Local area community cumulative incidence (per 1,000 population) Health care personnel with positive test results for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (%) Abbreviation: COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019. * Calculated as the total number of reported community COVID-19 cases within a hospital-area county or counties between the beginning of the pandemic and 7 days after the first day of health care personnel enrollment at the hospital divided by population of the county or counties x 1,000.

this report was posted as an MMWR Early Release on the MMWR website (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr).Adults aged ≥65 years are at increased risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19 and were identified as a priority group to receive the first COVID-19 vaccines approved for use under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States (1-3). In an evaluation at 24 hospitals in 14 states,* the effectiveness of partial or full vaccination † with Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines against COVID-19-associated hospitalization was assessed among adults aged ≥65 years. Among 417 hospitalized adults aged ≥65 years (including 187 case-patients and 230 controls), the median age was 73 years, 48% were female, 73% were non-Hispanic White, 17% were non-Hispanic Black, 6% were Hispanic, and 4% lived in a long-term care facility. Adjusted vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19-associated hospitalization among adults aged ≥65 years was estimated to be 94% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 49%-99%) for full vaccination and 64% (95% CI = 28%-82%) for partial vaccination. These findings are consistent with efficacy determined from clinical trials in the subgroup of adults aged ≥65 years (4,5). This multisite U.S. evaluation under real-world conditions suggests that vaccination provided protection against COVID-19-associated hospitalization among adults aged * Patients were enrolled from 24 medical centers in 14 states (

The electoral success of the new populist radical right-wing party, VOX, which achieved an unprecedent electoral result in the Spanish general elections of April 2019, brought an end to Spain's exceptional status as a country free of the radical right. This article asks: who votes for VOX? Empirically, we present the first assessment of electoral support for VOX at the national level. Relying on national post-electoral survey data, our results show that the electoral profile of VOX's supporters differs from that of populist radical right-wing parties from the rest of Europe. Support for VOX, much like the voters of their European contemporaries, tends to be markedly higher amongst males; economic status, however, has the reverse effect than that observed elsewhere on the continent, with individuals on the higher end of the income distribution more likely to have voted for VOX in the April 2019 general elections. Importantly, we establish that national identity plays a large role in explaining support for the new radical rightwing challenger and that the effect of identity is conditioned by negative evaluations of the political situation in Spain.

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External shocks have been shown to be able to alter countries’ political dynamics in a deep manner. The number of works examining the impact of economic crisis, natural disasters or even terrorist attacks are numerous. However, the literature addressing the political effects of the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still in its infancy. Definitively, the pandemic has constituted an unpredictable external shock not only affecting the health of millions around the planet but also damaging the economic and social stability of most countries. Politically, it has forced electoral authorities in some countries to postpone elections (e.g. Kiribati, North Macedonia, Sri Lanka), to suspend voting rights for those infected with the virus (e.g. Galicia and Basque Country in Spain) or to adapt postal vote regulations (e.g. Bavaria in Germany) in order to guarantee citizens’ voting rights and diminish electoral fraud. Trying to fill a lacuna in the literature, the goal of this article is to give a first and nuanced examination on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted electoral participation all over the world. To that end we have collected data on all parliamentary, presidential and regional elections held worldwide during the first seven months since the COVID-19 outbreak became recognized as a health emergency of global scope and started to affect the organization of elections (March 1st-September 30th, 2020). Our results show that while voter turnout has not generally declined in comparison with those elections held before the pandemic, electoral participation is lower in polities hit by the pandemic the most, both in terms of infections and – especially - deceases. This seems to point to the fact that when faced with a choice (civic duty vs. personal risk), the fear of becoming infected will constrain voters to opt for the former.