COVID-19 Variants and Vaccine Challenges

It’s been almost a year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

And the virus is persisting: A downward trend in the U.S. caseload has stalled, and concern about the impact of variants is growing. Yet inoculations are on the rise, and the F.D.A. has approved Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, the third to be approved in the U.S.

Today, we check in on the latest about the coronavirus.

Guest: Carl Zimmer, a science writer and author of the “Matter” column for The New York Times. 

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Background reading: 

• After the Johnson & Johnson vaccine approval, President Biden vowed that there would be enough vaccine doses for “every adult in America” by the end of May.
• For more information about the emerging mutations, check out The Times’s variant tracker. 

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

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