Baby Boom Goes Bust, Signaling Hard Times: U.S. Coronavirus Blog

ACROSS AMERICA — Nearly a year ago, pandemic-prompted lockdowns gave rise to a spate of jokes that efforts to pass the time at home would result in a baby boom by the end of 2020.

Turns out the jokes fell short, and the baby boom ended up being more of a baby bust, according to a report by CBS News.

Provisional birth rate data provided by 28 state health departments showed a roughly 7.2 percent decline in births in December 2020, about nine months after the COVID-19 virus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

California, the most populous state, saw its birth rate decrease by 10.2 percent in December. Hawaii saw one of the largest drops at 30.4 percent.

Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, told CBS News that December's drop was the biggest he's seen since the baby boom ended in 1964.

"The scale of this is really large," Cohen said in a telephone interview with CBS News.

"Regardless of whether you think it's good or bad to have a lot of children, the fact that we're suddenly having fewer means things are not going well for a lot of people."

Read more via CBS News

The Latest

Some states are lifting coronavirus-related restrictions, including mask mandates. But health experts and public officials on the federal and local levels are warning against acting too soon.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday called out Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi for “Neanderthal thinking” in deciding to relax their mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions, according to a report from The Associated Press. Pennsylvania on Monday took a more gradual approach to reopening, allowing fans at professional sporting and entertainment events at a 20 percent capacity.

Biden called the easing of restrictions a “big mistake” while speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with lawmakers, who each wore a mask. He said, “I hope everyone has realized by now, these masks make a difference.”

“We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease,” he said. “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking that, in the meantime, everything’s fine, take off your mask, forget it.”

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has urgently warned state officials and ordinary Americans not to let down their guard. Walensky said she is "really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures that we have recommended."

"I remain deeply concerned about a potential shift in the trajectory of the pandemic," she told the AP. "We stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground that we have gained."

Cases, deaths and hospitalizations from the virus are on a downward trend nationally, and the vaccine rollout has received a big boost with the announcement that drugmaker Merck will help rival Johnson & Johnson with the production of the single-dose vaccine that was just approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a few days ago.

But the country remains far from its lofty vaccination goal, which Biden said is to have doses available for all adults by the end of May.

Local leaders in Texas have criticized Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to open the state "100 percent."

"There is no explanation for the governor's action other than trying to distract us and the media from the failure of the state to protect us from the power outage," Austin Mayor Steve Adler said, according to CNN, referring to the winter snowstorm that caused dozens of deaths and millions to lose power two weeks ago.

Texas, the nation's second most-populous state, is actually one of the few states where coronavirus cases have increased in recent weeks. And it's where more than 100 immigrants recently released at the U.S.-Mexico border have tested positive for the virus since January, according to a Fox News report.

Felipe Romero, a spokesperson for Brownsville, Texas, told the news channel that the 108 positive tests account for 6.3 percent of the migrants who have been tested while they are released by the Border Patrol. He said the city cannot prevent the immigrants from traveling elsewhere in the United States, but has advised them to quarantine.

On the vaccine front, several states are expanding access as the rollout is expected to speed up significantly due to the Merck-J&J partnership.

Arizona, Connecticut and Indiana have thrown open the line to the younger age bracket, the AP reported Wednesday. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are reserving the first doses of the new one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson for teachers. And in Detroit, factory workers can get vaccinated starting this week, regardless of their age.

Teachers, school staff, bus drivers and child care workers will be eligible for vaccine shots in all states, a directive put in place by the Department of Health and Human Services. That's a major shift for the Biden administration, which controls access to COVID-19 vaccines but previously allowed states to set their own guidelines.

Some evidence that the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are working can be found in Los Angeles County, California, where healthcare workers have accounted for significantly fewer positive virus tests since they have been vaccinated, The New York Times reported.

Coronavirus numbers among Los Angeles County healthcare workers are down 94 percent since vaccinations became available in late November, the report found.

Also this week, the independent COVID Tracking Project said it will stop gathering data beginning March 7. The tool has given a daily total of reported hospitalizations across the country, which are now consistently below 50,000.

Hospitalizations nationwide have been on a downward trend for several weeks.

Newest Numbers

As of Wednesday afternoon, the United States had reported more than 28.7 million cases and more than 518,400 deaths from COVID-19-related illnesses, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

At least 1,743 deaths and 55,122 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the United States on Tuesday, according to a Washington Post database. The Post's reporting shows that over the past week, new daily cases have fallen 1.7 percent, new daily deaths have fallen 5.2 percent and COVID-19-related hospitalizations have fallen 16.4 percent.

More than 102.3 million vaccine doses have been distributed and nearly 78.6 million administered in the United States as of Wednesday, according to the CDC. More than 51.7 million people have received one dose, and more than 26.1 million have received two.

Currently, 46,388 people are hospitalized with a coronavirus-related illness in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Wednesday, 21 states and U.S. territories remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

For more live coverage on the coronavirus, follow The New York Times or The Washington Post.

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