Coronavirus Watch: CDC panel to review safety of vaccinations for children

A CDC advisory panel is meeting today to weigh the risks of COVID-19 vaccinations for young adults after reports of heart inflammation among a small number of teens who were vaccinated.

As of June 14, U.S. health authorities had confirmed 323 cases of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) or pericarditis (inflammation of the sac that surrounds the heart) in people younger than 30 who had received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. That’s out of more than 310 million doses administered in the U.S.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said in May that the "relatively few" reports of myocarditis "appear to be mild" and are below the expected baseline rates.

It's Wednesday, and this is the Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news you need to know:

• Deaths among Medicare patients in nursing homes soared by 32% last year, a government watchdog reported Tuesday.
• About 900 U.S. Secret Service employees tested positive for the coronavirus from March 2020 to 2021, according to government records.
• The Delta variant, first detected in India, now represents more than 20% of infections in the U.S. in the last two weeks, or double what it was when the CDC last reported on the variant’s prevalence. Declining U.S. infection rates are beginning to plateau, and there is increasing concern that could be because of the Delta variant, according to the Johns Hopkins Weekly Situation report. 
• India has become the second country, after the U.S., to report 30 million infections. At the latest rate of reported cases, India would overtake the U.S. case counts in about 11 weeks, a Paste BN analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.
• Brazil, meanwhile, has reported 505,000 deaths, second only to the U.S. At the latest weekly rate of deaths, Brazil could surpass the U.S. in about eight weeks. It's not clear how underreporting and access to testing have affected the counts.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported more than 33.5 million COVID-19 cases and 602,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 179.3 million cases and more than 3.9 million deaths. Nearly 54% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 45% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

Tracking the pandemic: See the numbers in your area here. See where cases are rising here. See vaccination rates here. And here, compare vaccinations rates worldwide and see which countries are using which vaccines.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck