HONOLULU (KHON2) Demand for COVID-19 testing is at an all-time high on Kauai where case numbers are expected to increase after four locations were linked to positive cases.
Mondays one new case was a welcomed break after the Garden Isle reached 73 active cases in two weeks, but with so much virus in the community, many residents are going out to get tested.
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A week ago, we were testing 50 to 60 people a day in the community testing site at the Convention Hall, and then by the middle of the week, we were testing 350 a day, said Kauai District Health Officer Dr. Janet Berreman.
The increased number of people promoted free testing over the weekend, which was a first for the County, and they increased testing capacity to 400 tests a day for the rest of the week.
I believe all 400 appointments were gone by 10:15 this morning, she added.
Wilcox Hospital helped by offering free-drive thru testing over the weekend too.
We did hear that the wait was about two and a half hours. So clearly, theres a lot of demand, and I think thats a good thing, Berreman said.
She said more people might be coming out to get tested who might have been associated with possible positive cases.
On Saturday, the District Health Office encouraged people who went to Robs Good Times Grill or Troys Bar between Friday, April 16, and Thursday, April 29, to get tested; and for people who attended the Ekolu Mea Nui drive-in concert at Vidinha Stadium on April 24 and the Sheraton Kauai Coconut Beach Resort Brunch Babes show on April 17 or 18 to get tested too.
We have seen transmissions have occurred at the two restaurants and bars, she explained. At the performance events, we have not seen evidence of transmission, but what we know is that there were individuals there during their infectious period.
Berreman said she wasnt there, but anecdotally, theres been a lot of close contact without mask wearing.
She said discussions continue with Mayor Derek Kawakami about shifting tiers for the first time.
Were about to go into our second and then third meetings of the day about what kinds of actions the County should take at the point that the tier system would tip us into the next tier, which is Tier 3, Berreman said.
These tiers were made a while ago, and so we want to make sure that they really reflect our best knowledge and understanding now and factoring in variants, vaccine, CDC guidance on masking indoor versus outdoor risk, and the patterns of disease that were seeing here on Kauai, she said. All of those things play into the mix.
Berreman said vaccinated employees can return to work, although businesses have closed voluntarily for the time-being.
She said vaccinated residents do not need to get tested unless they have symptoms.
All symptomatic people are asked to not go to the free testing site and go to a health care provider instead.
She also asked for the publics help when it comes to contact tracing.
Everything that we do is completely dependent on our community members when we call them, meeting us halfway, providing as much information as they can, listening to the information and complying as best they can with our directions, she said.
I dont think theres a feeling of panic, but theres certainly a sense of fear and concern on our island that we havent seen for a long time, she added.
Individuals identified as a close contact of a positive case are asked to contact their primary care physician, a hospital, or an urgent care clinic to schedule a drive-up test.
Drive-up testing is available at KVMH, Wilcox, Kauai Medical Clinic Kapaa, and Longs Kapaa with a doctors order.
The County of Kauais free testing location at the Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall has reached capacity for several consecutive days.
We have been forced to turn people away from the free testing clinic after reaching capacity at 400 available spots per day, said Kauai COVID-19 Incident Management Team Section Chief Patrick Porter. If you have insurance and need a test, please kokua and get a doctors order for a drive-up test so the free option can remain available for those who need it. Drive-up testing is also a safer option for those who may have been exposed to COVID. Please do not come to the testing clinic if you are sick with fever or a cough; stay home and call your doctor or go to a healthcare facility.
Hoola Lahui Community Clinic, in partnership with Malama Pono, the Hawaii Department of Health, and the County of Kauai, is offering vaccine appointments onSaturday, May 8, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Anahola Clubhouse.
Adults over 18 are eligible for this clinic. Participants will be able to choose between the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
A rising number of people whove been vaccinated are getting infected with the coronavirus. But is that surprising, and should it be cause for concern?
The short answer, according to local researchers: No.
Public health officials are tracking so-called COVID-19 breakthrough cases: fully vaccinated people whove become infected. It was already clear from the clinical trials that the current vaccines werent perfect. No vaccine is. But the rate of infection among the immunized has been extremely low, with COVID-19 hospitalization and death even less likely.
Researchers havent seen any alarming trends in these cases just further evidence that the current vaccines are highly effective.
The fact that there are breakthroughs is not a red flag, said Dennis Burton, an immunologist at Scripps Research. Breakthrough infections are to be expected, and the very small number indicates how very well the vaccines are providing protection.
To count as a breakthrough case, a person must have been infected at least two weeks after their second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Thats about how long it takes for a vaccine to spark an antiviral response.
According to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 9,245 of the 95 million Americans who were fully immunized as of April 26 have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Thats an infection rate of less than one out of every 10,000 people. About 2,500 of those cases had no symptoms, 594 were hospitalized and 112 died of COVID-19.
The local situation mirrors the national picture, though on a smaller scale. San Diego County has had 234 breakthrough cases, 55 percent of whom havent had any COVID-19 symptoms. None of these people have been hospitalized or died, according to Dr. Seema Shah, medical director of the countys epidemiology division.
More than 1 million San Diegans have been fully vaccinated, putting the local breakthrough rate at about 0.02 percent.
The actual numbers are likely higher, as it takes time for public health departments to detect and report these cases. And asymptomatic infections often go unnoticed unless that person happens to get tested. Still, by any measure, the rate of breakthrough infections is low.
If youve ever gotten an influenza vaccine and still wound up with the flu, you know firsthand that no vaccine is 100 percent effective. In those moments, its tempting to think the shot didnt work. After all, if it had, you wouldnt have gotten sick, right?
Wrong, according to Shane Crotty, a researcher at La Jolla Immunology.
Ive had people tell me, Oh, I got infected, so the vaccine didnt work. And, no, thats really an example of the opposite, he said. You would have been so much more sick.
Crotty cites vaccine trial data and a growing body of research showing that coronavirus vaccines reduce your risk and severity of infection. In other words, people who might otherwise have died are surviving hospitalization, people who would have gone to the hospital are recovering at home, and those who would have had mild symptoms arent having any.
Clinical trials showed that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are about 95 percent effective in preventing illness, and that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is roughly 66 percent effective. If those studies, which enrolled tens of thousands of people, saw breakthrough cases, then it was a matter of time until these cases appeared in the wider population now that millions of people are being immunized each day in the U.S.
As scientists detect more of these cases, theyll look for evidence theyre linked to certain demographics, vaccines or viral variants. There has been one notable example of that in South Africa, where AstraZenecas vaccine is only 10 percent effective against the fast-growing coronavirus strain first spotted in that country, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
So far, there are no such signs in San Diego or elsewhere in the U.S. While most local cases have been detected among health care workers, thats probably because routine testing is more common in health care than in other sectors. And its too early to say whether certain strains are consistently evading current vaccines based on local data, according to Shah, as only a handful of samples have been sequenced.
There are a few reasons a fully vaccinated person could still get infected. One is that they were exposed to so much virus that their immune system couldnt quickly clear all of it.
Theres a huge range in the amount of virus that might be breathed on from one person to the other, Crotty said. Thats definitely a significant part of it.
Another factor is the dizzying degree of variation in peoples immune systems based on genetics, underlying health conditions and age, among other contributors.
No two immune responses will be the same, said Sujan Shresta of La Jolla Immunology, who studies immune responses to dengue and Zika virus. Some people will mount a really vigorous immune response that completely gets rid of the virus . (others) will get rid of maybe half of the virus, and then another arm of the immune system needs to come in.
Those who quickly clear the virus may have higher levels of antibodies, Y-shaped immune proteins that grip the surface of a virus and, if they latch on tightly enough at the right spot, can prevent infection.
But people who dont make the right kind of antibody response or who do, but in low amounts can still control an infection in other ways. That often involves T cells, which kill infected cells before they spew out more virus.
Crottys lab has found that, while a two-pronged attack of T cells and antibodies works best against the coronavirus, a strong T cell response alone can still limit the severity of infection.
That study was conducted before the start of the vaccine rollout. The La Jolla Immunology team is now looking for people with breakthrough infections who are willing to provide blood samples, which researchers will use to better understand antibody and T cells responses in these cases and why they werent enough to prevent infection.
As researchers learn more about why and when breakthrough cases occur, Burton of Scripps Research says theres a simple step you can take to prevent these infections: get vaccinated. The shot will reduce your chances of getting ill, he says, and it will also make you less likely to infect people who may not have strong vaccine responses such as those living with autoimmune disease or cancer.
The presence of breakthrough infections indicates the importance of everyone getting vaccinated so that we protect the weakest in society.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) Africa is watching with total disbelief as India struggles with a devastating resurgence in COVID-19 cases, the continents top public health official said Thursday, as African officials worry about delays in vaccine deliveries caused by Indias crisis.
The African continent, with roughly the same population as India and fragile health systems, must be very, very prepared since a similar scenario could happen here, John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters.
What is happening in India cannot be ignored by our continent, he said, and urged African countries to avoid mass gatherings including political rallies. We do not have enough health care workers, we do not have enough oxygen, he warned.
Africas vaccine supply heavily relies on India, whose Serum Institute is the source of the AstraZeneca vaccines distributed by the global COVAX project to get doses to low- and middle-income countries. Indias export ban on vaccines has severely impacted the predictability of the rollout of vaccination programs and will continue to do so for the coming weeks and perhaps months, Nkengasong said.
We are living in a world that is extremely uncertain now, he added.
Just 17 million vaccine doses have been administered across the African continent for a population of some 1.3 billion, according to the Africa CDC.
The situation in India is very sad to observe, the World Health Organizations Africa chief told reporters in a separate briefing. We are very concerned about the delays that are coming in the availability of vaccines, Matshidiso Moeti added.
Her WHO colleague, Phionah Atuhebwe, called the delay quite devastating for everybody and said most African nations that received their first vaccine doses via COVAX will reach a gap in supply while waiting for second doses as early as May or June.
We call upon countries that have extra doses to do their part, Atuhebwe said, adding that the WHO is reviewing the Chinese-made Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines this week.
One unexpected COVID-19 vaccine donor is Congo, which Nkengasong said wants to give back some 1.3 million doses so they can be distributed to other African nations since it hasnt been able to do it at home.
There is a lot of vaccine hesitancy in the vast country, Nkengasong said. He didnt immediately know how many people have received the doses there.
There is a five-week timeline to get the doses administered elsewhere, he said, and Congo is working with COVAX to hand them over. He expressed hope that the doses can reach other people quickly during what he called an extremely critical time.
Nkengasong didnt know of other African countries saying theyre unable to use their doses but he urged them not to wait until the last moment to hand them back. Other countries in Europe, North America and Asia can have their luxury of vaccine options, he said, but we do not have choices.
Moeti with the WHO commended Congo for its decision, calling it extremely wise of the government to make this estimation in a country with gaps in its health care system.
She also warned that African countries must step up key public health measures to help avoid Indias scenario occurring here. The rate of testing for the coronavirus has dropped in quite a few countries, she said, and mentioned seeing data from one African nation in which the proportion of people not wearing face masks has risen to almost 80%.
Only 43 million tests for the virus have been conducted across the African continent since the pandemic began, the Africa CDC chief said, with a 26% drop in new tests conducted in the past week.
Nkengasong warned against travel bans, however, after Kenya this week announced it will suspend all passenger flights to and from India for two weeks starting midnight Saturday, while cargo flights continue.
Its really unfortunate we are reacting in a very ad hoc manner in respect to flight movements, he said, emphasizing the strength of authentic negative PCR tests. Its not people who are a threat, its the virus.
WASHINGTON, D.C. While COVID-19 vaccines now reach most the country, one group isnt part of the rollout equation yet: children.
But thats starting to change.
It's a family and a parent decision, and its not the right thing for every parent, said Dr. James Campbell with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a principal investigator for a clinical trial now underway involving more than 6,700 kids and the Moderna COVID vaccine.
At their Baltimore vaccine trial site, they had just 150 slots for children, but they received thousands of inquiries from parents trying to enroll their children.
I think the reason why we have had such an outpouring, so many families wanting to be in the study, is because of the success of the vaccine so far in adults, Dr. Campbell said.
One of those families is the Mugeras, who were able to enroll their 8-year-old son, Christian.
We thought about it and then we, for me, was a no-brainer, said his dad, Dr. Charles Mugera.
The Mugeras arent just parents, theyre also doctors themselves. They carefully reviewed information about the study beforehand and thentalked to their kids about it.
I think for the children, ultimately, what was the most appealing to them was the fact that they got their life back, Dr. Mugera said.
The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial is for children under the age of 12, who are then broken down into three age groups:
The groups get vaccines varying in strength from a full adult dose to a half dose. Parents need to keep an electronic daily diary of any symptoms and commit to one year of follow-ups either by phone or in person.
So far, Dr. Charles Mugeras son only experienced some initial soreness in his arm from his first full dose of the shot.
It's going to change the game completely, especially if we get the children vaccinated, he said. This is going to save millions and millions of lives.
It marks one more front in the war against COVID-19.
Young kids are extremely unlikely to suffer serious complications from COVID-19. Its weird. Nobody entirely understands why. But you know what? Im sold. Its been a tough year lets take our wins where we can. Particularly when, as several news outlets have reported in recent weeks, this is good news for a lot of parents during a probably long stretch when they will be vaccinated but their children will not.
Before I started making plans for my post-vaccine parenting lifestyle, though, I wanted to understand one other aspect of risk: the role my unvaccinated kids might play in getting other people sick. In the U.S., only about 31.6 percent of eligible people were fully vaccinated as of Monday morning, and that number varies a lot from place to place 23.8 percent of Alabamians were fully vaccinated compared with 40.2 percent of Mainers, and you can assume counties and cities show this same kind of variation. That leaves a lot of people who can still contract COVID-19, and I wondered whether young kids could end up being a conduit that keeps COVID-19 moving through the population even as vaccination rates rise.
As with many aspects of COVID-19, this question doesnt yet have absolute, unequivocal answers. When I asked Yair Goldberg, a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology who is studying how COVID-19 spreads in that country, he said that his team wasnt yet ready to talk about the data theyre collecting. Even a year in, were still learning as we go.
But other researchers told me that evidence suggests grade-school kids are not a major driver of COVID-19s spread in communities at least, that is, so long as theyre following mitigation strategies like wearing a mask.
For example, even after many school districts had been open for a while last fall and case numbers were rising to a surge, a study modeling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. found that children age 9 and under were responsible for only about 5 percent of the transmissions happening at the time. And those results line up with what researchers are seeing in other countries. Kids in the U.K. can and do get infected and spread COVID-19, said Rosalind Eggo, a professor and infectious disease modeler at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. But so far, she said, cases among kids arent rising before cases in adults, a sign that would indicate they were the ones driving infection.
The fact that kids dont seem to be a leading source of COVID-19 transmission is a bright spot in this whole sad, sorry year. It could quite easily be a different situation. Influenza, after all, works exactly the opposite way, said Oliver Ratmann, a lecturer in statistics at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the U.S. modeling study. With the flu, he told me, kids are both more susceptible to the virus and more likely to transmit it. Whats more, he said, they tend to have a higher number of contacts than adults, thanks to spending their days in school or day care.
If COVID-19 spread like the flu, a community where none of the children and the majority of adults were not yet fully vaccinated would be in trouble. Unvaccinated, unmasked kids playing outside together, going to restaurants or movie theaters with their vaccinated parents and traveling on vacation to other communities would pose a meaningful risk to a lot of people besides themselves.
So, it is a pretty big relief that this is not the case, and were seeing that fact echoed in new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that classify unvaccinated people (including kids) hanging out unmasked, outside in the safest category so long as the people theyre with are all vaccinated. That said, risks remain. Young children do transmit the virus, and variants like the more-transmissible B.1.1.7 lineage increase how likely kids are to spread COVID-19. Its also important to note that those low rates of children transmitting COVID-19 are very dependent on behavioral modifications in particular, wearing masks indoors. A brand-new study out on Thursday found that risk-reduction strategies like teachers wearing masks, kids wearing masks, checking symptoms daily and canceling extracurricular activities like sports made the difference between in-person schooling that spread COVID-19 from kids through their families and in-person schooling that didnt significantly increase the spread of COVID-19.
All this means that vaccinated parents should not go around treating their unvaccinated children as extensions of themselves, said Dr. William Raszka, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont Medical Center. There will be situations where two vaccinated adults can safely hang out mask-free but their unvaccinated kids cant.
Its also the case that the more adults get vaccinated, the more COVID-19 cases will concentrate in young children simply because thats increasingly the only place the virus has left to go. Researchers have seen that in the U.K. as well, said Edward Goldstein, a senior research scientist in epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Kids age 5-12 are now the group with the highest infection rate in the U.K.
Experts like Raszka say kids going unmasked outdoors unless theyre in a large, closely packed group is probably fine. But masking indoors remains an important way to keep COVID-19 from spreading among unvaccinated people of all ages. In the end, the degree to which your childrens lives can reasonably change has a lot to do with how tightly locked down your family has been up until this point. If your kids have been masked up everywhere, indoors and out, the fact that rising numbers of adults are vaccinated and experts are saying outdoors is safer than previously thought will look like a reprieve. If youve already lost the masks months ago, the good news might not seem so great.
Since last year, Anastasios Butch Tsiatis, professor emeritus of statistics, has served on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board for the U.S. government-sponsored clinical trials evaluating COVID-19 vaccines such as those developed by Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
Tsiatis had previously served on other vaccine trial monitoring boards and as a statistical consultant for the World Health Organization.
He talked to us about the work of the Data Safety Monitoring Board and how statistics expertise can help in evaluating the COVID-19 vaccines, some of the most scrutinized pharmaceuticals in history.
Describe the charge and composition of the Data and Safety Monitoring Board.
The purpose of the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) is to ensure the safety of study participants and the rigor and integrity of the clinical trials that it monitors. The COVID-19 vaccine DSMB is part of Operation Warp Speed and is responsible for reviewing and monitoring all U.S. government-supported clinical trials of candidate COVID-19 vaccines.
The board consists of 11 members from the United States, Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom, and includes experts in infectious disease, vaccinology, immunology, biostatistics, pharmacoepidemiology, public health and biostatistics.
When did you begin serving on the board, and how were you appointed? Had you served on this type of board before?
On June 9, 2020, I received a letter from Dr. Anthony Fauci inviting me to serve on the COVID-19 vaccine DSMB. I was honored to be asked and immediately accepted to serve.
Ive been serving on DSMBs for government-sponsored clinical trials for almost 40 years, including clinical trials for vaccines for AIDS, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
What has been your role on the board?
The other DSMB members and I review all the accrued safety and efficacy data for the trial being monitored. My focus is on the statistical aspects of the reports. When a clinical trial is first proposed, the other statisticians on the board and I carefully review the statistical analysis plan and check all the calculations that describe the sample sizes being proposed and the analyses that will be conducted. We also review all the tables and plots that will be presented to the board to ensure that all the relevant information will be captured so that the board can make the most informed decision regarding the study.
How does statistics expertise apply to this project?
At each meeting, we are presented with a plethora of data on both vaccine efficacy and adverse events. Statisticians are best equipped to understand and interpret these data. We are trained to understand uncertainty and can help guide the DSMB to distinguish between real effects and those that may have occurred by chance.
Outline a typical review process for a vaccine. What are some factors you and your colleagues consider in evaluating them?
The DSMB meets by videoconference at least every one to two weeks, generally reviewing one trial per meeting. Prior to each meeting, members receive study reports via a secure website. Once a trial begins enrolling, our reviews focus on three main elements: trial conduct, safety and vaccine efficacy.
For each review, the DSMB examines metrics related to trial conduct such as proportions of participants in relevant subgroups (by age, sex, race, ethnicity and presence of COVID-19 risk factors) and the quality of data to ensure that the trial is proceeding as planned. The board then makes recommendations based on this data review.
When a vaccine recipient experiences an adverse reaction, the DSMB must assess the likelihood that it was related to the vaccine and, if so, whether it recommends changes to the protocol or informed consent documents or whether the trial should be paused pending further investigation.
The DSMB also reviews two types of efficacy analyses to determine whether accumulating data suggest that it is highly unlikely that a vaccine will meet specified criteria for effectiveness or whether they show convincing evidence of efficacy by surpassing stringent, prespecified criteria. In either case, we can make a recommendation regarding the future conduct of the study. This recommendation shows the DSMB believes the data are compelling and actionable and allows manufacturers to take actions such as submitting applications to regulatory agencies for emergency use authorization or full approval or notifying participants and the public of study findings.
In what ways does the work of this group add to the evidence that the approved vaccines are safe? And how has your work informed your own opinions about the vaccine and the COVID-19 crisis in general?
The COVID-19 vaccine trials have been perhaps the most politicized trials in history, even becoming embroiled in United States presidential election politics. The politicization of these trials prompted prominent figures in the scientific community to question whether vaccine approval might be rushed for political reasons and fostered public concern about whether safety would be compromised. Notwithstanding these controversies, the DSMB has focused throughout on its primary goals the safety of study participants and the integrity and scientific validity of the trials that it is tasked to oversee and has encountered no interference with its ability to fulfill its charge.
Personally, seeing the process unfold and the work and dedication of the DSMB, I have full confidence in the integrity and accuracy of the results from these studies. As soon as I was able to receive my vaccine, I did not hesitate to do so and have encouraged all my family and friends to also get vaccinated.
Find out how the College of Sciences has been at the forefront of solutions during the COVID-19 crisis.
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MOSCOW (AP) While at the Park House shopping mall in northern Moscow, Vladimir Makarov saw it was offering the coronavirus vaccine to customers, so he asked how long it would take.
It turned out its simple here 10 minutes, he said of his experience last month.
But Makarov, like many Muscovites, still decided to put off getting the Sputnik V shot.
Russia boasted last year of being first in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, but it now finds itself lagging in getting its population immunized. That has cast doubt on whether authorities will reach their ambitious goal of vaccinating more than 30 million of countrys 146 million people by mid-June and nearly 69 million by August.
The vaccine reluctance comes as shots are readily available in the capital to anyone 18 or older at more than 200 state and private clinics, shopping malls, food courts, hospitals even a theater.
As of mid-April, over 1 million of Moscows 12.7 million residents, or about 8%, have received at least one shot, even though the campaign began in December.
That percentage is similar for Russia as a whole. Through April 27, only 12.1 million people have gotten at least one shot and only 7.7 million, or 5%, have been fully vaccinated. That puts Russia far behind the U.S., where 43% have gotten at least one shot, and the European Union with nearly 27%.
Data analyst Alexander Dragan, who tracks vaccinations across Russia, said last week the country was giving shots to 200,000-205,000 people a day. In order to hit the mid-June target, it needs to be nearly double that.
We need to start vaccinating 370,000 people a day, like, beginning tomorrow, Dragan told The Associated Press.
To boost demand, Moscow officials began offering coupons worth 1,000 rubles ($13) to those over 60 who get vaccinated not a small sum for those receiving monthly pensions of about 20,000 rubles ($260).
Still, it hasnt generated much enthusiasm. Some elderly Muscovites told AP it was difficult to register online for the coupons or find grocery stores that accepted them.
Other regions also are offering incentives. Authorities in Chukotka, across the Bering Strait from Alaska, promised seniors 2,000 rubles for getting vaccinated, while the neighboring Magadan region offered 1,000 rubles. A theater in St. Petersburg offered discounted tickets for those presenting a vaccination certificate.
Russias lagging vaccination rates hinge on several factors, including supply. Russian drug makers have been slow to ramp up mass production, and there were shortages in March in many regions.
So far, only 28 million two-dose sets of all three vaccines available in Russia have been produced, with Sputnik V accounting for most of them, and only 17.4 million have been released into circulation after undergoing quality control.
Waiting lists for the shot remain long in places. In the Sverdlovsk region, the fifth most-populous in Russia, 178,000 people were on a wait list by mid-April, regional Deputy Health Minister Yekaterina Yutyaeva told AP.
On April 28, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are enough vaccines available in Russia, adding that demand was the defining factor in the countrys vaccination rate.
Another factor in Russians reluctance over Sputnik V was the fact that it was rolled out even as large-scale testing to ensure its safety and efficacy was still ongoing. But a study published in February in the British medical journal The Lancet said the vaccine appeared safe and highly effective against COVID-19, according to a trial involving about 20,000 people in Russia.
A poll in February by Russias top independent pollster, the Levada Center, showed that only 30% of respondents were willing to get Sputnik V, one of three domestically produced vaccines available. The poll had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
Dragan, the data analyst, says one possible explanation for the reluctance is the narrative from authorities that they have tamed the outbreak, even if that assessment might be premature.
With most virus restrictions lifted and government officials praising the Kremlins pandemic response, few have motivation to get the shot, he said, citing an attitude of, If the outbreak is over, why would I get vaccinated?
Vasily Vlassov, a public health expert at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, echoed Dragans sentiment and also pointed to inconsistent signals from officials and media.
Russians in 2020 were bombarded with contradictory messages first about (the coronavirus) not being dangerous and being just a cold, then that it was a deadly infection, he told AP. Then they were banned from leaving their homes.
Another narrative, he said, was that foreign vaccines were dangerous but Russian-produced ones were not. State TV reported adverse reactions linked to Western vaccines while celebrating Sputnik Vs international success.
A proper media campaign promoting vaccinations didnt begin on state TV until late March, observers and news reports note. Videos on the Channel 1 national network featured celebrities and other public figures talking about their experience but didnt show them getting injected. President Vladimir Putin said he received the shot about the same time, but not on camera.
Fruitful ground for conspiracy theorists, said Dragan, who also works in marketing.
Rumors about the alleged dangers of vaccines actually surged on social media in December, when Russia began administering the shots, and have continued steadily since then, said social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova.
The rumors combined with other factors the pseudoscience on Russian TV, vaccine distribution problems and an uneven rollout of the promotional campaign to hamper the immunization drive, Arkhipova told AP.
Vlassov, meanwhile, noted the outbreak in Russia is far from over, and there even are signs it is growing.
Roughly the same number of people get infected every day in Russia now as last May, at the peak of the outbreak, he said, adding that twice as many people are dying every day than a year ago.
Government statistics say infections have stayed at about 8,000-9,000 per day nationwide, with 300-400 deaths recorded daily. But new cases have been steadily increasing in Moscow in the past month, exceeding 3,000 last week for the first time since January.
Infection rates are growing in seven regions, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said on April 23, without identifying them. She blamed insufficient vaccination rates in some places.
And yet, the abundance of vaccines in Moscow has attracted foreigners who cant get the shot at home. A group of Germans got their first jab at their hotel last month.
Uwe Keim, 46-year-old software developer from Stuttgart, told AP he believes there are more vaccines available here in Russia than is demanded by the people here.
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Kostya Manenkov and Anatoly Kozlov in Moscow and Yulia Alexeyeva in Yekaterinburg contributed.
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https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine
https://apnews.com/hub/understanding-the-outbreak
LAKE COUNTY, Ohio Northeast Ohio counties are among the stop in the state to get the COVID-19 vaccination.
During Mondays press conference, Gov. Mike DeWine released the number of people getting the vaccination in the state based on counties.
Lake County reported the second-highest amount in the state, with 36.4% completing the vaccination process.
Geauga County reported the fifth-highest amount in the state, with 37% completing the vaccination process.
Medina, Cuyahoga, Summit, and Lorain counties rounded out the top 10.
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The fact that vaccinated people can still get COVID-19 should not be a surprise.
And its certainly no reason not to get vaccinated.
Breakthrough cases of COVID-19 among vaccinated people are expected.
It doesnt mean that the vaccines currently in use are not highly effective.
They are.
Theyre just not 100 percent effective.
So, yes, you can still get sick even if youre vaccinated, but its exceedingly rare.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 87 million Americans had received the COVID-19 vaccine as of April 20, 2021. Among vaccinated people, there were 7,157 breakthrough cases, with fewer than 500 hospitalizations and 88 deaths.
Do the math and you can see the cases are about 1/100th of 1 percent of those vaccinated.
The effectiveness of any vaccine in preventing serious illness is high, and in the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, its very high, Dr. S. Wesley Long, an infectious disease researcher and clinical microbiologist at Houston Methodist in Texas, told Healthline.
All the data shows that if youre vaccinated you probably wont get any symptoms at all, but even if you do, you still probably wont get full-blown COVID and end up in the hospital, he said.
COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness varies according to which shot you get.
Research published this month by the CDC shows that messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19 which include those developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are 80 percent effective in preventing detectable coronavirus infections 14 days after the first dose and 90 percent effective after the second dose.
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be 66 percent effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness 2 weeks after vaccination.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, based on more conventional adenovirus technology, was also found in clinical trials to be 100 percent effective against serious COVID-19 illness.
In the study, several people in the control group were hospitalized and/or died from COVID-19.
None of those who received the vaccine were hospitalized or died, even among those who got detectable infections.
So, why can people who get vaccinated still get sick?
To begin with, 66 percent or 80 percent or 90 percent effective isnt the same as 100 percent effective.
You can also get sick if youre exposed to the coronavirus in the weeks immediately following your shot, when the immune response caused by the vaccine is still developing.
There is [also] a small subset of people who will not make a protective response after immunization, Long said. Thats why we need herd immunity to protect those people.
That said, the vaccines for COVID-19 are remarkably effective.
Since the 200910 flu season, for example, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine has ranged from 19 to 60 percent.
The COVID vaccines do very well, especially when compared to something like the influenza vaccine, Long said.
How well?
Consider that when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued guidelines for emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines, it set the efficacy threshold at just 50 percent.
All three vaccines now in use in the United States far exceed that minimum.
We [also] have evidence to suggest that the vaccines do a pretty good job of preventing transmission of the disease to other people, Long said.
Breakthrough cases in vaccinated people are entirely normal.
There will be a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19, the CDC states.
Even if we have a handful of breakthrough cases its important to remember that these people are unlikely to have severe disease or pass COVID along to other people, Long said.
The latest data from the CDC, for example, shows that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were 94 percent effective against COVID-19 hospitalization among fully vaccinated adults ages 65 and older the population considered most vulnerable to the disease and 64 percent effective among partially vaccinated adults.
Thats similar to whats already known about the flu.
A study published in 2018 found that even when people who got the flu shot fell ill, their odds of being hospitalized were reduced by 37 percent compared with unvaccinated people. The odds of requiring intensive care were cut by 82 percent.
To recap:
If you get vaccinated, the odds are you wont get COVID-19.
If you get vaccinated and you do get sick, the odds are you wont get seriously ill or die from the disease.
Its not a 100 percent guarantee, but its close.
SACRAMENTO COUNTY (CBS13) Officials say there are hundreds of open COVID-19 vaccination appointments available at Sacramento County drive-thru locations this week.
The locations still accepting appointments include the countys McClellan and Cal Expo sites.
It was really fast. I was surprised, said Ram Chandran, who got his vaccine on Monday.
Chandran went online to book his shot.
It was pretty seamless to get an appointment, he said.
Both locations will be administering the Pfizer vaccine, officials say. Patients even get to stay in their cars when the shot is given.
Were here. Were ready to go, said Jason Cowen with Curative, the company running the vaccine clinics. Knowing that there are that many people out here who still need it is something were out there trying to help correct.
Same-day appointments are still available, officials say, and both locations are even accepting patients without an appointment.
McClellans site runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, while Cal Expos runs from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Appointments can be made through the states MyTurn website.
