“I have talked to all the pharmaceutical companies and scientists, and they all say the same thing: even if these vaccines are reduced a little bit, they will be able to constantly update them,” Slavitt, who is responsible for the Covid response, told CNN . Chris Cuomo Thursday.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. has declined 26% in new cases since that time last week, and continues the strongest decline in new cases since the onset of the pandemic.
Officials rushed to quickly inject vaccines to prepare for further mutations, with about 57.7 million doses administered so far across the country, according to the CDC.
New research from Israel and Canada has found that just a single dose of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine provides significant protection against the virus, but Slavitt said that does not mean people should avoid the second shot.
“We do not know how long or how durable the benefit is without the amplifier,” he said. “We do not know how effective it is against variants.”
The US will have to work ‘double time’ after the winter weather
“It has been delayed; in some places it is coming to a standstill,” Fauci, the country’s leading expert in infectious diseases, said in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday.
A number of countries have reported delays in the delivery and distribution of vaccines, forcing providers to cancel or reschedule appointments for vaccinations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said Thursday that more than 2,000 vaccination sites are in areas suffering from power outages.
Fortunately, none of the vaccines that need to be stored at specific temperatures have been spoiled, according to officials’ knowledge this week, Slavitt said.
Houston, which was hit by both power outages and water problems during the storm, plans to re-vaccinate Saturday and Sunday, the city’s health department said Thursday.
Many states hit early in the storms, especially in Texas, had to cancel the vaccinations before vaccination due to dangerous road conditions and power outages.
But Connecticut government Ned Lamont said Thursday that the state has so far not had to make any cancellations.
“Look, there are disruptions,” Lamont said. “Fortunately, we have almost all of our doses for this week. So far no cancellations have been expected, but time will tell.”
Blacks and Hispanics get fewer vaccinations
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference on Thursday that the World Health Organization would launch a new statement on Friday focusing on fair vaccine.
While Tedros’ statement will focus on vulnerable groups and small island states with less bargaining power than larger countries, inequality is already a factor in the US.
On February 16, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) researchers analyzed statistics at the level of the 34 countries that collect demographic information about Covid-19 vaccinations.
In most of the countries, black and Hispanic people received smaller vaccinations compared to the number of cases, deaths and percentage of the population, the researchers said. The opposite is true for white people in most states.
In Texas, for example, the Spanish people are responsible for 42% of coronavirus cases, 47% of Covid-19 deaths and 40% of the state’s population – but they have only received 20% of the vaccinations.
Among the 27 states that report ethnicity data for those who received at least one dose of the vaccine, white people were vaccinated three times higher than Hispanics and twice as high as black people.
The KFF team noted that some states do not record the race or ethnicity of those vaccinated.
Researchers found higher infection rates in pregnant women
The infection rate among pregnant women in the study was 13.9 out of every 1,000 births, compared to an overall rate of 7.3 out of 1,000 for 20 to 39-year-olds in the state.
The higher infection rates may “be due to the over-representation of women in many occupations and industries that are considered essential during the COVID-19 pandemic – including healthcare, education, service sectors,” said Dr. Erica Lokken said in a news release.
“Pregnant women are being enrolled in half of the U.S. states because of the grant priority. Many states do not even link their COVID-19 vaccine grant plans to the high-risk medical conditions described by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] “Which includes pregnancy,” Waldorf said.
A Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine trial for pregnant women gave their first participants doses on Thursday. The doses were administered to US participants, although the trial will be conducted in nine countries: the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
The company said the trial is designed to evaluate the vaccine in pregnant women, but also their babies, who will be monitored for safety and the transmission of potential protective antibodies until they are about 6 months old.
Pfizer / BioNTech also expects to expand trials to children aged 5 to 11 in the next few months, according to a company statement.
CNN’s Christina Maxouris, Dakin And one, Michael Nedelman, Deidre McPhillips, Andrea Diaz, Keith Allen, Mirna Alsharif, Naomi Thomas and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.