UTAH (ABC4) Salt Lake Community recently lifted its COVID-19 vaccine requirement on Thursday, but some colleges in Utah are still requiring it.
University of Utah
Students who attend the University of Utah are required to be fully vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, and COVID-19.
Students who do not comply by either showing that they have received the vaccines or indicated a reasonable exemption will have a hold placed on their record that will prevent registration for future classes.
Utah State University
USU announced that all students would be required to be vaccinated for COVID-19 for Spring Semester 2022.
USU did however announce that for the Fall Semester 2022 students will not be required to have the vaccine.
Weber State University
Weber State University announced that it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for all students, except for concurrent enrollment students and students who qualify for an exemption, for the 2022 spring semester.
Westminster College
Westminster requires all its employees and students to be fully vaccinated or have an approved exemption.
Utah Valley University
UVU announced that the COVID-19 vaccine is required for all students for the Spring 2022 semester.
Dixie State and Southern Utah University
Both colleges have never required the COVID-19 for staff or students.
BYU and Ensign College
BYU announced they will discontinue the requirement for students and employees to report their vaccination status. The University says they still encourage vaccinations and boosters.
BYU and Ensign College have never required the vaccine for students but have always strongly encouraged it.
Starting in August 2020, the World Bank collaborated with the World Food Programme (WFP) and implemented nine (9) rounds of the Iraq High Frequency Phone Survey (IHFPS) as part of the WFPs monthly mVAM survey. For each round, more than 1,600 adult respondents from across Iraq (nationally representative) were interviewed using mobile phones. While the first six (6) rounds of the survey were implemented between August 2020 and January 2021, the last three rounds were conducted between June and August 2021.
This brief presents findings on Covid-19 vaccination disparities and hesitancy from the last three rounds of the IHFPS. Findings from the survey suggest a low but increasing vaccination trend among adult Iraqis but also high levels of resistance to the vaccine. Concern regarding possible side effects of the vaccine is the single most cited reason why a significant number of adults in Iraq remain hesitant to the Covid-19 vaccine. The survey also revealed notable disparities in vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. Iraqis with higher levels of education, with formal public-sector jobs, men, and those in urban areas are more likely to have been vaccinated than those with lower levels of education, with informal private-sector jobs and self-employment, women, and those in rural areas. Moreover, vaccination among the elderly, who are most vulnerable, and those with higher risk of exposure poorer Iraqis that are more likely to live in large households in cramped conditions and often do informal jobs that require direct interaction with people remain significantly low.
Huntington, WV (WOWK) Valley Health Systems is embracing National Minority Health Month and its theme to Give Your Community a Boost. The health system will use its COVID-19 Vaccine Equity Grant to ensure vaccine access in disproportionately affected communities, including racial and ethnic minority groups.
The $178,920 grant issued by the State of West Virginia will be used to focus on Cabell, Lincoln, Kanawha and Wayne counties.
Valley Health recognizes that a patients environment significantly impacts their health. Conditions like chronic lung diseases, diabetes, and obesity are associated with an increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and all of these conditions are prevalent in these counties.
Valley Health will offer mobile vaccination clinics and vaccine education at churches, food banks, public housing complexes, homeless shelters, recovery homes and more. Pharmacists, nurses and other healthcare professionals will administer the vaccines.
If an individual needs to travel to get their vaccine, Valley Health can provide gift cards to help with transportation costs.
The health system will also collaborate with trusted local leaders to host listening sessions in which the community can voice their concerns regarding vaccine hesitancy.
Additionally, Valley Health will seek to understand the needs of each disproportionately impacted group.
By focusing our implementation on presenting a multi-faceted approach, we can utilize this grant to provide vaccine hesitancy outreach to overcome barriers to meet the needs of individuals in our communities. This is especially important given racial, ethnic, and other disparities seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and our efforts will be undertaken with a particular focus on these disparities.
Valley Health operates over 40 health centers and public health programs in southeastern West Virginia and southern Ohio. To learn more, visit the Valley Health Systems website or call your local health center.
Our key independent variable is the mean percentage of vaccine-related misinformation shared via Twitter at the U.S. state or county level. We used 55M tweets from the CoVaxxy dataset17, which were collected between January 4th and March 25th from the Twitter filtered stream API using a comprehensive list of keywords related to vaccines (see Supplementary Information). We leveraged the Carmen library29 to geolocate almost 1.67M users residing in 50 U.S. states, and a subset of approximately 1.15M users residing in over 1,300 counties. The larger set of users accounts for a total of 11M shared tweets. Following a consolidated approach in the literature25,26,27,28, we identified misinformation by considering tweets that contained links to news articles from a list of low-credibility websites compiled by a politically neutral thirdparty (see details in the Supplementary Information). We measured the prevalence of misinformation about vaccines in each region by (i)calculating the proportion of vaccine-related misinformation tweets shared by each geo-located account; and (ii)taking the average of this proportion across accounts within a specific region. The Twitter data collection was evaluated and deemed exempt from review by the Indiana University IRB (protocol 1102004860).
Our dependent variables include vaccination uptake rates at the state level and vaccine hesitancy at the state and county levels. Vaccination uptake is measured from the number of daily vaccinations administered in each state during the week of 1925 March 2021, and measurements are derived from the CDC9. Vaccine hesitancy rates are based on Facebook Symptom Surveys provided by the Delphi Group24 at Carnegie Mellon University. Vaccine hesitancy is likely to affect uptake rates, so we specify a longer time window to measure this variable, i.e., the period January 4thMarch 25th 2021. We computed hesitancy byinverting the proportion of individuals who either have already received a COVID vaccine or would definitely or probably choose to get vaccinated, if a vaccine were offered to them today. See Supplementary Information for further details.
There are no missing vaccine-hesitancy survey data at the state level. Observations are missing at the county level because Facebook survey data are available only when the number of respondents is at least 100. We use the same threshold on the minimum number of Twitter accounts geolocated in each county, resulting in a sample size of N=548 counties.
Our multivariate regression models adjust for six potential confounding factors: percentage of the population below the poverty line, percentage aged 65+, percentage of residents in each racial and ethnic group (Asian, Black, Native American, and Hispanic; White non-Hispanic is omitted), ruralurban continuum code (RUCC, county level only), number of COVID-19 deaths per thousand, and percentage Republican vote (in 10 percent units). Other covariates, including religiosity, unemployment rate, and population density, were also considered (full list in Supplementary Table S9).
We also conduct a large number of sensitivity analyses, including different specifications of the misinformation variable (with a restricted set of keywords and different thresholds for the inclusion of Twitter accounts) as well as logged versions of misinformation (to correct positive skew). These results are presented in Supplementary Information (Tables S3-S8).
We conduct multiple regression models predicting vaccination rate and vaccine hesitancy. Both dependent variables are normally distributed, making weighted least squares regression the appropriate model. Data are observed (aggregated) at the state or county level rather than at the individual level. Analytic weights are applied to give more influence to observations calculated over larger samples. The weights are inversely proportional to the variance of an observation such that the variance of the j-th observation is assumed to be 2/wj where wj is the weight. The weights are set equal to the size of the sample from which the average is calculated. We estimate weighted regression with the aweights command in Stata 16. In addition, because counties are nested hierarchically within states, we use cluster robust standard errors to correct for lack of independence between county-level observations.
We investigate Granger causality between vaccine hesitancy and misinformation by comparing two auto-regressive models. The first considers daily vaccine hesitancy rates (x) at time (t) in geographical region (r) (state or county):
$$x_{t,r} = mathop sum limits_{i}^{n} a_{i} x_{t - i,r} + epsilon_{t,r} ,$$
where (n) is the length of the time window. The second model adds daily misinformation rates per account as an exogenous variable (y):
$$x_{t,r} = mathop sum limits_{i}^{n} (a_{i} x_{t - i,r} + b_{i} y_{t - i,r} ) + epsilon^{{prime }}_{t,r} .$$
The variable (y) is said to be Granger causal30,31 on (x) if, in statistically significant terms, it reduces the error term (epsilon^{prime}_{t}), i.e., if
$$E_{{a,b}} = sumlimits_{{t,r}} {epsilon _{{t,r}} ^{2} } - sumlimits_{{t,r}}^{{}} {epsilon _{{t,r}}^{{prime 2}} } > 0,$$
meaning that misinformation rates y help forecast hesitancy rates x. We assume geographical regions to have equivalence and independence in terms of the way misinformation influences vaccine attitudes. Thus, we use the same parameters for (a_{i}) and (b_{i}) across all regions. We employ Ordinary Least Squares (using the Python statsmodels package version 0.11.1) linear regression to fit (a) and (b), standardizing the two variables and removing trends in the time series of each region. We select the value of the time window (n) that maximizes (E_{a,b}). For both counties and states, this was (n = 6)days and we present results using this value. We also tested nearby values of (n pm 2) to confirm these provide similar results. We use data points with at least 1 tweet and at least 100 survey responses for every day in the time window for the specified region.
The traditional statistic used to assess the significance of Granger Causality is the F-statistic30. However, in our case, there are several reasons why this is not appropriate. First, we have missing timewindows in some of our regions. Second, our assumptions of equivalence and independence for regions may not be accurate. For these reasons, we use a bootstrap method to estimate the expected random distribution of (E_{a,b}) with the time signal removed. To this end, we generate trial surrogates for (y) by randomly shuffling the data points. With each random reshuffled trial, we can then use the same procedure to calculate the reduction in error, which we call (E^{*}_{a,b}). The p-value of our Granger Causality analysis is then given by the proportion of trials ((N)=10,000) for which (E^{{*}{}}_{a,b} > E_{a,b}). A potential issue with Granger Causality analysis is that it may detect an underlying trend. We tested for this by linearly detrending both time series before running the Granger analysis, finding similar results.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, experts from Drexel Universitys Dornsife School of Public Health have researched disparities in testing, vaccination, health care access and other markers of the pandemic response. The latest study, this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology, harkens back to December 2020 through September 2021, when the United States first started distributing the COVID-19 vaccines, and looked at full vaccination rates in neighborhoods of 16 large U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Austin, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.
Researchers at Drexels Urban Health Collaborative used the CDCs Social Vulnerability Index a measure that includes socioeconomic, housing, minority status, language and other factors to assess a communitys resilience against human suffering and financial loss when faced with a crisis and looked at its association with COVID-19 vaccination in zip codes of the 16 cities. The team found wide disparities in vaccination, with neighborhoods with higher levels of social vulnerability having the lowest vaccination rates.
Shortly after the paper was published, Anthony Fauci, MD, the U.S. Presidents chief medical advisor, made a comment this week that our country is no longer in a pandemic, but a transitional phase, perhaps toward endemicity.
So, with a hopeful tone, the Drexel News Blog checked in with the papers lead author Usama Bilal, PhD, an assistant professor at Dornsife, about his teams recent findings and the current state of the pandemic locally and internationally.
We are in a better situation than one year ago, but we are still in a tough one. 362 daily deaths for a year is 132,000 deaths, which is thesame number of people that died from Alzheimers in 2019, and almost thrice the influenza/pneumonia deaths in 2019. The pandemic has also slowly moved further away towards the margin, affecting more rural and disadvantaged populations over time. Moreover, as a pandemic is a global phenomenon, it is still raging in many places, and will continue doing so at least until we achieve global vaccine equity.
We found that neighborhoods with higher levels of social vulnerability had lower likelihood of full vaccination. This pattern mirrors what we have described before with COVID-19 itself, which tends to be higher infection rates and its effect worse in those same areas. Given what we know about public health, that it affects the most vulnerable, poor and oppressed, this is not surprising. What was surprising is the degree of variability, as we found cities with much wider disparities than others.
We found that some cities in California, along with our own city of Philadelphia had a narrower gap between neighborhoods. We did not study factors driving these narrower inequalities, but we know that California has an extensive COVID-19 equity plan and that some of its cities (e.g., San Francisco) made an effort to vaccinate people in the more vulnerable neighborhoods.
Here in Philadelphia, there have been several efforts that would be great to evaluate and, if found to be effective, scale up in other locations, including the efforts of theBlack Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, thecoordinated effortsof community organizations to vaccinate Latino individuals, and some prioritization efforts towards low vaccinated zip codes in April 2021, when criteria for vaccination was more restrictive. We cannot know for sure with our data whether these efforts were the reason for Philadelphias narrower gap in vaccination, but they are definitely very important initiatives.
Many people that work in vaccines and communication were already talking about this at the beginning of the vaccination rollout, because these are issues we have seen with other interventions. If you think about the politization of mask use, vaccines have followed a similar trend.
However, I want to point out that we should not just focus on hesitancy and mistrust, but also on access. In many cities, getting an appointment to be vaccinated was challenging, vaccination sites were far away from where many people live and public transit options were scarce. There were also some immigrant populations being (incorrectly) asked for identification or insurance, which created very understandable concerns.
Public health is a collective effort, and its measures are collective by nature. Local public health departments, local and state governments, and the federal government itself, are the key agents driving public health measures. There has been a slow shift towards focusing just on personal responsibility, which is antithetical to the mission of public health. Pressuring your local governments to apply timely and adequate measures in times of high transmission, and supporting them when they do, may be a key strategy. If the last two years have taught us something, its that caring for each other is the only way out of this.
Media interested in talking with Bilal should contact Greg Richter, news manager, at gdr33@drexel.edu or 215-895-2614.
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Athens, AL (35611) Today
Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..
Partly cloudy this evening. Scattered thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Updated: April 30, 2022 @ 5:53 am
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of April 29, 2022, there are currently 882 active COVID-19 cases statewide. There has been one death reported since the last report, with a total of 6,856 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
DHHR has confirmed the death of a 76-year old female from Raleigh County.
We mourn the loss of this West Virginian and extend our deepest sympathies to the family, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Please schedule a COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot to protect yourself and those around you.
CURRENT ACTIVE CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (8), Berkeley (78), Boone (11), Braxton (4), Brooke (10), Cabell (39), Calhoun (21), Clay (0), Doddridge (1), Fayette (23), Gilmer (3), Grant (5), Greenbrier (32), Hampshire (13), Hancock (12), Hardy (5), Harrison (22), Jackson (2), Jefferson (29), Kanawha (83), Lewis (6), Lincoln (14), Logan (25), Marion (32), Marshall (24), Mason (6), McDowell (10), Mercer (21), Mineral (5), Mingo (3), Monongalia (48), Monroe (10), Morgan (11), Nicholas (11), Ohio (49), Pendleton (2), Pleasants (1), Pocahontas (25), Preston (12), Putnam (27), Raleigh (63), Randolph (15), Ritchie (2), Roane (3), Summers (0), Taylor (3), Tucker (1), Tyler (0), Upshur (12), Wayne (4), Webster (0), Wetzel (8), Wirt (6), Wood (17), Wyoming (5). To find the cumulative cases per county, please visit www.coronavirus.wv.gov and look on the Cumulative Summary tab which is sortable by county.
Delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from the local health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in question may have crossed the state border to be tested. Please visit www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.
West Virginians ages 5 years and older are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination; after the primary series, first booster shots are recommended for those 12 and older. Second booster shots for those age 50 and over that are 4 months or greater from their first booster have been authorized by FDA and recommended by CDC, as well as for younger individuals over 12 years old with serious and chronic health conditions that lead to being considered moderately to severely immunocompromised. To learn more about COVID-19 vaccines, or to find a vaccine site near you, visit vaccinate.wv.gov or call 1-833-734-0965.
Free pop-up COVID-19 testing is available today in Barbour, Berkeley, Braxton, Cabell, Clay, Fayette, Gilmer, Grant, Greenbrier, Hampshire, Hancock, Jefferson, Lewis, Logan, Marion, Marshall, Mason, Morgan, Nicholas, Ohio, Raleigh, Randolph, Taylor, Upshur, Wayne, and Wood counties.
Barbour County
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM, Community Market, 107 South Main Street (across the street from Walgreens), Philippi, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVBBC)
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM, Junior Volunteer Fire Department, 331 Row Avenue, Junior, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Berkeley County
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM, Airborne Church, 172 Creative Place, Martinsburg, WV
8:30 AM - 4:00 PM, Shenandoah Community Health, 99 Tavern Road, Martinsburg, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM, 891 Auto Parts Place, Martinsburg, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Braxton County
9:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Braxton County Memorial Hospital (parking lot), 100 Hoylman Drive, Gassaway, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=Braxton)
Cabell County
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Marshall University Campus (parking lot), 1801 6th Avenue, Huntington, WV (optional pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
8:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Cabell-Huntington Health Department (parking lot), 703 Seventh Avenue, Huntington, WV (optional pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Clay County
8:30 AM - 3:00 PM, Lizemores Volunteer Fire Department, 13175 Clay Highway, Lizemores, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVClayCounty)
Fayette County
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM, Fayette County Health Department, 5495 Maple Lane, Fayetteville, WV
Gilmer County
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM, Minnie Hamilton Health System (parking lot), 921 Mineral Road, Glenville, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVMHCT11)
Grant County
11:00 AM - 3:00 PM, Petersburg City Parking Lot, South Main Street (across from Walgreens), Petersburg, WV (optional pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Greenbrier County
9:30 AM - 3:00 PM, State Fair of WV, 891 Maplewood Avenue, Lewisburg, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVGBC)
Hampshire County
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Hampshire Memorial Hospital, 363 Sunrise Boulevard, Romney, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Hancock County
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Hancock County Health Department, 100 North Court Street, New Cumberland, WV (optional pre-registration: https://roxbylabs.dendisoftware.com/patient_registration/)
Jefferson County
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Hollywood Casino, 750 Hollywood Drive, Charles Town, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Lewis County
8:30 AM - 3:00 PM, City Parking Lot, 95 West Second Street, Weston, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVMavLewis1)
Logan County
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM, Town of Man Fire Department, Administration Building, 110 North Bridge Street, Man, WV
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM, Old 84 Lumber Building, 100 Recovery Road, Peach Creek, WV (optional pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Marion County
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM, Dunbar School Foundation, 101 High Street, Fairmont, WV
Marshall County
11:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Benwood City Building, 430 Main Street, Benwood, WV
Mason County
8:30 AM - 3:00 PM, Krodel Park, 1186 Charleston Road, Point Pleasant, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVMavCOUNTY12)
Morgan County
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM, The Blue (of First United Methodist Church), 440 Fearnow Road, Berkeley Springs, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVMavMorgan1)
11:00 AM - 5:00 PM, War Memorial Hospital, 1 Health Way, Berkeley Springs, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Nicholas County
9:00 AM - 3:30 PM, Summersville Regional Medical Center, 400 Fairview Heights Road, Summersville, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVNL)
Ohio County
9:00 AM - 3:30 PM, Ohio Valley Medical Center (back parking lot at the top of 22nd Street), 2000 Eoff Street, Wheeling, WV (optional pre-registration: https://roxbylabs.dendisoftware.com/patient_registration/)
Raleigh County
9:00 AM - 4:00 PM, Beckley-Raleigh County Health Department, 1602 Harper Road, Beckley, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=MavBeckleyRaleigh)
Randolph County
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM, Davis Health Center, 812 Gorman Avenue, Elkins, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVRDC)
Taylor County
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Grafton-Taylor Health Department, 718 West Main Street (parking lot at Operations Trailer), Grafton, WV (optional pre-registration: https://wv.getmycovidresult.com/)
Upshur County
8:30 AM - 3:30 PM, Buckhannon Fire Department (parking lot), 22 South Florida Street, Buckhannon, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVUSC)
Wayne County
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM, Wayne County Health Department, 217 Kenova Avenue, Wayne, WV (optional pre-registration: https://unityphr.com/campaigns/wvlabs/covid)
Wood County
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM, Vienna Baptist Church, 3401 Grand Central Avenue, Vienna, WV (optional pre-registration: https://labpass.com/en/registration?access_code=WVMavWood1)
Please check with the testing site, DHHRs social media pages and the COVID-19 website https://dhhr.wv.gov/COVID-19/pages/testing.aspx for any last minute cancellations, and to find other free testing opportunities across West Virginia.
After being at low levels for months, coronavirus prevalence doubled at both Portland Water District wastewater treatment plant locations this week.
The levels, measured in copies of coronavirus per liter of wastewater, were at about 1 million at the East End plant as of Friday, and 1.3 million at the Westbrook plant. Thats far below levels seen in late January and early February, when virus prevalence was about 2 million or higher, or at the peak of more than 5 million in late December and early January.
But even compared with a week to 10 days ago, levels have doubled at the Portland Water District plants. Wastewater testing is considered a leading indicator of the presence in communities of the coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Results were mixed at other sewage plants where wastewater testing is occurring. Brunswick and Presque Isle have experienced sharp decreases this week, while Bangor also declined slightly after seeing its numbers vary significantly over the past week. Lewiston-Auburn recorded a steep increase this week, while York showed a slight increase.
Dr. Yolanda Brooks, an assistant professor of biology at St. Josephs College in Standish who did the coronavirus testing for Yarmouths wastewater program, said the increases in Portland have persisted over at least three testing periods, which is a little concerning even though levels are still far below what was seen in January.
Brooks said its hard to know what is driving the increases, as there could be other reasons besides more people contracting the virus. For instance, Portland is a hub for workers, and with more employees returning to the office, that could be impacting the volume of people using Portlands wastewater system.
Its also the beginning of tourist season, and more visitors could be using the system, she said. The recent K-12 spring break also could have affected the numbers.
Brooks said another dynamic is that in smaller systems, the numbers bounce around more. Even though Portland is Maines largest city, the wastewater system is still small compared to those in major urban centers such as Boston and New York.
Theres more variability in smaller systems, Brooks said. Fewer people getting infected and shedding the virus can affect the measurements in smaller systems.
Despite the increases in Portland, Brooks said that with high vaccination rates and Maine having recently gone through the omicron wave, she doesnt anticipate a return to the states winter virus surge.
Maine reported 470 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, along with one additional death.Since the pandemic began, Maine has recorded 244,062 cases of COVID-19 and 2,283 deaths.
Hospitalizations increased to 143 on Friday from 132 on Thursday. There were 34 patients in critical care Friday and five on ventilators.
Maines COVID-19 hospitalizations had remained nearly flat since mid-March, hovering between 90 and 100 patients before rising sharply this week. The current total is still down dramatically from this years peak of 436 hospitalizations on Jan. 13.
Unvaccinated people represented roughly two-thirds of the COVID-19 patients treated in Maine hospitals from when vaccines became readily available through April 15, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention website.
MODERNA SEEKS VACCINE AUTHORIZATION
Meanwhile, Moderna announced Thursday that it is seeking emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months through 5 years old. No COVID-19 vaccine for toddlers and infants has been approved despite adults having access to vaccines for about a year. A vaccine developed by Pfizer was approved for children ages 5 to 11 in the fall.
On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it plans to convene a panel of vaccine experts in June to review applications from both Moderna and Pfizer for child vaccines, The Associated Press reported. The dates are not final, and the FDA said it will provide additional details as each company completes its application.
The Moderna vaccine proved effective in a two-dose regimen given 28 days apart, according to a Moderna study of 6,700 children.
We are proud to share that we have submitted for authorization for our COVID-19 vaccine for young children, Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel said in a statement. We believe (the vaccine) will be able to safely protect these children against SARS-CoV-2, which is so important in our continued fight against COVID-19, and will be especially welcomed by parents and caregivers.
The vaccines effectiveness is 51 percent for children ages 6 months to under 2 years, and 37 percent for ages 2 to 6, according to a company statement.
That means that youre going to reduce your chances of getting disease by about a half, Dr. Paul Burton, Modernas chief medical officer, told NPR in an interview. Thats very important for these kids.
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