Last year, fear of simultaneous coronavirus and influenza pandemics drove more Americans than usual to get their flu shots. That, combined with distancing and masking measures, made the 2020-21 flu season remarkably tame.
This year, the numbers look less promising.
As of Oct. 29, 158.7 million flu vaccine doses had been distributed in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is down roughly 8 percent from the 172.3 million doses that had been distributed at the same time last year, and health officials across the country — in Michigan, in San Diego, in Ventura County, Calif., and elsewhere — have been sounding alarms.
“I think any indication that we’re going to have lower flu vaccination rates is of concern,” said Dr. Richard Webby, a faculty member of the Infectious Diseases Department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Dr. Webby said that because of the highly abnormal flu season last year, scientists don’t have a good grasp on how severe the coming season is likely to be. Since flu hasn’t been circulating for a season and a half, he said, fewer people may have lingering immunity to the virus than in a normal year.
“We’re just headed into, really, an unknown,” he said. “We’re certainly not the best at predicting flu seasons in a typical year, and this is anything but a typical year.”
Even without the coronavirus also circulating, a bad flu season could strain health care systems. And the United States has seen many times over how quickly a surge in Covid-19 cases can overwhelm hospitals entirely, making it impossible for them to properly care for patients with other medical emergencies, like severe influenza. The prospect of both viruses surging at the same time has horrified doctors from the start.
With coronavirus case rates plateauing at a high level nationally — and rising in some states — and with coronavirus vaccination rates still lagging behind the rates in most other wealthy countries, American hospitals are hardly in a position to handle more stress.
But Dr. Webby said that the good news is that the flu season has not yet begun in earnest — which means there is still time for people to get their shot.
Austria on Monday began a targeted lockdown against unvaccinated people, confining adults and minors ages 12 and older to their homes.
The move, which is aimed at calming the worst surge in infections the country has faced since the pandemic started, is believed to be one of the first national lockdowns directed at the unvaccinated, and is initially expected to last 10 days.
“We do not take this step lightly,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said at a news conference on Sunday.
Starting Monday, those who cannot prove that they are either fully vaccinated or immune from a past infection can only leave their dwellings for essential reasons, such as going to the doctor or for essential grocery shopping. Officials warned that they would increase police patrols to enforce the rules, and that those found to be violating them could be fined up to 1,450 euros, or $1,660, The Associated Press reported.
Karl Nehammer, the country’s interior minister, announced wide-ranging police measures, such as checking vaccination records, and laid out some of the fines people would face if caught breaking the rules.
Austria is currently averaging 10,395 cases a day, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Less than 65 percent of the country is fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in the European Union.
The new lockdown, which comes a week after an announcement that most businesses were required to check customers for proof of vaccination or immunity, essentially aims to keep the estimated two million unvaccinated Austrians off the streets as cases are surging.
Outside the chancellery in Vienna on Sunday, where Mr. Schallenberg, his interior and health minister were announcing the new restrictions, a crowd gathered to protest them.
Several lawmakers had called for a general lockdown to bring down the numbers, but the country’s health minister pointed out on Sunday that while the overall infections were going up, the infections among the immunized were actually decreasing.
State governments in the United States are offering incentives for coronavirus shots for children, just as they did for adults earlier in the year.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally endorsed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Nov. 2 for children ages 5 to 11, more than a million have received doses, according to a White House estimate.
With the pace of inoculations stagnating among U.S. adults, states are rushing to encourage vaccinations among newly eligible younger children, despite some questions about the effectiveness of incentive programs.
Such programs proliferated over the summer as progress on vaccinations began to decline. They often involved cash payments or lotteries, sometimes to win items like customized pickup trucks or rifles, and free tickets to baseball games, drinks and even joints.
The rewards announced for children so far are mostly cash and scholarships, but in some areas, local attractions are also being dangled.
Visa gift cards worth $100 are available to children in Louisiana and Chicago. In New York City, $100 prepaid debit cards are also available, as are tickets to the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Cyclones baseball games.
In San Antonio, parents who have their children vaccinated at city clinics are eligible for a $100 gift card to H-E-B, the grocery store chain that is an institution in Texas. Around New York State, parents can enter children ages 5 to 11 in a series of drawings for full-ride college scholarships to any two- or four-year public college or university in the state. There will be a total of 50 winners.
Ohio is running a program called Vax-2-School in which there will be drawings for 150 scholarships to Ohio colleges worth $10,000 each, as well as five $100,000 scholarships. Older children in Minnesota, those 12 to 17, can get a $200 Visa gift card and enter a series of drawings for one of five $100,000 Minnesota college scholarships.
West Virginia is offering children a chance to win educational savings funds, and as a grand prize in the program, one school will receive $100,000 and a holiday party featuring Gov. Jim Justice and Babydog, his English bulldog. One hundred lifetime hunting and fishing licenses are also up for grabs.
In a similar vein, children aged 5 to 17 in Maine are being asked to be creative to encourage their peers to get vaccinated. The state is soliciting 30-second videos from them on the benefits of getting a Covid shot, with an emphasis on “original music or humor,” information on the vaccines’ safety and efficacy, and the dangers of being unvaccinated. The prizes, which will be donated to the filmmakers’ schools, are $50,000 for first place, $25,000 for second place and $10,000 for third place.
Japan’s economy continued to wobble in the third quarter of 2021, tipping back into contraction, but the success of its coronavirus vaccination campaign suggests that brighter days may be ahead, at least in the near term.
In the July-to-September period, the country’s economy, the third largest after the United States and China, shrank by an annualized rate of 3 percent, government data showed on Monday. The result, a quarterly drop of 0.8 percent, indicated an economy struggling to find its footing in the face of coronavirus restrictions and a supply chain crunch that hit its biggest manufacturers. The previous three-month period saw a slight expansion.
But Japan now has one of the highest vaccination rates among major nations, and it has lifted virtually all restrictions on its economy as its virus caseload has fallen in recent weeks to one of the lowest levels in the world.
Seventy-five percent of the country is fully vaccinated. And coronavirus case counts have hovered in the low hundreds since mid-October, a decline of about 99 percent since their August peak, heralding the return of long-suppressed consumer spending.
Bolstering the positive outlook, policymakers, fresh off an election, are preparing a new round of stimulus that would provide support to ailing businesses and put cash in the hands of people nationwide.
The country started the July-to-September period on the back foot because of a clunky vaccine rollout that left it far behind its peer countries. The Delta variant caused cases to surge just as Tokyo prepared to kick off the Summer Olympics, which were conducted without spectators and failed to deliver the economic boost that had been promised when the country was chosen as host.
As the virus spread, Japan entered a new state of emergency. Restaurants and bars closed early and travel dried up, with many people deciding to stay home rather than brave record-high case counts.
Since the country ended its state of emergency last month, however, foot traffic has nearly returned to prepandemic levels, said Tomohiko Kozawa, a researcher at the Japan Research Institute.
“There’s a risk that infections could begin to spread again, but for the moment, the outlook points to recovery,” he said, adding that “we can expect high growth” in domestic consumption in the coming months.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, said on Sunday that if courts continue to block the Biden administration’s efforts to soon compel large companies to require a Covid vaccine or face weekly testing, it would be “a setback for public health.”
A federal appeals court issued a ruling on Friday that continued to block the administration’s rule, saying the federal agency that drafted the order had “grossly” exceeded its purview.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency within the Labor Department, issued a rule this month that companies with 100 or more employees must put a vaccine mandate in place by Jan. 4 or comply with weekly testing, as well as mandatory masking in December.
The administration’s attempts — which could affect 84 million private-sector workers, 31…