The severe winter weather in the U.S. is not hitting the Bay Area directly, but its definitely having a significant impact on its COVID-19 vaccine supplies.
Hundreds of thousands of doses that were supposed to arrive in California Friday didnt because of the deep freeze across much of the country.
In total, six million doses that were set to be delivered nationwide are now delayed.
A mass vaccination site on Berger Drive in San Jose is still administering about 1,400 COVID vaccine shots a day and many people, including Marciel Cardenas, had heard about the vaccine shipment delay and were relieved to get their shot Friday.
Im lucky, said Cardenas. Im a person who is very, very lucky.
How long the luck holds out depends on that severe weather. Governor Gavin Nesom said about 702,000 doses -- mainly Moderna -- were delayed.
We dont have the exact dates. A lot that were going to arrive today didnt so there is going to be some adjustment, he said. There is going to be some impact ... a lot of calls, a lot of stress.
But the presidents COVID-19 task force gave an encouraging update.
One point four million doses are already in transit today. And we anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week with most being delivered within the next several days, said Andry Slavitt.
I just want to reassure everyone that here anybody that has had an appointment to date has been vaccinated, said mass vaccination site lead Rupalee Patel. So its important to come out and get vaccinated if you do have an appointment.
Santa Clara County Public Health acknowledges it has not received all its expected shipments but has enough to fulfill appointments until early next week. After that, a lot depends on the weather.
I think its really important to get these vaccines in before things start to get delayed with this horrible weather that everybody else is having to experience, said vaccine recipient Eileen.
DHEC's vaccine map shows two providers outside of the local health department in Newberry County.
NEWBERRY COUNTY, S.C. Sammy Singley of Newberry County will be fully vaccinated in March.
"I go to the VA in Columbia because I'm a veteran," said Singley. "The process was easy for me."
DHEC's vaccine mapshows two providers outside of the local health department in Newberry County. Cooperative Health is hosting a limited vaccination clinic Saturday at Pediatrics of Newberry, and they are no longer taking appointments.
"I looked on my tablet last week, and I found there were no places in Newberry giving the shot," said Singley.
According to DHEC, 4,622 vaccines have been administered in Newberry County. Singley says the lack of supply makes the process harder for those who may not have transportation or internet access.
"We want everyone to get the vaccine," said DHEC's director Dr. Edward Simmer. "If you're having trouble getting it in your county, you can go across the line and get it."
ONTARIO The Ohio District 5 Area Agency on Aging has announced the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services have put together a series of COVID-19 vaccine town halls.
The program will include medical experts, community leaders, and public health professionals to address common concerns and questions from specific communities.
Ohio wants to ensure that communities have the information they need to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines.
COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. There have been no shortcuts in the vaccine development process. The development process for COVID-19 vaccines involved several steps comparable with those used to develop other vaccines such as the flu or chickenpox vaccine, which have successfully protected millions of Ohioans for years.
Your questions will be answered at Ohio's COVID-19 Vaccine Town Halls. Hear from medical experts, community leaders, and public health professionals.
Certain groups of Ohioans, with limited access to healthcare, may be more hesitant to get COVID-19 vaccines, wanting to wait and see how it goes for others who are receiving their vaccines.
Ohio wants to ensure that all communities have the information they need to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines.
Some communities have had negative experiences with the healthcare system due to lack of access, discrimination, and language barriers. Ohio is making an effort to bridge the gap and address health inequities that lead to disparities in health outcomes.
Watch livestreams on Facebook, YouTube, and at coronavirus.ohio.gov/townhall at the following dates and times:
o Monday, Feb. 22, 6:30 p.m. African American Ohioans.
o Tuesday, Feb. 23, 6:30 p.m. Hispanic/Latino Ohioans.
o Monday, March 1, 6:30 p.m. Asian American and Pacific Islander Ohioans.
o Tuesday, March 2, 6:30 p.m. Rural Ohioans.
How to watch: Watch live or on-demand after the event:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OHdeptofhealth/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OhioDepartmentofHealth1
Online - https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/townhall
Watch later on TV: Watch later on the Ohio Channel. Find your local channel by checking with your PBS station or television provider.
The Ohio District 5 Area Agency on Aging is located at 2131 Park Avenue West in Ontario, provides leadership, collaboration, coordination and services to older adults, people with disabilities, their caregivers & resource networks that support individual choice, independence and dignity.
Do you want to know the who, what, where, why and how in local news? Become a Source member to support the most diverse coverage of our region.
Despite divisive politics, conspiracy theories and a botched U.S. rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, Americans are hungry for information about vaccines, new data from Google reveals.
Over the past month, "Where to get covid vaccine" was the most-Googled question in the U.S., the search giant told CBS MoneyWatch. Pennsylvania was the top state searching for "where to get covid vaccine," followed by Delaware and Washington. The term "covid vaccine near me" was searched three times more frequently than queries related to testing.
Google, which claims more than 90% of internet searches in the U.S., aggregated and analyzed a broad sample of search data in all 50 states and analyzed geographic patterns. The company discovered demand for authoritative vaccination information, including strong interest in where to get the vaccine, how it works and if it's safe.
In West Virginia, for example, astate lauded for its efficient vaccine rollout, the most popular virus-related searches are "is the covid vaccine safe" and "covid vaccine side effects." As vaccinations spread across the U.S. in February, searches for the term "arm sore," a side effect of the vaccine, also spiked.
Google extracted vaccination and testing search data primarily to help public health agencies, the company said.
"We work in partnership with the CDC, [the World Health Organization] and state agencies," said Danny Sullivan, Google's public liaison for search. "Our work in the U.S. is a model for the world overall. We're able to surface information ... to give you, for example, testing locations or vaccination locations, side-effect information and symptoms information."
According to anonymous search data from each state, these are the 10 most frequently searched questions related to COVID-19 vaccines:
Safety is a key concern for most Americans. In the past month, the phrase "Is the covid vaccine safe for..." is searched along with the keywords:
The COVID-19 vaccine has not been extensively tested in children, but according to Dr. Bob Lahita, chairman of medicine at St. Joseph University Hospital, thePfizer vaccine is "extremely safe."
Vaccine search data also indicates that Americans are still anxious about potential vaccine side effects:
People are also apprehensive about how the vaccine might interact with prescription and over-the-counter medications. These are the top keywords appearing alongside searches for "vaccine":
Sullivan is optimistic about the recent shift in search interest in vaccinations. "There's a degree of hope just in the fact that people are searching for the vaccine," he said.
A North Bergen resident is administered the COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 16.
A North Bergen resident is administered the COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 16.
Eligible North Bergen residents can get vaccinated at the recreation center at 6300 Meadowview Avenue. To register, call 201-392-2084. When an appointment is available, the township will reach out to registered individuals.
The vaccine distribution site was set up nearly two weeks ago. Vaccinations had been administered at municipal buildings since the first doses of the Moderna vaccine were given to healthcare personnel on Dec. 24.
The Health Department is receiving only about 400 doses per week. As of Feb. 14, about 1,800 first doses had been administered and 360 second doses.
Recipients must receive the doses 28 days apart. According to the township, more than 500 residents are on the waiting list.
Increasing supply
Ever since vaccines were approved by the federal government, the township of North Bergen has been pushing to secure our own supply of the vaccination, said Mayor Nicholas Sacco. Thanks to the efforts made by our Health Department and Township administration, we have been able to do secure a steady supply and have been providing approximately 400 weekly vaccines to eligible personnel in our community. We are still working tirelessly to increase our supply and expand our vaccination operations.
The vaccines are being distributed immediately to residents who qualify according to the states regulations. Currently eligible are healthcare personnel, first responders and individuals at high risk, including residents over age 65 and those under age 65 with medical conditions.
The township has increased capacity as the state provides more doses. According to the township, the distribution site can administer at least twice as many vaccines as soon as the state increases its allotment.
Qualified residents can put their names on a waiting list by calling the Health Department at 201-392-2084. The township has offered a phone number to accommodate residents without the internet, including seniors and Spanish speaking residents.
In the upcoming days we will be launching an online portal for residents to register, Sacco said. Those residents with no internet access can still call our Health Department at 201-392-2084 to be placed on the waiting list.
For updates on this and other stories, check www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Daniel Israel can be reached at disrael@hudsonreporter.com.
By the thousands, U.S. service members are refusing or putting off the COVID-19 vaccine as frustrated commanders scramble to knock down internet rumors and find the right pitch that will persuade troops to get the shot.
Some Army units are seeing as few as one-third agree to the vaccine. Military leaders searching for answers believe they have identified one potential convincer: an imminent deployment. Navy sailors on ships heading out to sea last week, for example, were choosing to take the shot at rates exceeding 80% to 90%.
Air Force Major General Jeff Taliaferro, vice director of operations for the Joint Staff, told Congress on Wednesday that "very early data" suggests that just up to two-thirds of the service members offered the vaccine have accepted.
That's higher than the rate for the general population, which a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation put at roughly 50%. But the significant number of forces declining the vaccine is especially worrisome because troops often live, work and fight closely together in environments where social distancing and wearing masks, at times, are difficult.
The military's resistance also comes as troops are deploying to administer shots at vaccination centers around the country and as leaders look to American forces to set an example for the nation.
"We're still struggling with what is the messaging and how do we influence people to opt in for the vaccine," said Brigadier General Edward Bailey, the surgeon for Army Forces Command. He said that in some units just 30% have agreed to take the vaccine, while others are between 50% and 70%. Forces Command oversees major Army units, encompassing about 750,000 Army, Reserve and National Guard soldiers at 15 bases.
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where several thousand troops are preparing for future deployments, the vaccine acceptance rate is about 60%, Bailey said. That's "not as high as we would hope for front-line personnel," he said.
Bailey has heard all the excuses.
"I think the most amusing one I heard was, 'The Army always tells me what to do, they gave me a choice, so I said no'," he said.
Service leaders have vigorously campaigned for the vaccine. They have held town halls, written messages to the force, distributed scientific data, posted videos, and even put out photos of leaders getting vaccinated.
For weeks, the Pentagon insisted it did not know how many troops were declining the vaccine. On Wednesday they provided few details on their early data.
Officials from individual military services, however, said in interviews with The Associated Press that refusal rates vary widely, depending on a service member's age, unit, location, deployment status and other intangibles.
The variations make it harder for leaders to identify which arguments for the vaccine are most persuasive. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed emergency use of the vaccine, so it's voluntary. But Defense Department officials say they hope that soon may change.
"We cannot make it mandatory yet," Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, commander of the Navy's 2nd Fleet, said last week. "I can tell you we're probably going to make it mandatory as soon as we can, just like we do with the flu vaccine."
About 40 Marines gathered recently in a California conference room for an information session from medical staff. One officer, who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Marines are more comfortable posing questions about the vaccine in smaller groups.
The officer said one Marine, citing a widely circulated and false conspiracy theory, said: "I heard that this thing is actually a tracking device." The medical staff, said the officer, quickly debunked that theory, and pointed to the Marine's cellphone, noting that it's an effective tracker.
Other frequent questions revolved around possible side effects or health concerns, including for pregnant women. Army, Navy and Air Force officials say they hear much the same.
The Marine Corps is a relatively small service and troops are generally younger. Similar to the general population, younger service members are more likely to decline or ask to wait. In many cases, military commanders said, younger troops say they have had the coronavirus or known others who had it, and concluded it was not bad.
"What they're not seeing is that 20-year-olds who've actually gotten very sick, have been hospitalized or die, or the folks who appear to be fine but then it turns out they've developed pulmonary and cardiac abnormalities," Bailey said.
One ray of hope has been deployments.
Lewis, based in Norfolk, Virginia, said last week that sailors on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is operating in the Atlantic, agreed to get the shot at a rate of about 80%. Sailors on the USS Iwo Jima and Marines in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who also are deploying, had rates of more than 90%.
Bailey said the Army is seeing opportunities to reduce the two-week quarantine period for units deploying to Europe if service members are largely vaccinated and the host nation agrees. U.S. Army Europe may cut the quarantine time to five days if 70% of the unit is vaccinated, and that incentive could work, he said.
The acceptance numbers drop off among those who are not deploying, military officials said.
General James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, used his own experience to encourage troops to be vaccinated. "When they asked me how it felt, I said it was a lot less painful than some of the meetings I go to in the Pentagon."
Colonel Jody Dugai, commander of the Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital at Fort Polk, Louisiana, said that so far conversations at the squad level, with eight to 10 peers, have been successful, and that getting more information helps.
At the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Brigadier General David Doyle, has a dual challenge. As base commander, he must persuade the nearly 7,500 soldiers on base to get the shot and he needs to ensure that the thousands of troops that cycle in and out for training exercises are safe.
Doyle said the acceptance rate on his base is between 30% and 40%, and that most often it's the younger troops who decline.
"They tell me they don't have high confidence in the vaccine because they believe it was done too quickly," he said. Top health officials have attested to the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.
Doyle said it appears peers are often more influential than leaders in persuading troops a sentiment echoed by Bailey, the Army Forces Command surgeon.
"We're trying to figure out who the influencers are," Bailey said. "Is it a squad leader or platoon sergeant in the Army? I think it probably is. Someone who is more of their age and interacts with them more on a regular basis versus the general officer who takes his picture and says, 'I got the shot.'
Here's how mRNA viruses like COVID-19 mutate, and why certain viruses are harder to develop vaccines for. USA TODAY
If you think the COVID-19 vaccine rollout seems chaotic and incomprehensible, that the numbers don't add up and allocationsdon't make sense, you're not alone.
Even people who study this for a living are at a loss.
None of us know whats going on, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
He has been trying to understand howfigures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and the states fit together, but he cant.
I dont understand why theres not more transparency, he said. They could easily hold a webinar every day to go through the numbers this is how many boxes we shipped, this is how many boxes are coming next week. The more they dont do that, the more acrimony thats created between states and the federal government.
Overallthe trends are positive, but the pace will need to intensify significantly to meet deadlines the White House announced this week.
The White House says winter weather affecting parts of the country has slowed down vaccinations. This comes as the Biden administration admits if Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets approved, it will be slow rollout. (Feb. .17) AP Domestic
Tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: How many people have been vaccinated in the US?
Since Jan. 25, COVID-19 vaccine distribution from the federal government has increased 57%. As of this week, it'sup to 13.5 million doses shipped a week.
"We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,"Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a task force briefing Wednesday.
To get the scheduled two doses of the authorized vaccines to 300 million people, distribution from the federal government will need to ramp up by about one-third. At the current level, it would take until September.
Given how fast things have been increasing, that seemsfeasible. But no actual data on future increases has been announced by the White House.
If things appear to be on track, why is there so much chaos at the state level, with long lines, people unable to get appointments and clinics closing because of lack of vaccine?
There are severalreasons. One is a lack of federal transparency about vaccine supply and shipments and continued fluctuation of vaccine deliveries, all of whichconfuse and confound states.
Public health officials are frustrated over thelack of clarity. It's impossible to know exactly how much vaccine is being shipped and to where and to whom it hasbeen administered information they need so they can plan.
'It's like we're trying our best to help the virus': A fourth wave is looming if US fails to contain COVID-19 variants, experts say
Vaccine is delivered, and tallied,through several separate programs, including ones for states, nursing homes and long-term-care facilities,Federally Qualified Health Centersandprivate pharmacies. Some doses are controlled by states themselves andsome by federal programs.
The National Governors Association sent a public letter to President Joe Biden this week asking for more clarity, including"visibility into the federal vaccination efforts at the facility level happening in our borders."
The letter cited "the anxiety created by the demand and supply of the vaccine" and asked for better reporting to avoid confusion.
States also shoulder a share of the blame.Experts say theyopened up vaccinations to ever-widening groups too quickly, eventhough supplies werein short supply.
We knew all along there would be a limited number of doses at the beginning and we would have to prioritize, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials."Somewhere in there, the vaccine got overpromised."
That hasn't always happened.
The CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices spent months creating a carefully designedseries of vaccine eligibility tiers from the most vulnerable to the least.
Since Jan. 25, COVID-19 vaccine distribution from the federal government has increased 57%.(Photo: John Locher, AP)
Luck, foresight and science:How an unheralded team developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time
Some state officials promptly ignored the recommendations and began opening up vaccinationto broader groups of people, Plesciasaid.
The immunization advisory committee guidelinesfrom December saidfront-line heath care workers and long-term-care facility residents would be first in linein what was known as Phase 1a.Next wouldcome front-line essential workers and people 75 and older, in Phase 1b. People 65 and older and people with high-risk medical conditions would be in a larger Phase 1c.
Just one week after the first COVID-19 vaccine wasdistributed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis overrode the committee guidelines and unilaterally declaredhis state was prioritizing people 65 and older.
That resulted in long lines, seniors waiting overnight for vaccine, crashing appointment websites and general chaos as Florida's more than 4 million seniors clamored to getvaccinated.
In 35 states plus the District of Columbia,people65 and older can seek an appointment now, according to the White House. But other stateshaven't moved beyondvaccinating essential workers and those 75 and above.
Wisconsin's Legislature is debating this week whether to add teachers to Phase 1a.
Early finger-pointing that states were going too slow may have driven the rush for speed and bypassing of the guidelines.In any case, he said, vaccine got overpromised.
We suddenly skipped through the ACIP guidelines and told all these people they were eligible, he said. "I dont know if that was the most judicious thing to do. It probably would have been better if wed held our ground."
'It doesn't make you a bad person': Vaccine envy is normal, but here's when it can become dangerous
Other states, such as Georgia,have resisted widely broadening who is eligible for vaccines, saidGlen Nowak, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Health and Risk Communications and a former communication director for the National Immunization Program at the CDC.
The governor there has been consistent saying there isn't yet enough vaccine for the first priority groups, so he's not going to open it up yet. "He's saying'I hear you, I want to do that,but we don't have enough vaccine right now,'" Nowak said.
To make the rollout seem as if it's under control, states need to manage expectations. "Broadening it isn't going to help, it's going to make things worse," he said.
Whats needed are honest messages that widespread vaccination cant happen overnight. Though not everyone will get a vaccine immediately, everyone will get one eventually, said Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Groupand editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine.
The cure is tincture of time, he said. But, he acknowledged, thats easy for me to say now that Ive now gotten both my doses.
A big part of the problem, since before the first doses of the vaccine were shipped, has been the lack of clear, consistent communication, experts say. That hasmade the job of explaining what's happening now with the vaccine supply even harder.
Even the man who played a key role in making COVID-19 vaccines possible, Moncef Slaoui, says messaging was a major failure of Operation Warp Speed's otherwise stellar work.
The rollout "was a huge communications failure, honestly," Slaoui said at a recent New York Academies of Science conference.
USA TODAY analysis: What went wrong with COVID-19 vaccine distribution and how it has tarnished the 'miracle'
There was no way everyone in America was going to be immunized immediately, he said, but that message didn't get out. Millions of Americans have expressed anger and frustration about something Slaoui and his team thought they had clearly explained.
"Every single time we said, 'We will produce enough vaccine doses to immunize the U.S. population by the summer of 2021.' It is understood in that statement that it's going to take six, seven months to have enough vaccine to immunize everybody," he said."But, in fact,I think we should have communicated much, much better that there will not be enough vaccine for everybodyimmediately."
It's going to take time to overcome that deficit of trust and information, said Dr. Kelly Moore,deputy director of the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition.
"We will never recapture the opportunities that were lost tobuild a solid foundation for the vaccination program before vaccines began rolling out," she said,"but were getting back on track, and the signs give me hope.
Contact Elizabeth Weise at eweise@usatoday.com
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The parking lot at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles serves as a drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine site open into the night.
By Jon CohenFeb. 16, 2021 , 5:45 PM
SAN DIEGOTwenty days into the new year, cars were entering a parking lot bumper-to-bumper in the shadow of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres baseball team. Arms waving, attendants directed the cars into three lines, which split into four more, and yelled as though the first pitch had already been thrown. Im going to load you up, Im sending you 10, you can stack them! one attendant hollered to another.
But the Padres dont play in January.
Instead, Petco Park was home field for this citys drive-thru COVID-19 vaccinations. For 9 days straight, health workers there had been injecting about 5000 people between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Run by infectious disease clinician Shira Abeles of UC San Diego Healthdubbed the vaccine czar by the 300 people she manages at the Petco operationit is the citys largest vaccination site, focusing on health care workers and anyone 75 or older. Cars moved through stations where workers checked people in, injected them, and then watched them for at least 15 minutes to make sure they didnt have immediate side effects.
The traffic flow was slow but steadyand no one honked. Above their masks, the visitors eyes were smiling. If vaccine hesitancy has an opposite, this was it.
By the end of January, nearly 100 million people around the world had received COVID-19 vaccines, and more than 1 million were getting shots each day in the United States and China. The effort was lagging in Europe, and staggering global inequities remain. The World Health Organization noted on 5 February that 75% of vaccinations have occurred in 10 countries. About 130 countries had yet to inject anyone with a COVID-19 vaccine. Still, the vaccines, shown in clinical trials to have efficacies of up to 95% against symptomatic disease, have finally given the world the prospect of an escape from COVID-19s long siege. There is so much hope, Abeles says.
Now, as vaccination campaigns gain speed, a raft of pressing questions have arisen: Does being immunized mean you wont spread the virus? When will the campaigns begin to curb the pandemic and allow daily life to return to normal? And what do the new variants of SARS-CoV-2, able to spread faster or evade immune responses, mean for the promise of vaccines? The reality here is this virus is evolving, says Lawrence Corey, a virologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, who co-leads the U.S. governmentsupportednetwork that tests COVID-19 vaccines.
Still, answers are emerging.
One month into the U.S. vaccination campaign, Abeles thinks she has seen its effect already. Beginning in mid-December 2020 some 11,000 UC San Diego Health employees began to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna vaccine, both of which contain messenger RNA (mRNA) that directs the bodys cells to make the surface protein from SARS-CoV-2, spike, to trigger an immune response. Despite reports of health care workers hesitant to get the vaccines, 96% of Abeless colleagues accepted the shots. Each week, those employees are tested for SARS-CoV-2, which exploded in San Diego county starting in December, even if they are feeling healthy.
At the peak, UC San Diego Health was detecting 20 to 30 infections each day in employees, many asymptomatic. By the third week in January, the number had fallen to just a handful. Abeles emphasizes that the evidence is far from conclusive, but says we are extremely hopeful that the link between the drop and the mass vaccination is real.
More compelling, if still preliminary, evidence comes from Israel, home to the worlds most aggressive and best studied immunization campaign so far. A country of 9 million people, Israel has universal health care provided mainly through four HMOs with excellent electronic medical records. The Israeli government negotiated with Pfizer to rapidly roll out its mRNA shots in exchange for sharing data about their impact with the company. Between 19 December and 4 February, 39% of Israelis had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Per capita, that is far higher coverage than in any country other than the similarly small United Arab Emirates (36%).
Nationally, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations appear to be dropping faster among people 60 or older, the first to receive the vaccines, than among the 40- to 60-year-old segment. And in a 1 February press release, the Maccabi Research and Innovation Centeran arm of one of the four HMOsnoted it had tracked 132,015 of its members over age 60 who had received a vaccine dose in the first 9 days of the immunization campaign. Diagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections in that group peaked about 10 days after immunizations began. By day 28, when most people had received their second, booster dose, diagnoses had fallen by two-thirds, and COVID-19related hospitalization had dropped from a daily high of seven people to one. In the general population, the team notes, reported cases dropped much more slowly.
Israels aggressive COVID-19 vaccine rollout targeted the elderly first, and an analysis of 132,015people 60 and older who received their initial dose in late December 2020 suggests the shots already started reducing the toll of the pandemic in that country 1 month later.
(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Data) Maccabi Research and Innovation Center
That finding constitutes persuasive evidence of real-world benefit of vaccination, especially since prior behavioral restrictions in Israel did not seem to selectively protect those over 60, says Roby Bhattacharyya, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In the United States, people living in long-term care facilities, most of them elderly, and facilities staff were put at the front of the line for vaccines. Those residents account for about 40% of the countrys COVID-19 deaths, so the impact of vaccinations on their hospitalization and mortality will probably be seen within a month or two, certainly, says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Florida (UF).
The effect may have already become visible. COVID-19 cases have been dropping nationwide since December, including at nursing homes. Interventions other than vaccines explain some of the fall. But a county-level comparison of facilities that got their first shots from 18 to 27 December and those that didnt showed the drop in daily cases was more than twice as large in the earlier vaccinated facilities (a 48% decline versus 21%).
Blunting COVID-19 cases nationwide is a long game, however, especially in a country such as the United States, where the vaccine rollout has not been as fast or uniform as in Israel. We have a big country. We have a lot of transmission, Longini says. I dont think well see a big impact on numbers of cases from vaccines until the summer.
If vaccines created whats known as sterilizing immunity all the time, no vaccinated person would transmit the virus. Vaccinated grandparents could safely play with their unimmunized grandchildren. Countries could welcome visitors who had proof of vaccination with little fear of introducing new viral variants or reigniting outbreaks.
That level of assurance is a tall order. Few vaccines, for any infectious diseases, create sterilizing immunityeven the most effective ones. The inactivated poliovirus vaccine developed by Jonas Salk did little to block infection or transmission of the virus, yet it powerfully prevented paralytic polio. By 1961, 6 years after it was licensed, only 54% of the U.S. population had received the vaccine, yet paralytic polio cases had dropped by more than 90%.
For practical reasons, the recent COVID-19 vaccine efficacy trials evaluated mainly the frequency of symptomatic disease, typically detected after participants feel sick and get a virus test. Its tougher to identify all SARS-CoV-2 infections, which remain invisible if they dont cause symptoms. Yet models suggest asymptomatic cases account for about half of transmission, so tracking them among vaccine recipients is key. There are easy ways to look at transmission and hard ways, says Ruth Karron, who runs the Johns Hopkins University Center for Immunization Research.
One approach, says John Mascola, who heads the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is to ask: If youre vaccinated, could you have the virus in your nose and shed it? Thats how researchers studying the AstraZenecaUniversity of Oxford vaccine recently tried to get at transmission. In a U.K. efficacy trial of that vaccine, participants did weekly nasal swabs at home. Results showed vaccination reduced asymptomatic infections by 49.3%. The data suggest, but do not prove, that the vaccine stymies viral spread; misleading news coverage claimed the vaccine had cut transmission by two-thirds. Moderna has also reported a similar decline in asymptomatic infections after just one dose of its mRNA vaccine in a subset of its large efficacy trial, which found overall that the vaccine had 94% efficacy against mild disease.
Several COVID-19 vaccine studies have opted for a simpler, if less precise, look at the issue. They took repeated blood samples from people in both the placebo and vaccinated groups at different time points. The trials tested for antibodies against the viral N protein, which are triggered by infection but not by most vaccines. If the placebo group has more positive N antibody tests than the vaccinated group, that would suggest the vaccine had cut asymptomatic infectionsand therefore transmission. No group has yet reported results from those serosurveys.
Early data from Israel indicate vaccinated people who nevertheless became infected with SARS-CoV-2 have reduced levels of virus, which may make them less contagious. A research team from the Maccabi group and the Israel Institute of Technology measured viral loads in nasal samples taken from more than 1000 people who became infected between 12 to 28 days after their first dose, the period in which immunity begins to build. The amount of virus found was significantly less than in a similar group of unvaccinated, infected Israelis, the group reported on 8 February in a preprint on bioRxiv.
Israel has vaccinated more of its population than any countryand has already seen encouraging drops in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Myron Cohen, an infectious disease clinician at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues at the COVID-19 Prevention Network have a proposal at NIAID to study the question in college students. One group would receive the vaccine immediately and a control population would get it weeks later. Both groups of students would swab their noses daily to assess whether there are differences in the rate of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections and levels of the virus. Withholding vaccine would be ethically dodgy if doses were plentiful, but most college students are still not eligible for vaccination, and they are less likely to develop serious COVID-19 than older adults. Cohen is confident the trial will receive the necessary ethical approvals.
Knowing whether vaccines stop transmission may not matter to government officials. In the next 6 months, were probably going to have a menu of vaccines and each is going to have characteristics related to the cold chain, number of doses required, reactogenicity, and efficacy, Karron notes. Were going to make policy decisions about use based on all of those characteristics. I dont think that some superimprecise measure of transmission is going to be one of the things that goes into our calculus.
But Cohen contends that the difficult studies to evaluate whether immunized people spread the virus are worth doing. Unless we answer this question, we are a masked society. We need to address this to become maskless.
That depends on the definition of normal. To many people now, it means herd immunity, in which a high percentage of a population has either been vaccinated or naturally infected, leaving too few susceptible hosts for a virus to continue to spread. Its such a clean, beautiful concept, the tipping point idea, that if we can just get there, the virus will go away, and then we can just go about our business as if its gone, Longini says. Its kind of a pie-in-the-sky concept thats very, very attractive.
The idea of herd immunity, a term imported from livestock veterinarians, has become more beguiling as huge swaths of populations in parts of the world recover from SARS-CoV-2 infections, leaving them with some degree of immunity. In India, for example, serosurveys have found antibodies to the virus in about half of people in the city of Delhi and the entire state of Karnataka. And though no one is claiming this meets the herd immunity threshold, new cases have recently dropped precipitously.
Still unclear is what percentage of a population needs to be vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 before herd immunity kicks in. Early predictions were between 60% and 70% and then rose as high as 90%but thats all based on modeling or even guesswork. Anthony Fauci, who heads NIAID, has been taken to task for changing his own estimates. Recently on CNN, Fauci acknowledged that: I think we all have to be honest and humble. Nobody really knows for sure.
Recent developments have been sobering. The COVID-19 vaccines rolling out are highly effective against hospitalization and death, but their success against mild and moderate symptoms plummets when faced with viral variants that can evade vaccine-triggered antibodies. And herd immunity, even if it emerged, could easily fade as immunity waned or new variants arose.
Yet there is growing recognition that even if widespread vaccination cant halt the spread of the virus, it promises a major step back toward normal. Preventing severe disease and death in the elderly and people with comorbidities such as obesity and hypertensionthe most vulnerableis still a resounding victory over the virus, many epidemiologists say.
A nursing home resident in Greece thanks a social worker after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
Large swaths of the population might still become infected and develop minor disease or asymptomatic infections. That prospect worries some scientists and clinicians, who note that even mild cases can lead to the long COVID phenomenon of lingering symptoms. Hospitals, though, will not become overwhelmed with emergency cases and deaths will become increasingly rare.
To Corey, those metrics are the most relevant. When will the ICU use and all of this decant so that were at the point where, yes, we can sort of tolerate this? he asks.
Were not going to shut down this virus and end transmission, agrees Nicole Lurie, an adviser to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. We have to make a decision as a society about how much of this we can and want to live with. Society lives with influenza, after all, which remains endemic despite a vaccine. But Lurie stresses that flu is not an appealing model. It kills up to 60,000 people per year in the United States alonea toll she would not want to accept from COVID-19.
Still, immunologist Brigitte Autran, a member of Frances Scientific Committee on COVID-19 Vaccines, says herd immunity isnt needed to bring back normalcy. The first goal is to have individual protection, and by summing the individual protections, to have a protection of the society that will allow countries to come back to almost real, true lives.
That concern quickly moved from the theoretical to the real world when multicountry studies recently revealed several vaccines were least effective against symptomatic COVID-19 in South Africa. Thats where 95% of infections now stem from a viral variant that in test tube studies could dodge antibodies against the viral spike protein. Novavaxs protein-based vaccine went from 89.3% protection in the United Kingdom, where the variant is rare, to 49.4% in South Africa. And South Africa even halted its planned rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which consists of a harmless viral vector carrying the gene for the spike protein, after a small trial there indicated the vaccine had 22% efficacy.
Still, the vaccine-triggered immune responses may retain plenty of muscle, enough to prevent serious symptoms. A third vaccine, from Johnson & Johnson, also fell short against mild disease in South Africa, but it prevented almost all severe diseasewith no hospitalizations or deaths. (The AstraZeneca-Oxford and Novavax studies were too small to address impact on severe disease.)
One explanation could be that the level of key spike antibodies, those capable of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2s infectivity, jumped so high after vaccination that there was a cushion: Even though several labs reported that the variant in South Africa reduced the impact of the vaccine-induced antibodies by up to ninefold, if those immune fighters rise to high enough levels they may still pack enough punch to thwart serious disease.
Other arms of the immune system less affected by the mutations in the variant likely contribute to protection. Pfizer and BioNTech have shown their mRNA vaccine triggers a steep increase in key T cells. One set, which carries the CD8 receptor, targets and destroys cells that SARS-CoV-2 manages to infect. Underscoring the importance of those cells, Pfizer and BioNTech found that even though neutralizing antibody levels triggered by their vaccine were minimal in the 21 days between the first and second doses, it still gave 52.4% protection against disease during that period. Vaccine-induced T cell responses are important for COVID-19 vaccines, particularly for resistant variants that might partially evade neutralizing antibodies, suggests Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School, whose lab has documented the importance of CD8+ cells for protecting monkeys from coronavirus reinfection.
Mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines may also boost both antibody and T cell responses to higher levels, creating bigger cushions. Studies of various combinations have begun.
Thats the realm of modelers like Longini. Often, they restrict their analyses to tight geographical areas, which makes it easier to amass high-quality data and to account for variables that can alter outcomes. So Longini and Thomas Hladish, also at UF, created a model for their home state that extrapolates from actual case numbers for COVID-19 and assumes a rapid rollout, starting with people older than 65, of vaccines that are 60% effective at preventing infection. Assuming the virus doesnt change, they found that a vaccination campaign reaching half the population would slash symptomatic disease and death by 30% by August.
Surprisingly, their Florida model shows COVID-19 cases would steadily decline even without vaccination. Thats because the states reproductive number for SARS-CoV-2how many other people each COVID-19 case infectshas dropped below 1. Its mostly masking, social distancing, and the slow buildup of natural immunity in the population, Longini says. Indeed, as in many U.S. states, Floridas cases began to drop steeply in January.
But that decline could quickly reverse if a mutant strain takes off thats 50% more infectious, such as the B.1.1.7 variant strain that exploded first in the United Kingdom and has come to the United States, including Florida. We will have a much bigger epidemic that starts happening now, Longini says. But with more viral spread, the impact of vaccination would be bigger, averting twice as many symptomatic cases and deaths.
Models suggest the impact of COVID-19 vaccinations in San Diego will be blunted by the fast-spreading B.1.1.7 variant, which already accounts for 5% of SARS-CoV-2 infections there. If other prevention efforts are relaxed, a surge of cases will swamp the gains from vaccination.
Swipe or click the arrows to view modeling of other vaccination and behavior scenarios.
(Graphic) N. Desai/Science; (Interactive) K. Franklin/Science; (Data) Kristian Andersen/Scripps Research Institute; Natasha Martin/UC San Diego
Modeler Natasha Martin and her team at the University of California, San Diego, have looked at the interplay of variants and vaccines in an even smaller area: their home county. Sequencing of COVID-19 cases in San Diego county has shown the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant has a 5% prevalence so far10 times higher than recently estimated for the nation. Martins model shows that if the variant takes over, as many researchers expect, aggressive vaccination campaigns over the next 3 months will still cut case numbers in half. But if the county drops its guard and people become lax about prevention efforts, COVID-19 cases will triple even with rapid vaccination. We are at a critical moment in the epidemic, where our progress in terms of declining cases could quickly be reversed as the B.1.1.7 strain expands, Martin says. We have the tools we need to fight the spread of this virus: masking, social distancing, vaccination. Now is the time to vaccinate as many people as fast as we can, and double down on masking and distancing.
Vaccine developers proved in 2020 that they can move from concept to candidate vaccine, ready to test in people, in as little as 2 months. Changing the genetic code used in an mRNA or vector-based vaccine, or making a new inactivated-virus preparation, should be at least as fast. (A genetically engineered protein, such as the Novavax vaccine, takes longer.)
But by far the biggest time sink and expense for getting COVID-19 vaccines into use were the large-scale efficacy trials, which took about 4 months. Would those need to be repeated for each updated vaccine? No, says Peter Marks, who heads the vaccine division at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. All the agency would likely require, he says, is a modest size study in humans showing the immune responses elicited by the new vaccine resemble those triggered by the original and are likely to be protective.
Flu vaccines, after all, are updated yearly to keep up with the ever-morphing influenza virus and are quickly approved. Makers can pop out components from the old vaccine and replace them with new ones. Regulators require minimal evidence about the revised productoften just animal studies showing it performs as well as last years model.
But with COVID-19 vaccines, no one knows which immune responses correlate with protection. Many vaccine experts assume neutralizing antibodies to the spike protein are the most important driver of protection. To prove that, however, researchers need to compare immune responses between vaccinated people infected by viruses that broke through their protection and vaccinated people who did not become infected. A more in-depth sieve analysis of breakthrough cases refines the correlates of protection by looking at the genetics of the variants that break through. Those studies are underway, but the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, the first approved, worked so well that it was difficult to figure out the protective immune responses. There werent that many vaccinated, infected people, explains Mascola, who is helping coordinate the analyses.
Still, Marks says he anticipates that by the time makers of vaccines formulate new preparations to combat variants and test them in small human studies, the key immune responses will have become clear. We may well have the correlate confirmed by March when it is really needed, he says. That could open the way for rapid approval and rollout of boosters designed to keep up with the evolving virusand ensure that any hard-won progress against the pandemic isnt undone.
TOKYO (AP) Japan launched its coronavirus vaccination campaign Wednesday, months after other major economies started giving shots and amid questions about whether the drive would would reach enough people quickly enough to save a Summer Olympics already delayed by the pandemic.
Despite a recent rise in infections, Japan has largely dodged the kind of cataclysm that has battered other wealthy countries economies, social networks and health care systems. But the fate of the Olympics, and the billions of dollars at stake, makes Japans vaccine campaign crucial. Japanese officials are also well aware that rival China, which has had success beating back the virus, will host the Winter Olympics next year, heightening the desire to make the Tokyo Games happen.
Japans rollout lagged behind other places because it asked vaccine maker Pfizer to conduct clinical trials with Japanese people, in addition to tests already conducted in six other nations part of an effort to address worries in a country with low vaccine confidence.
That longstanding reluctance to take vaccines usually because of fears of rare side effects as well as concerns about shortages of the imported vaccines now hang over the rollout, which will first give shots to medical workers, then the elderly and vulnerable, and then, possibly in late spring or early summer, the rest of the population.
Medical workers say vaccinations will help protect them and their families, and business leaders hope the drive will allow economic activity to return to normal. But the late rollout will make it impossible to reach so-called herd immunity in the country of 127 million people before the Olympics begin in July, experts say.
That will leave officials struggling to quell widespread wariness and even outright opposition among citizens to hosting the Games. About 80% of those polled in recent media surveys support cancellation or further postponement of the Olympics.
Despite that, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and others in his government are forging ahead with Olympic plans, billing the Games as proof of human victory against the pandemic.
Japan has not seen the massive outbreaks that have buffeted the United States and many European countries, but a spike in cases in December and January raised concerns and led to a partial state of emergency that includes requests for restaurants and bars to close early. Suga has seen his support plunge to below 40% from around 70% when he took office in September, with many people saying he was too slow to impose restrictions and they were too lax.
The country is now seeing an average of about 1 infection per 100,000 people compared with 24.5 in the United States or 18 in the United Kingdom. Overall, Japan has recorded about 420,000 cases and 7,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
In a room full of journalists Wednesday, Dr. Kazuhiro Araki, president of Tokyo Medical Center, rolled up his sleeve and got a shot, one of the first Japanese to do so.
It didnt hurt at all, and Im feeling very relieved, he told reporters while he was being monitored for any allergic reaction. We now have better protection, and I hope we feel more at ease as we provide medical treatment.
About 40,000 doctors and nurses considered vulnerable to the virus because they treat COVID-19 patients are in the first group slated to be vaccinated using shots developed by Pfizer and its Germany-based partner BioNTech after the vaccine was authorized Sunday by Japans regulator. It requires two doses, though some protection begins after the first shot.
Japans late authorization of the vaccine means it lags behind many other countries. Britain started inoculations on Dec. 8 and has given at least one shot to more than 15 million people, while the United States began its campaign on Dec. 14 and about 40 million people have received shots. Vaccines were rolled out in many European Union countries in late December, and the campaigns there have come under criticism for being slower.
But Japans vaccine minister, Taro Kono, defended the delay as necessary to build confidence in a country where mistrust of vaccines is decades old. Many people have a vague unease about vaccines, partly because their side effects have often been played up by media here.
I think it is more important for the Japanese government to show the Japanese people that we have done everything possible to prove the efficacy and safety of the vaccine to encourage the Japanese people to take the vaccine, Kono said. So at the end of the day we might have started slower, but we think it will be more effective.
Half of the recipients of the first shots will keep daily records of their condition for seven weeks; that data will be used in a health study meant to inform people worried about the side effects. Studies on tens of thousands of people of the Pfizer vaccine and others being administered currently in other countries have found no serious side effects.
We would like to make efforts so that the people can be vaccinated with a peace of mind, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters.
The development of a Japanese COVID-19 vaccine is still in the early stages, so the country, like many others, must rely on imported shots raising concerns about supply issues seen in other places as producers struggle to keep up with demand. Suga on Wednesday acknowledged the importance to strengthen vaccine development and production capability as important crisis management and pledged to provide more support.
Supplies will help determine the progress of the vaccination drive in Japan, Kono said.
The first batch of Pfizer vaccines that arrived Friday is enough to cover the first group of medical workers. A second batch is set for delivery next week.
To get the most from each vial, Japanese officials are also scrambling to get specialized syringes that can draw six doses per vial instead of five by standard Japanese-made syringes.
After the front-line medical workers will come inoculations of 3.7 million more health workers starting in March, followed by about 36 million people aged 65 and older beginning in April. People with underlying health issues, as well as caregivers at nursing homes and other facilities, will be next, before the general population receives its turn.
Some critics have noted the vaccination drive which requires medical workers to be carried out adds to their burden, since Japanese hospitals are already strained by daily treatment of COVID-19 patients. Theres an added worry that hospitals will have no additional capacity to cope with the large number of overseas visitors the Olympics would involve.
Sometimes, people will take pain medication in anticipation of discomfort before an injection
by: WKBN Staff
Credit: Images By Tang Ming Tung/DigitalVision/Getty Images
(WKBN) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning people to hold off on taking Tylenol or Motrin (NSAIDs) before getting a COVID-19 vaccination.
Sometimes, people will take pain medication in anticipation of discomfort before an injection, but that is not recommended for the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
Researchers say they dont have the information right now on the impact of those medications on the COVID-19 vaccine-induced antibody response.
Also, antihistamines are not recommended prior to getting the vaccine. Doctors say antihistamines do not prevent a reaction and could mask a problem.
NSAIDs may be taken after the vaccine is administered, according to the CDC.
Also, the COVID-19 vaccine should not be taken at the same time as any other vaccine. Health officials say you should wait at least 14 days after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine to get any other immunizations.
COVID-19 and other vaccines may be administered within a shorter period of time in situations where the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.
