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When will the pandemic end? It’s the question hanging over just about everything since Covid-19 took over the world last year. The answer can be measured in vaccinations. Bloomberg has built the biggest database of Covid-19 shots given around the world, with more than 119 million doses administered worldwide. U.S. science officials such as Anthony Fauci have suggested it will take 70% to 85% coverage of the population for things to return to normal. Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker shows that some countries are making far more rapid progress than others, using 75% coverage with a two-dose vaccine as a target. (Randall, 2/4)

As coronavirus infections surged around the country in early November — and as the prospect of a long, dark winter loomed — it was not clear if any of the vaccines in development would pan out. Now, three months later, the picture is very different. Two highly effective Covid vaccines are rolling out around the country. Three others appear to be slightly less robust, but still offer strong, and in some cases complete, protection against severe disease and death. (Thomas and Robbins, 2/3)

Coronavirus deaths in the United States surpassed 450,000 on Thursday, and daily deaths remain stubbornly high at more than 3,000 a day, despite falling infections and the arrival of multiple vaccines. Infectious disease specialists expect deaths to start dropping soon, after new cases hit a peak right around the beginning of the year. New COVID-19 deaths could ebb as early as next week, said the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Smith and Taxin, 2/4)

KHN and NPR: Comparing Death Tolls From Covid To Past Wars Is Fraught 

Counting the dead is one of the first, somber steps in reckoning with an event of enormous tragic scope, be it war, a natural disaster or a pandemic. This dark but necessary arithmetic has become all too routine during the covid-19 outbreak. The total U.S death toll has now surpassed 450,000. (Stone and Feibel, 2/5)

Confusion over the terms “variant” and “strain” predate this coronavirus. It seems virologists never got around to defining their terms. ... The distinction between a variant and a strain hinges on whether the virus in question behaves in a distinct way, according to Dr. Adam Lauring, who studies the evolution of RNA viruses at the University of Michigan, and Emma Hodcroft, an expert on viral phylogenetics at the University of Bern in Switzerland. (Kaplan, 2/4)

There is now real evidence that at least one coronavirus variant seems to elude some of the power of Covid-19 vaccines. What, exactly, that means for the pandemic is still being sussed out. (Joseph, 2/5)

The devastating spike in new daily COVID-19 cases in the United States has slowly begun to come down, and vaccinations are starting to protect millions of the country’s most vulnerable people. But any respite from the pandemic’s worst chapter so far could be turned back — or made worse — by new coronavirus variants that experts say may present a variety of challenges to getting the virus under control. Three specific variants have raised alarm bells so far: B.1.1.7, which was identified in the United Kingdom, B.1.351 in South Africa, and P.1 in Brazil, all of which have been detected in the U.S. Experts believe that B.1.1.7. could be as much as “50 to 70 percent more contagious” compared to past variants, which means more people are likely to get infected. (Isaacs-Thomas, 2/4)