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Elinor Aspegren
| USA TODAY
COVID-19 vaccine: Biden orders 200 million doses for summer delivery
The Biden administration is increasing purchases of coronavirus vaccines to provide enough by the end of the summer to protect 300 million Americans.
USA TODAY, Associated Press
Anthony Fauci predicted on Thursday that April will be an “open season” for vaccinations in the USA, and any adult can be vaccinated.
Fauci, who spoke on the NBC program “Today”, said the vaccination rate was already accelerating. As production of the two authorized Pfizer and Moderna vaccines accelerates, and becomes more available online, vaccines will quickly become more readily available, Fauci said.
“By the time we are in April, it will be … open season, namely anyone and everyone in any category can start vaccinating,” Fauci said.
He said it would still take several months to give injections to adult Americans, but the prediction of herds could be reached by late summer. Fauci’s remarks come amid a slow and chaotic explosion of vaccines that has halted vaccination sites due to a lack of supply and waiting lists of tens of thousands across the country who cannot get an appointment for a shot.
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In the headings:
► California has surpassed New York in the number of deaths due to COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University on Thursday. California’s death toll reached 45,496, surpassing the 45,312 New York toll.
►Oklahoma plans to expand the coronavirus vaccine for school workers and adults with underlying health conditions from February 22, state health officials said on Thursday. There are more than 89,000 employees from kindergarten to 12th grade and more than 1 million adults with co-morbidities who are expected to be eligible.
►Japan could waste 12 million doses of Pfizer vaccine due to a shortage of special syringes that could extract more of the vaccine from vials. Japan obtained doses for 72 million people based on the assumption that each vial could deliver six shots. Health officials scrambled to get more of the needed syringes.
► Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute, Tulane University, LSU Health Shreveport and several other agencies said in a pre-publication report that Mardi Gras was responsible for tens of thousands of cases of coronavirus in 2020 after one person probably brought them to New Orleans.
►The World Health Organization recommends that the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford should continue to be used in countries where new variants of the coronavirus are in circulation, although South Africa will stop using the vaccine because it is ineffective. versus the variants.
► About 1 in 3 Americans say they will definitely or probably not get the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a new poll which, according to experts, is discouraging news as the US hopes to secure herd immunity and overcome the outbreak . Many have expressed doubts about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.
📈 Today’s numbers: According to Johns Hopkins University data, there are more than 27.2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and 471,000 deaths. The world total: more than 107.4 million cases and 2.35 million deaths. According to the CDC, more than 65.9 million doses of vaccines have been distributed and approximately 44.7 million have been administered.
📘 What we read: How much rent relief will you get in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? You will get more help if you are white and live in rural America. Read the full story.
Ohio will add as many as four previously unreported COVID-19 deaths to the state over the next week, after the Ohio Department of Health discovered that reporting errors date back to October.
Most of these deaths occurred in November and December, already the deadliest two months of the pandemic with 1,574 and 2,859 deaths, respectively, the agency said in a news release.
Ohio Department of Health spokeswoman Melanie Amato said the inconsistency stemmed from the state’s process of verifying reported deaths with death certificate information.
The correction will lead to a few days of above-average mortality rates, the agency warned.
– Jackie Borchardt and Randy Ludlow, Cincinnati Enquirer
Instagram featured Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s account closed for sharing discredited claims over COVID-19 vaccines. The cousin of the late President John F. Kennedy also spoke out against COVID-19 vaccines on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, which are still active. Kennedy claims the vaccines cause severe allergic reactions and are linked to several deaths, including that of baseball player Hank Aaron. Aaron died Friday morning after suffering a severe stroke.
“We have removed this account for the repeated part of debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook said in a statement.
– Coral Murphy Marcos
People who are fully vaccinated and meet certain criteria no longer need to remain in quarantine after exposure to someone with COVID-19, says the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
COVID vaccine: once you get it, CDC says no quarantine if exposed
According to the CDC, it is not necessary for people who are fully vaccinated to be quarantined to certain criteria, exposed to someone with COVID-19.
USA TODAY
The ease rules announced on Wednesday start 14 days after the final vaccination dose and last three months after the dose for people who show no symptoms. The latter time frame can be extended as more is learned about the long-term impact of the vaccinations. CDC notes that, although the risk of transmission of vaccinated humans is not yet certain, vaccination has been shown to prevent symptomatic COVID-19.
“Individual and social benefits of avoiding unnecessary quarantine may outweigh the potential but unknown risk of transmission,” the CDC said. Vaccines should continue to wear a mask, stay at least 6 feet away from others, avoid crowds and poorly ventilated areas, and follow other guidelines for travel and other activities, the CDC said.
Thousands of workers in the beleagured restaurant industry in New York, hoping to get back to normal when the indoor dinner returns on Friday. Last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that restaurants and bars on Valentine’s Day may allow guests with 25% capacity. On Monday, Cuomo moved the opening day to Friday. Governors and mayors elsewhere in the U.S. have also recently reopened or relaxed restrictions on indoor dining, including in Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, Maryland’s Montgomery County and New Jersey.
“Unemployment does not scratch the surface of the money we’re making,” said Billy Swenson, a New York minister. “Here we put a quarter of what we made earlier … it was very stressful and there was not much relief.”
– Ryan Miller
Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns, who lost his mother and six other family members to the coronavirus, played in his first NBA game on Wednesday since testing positive for COVID-19 less than a month ago.
“I had a lot of underlying conditions that genetically did not play in my favor,” Town said of his illness. “The amount of viruses I had in my body was not healthy at all.”
Towns said he shared similar genes as his mother, Jacqueline Cruz, who died on April 13 after being in a medically induced coma and connected to a ventilator. Towns, which donated $ 100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to test coronavirus efforts, expressed its gratitude to the front-line workers and described the remorse over its survivor. He said he “feels very guilty about the treatment I received. I feel it should be more available to Americans and everyone in the world.”
– Mark Medina
About 40% of the country’s 470,000 coronavirus deaths could have been prevented if the average death rate of the United States was comparable to other industrialized countries, according to a new report. While the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump era blamed former President Donald Trump’s “inappropriate and inadequate” response, the report said the roots of the country’s poor health outcomes are much deeper. Steffie Woolhandler and dr. David Himmelstein, former chair of a single-payer health care system like Medicare for All, said the report, published Thursday, highlights decades of health, economic and social policies that have accelerated inequalities in the country.
“The most important thing we need to do in our country is to reduce the big and bigger inequalities in our country,” Himmelstein said.
– Ken Alltucker
The United States reported 19,453 COVID-19 deaths in a seven-day period that ended Wednesday, and the first time deaths in more than a month were below the 20,000 mark, according to a U.S. analysis of the data from Johns Hopkins University in the United States. The deaths peaked at 23,541 in the week ending January 14.
Cases in the United States have dropped to less than half the previous month’s high, with deaths following the trend of cases. But even with the decline, cases and deaths remain at high levels. The United States still reports more than one case every second, and cases are reported about three times faster than they were in relative silence before the fall. Deaths are still being reported four times faster.
In 2021 alone, the United States reported more than 7.2 million new cases and 124,485 deaths.
– Mike Stucka
Los Angeles will temporarily close a majority of its vaccination stations on Friday and Saturday, including the megacity at Dodger Stadium, due to a shortage of shots. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the move in a video conference Wednesday, saying the city, among the hardest hit by the pandemic, received only 16,000 doses from the federal government this week.
“It’s 90,000 lower than the previous week,” he said. “This is unacceptable.” The city expects to use all available Modern vaccines by Thursday for the first dose of appointments.
The White House did announce three new vaccination sites at Texas sports stadiums that could deliver a total of 10,000 shots a day. The sites in Dallas, Arlington and Houston will be operated from February 22 by local health officials supported by federal troops. The action comes days after the National Football League said it was working with public health officials to use its stadiums for mass vaccinations. , and Biden’s activation of the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program as part of the coronavirus vaccine effort, which enables distribution to retail locations across the country.
Contributing Contributions: The Associated Press