By RICHARD SKOLNIK
Los Alamos

We are living in a new world of COVID-19, compared to where we were in most of 2020 and 2021 to date.

The good news is that an overwhelming share of our eligible citizens have been fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. Over the last several months, we had very few new infections in Los Alamos County.

The bad news, however, is that the daily average number of infections in Los Alamos County has increased dramatically in the last few weeks. The daily average for the two weeks ending August 6 was 10.8 cases, per 100,000 people. The daily average for the two weeks prior to that was .8 cases, per 100,000 people. More of our children are also being infected than before.

Almost all of the new infections in the US are from a viral variant that spreads more easily and can be more dangerous than earlier variants. Although breakthrough infections among the vaccinated are rare, those vaccinated who do get infected can transmit the virus. In addition, there are pockets of unvaccinated people in New Mexico and the US that pose risks to the rest of society. Moreover, most of the low- and lower-middle income world is barely vaccinated. As long as this is true, the whole world remains at risk of infection.

We may be safer in Los Alamos than almost anywhere in the US. However, our present approach to COVID will not be good enough to protect us or to protect our unvaccinated children—with school starting imminently.

Rather, we need to urgently pull together as a community in the following ways:

• Avoid hosting large indoor community events. If they must take place, ensure that everyone inside is masked.
• Ensure that any large outdoor events that will place people close to each other will also have everyone masked.
• Build on the strengths of our vaccine program to encourage everyone eligible who is not vaccinated to be vaccinated. If you are not yet vaccinated, please get vaccinated. This is necessary not only to protect you and your family. It is also necessary to protect our young children, who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated.
• Write to your members of Congress, asking them to urgently support the production and distribution of additional vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.

The threats to our school children, especially at the elementary level, are more serious than ever and we need to do everything we can to prevent infections in our schools. Our schools need to ensure that the measures recently recommended by NMPED are in place. Furthermore, they should exploit the opportunities for teaching and learning outdoors as much as possible, as the Danes did so well. We are lucky to live in a place with weather that enables this.

Getting good information about the spread of infection among our schoolchildren will be essential to managing the virus. It will be important for our families to participate in the school surveillance and testing program. However, the proposed approach will not be easy to carry out. Thus, we need to ensure that NMPED refines its approach to testing and surveillance, as needed.

Every infected person can spread the virus to others, some of whom may be especially vulnerable to severe illness, hospitalization, or death. In addition, we have very little understanding so far of the possible long-term implications of COVID, including from asymptomatic infection and among children.

We have led New Mexico and the US in vaccination. This is good. However, we are living in a different world than we were in a few months ago. Our unvaccinated children are more vulnerable than before. The fight against this variant has only just begun and we in Los Alamos need to do all we can as a community to fight it.

Editor’s Note: Richard Skolnik is the former regional director for health for South Asia at the World Bank. He was the director of an AIDS treatment program for Harvard and taught Global Health at the George Washington University and Yale. He is the author of Global Health 101 and the instructor for Yale/Coursera’s Essentials of Global Health. Skolnik has written this article in his personal capacity.