very good question。请看本周一我们系疫情现状小结：

（以下内容是本周一我们系会议powerpoint presentation的口头介绍的部分内容。我个人认为打疫苗对疫情的防控和蔓延是有效的。但要现在就在已打疫苗的人群建立疫苗与疫情显著的因果关系，我个人觉得为时稍早，再要再等一段时间，有更多的数据资料之后下结论）

 

The fourth wave is well underway. Numbers of new cases are rising around the world. Growth worldwide has increased 22% over the past two weeks.

 

Death totals worldwide are on the rise. The death rate has risen 8% in the past two weeks.

 

The countries with the highest average number of cases in the past seven days include India, Turkey, the US, France, and Brazil.

 

India’s coronavirus crisis deepened on Monday with the number of new reported cases setting a global record for the fifth consecutive day; India’s health ministry reported almost 353,000 new cases and 2,812 deaths on Monday, and enormous funeral pyres continued to burn in the worst-affected cities. Experts say that India’s reported overall toll of more than 195,000 deaths could be a vast undercount.

 

In the US, case numbers have started to fall again.  The case rate has decreased 16% over the past two weeks.  38 states and territories, including Texas, are seeing lower case rates. 17 states and territories are recording rising case levels. 

 

Deaths continue to decrease over the past several weeks in the US; the daily death rate has decreased 3% across the nation over the past two weeks. In Texas, the case rate has started to level off over the past two weeks, down 6%.  

 

The WHO recommendation of the test positive rate is 5% or lower. In the US, the current positive rate is decreasing. 26 states now meet positivity recommendations, basically flat from last week. The new rate is 4.1%.

 

In vaccinations, nationwide just over 2.75M doses per day have been administered over the past week, a 14% decrease over the week before. 290 million doses have been distributed through yesterday, and 228M shots have been given.  That’s a dose usage rate of 79%.  At least 42% of Americans have been given one shot and 28.5% have received both. In numbers that’s 140M who have received one or both doses.

If the country maintains its current pace of administering first doses, about 70% of the total population would be at least partially vaccinated around the first week of July and nearly all around the end of August, assuming supply pledges are met and vaccines are eventually available to children.

 

Statewide, 37% of Texans have received at least one shot and 23% have received both. Almost 18M shots have been given in total, which is 76% of the doses distributed in the state. 

 

Locally, 2.9M doses have been allocated in Harris County; 1.71M are partially vaccinated and just over 1M are fully vaccinated. As of Monday, over 1.65M doses had been administered by TMC institutions; 827,000 people have been fully vaccinated.