CHICAGO Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced that starting Thursday, eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine will expand to younger residents with certain health issues.
However, the change in eligibility isnt happening in Chicago or neighboring cities because city officials said they dont have enough shots to give out.
We still have people on the 1a list that have not been vaccinated many people in 1b that havent been vaccinated, said Karen Ayala, Executive Director of DuPage Countys Health Department. We know people in this expanded category need and deserve to have access to the vaccine. We just dont have the supply right now.
Under the Phase 1B plan, people 16-64 years old could qualify for the vaccine if they are dealing with the following conditions:
Illinois has an estimated 3.2 million people who would qualify in the 1B group.
Because of limited doses, Chicago joins Skokie as well as Cook, Lake, DuPage and Will counties who are not moving forward into the 1B phase. When it comes to pharmacies, Walmarts in Chicago said they will not expand to the 1B phase. Walgreens and Marianos said they will follow what the counties are doing.
WGN has heard that Jewel-Osco will follow state guidelines and expand to the 1B phase at their pharmacies.
State officials want people to get vaccinated in their county and are relying on the honor system for people trying to get vaccinated.
Kristina Wilson, the owner of a Chicago-area preschool tells WGN she reached out to the health department about vaccine availability. She says the process has been frustrating and disheartening.
Until my brother spent 30 hours basically hitting refresh to get every staff member covered but it shouldnt take someones family member to help early educators out, she said.
Once 70% of seniors are vaccinated by the end of March, Minnesota's COVID-19 vaccine rollout will move on to people with underlying health conditions and workers at high risk for infection.
The next phase, unveiled by state health officials Thursday, will be in four tiers, eventually getting to all Minnesotans 50 and older and finally expanding this summer to any adults left in the general public.
"The next phase is going to protect Minnesotans at higher risk of exposure and severity of illness," Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said.
Health officials hope the new, rough timetable will comfort anxious Minnesotans who haven't had any idea when they will be eligible for vaccination. The pandemic has caused 6,450 deaths and 481,831 known infections with the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Vaccination might occur even faster because the plan is based on continued 5% growth in weekly doses to Minnesota. Increased shipments are likely, especially with a third COVID-19 vaccine one by Johnson & Johnson nearing federal approval.
"This is predicated on our current allocation of vaccines," Gov. Tim Walz said. "Everything I see leads me to believe it is not going to be less, it is going to be more."
Walz said Minnesota is on pace to complete its vaccination goal for seniors by the end of March, despite some people being hesitant and others not returning to the state until winter is over.
"We are continuing the focus on those seniors until we hit about 70 percent," he said.
After that, the highest priority has been assigned to 45,000 workers in food processing plants, which have seen many outbreaks in the pandemic.
"The food supply of the entire nation relies on us," Malcolm said. "There are many reasons to prioritize this group."
People with high-risk medical conditions will also be first in the next wave.
That includes people receiving cancer treatment and those with sickle cell disease, Down syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and anyone immunocompromised due to organ transplants.
Together, those conditions account for 75% of all COVID-19 deaths in the state, Malcolm said. "It is only going to take us a matter of weeks to vaccinate these groups."
In subsequent tiers, people with one or more qualifying underlying health conditions will become eligible, as will workers in other essential industries, including manufacturing, public transit, police and fire departments, grocery stores, restaurants, agriculture and the postal service.
Additional medical conditions that will become eligible in late spring include cancer, chronic kidney disease, heart conditions, obesity, type 2 diabetes and pregnancy.
While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers smokers at elevated risk for COVID-19, the state's vaccine rollout plan does not prioritize them. Malcolm said their elevated rates of health conditions such as COPD will likely qualify them earlier on, anyway.
Employees in 21 essential industries will qualify for shots between April and late spring. Combined with those with at-risk chronic conditions, the state estimates that 2.6 million Minnesotans will be eligible in that time period.
Along with the 1.7 million who qualified as health care workers, long-term care residents, seniors and school and child-care workers, so many state residents will have been offered the vaccine that there will be only 300,000 adults left when the process opens up to the general public by summer.
"This is America, folks," Walz said. "Pretty much everybody's got one underlying health condition or something. If you look at all those groups, the number at the end is pretty small."
Details on how eligible individuals will get notified are being worked out, Malcolm said, but employers and health care systems will play a role.
"We will be working with each sector to figure out what is the best approach to get the vaccine to their workforce," she said. Minnesota food processing plants have expressed interest in having vaccine clinics in their facilities.
People with chronic medical conditions will most likely be contacted by their medical providers.
Minnesotans can also register with the state's vaccine connector website, which collects information about qualifying medical conditions and essential industry jobs. The system is supposed to notify people when they become eligible for the shot.
State Sen. Karin Housley, R-Stillwater, welcomed the vaccination goal for seniors but said that many find the rollout difficult to understand.
"This is a step in the right direction, and I'm committed to holding [the governor] accountable," she said. "I've heard from seniors across the state who have been confused by this constantly changing information."
The state on Thursday reported that 783,214 people in Minnesota have received first doses of the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, and that 386,256 of those people have completed the series. The state projects that more than 42% of senior citizens in Minnesota have received a first dose.
People 65 and older have suffered 89% of Minnesota's COVID-19 deaths, including five of seven deaths reported on Thursday. Four of the deaths involved residents of long-term care, despite vaccines being offered in all nursing homes in the state and an increasing number of assisted-living facilities.
The state also reported 996 diagnosed infections and a 3.7% diagnostic testing rate that is below the state's 5% caution level that suggests uncontrolled viral spread.
The number of COVID-19 patients in Minnesota intensive care beds declined to 50 on Wednesday, with another 215 patients who are not receiving critical care.
Total COVID-19 hospitalizations declined this week to a level not seen in Minnesota since mid-September, but the number of those patients in ICU beds declined to a level not seen since April. At its peak on Dec. 1, Minnesota had 399 COVID-19 patients admitted to ICU beds.
Dr. Andrew Olson of M Health Fairview said the more rapid decline in ICU admissions suggests that the oldest and most vulnerable patients are getting vaccinated, so fewer people needing hospital care are suffering severe cases of COVID-19.
"We're probably seeing a benefit of that," said Olson, M Health Fairview's director of COVID hospital medicine.
Glenn Howatt 612-673-7192
Jeremy Olson 612-673-7744
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Some 1,100 members of the Texas National Guard will administer vaccines to older people in their homes in rural and isolated areas of the state in an effort to get the majority of Texans who are 65 and older inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of March, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.
Abbott also said that with vaccine supply ramping up considerably starting next week, combined with the anticipated approval of a third vaccine this week, the state could open up eligibility to more Texans beyond the first two identified priority groups sometime next month.
The good news is theres going to be a record amount of vaccines available across Texas this week with increasing numbers going forward, he said. Were going to have the capability to apply vaccines very, very quickly for our seniors as well as additional populations, so that we increasingly, week by week, will be increasing the immunity that Texans have.
The Texas Department of State Health Services has prioritized Texans who are 65 years old and older and anyone with medical conditions that put them at higher risk for death or hospitalization from the virus. The number of eligible recipients is estimated to include more than 9 million people across the state.
Officials have hinted that the next group of vaccine eligible Texans could include teachers and other essential workers.
Abbott said he has been told by President Joe Biden that the state will receive more than 1 million doses next week and that the number could increase if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants emergency use authorization this week to a new vaccine by Johnson & Johnson. That vaccine can be stored at regular refrigeration temperatures, is easily moved and is a one-dose regimen. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses and have to be stored at temperatures well below freezing.
The renewed effort to reach older Texans who are unable to leave or have difficulty leaving their homes, an effort dubbed Save Our Seniors, launches Monday, Abbott said. It is an expansion of a mobile vaccination program run for several weeks by the Texas Division of Emergency Management and is modeled after local programs that partner with nonprofit organizations to identify homebound older people in need of the vaccines, state leaders said.
Teams of National Guard members will be registering people for the program or visiting homes and administering the vaccines, with more than 8,000 vaccines allotted in the first week of the program, and possibly four times that many if the new vaccine is approved, Abbott said.
The teams will work with organizations like Meals on Wheels and nursing groups to identify older Texans who dont have access to mass vaccination hubs, drive-thru clinics or doctors offices, TDEM Chief Nim Kidd said.
The program is modeled in part after the Save Our Seniors program in Corpus Christi, where Abbott made his remarks Thursday. There, some 2,000 doses have been given to homebound older people through the local program, officials said.
It creates a ripple effect, said Lisa Oliver, superintendent of Corpus Christi Senior Community Services. It also benefits those that have daily personal contact with the homebound clients such as caregivers and those who provide in-home services, whether it be home health [or] physical therapy.
Abbott said identifying and reaching out to homebound older people who are not regularly in contact with providers is the biggest challenge in getting them inoculated.
Some 40% of people in the state who are 65 and older have received one dose of the vaccine, Abbott said, but officials aim to get shots to at least 50% of them by the end of next week and vaccinations to all older people who want them by the end of March.
Texas, with a population of about 29 million, has administered 4.6 million doses to residents and fully inoculated nearly 1.5 million people, according to DSHS.
Abbott said the latest efforts are absolutely critical to the states goal of eventually reaching herd immunity from the virus and further reducing deaths and hospitalizations among the states most vulnerable residents.
We absolutely want the people in those rural areas to know that were coming to help vaccinate them just as fast as we can with as much vaccine is available, Kidd said.
Louis Llovio|Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Anita Winchell had a simple question.
I am 64, she wrote in an email to the Herald-Tribune, and I am at high risk for COVID due to lung disease.When and how can I get this much needed vaccine?
The answer should have been simple.
But, with murky rules about vaccine distribution from the state combined withhigh demand for the limited, though growing, supply of vaccine, it wasnt.
When the state of Florida released who would qualify for the COVID-19 vaccine it included people who are 65 and over, front-line health workers and those living and working in nursing homes.
More: No clear answers on teacher COVID-19 vaccination plan
But there was a fourth, often overlooked, category, included in Gov. Ron DeSantis Dec. 23 executive order. That category, mentioned at the end,just above the governors signature, reads that Hospital providers, however, also may vaccinate persons who they deem to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19.
That, to Winchell and tens of thousands of others who suffer from serious health issues, was a lifeline and meant that they would be eligible for the potentially lifesaving COVID-19vaccine.
But left without clear guidance, patients with complications and their doctors have to fend for themselves as they try to figure out whos qualified and when and where the vaccine can be administered.
The state, according to Samantha Bequer of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, hasasked hospitals to make their own determinations on who would qualify when vaccinating extremely vulnerable individuals.
More: Another upscale Florida community got special vaccine access; this one has a splash park
Winchell said she reached out to her doctors office and was told the office would possibly get the vaccine in two or three months and that she would qualify at some point.
They did not know anything more about getting the vaccine at a hospital.
According to the Florida Department of Health and Division of Emergency Management, to date the state has allocated more than 115,000 doses to hospitals to vaccinate individuals they deem extremely vulnerable.
That makes up a sliver of the 2.7 million who have beenvaccinated in the state as of Wednesday morning.
The logjam could be breaking, though, as more vaccines doses earmarked for the medically vulnerable begin heading to hospitals.
More: Teachers, firefighters, police next for vaccination; Manatee CVS store to offer it
The state says that in the past week 30,240 doses for the medically vulnerable have been sent to 28 hospitals.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital received 500 doses Friday that are dedicated to people who are high-risk and have certain underlying medical conditions.
The hospital said it will use guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine who qualifies.
On its website the CDC says people who areat an increased risk of severe illness from the virus includes those with Type 2 diabetes, cancer and COPD. People who mightbe at an increased risk include those with Type 1 diabetes, moderate to severe asthma and high blood pressure.
James Fiorica, the chief medical officer at SMH, said because the supply was so limited, the process of deciding who gets the vaccine was a little more challenging.
More: You've been vaccinated, so what next? Sarasota-Manatee experts say maintain precautions
So, what we did is, we had a defined process where we looked at our hospital patients, basically medically vulnerable individuals under 65, that were already in our hospital database, he said.
Fiorica said the hospital found the people to vaccinate through its outpatient disease management programs, heart failure program, COPD program and cancer patients, as well as patients at specialty clinics.
We just received them last Friday and we distributed them as soon as we got them out, he said.
DeSoto Memorial Hospital is also moving to vaccinate people with medical issues.
The hospital said its most recent allocation of vaccine doses was earmarked for people under 65 who are judged to be medically vulnerable, Sarah Hipp, the hospitals marketing director said.
More: Venice paramedics administer COVID-19 vaccines to homebound residents
She said the hospital relied on CDC guidelines to determine who qualified and then reached out to doctors in the county asking for a list of their most vulnerable patients in that age group to ensure we were catching the appropriate patients.
We received 400 doses for this purpose and are still in the process of vaccinating these individuals, Hipp said.
In Manatee, Kevin DiLallo, CEO of Manatee Memorial Hospital and Lakewood Ranch Medical Center, said the hospital has been focused on getting health care workers the shot and, as more doses arrive, we intend to continue to follow the administration guidance of the state.
In the absence of a definition of medicallyvulnerable, our medical staff will make a determination based on the most current, medically relevant information, he said in an email.
As for Winchell, she is still waiting for the vaccine and is losing patience.
More: Sarasota County resident Stephen King criticizes Gov. Ron DeSantis over vaccine clinic
Two weeks after her initial inquiry, she was asked if there was any progress or if shed been able to get an exception.
No, I have not been able to get anywhere, she said. Im beyond frustrated at this point and Ive called hospitals, my doctors, the governor and my representative.
This storycomes from Aspirations Journalism, an initiative of The Patterson Foundation and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune to inform, inspire and engage the community to take action on issues related to Conquering COVID.
As of Thursday, Feb. 25:
Florida:About 2.8 million had been vaccinated. Of those, about 1.5 million had received the second dose.
Sarasota County: 79,411people hadbeen vaccinated. Of those, 36,397 had received the second dose.
Manatee County: 49,802 had been vaccinated. Of those, 24,819 had received the second dose.
Waiting in line in Sarasota County:Vaccinations are beingscheduled up to number 42,977.
When Hilda Bastian and I first caught up over Skype to talk about Covid-19 vaccines last autumn, she showed me the boxes and unfinished rooms in her new home in Victoria, Australia. Shed been so busy tracking the global vaccine effort, she hadnt had time to settle in.
Bastian an expert in analyzing clinical trial data, founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration, and a former National Institutes of Health official has gone down rabbit holes before. There was the time she traveled the US on her own dime to research and take historical photos for a Wikipedia list of African American mathematicians.
But her obsession with vaccines in this pandemic has been especially fruitful: Shes called the race right at just about every turn.
Last July, she warned that side effects for some Covid-19 vaccines may be more severe than were used to with other shots. At the time, she says, I copped flak for it. Also last July, when the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine was the focal point of media coverage, she praised the rigor of clinical trials for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine the first to receive emergency authorization use in the US and said it was the one to watch.
On the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, she was among the first to spot the inconsistencies and issues with the clinical trials back in June. She also supported emergency use authorization for Covid-19 vaccines last August, when it was still controversial to do so.
With all her foresight, Bastian has become something of a Zeynep Tufekci on pandemic vaccines. Like the prescient computer programmer turned sociologist, Bastian who does this work independently and without pay has seen the state of play more clearly than many others. Her blogs, articles, and Twitter account might also be the most comprehensive look at just about everything published on Covid-19 vaccines anywhere. (She also fills
The Covid-19 vaccine project was born out of concern for her sons, one of whom is immunocompromised and at higher risk of coronavirus complications. I wanted to do something useful, and I decided early on I thought that it was likely there would be vaccines, Bastian told me recently.
But another motivation was frustration: The myopic focus in Western media on Europes and Americas vaccine development and rollout missed what was happening in most of the world in countries like China, Russia, and Cuba, Bastian said. And so much of the coverage was uncritical of vaccine developers marketing hype. ... You couldnt get an accurate perspective of what was going on, without putting a ton of time into it.
Nearly a year into her project, I caught up with Bastian to ask where our blind spots are now and how she predicts the vaccine story and the pandemic will unfold. She talked about the need for health officials to acknowledge that coronavirus vaccines have potentially big differences in efficacy and adverse events, a time in the future when we may need Covid-19 vaccine boosters every year, and the problem of people in rich countries like the US shamelessly hogging vaccines. The transcript of our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Early in the pandemic, you pointed out how multiple rich countries, especially in the West, were getting their pandemic responses wrong. They were not learning from our Asian-Pacific neighbors, especially when anti-virus measures didnt fit our preconceived notions. One example is the great mask debate of 2020. What do you think was driving that inability to learn from the experience of Asian-Pacific countries?
Somebody said that people in many rich countries have got used to thinking that theyve conquered all infectious disease, and so theres this hubris about that, and I think that we found that hubris was more profound than we realized. We felt far too safe, and there was really quite a great degree of arrogance in there.
I [also] started to think, This is just racism, an old colonialist-thinking legacy, discounting Asian science and experience, and thats a large part of what this whole theme is. Just that assumption that you are Americans or Europeans and know best over and over again. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it should be not to think that anymore, and, yet, people keep doing it.
Where do you see that playing out now the discounting of non-Western or lower-income countries and overestimating the wealthier, Western ones?
Its happening with vaccines, especially thinking its all about the vaccines of a few big EuroAmerican multinationals galloping to the worlds rescue. One of the most fascinating stories is Cuba. I mean, theres this really interesting juxtaposition between Cuba and Canada, ironically. In Canada [where the vaccine rollout has been slow] theres a debate about why did they let their capacity to produce vaccines dwindle away to next to nothing.
Cuba had the exact opposite. Cuba had to become self-sufficient at pretty well everything, and that included producing drugs and producing medical teams. Cuba now exports a lot of medical care to poorer countries. The first two of their vaccines are looking really quite good. The first ones just about to start its big phase 3 trial, and theyve got three others coming up behind.
Theyre going to have a massive amount more vaccine than they need. Theyre not going to have any trouble vaccinating their population with home-grown vaccines in 2021. That just does not look remotely like its going to be a problem, and, then, theyre just going to be exporting masses and masses of vaccine.
One vaccine group that there was a ton of hype around and that has under-delivered is Oxford/AstraZeneca. It was supposed to be the vaccine that saved poor countries, but now there are manufacturing problems, and questions about the quality of their clinical trial data, including whether the vaccine even works in the highest-risk groups, like people over 65. You were, I think, first to point out the troubling signs in their clinical trials, back in June, and then followed the story in detail. Where do you think that vaccine is going?
I wouldnt be surprised if the situation got worse, though I hope it will get better. [They went] about their clinical trial program in such a problematic way. [They] overlapped the early phases of their trials too much. They didnt do early phase tests in older people as a result, leaving us struggling now with the results in a way we dont have to with other EuroAmerican vaccines.
The publicly available details about the trial kept changing while it was in progress and didnt even say clearly what the dose was, for example.
The really big question about that is why on earth did the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency [the UKs health regulator] greenlight these plans? Maybe people ceased to be critical enough, and they went over a bit of a cliff.
Whether it turns out to be a good vaccine or not, lets leave that to one side. The clinical trials were, the European Medicines Agency [Europes drug regulator] concluded, sub-optimal. That shouldnt happen. Were lucky the [Food and Drug Administration] insisted on a large trial. Well hear the results soon.
We already saw South Africa halt distribution of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine because of preliminary data suggesting it didnt work as well against the variant that emerged there. If the vaccine doesnt end up being widely distributed in low and middle-income countries, do you think that gap will be filled maybe by the Russian and Chinese vaccines?
[The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine] is already being widely distributed. But China may already have supplied as much as 1 in 5 of the vaccines administered globally. And China and Russia are the ones who are there first with batches of vaccine in a lot of countries.
The role that people were ascribing to AstraZeneca, I thought always was going to be Johnson & Johnson because [theyre] a huge vaccine company. AstraZeneca is not really a vaccine company. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose. They were also doing trials that were seriously geared at international needs. They ran the biggest trial in the most countries, and that matters a lot to people from different ethnic groups.
Even though the actual doses are a bit more expensive [for Johnson & Johnsons vaccine], the cost of actually vaccinating people is enormously lower if youve only got to vaccinate everybody once. And Johnson & Johnson also committed to affordable, nonprofit vaccine for the emergency. Its going to depend a lot on how many doses actually get delivered in the end, and what happens with variants. Now it seems likely Novavax may be as big a supplier as well possibly more than half of the WHO-provided supply.
Another vaccine you put a lot of stock in from the start was the one developed by Pfizer/BioNTech one that got relatively little attention in the US until the big finding of 95 percent efficacy last autumn. Why were you so impressed so early on?
That was because BioNTech was doing such thorough work early on they were developing several versions, and testing them against each other in early trials. They didnt have all their eggs in one basket. Then there was the partnership with Pfizer, which was going to give them an important edge in running a massive clinical trial in a pandemic. You had to have both those things a good vaccine, and a good major trial.
Which vaccine group is the next Pfizer/BioNTech?
Novavax is an important one to watch, if the results continue to be as good as their first ones, which were similar to the mRNA vaccines. Its a more traditional form of vaccine, so theres more capacity to manufacture it.
There are others that could be important globally, like one from Thailand that will be cheap and both profit- and royalty-free for lower-income countries, and another that UNICEF is supporting thats also aiming at preventing infection.
Can we talk a little more about the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V: The data published in The Lancet looked quite impressive taken at face value but you werent convinced. Can you tell me why?
There wasnt the kind of data about possible adverse reactions that have become the scientific standard, for example. Trial participants get asked to record a list of specific possible reactions in the first week things like fever, fatigue, headaches. We know if you dont do that systematically, youll end up with an underestimate and a too-rosy picture of a vaccine. Because they didnt seem to do that, well stay pretty much in the dark on how tolerable this vaccine is for a while. And theres a lot thats not transparent about this trial, because they played it close to the vest with critical details, like the protocol [or pre-established plan] of the trial.
When we saw the report, we could see the age spread, and it was a pretty young group about 90 percent were under 60, so thats not where the greatest burden of suffering from this disease is. It was done in Moscow, so theres little diversity 99 percent of the participants were white, so that was stark, too. There are going to be more trials outside Russia, and thats going to help get data we can more easily compare to other vaccines.
So I guess its pretty fair to say at this point: The vaccine rollout is shaping up to be quite different from what many of us expected.
Yeah, we never really grappled with what weve got, which is, although some people dont seem to want to face it head-on, vaccines with potentially big differences in efficacy and adverse events. So, what are the priorities, then, for the better vaccines versus the vaccines that have less protection and so on? The situation turned out to be far more complex than the experts prepared us for, I think. Communities have a lot of very tough calls to make, under very different levels of urgency.
Most of the trials havent had enough severely ill people to give us a clear picture on how much the vaccines will prevent severe disease, and the differences there might not be as big as other differences. If youre in a community thats very vulnerable to major outbreaks, with a limited supply of vaccines, the differences between them are small compared to the risks to ourselves and our communities of being unvaccinated.
Doesnt this raise questions about health officials who are telling the public all vaccines are equal?
Trying to convince people that the vaccines are all equal isnt going to work. People are making claims that go beyond the solid data we have, and thats a risky proposition. Were going to see the differences in rates of adverse events, for example, pretty quickly for ourselves once we know lots of people getting vaccinated.
Especially when the fear of major outbreaks subsides prematurely and were trying to get younger people to accept vaccination, adverse reactions are going to matter to people.
Moving forward, whats the big vaccine issue youre going to be tracking?
Its still early days for clinical trials, so Ill be tracking those and new boosters against variants, as well as what happens in vaccinated communities. [Im] also watching how the rich countries are cornering vaccines, and those advancing their geopolitics to fill in the gaps its actually quite a horrifying thing.
Very rarely do you see people from one of the rich countries expressing concern that their country may be fully vaccinated within a few months. Im not utopian and that idealistic about it. It was never 100 percent going to happen that way [that the high priority groups in rich and poor countries got vaccinated at the same levels at the same time, per WHO advice], but I hoped at least for something roughly close, and Im really quite shocked how comfortable people are with whats happening.
Some are promoting personal donations to WHO now for vaccines, which just underscores the lack of awareness that the problem is rich countries taking all the doses for ourselves. You cant buy whats already gone from the shelves. There are severe limits to what can be produced this year. Even with recent promises of more money for WHO from rich countries, 2021 looks pretty grim.
In a way, for me, thats the story of the pandemic. We had too many people more concerned about their individual rights or about wearing masks or flying for a vacation, or complaining about the restrictions that they faced, than the consequences of those actions for people more vulnerable than themselves. Now, its playing out [with] vaccines, too.
From a health perspective, why is hoarding so concerning?
We need to reduce the chances of the virus morphing into more dangerous variants vaccines might not protect communities enough from new variants sweeping through. And many of the rich countries will have trouble getting enough people vaccinated anyway. The notion that there can be countries where theres going to be 40-year-olds and 30-year-olds vaccinated while there are terrible outbreaks in other parts of the world, and even the health care practitioners are unprotected, isnt okay on any level.
Even rich countries, though, are having manufacturing and supply issues like Canada, as you mentioned. Will the world be able to maintain a sustained production capacity for vaccines, or will it see spikes and drops for the next while?
It could settle down, particularly if some of the more traditional forms of vaccine, like the one from Novavax, make it into use and are popular and effective. Vaccines that can tap into more of the existing widespread technical capacity should help. And I guess therell be more movement from the big companies that dont yet have a vaccine of their own.
Okay, so now we have multiple effective vaccines on the market, and more coming online soon. But we also have this emerging variant problem and questions about how to use the vaccines weve got. Do we know how this pandemic ends?
No, I dont think we [do]. I dont think theres been a pandemic quite like this because they were either that the thing went through and did its worst and left horrific death in its wake, or the smaller ones in more contained areas that are recent.
But this thing on this scale, while theres this level of antibody-based treatments out there, and vaccines of different efficacy, and all of this stuff that could play in the favor of variants, this situation has never existed before.
I dont think that the past tells us where this is going. [But] I believe the people who are saying that we appear to be on a course to eventually get to the point where we get vaccinated against this each year. The path to global eradication through very high levels of vaccination with a high level of other suppression efforts seems narrow. That could change, though, and I hope it does.
Do you have any predictions for long-lasting effects of the pandemic, how it changes society?
For me, one of the things that is a really huge unknown is what happens with long Covid. When I lived in Germany, I was trying to understand why issues for people with disabilities were so much better in Germany than any place Id ever spent time in, and on a scale that was really quite extraordinary.
Then, I started to read about the history of the disability movement after World War I, that you had such a huge proportion of young men with major disabilities, whether it was sight, limbs missing and to have such a massive proportion of your population suddenly with disabilities, changed societies. It happened again after World War II. So, Im thinking about that again, now.
To some extent, its going to depend on how disabling long Covid turns out to be, and for how many people? Are we looking at a really serious big wave of decades-long disability? Because if we are, that is a really profound, sudden change in societies.
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More covid-19 vaccination appointments are available for eligible residents in San Luis Obispo County.
The window to schedule appointments for next week opened at 9 a.m. Thursday.
The county plans to administer about 10,000 covid-19 vaccine doses next week.
About 5,300 eligible community members can reserve a first-dose appointment, and nearly 4,500 can reserve a second-dose appointment.
Second-dose appointments are currently open to those who got their first dose about a month ago.
For more information on how to make an appointment and check eligibility, click here.
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) Officials at the Shawnee County Health Department said that the vaccine distribution in the county has gone well with the allocation that they have received.
The department currently receives 2,340 doses of the Pfizer vaccine every week from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Shawnee Countys Health Officer Dr. Erin Locke told County Commissioners on Thursday she believed the department expects to get more doses in the coming weeks, but that they have no details on how much that will be or when the county will get them.
The county is currently in phase 2A of its vaccine distribution plan where they continue to vaccinate those 65 and older.
As of last week, Dr. Locke said that nearly 18,000 people 65 and older had been vaccinated.
K-12 staff in Shawnee County are also being vaccinated in phase 2A. All first doses for them will be administered to them by Friday, February 26, and that is more than 4,000 employees.
Dr. Locke said as the county looks to expanding those getting vaccinated in phase 2A, they are looking to include people in childcare and mass transportation next week, which they estimate is less than 500 people.
Thousands of new first-dose COVID-19 vaccination appointments will open for Cook County residents at noon Wednesday.
A total of 5,000 appointments will open for later this week at Triton College and South Suburban College for individuals eligible under Phases 1A and 1B, according to a statement from Cook County Health.
Appointments can be made at vaccine.cookcountyil.gov. Those without internet access or who need assistance scheduling can call 833-308-1988 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Under Phase 1B, the current phase of Illinois' vaccination rollout, people age 65 years and older as well as "frontline essential workers," which includes first responders, education workers like teachers and support staff and grocery store employees, are eligible.
Illinois expects to increase eligibility beginning Feb. 25, allowing for people with "a high-risk medical condition" or comorbidity to be vaccinated, though Chicago and Cook County both announced that they will not be joining the rest of the state in expanding eligibility, citing low supply.
Vaccinations at all Cook County Health sites are by appointment only. Three large-scale vaccination sites have been opened in Cook County: South Suburban College in South Holland, the Tinley Park Convention Center and Triton College in River Grove.
Additional vaccination sites throughout the county are expected to open in the following weeks.
For a complete look at how to make an appointment or receive vaccine information for your area, clickhere.
In addition to the mass vaccination sites, select Jewel-Osco, Mariano's and Walgreen's locations are also among those offering appointments for residents eligible under Phase 1B, as well as federally qualified health centers and hospitals.
To date, we have provided more than 113,000 doses but that is only a fraction of the demand that we have seen," Cook County Health CEO Israel Rocha said in a statement. "Unfortunately, vaccine supply remains extremely limited. We look forward to the day when there is enough vaccine to meet the demand for first and second doses each week."
Residents who are not eligible to receive the vaccine can sign up at vaccine.cookcountyil.gov to receive updates about phases and eligibility.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Qantas Airways does not expect to resume international travel apart from New Zealand until late October after the Australian population is vaccinated for COVID-19, the airlines chief executive said on Thursday.
The Sydney-based airline had been selling seats on international flights from July 1.
But there has been a huge surge in COVID-19 cases around the world since those July flights went on sale in early January, Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said. There were also new coronavirus variants emerging.
Those tickets sold for flights after July 1 and before Oct. 31 are being refunded.
We are now planning for international travel to restart at the end of October this year in line with the day for Australias vaccine rollout to be effectively complete, Joyce said.
Australias immunization program began this week. The government expects vaccine will be made available to anyone who wants it by October.
But Australia plans to administer a second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine 12 weeks after the first. The wait between doses of the Pfizer product is only 3-to-4 weeks. So some of those taking AstraZenca might not be effectively vaccinated by the end of October.
Qantas still expected a material increase in flights between Australia and New Zealand by July, Joyce said.
The Australian government would have final say on the resumption of international travel and would take into account issues including the effectiveness of vaccines on reducing virus transmission, Joyce said.
Were confident that there should be a good case for it opening up in October, he said.
Australia has banned its citizens from leaving the country except under limited circumstances in a bid to prevent them bringing home infections. Most of Australias COVID-19 cases were infected overseas and are diagnosed during 14-days hotel quarantine which are mandatory for travelers on arrival.
Qantas on Thursday posted a 1.47 billion Australian dollar ($1.17 billion) statutory loss for the six months through December and a AU$6.9 billion ($5.5 billion) fall in revenue due to pandemic restrictions.
Across the United States, and the world, the coronavirus seems to be loosening its stranglehold. The deadly curve of cases, hospitalizations and deaths has yo-yoed before, but never has it plunged so steeply and so fast.
Is this it, then? Is this the beginning of the end? After a year of being pummeled by grim statistics and scolded for wanting human contact, many Americans feel a long-promised deliverance is at hand.
We will win against the virus and regain many aspects of our pre-pandemic lives, most scientists now believe. Of the 21 interviewed for this article, all were optimistic that the worst of the pandemic is past. This summer, they said, life may begin to seem normal again.
But of course, theres always a but researchers are also worried that Americans, so close to the finish line, may once again underestimate the virus.
So far, the two vaccines authorized in the United States are spectacularly effective, and after a slow start, the vaccination rollout is picking up momentum. A third vaccine is likely to be authorized shortly, adding to the nations supply.
But it will be many weeks before vaccinations make a dent in the pandemic. And now the virus is shape-shifting faster than expected, evolving into variants that may partly sidestep the immune system.
The latest variant was discovered in New York City only this week, and another worrisome version is spreading at a rapid pace through California. Scientists say a contagious variant first discovered in Britain will become the dominant form of the virus in the United States by the end of March.
The road back to normalcy is potholed with unknowns: how well vaccines prevent further spread of the virus; whether emerging variants remain susceptible enough to the vaccines; and how quickly the world is immunized, so as to halt further evolution of the virus.
But the greatest ambiguity is human behavior. Can Americans desperate for normalcy keep wearing masks and distancing themselves from family and friends? How much longer can communities keep businesses, offices and schools closed?
Covid-19 deaths will most likely never rise quite as precipitously as in the past, and the worst may be behind us. But if Americans let down their guard too soon many states are already lifting restrictions and if the variants spread in the United States as they have elsewhere, another spike in cases may well arrive in the coming weeks.
Scientists call it the fourth wave. The new variants mean were essentially facing a pandemic within a pandemic, said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The United States has now recorded 500,000 deaths amid the pandemic, a terrible milestone. As of Wednesday morning, at least 28.3 million people have been infected.
But the rate of new infections has tumbled by 35 percent over the past two weeks, according to a database maintained by The New York Times. Hospitalizations are down 31 percent, and deaths have fallen by 16 percent.
Yet the numbers are still at the horrific highs of November, scientists noted. At least 3,210 people died of Covid-19 on Wednesday alone. And there is no guarantee that these rates will continue to decrease.
Very, very high case numbers are not a good thing, even if the trend is downward, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Taking the first hint of a downward trend as a reason to reopen is how you get to even higher numbers.
In late November, for example, Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island limited social gatherings and some commercial activities in the state. Eight days later, cases began to decline. The trend reversed eight days after the states pause lifted on Dec. 20.
The viruss latest retreat in Rhode Island and most other states, experts said, results from a combination of factors: growing numbers of people with immunity to the virus, either from having been infected or from vaccination; changes in behavior in response to the surges of a few weeks ago; and a dash of seasonality the effect of temperature and humidity on the survival of the virus.
Parts of the country that experienced huge surges in infection, like Montana and Iowa, may be closer to herd immunity than other regions. But patchwork immunity alone cannot explain the declines throughout much of the world.
The vaccines were first rolled out to residents of nursing homes and to the elderly, who are at highest risk of severe illness and death. That may explain some of the current decline in hospitalizations and deaths.
But young people drive the spread of the virus, and most of them have not yet been inoculated. And the bulk of the worlds vaccine supply has been bought up by wealthy nations, which have amassed one billion more doses than needed to immunize their populations.
Vaccination cannot explain why cases are dropping even in countries where not a single soul has been immunized, like Honduras, Kazakhstan or Libya. The biggest contributor to the sharp decline in infections is something more mundane, scientists say: behavioral change.
Leaders in the United States and elsewhere stepped up community restrictions after the holiday peaks. But individual choices have also been important, said Lindsay Wiley, an expert in public health law and ethics at American University in Washington.
People voluntarily change their behavior as they see their local hospital get hit hard, as they hear about outbreaks in their area, she said. If thats the reason that things are improving, then thats something that can reverse pretty quickly, too.
The downward curve of infections with the original coronavirus disguises an exponential rise in infections with B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, according to many researchers.
We really are seeing two epidemic curves, said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Toronto.
The B.1.1.7 variant is thought to be more contagious and more deadly, and it is expected to become the predominant form of the virus in the United States by late March. The number of cases with the variant in the United States has risen from 76 in 12 states as of Jan. 13 to more than 1,800 in 45 states now. Actual infections may be much higher because of inadequate surveillance efforts in the United States.
Buoyed by the shrinking rates over all, however, governors are lifting restrictions across the United States and are under enormous pressure to reopen completely. Should that occur, B.1.1.7 and the other variants are likely to explode.
Feb. 25, 2021, 7:19 p.m. ET
Everybody is tired, and everybody wants things to open up again, Dr. Tuite said. Bending to political pressure right now, when things are really headed in the right direction, is going to end up costing us in the long term.
Another wave may be coming, but it can be minimized.
Looking ahead to late March or April, the majority of scientists interviewed by The Times predicted a fourth wave of infections. But they stressed that it is not an inevitable surge, if government officials and individuals maintain precautions for a few more weeks.
A minority of experts were more sanguine, saying they expected powerful vaccines and an expanding rollout to stop the virus. And a few took the middle road.
Were at that crossroads, where it could go well or it could go badly, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The vaccines have proved to be more effective than anyone could have hoped, so far preventing serious illness and death in nearly all recipients. At present, about 1.4 million Americans are vaccinated each day. More than 45 million Americans have received at least one dose.
A team of researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle tried to calculate the number of vaccinations required per day to avoid a fourth wave. In a model completed before the variants surfaced, the scientists estimated that vaccinating just one million Americans a day would limit the magnitude of the fourth wave.
But the new variants completely changed that, said Dr. Joshua T. Schiffer, an infectious disease specialist who led the study. Its just very challenging scientifically the ground is shifting very, very quickly.
Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, described herself as a little more optimistic than many other researchers. We would be silly to undersell the vaccines, she said, noting that they are effective against the fast-spreading B.1.1.7 variant.
But Dr. Dean worried about the forms of the virus detected in South Africa and Brazil that seem less vulnerable to the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. (On Wednesday, Johnson & Johnson reported that its vaccine was relatively effective against the variant found in South Africa.)
About 50 infections with those two variants have been identified in the United States, but that could change. Because of the variants, scientists do not know how many people who were infected and had recovered are now vulnerable to reinfection.
South Africa and Brazil have reported reinfections with the new variants among people who had recovered from infections with the original version of the virus.
That makes it a lot harder to say, If we were to get to this level of vaccinations, wed probably be OK, said Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago.
Yet the biggest unknown is human behavior, experts said. The sharp drop in cases now may lead to complacency about masks and distancing, and to a wholesale lifting of restrictions on indoor dining, sporting events and more. Or not.
The single biggest lesson Ive learned during the pandemic is that epidemiological modeling struggles with prediction, because so much of it depends on human behavioral factors, said Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Taking into account the counterbalancing rises in both vaccinations and variants, along with the high likelihood that people will stop taking precautions, a fourth wave is highly likely this spring, the majority of experts told The Times.
Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, said he was confident that the number of cases will continue to decline, then plateau in about a month. After mid-March, the curve in new cases will swing upward again.
In early to mid-April, were going to start seeing hospitalizations go up, he said. Its just a question of how much.
Now the good news.
Despite the uncertainties, the experts predict that the last surge will subside in the United States sometime in the early summer. If the Biden administration can keep its promise to immunize every American adult by the end of the summer, the variants should be no match for the vaccines.
Combine vaccination with natural immunity and the human tendency to head outdoors as weather warms, and it may not be exactly herd immunity, but maybe its sufficient to prevent any large outbreaks, said Youyang Gu, an independent data scientist, who created some of the most prescient models of the pandemic.
Infections will continue to drop. More important, hospitalizations and deaths will fall to negligible levels enough, hopefully, to reopen the country.
Sometimes people lose vision of the fact that vaccines prevent hospitalization and death, which is really actually what most people care about, said Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Even as the virus begins its swoon, people may still need to wear masks in public places and maintain social distance, because a significant percent of the population including children will not be immunized.
Assuming that we keep a close eye on things in the summer and dont go crazy, I think that we could look forward to a summer that is looking more normal, but hopefully in a way that is more carefully monitored than last summer, said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Imagine: Groups of vaccinated people will be able to get together for barbecues and play dates, without fear of infecting one another. Beaches, parks and playgrounds will be full of mask-free people. Indoor dining will return, along with movie theaters, bowling alleys and shopping malls although they may still require masks.
The virus will still be circulating, but the extent will depend in part on how well vaccines prevent not just illness and death, but also transmission. The data on whether vaccines stop the spread of the disease are encouraging, but immunization is unlikely to block transmission entirely.
Its not zero and its not 100 exactly where that number is will be important, said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University. It needs to be pretty darn high for us to be able to get away with vaccinating anything below 100 percent of the population, so thats definitely something were watching.
Over the long term say, a year from now, when all the adults and children in the United States who want a vaccine have received them will this virus finally be behind us?
Every expert interviewed by The Times said no. Even after the vast majority of the American population has been immunized, the virus will continue to pop up in clusters, taking advantage of pockets of vulnerability. Years from now, the coronavirus may be an annoyance, circulating at low levels, causing modest colds.
Many scientists said their greatest worry post-pandemic was that new variants may turn out to be significantly less susceptible to the vaccines. Billions of people worldwide will remain unprotected, and each infection gives the virus new opportunities to mutate.
We wont have useless vaccines. We might have slightly less good vaccines than we have at the moment, said Andrew Read, an evolutionary microbiologist at Penn State University. Thats not the end of the world, because we have really good vaccines right now.
For now, every one of us can help by continuing to be careful for just a few more months, until the curve permanently flattens.
Just hang in there a little bit longer, Dr. Tuite said. Theres a lot of optimism and hope, but I think we need to be prepared for the fact that the next several months are likely to continue to be difficult.
