CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) All the employees at the TVA Cumberland Fossil Plant will be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks.
The details are being worked out, but TVA spokesman Scott Fielder confirmed to Clarksville Now that all TVA employees must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22. That includes the estimated 180 employees of the TVA plant in Cumberland City, about 25 miles southwest of Clarksville on Highway 149.
The requirement is in response to President Joe Bidens order earlier this month that all federal employees must get COVID-19 vaccine.
After reviewing the recently issued Executive Order and additional guidance received from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force for federal employees, TVA employees will be required to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by November 22, 2021, according to a TVA statement provided by Fielder.
TVA has consistently encouraged our workforce to become vaccinated since vaccines became available to them, as this offers the best protection against serious illness. We are currently working on developing the specific processes and procedures needed to implement this new requirement, including the development of a secure system through which employees will document their vaccination status, the statement said.
Employees will be updated as new information becomes available, he said.
Until then, TVAs current COVID-19 protection protocols will remain in place. Those include:
WKRN, Channel 2 in Nashville contributed to this report.
Passenger removed after asking flight attendant to wear face mask
A man was removed from an Allegiant Air flight Monday morning to Punta Gorda, Florida after allegedly asking a flight attendant to put a face mask on, according to a report by Newsweek. (Credit: Anonymous via Storyful)
WASHINGTON - California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed a bill that would require all U.S. domestic airline passengers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, test negative for the virus, or show proof that they have fully recovered from the illness.
Feinstein introduced the U.S. Air Travel Public Safety Act Wednesday that would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services, along with the FAA, to develop standards and procedures to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak regarding air travel.
The proposed bill would also require an advisory committee with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make recommendations for COVID-19 vaccine use in health care settings and among health care staff in other settings.
RELATED: United, Frontier roll out COVID-19 vaccination requirements for workers
"We know that air travel during the 2020 holiday season contributed to last winters devastating COVID-19 surge," Feinstein said in a news release. "We simply cannot allow that to happen again."
"Ensuring that air travelers protect themselves and their destination communities from this disease is critical to prevent the next surge, particularly if we confront new, more virulent variants of COVID-19," she continued.
A Southwest Airlines flight attendant has filed a lawsuit against the carrier, claiming the airline failed to follow proper COVID-19 protocols to protect its staff from being exposed to the coronavirus during a mandatory training session last summer, which led to her husbands death.
Some airlines have already mandated that employees receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
United Airlines said it will begin terminating the employment of workers who have declined to get a COVID-19 vaccine in violation of the companys policy.
RELATED: United Airlines to fire 593 employees who refused COVID-19 vaccine
In a memo obtained by FOX TV Stations, the company wrote that more than 99% of its 90,000-plus workforce has gotten vaccinated.
A United Airlines spokesperson confirmed the company has already begun a process to terminate the employment of 593 people who have chosen not to comply with the companys vaccine requirement policy.
RELATED: These companies are requiring employees to get COVID-19 vaccinations
Frontier Airlines followed suit, announcing a similar policy requiring employees to be vaccinated by Oct. 1 or provide "regular" proof of a negative COVID-19 test.
Airlines continue to grapple with mandated COVID-19 restrictions as travel rebounds from the 2020 global lockdown.
Federal officials extended into January a requirement that people on flights and public transportation wear face masks, a rule intended to limit the spread of COVID-19.
The mask mandate has been controversial and has led to many encounters between passengers who dont want to wear a mask and flight attendants asked to enforce the rule. The FAA said in August that airlines have reported 3,889 incidents involving unruly passengers this year, and 2,867 or 74% involved refusing to wear a mask.
Austin Williams and the Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
According to the ODH, people 65 and older, those living in long-term care settings and people ages 50 to 64 with certain medical conditions should get a booster dose. People ages 18 to 49 with certain medical conditions and those 18 and older with an increased risk of being infected with COVID-19 may get a booster shot.
Patients wait at least six months after receiving their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine before getting the third dose.
In the last day, Ohio recorded 6,463 COVID cases, bringing its total to 1,407,442.
The state is averaging 6,600 cases a day over the last three weeks and 5,948 cases in the last week.
Ohio had 3,684 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of Wednesday, including 977 in ICUs and 645 on ventilators, according to ODH. Coronavirus patients account for 13.8% of the states hospital beds, 20.52% of ICU beds and13.54% of ventilators.
About 20% (5,318) of hospital beds, 17.93% (854) of ICU beds and 60.75% (2,894) of ventilators are available in Ohio.
In the last day, the state recorded 298 hospitalizations and 25 ICU admissions.
Ohios 21-day average is 254 hospitalizations a day and 22 ICU admissions a day, according to ODH.
By: KDKA-TV News Staff
BURGETTSTOWN (KDKA) Concert-goers will now need proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to see shows and performances at Star Lake.
Starting next week, Live Nations new safety requirements will take effect.
Officials with The Pavilion at Star Lake say they will need to see your original vaccination card or a printed copy.
They will also accept a printout of a negative test result within 72 hours of the show.
The next concert in Burgettstown will be the Jonas Brothers.
Thats one week from today.
For more information on the health and safety guidelines at The Pavilion at Star Lake, visit this link.
As the Dallas Mavericks season nears, one player has admitted to not being vaccinated against COVID-19.
Guard Trey Burke told reporters after practice on Wednesday that he has yet to receive the vaccination.
The NBA released tentative health and safety protocols to its teams Tuesday, detailing how players who havent gotten the COVID-19 vaccination will be tested far more often than their vaccinated colleagues and face a slew of other restrictions.
Click here to read more on this story from our partners at The Dallas Morning News.
Director of the Pan American Health Organization Carissa Etienne speaks to media about policies to deal with the Zika virus, in Montevideo February 3, 2016. REUTERS/Andres Stapff
MEXICO CITY, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Wednesday it is in advanced talks with vaccine makers to buy additional COVID-19 shots for its member states to complement bilateral deals, donations, and doses they are receiving via the COVAX mechanism.
PAHO has reached an agreement with Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac, and is expecting to sign new accords soon to buy vaccines with emergency use listing approval from other suppliers for 2021 and 2022, PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said.
"PAHO has helped COVAX deliver 50 million doses to our region, including nearly 14 million donated doses, and we have the capacity to quickly scale this support, so we urge countries not to delay their donations as lives hang in the balance today," said Etienne.
The agreement with Sinovac is to buy 8.5 million vaccine doses for 2021 and some 80 million doses next year, said Jarbas Barbosa, assistant director of PAHO, the regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO).
"We are in negotiations with all the producers who have emergency use authorization from the WHO ... and we are in fairly advanced negotiations to probably sign this week or next week with two other producers who have offered vaccines for the last quarter of 2021 and for 2022," said Barbosa.
Over a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the Americas and 35% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated, but stressed that coverage has not been uniform, said Etienne.
Canada, Chile, Uruguay, and Puerto Rico have fully vaccinated over 70% of their populations, while 10 countries and territories in the region have yet to vaccinate 20% of their populations and Haiti has inoculated less than 1% of its people.
Last week the Americas saw nearly 1.5 million new infections and more than 26,000 COVID-19 related deaths, more than any other global region, according to PAHO figures.
Reporting by Anthony Esposito and Adriana Barrera; editing by Diane Craft
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Pfizer and German partner BioNTech have submitted initial data from the late-stage trial of their COVID-19 vaccine in children aged 5 to 12 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,raising hopes that a key patient group can be added to the program as soon as late October.
Topline immunogenicity and safety readouts for the other two age cohorts from the trial children 2 to [less than] 5 years of age and children 6 months to [less than] 2 years of age are expected as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, the companies said in a statement.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, told MSNBC early Tuesday that the hope is now for authorization by the end of October.
The move comes at a time when the U.S. is still suffering more than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths a day, according to a New York Times tracker, matching levels last seen in February, the majority of them among unvaccinated people. New cases and hospitalizations are falling, but the death toll remains stubbornly high. More than 690,000 Americans have died of COVID so far, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, and that number is now on track to hit 700,000 within five days.
Alaska is still leading the country by new cases as measured on a per capita basis, and hospitals there are rationing care, the tracker indicates. Alaska has fully vaccinated just 50% of its population, below a national average that now stands at 55.4%, according to a CDC tracker.
See now: New York healthcare workers who are fired for refusing to be vaccinated wont be eligible for unemployment benefits in most cases
A study released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation on vaccine attitudes found that the greatest motivator for unvaccinated people is fear of the highly transmissible delta variant, which has been dominant in the U.S. for months. Other factors, such as the FDAs full approval of the Pfizer vaccine and mandates from governments and companies are less effective at present, according to the study.
Large gaps in vaccine uptake remain by partisanship, education level, age and health-insurance status, the authors wrote.
See now: Coronavirus deaths are highest in counties with the largest shares of Trump voters: report
The study also found the debate around booster shots to be both confusing and a negative for unvaccinated people, who believe requiring a third dose so soon after primary vaccination means that the vaccines dont work as well as experts have said they do.
The top reason vaccinated adults see driving high caseloads is vaccine refusal, while the unvaccinated say the main reason is that the vaccines arent working as well as promised, the study found.
Read now: Scientists continue to say there isnt enough evidence to make COVID-19 boosters available to all Americans
Elsewhere, Russia suffered its highest one-day death toll on Tuesday at 852, Reuters reported, exceeding the previous record set just last week. Daily cases started climbing in early September after millions of Russian students returned to schools and colleges.
India reported its lowest daily numbers of COVID-19 infections deaths in more than six months, Al Jazeera reported. The death toll of 179 COVID deaths, reported on Tuesday, is the lowest daily figure since the middle of March.
Japan is dropping its state of emergency on Thursday, as the rate of new infections slows, the Associated Press reported. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is expected to announce a lifting of the emergency and subsequent plans later Tuesday.
French drug company Sanofi SNY, +0.98% SAN, +2.45% has halted the development of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate using mRNA technology, as do the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna MRNA, -1.38% vaccines, MarketWatch sister publication Barrons reported.
Sanofi said that interim results from a Phase 1/2 study of the vaccine had been positive, and that no safety concern had been observed, but it would drop the program given the competition. Sanofi will instead seek to develop other vaccines based on mRNA technology.
The global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness climbed above 232.5 million on Tuesday, while the death toll rose above 4.76 million, according todata aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. continues to lead the world with a total of 43.1 million cases and 691,202 deaths.
India is second by cases after the U.S. at 33.7 million and has suffered 447,373 deaths. Brazil has the second highest death toll at 594,653 and 21.4 million cases.
In Europe, Russia has recorded the most fatalities at 201,854, followed by the U.K. at 136,730.
China,where the virus was first discovered late in 2019,has had 108,360 confirmed cases and 4,809 deaths, according to its official numbers, which are widely held to be massively underreported.
All employees, regardless of work location, must be fully vaccinated by Oct.18, or obtain a medical or religious exemption under Proclamation 21-14.1. Beginning October. 19, employees who are not fully vaccinated and lack an approved exemption will not be able to engage in work for the university.
By Oct. 4, employees must complete the COVID-19 vaccination verification process or request a medical or religious exemption via Workday. Once that deadline passes the university will begin initiating the appropriate separation process for employees who have not taken action.
The Oct. 4 deadline also ensures employees who received either the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the one-shot Janssen/Johnson & Johnson have the necessary two weeks to be considered fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. This deadline also provides Human Resource Services additional time to review the hundreds of exemption requests already submitted by employees.
Beginning Oct.19, employees ability to use accrued leaves or leave without pay depends on several variables, including the status of their verification process and job classification.
Civil service and administrative professional employees who are in the process of becoming fully vaccinated, or are awaiting a determination on their exemption or accommodation request, may be able to use accrued leave, their personal holiday or leave without pay in accordance with associated program rules, until a determination on their status is made. Those individuals in these job classification categories, who did not meet the requirements of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, who are awaiting a determination on their employment status may be able to use the same leaves in accordance with associated program rules. Details relating to faculty are still being reviewed.
WSUs previous declaration process does not meet the state mandate. The vaccination verification requirement supersedes the previous vaccination declaration process in Workday.
Once a person is fully vaccinated they must enter their COVID-19 Vaccination Verification Request in Workday and show their supervisor a form of acceptable COVID-19 Vaccination documentation:
Managers responsible for verifying the vaccination status of their employees, once viewed and verified the appropriate information, must complete the Request process through Workday. Employees are not to provide copies of supporting documents or upload them to Workday. Additionally, employees are not to ask their co-workers or student employees about their vaccination status. Supervisors and departments are not allowed to request or take copies of vaccination records or share vaccination information for any reason other than complying with state regulations.
Employees may request an exemption in Workday for those with sincerely held religious beliefs or with documented medical reasons. In addition to requesting the exemption request in Workday, the employee must submit supporting information. Medical exemption request forms are completed and emailed to Disability Services at hrs.disabilityservices@wsu.edu or faxed to 509-335-1259. Religious exemption request forms are emailed to hrs.exemptions@wsu.edu or faxed to 509-335-1259.
Request for exemptions are carefully evaluated and whether a request is approved or denied, employees will be contacted by HRS.
Religious and medical exemption requests go through a two-step process. If an exemption is approved, HRS will then engage the department to determine what if any accommodations may be considered. In order to engage in work for the university after Oct. 18, an unvaccinated employee will need to have both a granted exemption and accommodation. Whether an accommodation is granted will depend on a number of factors, including position responsibilities and the employees work environment.
The employee vaccination verification process is completely separate from the student process. Student-employees must complete the online employee vaccination verification process through Workday. For religious exemptions, HRS coordinates with Cougar Health Services, so students only need to submit their Religious exemption request form to Cougar Health Services. Student employees who are requesting medical exemptions must follow both the student and employee request processes separately.
Students who fail to comply with the student vaccination process will have holds placed on their accounts, preventing them from enrolling in classes during the Spring 2022 semester. More information on the student process is found on Cougar Health Services website
Because of the complexity involved in the COVID-19 Vaccination Verification process, employees are asked to refer to the Human Resource Services website for the most up-to-date information.
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Pigs can be infected by SARS-CoV-2, but they are also susceptible to an entirely different kind of coronavirus. That virus, called porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, is a distant cousin of SARS-CoV-2.
To the scientists shock and delight, their fusion peptide vaccine not only protected the pigs against COVID-19, it also protected them against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.
That would suggest this same COVID-19 vaccine would protect against all variants, Zeichner said. So, thats what were working on now.
Zeichner didnt set out to create a universal vaccine. His initial project was to develop an inexpensive and easily manufactured one for SARS-CoV-2.
The new mRNA technology that was used to create the [Pfizer and Moderna vaccines] is great, but its a really elaborate technology that is ideally suited to the modern world, he said. Its a really involved production process that can only be done in a few places. We wanted something that was inexpensive and could be made in factories that already exist around the world.
Zeichners lab was already working on a technique to rapidly create these types of inexpensive vaccines when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year.
His technique utilizes killed whole-cell bacteria something humans have used to create vaccines for decades.
Whats different about Zeichners approach is he uses a special kind of e-coli bacteria that has had most of its genes deleted. With so few genes, the bacteria essentially becomes an empty vessel to carry the vaccine.
From there, Zeichner infuses synthesized DNA of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the e-coli bacteria to create antigens the things that induce an immune response in the body on the bacterias surface.
Almost immediately, Zeichners team ran into a problem. The part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that scientists are using to create antigens (the infamous spike protein visible on all COVID-19 pictures and drawings) was too big to fit on the e-coli bacteria.
