How to stay safe as you celebrate Easter during COVID

Good afternoon and a happy Friday, readers.

First off, I want to thank my colleague and co-author David Z. Morris for his excellent debut in this newsletter yesterday. For April, Capsule is returning to a daily, rather than weekly, format: David will have you handled on Tuesdays and Thursdays for this month while I’ll be covering Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I’m excited to have his talent on board as we navigate a critical stage of the COVID vaccine rollout.

Speaking of… It happens to be Good Friday, an occasion observed by Christians worldwide, including millions of Americans. That also means that Easter Sunday is coming up. And as with any holiday, religious or otherwise, during a pandemic, that necessitates gearing yourself up with the best information on how to stay safe and prevent COVID-19’s spread.

To that end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is out with a new set of guidelines specifically tailored towards religious holidays such as Easter. These occasions are by nature more intimate than a big outdoor barbeque or block party bash. Families gather in rooms for dinner, or with neighbors in churches for worship, and not everyone may be vaccinated. Elderly people, as always, are more vulnerable should they be infected with the virus.

So prudence is key. The CDC’s main recommendations are to gather outdoors, if possible, or to keep any indoor gatherings small and limited to people within your own household. As per earlier guidance, small gatherings of people who have all been vaccinated can be indoors together, without masks or social distancing (see a full rundown of current guidelines here).

Travel, especially via mass transit, remains one of the most critical concerns. So have a Happy Easter to all who celebrate, and stay safe for yourselves and each other.

Read on for the day’s news, and we’ll be back with you on Monday.

Sy Mukherjee
sy.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy

DIGITAL HEALTH

Qualtrics finds high support for vaccine passports. A new survey from analytics giant Qualtrics finds that there is high support for implementing so-called COVID vaccine passports in the U.S., as several European nations have done. The analysis found that 66% of respondents among U.S.-based workers supported such a system to ensure safety during travel, and that 61% said they would wait until being vaccinated before traveling. That mirrors a trend wherein an increasing share of Americans say they want to get vaccinated against COVID. What will be critical to keep an eye on is whether that trend continues, and whether or not vaccine skepticism eventually rears its head and stalls the nation on the road to herd immunity. And then, of course, there's the inherent ethical dilemma of a vaccine passport in balancing health data privacy and public health imperatives.

INDICATIONS

Johnson & Johnson expands its COVID vaccine trial in adolescents. Johnson & Johnson announced on Friday that it's expanding the Phase 2 clinical trial of its COVID vaccine to include younger people aged 12 to 17. “The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on adolescents, not just with the complications of the disease, but with their education, mental health, and wellbeing,” said Paul Stoffels, J&J's chief scientific officer, in a statement. The U.S. in particular has been aggressive in expanding access to younger tranches of the public in order to achieve herd immunity. For instance, eligibility for vaccinations will open up to those over the age of 16 in New York state in less than a week.

THE BIG PICTURE

A "prescription to die." Kaiser Health News has an excellent report on how states with so-called right-to-die laws for the terminally ill don't exactly make the process easy for those who wish to pursue it. For instance, in Montana, there's a considerable amount of constitutional confusion over the issue, which often results in a lot of responsibility (and risk) being laid on individual doctors. “There is just no right to medical aid in dying in Montana, at least no right a patient can rely on, like in the other states,” former state Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson told Kaiser Health News. “Every time a physician does it, the physician rolls the dice.” I highly recommend reading the entire story on this controversial, and innately personal, issue. (Kaiser Health News)