Top COVID-19 News

^{Amid the pandemic, news is fast-moving – and sometimes confusing. Coverage is here to help. Our new series provides a clear, fact-based digest of the top news for health consumers.}

CDC guidance for the vaccinated

Fully vaccinated people can safely gather indoors with one another in small groups without masks or distancing, the Centers for Disease Control said in its first guidance to help vaccinated people returning to everyday activities. They also can visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease. There is “a growing body of evidence” that suggests people who are fully vaccinated are “potentially less likely to transmit the virus that causes COVID-19 to other people,” the CDC stated.

The CDC will continue to update its recommendations, and notes that its guidance applies to people two weeks after full vaccination, when shots have taken full effect. For now, it still recommends the fully vaccinated wear masks when in public, and continues to advise that all Americans refrain from travel unless absolutely necessary.

Massachusetts adds teachers to eligibility pool

Amid a national push to help speed the return of children to classrooms, Massachusetts has moved K-12 educators, staff and childcare workers up in the prioritization schedule, making them eligible for vaccine beginning March 11. Nationally, pharmacies have been asked to prioritize the group for vaccination through the month of March.

Who’s next? Transit, grocery, utility, food and agriculture, sanitation, public works and public health workers are next in the state’s schedule, with rollout expected sometime this month.

More vaccination sites

The state continues to add vaccination sites, with a focus on reaching underserved communities, including a Lower Merrimack Valley Regional Collaborative site that will be open weekdays. A new regional vaccine collaborative at Cape Cod Community College will have capacity to administer more than 750 vaccines per day. And the Fenway Park site will transition to Hynes Convention Center later this month, with capacity to ramp up to 5,000 doses a day.

For now, high demand continues to outpace the limited supply. About a million people are currently eligible to receive a vaccine in Massachusetts, including the newly eligible 400,000 educators, and the state estimates it will take about a month to vaccinate that pool. Available doses and appointments are expected to increase in coming weeks and months, as vaccine manufacturers Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson continue to ramp up supply.

By the numbers

The state continues to see declines in cases, hospitalization and death rates since the winter holidays. However, all three metrics remain above the lows of the summer. Nationally, recent data shows a period of steady declines now slowing, with infections stalling at a high plateau of about 55,000 cases a day.

Health officials urge the public to maintain distancing, mask-wearing and other measures. Such measures are crucial to prevent a rise in more transmissible or dangerous variants before most of the public is vaccinated. A more contagious variant that originated in the United Kingdom continues a rapid spread in the U.S., health officials note. "A concerted and well-coordinated public health effort, together with rapid and widespread uptake of effective vaccines, is essential to remain ahead of the inevitable evolution of variants that could dangerously accelerate the trajectory of the pandemic," CDC head Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky wrote recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.