Wearing face masks and implementing lockdowns are effective measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Face masks serve as physical barriers that reduce transmission of droplets that carry the virus from infected to uninfected people. Implementing lockdowns leads to significant reductions in physical interactions between people, which also reduces transmission of COVID-19.
COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demonstrated a high level of safety and efficacy in clinical trials. However, limited data is available regarding the safety and efficacy of these vaccines in pregnant women because they were excluded from initial clinical trials. Available evidence from animal studies and ongoing vaccine safety monitoring suggests that COVID-19 vaccines don’t pose any specific risk for pregnant women. In contrast, pregnant women have an increased risk of suffering complications from COVID-19, which may affect pregnancy outcomes.
“The article’s claim that the U.S. is near herd immunity rests on two numbers: 1) the detection of infections by testing (claimed to be 10 – 25 percent) and 2) the infection fatality rate (claimed to be 0.23 percent). Using the same number of deaths as the author indicates that 0.15%/0.6% = 25% of the U.S. population has been infected, rather than two-thirds as the author claims. Thus, the author’s argument that 55 – 66 percent of the U.S. population has already been infected and has immunity is not supported by available data.”
Vitamin D is important for health and may play a role in helping the body to fight infections. While there has been much discussion of the ability of vitamin D to prevent COVID-19, scientific studies so far have produced only limited and conflicting evidence. Taking vitamin D supplements may be useful to prevent a deficiency due to a lack of sunshine, which can be common in people spending a lot of time indoors or living at high latitudes during winter.
The daily number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. fell sharply in January 2021. The COVID-19 vaccination campaign has been steadily ramping up since mid-December 2020. These data alone don’t provide evidence that Joe Biden taking office is having an impact, as the reduction in the number of new COVID-19 cases and the increase in the number COVID-19 vaccinations began weeks before Biden’s inauguration. The new presidency, while not expected to have any significant effects in the first weeks following inauguration, might materialize in future months and years.
COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed a high level of safety and efficacy in clinical trials. However, these trials excluded pregnant women. For this reason, data from clinical trials regarding the vaccines’ safety and efficacy in pregnant women is limited. However, current safety monitoring of pregnant women who received the vaccine hasn’t shown an increased incidence of pregnancy-related adverse events compared to unvaccinated pregnant women. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that “People who are pregnant and part of a group recommended to receive COVID-19 vaccine, such as healthcare personnel, may choose to be vaccinated”.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines demonstrated a high level of safety and efficacy during clinical trials in order to receive emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Extensive post-approval monitoring also indicates that the vaccines are safe. Apart from severe allergic reactions (anaphylaxis), the data so far doesn’t indicate that the vaccines cause severe side effects in the general population. The U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is an important tool for monitoring vaccine safety, but VAERS reports alone don’t demonstrate that a vaccine caused the adverse event. Further investigation of reported deaths found no causal link with COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to more deaths in the U.S. than usual in 2020. Excess death measures how many more deaths occurred over a period of time compared to the same time period in previous years. More than 490,000 excess deaths have occurred in the U.S. so far compared to previous years.
Authorized COVID-19 vaccines stimulate COVID-19 immunity in vaccinated individuals and significantly reduce the number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases. Preliminary data indicate that the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use may also reduce the risk of person-to-person transmission of the virus that causes the disease, however, the degree of this effect has not been determined by scientific studies yet. Therefore health authorities recommend that vaccinated people still wear masks to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
No vaccine can receive Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unless clinical trials demonstrate that it is safe and can prevent the disease in vaccinated individuals. Data from Phase 3 trials and continued monitoring of vaccinated individuals show that the COVID-19 vaccines approved by the FDA have a high level of efficacy and are generally safe. This evidence indicates that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines in preventing the disease largely outweigh potential risks, such as allergic reactions in a small number of people who have previous histories of allergies.
