Coronavirus vaccine and Delta variant updates for 8-05-2021

<p>This is Vaccine 411, the latest coronavirus vaccine information for August 5th, 2021.</p><p><br></p><p>Yesterday we had an Axios poll that shows unvaccinated Americans mostly blame foreigners visiting the United States for the surge in the Delta variant. And apparently the White House agrees with them. The administration is taking the first steps toward requiring nearly all foreign visitors to the U.S. to be vaccinated. Travel restrictions curtailing international travel to the U.S. have long been in place, with no apparent effect on the prevalence or spread of the Delta variant.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>The U.K. plans to offer vaccines to 16 and 17-year-olds in the next few weeks. An independent body of scientists that makes recommendations to the government changed its advice. Healthy 16 to 17-year-olds can be offered a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine without parental consent.</p><p><br></p><p>A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine says children and adolescents transmit the coronavirus efficiently to household contacts and some of those contacts require hospitalization. The good news, no one in the study younger than 18 required hospitalization, however the study was done last year before the more dangerous Delta variant took hold.</p><p><br></p><p>The director general of the World Health Organization has a message for countries giving COVID booster shots. Stop it. He’s calling for a moratorium of at least two months on boosters because, "We should not accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines, using even more of it while the world's most vulnerable people remain unprotected."</p><p><br></p><p>The U.K.’s “Freedom Day” when restrictions were completely lifted brought screams of irresponsibility and predictions of doom and 100,000 cases daily from pandemic experts and the World Health Organization. Instead, the British are astounding the world with a drop in cases for the fifth day in a row. Why it’s happening is still guesswork, but most speculation