Coronavirus

Susan Coffin and Sage Myers of the Perelman School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wrote an opinion piece about unvaccinated children’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 delta variant. They called for adults to continue wearing masks in risky environments, saying, “allowing even one child to become severely ill is too many if it can be prevented with simple measures.”

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel said workplace vaccine mandates could improve uptake. When Penn’s health system required staff to get COVID-19 vaccines, Emanuel said, “the sky didn’t fall. When we do it, and we have a good justification, people respond.”

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel spoke about vaccine mandates for health care workers. “Patients come first. It's our obligation to promote their health and well-being,” he said.

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel and research coordinators Matthew Guido and Amaya Diana wrote an opinion piece calling for vaccine mandates in the private sector. “The mandates are ethical, providing huge benefits that outweigh risks, and higher immunization rates maximize the vaccine’s benefits in the workplace and community,” they wrote.

Laura Su of the Perelman School of Medicine explained why breakthrough COVID-19 infections occur in vaccinated people. “People tend to think of this as yes or no—if I got vaccinated, I should not get any symptoms; I should be completely protected,” she said. “But there’s way more nuance than that.”

Irma Elo of the School of Arts & Sciences said the decline in life expectancy among Black and Latinx Americans reflects unequal access to health care and class privilege. "The people who have disproportionately suffered from this pandemic were the same people who were put in positions where they were more likely to be exposed because of their employment," she said.

Scott Hensley of the Perelman School of Medicine said breakthrough COVID-19 infections tend to be mild because the vaccines give the immune system a head start. “The virus is stopped in its tracks within a few days,” he said.

Genevieve Kanter of the Perelman School of Medicine said the current COVID-19 vaccines seem to be holding up against the delta variant. “We may need boosters later on, perhaps in eight to 12 months but not yet,” she said.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center spoke about the politicization of public health information on COVID-19 in the U.S. "When you begin to reduce trust in experts and agencies telling you that vaccines are safe, you're creating all kinds of susceptibilities that can be exploited for partisan gain," she said.