One Minute Overview

Imposing Vaccine Mandates

• Germany's Lufthansa will require the crew on its planes to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, the airline said on Wednesay.
• Air Canada said on Wednesday it would require all employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as the fast-spreading Delta variant drives an increase in infections. The move by Canada's largest carrier was in line with a government mandate that workers in the transportation sector be vaccinated by the end of October and follows similar moves by other major companies, including United Airlines
  
• In a move aimed at pushing employees to get COVID vaccines, United Airlines has mandated shots for its employees.
  
• Ford Motor Co will delay bringing most workers back to offices until January, and is still considering whether to require employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, the company's chief people officer told Reuters.
• Credit Suisse has asked all non-vaccinated staff in the United States to work from home beginning Sept. 7, as it pushes back its return-to-office plans over concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
  
• Goldman Sachs Group Inc told employees on Tuesday that anyone entering the investment bank's U.S. offices, including clients, must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 starting immediately, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
  
• United Parcel Service Inc said on Tuesday it would require employees in certain U.S. locations to be vaccinated when they return to the office, as COVID-19 cases rise across the United States due to the fast-spreading Delta variant.
  
• US Military troops must immediately begin to get the COVID-19 vaccine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a memo Wednesday, ordering service leaders to “impose ambitious timelines for implementation.” More than 800,000 service members have yet to get their shots, according to Pentagon data.
  
• Scott Morrison has backed businesses to reject customers or guests who haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19, giving the clearest picture on how so-called ‘vaccine passports’ could be used in Australia. The Prime Minister has gradually been preparing the ground for such a scheme, but his latest position risks a backbench revolt and raising the ire of a growing movement of many thousands of people opposing vaccine passports.

Mask Mandates

• Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley issued new regulations Wednesday requiring all public school students ages 5 and above, and all staffers, to wear masks indoors while at school. All visitors are also expected to wear masks in school buildings. Masks are not required when outdoors. The regulations take effect immediately
  

Mental Health

• Across Myanmar many are struggling with the grief of losing loved ones to disease and violence. Yet, forced to grapple with more immediate dangers like basic safety and access to medicine, attention to mental health has taken a back seat. But experts say the psychological toll is becoming impossible to ignore as rates of depression and suicide rise.
  

Vaccine Protection in Schools

• India will supply millions of additional COVID-19 vaccine doses to its states to try to inoculate all school teachers by early next month, the health minister says, as the country gradually resumes physical classes. The pandemic has hit the country of 1.35 billion people particularly hard and hundreds of millions of its students have been stuck at home for months, with little or no access to online education for a majority of the poor.

Vaccine Efficacy

• Protection against COVID-19 offered by two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines begins to fade within six months, underscoring the need for booster shots, according to researchers in Britain. After five to six months, the effectiveness of the Pfizer jab at preventing COVID-19 infection in the month after the second dose fell from 88% to 74%, an analysis of data collected in Britain's ZOE COVID study showed.
  
• Researchers say they are seeing some waning of protection against Covid infections in double-jabbed people. The real-world study includes data on positive Covid PCR test results between May and July 2021 among more than a million people who had received two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine. Protection after two shots of Pfizer decreased from 88% at one month to 74% at five to six months. For AstraZeneca, the fall was from 77% to 67% at four to five months. Waning protection is to be expected, say experts.