During his press conference Monday, Gov. Lamont said that COVID-19 mandates will be lifted for businesses and replaced with recommnedations.
CONNECTICUT, USA Connecticut continues to move toward pre-pandemic normalcy with Gov. Ned Lamont announcing COVID-19 restrictions for businesses will be lifted starting May 19.
Beginning on May 1, all business curfews will be moved back to 12 a.m. and outdoor restrictions will be lifted. One will still have to order alcohol without food and there will be no table size limit.
On May 19, the rest of the business restrictions will end. This means there will no longer be capacity limits and the mandates will turn into recommendations.
Gov. Lamont did say that indoor masking will continue and the lifting of restrictions is subject to change pending on Connecticut's COVID-19 numbers.
The governor added the state will not require people to be vaccinated but that businesses could implement the rule themselves.
Over the weekend, Connecticut surpassed 8,000 COVID-19 related deaths. There were 19 reported deaths over the weekend.
Connecticut administered 101, 952 tests and 2,736 came back positive, yielding a positivity rate of about 2.68%.
Hospitalizations increased in the state by eight over the weekend, bringing the total number of COVID-19 patients to 494.
The state continues to vaccinate well with 1,113,184 residents being fully vaccinated. About 61% of all CT residents 18 and older have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
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All Oregonians 16 and older are now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine but the virus continues to spread, and the state so far hasnt lived up to its promises to ensure people of color and those most at risk of the virus get their shots first.
On the latest episode of Beat Check with The Oregonian, well get an update on the pandemic and the vaccine rollout.
In the second half of the show, well hear from The Oregonian and OregonLives Rob Davis about how a public records request filed by our newspaper laid bare the full scale of the inequities and why where you live may be the best indicator of whether youve been vaccinated yet.
But first, The Oregonian and OregonLives Aimee Green, who talked about the worrisome public health models that indicate the pandemic is not yet over, what it all means and whether the state is ready to vaccinate millions more Oregonians.
Heres the full episode.
Subscribe to Beat Check on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.
-- Andrew Theen; atheen@oregonian.com; 503-294-4026; @andrewtheen
OLATHE, Kan. The Johnson County Health Department has been working with school districts in the county to come up with a plan to vaccinate students.
The health department said Monday afternoon that since school staff have been vaccinated, its time to take the next step and vaccinate as many students age 16 and older as possible.
The vaccination process will look very different depending on which school district your students attend, according to the Johnson County Health Department.
Shawnee Mission schools will be vaccinating students during school hours starting Tuesday.
The district said it had more than 800 students express interest in receiving the vaccine. In a statement, the district said it has clinics scheduled at nine locations across the district through Friday.
This is completely voluntary, Elizabeth Holzschuh, epidemiologist with the health department, said. Families were asked last week if they would be interested in this. And then on Friday, they received an email with a consent form for that to be done during school hours.
Other school districts wont take that same approach.
Other school districts have opted not to run clinics on their own, Holzschuh said. With the number of vaccine appointments that are available in the community both at our sites at Childrens Mercy as well as our hospital partners and pharmacies, we opted to just move forward with providing information to families throughout Johnson County about the various vaccine opportunities.
If you did not receive information from your childs school about vaccines, that information can be found on the Johnson County Health Departments site. Information is also available in Spanish. Childrens Mercy Hospital also has vaccination clinics coming up in the next few weeks.
Keep in mind that each teenager will receive a Pfizer vaccine because thats the only vaccine that has Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA to be given to children as young as 16.
In the days since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called for a temporary pause in administering the Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.28% COVID-19 vaccine over several severe cases of rare blood clots, many people have attempted to soothe fears and offer context by listing other common habits that can increase the risk of blood clots even more.
Among the most popular comparisons has been the heightened risk of clots that women taking hormonal birth control pills face. And this, in turn, has led some people to question how much the medical community cares about women. The most common complaint: that the J&J jab was paused over a one in a million risk of severe blood clots for the general population, yet women have been encouraged to use oral contraceptives for decades even though 1 in 1,000 develop blood clots which, it should be noted, is still rare.
But womens health experts told MarketWatch that this isnt a fair comparison for a couple of reasons. First, were talking about different types of clots here.
Dr. Jen Villavicencio, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), told MarketWatch in a statement that it is not appropriate to compare the risk of clotting associated with the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine with the risk of clotting among some hormonal birth control methods. The clotting syndrome that is currently being investigated by the FDA and the CDC is likely different from the type of blood clotting experienced with birth control, she said.
Dont miss: Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause: What to know if you got or scheduled the shot
Related: The more we talk about it, the more were validating the symptoms: What we know about COVID vaccine side effects in women
Indeed, government health officials are investigating a type of blood clot called a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) among the J&J recipients. These clots formed in the draining veins of the brain, combined with a low platelet count, essentially causing a stroke. Hormonal birth control pills, on the other hand, raise the risk of blood clots in the leg that can break off and travel to the lung, causing a pulmonary embolism that blocks blood flow to part of the lung. The latter clots can be treated with anticoagulants, while the J&J clots cannot.
Whats more, there are many different personal factors that can raise or reduce the risk of developing a blood clot, such as: a family history of clots; high blood pressure; obesity; pregnancy; recent surgery; or recently suffering a fracture.
Each one of us has different risk factors for the same medical intervention, whether its the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or whether its taking a birth control pill, Dr. Gloria Bachmann, an OB-GYN and director of the Womens Health Institute at Rutgers, told MarketWatch. And there are benefits for both, and there are risks for both, and thats where one has to evaluate the risk of this intervention, and what would be the risks of getting COVID.
The biggest risk at the moment is the COVID virus, not the COVID vaccine.
Plus, women on the pill are made aware of the risks beforehand, notes Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of NYU Langones Division of Medical Ethics. Some women have suggested maybe people are indifferent to womens health. I dont see it that way, he said. Women Ive known on birth control pills are well aware of the risk of clots. People assume the risk, and then decide theyre gonna do it.
So while it may be helpful to get people to stop panicking about the J&J pause, or reports of rare blood clots among AstraZeneca AZN, +1.75% vaccine recipients, by showing just how many other medications and personal behaviors could be more likely to cause clots, directly comparing the rate of blood clots from birth control with the rate among recipients of COVID vaccines doesnt really work. Plus, different birth control pills have different amounts of estrogen and progesterone, and carry different risks of blood clots, so its not as simple as making a global statement, said Bachmann.
Related: The expectation of perfection: Risk of blood clot from Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is 0.00009%
But it does resurface the important subject of whats considered an acceptable risk in medicine or in anything, really and the risk-benefit analysis each one of us makes when we decide to take a medication to treat an ailment despite the possible side effects. And the science shows that the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID outweigh the small risk of blood clots for most people. And that is similar to taking hormonal birth control pills. Bachmann notes that women on birth control enjoy a reduced risk of ovarian cancer, fewer anemia problems, more regular periods, as well as the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. (Pregnancy actually poses an even greater risk of blood clots than birth control pills, she added.)
In the case of COVID-19, the virus has infected more than 31.5 million Americans and killed more 565,695. Health officials are investigating six cases of severe blood clotting, all women, who received the J&J vaccine, including one who died.
Whats more, some 30% of COVID-19 survivors have reported persistent symptoms like fatigue, brain fog and difficulty breathing still plaguing them nine months later. Plus, a new study from researchers at Oxford University has found that people who contract COVID-19 are at far higher risk of developing blood clots than people who receive COVID vaccines. In fact, the risk of cerebral venous thrombosis after a COVID-19 infection is about 100 times greater than normal, and several times higher than after coronavirus vaccination or after the flu.
Read more: Getting COVID creates far higher risk of rare blood clots than vaccines, Oxford study finds
Meanwhile, 99.992% of fully vaccinated people have avoided getting COVID, CDC data shows.
The bottom line is that the fallout from catching COVID right now far outweighs the small risk of possible side effects from any of the vaccines that have been approved for emergency use authorization in the U.S. Problem is, people arent great at translating risk into action, as Dr. Andrew Pavia, the George and Esther Gross Presidential Professor at the University of Utah, recently told MarketWatch. Which could explain some conflicting behavior.
I had someone come up to me today who said, I wont take that vaccine because its dangerous and they smoke two packs [of cigarettes] a day! Caplan said. Meanwhile, smoking cigarettes can increase the risk of both developing blood clots and suffering severe COVID-19 illness.
Hes among the doctors who fear that pausing J&J will increase vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. In fact, a recent poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov found that only 37% of respondents think that J&Js vaccine is safe after the pause, compared with 52% who believed it was safe before the pause.
I think the messaging should have been, While we examine a possible association [with blood clots] that is serious but rare, keep vaccinating, he said. I wouldnt stop vaccinating myself or anybody in my family because of this possible association. I would not pull away from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to a less than one in a million risk of death.
The biggest risk at the moment is the COVID virus, not the COVID vaccine, Caplan added.
Local leaders and infectious disease experts teamed up Saturday at FEMA vaccination site to encourage the public to step up and roll up their sleeves.
HOUSTON Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee joined forces with infectious disease expert Dr. Peter Hotez Saturday at a community FEMA vaccination site. The duo is working to combat vaccine hesitancy.
"Everybody has to play. Everyone has to step forward to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
They're working to convince more people to roll up their sleeves for the COVID-19 vaccine. Hesitancy remains a problem nationwide.
15.6 percent of Americans are hesitant to get vaccinated. That number creeps up to 17.2 percent in Texas.
"We have the vaccines, we have the vaccination hubs, the only thing that could derail this is if people refuse to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
And there are growing concerns blood clot issues with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could lead to even greater hesitancy. Hotez said the FDA and CDC will get to the bottom of it soon.
"The longer we pause, the more people will have outstanding concerns," Hotez said. "This is an extremely rare event. We're talking between 1 and 100,000 and 1 and a million."
The spread of highly contagious variants of the virus means more people will have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity. That's up to 80 percent of the population, Hotez said.
"Now the bigger problem is access and making people aware of the opportunities that are out there to get vaccinated," Hotez said.
That's why more open vaccination events like this in underserved communities will be critical. Congresswoman Jackson Lee is urging the public to block out the noise and trust the science.
"The rumors will kill you. Bad information will kill you," Jackson Lee said.
More COVID-19 vaccine sites expected to open on May 1 for an area-wide GOTV, or get out the vaccination effort.
Roughly half of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)released Saturday.
Across the country, more than 128 million people ages 18 and older have received at least one shot, with more than 82 million fully vaccinated with one of the three vaccines approved for emergency use in the U.S., the CDC said.
Overall, 49.7 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the data, and nearly a third are fully vaccinated.
The milestone comes a day after the CDC announced that 30 percent of U.S. adults had been fully vaccinated, a percentage likely to increase rapidly over the next few weeks following President Bidens decision to open up vaccine eligibility to all Americans ages 18 and older by Monday.
Three vaccines have received emergency authorization in the U.S. inoculations by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson though federal officials this weekrecommended a pauseinadministrationof the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to six reported cases of blood clots out of more than 6.8 million people who received the shot.
Johnson & Johnson scientists on Friday said there is currently insufficient evidence of a causal relationship between its single-dose vaccine and the brain blood clot known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. The U.S.-recommended pause has raisedconcernsabout the progress of vaccine distributionas well as vaccine hesitancy.
CDC Director Rochelle WalenskyRochelle WalenskyFive global concerns for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause CDC: Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose Healing the deep wounds of racism, starting with our Black mothers and babies MORE said Friday that an independent advisory panel will meet again next week to resume discussions on whether to continue the pause of the Johnson & Johnson shot.
The distribution pause has alreadyhad an impact on public perception of the vaccine, with an Economist-YouGov poll released Thursday showing that just 37 percent indicated that they believed the inoculation was safe, down from 52 percent who said the same prior to the announcement.
Despite the concernsabout the shots safety, Anthony FauciAnthony FauciThe dangers of pausing the J&J vaccine Sunday shows preview: Russia, US exchange sanctions; tensions over policing rise; vaccination campaign continues CDC: Half of US adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose MORE, the nations top infectious diseases expert,said Wednesday that he believed the halt could actually diminish vaccine hesitancy by showing how seriously federal agencies are taking vaccine safety.
The updated vaccination figures released Saturday come after officials pushed for larger swaths of the country to get vaccinated. Fauci told Business Insider in an interview last week that between 70 percent and 85 percent of the American population would need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.
The U.S. has had a more effective vaccine distribution than some other countries, especially in Europe, where the World Health Organization earlier this month said the vaccine rollouts have been unacceptably slow.
Even amid the increase in vaccinations, cases and deaths across the globe continue to persist, with the world surpassing3 million coronavirus-related fatalities on Saturday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. has had the most reported COVID-19 deaths by far of any country with more than 566,000, according to the tracker, followed by Brazil with more than 368,000 deaths and Mexico withmore than 211,000.
Jackie Cornejo held her fathers hand for the last time on Jan. 31, as he died from complications of COVID-19. Ricardo Cornejo was a true warrior, her beloved viejito, who taught his daughter to be both generous and strong.
As she helped arrange her fathers funeral, she booked an appointment for her mother, Martha, to get vaccinated. When food service workers were eligible for the vaccine, she made an appointment for her little brother. Then one for her in-laws, her godmother, a sister and friends. At least nine so far.
Its been therapeutic in a way to be able to get ... people within my world vaccinated, said Cornejo, who works on housing policy for the city of Los Angeles when shes not arranging inoculation appointments. It has been a little bit stressful, but its also been part of how Ive been coping. My dad never had a chance.
Cornejo is a vaccine hunter, an unofficial hero of the coronavirus age. Wielding smartphones and tablets, PCs and Macs, these internet wranglers blast through the barriers that stand between loved ones arms and needles filled with Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.
Those barriers are legion. The sign-up process is convoluted. Not everyone has internet access. The vaccine supply has been spotty, and now the Johnson & Johnson offering is on hold because of concerns it may cause blood clots. Some people dont trust the government. Others dont trust the science.
Jackie Cornejo lost her father, Ricardo Cornejo, to COVID-19 on Jan. 31.
(Courtesy of Jackie Cornejo)
In California, Black and Latino residents have fallen ill and died of COVID-19 at higher rates than other groups, and their vaccination rates have also been low.
Which means many families need a vaccine hunter. Until, that is, they dont. Because sometimes these self-appointed saviors fueled by love, duty and a sense that sister knows best can quickly become the family nag.
Or as Cornejos mother warned the 37-year-old, who wouldnt stop sending appointment links to relatives, Te deberas de calmar un poquito. You should calm down a bit.
But when youre the vaccine hunter, youre riding in on your horse, guns ablazing. Its something you can do in a year when you cant do the things you want to do and like to do, said Alison M. Buttenheim, an associate professor and public health researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
One downside is, you cross a line, she said. You can interfere with a wonderful, trusted relationship if you say, I made you the appointment. Here it is.
Buttenheim knows this firsthand. She studies the behavioral aspects of infectious disease prevention. She founded Dear Pandemic, a social media campaign and website where bona fide nerdy girls post real info on COVID-19.
And shes a vaccine hunter herself.
She thinks its fun. Really.
And its soothing, she said, on a day of relentless Zoom calls, to have five browsers open on her computer screen, to constantly refresh the different appointment portals, to problem-solve for relatives in four states. Its not that they were hesitant; they just needed to be nudged.
The 51-year-old has made appointments for her sister and parents in Massachusetts and her husband in Philadelphia, where they live with a teenage daughter who will soon be eligible for a shot and, thus, Buttenheims appointment attentions. She and her husband also pestered his parents in California and their 21-year-old daughter, at school in Connecticut. All three eventually booked appointments.
Jennifer Eremeeva, Buttenheims sister, lectures on cruise ships about Russian history, Mediterranean history, art and culture. She hasnt worked in more than a year. She has to fill out paperwork proving she is vaccinated if she wants to get back on the job when the industry resumes operations.
Her cruise lines documents listed Pfizer and Moderna vaccines but not Johnson & Johnson.
Alison wasnt only hunting and pecking for an appointment for me, but for a Pfizer or Moderna, Eremeeva said. It was a gift. She doesnt need to get me a Christmas present this year.
But when it came to their parents, who are 78, things got more complicated. The elderly couple spent much of the pandemic with Eremeeva in Massachusetts while waiting to get into a retirement home in Pennsylvania. At first, they figured theyd just get vaccinated when they arrived at their new place. But that wasnt good enough for a certain daughter.
Heres how the sisters tell the tale:
Buttenheim: I said, No, were not waiting three weeks. This is life or death for you. ... I finally saw two appointments 15 miles away. It took my sister, my niece, a laptop and an iPad and my parents standing there with their insurance cards. It felt urgent. I couldnt leave it up to them.
Eremeeva, 54, who was trying to make dinner for husband, daughter and parents as Buttenheim booked appointments from nearly 200 miles away and the black Lab puppy barked: I felt super frustrated and a little pushed around. But she was responding to a need of my parents. ... Im very grateful. ... [Still,] when you have a multigenerational household, I felt like the filling in an Oreo cookie. And not in a good way.
Krysta Villeda moved from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in 2012 to attend graduate school and decided to stay. But that hasnt stopped her, her mother jokes, from trying to get her entire hometown vaccinated from more than 2,000 miles away.
First up was Villedas grandmother, who is 78 and lives in South Gate. After three hours on a constantly crashing website, Villeda finally booked the elderly woman an appointment at Kedren Community Health Center in South Los Angeles. One of her sons drove her.
Something that really frustrated me is that no one else in my family took the initiative to make her an appointment or talked about it, the 32-year-old said. I think they just kind of assumed it was going to happen.
Her uncle asked for help next. Since the pandemic began, Villeda also has helped him file unemployment claims every two weeks. She kept track of Washington state vaccine requirements on behalf of her younger sister in Seattle, who was set to get her shot Friday, and Orange County guidelines to help her stepsister, who was inoculated in late March.
Carlos Villeda, her 54-year-old father, was the toughest customer. The Bellflower resident was hesitant because he worried about the vaccines side effects.
So Villeda sent him two TikTok videos shed made of her own vaccinations as part of her job at Project Pulso, a nonprofit digital media start-up that produces content for the Latino community.
Overall, my recommendation is to plan to stay home the day after if you can, just in case, she says on TikTok, wearing a flowered mask and holding a birthday girl balloon after her second shot. At the very least, dont plan anything important for right after. But it honestly wasnt as bad for me as I was expecting.
Her secret weapon was a daughterly threat. She hasnt been home since December 2019. Because of her kidney transplant, she told her father, if you dont get vaccinated, then youre probably not going to see me that much, or if you do, youre going to see me from a distance.
On April 1, the day eligibility opened up for those 50 and older, Carlos relented. Villeda sprang into action.
I was skeptical, but I did it for her, Carlos said. Then he laughed. I didnt think she was going to tell me to go the next day.
Most of Villedas family members wanted to get vaccinated, she said. But she knew that if she didnt step in and help, their success rate would be slow and iffy.
Theyre not very online and didnt exactly know how/where to sign up, she said in a message via Twitter. I definitely felt like the burden was all on me to get these done.
Carina De Los Santos felt a similar responsibility. Standing in line at Kedren on a breezy Monday in April, waiting for her second Moderna shot, she talked about an uncles death from COVID-19.
He went pretty quick, said the 43-year-old from Maywood, who works in the accounting department of a food-service company. We didnt think it was going to happen. He didnt have any health conditions. It was a shock. His wife had it, too.
So De Los Santos searched on behalf of two aunts who dont have the whole computer knowledge and a cousin who had problems getting an appointment. It took several days of lunch hours and other work breaks before her efforts paid off.
The fact of their age and that some have health conditions, I felt I had to give them a little push, she said. After that, its on them.
Research has shown that even people with the intent to get vaccinated have trouble following through, said the University of Pennsylvanias Buttenheim. Only about 45% of adults in the United States get the flu shot every year. Way more than that intend to, she said, but just dont get around to it.
We are very lazy humans, she said. We have these big brains. We live in an environment that pushes a lot of information at us. ... An adaptive response is to look for shortcuts. We look for the thing thats easy to do or is bright and shiny. If the healthcare thing you want to do isnt easy, you look for something else to do.
Ana Lara, 46, set up vaccine appointments for her mother, father and grandfather at the same time and place in early March. The Oakland resident escorted them to get their first dose of Moderna. Her sister took them for their second.
Afterward, Laras uncle in Salinas reached out to their mom: Can you ask the girls if they can find a vaccine for me?
Several weeks ago, Lara contacted a local health center to see if her aunt, who works in a tortilla factory, would qualify for the vaccine. The answer was yes. Lara texted her aunt with the good news and put the 61-year-old on a waiting list.
S, est bien, mija, was the response. But when it came time to actually schedule the shot, the aunt balked. Lara backed off to give her aunt some space to reconsider. Her aunt has since come around, and Lara is on the hunt yet again.
Shes an administrative assistant for the city of Oakland and works from home. Any time she saw a tweet or Facebook share saying appointments were available, shed take her break and look.
Lara searched from her kitchen table, her home office space, on her tablet while watching television. Finding appointments was always on my mind because her and her sisters priority is always their family, she said.
Getting them vaccinated meant we could be with our parents, she said in a Twitter message. It was really hard in the beginning, my dad got depressed and really sick. I didnt visit my grandma for like 10 months.
She felt burdened sometimes, she said, but helping my parents has always been a part of being the oldest.
With Covid-19 vaccines, the world hopes to beat back the virus that causes the disease. But some scientists are increasingly concerned that, because of a quirk of our own biology, future iterations of the vaccines might not always be quite as effective as they are today.
The concerns stem from a phenomenon that is known as imprinting, sometimes called original antigenic sin, which is believed to affect how we respond to some pathogens.
In short, when your body is introduced to a particular threat for the first time either through infection or a vaccine that encounter sets your immune systems definition of that virus and what immune weapons it needs to detect and protect against it in the future.
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That imprint can be helpful. In the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, elderly adults were protected by immune responses theyd generated more than half a century earlier, in childhood, through encounters with a related virus. But it can also interfere with your bodys ability to mount responses against strains that have evolved from the one you were first exposed to.
In the case of Covid, some scientists are concerned that the immune systems reaction to the vaccines being deployed now could leave an indelible imprint, and that next-generation products, updated in response to emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2, wont confer as much protection.
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Michael Worobey, who was been involved in groundbreaking research on imprinting with influenza, said he worries the responses to first-generation Covid-19 vaccines will prove to be a high-water mark for peoples immune responses to these inoculations.
I do think its something that we need to be thinking about, Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, told STAT. We might actually see lower efficacy five years from now, if people are still locked into recalling the response to the first [SARS-2] antigen that they saw.
Sarah Cobey, an associate professor of computational biology at the University of Chicago, shares his worry. As long as we have competition between old antibody responses and new antibody responses then it seems like exactly the right sort of environment to see these phenomena, Cobey said.
I cant think of a reason that should be restricted to influenza, she added.
Not everyone in the conversation is convinced there will be a problem, though.
Vineet Menachery is a coronavirus expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, one of the smallish community of researchers who were studying coronaviruses before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. He noted that the SARS-2 spike protein the protein that projects from the virus surface, giving it the appearance of wearing a crown doesnt have as much wiggle room to change as the hemagglutinin proteins that sit atop of flu viruses.
Both the spike and the hemagglutinin proteins are the means by which their respective viruses attach to the cells they are trying to infect; in the case of SARS-2 viruses, attachment occurs via a receptor known as ACE2. But influenza viruses mutate at a far faster rate than coronaviruses and they have much more leeway to change mutational space, Menachery called it without impeding its functionality.
The changes that we see in the [SARS-2] variants arent whole-hog changes, he said.
Imprinting is one of the reasons why flu vaccines arent as protective as wed like them to be. Flu is a notorious shape-shifter and its constant alterations allow influenza viruses to evade immune system protections generated by either vaccination or previous infections. People who first encountered H1N1 viruses, for instance, never get as much protection from the H3N2 component of a flu shot as they do from the H1N1 part.
Basically, I think of original antigenic sin as some sort of hierarchy in immune memory, meaning you preferentially boost what youve seen before, at the expense of developing responses to the new stuff, Cobey said. It could impact the effectiveness of [Covid] vaccine going forward.
Scott Hensley, a sometimes collaborator of Cobeys, has actually seen some evidence of coronavirus imprinting in his research. An associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Hensley and colleagues were working to develop Covid-19 antibody tests in the early days of the pandemic. The work involved studying using blood samples from people who contracted Covid. They compared the post-infection samples to blood drawn from the same individuals prior to the pandemic.
In comparing the before and after blood samples, they saw in the post-infection sample a dramatic rise in antibodies to one of the humans coronaviruses that is among the causes of the common cold. It was a virus called OC43, which is in the same coronavirus family as SARS-2, as well as the viruses that cause SARS and MERS.
In other words, Covid infection actually boosted the immune systems protection against a different virus, one that the immune system already knew.
Still, Hensley isnt worried about imprinting or at least not among people who have been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The very strong immune response generated by the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines should override any imprinting impacts as SARS-2 mutates, he said. Hensley worries, though, that people whose immunity to the virus comes from infection, not vaccination, might have more difficulty handling variant viruses because of imprinting effects.
David Topham, an immunologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center and director of the New York Influenza Center of Excellence, also envisages that possibility.
He noted that, in the earliest stages of SARS-2 infection, the immune system mounts a response to a portion of the spike protein called S2. Later, the immune system focuses its attention on other parts of the spike, notably the part of the protein that attaches the virus to cells it invades, known as the receptor binding domain.
Its not yet known if the early focus on S2 which doesnt change much from virus to virus will blind the immune system to the changes elsewhere in the spike protein, the changes updated vaccines would be trying to teach the immune system to respond to, Topham said.
Topham doesnt think this will be a problem in vaccinated people, because of the way the vaccines in use have been designed. The spike proteins they trigger production of appear to hide the S2 region, he said. The immune system cant fixate on something it doesnt see.
For people whose immunity comes from infection, Topham sees three possible scenarios. It can be a problem, because the immune cells specific for S2 outcompete immune cells against other components of the spike protein that you really need in order to get protection. It can be inconsequential in that eventually the responses to the other parts of the protein catch up and it doesnt matter. Or it could actually be a benefit because it gets the immune system revved up more quickly.
Topham is not alone in speculating that an original Covid vaccine with a booster targeting variant viruses could, in fact, lead to a stronger immune response.
You might actually end up with an immune response that is broader, said Florian Krammer, a professor of vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Krammer used as an example research done by scientists at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and University of Turku on vaccination against H5N1 bird flu. H5N1 vaccine that dont contain adjuvants boosting compounds appear to generate poor immune responses. But in a paper published in the journal Vaccine, the researchers reported that a priming and boosting regimen that used two different H5N1 vaccines, made with different strains of the virus, induced a strong and long-lasting response.
We may find out whether this is going to be a problem sooner than youd think. Moderna is working with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which helped it design its original Covid vaccine to test an updated version of its vaccine that targets the variant first spotted in South Africa, B.1.351. That variant appears to be able to evade immune responses triggered by earlier versions of the virus.
The Phase 1 studies conducted by Moderna and NIAID will produce immunogenicity data that will address this question, John Mascola, director of NIAIDs Vaccine Research Center, told STAT in an email. So data directly bearing on the question will be forthcoming over the next weeks and months.
China is planning to approve its first foreign Covid-19 vaccine before July, according to people familiar with the matter, as pressure mounts from domestic scientists and the foreign business community to expand beyond the countrys own roster of shots.
Chinese officials have been scrutinizing clinical-trial data for the coronavirus vaccine made by Germanys BioNTech SE and are expected to green light domestic distribution of the shot within the next 10 weeks, people privy to these discussions say. Some of the people were told of the timeline during a private discussion with government and health officials. The others were government officials briefed on the internal discussions.
Most of Chinas shot makers cite trial data showing that their vaccines are close to 100% effective in preventing Covid-19 infections serious enough to require hospitalization when fully administered. But some Chinese public-health experts, including the head of Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention, have pushed for the introduction of Western vaccines that are better at preventing milder infections.
Foreign businesses are eager to add Western vaccines to make it easier to travel overseas, where foreign shots are more accepted, according to Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. The chamber has been urging the government to approve the BioNTech vaccine, which is being produced and distributed by Pfizer Inc. in most of the world, since December, he said.
BioNTech agreed in December to work with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. to deliver 100 million doses to China in 2021, pending approval.
HAMPTON ROADS, Va. Eric Cramer and his girlfriend Jo-Beth Strong are both fully vaccinated against COVID-19. They got the Moderna shot, but their side effects differed.
I had migraines, Cramer said. I had back pains, everything. I have a high immune system and I never get sick, and it hit me.
Strong said she hardly had any symptoms and believes it was because she hydrated.
Drink lots water right before and after, she said. He did not; I did, so therefore, I didnt get so much of the side effects.
Virginia Department of Health Chief Deputy Commissioner Dr. Parham Jaberi said experiencing side effects is not necessarily a bad thing.
This is telling you actually the vaccine is doing its job, he said. The vaccine is working.
Dr. Jaberi said with Pfizers and Modernas two-shot vaccine, side effects after the second dose might be more intense.
Common side effects typically begin several hours after the shot and include tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever and nausea.
Johnson & Johnsons one-shot vaccine has similar side effects.
Modernas shot reportedly had slightly higher side effects than Pfizers, with more people experiencing fatigue and headaches.
According to Pfizer, about 3.8% of their clinical trail participants experienced fatigue as a side effect, and 2% got a headache.
Moderna said 9.7% of their participants felt fatigued and 4.5% got a headache.
All three vaccines include arm pain from the shot.
Dr. Jaberi said younger people are more likely to experience symptoms.
If you are elderly or if your immune system is not quite as robust, then you may not experience all of these side effects, he said. If you dont experience any of the side effects, it does not mean the vaccine is not working.
While theres no specific way to prevent side effects, Dr. Jaberi said you should rest up, drink plenty of fluids and if you have a fever, take over-the-counter pain relief medication after the shot, not before.
If mild symptoms dont go away after a couple days, call your doctor. If you develop a severe allergic reaction after the COVID-19 vaccine, health officials said seek immediate medical attention by calling 911.
Despite some discomfort, Dr. Jaberi said getting the shot is worth it.
Vaccination is the most effective form of prevention, he said. This is the best thing any of our community and residents can do to protect themselves and those around themThe more individuals get vaccinated, the quicker we all get vaccinated, the sooner we can put this pandemic behind us.
The J&J shot is now on pause around the country after the CDC said several people developed blood clots. The CDC is also investigating whether a Virginia womans death is linked to adverse side effects from the shot.
Click here for our full COVID vaccination guide.
