Welcome to our weekly newsletter highlighting The Economist’s best coverage of the pandemic and its effects. Johnson & Johnson’s covid-19 vaccine is the latest to suffer a setback. On April 13th American health authorities paused its use to investigate six cases of unusual blood clots in people who had received the jab, after more than 6m doses were administered. European countries halted the jab too. The jury is still out on whether these blood clots are linked to the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine but the same rare condition was linked to AstraZeneca’s covid-19 vaccine a week earlier, which suggests that could be the case. Both jabs use a modified adenovirus, though a different one is involved in each. On “The Jab”, our podcast reporting from the sharp end of the vaccination race, we investigate vaccine hesitancy in America. The country is close to delivering jabs to almost all who want them—unfortunately, only seven in ten Americans are interested. In the United States section, we focus on white evangelicals, a community that seems particularly set against the idea of taking covid jabs, and consider the kinds of messaging might be used to persuade the sceptics. Vermont, America’s second-whitest state (after Maine) has made all non-white residents, and those in their households, eligible for the vaccine. The move has raised some legal concerns, but proponents defend it on public-health grounds, since non-white Americans have suffered disproportionately from covid-19. The vaccine roll-out in Hong Kong has become highly politicised. China is pressing Hong Kongers to accept a Chinese vaccine, but many there would prefer a better one. In the Graphic detail section, we delve into the latest clinical and real world trial results for China’s CoronaVac vaccine, developed by Sinovac Biotech. The numbers show that the vaccine underperforms, with efficacy rates that range from 83% to a little over 50%. Not as impressive as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which cut the risk of catching covid-19 by more than 90%. On our science podcast, “Babbage”, we investigate one of the covid-19 pandemic’s most compelling mysteries—where did SARS-CoV-2 virus come from? |