Gov. Jim Justice,the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, and the WestVirginia Joint Interagency Task Force for COVID-19 VaccinesannouncedCOVID-19 vaccine clinics that will be held across the state.
All West Virginians, age 12years and older, are encouraged to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. More informationmay be found at www.vaccinate.wv.gov. For assistance by phone, please call 1-833-734-0965.
Pleasecheck with the local county venue for information regarding appointmentrequirements.
Sunday, June 20, 2021
11:00a.m.,State Capitol, Lincoln Plaza (South Side of the Capitol Building), 1900 KanawhaBoulevard, East, Charleston, WV 25305. Part of West Virginias 158thBirthday Celebration.
Monday, June 21, 2021
Ohio County
9:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, 1500Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV 26003.
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Cabell County
8:00a.m. 4:00 p.m., COVID-19 VaccineCenter, 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville, WV 25504.
Hancock County
10:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m., Hancock CountyDHHR Office, 100 Municipal Plaza, Suite 600, Weirton, WV 26062.
Kanawha County
8:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Kanawha-CharlestonHealth Department, 108 Lee Street, Charleston, WV 25301.
Ohio County
9:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, 1500Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV 26003.
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Berkeley County (schedule appointmentat www.blueridgectc.edu/clinic)
8:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m.,Blue Ridge Community and Technical College Main Campus, 13650 Apple HarvestDrive, Martinsburg, WV 25403.
Cabell County
8:00a.m. 4:00 p.m., COVID-19 VaccineCenter, 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville, WV 25504.
Kanawha County
8:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Kanawha-CharlestonHealth Department, 108 Lee Street, Charleston, WV 25301.
Mason County
10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m., Mason CountyDHHR Office, 1406 Kanawha Street, Point Pleasant, WV 25550.
Mercer County
9:00 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Mercer CountyHealth Department, 978 Blue Prince Road, Bluefield, WV 24701.
Nicholas County
10:00 a.m. 4:30 p.m., Nicholas CountyHealth Department, 1 Stevens Road, Suite 201, Summersville, WV 26551.
Ohio County
9:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, 1500Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV 26003.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Braxton County
8:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Braxton County HealthDepartment, 617 Old Turnpike Road, Sutton, WV 26601.
Cabell County
8:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., CentennialFire Station, 839 7th Avenue, Huntington, WV 25701.
8:00a.m. 8:00 p.m., COVID-19 VaccineCenter, 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville, WV 25504.
Jackson County
12:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m., Jackson CountyHealth Department, 4285 Cedar Lakes Road, Ripley, WV 25271.
Kanawha County
8:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Kanawha-CharlestonHealth Department, 108 Lee Street, Charleston, WV 25301.
Lincoln County
9:00 a.m. 3:00 p.m., Lincoln CountyHealth Department, 8008 Court Avenue, Hamlin, WV 25523.
Mercer County
9:00 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Mercer CountyHealth Department, 978 Blue Prince Road, Bluefield, WV 24701.
Nicholas County
10:00 a.m. 4:30 p.m., Nicholas CountyHealth Department, 1 Stevens Road, Suite 201, Summersville, WV 26551.
Ohio County
9:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, 1500Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV 26003.
Webster County
9:00 a.m. 12:00p.m., Webster County Health Department, 112 Bell Street,Suite C, Webster Springs, WV 26288.
Wetzel &Tyler Counties
9:00 a.m. 12:00p.m., Wetzel/Tyler Health Department, 425 South 4thAvenue, Paden City, WV 26159.
Friday, June 25, 2021
Cabell County
8:00a.m. 4:00 p.m., COVID-19 VaccineCenter, 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville, WV 25504.
Kanawha County
8:30 a.m. 3:30 p.m., Kanawha-CharlestonHealth Department, 108 Lee Street, Charleston, WV 25301.
Ohio County
9:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m., Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department, 1500Chapline Street, Wheeling, WV 26003.
Saturday, June 26, 2021
Cabell County
8:00a.m. 12:00 p.m., COVID-19 VaccineCenter, 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville, WV 25504.
CHICAGO (CBS) On this Fathers Day, a life-affirming event was held in Chicagos Chatham neighborhood.
It was hosted by the Talbert Memorial Fund, a group dedicated to help Black parents who have lost children.
The organization offered COVID-19 vaccinations on Sunday, as part of its Black Men Heal Initiative to help Black dads better take care of their physical and mental health.
We talked to Jamal Harris, a neighborhood store manager and father of two, who explained why it was important to for him to get his shot.
If I can be leading by example, none of my other employees are vaccinated. So maybe if I start, maybe I can start a trend within my location just a little push, like safety, for everybody to be safe, Harris said.
Everyone gathered for the event at 75th Street and Prairie Avenue. Business owners along 75th Street contributed food, beverages, and other support.
TIJUANA (Border Report) Since the state of Baja California began vaccinating those 18 and older with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the rush to get inoculated has generated lines measured in kilometers at some sites, according to state health officials.
At some locations, people had begun to line up on foot or in cars days before the vaccines were scheduled to be given starting Thursday morning.
But one man named, Mario, said he lined up at a place only to be surprised by the lack of people waiting.
I got here yesterday at 6:30 in the afternoon (Wednesday) trying to avoid a lot of people, but when I got here there was nobody, I was the first one, he said. My parents are vaccinated already, my siblings are already vaccinated because they work taking care of seniors and they got the vaccine at work.
Mario considers himself lucky because no one in his family got the virus.
Jobs were lost because restaurants closed, many options for work also closed, a lot of us were affected since we could not earn any pay, he said. We had no money so we had to start charging buying on credit, but that was the worst of it.
Baja Californias Health Secretary placed 16 vaccination sites at various cities throughout the state and opened them at the same time, but in the city of Mexicali, where temperatures are exceeding 110 degrees, hours of operation have shifted to the evening from 6 p.m. till midnight.
Once people have been vaccinated, 14 days must pass to acquire immunity. People are being advised to continue with prevention protocols such as wearing facemasks and maintaining social distancing.
We are saying that once vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, after 14 days people should have generated enough antibodies to start enjoying immunity, said Alonso Prez Rico, Bajas Secretary of Health.
Prez Rico says the target is to vaccinate 135,000 people per day with a goal of inoculating 1.35 million people in a 10-day period.
With the shipment from the United States we should be able to get to 75 percent herd immunity, which is something the Americans are insisting on before we can open the border between Tijuana and the United States, he said.
The southern border, including the stretch between Tijuana and San Diego has been under cross-border restrictions for almost 15 months.
Best case scenario, Im guessing by the middle or end of July we will be tentatively talking about opening the border, but the truth is once the last of the citizens gets one of the 1.3 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines, we still have to wait to 14 days, said Prez Rico.
Visit theBorderReport.com homepagefor the latest exclusive stories and breaking news about issues along the United States-Mexico border.
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Iceland has bore a relatively low COVID-19 burden compared to many other countries, with the first case of SARS-CoV-2 being confirmed in late February 2020 and a total of 6,526 people having been diagnosed with the virus as of May 14th, 2021.
Thanks to the manageable number of cases every diagnosed case was contact traced, allowing those in close proximity to enter quarantine with a PCR test upon reaching the end of the isolation period. All of those with positive PCR tests had further samples collected for sequencing of the virus, providing an unprecedented level of detail in data collection.
Three waves of COVID-19 can be traced to their origins in Iceland, with the first being introduced from abroad by several travelers, which brought multiple genetically distinct lineages. This wave was completely eliminated by May 2020 via non-pharmaceutical interventions, though the second and third waves followed shortly after, with the third in particular being larger and characterized mainly by a single genetic clade.
The transmission tree of the third wave has recently been reconstructed in a paper uploaded to the preprint server medRxiv* by Hjorleifsson et al. (June 16th, 2021), allowing a detailed comparison between demographics concerning the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2. Further, the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccine distribution methodology is probed by computational simulation, finding that the widely accepted age descending vaccination policy may not be optimal.
Study Results. Image Credit: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.11.21258741v1.full.pdf
The group found that quarantine protocols significantly slowed the spread of the virus, with those diagnosed outside of quarantine being 89% more infectious than those diagnosed inside quarantine, as asserted by contact tracing and testing. As might be expected this effect intensifies with time, with those testing positive in the first few days of quarantine having had the virus well before entering, and therefore have had a chance to spread it more before isolation.
Iceland has implemented a similar vaccine distribution policy to most other nations, providing them first to the elderly and vulnerable, and then in descending age order. To optimize this strategy the group analyzed three vaccination strategies: descending age order, ascending age order, or random distribution.
Simulations that allowed iterative increases in the vaccinated percentage of the adult population from 0% or 29%, to represent frontline workers receiving the vaccine as a baseline, were run, setting the presumed probability of transmission to 40% or 10%, depending on whether an individual had received one or two doses of the vaccine, respectively. Vaccinated individuals still have a chance of catching the virus, but are significantly less likely to transmit it as they bear a lower viral load, though this was not considered in the simulation.
According to the simulations, and with all non-pharmaceutical interventions being the same, to reduce the size of the third wave outbreak to only 100 persons, 4% of the actual outbreak, 79% of all adults would need to have received a single dose of the vaccine when given in descending age order.
Vaccinating in order of ascending age, instead, would require only 64% of the adult population to have received one dose, while random distribution would require 72%. Similarly, having received two doses of the vaccine less than 60% of the adult population would need to be vaccinated in a random or ascending order strategy, being closer to 70% when given in descending order.
Therefore, after having distributed the vaccines to the elderly and vulnerable, distribution in ascending age order or even randomly would have been more beneficial to reducing transmission than age descending order. The group state that the third wave was largely spread by the young, as determined by the extensive and detailed contact tracing in Iceland, and therefore lowering transmission amongst them would have impeded the spread more strongly.
medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
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With two Super Bowl rings to his name and NFL street cred to the hilt, retired receiver Rod Smith showed up at Broncos headquarters to impart lessons on how a once-proud franchise could get its winning mojo back.
But after Smith was introduced to the team on a recent spring day, something slightly unexpected and totally beautiful happened. One of the feistiest players to ever wear a Denver uniform revealed the pain and anxiety in his heart, then told the Broncos how a shot in the arm can be a powerful symbol of love.
With the same boldness Smith displayed every time he snared a pass in the angry teeth of a defense, the 51-year-old Ring of Famer told current players if they truly cared about team chemistry and the people outside football that matter most to them, the Broncos would put aside any fear or hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccine, roll up their sleeves and get inoculated long before the upcoming 2021 NFL season began.
I wouldnt call it a sales job. He just spoke from the heart, Broncos coach Vic Fangio told me during a telephone interview. Rod shared with the team that he was terrified of COVID for the last year and basically locked himself in his room, in part because he didnt want to pose any danger to his sick daughter.
Every one of his 849 receptions hauled in for the Broncos were squeezed and secured with passion. Throughout much of 13 seasons in Denver, Smiths eyes often burned with the defiance of a player who joined the league as an undrafted free agent out of Missouri Southern in 1994.
He took nothing for granted and took no prisoners. As a journalist caught more than once on the wrong side of the blow torch when Smith got worked up on a topic, Im hear to testify when Brother Rod preaches, the congregation has little choice but to shout: Amen, brother!
As daily vaccination rates across the country decline, and President Joe Bidens desire of inoculating 70% of the U.S. population against COVID-19 by July 4 now destined to fall short of the goal line, the Broncos have taken their medicine. For the good of the team. And to be good neighbors.
More than 80 players on Denvers large summer roster have received at least one dose of the vaccine, ranking Denver among the NFLs top three teams in the battle to snuff out a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans.
Yes, there are intelligent folks with strong reasons that make them reluctant to get the COVID vax. Professional football players, who cant make a living in a dangerous game without their health, have long been wary of anyone sticking a needle in them.
When addressing the Broncos on May 24, Smith not only heard the doubts of skeptical Denver players, he shared some of their same fears.
Rod admitted that he was kind of an anti-vaccine guy by nature, but theres no way he wouldnt get one for COVID. In spite of his stubbornness he saw the light and got the vaccine, recalled Fangio, whose own daughter is a nurse who fell ill, but recovered during the early stages of the pandemic.
Shortly before his visit to team headquarters, the Ring of Fame receiver humbly stood in line at a grocery store with regular peeps like you and me, awaiting his date with the needle. Smith told Broncos players and coaches he got the vax with his grown daughter in mind.
Her name is Vanessa. She was brought into the world by Valerie Webb and a young football player at Joplin, Mo., hospital in November 1989. Despite a lifelong battle with sickle cell anemia, she grew up to be a phlebotomy technician and the proud mother of two boys.
In a too-often-told, gut-wrenching story that has touched millions of aching hearts during the pandemic, the dangers of COVID-19 drove a wall between a retired NFL star and his ill daughter. Ive lived the same story as Smith with my mother, and Im willing to wager you or somebody you know has experienced the anxiety of being unable to reach out and touch a loved one in need during the pandemic.
COVID-19 stole time none of us can ever get back.
Smith knows that pain all too well.
Vanessa Denise Webb passed away June 7, after her courageous battle with sickle cell anemia ended at age 31.
You get a COVID vaccine, if not for yourself, to be a strong teammate, a good friend or show a loved one were all in this fight together.
The Broncos have yet to play a game in 2021, but already are out-front leaders in the fight to snuff out this nasty pandemic.
And hopefully, Fangio said, we will win some games. Then all messages carry more weight.
Plus, antibodies are not the only defense the body deploys to create immunity: We also make T cells, memory B cells, and others. The vaccine clinical trials didnt attempt to measure the cell counts required to create an effective defense against the virus. They reported only clinical endpoints, such as whether someone became seriously ill or died from the disease. So focusing on antibodies alone may miss important parts of the immune response.
I try not to use words like you didnt respond to the vaccine when someone isnt making antibodies, says Haidar, who is principal investigator on a larger study that is recruiting people with a range of immune deficits, including HIV, in order to study Covid vaccine response. I worry that it might drive vaccine hesitancy if the messaging is that the vaccine isn't working for you. I think we have to be a little more nuanced to account for the complexities that other elements of the immune system could have been revved up by the vaccines.
Even in the few studies done so far, its clear that immune response to the vaccines varies, depending on the age of the patient, the type of immune deficit they are experiencing, the type of transplant they received, the specific drugs they take, the length of time since transplant or last dose, and a host of other factors. The likelihood of abundant antibody production appears higher, for instance, in patients who take immune-suppressing medications to treat chronic inflammatory diseases than it does in transplant and cancer patients. Studies done by Segev and team show better rates of antibody production in those patients after one and two doses. But a separate preprint, done by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and UC San Francisco, shows a wide range of responses depending on which drug regimen a patient is taking.
That may provide a clue for managing patients vulnerability, so that they can get closer to the kind of immune protection that otherwise healthy people receive from Covid vaccines. One thing we are telling patients who are in suppression, who haven't gotten vaccinated yet, is to consider holding their medicine, says Alfred H. J. Kim, that studys senior author and an assistant professor of rheumatology and immunology at Washington University. Obviously, if you hold medicines, you risk flares. And if you're going to flare, this could make your vaccine side effects worse, or it could make the vaccine itself less effective. Its a really tricky situation.
And, legally, doctors currently cant advise patients to seek extra doses of the Covid vaccine. The FDA has authorized only one or two doses for all the vaccines it has let enter the US market. For Segevs teams study, the doctors didnt prescribe third dosesthe patients found third doses on their own, in ways the study did not specify. The Hopkins team tracked the results.
Still, theres some evidence in medical literature to support the utility of additional doses. For instance, the French government has recommended a third dose for anyone who is immunocompromised. And in the US, its been understood for years that a second dose of seasonal flu vaccine and larger doses of hepatitis B vaccine are required to create immunity in them.
But it will be necessary to gather more data to be sure. The Hopkins team is contemplating a larger trial in which immunosuppressed patients seeking third doses would be enrolled and tracked in a formal way. And despite the allure of higher protection, theyre not urging immune-damaged patients to start freelancing their own third shots. There are risks to taking third doses, Segev says. There is a risk the third dose will activate your immune system and cause either an overt rejection or some sort of subclinical thing, where you start to develop a little more antibodies against your transplanted organ. It's important that people who do go out and get third doses are either part of research protocols or are doing this in collaboration with their doctors who have evaluated the risks and benefits.
If trials like this can yield dataanother one, recently announced, is being conducted by the National Institutes of Healththey could do more than let the immunocompromised get back to everyday life. They could also illuminate aspects of the immune system and its interaction with vaccines that are still not very well understood. And that will be of benefit not just during this pandemic but for whatever we need to protect ourselves against next.
More From WIRED on Covid-19
Having witnessed the havoc wreaked by the second wave of coronavirus, it is only proper to stay prepared for a possible third wave. With states lifting their border restrictions and many fleeing to the hills, it seems that the only way to avoid yet another devastating phase is through mass vaccination.
Amidst all the chaos around vaccine shortage, while some are relieved to have taken their COVID shot, there are many who are still reluctant. Given the side effects and cases of adverse reactions, people are still trying to make their way around getting themselves vaccinated.
Apart from fever, fatigue and body ache, pain in the sight of vaccine injection has become a common post vaccination issue. While the pain lingers from a day or two, many are still wondering as to what causes the soreness.
But manufacturing problems at a factory in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions, Johnson & Johnsons subcontractor, have had serious consequences for the vaccine. Because of a major production mishap that resulted in a two-month shutdown in operations, Johnson & Johnson has essentially been forced to sit out the brunt of the pandemic in the United States while Pfizer and Moderna, the other federally authorized vaccine makers, provided almost all the nations vaccine stock.
Johnson & Johnson has had to throw out the equivalent of 75 million doses, and the regulatory authorities in Canada, South Africa and the European Union also decided to pull back millions more doses made at the Baltimore plant. The company has been able to deliver less than half of the 100 million doses it promised the federal government by the end of this month.
Dr. Anne Zink, Alaskas chief medical officer, said that in her state, Johnson & Johnsons shot had become a victim of its own timing. By late February, when it was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, Alaska had figured out how to get two-dose vaccines to remote areas, leaving the one-shot regimen less crucial than she had initially imagined.
Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginias Covid-19 czar, said that the pause and Johnson & Johnsons later authorization more than two months after Pfizers and Modernas deprived it of a halo effect. By the time West Virginia had an ample supply of all three vaccines, he said, people started to get this concept that maybe theres something better about being immunized with Pfizer and Moderna.
The Johnson & Johnson shot had also suffered from a social network effect, said Andrew C. Anderson, a professor of public health at Tulane University who researches vaccine hesitancy. Most Americans who were inoculated in the early months of the vaccine campaign received Moderna and Pfizer shots, and so their friends and family were less likely to deviate and accept a different brand.
In Louisiana, hospitals in the New Orleans area have started offering the Johnson & Johnson shot to people on their way out of the emergency room; the thinking is that people will be more likely to accept the vaccine when a doctor who has treated them asks them to take it. And in Arkansas, where only a third of the population is fully vaccinated, state officials are offering Johnson & Johnson doses to agriculture, manufacturing, wastewater and poultry workers, with gift certificates for hunting and fishing licenses as a reward.
Few knew about mRNA technology before the pandemic ushered the novel approach to the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. But while mRNA shots sailed through testing and have reached hundreds of millions of people so far, the techwont be the panacea for all other diseases, analysts say.
To be sure, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have shown astonishing efficacy, Jefferies analysts wrote in a note Wednesdayfollowing a conversation with an undisclosed world pre-eminent expert on vaccines and infectious diseases. Still, uncertainties remain in areas such as flu and cancer.
Following the mRNA success, experts have started speculatingabout which other diseases might be suitable forthe novel approach. For their part, the Jefferies analysts saidit's not clear how mRNA vaccines wouldstack up against more traditional methods of vaccine-making from industry heavyweights Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.
For those companies and Merck, established shotsinclude pediatric combinations, plus vaccines against meningitis, shingles and HPV. There may be more room for mRNA developers to tackle cytomegalovirus virus or dengue, the Jefferies analysts wrote.
When it comes to the flu, rival mRNA developers have argued the technology, which uses messenger RNA instead of a weakened germ to instruct cells to trigger an immune response, could disrupt the multibillion-dollar market.
Existing flu vaccines typically hold a low efficacy barroughly 30% to 60%and cant be quickly adjusted to target emerging strains like mRNA can. Except there may be some challenges in that arena as well, Jefferies analysts pointed out.
RELATED:Pfizer, after success in COVID-19, will go solo to develop other mRNA vaccines, CEO Bourla says
For one, its unclear whether one shot of an mRNA vaccine will work just as well as existing flu shots; a two-dose regimen could be a drawback. Its also unknown how much governments would be willing to shell out for more effective flu vaccines.
Meanwhile, developing a cancer vaccine has proven to be a hard nut to crack and the probability an mRNA-based cancer shot would work is likely lower than viral vectors, Jefferies analysts said in the note.
Pfizer and Moderna have both pledged to plow ahead with the gene-based technology. Both companies are working on booster shots to tackle emerging coronavirus variants, and Moderna is testing a dual COVID-flu combo option.
Jefferies noted that the combo shot, while conceivable, could be complicated by the different mutation rates of the two viruses, plus potential for deleterious interactions and added manufacturing complexity.
Beyond COVID-19, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in March that the drugmaker will try to use the technology against a host of other diseases. The drugmakers chief scientist, Mikael Dolsten, told investors on an earnings call that the technology could potentially be applied to flu, CMV and RSV.
RELATED:Moderna advancing early-stage mRNA prospects to show depth beyond COVID-19 shot
But the drugmaker will have to go head-to-head with Moderna, which has been developing drugs in the field over the last decade. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech has more than a dozen different mRNA candidates launched into clinical trials already with plans to further invest in the mRNA platform.
Thats not to mention the mRNA partnerships Sanofi and GSK drummed up recently. Sanofi is working with Translate Bio while GSK is teamed up with Germanys CureVac to develop and a handful of mRNA infectious disease contenders.
