As part of the Biden administrations plans to facilitate more equitable access to vaccinations, the administration has formed a partnership with community health centers, known for providing health care to some of the hardest-to-reach populations. This partnership, called the Health Center COVID-19 Vaccination Program, directly supplies health centers with a limited number of doses to increase vaccinations among people of color, low-income communities, and other underserved populations that make up a large share of health center patients. The first phase of the program kicked off February 15, 2021 and invited 250 health centers to participate, aiming to provide them with 1 million vaccine doses over the course of 4 weeks. Currently, the program is in the process of adding 700 more health centers, phasing in participation over a period of six weeks, and, by May, the administration expects to open the program to all 1,400 health center organizations across the U.S.
As of March 22, 2021, there were 325 health centers participating in the Health Center COVID-19 Vaccination Program and they had received over 1 million vaccine doses. Based on 2019 data, 75% of all patients visiting these health centers were people of color and 92% had incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. Prior KFF research has shown that health centers are vaccinating people of color at higher rates than vaccine efforts nationally, and that is especially true for health centers participating in the federal program where, according to federal officials, over 65% of the allocated doses have been administered to people of color.
The first 325 health centers to participate in the program have the capacity to reach very specific, high-need populations that may require more resource-intensive vaccination efforts. Many of the health centers participating in the early phase of the program receive designated funding to treat agricultural workers, patients experiencing homeless, and/or patients living in or near public housing. They are also larger, on average, than other health centers. Our analysis shows that these health centers served just under half of all health center patients in 2019, as well as 80% of all health center patients who are agricultural workers, 69% of all patients living in or near public housing, 62% of patients with limited English proficiency, and just over half (54%) of patients experiencing homelessness (Figure 1). Although health centers provide services to only a subset of these individuals, reaching high-need populations as well as others facing barriers to vaccinations in the greatest numbers possible will be helpful in achieving population-level immunity.
Although the Health Center COVID-19 Vaccination Program represents a small portion of vaccinations nationally to date, increased federal funding for the program will enable participating health centers to reach many more people. On March 25, 2021, the Biden administration announced $6 billion in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan would be directed to health centers to expand vaccine access. This investment, coupled with new flexibility allowing health centers to vaccinate people in ACIPs Phase 1c priority group along with other state priority populations, will enable health centers to reach more of their patients and other higher-risk individuals in their communities. Currently, the program is onboarding 700 more health centers as part of the second phase of the program, including those serving large shares of people with low incomes and people of color, those located in rural and frontier areas, those serving tribal communities, and health centers operating mobile vans with the ability to take vaccinations out into the community. Ensuring more equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine will be a meaningful step in mitigating the disparate impacts of the pandemic and limiting health disparities in the future.
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) With Spring in full bloom, so too are seasonal allergies.
From the sneezing, the itchy eyes, scratchy throat and coughing.
Experts say its a tough time of the year for many from December to May as people suffer from the familiar symptoms. But, with those symptoms so similar to something else, how do you know if its allergies, a cold, or COVID-19?
Like so many of us, Gina Myhet suffers from allergies.
This is the sunshine state, its pollen all year round, its summer all year round, you never get used to the allergies, its bad, Myhet told 8 On Your Side.
As it turns out, Myhet knows a thing or two about allergies, colds, and COVID. Shes studied all three, as a traveling nurse, now retired and living in Florida.
For Myhet, pollen has always been a problem and during the COVID-19 pandemic, she says symptoms can often be confusing for patients.
The side effects for COVID are the same for allergies, flu, cold. Theyre the same, she explained. You have to sit and figure it out.
Dr. John Greene is a longtime infectious diseases expert with Moffitt Cancer Center and has been in the field for well over four decades.
When it comes to allergies, colds and COVID, we wanted to know one thing.
So, how do you know which one it is, asked Dr. Greene. And, a lot of times you cant tell unless you test for it.
Dr. Greene says theres a lot to be learned from a recent European study. According to the study where 31 countries were researched, allergies can lower your ability to produce immune-boosting chemicals, making you much more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.
Thats an intriguing association that many people are not aware of, so theres sort of a double whammy with pollen, Dr. Greene said.
As far as how to tell the difference between allergies, a cold and Coronavirus?
The key symptom, Dr. Greene says, is wheezing.
All three can easily cause a cough, but the shortness of breath and wheezing, he says, could indicate the possibility of COVID.
Dr. Greene advises anyone who experiences wheezing or shortness of breath to seek medical attention.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- The state will open 35 new rapid Covid-19 testing sites by mid-April, a move meant to continue to track the coronavirus as New York begins allowing larger gatherings at weddings, concerts, sporting events and other venues.
That includes one that will open at Quest Diagnostics, Shop City Plaza, 396 Grant Blvd., within the next two weeks, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomos office.
This new effort adds to 35 existing test centers, most of which are in New York City.
These 70 test centers will also feed the test results into the states Excelsior Pass program. That is an electronic way for people to show their vaccination and testing history as required to enter or attend some events.
These tests are not free. The testing providers can charge no more than $30, according to a news release from Cuomo. The providers must also release the results within 30 minutes and offer a way for people to schedule appointments.
The testing will be run byBioReference Laboratories,Clarity MedHealth, Quest Diagnostics and Rapid Reliable Testing, according to Cuomos office.
You can make appointments here.
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One Washington Nationals player has tested positive for COVID-19, general manager Mike Rizzo announced on Wednesday. Five others within the organization -- four players and one staff member -- were in close contact with the person that tested positive, RIzzo told reporters, includingBritt Ghiroli of The Athletic.
Rizzo hinted that roster moves will be necessary in advance of their Opening Day matchup against the Mets, scheduled for 7:09 p.m. ET on Thursday in Washington, D.C. That's because those five players will be in quarantine. The player testing positive, per MLB health and safety protocols for 2021, must remain in quarantine for at least 10 days and then be cleared by baseball's joint COVID-19 committee and the team physician following a cardiac examination. As of yet, the players in question have not been named.
Some additional context, via Dougherty:
Mike Rizzo says that the person who tested positive is a player and, after contract tracing -- having flown on a team charter Monday evening -- it was determined that five people had to quarantine. The Nationals have undergone PCR and rapid tests in the time since.
Rizzo also says that the Nationals are working with the league to determine what additional steps to take.
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While impressive progress is being made with vaccination rates across the country, COVID-19 variants are also presently spreading, which may account for some of the case surges we're seeing. Likely, MLB as it enters the 2021 regular season will not be spared from those trends. In other words, the Nats' announcement probably won't be the last of this kind.
The vaccines were at least 90 percent effective for those fully vaccinated, 80 percent if they were partially vaccinated meaning maybe one dose of Pfizer or Moderna but not yet having the second dose and much, much better than those people who were not vaccinated at all, said Dr. Lawton Davis, Director of the Coastal Health District.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) Should you be required to get a COVID-19 vaccination? Thats the question lawmakers are debating.
Its a conversation happening around the world and Tennessee is now advancing a bill that would restrict governmental entities from requiring a coronavirus shot.
Were not here to argue whether or not vaccines are good or bad were not here to argue the science behind COVID, were simply saying we are against a government mandate to a medical treatment especially without a religious exemption, said Gary Humble, organizer of the rally.
Currently, there is not a requirement for COVID-19 shots to be taken in Tennessee.
The approved U.S. vaccines have shown the doses are effective against severe illness and death.
The amended bill passed the Senate Health and Welfare committee by a party line vote 8-1.
Its been nearly a year since Julie Horowitz-Jacksons mother, Arlene, died of Covid-19 in a nursing facility in Philadelphia. What hit me recently is that the world is opening back up, and my moms still dead, Horowitz-Jackson says.
At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, as vaccines get rolled out in the United States and around the globe, there is a glimmer of hope that life will safely start shifting back to normal in the coming months. But so many people, like Horowitz-Jackson, are still working through their grief, and it wont just disappear when the virus does. Horowitz-Jackson, 51, says she was coping well with the loss of her mom until recently, when, in Chicago, where she lives, she saw many people out and about, celebrating St. Patricks Day in large crowds. I get angry, she says. I get angry that people arent taking it seriously.
With over 550,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the US and 2.8 million worldwide, a massive grief crisis is upon us with large, unaddressed mental health and economic implications.
For a large share of people, these [losses] lead to bouts of prolonged grief disorder and depression, says Ashton Verdery, a Penn State sociologist who studies the societal costs of bereavement. But also they have huge impacts on their finances, on their employment, on their relationships, and on all kinds of aspects of thriving in the world.
And new research here provides a broad window onto the lasting scope of our national tragedy.
These losses that are felt now will be felt for some time to come even individuals who arent born yet will potentially be missing these relatives who might have been alive during their formative years, says Mallika Snyder, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who is also working on estimates with colleagues of the excess bereavement felt in the United States and other countries this year.
Theres no exact figure on the amount of excess bereavement, but its likely very large, and very devastating.
Lately, Ive been trying to understand the long-term consequences of the Covid-related death the blank spaces and shadows it leaves behind. Death is not a one-dimensional statistic. It ripples across time, leaving holes in peoples present and future where their loved ones would have been. So, so many people are sensing these holes in their lives right now.
Recently, Verdery and colleagues estimated that, roughly, every person who dies from Covid-19 in the United States leaves nine grieving people behind. Since more than 550,000 people have died of Covid-19 here, then there are nearly 5 million people whove suffered the loss of someone close to them.
Verderys work is based on a statistical model of the personal connections people typically have. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collects data on who is dying of Covid-19, but not the survivors they leave behind.
That said, Verdery says his teams work suggests a huge swath of people are dealing with loss. Each death [regardless of their age at death] is going to leave a 4-year-old, a 50-year-old, a 60-year-old, a 10-year-old bereaved, on average, he says.
And researchers know from past disasters that those losses can leave a lasting mark.
Meghan Zacher, a sociology researcher at Brown, has recently re-analyzed some mental health and wellness data collected from survivors of Hurricane Katrina, in an attempt to predict some of the long-term consequences of the pandemic. Katrina and Covid are different in really important ways, she stresses. This isnt an apples-to-apples comparison. But there really isnt an apples-to-apples comparison to the pandemic, at least in modern history.
She and her co-authors found that the experience of losing a relative or a friend during the storm and its aftermath had the largest effects on mental and physical health, one year after the storm, she says. Also things like fearing for your loved ones safety had sizable impacts, as did unmet medical needs. And those are all things that people have experienced during the pandemic.
The loss of a loved one is really hard, and not everyone copes in the same way. But theres some research into the broad buckets of need grieving people fall into. And that helps us understand the immediate impact this bereavement crisis is having in the country and around the world.
Survey research suggests that, at least in Western contexts, around 60 percent of people dealing with a loss cope by relying on friends and family to support them. They handle it in their own way, says Catriona Mayland, a physician and researcher at the University of Sheffield who studies end-of-life issues. Its not necessarily easy for this group to deal with loss. But they manage.
A further 30 percent might need some more structured help. So that might be group bereavement support from a faith-based or community-based group, Mayland says.
And then around 10 percent of those who lose someone close to them experience symptoms qualifying them for a prolonged grief disorder, a diagnosis that soon will be included in the DSM (the psychology/psychiatry official diagnostic manual).
The diagnosis recognizes that sometimes grief rises to the level of severely interfering with the normal function of life, and that people experiencing prolonged grief could benefit from mental health care.
That 10 percent figure is both small and large. It means that, yes, most people cope with loss in their own time. But its also not uncommon for someone to need extra help.
And then consider the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, there could be 5 million people grieving losses due to the pandemic. If 10 percent of those people qualify for this diagnosis, thats half a million people.
Theres even some limited research from the Netherlands suggesting losses due to Covid-19 are harder to take, resulting in more grief, compared to deaths from more typical natural causes.
Talking with people who have experienced loss, its easy to see why. Horowitz-Jacksons family is Jewish, and its custom for the family and surrounding community of the deceased to hold a week-long open house shiva period, where theres near-constant company in the home.
Shiva Zoom was about the worst thing Ive ever experienced, she says. Particularly, she remembers how her father, hard of hearing, struggled with the technology. The ritual of seeing each other and leaning on one another, she says, just couldnt be facilitated as well over the internet.
Mayland worries, too, that there actually could be an upward shift in the number of people needing more than informal support after a loss, since due to the social distancing restrictions of the pandemic, normal support from family and friends may be limited.
Which is all to say: More people than usual may need support to deal with their loss.
A person older than 65 who loses a spouse has a shockingly elevated increased risk of dying over the next year, Verdery says estimates range from 15 to 30 percent higher risk of dying. There are many reasons: Our loved ones take care of us when were sick, they prod us to get checked out by a doctor, they provide emotional and sometimes financial support. When a loved one gets taken out of the picture, so many cracks can form in the foundations of our lives.
There is, quite literally, a condition called broken heart syndrome, or takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Its when, in reaction to a sudden surge in stress, the hearts left ventricle weakens.
The experience of loss can be particularly impactful on the trajectory of a life when it comes to young people: When a person under the age of 18 loses a parent, they become less likely to finish high school or college. Because we know that education is so strongly linked to all manner of life course outcomes like involvement in the prison system, socioeconomic status in adulthood, unemployment spells, early pregnancy, all sorts of stuff this does suggest that some of these bereavement events might be really derailing, Verdery says.
The impact of these deaths is so powerful that bereavement is thought to be a source of racial disparities in health and education in America. By age 20, a Black child is twice as likely to experience the death of a mother and 50 percent more likely to experience the death of a father. The pandemic is likely to make this trend worse as we know Covid-19 has been taking minorities at younger ages than white people dying from it.
And American society doesnt do well to protect these grieving kids. Its estimated that less than 50 percent of children who experience the loss of a parent receive Social Security survivors benefits (which they may be entitled to). This is one of the most staggering statistics that I found, Verdery says. The kids are already dealing with so much. And were not even getting them in touch with the benefits theyre entitled to.
After experiencing the loss of her child, Joyal Mulheron, a former adviser to Michelle Obamas Lets Move campaign, felt the extreme, life-altering pain bereavement can bring. I basically drove to work every day for 18 months and cried to and from work, she says. And it wasnt just her personal pain that was horrible she also realized that society often overlooks bereavement issues.
Now Mulheron runs Evermore, a bereavement-focused nonprofit, and hopes the pandemic will be a wake-up call for the country to start paying closer attention to the societal strain bereavement puts on the country. The challenge is no one is thinking about it as an event that can change the course of an individuals life, she says.
For instance, she points out that bereavement is not part of the FMLA the Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides time off for those caring for sick family members, but not to cope with their loss. She calls for better housing protections for those who lose financial support after losing a loved one, more transparent funeral pricing, and better Social Security assistance for kids who lose parents.
She also simply would like to see this issue be studied more thoroughly. Weve not had the data to really contextualize this, Mulheron says. Weve really thought of a death event as a personal tragedy, rather than a family or a community experience. At the very least, Mulheron would like to see the White House establish an Office of Bereavement Care, to set a national agenda on this issue.
On a smaller scale, Mayland, the physician who studies end-of-life issues, says it can be helpful just to find spaces to talk about grief, and more helpful still if friends and family reach out with an ear to listen. Sometimes its therapeutic to be able to tell a story, she says.
Each time I talk about it, I feel like Im honoring her memory, Horowitz-Jackson, the Chicago woman who lost her mother, says.
And dont forget, Mayland stresses, Individual kindness can have an impact. It often is the small things that actually can make a difference.
If youre reading this, having lost someone to Covid-19, know that you are not alone. So many people are experiencing loss in the country right now, and the pain might not go away when life appears to return to normal.
For some additional resources on bereavement, check out Refuge in Grief, a website and online community with worksheets and courses for processing grief. And you can read more about therapies designed to help people with complicated grief here.
The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE is highly effective at protecting against symptomatic Covid-19 up to six months after the second dose, the companies said.
The findings, released Thursday, emerged from a continuing review of how volunteers in the shots late-stage trial were faring.
The further analysis suggested the vaccine worked effectively against a variant first identified in South Africa, Pfizer and BioNTech said. And the companies said they havent found serious safety concerns so far.
It is an important step to further confirm the strong efficacy and good safety data we have seen so far, especially in a longer-term follow-up, said BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin.
Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said the additional results provide further confidence in our vaccines overall effectiveness.
LONDONThe U.K.s bold call to delay giving people a second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has put it out in front in the race to inoculate the world against the disease.
Behind that decision: a group of 16 scientists who advocated a controversial move tooverrule some vaccine manufacturers guidelines in order to get more first doses to more people.
The gamble appears to have paid off, with incoming data pointing to durable protection against falling ill after just one vaccine dose.But while some countries, such asCanada,have followed the U.K.s lead, others including the U.S. are refusing, saying to do socould pose a risk to public health.
The decision by British authoritiesholds lessons for other countries as they fight to contain the pandemic. Indeed, the dosing debate raises difficult questions about whether some governments and their scientific advisersfor instance in the European Union, where vaccination campaigns are painfully sloware being too risk averse.
In December, as a highly infectious Covid-19 variant ripped across the U.K., the group of scientists sitting on Britains Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded that delaying a second vaccine dose by upto 12 weeks could save lives.
