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Now that the new local dial is in place, local officials are gearing up for a big push to get 70% of the community vaccinated in order to move into level green and remove most restrictions on businesses and individuals.
For those interested in receiving a vaccine, heres what you need to know.
As of early April, all Coloradans ages 16 and older are eligible to receive a vaccine. Because vaccines are in short supply, all residents should preregister for an appointment at CoMassVax.org, which is used for the countys drive-thru and neighborhood pop-up clinics.
When residents preregister, they are essentially putting their name on a contact list. Public health officials draw names randomly each week and notify those individuals about available appointments. Brian Bovaird, director of emergency management at the county, said this usually happens soon after the county receives confirmation from the state regarding how many vaccines it will receive for the upcoming week.
Residents are notified about upcoming appointments through an email, which typically comes Friday through Monday, depending on when the county receives confirmation from the state about its vaccine allocation. Public Health Director Amy Wineland said the emails are occasionally getting lost in inboxes and that residents should check their spam folders.
The email will have a link that allows residents to sign up for an appointment. If they are not able to sign up for an appointment that week, their name remains on the contact list to be selected another week.
Bovaird said residents who do not have email should call the county at 970-668-9730 to get help registering. A staff member is available during business hours Monday through Friday to help residents sign up, but individuals can also leave a voicemail after hours. If their name is selected in the system, the county will call and help them schedule an appointment.
Bovaird reiterated that preregistering does not mean individuals are signing up for an appointment. Instead, it just gets them on the list for when appointments become available. Since the county draws names randomly, it could take some time to be notified about available appointments.
To increase the chance of getting the vaccine sooner, Bovaird recommends signing up for appointments at other local vaccine providers, including pharmacies, the Summit Community Care Clinic and Centura Health, which owns St. Anthony Summit Medical Center.
Residents also can sign up in different counties at CoMassVax.org.
They can sign up in multiple different counties as long as they are in Colorado, Bovaird said. Were obviously not doing vaccine pods every single day, and so the advantage of signing up in different counties, if youre able to make it there, is that if timing is an issue or they have clinics on days that we dont, then thats great.
For step-by-step instructions and a guided video on how to register in the statewide system, visit SummitCountyCo.gov/vaccine and click scheduling vaccinations.
Each providers process for administering a vaccine differs, but the drive-thru clinics have the same system each week.
The mass vaccination clinics are held at the Summit Stage bus barn at County Commons, 0222 County Shops Road in Frisco. Individuals are instructed to show up 15 minutes before their appointments.
At the first check-in, an attendant will verify that a resident has an appointment. At the second checkpoint, individuals receive a quick health screening to ensure they dont have COVID-19 symptoms. At the next checkpoint, individuals receive their vaccine. Afterward, they are instructed to pull into a waiting area. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends individuals wait at least 15 minutes after theyve received their vaccine to make sure they dont have any adverse reactions.
Bovaird said adverse reactions are rare, but if they happen, the county is ready with an ambulance crew staffed at the site.
Usually, the entire process takes about 30 minutes to an hour, and individuals can remain in their cars the entire time.
Though not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, all three vaccines Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have been authorized for emergency use in the U.S.
Dr. Rebecca Blackwell, director of medical affairs at St. Anthony Medical Summit Center, said that doesnt make the vaccines any less safe.
The number of people who have received the vaccine through the emergency-use authorization is greater than the number of people who would receive a vaccine in a vaccine trial whose data would go toward a full FDA approval, Blackwell said. So we actually have, at this point, more information about this vaccine than we would typically have about a vaccine that went through a full FDA approval for the first time.
While the vaccines are safe, each is considered to have possible side effects. In addition to redness, swelling and pain at the injection site, individuals who receive the vaccine could experience a headache, fever, muscle pain, chills, tiredness and nausea. The side effects could occur within a day or two of getting the vaccine.
Health officials have emphasized that the side effects are signs of an immune system response, which means the vaccine is working. But if symptoms worsen or do not go away after a few days, people are advised to contact their doctors.
Life-threatening reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare. Anyone who experiences an allergic reaction should call 911.
As of Friday, the FDA and CDC were still recommending a temporary halt on the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot.
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) Madera Unified students and families got the chance to get vaccinated on Saturday.
Partnering with the Madera County Department of Public Health, the district held a vaccination clinic at Madera South High School from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Families and students 16 and older were eligible to for the vaccine.
Appointments and walk-ins were welcome. The district says they recognize the importance of vaccinating younger populations and that it is vital to reach herd immunity.
Seattle University said all students must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to campus in the fall.
SEATTLE Seattle University (SU) plans to return to in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year. For the campus to safely open, SU saidTuesday all students will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before arriving on campus this fall.
After receiving the vaccine, the university said undergraduate, graduate and professional students must register their vaccination status at SUs Safe Start Health Check website.
While SUs COVID vaccine policy is new, the university already requires students be immunized for measles prior to attending and recommends a number of other vaccines as well, SU said on its website.
The university said it would work with international students and others who are unable to receive a vaccination before arriving in the fall.
SU is expected to release more information about the requirement in the coming weeks.
How to get a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington
Everyone in Washington state aged 16 and over is eligible for the vaccine.
Find a list of vaccine providers on the state's Vaccinate WA page and information on how to make an appointment.
Pfizer is the only vaccine approved for people 16 and 17 years old, and the state is working to update its Vaccine Locator with information about which vaccine is offered at each location.
Several health care providers allow people to join waiting lists for the vaccine, and they will contact you when doses are available. Join the waiting list for:
Washington residents can also use the Vaccine Locator tool to register for a COVID-19 vaccine appointment.
Dispensed vials of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine are seen as the Thai resort island of Phuket rushes to vaccinate its population amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, and ahead of a July 1 ending of strict quarantine for overseas visitors, to bring back tourism revenue in Phuket, Thailand, April 1, 2021. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine was 67% effective in preventing symptomatic infection, data from a huge real-world study inChile has shown, a potential boost for the jab which has come under scrutiny over its level of protection against the virus.
The CoronaVac vaccine was 85% effective in preventing hospitalizations and 80% effective in preventing deaths, the Chilean government said in a report, adding that the data should prove a "game changer" from the vaccine more widely.
Rodrigo Yanez, Chile's vice trade minister who forged a deal with Sinovac to host the drug's clinical trial and buy 60 million doses of the drug over three years, said the results showed Chile had made "the right bet".
"It's a game changer for that vaccine and I think it ratifies quite graphically the discussion over its efficacy," he told Reuters, adding it should help it with approvals with the World Health Organization as the first real-world study.
Chile's stock of CoronaVac is running low, with the supply of an agreed total of 14.2 million to be fully delivered by late May. Yanez said he was negotiating an additional 4 million doses of the vaccine and for now, the country will switch to using more of the Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N), (22UAy.DE) doses it is due.
The release of the CoronaVac data makes Chile one of a handful of countries, including Britain and Israel, that have used their rapid inoculation campaigns to gather insights into how effective vaccines are outside controlled clinical trials and when faced with unpredictable variables in societies.
Israel's real-world study of the effectiveness of Pfizer's vaccine looked at the results among 1.2 million people, a mix of those who received the shot and those who did not.
Chile's study examined CoronaVac's effectiveness among 10.5 million people, again looking both at people who had been vaccinated and those who had not. Vaccines were administered approximately 28 days apart.
The CoronaVac data published by Chile compares favorably with previous data released on its efficacy in clinical trials.
Brazilian trials have indicated general efficacy of the drug at preventing symptomatic infection at just above 50%, though shower far higher efficacy at preventing hospitalization and against moderate and severe cases.
Indonesia gave the vaccine emergency-use approval based on interim data showing it was 65% effective, while in a Turkish trial it had an efficacy in preventing symptomatic infection of 83.5% and 100% in preventing severe illness and hospitalization.
The Chilean study looked at the impact of the vaccine among people in the public health system between Feb. 2-April 1, adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities, income and nationality.
Its authors stressed that its results, for example a lower protection against death than in clinical trials, should be considered against the backdrop of a fierce second wave of the pandemic.
It compared people who were not inoculated, individuals 14 days or more after receiving one dose and more than 14 days after receiving a second dose. Protection against the virus was far higher after the second shot.
Rafael Araos, the Chilean public health official who presented the study, said the report did not specifically look at how the vaccine stood up to coronavirus variants, including the P1 mutant first identified in Brazil.
"The study was done during a period of high circulation of the virus, including of the variants - so these results are positive if we don't have variants and also if we do," he said.
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A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in February, examined the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and found that 79 percent of the side effects reported to the agency came from women, even though only 61 percent of the vaccines had been administered to women.
It could be that women are more likely to report side effects than men, said Dr. Sabra L. Klein, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Or, she added, women might be experiencing side effects to a greater degree. Were not sure which it is, she said.
If women are in fact having more side effects than men, there might be a biological explanation: Women and girls can produce up to twice as many antibodies after receiving flu shots and vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (M.M.R.) and hepatitis A and B, probably because of a mix of factors, including reproductive hormones and genetic differences.
A study found that over nearly three decades, women accounted for 80 percent of all adult allergic reactions to vaccines. Similarly, the C.D.C. reported that most of the anaphylactic reactions to Covid-19 vaccines, while rare, have occurred among women.
And in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine describing the experiences of people who had redness, itching and swelling that began four to 11 days after the first shot of the Moderna vaccine, 10 of the 12 patients were women. It is not clear, however, whether women are more prone to the problem.
If you have mild side effects like headache or a low fever, its actually a good thing, Dr. Klein said, because it means your immune system is ramping up. A lack of side effects, however, does not mean the vaccine isnt working.
You can share your symptoms or concerns via the C.D.C.s V-safe app, which records symptoms and provides health check-ins after vaccinations. Medically significant reports sent using V-safe will be followed up by a call from a representative.
I thought okay, it's been two and a half weeks, that should be about enough time, said Christianna Jackson.
Jackson, like many other patients who showed up at Any Lab Test Now in Scottsdale, wondered whether she was truly protected after getting the coronavirus vaccine back in February.
It was very scary especially initially last March and April when we didnt really know much about the virus itself, said Jackson, while thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic.
Jackson suffers from asthma, an underlying health condition that can greatly increase her risk of complications if she contracted COVID-19.
So, when she had an opportunity to volunteer and also get the vaccine, it was a no-brainer.
People just want to know, do I have protection? Do I have antibodies? said Any Lab Test Now Clinical Manager Angela Garrett.
Garrett says the community is craving information around the vaccine.
Is it working and for how long?
While there arent definitive answers to the second question, they can help with the first.
If somebody was vaccinated in December and they want to know if they still have antibodies four months later, this test would either reassure them that they do or dont, said Garrett.
A simple blood draw offers results in just two days.
Jackson eagerly awaited her results and received them in an email.
Sure enough I had the antibodies about two and half weeks after getting my first COVID shot, said Jackson.
This came as a signal that the hope she was feeling for the nation wasnt overhyped.
A year of isolation at home is paving the way for a dinner out for her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and the confidence to encourage others to get the shot as well.
Personally, for myself, I think its worth it to take an antibody test, that way you know its working, you can tell your friends and family, 'Hey, I got the vaccine, I have the antibodies, I have proof now, I have the data that it works,' said Jackson.
Those interested in getting an antibody test done can do so at Any Lab Test Now, through a doctor's office and while donating blood.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. A Charlotte woman learned the hard way that doctors recommend women should wait several weeks after getting the COVID-19 vaccine to get a mammogram.
Amelia Moore drove almost an hour to her annual mammogram appointment.
She told Action 9s Jason Stoogenke that once a nurse took her back into a room, she asked Moore if she had gotten the COVID-19 vaccination.
Moore told the nurse she had received her first dose and thats when the nurse informed her that she should wait at least a month after getting her second dose to come back for her mammogram.
I was very surprised. I was really livid, she said. If I had known that, I would not have even scheduled my appointment so soon. I would have waited.
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Stoogenke contacted Dr. Ryan Shelton with Tryon Medical Partners to find out if there is a recommended wait period.
When our body is fighting something off, whether its infection or mounting the immune response to the COVID vaccine, our lymph nodes can swell or enlarge a little bit ... he said.
Theyre kind of doing their job, but on a mammogram, that could indicate perhaps they are enlarged because of potentially breast cancer, he explained.
Shelton along with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Society of Breast Imaging all suggest waiting.
I would wait four to six weeks after having that final dose of the COVID vaccine just to help minimize the risk of any false positive mammogram result that could lead to more potentially unnecessary testing, Shelton said.
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Hopefully this will reach a lot of people out there that dont know, Moore said. Its good to know than to not know, and thats something that I didnt know.
While the recommended wait period applies to routine mammograms, medical professionals suggest that if your doctor finds a lump or something else suspicious, patients should not wait to have the procedure done.
You could run into a situation where you just got unlucky with where you chose to target your test, and something popped up there that then made your test less effective, said Nathan Grubaugh, a virologist at Yale University.
The gene for the viruss characteristic spike protein, known as the S gene, has been particularly prone to mutation, and tests that target this gene may miss certain variants. For instance, Thermo Fishers TaqPath test fails to detect the mutated S gene of the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first identified in Britain and is now spreading rapidly through the United States.
But the test does not rely on the S gene alone; it has three targets and can still return accurate results by detecting two other stretches of the coronavirus genome.
Just 1.3 percent of molecular tests rely solely on an S gene target, according to calculations performed by Rachel West, a postdoctoral associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The rest either target more stable regions of the genome, which are less likely to mutate, or have multiple target sequences, which makes them less susceptible to failure. Its very unlikely that youre going to get mutations in all of them, Dr. Lillis said.
The F.D.A. has listed four different molecular tests whose performance could be impacted by the variants, but notes that the tests should still work. Three of the tests have multiple targets; a fourth may be slightly less sensitive when the virus has one particular mutation and is present at very low levels. (The four tests are the TaqPath Covid-19 Combo Kit, the Linea Covid-19 Assay Kit, the Xpert Xpress and Xpert Omni SARS-CoV-2, and the Accula SARS-CoV-2 Test.)
We dont think that those four assays are significantly impacted, said Dr. Tim Stenzel, who directs the F.D.A.s office of in vitro diagnostics and radiological health. It was more out of an abundance of caution and transparency that we made that information public.
Antigen tests are less sensitive than molecular tests, but they are typically cheaper and faster, and they are being deployed widely in coronavirus screening programs. These tests detect specific proteins on the outside of the virus. Some genetic mutations could change the structure of these proteins, allowing them to escape detection.
The number of new coronavirus cases in New York City has remained alarmingly, and stubbornly, high for weeks, even as tens of thousands of people are vaccinated daily.
A likely reason is that more contagious variants have displaced the original forms of the virus, public health officials have said, accounting for more than 75 percent of new cases, according to a recent analysis.
Each week, the Health Department releases the results of a sampling of up to 1,500 sequenced cases, providing a citywide snapshot of which variants are on the rise.
Until this week, the city had not said which variants were more common in which neighborhoods. But newly available ZIP code-level data provides some insight into the mix of variants circulating in the area.
The information serves as a vivid reminder that the dynamics of New Yorks epidemic have changed over the past few months, and that the original forms of the virus are increasingly unusual across the city.
It makes something thats been pretty abstract and maybe less accessible that much more tangible to people, Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, said of the data. The landscape is changing quickly.
A variant first discovered in New York, B.1.526, has spread more widely in the city than all of the others so far. There has also been a significant increase in cases linked to the B.1.1.7 variant, which was first detected in Britain last year and now makes up nearly 30 percent of new cases sequenced in New York City.
The B.1.1.7 variant has driven new surges of sickness from Poland to Michigan. It is estimated to be 60 percent more contagious and two-thirds more deadly than the original form of the virus. This variant is now the main source of new infections across the United States and in Europe.
But not in New York City, where B.1.526 remains the most prevalent variant, comprising about 45 percent of cases sequenced from the fourth week of March.
Many questions about B.1.526, such as whether it causes more severe illness or can evade the protection granted by the vaccines, remain unanswered.
As to which is more contagious B.1.1.7 or B.1.526 health officials are not yet sure. We dont have enough information to discern this at this moment, said the citys health commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi.
In Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn, the B.1.526 variant made up more than 50 percent of all the cases sequenced between March 16 and April 1. In the Bronx, the share of B.1.526 was 61 percent.
One of the few places where B.1.1.7 appears responsible for the majority of cases was along the southern tip of Staten Island, which has struggled with high case loads for months and currently has some of the highest positivity rates in the city.
Across Staten Island, B.1.1.7 made up 40 percent of new cases sequenced between March 16 and April 1. In Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, B.1.1.7 represented a smaller share, making up 26 to 29 percent in these boroughs. In the Bronx, B.1.1.7 represented only 23 percent of the cases sequenced.
Despite the dominance of variants, hospitalizations have not been rising in the city in recent weeks, and are actually on a slight decline. And cases have been stable, though at a high level. To me that is reassuring, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health. We may be seeing the beginnings of a vaccine effect.
April 17, 2021, 6:20 p.m. ET
In a given week, about one to two thousand positive coronavirus cases in New York City are sequenced that is, the genetic material of the virus is examined for mutations. That represents roughly between four and eight percent of New York Citys new cases. The majority of those cases are sequenced at a laboratory in Long Island City operated by Opentrons, a robotics company.
At the request of The Times, the companys chief executive, Jonathan Brennan-Badal, shared ZIP code-level data for about 7,500 sequenced cases, explaining that the information could help identify where the need for more resources including testing and vaccinations was greatest.
The city Health Department uses the sequences from this laboratory, known as the Pandemic Response Lab, as the basis for its weekly sample gauging the prevalence of each variant.
But even with thousands of samples sequenced, the data still has significant limitations. Most of its coronavirus samples come from the citys public hospital system and city-sponsored testing sites. It receives lots of samples from some neighborhoods, but few from others.
The limited number of variants sequenced up till now make it difficult to arrive at conclusions as to whether some neighborhoods are more severely affected than others, Dr. El-Sadr said.
Each dot on the density maps above is placed in the ZIP code of a New Yorker whose coronavirus sample was sequenced at the Opentrons lab. But neighborhoods with lots of dots do not necessarily correspond with coronavirus hot spots. The density of dots can often be explained by the presence of a city testing center nearby.
On the other hand, neighborhoods with few dots are not necessarily free of variants. It just means few coronavirus samples from there reached the lab.
There are blind spots across the Bronx, Queens and the southern half of Manhattan. In some ZIP codes too few samples have been sequenced to draw any solid conclusions. In Roosevelt Island, for example, only one case has been sequenced.
The city on Monday separately released a report based on ZIP-code level data from the Pandemic Response Lab, as well as from the citys own lab. It also showed the proportion of B.1.1.7 and B.1.526 cases growing rapidly.
The report said that B.1.526 cases have been detected in all five boroughs, but were slightly more common in the Bronx and parts of Queens. B.1.1.7 cases were also found citywide, but were slightly more common in southern Brooklyn, eastern Queens and Staten Island.
City officials said that the maps showed widespread transmission of the variants, and that they were an important reminder for people not to let their guards down in any neighborhood.
The single best way we can address this threat is by vaccinating everyone as quickly as possible, said Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser on public health in the mayors office. The reality is you are at risk of any of these no matter where you are.
Dr. Chokshi said that the geographic breakdown of variants illustrated where the variants had been detected and how widespread they were across the city, questions health officials had been asking for weeks.
Monitoring clusters in certain neighborhoods could lead to insights about variants that so far have remained somewhat of a mystery to health officials.
Because B.1.526 appears to have emerged locally in New York City, Dr. Nash said he would expect that it would circulate more in areas with high levels of community transmission.
Throughout the pandemic, these have tended to be poorer swaths of the city, where living conditions are more crowded and jobs have required showing up in person. The map largely bears that out.
In ZIP codes where more than 20 percent of the population lives in poverty, there were about three times as many B.1.526 cases sequenced as B.1.1.7 cases between March 1 and April 1. In ZIP codes with less poverty, B.1.526 cases were just twice as numerous as B.1.1.7.
In an inverse effect, vaccination rates also tend to be lower in harder hit neighborhoods that have had more community transmission during the pandemic. Some of this is because of vaccine hesitancy, and some because of access issues. The city has been trying to address this with targeted vaccination campaigns.
Scarcity is the enemy of equity, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former city health commissioner.
The abundance of variants being detected in the city has created a complicated challenge for health officials.
Some variants such as the ones first found in Brazil, P.1, and South Africa, B.1.351, that are now popping up in small numbers in New York carry a mutation that appears to allow the virus to partially evade antibodies from prior infection. The variant first found in South Africa also appears to make vaccines less effective.
The variant first detected in New York, B.1.526, appears to come with two forms of mutation.
More than half of the B.1.526 circulating in New York City now carries a mutation similar to ones carried by the variants discovered in South Africa and Brazil, according to the New York City Health Department.
Another version of the variant, researchers say, contains a different mutation, which may help the virus bind more tightly to human cells and may make it more contagious. However, there is no real-world evidence yet that B.1.526 results in more severe infection, or is more likely to evade antibodies from prior infections or vaccines, though it is being studied, city officials said.
The P.1 variant, which has been linked to a surge of cases in Brazil, has been detected about two dozen times in New York City between March 16 and April 1, mainly in Queens. A handful of cases of B.1.351 have been found mostly on Staten Island in recent weeks.
Its just a reminder that not only are we interconnected in the city, but we are interconnected around the world, said Dr. Nash, and what happens there can happen here too, if we are not careful.
Lauren Leatherby contributed research.
