Coronavirus vaccine and Delta variant updates for 8-12-2021

<p>This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 12th, 2021.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>California will become the first state to require all teachers and school staff to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. That applies to public and private schools, and it will also apply to school volunteers. California’s two largest teachers’ unions announced their full support.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The FDA is expected to in the next day or so authorize vaccine booster shots for the immunocompromised. That’d be a third shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Even after authorization, the CDC would advise on whether to use a vaccine booster. A recent study by Johns Hopkins found vaccinated immunocompromised people are 485x more likely to end up in the hospital or die from COVID compared to the general vaccinated population.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Your friends who think the vaccines endanger current and future pregnancies aren’t going to like this. The CDC yesterday urged all pregnant women to get the vaccine. Hospitals in various hot spots are seeing disturbing numbers of unvaccinated mothers-to-be seriously ill with the virus. Expectant women run a higher risk of severe illness and pregnancy complications from the virus, but only about 23% have gotten at least one vaccine dose.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Research in several states by the Mayo Clinic appears to show Moderna’s vaccine is considerably more effective against the Delta variant than Pfizer’s. While Moderna’s effectiveness was down to 76%, Pfizer’s was down to 42%. The study also found across multiple states, those inoculated with Pfizer were twice as likely to have a breakthrough infection compared to Moderna.</p><p><br></p><p>If you do wind up in the hospital, you’ll need people to take care of you. But in some hot spots, there’s now a shortage of nurses. Just one example, one person who suffered a heart attack in Louisiana was bounced around to six hospitals before finding an ER that could take him. Hospitals are losing nurses to staffing agencies, ho