(CNN) The US Food and Drug Administration is planning on allowing Americans to receive a different coronavirus vaccine for their booster shots than their original dose, according to two sources familiar with the current thinking inside the agency.
While the details on exactly what language the FDA will use remains unclear, its expected to make a broad authorization on mixing and matching potentially as soon as this week.
While this could apply to all FDA-authorized vaccines in the US, officials realize it has been the biggest concern for those who received a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The FDA has already authorized boosters of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for some adults and is currently considering authorization of boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The US Centers for Disease Control and Preventions vaccine advisers are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss Moderna and J&J boosters.
The National Institutes of Health last week presented to the FDAs vaccine advisers early information from an ongoing study showing that it didnt matter which vaccine people got first and which booster they got it was safe to mix boosters and it revved up immune response. Mixing boosters also provided a good response to the Delta variant.
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What to expect at a COVID-19 vaccine appointment in Colorado
Here's what to expect at your COVID-19 vaccine appointment, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sady Swanson, Wochit
If you've heard the term "twindemic," you likely know it meansthe conversion of the unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic and a potentially rough flu season.
With flu season fast approaching on top of a surge in COVID-19 cases and new booster shots for people older than 65 or otherwise health compromised, people are navigating a labyrinth of advice on when to get their flu shots and COVID-19 vaccines, including booster doses.
Last year, flu was virtually non-existent as the pandemic forced most people to stay home, socially distance, wear masks in public and frequently wash their hands.
Now, as people return to near normal life Larimer County's new mask mandate not withstanding flu season is fast approaching. And, whether the twindemic materializes here depends largely on how much worse the current wave of delta variant COVID-19 infections getand what happens with the 2021-22 flu season, according to UCHealth.
Larimer County's indoor mask mandate begins Wednesday. Here's what you need to know.
The collision could exacerbate an already trying time for health care providers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment and both UCHealth and Banner Health have urged everyone to get a flu shot by the end of October, preferably. And, they all say it's OK to get the first, second or booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccineand a flu shot simultaneously.
Shots given on the same day are typically administered in different arms, according to UCHealth.
The health department recommends getting a flu shot by the end of October, but encourages people to get a flu shot any time even if it's after October.
Flu season runs through May, so it's not too late to get a shot even if it's in November or December,said Kori Wilford, spokesperson for the county health department.
"In a typical year we see around 200 hospitalizations due to influenza over the course of the flu season September through May and that would overburden our hospitals even more," Wilford said.
The health department anticipates that more mask-wearing will help slow the transmission of the flu and other respiratory infections as it did last year, she said. "However, last year we also had many children in remote learning and people working from home, capacity restrictions for businesses and less movement, such as travel and dining out, than we do now."
UCHealth's COVID-19 vaccine clinics are not offering flu shots at this time, so patients may have to make two different appointments for both shots, Tracer said.
Check with local pharmacies and your doctor's office for more information on what shots are available at those locations.
Note: Most locations are only providing booster doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and are awaiting formal guidance from the CDC before proceeding with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson booster shots.UCHealth has been offering Moderna booster doses, and some locations have offered third doses of Moderna to those who are immunocompromised (which isdifferent than a regular booster dose).
With CDC recommendation, COVID-19 boosters are reaching more people. Here's how to get one
The CDC recommends COVID-19 booster shots for all adults age 65 and olderand authorizes boosters for those 18 and olderwho live or work in high-risk settingslike homeless shelters or prisons as well as those at high risk for severe illness if they get COVID-19.
When should I get a COVID-19 booster shot?
The recommended timing is at least six months after your first vaccine.
Like the initial COVID-19 vaccine, the booster doses are free.
Want to be fully vaccinated for the holidays? You haven't missed your chance
Pat Ferrier is a senior reporter covering business, health care and growth issues in Northern Colorado. Contact her at patferrier@coloradoan.com. Please support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a subscription today.
Reading Hospital: COVID-19 vaccines are critical for pregnant women and their unborn children Reading Eagle
Connecticut has the highest rate of vaccination among children in the United States, according to Governor Ned Lamont.
Currently, those 12 and up are eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine. Kids aged 5 to 11 are not yet eligible for the vaccine, but they could be soon.
The governor said 80.2% of kids 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That is almost 10 percent higher than the national average, which is 70.5%, according to Lamont.
Lamont said this will allow kids the "most opportunity to thrive."
The state's positivity rate is at 1.83% and there are 247 hospitalizations, with an increase of 15 over the weekend.
New cases in Georgia and Florida are down 37% and 25%, respectively, compared to last week, JHU data showed. Both states had among the 10 lowest case rates in the past week. But a handful of states -- in regions where cold weather has set in -- are seeing an increase. This pattern is similar to what happened last year.
Five states saw Covid-19 cases increase more than 10% compared to last week, JHU data shows. Those states include Iowa, Oklahoma, Alaska, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Alaska, particularly, had more Covid-19 cases per capita than any other state over the past week, JHU data showed. Cases jumped 14% over the week before, and there were 125 new cases per 100,000 people each day, about five times the national average.
Vermont was once among the states with the lowest case rates, and now ranks among the 15 worst case rates.
Cases are trending in the right direction in the US overall -- the daily average is down 10% over the past week.
The downturn of cases, hospitalizations and deaths could end with another spike, said Dr. Anthony Fauci the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But the US could still prevent that spike with higher vaccination rates.
According to the Times, the FDA might note that getting the same vaccine as a booster is preferable, but it would not recommend one shot over the other.
The National Institutes of Health presented early information to the FDA's vaccine advisers Friday from an ongoing study showing that it didn't matter which vaccine people got first and which booster they got -- it was safe to mix boosters and it revved up immune response. Mixing boosters also provided a good response to the Delta variant.
Dr. Amanda Cohn, a member of FDA's vaccine advisory panel, said guidance about mixing and matching Covid vaccine booster shots would allow flexibility for the public and for those trying to offer vaccine doses to the public.
"I don't think there's any sort of need from a public health perspective to have a preference for mixing or matching," said Cohn, who is also chief medical officer for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases.
Although cases still remain high, with an average of about 85,000 new infections a day as of Sunday, they are down by more than 8,000 from a week prior, according to JHU data. Deaths are down an average of more than 200 a day from the start of the month.
And though health experts do not know exactly what proportion of the population needs to be protected to control the spread of the virus, Fauci has said a vast majority will need to be vaccinated.
Fauci does not think another spike in cases is inevitable.
"It's going to be within our capability to prevent that from happening," said Fauci, who is also the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
"The degree to which we continue to come down in that slope will depend on how well we do about getting more people vaccinated."
Mandates counterproductive, governor says
Health experts have pointed to vaccine mandates as a key tool to keeping cases down and relieving hospital strain, but some officials stand staunchly against the measures.
"I think when you're in a public health crisis, sometimes unusual situations require unusual actions," Fauci told Fox News.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday that he believes both federal and state mandates are counterproductive to increasing vaccination rates.
Hutchinson told NBC News he believes muddled messaging at the highest levels of government has "slowed down acceptance of the vaccine and increased resistance."
"I'd like to see us get to, without the mandate battle, let's just encourage the vaccine acceptance, build confidence in it, and that's the direction we need to go," the governor said.
"So yes, there is an effectiveness there. And so, let me make it clear that when I say I don't believe we ought to be engaged in mandates, I'm speaking of the government mandates, whether it's a federal government mandate or a state government mandate," he said.
Hutchinson pointed out that employers must navigate a nuanced, on-the-ground reality of some employees wanting a vaccine mandated work environment to feel safe while others do not. Hutchinson said, based on that predicament, the choice of whether to mandate should be left in the hands of employers.
Gottlieb pushes for research into Delta variant type seen in UK
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said "urgent research" is needed into a different version of the Delta variant of the coronavirus that has been seen in the UK, although there's no evidence that it's more transmissible.
"The variant has been in the UK since about July, but it has been slowly increasing in prevalence. There's no clear indication that it's considerably more transmissible, but we should work to more quickly characterize these and other new variants. We have the tools," he wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
"This is not a cause for immediate concern but a reminder that we need robust systems to identify, characterize new variants," he said.
A report released by the UK Health Security Agency on Friday says in the week beginning September 27 -- the last full week with complete sequencing data -- this version accounted "for approximately 6% of all sequences generated, on an increasing trajectory."
Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have all been rising in the UK, where there are no countrywide mask mandates and few travel restrictions from other countries.
Even with waivers, some paid thousands for Covid hospitalizations, study says
Many insurers waived Covid-19 hospitalization costs in 2020, but those waivers didn't cover everything and out-of-pocket expenses cost patients a lot more than other respiratory diseases, according to a new study.
The study published Monday in JAMA Network Open found that out-of-pocket spending for Covid-19 hospitalization was about $4,000 on average for people with private insurance. For people with Medicare Advantage it was more than $1,500.
Researchers looked at hospitalization records for more than 4,000 people in 2020 and found that this spending was about four times the average out-of-pocket cost for other respiratory infections in 2019.
"The findings suggest that out-of-pocket spending for COVID-19 hospitalizations may be substantial if insurers allow cost-sharing waivers to expire," the study said.
Additionally, all children that are fully vaccinated will be entered into a weekly drawing for a $100,000 scholarship to a Minnesota college.
"It's an incentive, it's an acknowledgment that the sooner we get this group vaccinated, the sooner we spread our vaccinations, we're seeing it around the world," Walz said. "Once you start to get close to that 80% number, you start to see amazing things happen as the infections drop off."
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The day before COVID-19 claimed its first Texas victim in 2020, Dr. Peter Hotez was a guest on the popular Austin-based podcast The Drive.
After 10 years of research into coronavirus vaccines, Hotez and his Houston team needed an infusion of cash to build on their past work and make a vaccine that could, as Hotez told listeners then, rescue the world from the deadly emerging coronavirus pandemic.
Youd think that people would be pretty eager to support us to move this forward, but so far it hasnt happened, the Houston pediatrician and vaccine scientist told the host, Dr. Peter Attia, on March 14, 2020.
By the following week, major cities in Texas began to shut down to avoid widespread community outbreaks.
But Hotezs plea worked. The donations started coming in support of efforts in the deadly new pandemic at the Baylor College of Medicine at the Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, co-directed by Hotez and Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi in Houston both of whom are celebrated pioneers in the area of vaccines for neglected tropical diseases like chagas and schistosomiasis.
Among the gifts was a $1 million infusion of cash in May 2020 by the philanthropic arm of Texas-based Titos Handmade Vodka, whose director of global impact and research, Sarah Everett, was tuned in when Hotez asked for help in reviving their research.
We decided that somebody should help restart that work immediately, Everett said.
Now, nearly 18 months later, the Houston teams vaccine, called Corbevax by its maker in India, is cheap, has no patent, can be made by many vaccine producers globally including those in low- and middle-income countries and is poised to receive approval for widespread global use.
The Indian government has promised the biopharmaceutical company Biological E Limited, which is making the vaccine in that country, that it will buy 300 million doses with the potential for more.
A halal version of the vaccine, for use in Islamic countries because it doesnt contain animal-based ingredients, is also about to start clinical trials in Indonesia.
And later this year, the company hopes the vaccine will be endorsed by the World Health Organization for use globally, which could open the doors to quicker authorization in several countries that need it.
But here in the United States, this truly Texas vaccine, as its creators like to call it, has no home.
The fact that the vaccine even exists can be traced to a lot of Texas money, including funds from The Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation and the M.D. Anderson Foundation. Several high-level and anonymous individual donors pitched in, as well as the JPB Foundation in New York.
Those donations funded a vaccine prototype with the initial doses mixed in the Houston lab and transferred to Biological E in India in May 2020. By November, BioE began clinical trials of the vaccine in India, where the delta variant was first identified and which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world. Total cost from creation to market was between $5 million and $7 million, Bottazzi said.
The U.S. government has yet to get on board. Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership created by the federal government to accelerate treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, spent none of its billions at the Houston lab.
Most experts, including Hotez and Bottazzi, agree thats because most of the funding and the attention and the bets are on the vaccines made earliest in the pandemic, and with the newest technology, by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson and a few others.
Were pushing the new ways because theyre better and faster, said Dr. Benjamin Neuman, a Texas A&M University virologist who has been doing coronavirus research since 1996, though he was not involved in any of the approved vaccines' development. Why wouldn't you want to have it all?
The mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna use messenger RNA, a molecule the virus needs to produce a spike protein and bind to human cells, to prompt the immune system to produce antibodies against that protein. Five years ago, Neuman said, that process hadnt been made effective yet.
But by the time Hotez was making his plea on Attias podcast, Moderna was already starting up clinical trials of its mRNA vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, the biomedical research arm of the U.S. government and the largest center of its kind in the world.
And by late 2020, when BioE was rolling out its phase 1 clinical trials with Corbevax in India, Pfizer was already getting emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Bottazi and Hotez vaccine relies on a production process very similar to the way the Hepatitis B vaccine is made thats been produced and used around the world for decades. The two argue that the familiarity with the process and the ease with which the materials can be gotten makes it easier to quickly ramp up global production compared to the newer vaccines, even if they came onto the market a little later.
But aside from a handful of philanthropies who can see the value of the domino effect more vaccinations outside this country help lower infections around the world and here Hotez and Bottazzi have heard nothing about producing or distributing here at home.
Why werent conventional vaccine technologies given the opportunity of being at the same table as all these other technologies? Bottazzi said.
The answer, Neuman says, is that while conventional technologies or what he jokingly derided as the obvious answer have a role in global vaccine development, the newer vaccines are stronger than the traditional types that Bottazzi, Hotez and other scientists around the world are developing.
Newer vaccines also have a quicker production process than the conventional vaccines, said Neuman, a member of the international committee that named SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Neuman agrees that the newer vaccines have distribution challenges: the tangles of intellectual property patents, the availability of materials to produce billions of doses in a short period of time and the logistics of a more complicated transport and storage process.
Those challenges can be solved, Neuman said, but until then, the majority of the planet should be vaccinated by any means necessary, including with conventional vaccines like the one created by Bottazzi and Hotez, if it proves to be safe and effective.
Whatever gets the job done the fastest as long as it's safe for everybody involved, he said.
While the Houston team waits for a production and distribution partner, the team fields calls every week from other countries asking them for help getting access to the vaccine, Bottazzi said.
They ask if they can get the spare doses that Americans are declining or if they can get connected to BioE to export to them from their Indian-made stocks or if the scientists will share the formula for the prototype.
The scientists share the formula with any country or lab who asks for it and help in other ways, however they can.
Were kind of practicing our own version of Texas vaccine diplomacy, Hotez said.
Vaccination rates for developing countries are still in the single digits. About 38% of the world population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Many African countries, such as Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia, have a rate below 2%.
In India, where nearly a billion doses of three different vaccines Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik V have been distributed, more than 80% of the population remains unvaccinated. In Brazil, less than a third of the country is inoculated.
Were one plane flight away from seeing a variant that developed in a country that has very little vaccine end up on our shores and set off a new wave of the pandemic, said Dr. James Cutrell, an infectious disease expert at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Right now, the World Health Organization is already monitoring several variants that have been traced to developing countries including Indonesia (21% fully vaccinated), Peru (with one of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world), Colombia, the Dominican Republic and South Africa.
Much of sub-Saharan Africa, large swaths of Latin America and other places like that they really dont have access to the [mRNA] vaccines, said Cutrell, an associate professor in the department of internal medicine. That makes it really important and attractive to have some of these cheaper, easier-to-distribute but hopefully similarly effective vaccines with more traditional technology, which I think this vaccine and other vaccines like it can contribute.
As the world scrambles for doses to meet the vaccination demand elsewhere, this nations vaccination effort has flagged, hitting a wall of hesitation by a significant portion of the American public that is declining the new vaccines, although they have proven to be safe and effective.
Hotez and Bottazzi believe their vaccine would likely be more accepted by those who dont trust a vaccine that is unfamiliar to them, like those by Pfizer and Moderna.
But from the start, inoculating reticent Americans was never the Houston teams first priority.
Bottazzi and Hotez began their work developing coronavirus vaccines as part of their mission at the National School of Tropical Medicine, where Hotez is dean and Bottazzi is associate dean, to inoculate developing nations against tropical viruses.
Fast forward to January 2020, when SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was setting off alarms in the U.S. medical community. Bottazzi and Hotez began working to repurpose their coronavirus research program to develop a vaccine against the new virus and distribute it to the same countries theyd focused on throughout their careers.
The speed with which the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were developed and the fact they used newer formulas seemed to spook some Americans and helped fuel politically motivated misinformation campaigns that chipped away at public acceptance. And as this nations vaccination rate hovers around 57%, its a matter of debate what is needed to achieve a higher level of immunity as a country.
Neuman said he isnt so sure that a more familiar vaccine formula would change a lot of minds in the United States, where the resistance appears to be more political than scientific.
I think that comes from a lot of different places, and I think the main place is sort of, Youre not the boss of me, he said. Who says you get to tell me what to do? And I don't think it matters what it is.
Even if it would make a difference, the path to emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine in this country starts with money for research, for trials, for materials and ends with firm commitments from the U.S. to support its mass production.
The Bottazzi-Hotez shot, at this point, has neither.
And so Hotez, who is an internationally known and outspoken warrior against the anti-vaccine movement, and Bottazzi redouble their attention abroad to protect Americans who cant or wont protect themselves. If they can get more of their vaccine overseas within a few months, they can keep the variants from percolating and landing on U.S. soil.
Its a pretty ambitious, audacious goal, Hotez said. But I think we could get there.
Disclosure: UT Southwestern Medical Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Oct 18th 2021
TWELVE MONTHS ago the northern hemisphere was about to embark on its first winter of the covid-19 pandemic. In western Europe and America cases were rising rapidly, and scores of deaths were soon to follow. Many countries, including Britain, entered strict lockdowns for the holiday season.
The Economist today
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Today, there is little sign yet that Western governments will reimpose draconian restrictions on behaviour. But covid has not gone away: in Britain cases are nearly as high as they were in January (although the fatality rate is a fraction of what it was). Britain is faring significantly worse than its European neighbours in containing the virus, although if this wave of infections peaks ahead of flu season, Brits may yet be thankful.
Part of the reason that covid is spreading so rampantly in Britain is the government has loosened restrictions faster than in other Western countries, and been slower to vaccinate under-18s. Only in September did Britain start offering jabs to 12- to 15-year-olds; America has been doing so since May. And nightclubs, for example, which include some of the most crowded and poorly-ventilated venues imaginable, are open without restrictions. In Italy clubbers are required to show vaccine certificates and in Spain they must dance in their masks.
Since March 2020 YouGov, a pollster, has asked a representative sample of adults in countries around the world whether they wear a mask in public. Even during 2021, as vaccination rates increased, mask-wearing stayed remarkably firm (see chart below). In France and Italy, three-quarters of people say they wear masks, and in Britain and Germany two-thirds say they do. Even in America, where mask-wearing has been a partisan issue, compliance rose in July in response to rising levels of infections.
Despite worries about waning efficacy, vaccines continue to be highly effective in keeping case-fatality rates low. In western Europe, people 12 and over have received 1.5 doses of a covid-19 vaccine on average. Although in America that figure is 1.4, large pockets of unvaccinated people help fuel the virus. Yet unless it develops a mutation that renders vaccines less effective, booster doses will help to keep the worst at bay. In America 14% of fully-vaccinated people aged 65 and over have received a booster dose. In Britain that figure is 25%. Greater awareness of the power of vaccines may also increase seasonal-flu vaccination rates, as they did in Britain last year.
Not all countries can breathe so easily. Covid continues to claim thousands of lives each day. The Economist's excess-death tracker estimates about 170,000 deaths to the pandemic around the world in the past week. The pandemic is particularly severe in Russia and much of eastern Europe, which have been slower to vaccinate. On Saturday Russia recorded 1,000 deaths from covid, the highest single-day figure since the start of the pandemic (although the official toll is almost certainly an undercount). And, covid will continue to claim the lives of a small share of those who have been fully vaccinated too, such as that of Colin Powell, a former American secretary of state, who died on October 18th.
The US Food and Drug Administration is planning on allowing Americans to receive a different coronavirus vaccine for their booster shots than their original dose, according to two sources familiar with the current thinking inside the agency.
While the details on exactly what language the FDA will use remains unclear, it's expected to make a broad authorization on "mixing and matching" potentially as soon as this week.
While this could apply to all FDA-authorized vaccines in the US, officials realize it has been the biggest concern for those who received a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The FDA has already authorized boosters of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine for some adults, and is currently considering authorization of boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine advisers are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss Moderna and J&J boosters.
The National Institutes of Health last week presented to the FDA's vaccine advisers early information from an ongoing study showing that it didn't matter which vaccine people got first and which booster they got it was safe to mix boosters and it revved up immune response. Mixing boosters also provided a good response to the Delta variant.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 241.1 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.9 million. More than 6.68 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
New Zealand as reported its highest single-day rise in COVID-19 cases since the pandemic begun, with 94 new COVID-19 infections reported today.
Many Russian regions have announced plans to keep cafes, museums and other public spaces only open to those who have recently recovered from COVID-19, have proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test.
Burundi has rolled out its first COVID-19 vaccines, with the vaccination campaign getting underway in the commercial capital of Bujumbura.
Europe's drugs regulator has approved two new manufacturing sites for producing the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech.
The European Medicines Agency is also evaluating the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in children as young as five.
More than a billion COVID-19 vaccines produced in the European Union have been exported since December 2020, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said yesterday.
China has reported 9 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases for 18 October - the highest tally since the end of September.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries.
Image: Our World in Data
Latvia has announced a COVID-19 lockdown, that will run from 21 October until 15 November, in an effort to slow rising infections.
"Our health system is in danger... The only way out of this crisis is to get vaccinated," Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said, blaming low vaccination rates for the spike in hospitalizations.
Only 54% of Latvian adults have been fully vaccinated, EU figures show. The EU average is 74%.
"I have to apologize to the already vaccinated," Karins said, announcing that shops, restaurants, schools and entertainment will be closed, with only essential services available and a curfew in place from 8pm to 5am. Only essential manufacturing, construction and critical jobs will be allowed to continue in person.
India's vaccination campaign has slowed despite amassing record stockpiles of vaccine, health ministry data showed on Monday, as authorities maintain a wider-than-usual gap between doses in a strategy that has boosted coverage.
Domestic production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which accounts for nearly 90% of administered doses, has more than tripled since May, when a supply shortage prompted India to double the period between doses to between 12 and 16 weeks.
That gap, exceeding the 8 to 12 weeks recommended by the World Health Organization, has allowed India to give at least one vaccine dose to 74% of its 944 million adults, with just 30% getting the full complement of two.
Each of our Top 50 social enterprise last mile responders and multi-stakeholder initiatives is working across four priority areas of need: Prevention and protection; COVID-19 treatment and relief; inclusive vaccine access; and securing livelihoods. The list was curated jointly with regional hosts Catalyst 2030s NASE and Aavishkaar Group. Their profiles can be found on www.wef.ch/lastmiletop50india.
Top Last Mile Partnership Initiatives to collaborate with:
The AstraZeneca vaccine, known as Covishield, accounts for 861 million doses of India's total injected figure of 977.6 million, while its other main vaccine, Covaxin has a dose interval of four to six weeks.
Over the last few days, daily stocks of all COVID-19 vaccines have exceeded 100 million doses, the health ministry figures show, for states and federally controlled territories taken together.
In contrast, daily vaccinations have dropped to an average of 5 million doses this month and even less in the past week, off a daily peak of 25 million last month.
The ministry said it followed recommendations from a group of experts in making any changes to dosage, arrived at by weighing up "scientific and empirical" evidence.
Written by
Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
A look at some of the top headlines trending online today around the world including the latest products from Apple, coronavirus updates and much more.
Heres everything Apple just announced: New AirPods, MacBook Pros, colorful HomePod Minis and more (CNBC)
White House dials up urgency as Biden meets with Democrats on economic bill (NBC News)
Trump sues to keep White House records secret, claiming executive privilege (CNN)
Biden team asks Supreme Court to pause Texas abortion law (AP)
Amazon to hire 150,000 U.S. workers for holiday shopping season (Reuters)
Energy crunch hits global recovery as winter approaches (AP)
Colin Powells death doesnt contradict efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, experts say (Yahoo)
FDA may allow mixed boosters: Source (ABC)
Washington State fires football coach Nick Rolovich, 4 assistants for refusing state-mandated COVID-19 vaccine (ESPN)
NHL hands Evander Kane 21-game suspension for submitting fake vaccine card (Yahoo Sports)
North Korea fires suspected submarine-launched missile into waters off Japan (BBC)
Drug lord Pablo Escobar smuggled hippos into Colombia. Officials are now sterilizing the invasive species (Washington Post)
Blood pressure medication recalled for possibly containing cancer-causing impurity (AL.com)
Ground turkey, plus beef and chicken products recalled from 3 companies (cleveland.com)
Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board, dies at 86 (NPR)
