Dear Friends,

The National Institutes for Health announced the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine was 72 percent effective in the U.S. trial in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19. This vaccine was reportedly 66 percent effective overall.

Eli Lilly announced new Phase 3 data showing COVID-19 treatment with both bamlanivimab and etesevimab reduced the risk of hospitalizations by 70 percent.

Novavax reported 89.3% efficacy in its Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial in the UK .

The White House released a fact sheet on new steps to boost vaccine supply and increase transparency.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued an amendment to the Declaration under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) to add additional qualified persons authorized to prescribe, dispense and administer COVID-19 vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an article analyzing policies schools can implement to limit the spread of COVID-19 and create a safe learning environment.

• CDC released a new MMWR investigating COVID-19 cases and compliance with mask use among K-12 schools. The report indicates that schools can help limit in-school spread by implementing proper safety measures, and that in doing so, out of 191 cases identified in the schools studied, only 7 were linked to in-school spread.
• CDC released information and data on the variant strains of COVID-19, which can be found here.