Data Snapshot
UW Medicine Hospitals:
King County: The county reported 285 new positive cases and 0 new deaths on March 18.
Washington: The state reported 331,109 cases and 5,156 deaths as of March 16.
United States: The CDC reports 29,431,658 cases and 535,217 deaths as of March 18.
Global: WHO reports 120,915,219 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,674,078 deaths as of March. 16.
Numbers update frequently, please follow links for most up-to-date numbers.
UW Medicine COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Update
Total Vaccine Doses Administered: 140,845
- Total first dose: 79,312
- Total second dose: 61,553
As of March 16, 2021.
UW Medicine in the News
Seattle Times: Mariners team up with UW Medicine to promote COVID-19 vaccines to underserved communities
Featuring: Dr. Paul Ramsey, CEO of UW Medicine
“The Mariners are making a pitch, and it has nothing to do with baseball. UW Medicine and the Mariners are working together to help COVID-19 vaccines reach underserved communities in the region, they announced Thursday morning. The Mariners are giving $2 million to support UW Medicine’s community outreach strategies and mobile vaccination efforts.”
KOMO News: Can someone who is fully vaccinated get infected with a variant of the coronavirus?
Featuring: Vin Gupta, IHME
“‘I think everybody needs to assume that even if they’ve been vaccinated, they can still be infected and pass on the virus,’ said Dr. Vin Gupta, at UW Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. ‘If you’ve been vaccinated, you could still get infected with this virus, you’re just not going to end up in the hospital, which is good, but it should also cause you to be mindful that there’s still a lot of people out there who’ve yet to receive their vaccine.’ You could still be a carrier, he says, which is why you still need to do your part to mitigate transmission by wearing a mask, social distancing, and avoiding unnecessary activities. Health experts say the three major COVID vaccines approved for use in the U.S. do provide some protection against the current variants. Dr. Gutpa worries that if a substantial number of people refuse to get vaccinated, the virus could mutate to the point where it can avoid the immune response provided by today’s vaccines.”
The Atlantic: The Pandemic Mistake America Can’t Repeat
Featuring: Alex Greninger, Laboratory Medicine
“Even as U.S. scientists were developing in-house tests to diagnose coronavirus infections, the FDA was dragging its feet on approval. In January, Alex Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington, designed a more effective diagnostic test than the CDC. But federal regulators put him through the wringer—requiring an online application that would take 100 hours to complete; then requesting a hard copy of that application; then insisting that he obtain samples of other coronaviruses, which the CDC had restricted access to. By the time Greninger’s test was approved, the calendar had turned to March and hundreds of thousands of Americans had probably already been infected. America’s testing capacity eventually rose to more than 2 million per day. But some observers believe that wasn’t nearly enough. The economist Paul Romer argued that the U.S. needed at least 10 times that—20 million to 30 million daily tests—to open up more of the economy safely in 2020. The best way to hit that figure would have been for the U.S. government to accelerate the production of cheap, rapid antigen paper tests, which could have been distributed en masse directly to residents.”
COVID-19 Literature Report
COVID-19 Literature Situation Report is a daily (M-F) newsletter put together by the Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness that provides a succinct summary of the latest scientific literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Key Takeaways: COVID-19 Literature Situation Report March 16, 2021
- Only 17% (76 of 436) of solid organ transplant recipients developed detectable antibody responses at a median of 20 days after the first dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to a convenience sample of US patients. Transplant recipients who were receiving immunosuppression therapy, older transplant recipients, and those vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (as compared to the Moderna vaccine) were less likely to develop detectable antibody responses. More.
- The SARS-CoV-2 P.1 variant which has caused large outbreaks in Brazil is less resistant to neutralization from both convalescent serum and vaccine-induced serum than the B.1.351 variant originally identified in South Africa, despite containing similar receptor binding domain mutations (E484K, K417N/T and N501Y). More.
COVID-19 Literature Surveillance Team, is an affiliated group of medical students, PhDs and physicians keeping up with the latest research on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 by finding the newest articles, reading them, grading their level of evidence and bringing you the bottom line.
Read the latest report: March 16 | Daily COVID-19 LST Report.
Listen to the latest podcast: Week of Feb. 15 | COVID-19 LST Podcast.
Tweet of the Week
We’re teaming up with the @mariners to strike out #COVID19.
Learn how our partnership aims to raise awareness for the vaccine's safety and importance and make it easier for communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic to get vaccinated.
— UW Medicine (@UWMedicine) March 18, 2021
