New story in Science and Health from Time: Crew Starts Making China’s New Space Station Their Home Crew Starts Making China’s New Space Station Their Home

JIUQUAN, China — Three Chinese astronauts have begun making China’s new space station their home for the next three months, after their launch and arrival at the station Thursday marked further advances in the country’s ambitious space program.

Their Shenzhou-12 craft connected with the station about six hours after taking off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert.

About three hours later, commander Nie Haisheng, followed by Liu Boming and space rookie Tang Hongbo, opened the hatches and floated into the Tianhe-1, the core living segment of the station. Pictures showed them busy at work unpacking equipment and at one point turning to the camera to greet and salute audiences back on Earth.
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“This represents the first time Chinese have entered their own space station,” state broadcaster CCTV said on its nightly news.

China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own. China’s leaders hope the mission will be a complete success as the ruling Communist Party prepares to celebrate its centennial next month.

Although contact between the Chinese space program and NASA is restricted by U.S. law, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson issued a statement Thursday expressing, “Congratulations to China on the successful launch of crew to their space station! I look forward to the scientific discoveries to come.”

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to connect the Tianhe-1 to two laboratory modules and send up crews and supplies. The current crew will carry out experiments, test equipment and prepare for the future missions.

A fresh crew and supplies will be sent in three months. Each crew will have three members, with the station’s capacity at six, when crews are being exchanged. Two of China’s past astronauts were women, and future crews on the station will include women.

Uniformed military personnel and children waving flowers and flags and singing patriotic songs saw off the astronauts before they entered the Shenzhou-12 to be blasted into space atop a Long March-2F Y12 rocket at at 9:22 a.m (0122 GMT) Thursday Beijing time.

The rocket dropped its boosters about two minutes into the flight followed by the cowling surrounding the crew’s craft. After about 10 minutes it separated from the rocket’s upper section, extended its solar panels and shortly afterward entered orbit.

About a half-dozen adjustments helped line up the craft for docking with the Tianhe-1, or Heavenly Harmony, module at about 4 p.m. (0800 GMT).

The travel time is down from the two days it took to reach China’s earlier experimental space stations, a result of a “great many breakthroughs and innovations,” the mission’s deputy chief designer, Gao Xu, told state broadcaster CCTV.

“So the astronauts can have a good rest in space which should make them less tired,” Gao said.

Other improvements include an increase in the number of automated and remote-controlled systems that should “significantly lessen the pressure on the astronauts,” Gao said.

China is not a participant in the International Space Station, largely as a result of U.S. objections to the Chinese programs secrecy and close military ties. However, China has been stepping up cooperation with Russia and a host of other countries, and its station may continue operating beyond the International Space Station, which is reaching the end of its functional life.

Chinese space officials have also said foreigners may be part of future crews on the station after it is fully built next year.

China landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

China and Russia this week also unveiled an ambitious plan for a joint International Lunar Research Station running through 2036. That could compete and possibly conflict with the multinational Artemis Accords, a blueprint for space cooperation that supports NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon by 2024 and to launch an historic human mission to Mars.

After the Tianhe-1 was launched in April, the rocket that carried it into space made an uncontrolled reentry to Earth. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

China dismissed criticism of the potential safety hazard at the time, and officials said the rocket used Thursday was of a different type and reentering components were expected to burn up before they could be a danger.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The U.S. Government Placed a Big Bet on an Antiviral Pill to Fight COVID-19 The U.S. Government Placed a Big Bet on an Antiviral Pill to Fight COVID-19

We’re not going to vaccinate our way completely out of this pandemic. With epidemiologists around the world increasingly accepting the reality that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will become endemic viruses—like the seasonal flu—the push is on to develop antiviral medications that can be taken at home to prevent infections from leading to hospitalization and death. Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Biden Administration has authorized $3.2 billion to accelerate the development of antivirals already in the R&D pipeline, with the hope that at least one will be ready for release before the end of the year.
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“The remarkable and rapid development of vaccines and testing technology has shown how agile scientific discovery can be,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in an HHS statement. “We will leverage these same strengths as we construct a platform for the discovery and development of effective antivirals.”

The plan will focus on 19 drugs currently being investigated for their antiviral potential, with a goal of accelerating their development to Phase 2 clinical trials. Last week, the Administration already placed a major bet on one of the 19, announcing that it will purchase up to 1.7 million doses of an antiviral being produced by Merck, pending emergency use authorization or full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Of the $3.2 billion being allocated, $1.2 billion is going to fund the creation of what the HHS calls “collaborative drug discovery groups,” hoping that the push to create a COVID-19 treatment will also create a developmental infrastructure for other antivirals to treat other diseases.

The new drugs could not only fill the breach left by the vaccine-hesitant who are slowing the push in the U.S. and around the world to reach herd immunity, they could also serve as a backstop against breakthrough infections—cases of COVID-19 that occur even among the vaccinated. Late last month, for example, the CDC reported more than 10,000 breakthrough vaccinations in 46 states as of the end of April, at a time when just over 100 million vaccines had been administered in the U.S. In Massachusetts alone, there have currently been a total of 4,000 breakthrough infections recorded, reported the Boston Herald today. That’s still a relatively small number—representing just 0.1% of vaccinated people—but does make the new drugs attractive.

“New antivirals that prevent serious COVID-19 illness and death, especially oral drugs that could be taken at home early in the course of disease, would be powerful tools for battling the pandemic and saving lives,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in the HHS announcement.

New story in Science and Health from Time: How COVID-19 Vaccination Became a Climate Metaphor How COVID-19 Vaccination Became a Climate Metaphor

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here.

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For years, climate policy experts have watched as the issue has been pushed off the stage at global summits to make way for the geopolitical conflict dujour. That trend has long frustrated climate advocates who sought to make leaders understand that the scientific reality of climate change is just as urgent—if not more so—than other flavor-of-the-month topics.

With this in mind, it was notable when many of these same climate advocates sharply criticized last week’s G7 leaders summit hosted by the United Kingdom for failing to adequately address another issue: the COVID-19 pandemic. In statement after statement, climate watchers homed in on what they often characterized as inadequate support from the world’s wealthy nations to address the pandemic in their poorer counterparts. Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, described the pandemic and climate change as “twin crises” and said the summit did “not measure up” to them. Nick Mabey, head of the E3G climate group, called out the G7 for failing to offer “enough financial firepower to tackle the global COVID, economic and climate crises.” And Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, called for a vaccine patent waiver.
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It’s a remarkable turnaround. When COVID-19 first emerged, many in the climate world feared efforts to address the pandemic would distract from efforts to address climate change. Today, climate advocates are arguing that the two need to be addressed hand in hand. This change is in part practical: leaders in many developing countries will understandably remain focused on the pandemic rather than climate change if their on-the-ground situation doesn’t improve. And, with the November UN climate summit in Glasgow fast approaching, the situation on the ground may need to change quickly to give officials adequate time to prepare.

But, in some sense, the rhetorical shift among climate activists may be just as symbolic as it is practical: climate advocates fear that failure to muster a strong response to COVID-19 will send a signal to developing countries that wealthy nations will leave them high and dry as the impacts of climate change start to mount. That, many believe, would hamper the motivation to take on mitigation efforts in the developing world—just as the needs grow more urgent. “In some ways, the vaccine issue is a metaphor for the larger climate issue,” says Alden Meyer, a longtime international climate policy expert who serves as senior associate at E3G.

When you look closely, there are a number of issues related to fighting COVID-19 that map directly onto fighting climate change. Patent waivers have become a point of contention, as some argue that freeing the intellectual property surrounding vaccines would enable poorer countries to manufacture vaccines locally. In the climate fight, developing countries have for years called for their wealthier counterparts to share the technological know-how to allow them to reduce emissions—even if that meant companies losing out on potential revenue.

Ponying up the money has also been a key point of contention in both COVID-19 and climate conversations. Ahead of the Paris Agreement, a group of rich countries committed to sending some $100 billion annually to the developing world to help finance climate efforts. Wealthy countries have repeatedly reaffirmed that promise—including at the G7 last week—but the money has yet to materialize at that scale. (You can read my colleague Ciara Nugent’s piece on climate finance and the G7 here). The fact that many poor countries facing pandemic-related budget crunches haven’t gotten much assistance from their wealthier counterparts doesn’t inspire much confidence in how things will play out when it comes to climate change.

Events like the upcoming UN climate conference in Glasgow typically draw tens of thousands of participants from all across the globe. And, unlike many geopolitical settings, delegates from poorer countries, particularly those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, often hold significant sway. What happens if those countries don’t have adequate access to vaccines by then? The U.K. has promised vaccines to “accredited delegations who would be unable to get them otherwise,” but the optics aren’t great. Will climate negotiators from developing countries get vaccinated while the elderly at vulnerable at home remain at risk? Even if they do show up, will those government leaders fear making aggressive climate commitments as their people suffer from a pandemic?

Time will tell. Ultimately, though, there is one inescapable conclusion: tackling the pandemic will help the world tackle climate change.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China Launches Its First Crewed Space Mission in Five Years China Launches Its First Crewed Space Mission in Five Years

JIUQUAN, China — Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years Thursday, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they’re expected to reach around midafternoon.

The astronauts, already wearing their spacesuits, were seen off by space officials, other uniformed military personnel and a crowd of children waving flowers and flags and singing patriotic songs. The three gave final waves to a crowd of people waving flags, then entered the elevator to take them to the spaceship at the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China.

The astronauts are traveling in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship launched by a Long March-2F Y12 rocket that blasted off shortly after the target time of 9:22 a.m. (0122 GMT) with near-perfect visibility at the launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
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The two veteran astronauts and a newcomer making his first space flight are scheduled to stay three months in the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, conducting experiments, testing equipment and preparing the station for expansion before two laboratory modules are launched next year.

The rocket dropped its boosters about two minutes into the flight followed by the coiling surrounding Shenzhou-12 at the top of the rocket. After about 10 minutes it separated from the rocket’s upper section, extended its solar panels and shortly afterward entered orbit.

About a half-dozen adjustments will take place over the next four to six hours to line up the spaceship for docking with the Tianhe at about 4 p.m. (0800 GMT), the mission’s deputy chief designer, Gao Xu, told state broadcaster CCTV.

The travel time is down from the two days it took to reach China’s earlier experimental space stations, a result of a “great many breakthroughs and innovations” Gao said.

“So the astronauts can a have a good rest in the space which should make them less tired,” Gao said.

Other improvements include an increase in the number of automated and remote-controlled systems that should “significantly lessen the pressure on the astronauts,” Gao said.

The mission brings to 14 the number of astronauts China has launched into space since its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own. Two astronauts on those past missions were women, and while this first station crew is all male, women are expected to be part of future station crews.

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to add the additional sections to the station and send up crews and supplies. A fresh three-member crew and a cargo ship with supplies will be sent in three months.

China is not a participant in the International Space Station, largely as a result of U.S. objections to the Chinese programs secrecy and close military ties. However, China has been stepping up cooperation with Russia and a host of other countries, and its station may continue operating beyond the International Space Station, which is reaching the end of its functional life.

China landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

After the Tianhe was launched in April, the rocket that carried it into space made an uncontrolled reentry to Earth, though China dismissed criticism of the potential safety hazard. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

The rocket used Thursday is of a different type and the components that will reenter are expected to burn up long before they could be a danger, said Ji Qiming, assistant director of the China Manned Space Agency.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Do Mindfulness and Health Trackers Mix? Deepak Chopra and Fitbit CEO James Park on Managing Stress With Data Do Mindfulness and Health Trackers Mix? Deepak Chopra and Fitbit CEO James Park on Managing Stress With Data

A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter.Sign up here to receive a new edition every Sunday.

I’m a tech believer. My first job with TIME was to set up new communications systems and convince cranky foreign correspondents to trust them. Alexa and Google Home have colonized my apartment. And not only did I give my DNA to 23andMe, but I even answer their follow-up questions about whether I like olives or get carsick so they can map those genes. (Naturally, I also want to donate my body to research after I’m done with it–and if there were a way to send me a report in the afterlife about what they find, I’d request it.)
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So you can imagine how very excited I was when Fitbit and other wearable health trackers, including Amazon’s Halo and the Apple Watch, started coming up with ways to show us data on our stress levels. There’s a bevy of new devices that monitor not just our heart rate, daily steps, and the quantity of our sleep, but the quality of our sleep by hour, skin temperature, and fluctuations in our blood oxygen saturation. Many of these biomarkers relate to our mental wellness and physical health, and there’s new wearable technology that picks up on our emotions.

But even data geeks like me realize there are crucial questions about whether technology is a solution or part of the problem when it comes to stress management. It’s fair to ask whether the very act of constantly checking personal health stats on our phones is antithetical to the kind of mindfulness and meditation practices that alleviate stress. And then there are all the sticky issues around data privacy.

So as annual global spending on wearable tech rises to more than $80 billion a year and rates of stress and anxiety skyrocket simultaneously, we wonder: Is a quantified self a happier self?

I spoke to mindfulness expert Deepak Chopra, M.D., and Fitbit CEO James Park about some of these questions. They’ve recently partnered on a series called “Mindful Method,” an expansion of Fitbit Premium‘s health tracking and content offerings. It includes short video meditations led by Dr. Chopra on cultivating the mind-body connection, getting better sleep, mental wellness, and my favorite, “resetting your bad mood.” This collection is paired with new Fitbit technology that detects electrodermal activity (EDA) responses–tiny electrical changes on your skin that can indicate a stress response.

Both Park and Chopra will tell you they see tech as a neutral actor, one that can be used to better lives or exploit societal weaknesses. Park uses the example of controversial algorithms that favored the sharing of extreme content on Facebook and other social platforms, which can lead to negative behavior. But Park sees positive opportunities in applications that provide ever-more customized health offerings: “What’s fascinating to me is that you can use these same tools to look at populations and try to nudge them in ways that actually result in really positive behavior.”

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And on the fundamental question of whether health tracking devices are an impediment to mindfulness or an facilitator, Chopra is unequivocally in the latter camp.

<strong>I think of technology as the evolution of human consciousness. Who created technology? We created technology, right? And technology is unstoppable. So how do we use it to our benefit?</strong> says Chopra.

To that end, more wearable health trackers like Fitbit are adding mental wellness features and content. For example, these devices can help you become more aware of your emotional fluctuations by asking you to log your moods and showing you data about related wellbeing biometrics (like the quality of your sleep, your physical activity, heart rate, or some of the newer wearable capabilities that can recognize stress reactions in your voice or skin).

There isn’t much independent research on whether digitally logging your moods is effective in managing your mental health. Still, the concept is similar to longstanding suggestions that it can be beneficial to keep a mood journal manually to identify your emotional patterns and triggers.

However, according to some studies, monitoring one’s biometrics can leave some users feeling both empowered and anxious. You could say our smartwatch relationships are complicated. Not only do we share intimate information with them, our weight, what we eat, how we feel, but they now give us biometrics that only elite athletes once had. These are things we didn’t know we had to worry about like whether we’ve enough REM sleep or our heart rate variability. That amount of information can be overwhelming, and dispiriting if you’re not meeting your goals. And on the flip side, some people become anxious when they don’t have access to their health trackers.

In a lot of ways, our gamified brains are primed to respond to trackers’ immediate feedback. Follow a guided breathing exercise and see your heart rate drop–it’s satisfying.

“Today, we are not even talking about bio-feedback; we’re talking about bio-regulation, which means real-time data, real-time feedback, and real-time intervention,” says Chopra. “But,” he adds, “it’s a mistake to think that the quantified self is not the qualitative self as well. The quantitative self is data that makes you feel better about yourself without feeling guilty.”

Brian Ach—Getty Images for TIME Fitbit CEO, President and Co-Founder James Park (L), speaks with MSNBC Live Anchor, Stephanie Ruhle, at the TIME 100 Health Summit on October 17, 2019 in New York City.

If you’re like me, this kind of data revolution isn’t so alarming, but there are obvious sensitivities about all the personal health information in the hands of private companies. This issue particularly current for Fitbit, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Park assures us that Fitbit’s data will not be used by Google for ad targeting, explaining the terms of the deal this way: “The regulators have said, ‘Hey look, you can’t just make a verbal commitment, it actually has to be enshrined and encoded in the technology itself, and in the systems that enforce the separation.'”

How data is gathered and used is undoubtedly one of the most vexing questions of our time. But Chopra believes it is medicine’s most valuable tool in managing chronic health conditions. He is working on a separate project for which a thousand people have agreed to share their biometric and other personal data from cradle to grave. “Data can give you instant knowledge of how to manage somebody’s concerns, whether they’re mental, emotional, physical, or even spiritual,” he says.

Read more: My Fitbit Is More Interested In Me Than I Am

Even those who have avoided the quantified-self movement would likely agree that we need more and better mental wellness interventions. There’s evidence the pandemic worsened what was already a stress epidemic. The American Psychological Association recently reported that 84% of U.S. adults reported feeling at least one emotion associated with prolonged stress in the prior two weeks. And, as Chopra and other health experts point out, long-term stress has all kinds of cascading physical health consequences, which can include high blood pressure, obesity, depression, and more.

At the very least, the debate over whether tech helps with mental wellness is bringing more awareness of the tremendous toll of rampant stress and burnout. And this conversation goes beyond changing our individual lifestyles and behaviors. It’s also about transforming institutions and workplace culture to get at some of the systemic causes of stress. And in that fight, data is an ally.

 

 

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As always, you can send comments to me at: Susanna@Time.com.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China’s New Space Station Is Set to Welcome Its First Crew China’s New Space Station Is Set to Welcome Its First Crew

JIUQUAN, China — The three members of the first crew to be sent to China’s space station say they’re eager to get to work making their home for the next three months habitable, setting up testing and experiments and preparing for a series of spacewalks.

The three met with reporters Wednesday from inside a germ-free glassed-in room, hours before they are due to blast off on Thursday morning.

“First of all, we need to arrange our home in the core module, then get started on a whole range of diagnostic tests on crucial technology and experiments,” said mission commander Nie Haisheng, the most senior of the three who is making his third trip to space.
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“The task is very arduous and there are many challenges. My colleagues and I will cooperate closely, operate carefully and overcome all difficulties,” Nie said.

Unsurprisingly, all said they had complete confidence in the mission, which carries special political meaning for the ruling Communist Party as it prepares to celebrate its centenary next month.

Liu Boming, whose one previous flight in 2011 included China’s first spacewalk, said there would be multiple such activities during the mission as the astronauts carry out their science experiments, conduct maintenance and prepare the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, core module to receive two other modules to be sent up next year.

Tang Hongbo, who is making his first flight since being selected among the second batch of astronauts in 2010, said he had been training virtually non-stop for years. “There is pressure,” Tang said. “But where there is pressure there is motivation and … I have confidence in myself and have confidence in our team.”

Thursday’s launch begins the first crewed space mission in five years for an increasingly ambitious space program. China has sent 11 astronauts into space since becoming the third country to so so on its own in 2003, and has sent orbiters and rovers to the moon and Mars.

The astronauts will be traveling in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship launched by a Long March-2F Y12 rocket set to blast off at 9:22 a.m. (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China.

While the first Tianhe crew are men, women will be part of future crews, officials have said.

Beijing doesn’t participate in the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns over the Chinese program’s secrecy and its military connections. Despite that, foreign science missions and possibly foreign astronauts are expected to visit the Chinese station in future, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at Jiuquan.

“Outer space is the common wealth of people all over the world, and exploring the universe is the shared cause of all mankind,” Ji said.

“We are willing to carry out international cooperation and exchanges with all countries and regions worldwide that are committed to the peaceful use of outer space,” Ji said, adding that existing cooperation with countries including Russia, Italy and Germany along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs was being expanded.

“I believe that in the near future, when the Chinese space station is complete, we will see Chinese and foreign astronauts taking on joint missions to the Chinese space station,” Ji said.

Ji conceded the construction of the Chinese station had come “relatively late,” but said that was also an advantage in that it allowed China to use the latest technologies and concepts, particularly in the areas of reliability and safety.

“Exploring the vast universe, developing space activities building a powerful space nation is our unremitting space dream,” Ji said.

“The construction and operation of China’s space station will raise our technologies and accumulate experience for all the people. It is a positive contribution by China for human exploration of the universe, peaceful utilization of outer space and push forward the building of a community of shared future for mankind,” he said.

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to add the additional sections to the station and send up crews and supplies. The main living section of the station was launched in April while the other two modules will be primarily for scientific work.

The mission builds on experience China gained from operating two experimental space stations earlier. It also landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

Once completed, the station will allow for stays of up to six months, similar to the much larger International Space Station.

Each astronaut will have their own living area and a stationary bike and other exercise equipment will allow them to counter some of the effects of weightlessness. They’ll also be able to bring personal items to remind them of home and stave off boredom while not working, Nie said.

The Chinese station reportedly is intended to be used for 15 years and may outlast ISS, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.

The launch of Tianhe was considered a success although China was criticized for allowing the uncontrolled reentry to Earth of part of the rocket that carried it into space. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

The rocket blasting off Thursday is of a different type, and Ji dismissed concerns about it or the models used for cargo missions posing a threat when they reenter. China published their trajectories and they are expected to burn up long before they could be a danger, he said.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Delta Variant Could Soon Become the Dominant COVID-19 Strain. Here’s What You Need to Know The Delta Variant Could Soon Become the Dominant COVID-19 Strain. Here’s What You Need to Know

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly becoming an arms race among the emerging variants of the virus, and at the moment, there’s no question which one is winning: the Delta variant—formally known as B.1.617.2—one of four strains to have emerged originally in India. It was just last month that the World Health Organization labeled Delta a “variant of concern”—joining with the Alpha strain, which emerged in the U.K.; the Beta strain, from South Africa; and the Gamma strain, first seen in Brazil. But Delta is fast becoming the most worrisome of the bunch.

Health officials are sounding the alarm that Delta threatens to reverse the progress made in countries, like the U.S. and U.K., that have lately been beating the pandemic into retreat and worsen conditions in countries, like India, that are still deep in crisis. Researchers have found that Delta is at least 60% more transmissible within households than the Alpha strain, the dominant variant in the U.S., according to the Public Health of England.
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According to accounts from doctors on state-run television in China—which were first reported in English media by the New York Times—Delta-variant patients there have seen symptoms develop more quickly and grow more severe than those in people infected with other variants. Viral loads also climb faster and decline more slowly. Still, epidemiologists say it may be too soon to know for certain if Delta causes more severe illness, and it’s important to recognize that other factors, like lockdown restrictions and vaccination rates, may be affecting disease spread as well. “I’m pretty wary of putting too many eggs in the basket of ‘the variants are making things worse’” says Dr. Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s very convenient for some political leaders to blame variants like an act of God for policy decisions that have led to the situation that we find ourselves in.”

In the U.S., the Delta variant now represents roughly 6% of all cases, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Those numbers are likely to climb. “I think that with the data we have, there’s a good chance that it could take over the 117 [Alpha strain] as the primary variant just because it’s more infectious,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It’s going to create a real additional challenge.”

At a White House briefing last week, Fauci noted that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 88% effective in preventing disease caused by the Delta variant. “The good news is that the Delta variants, just like the other variants, do not appear to escape the protection afforded by the vaccines available in the U.S.,” says Dr. Gronvall. In addition, the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is authorized for use in the E.U. but not in the U.S., has been shown to be 60% effective against the Delta variant, according to a study published in Nature, though scientists expect even greater protection against hospitalization and death caused by the strain.

But in the interim, as populations remain significantly unvaccinated, the Delta variant’s infectiousness is cause for concern. The U.K. government had set June 21 as the target date for reopening the country, but earlier today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced it will be postponed at least a month. The extra time will allow at least 10 million more doses of vaccine to be administered, according to U.K. Health Minister Edward Argar. So far, 62% of the U.K. population has received at least one vaccine dose and 44% are fully vaccinated.

But even if 10 million doses are indeed successfully administered over the next month, there’s no guarantee breakthrough infections won’t occur.

In response to the spread of the Delta variant in the U.K., other European nations have imposed additional travel restrictions on visitors from the country.

In China, the Delta crisis is centered around the city of Guangzhou in the southeastern part of the country, where the government has imposed restrictions not seen since the earliest days of the pandemic. The government has administered an estimated 32 million COVID-19 tests in the southeast, including to the entire 18.7-million-person population of Guangzhou (the region’s largest city) in an effort to get the outbreak under control. The tests in Guangzhou were conducted over just three-days from June 5 to 7.

So far, 800 million doses of vaccine have been administered across all of China, according to the Chinese news outlet XINHUANET. But that is total doses—not necessarily including second doses, which the widely used Sinovac vaccine requires—and in any event represents just 57% of the population.

And vaccination numbers are much lower in much of the rest of the world, exposing millions to highly transmissible and potentially more dangerous variants, and creating fresh opportunities for the SARS-CoV-2 to shape-shift yet again. “Every time you’re giving the virus a chance to replicate, you’re giving a chance for another variant to take hold, which may have different properties that are not to our advantage,” says Dr. Gronvall. “That is why it is in our self interest to help vaccinate the world.”

In the U.S., cases of the Delta variant are doubling every two weeks, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former director of the Food and Drug Administration, who spoke to CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “It’s essentially taking over,” warned Fauci flatly at a June 8 White House briefing. The answer, he reiterated, is to get people vaccinated—at least up to the 70% level needed to achieve herd immunity.

Osterholm is not optimistic that can happen, given the low rate of vaccination to date, especially in southern and Appalachian states like Georgia, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Some of those states—Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri, for instance—have seen cases rise in recent weeks, and Osterholm says the situation is particularly worrying in so-called “vaccine deserts” within those states where vaccination rates are even lower. There, it’s possible that Delta transmission could fuel local COVID-19 case spikes that overwhelm the regional medical system.

“We have to be careful not to automatically just assume what’s happened in England will happen here,” he says. Nonetheless, he adds, “The risk is surely greater when you have more unvaccinated people together. I think that as we open up everything we’re kind of back in many ways to where we were back in pre-March 2020.”