The vaccination effort in the United States has continued to ramp up, and research continues to exhibit the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. In light of this new information, President Biden has urged states to halt their reopening plans for this time being and continue or reinstate mask mandates.
Case counts continued a positive trend for a week straight. Additionally, hospitals have reported seeing more younger patients that are experiencing severe symptoms from the disease. As such, it seems that vaccines are mainly protecting the at-risk groups of those who are 65 and older.
President Biden is currently encouraging the nation to return back to its original mitigation strategies, despite the additional pushes made for the COVID-19 vaccine. His rationale is surrounded by the fact that the benefits of this effort would only be seen if the nation returned its commitment to these strategies once again.
Despite the concerning nature of the pandemic in the past few weeks, there has been much good news reported as well. On Monday, the CDC released a new study on the effectiveness of the vaccine and found that the vaccine reduced the risk of infection by 80% after one dose and 90% after patients were fully vaccinated.