Around one-third of US troops are refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, a top Pentagon official said Wednesday.
"Acceptance rates are somewhere in the two-thirds territory," Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeff Taliaferro, the Joint Staff's vice director for operations, told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on the Defense Department's response to the pandemic.
The vaccine is not compulsory for service members, but Taliaferro told Rep. Mike Rogers, the top Republican lawmaker on the committee, that the military must do better "to help them understand the benefits."
The military's acceptance rate is, however, higher than that of the general population, which, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, is around 50%.
As of Wednesday, a total of 916,575 doses have been administered to DOD personnel, with 359,000 troops having received their first shot and 147,000 troops fully vaccinated, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told Politico.
Taliaferro added that service members are deployable even if they have not been vaccinated.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven S. Nordhaus, the National Guard Bureau's director of operations, also told the hearing that the vaccine acceptance rate in the National Guard was around "two-thirds to 70%."
The US military had, until Wednesday, given little indication how many troops had been vaccinated.
The silence had led critics to question whether the military was hiding data.
"Nobody is hiding data," Kirbytold Politico. "We don't have a system in place across the services to specifically track data with respect to those individuals who for whatever reason are declining."
In his opening statement during Wednesday's hearing, Rep. Rogers said that it was important that US military personnel are vaccinated.
"It's critical for our national security that every service member, as well as DOD civilian personnel and contractors, receive vaccines as soon as possible," he said.
"I am interested to hear from our witnesses what percentage of our service members have been vaccinated, what the refusal rate has been, and what steps they are taking to get more shots into arms."
Last December, the Pentagon announced that top commanders, including former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, would be getting their vaccines publicly to send a "message" of confidence.
With declining rates of new infections and the rollout of vaccines, some are beginning to speak of an end to COVID-19. But that rhetoric, in my opinion, is ill-considered and premature. Based on what we know now of SARS-CoV-2, it may no longer be a question of months before an end to the pandemic but a question of years, if not decades. We should plan for it.
Viruses exist to thrive. Those that infect humans are faced with an impressive array of defensive weaponry, not just our natural adaptive immunity but also our intelligently designed defensesvaccines, drugs and social controls. For a virus to survive, it must be adapted to its chosen ecological nichein this case, usand capable of further intricate adaptation to overcome our best efforts at prevention and treatment.
Initially, many assumed that coronaviruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular were more stable and less prone to adaptation than other RNA viruses because of their error-proofing mechanisms. But we have since been proven wrong. Last summer, a researcher in Texas noticed that a mutated SARS-CoV-2 virus with a substitution in the spike protein had overtaken previous forms to become the dominant strain. Since then, multiple new variants have emerged with mutations that can make the virus more transmissible, more lethal and more able to evade our immune defenses.
These variants have seemingly been forged in fires of our own making. In Boston, a middle-aged man struggled with a COVID-19 infection for five months before succumbing to the disease. He was undergoing treatment with immunosuppressive drugs when he fell ill, and, during his illness, he received multiple rounds of additional treatment, with remdesivir nonimmune gamma globulin, and with monoclonal antibodies. Under this intense immune pressure, key mutations in the virus emerged. The doctors and scientists who witnessed their birth called it accelerated viral evolution.
Other viruses, like influenza, have shown themselves similarly capable of rapid evolution when faced with our best defenses. Indeed, based on what weve seen of SARS-CoV-2 and its capacity for variation, Id say this virus is much more like influenza than any other virus known to date.
Which means influenzas evolutionary pathway may hold important clues about the road COVID-19 will follow.
Influenza, as we know, comes and goes in seasonal waves in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In the tropics it occurs throughout the year, with only shallow peaks. This pattern mimics what we know of cold-causing coronaviruses, which, ever since their discovery in the 1960s, have returned annually to infect us. For the flu, antigenic driftthe accumulation of small genetic changes in the virushas been the primary explanation for recurrent seasonal epidemics. Dominant flu strains evolve from year to year, and the immunity we develop in response to a previous strain has only a muted effect on the new strain. Weve learned more recently that immunity to influenza also fades, often disappearing within a year, which also makes us susceptible to reinfection.
We used to believe that the cold-causing coronaviruses were stablemeaning no antigenic driftbut returned yearly because of faded immune protection. But over the past year, our understanding of coronaviruses has improved and we now know that at least one of the cold-causing coronaviruses, designated 229E, undergoes antigenic drift similar to that of influenza.
SARS-CoV-2, like 229E, has already shown that it can drift. But, like influenza, it has also shown itself capable of much more abrupt and substantial changes.One way these major changes happen occurs when a virus jumps to a new population, for example from animals to humans or back again. When a virus makes this jump, big thingsand often bad thingsmaterialize. Both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 have huge animal reservoirs. Coronaviruses have infected every type of vertebrate, from whales and bats to salamanders and snakes. Influenza is similar. This means they both have the potential to evolve to become much more damaging to our population. The two previous coronavirus outbreaks both started when coronaviruses jumped from animals to humans, from civet cats in 2003 with SARS and from camels with MERS in 2012. The 1918 influenza pandemic likely started with a jump from animals too.
If were lucky, SARS-CoV-2 will evolve, like the 1918 virus dubbed the Spanish flu, to become less lethal. After infecting an estimated 500 million worldwide and killing at least 50 million, the 1918 flu virus receded. But hope that this coronavirus will attenuate over time is no guarantee that it will. We already know that coronaviruses can become much more lethal; we need look no further than SARS-CoV-1, which killed 50 percent of those aged 65 and older, and MERS, which killed one out of three infected.
So where does that leave us?
First, we must accept the harsh truth told by this virus and its variants. We can expect it to come backpotentially for years to comeand we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that when it does, it may be more lethal and even more transmissible than the variants that exist today. We must adjust our vaccine development pipelines and public health interventions to account for emergent and future variations. Much like what has been proposed with influenza, we must develop COVID risk assessment tools that can identify the viral properties of dominant strainshow transmissible they may be or how resistant they are to current drugs or vaccinesto help us align our public health response with the level of risk. Otherwise, well be setting ourselves up for failure once more.
I have often likened SARS-CoV-2 to the mythical Proteus in Homers Odyssey. Like Proteus, SARS-CoV-2 is the quintessential shape-shifter, able to alter its form whenever grasped. It is only through sheer persistence that Menelaus, the great hero, is able to wrestle Proteus to a standstill. By claiming victory too soon, we risk losing our battle with this shape-shifting virus, a tragedy that would unfold this time not in words but in many more millions of lives lost.
This is an opinion and analysis article.
Federal officials will open a mass COVID-19 vaccination site at the Tampa Greyhound Track, one of four such locations to open in Florida that are meant to get more of the valuable shots into arms more quickly.
In recent days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been working with states to open several large-scale vaccination sites around the country.
Florida will have four of these sites, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday: the one in Tampa, at 755 E Waters Ave.; at Valencia Colleges West Campus in Orlando; at the Gateway Mall in Jacksonville; and at Miami-Dade Community Colleges North Campus in Miami.
The sites will open March 3 and will operate seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to a release from the governors office. Each one is expected to administer 2,000 shots per day. In addition, every site will have two smaller mobile satellite sites, each conducting 500 vaccinations a day in underserved areas, according to the release.
Altogether, the four sites would be capable of administering about 12,000 shots a day a helpful boost to the states vaccination efforts. The supply will come from the federal government and will be in addition to doses the government gives Florida each week to allocate as the state sees fit.
The federal government is working with the state to open the sites. People wanting to get vaccinated at these locations should use the states pre-registration system, myvaccine.fl.gov, or call the designated county phone number.
DeSantis initially called President Joe Bidens idea of using FEMA to build vaccination clinics across the U.S. a big mistake. But he later changed course and said he would help with the sites to get more vaccine doses into the state.
The sites will primarily use federal staff, according to a news release from the White House. It said the sites were chosen using a number of factors, including each areas score on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Social Vulnerability Index.
The White House said Hillsborough County was identified as one of nine counties in the state with significantly underserved or marginalized populations. It said the mobile vaccination clinics could also help reach part of the Seminole Tribe of Florida population and serve nearby counties vulnerable communities, specifically pointing to cities such as Lake Alfred, Lakeland and Bowling Green.
The eligibility criteria at these sites will mirror the states requirements, according to the White House news release. In Florida, people who are 65 and older, are frontline health care workers or are staff or residents of long-term care facilities are currently eligible to get vaccines.
We couldnt be more excited, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said of the new federal site in her city. She said the city and the county worked with the Department of Health and state Division of Emergency Management to find it.
Castor said she knows theres been a lot of frustration in the early weeks of the states vaccine rollout. Officials are working to get shots administered efficiently and to as wide a population as possible, she said. We have done all in our power to ensure everyone has availability to the vaccine.
It appears some details and communication regarding how the four federal sites will operate may still be getting worked out. The governors office said the Florida National Guard will be assisting with the effort. But as of early Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman said she was unaware of the guards involvement.
The Tampa Greyhound Track got involved on Wednesday after the governors office reached out, said Greg Gelyon, vice president of finance for parent company Tampa Bay Downs.
When they ask for something this serious, to help out, we cant say no, Gelyon said. He said the facilitys east and west parking lots have been leased for the effort but added he doesnt have further details about how exactly the site will be used.
Greyhound racing is no longer allowed in Florida, but the Tampa Greyhound Track, which also goes by TGT Poker & Racebook, still offers poker and simulcast race wagering, according to a spokeswoman.
As of Friday, more than 2.6 million Floridians had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to state data. In Hillsborough County, 124,906 people had received at least one dose, while 121,996 people in Pinellas County had.
Staff writer Ileana Najarro contributed to this report.
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As coronavirus cases plummet nationwide and vaccinations total 1.7 million Americans a day and rising, health experts are increasingly striking a new tone in their pandemic assessments: optimism.
I could be wrong, but I dont think were going to see a big fourth surge, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. I think weve seen the worst of it.
Many epidemiologists and other scientists, while still cautious, say they feel increasingly hopeful that the rest of 2021 will not replay the nightmare of last year.
The arrival of spring will likely aid the ongoing precipitous drop in coronavirus cases, as warmer weather allows people to spend more time outdoors and creates a less hospitable environment for the virus, experts say.
But the biggest factor, paradoxically, is something the nation spent the last year trying to prevent.
While 12% of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, far more people approximately 35% of the nations population have already been infected with the coronavirus, Offit estimated. Studies have found that people who survive COVID-19 have immunity for several months, though it likely lasts even longer.
UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford said one of the reasons why cases are dropping so fast in California is because of naturally acquired immunity, mostly in Southern California. He estimated that 50% of Los Angeles County residents have been infected with the virus at some point.
Were really talking something starting to sound and look like herd immunity although that true herd immunity is a ways off in the future, Rutherford said recently.
Herd immunity is reached when so many people have immunity that a virus cannot find new hosts and stops spreading, resulting in community-wide protection. Scientists believe that in the case of the coronavirus, the threshold could be as high as 90%. The United States has not met this threshold but each step toward it slows transmission, experts say.
The effects may be greatest in places that endured the worst COVID-19 surges, including Los Angeles. After a horrific autumn and winter wave that has killed more than 12,000 people, an estimated 33% to 55% of county residents have already been infected with the coronavirus, according to USC researchers.
Those past infections have blunted transmission of the coronavirus so significantly that they have changed the current trajectory of the outbreak in L.A. County, where new daily cases have been falling for five weeks, said Dr. Roger Lewis, director of COVID-19 hospital demand modeling for the L.A. County Department of Health Services.
If you had the exact same behavior and type of virus circulating that we have right now, but we were at the beginning of the pandemic and no one was immune yet ... wed be in the midst of an ongoing surge, he said. The fact that cases are going down right now, as opposed to going up, is because approximately a third of everybody in Los Angeles County is immune to COVID.
But experts caution that the battle is not yet won.
New coronavirus variants could undermine these projections, either by proving more resistant to existing vaccines or by finding a way to spread more easily. Shifts in behavior could also render this good news moot, as it holds only if people stick to the precautions they have been taking thus far, experts say.
I dont want to provide a false sense of assurance here, said L.A. County chief science officer Dr. Paul Simon, who pointed out that 60% of Angelenos would remain vulnerable even if more than a third have already been infected with the coronavirus. Unless theyve had vaccination, they continue to be susceptible. I think we need to continue to be vigilant.
Nationwide, coronavirus cases have dropped to levels not seen since late October, according to federal officials. In California, approximately 7,000 people are testing positive for the coronavirus each day, compared with 45,000 at the peak of the states winter surge.
In L.A. County, officials currently estimate the R value a measure of how many people a person with the virus goes on to infect to be around 0.8. Anything below 1 means an outbreak is shrinking, and anything above 1 means its growing.
If so many people in the county werent already immune, the R value would be about a third higher, or just above 1, Lewis said. Even that slight increase has major consequences for a virus prone to spreading exponentially.
The fact that the virus only has two-thirds as many people to jump to as it did early on slows it down, Lewis said.
Since the pandemic began, nearly 30 million Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus, but the true number who have contracted the virus is likely three or four times higher due to low levels of testing and the fact that many people who are infected never develop symptoms, experts say.
The large number of infections has come at a high cost. The nations death toll is approaching 500,000, far greater than any country in the world, and even more have survived but continue to suffer lingering effects of their illnesses, some of them severe. Allowing COVID-19 to run rampant to quickly achieve herd immunity, as some had promoted early in the pandemic, would have led to even more deaths and chronic health problems, experts say.
It remains unclear exactly what the threshold for herd immunity is with this virus with some scientists estimating that herd immunity may be achieved when 50% of people are immune, while others believe the threshold is closer to 90%, said L.A. Countys Simon. The uneven geographical distribution of infections may also leave some pockets of the county more vulnerable than others, he said.
We dont know quite yet what level of vaccination and protection would be required to get herd immunity across the county, Simon said in briefing Friday. As we see the number of new cases drop dramatically that will be I think the best clue that were reaching herd immunity, particularly if we see it across the county.
The biggest obstacle to ending the pandemic is the proliferation of coronavirus variants, especially if they are more transmissible or less susceptible to vaccines. For instance, the B.1.1.7 variant that emerged in the United Kingdom is about 50% more contagious than its predecessors and could fuel outbreaks in places where large swaths of people remain vulnerable to disease.
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicines National School of Tropical Medicine, said he thinks that flying to visit friends and family will be normal and safe by August. But because of the variants he cautioned people to beware the Ides of March.
Thats, I think, the biggest crisis facing us right now in our COVID-19 pandemic, he said in a recent interview with the American Medical Assn. As bad as 2020 was, now were looking at version 2.0 of this pandemic from the variants.
But others are more optimistic. Offit said he would be concerned if people who already had COVID-19 or who had been vaccinated were being hospitalized due to infections caused by a new variant.
That line hasnt been crossed, he said. You just want to keep people out of the hospital and it looks like to date theres not a variant that has escaped either disease- or vaccine-induced immunity.
At a UCSF Department of Medicine COVID seminar last week, Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist, put it simply: Try not to worry about the variants.
Offit said he remains hopeful about the nations trajectory through the summer and as more people get vaccinated. What worries me a little bit is when you hit September, and then it gets colder again, and there may be a variant that emerges, and people stop wearing masks and physically distancing, Offit said.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against viewing the downward case trends as a reason to let up on masking and other safety precautions.
In an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Walensky said she hoped for the best, but also warned of a worst-case scenario that people will stop wearing masks and physically distancing too early and that many will prematurely declare theyve had enough of the pandemic and wont get vaccinated.
How this goes is going to depend on 330 million individuals, Walensky said. Because while I really am hopeful for what could happen in March and April, I really do know this could go bad so fast. And we saw it in November. We saw it in December. We saw what can happen.
Dr. Annabelle de St. Maurice, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA, said she sympathizes with officials trying to walk a fine line between keeping morale up and not making people feel so optimistic that they led their guard down.
In L.A. in particular, the numbers have improved drastically, she said, but they remain almost as high as they were during the deadly summer surge.
It is reason to celebrate, and you want people to celebrate it, but you want them to do that physically distanced while wearing a mask, she said.
The city of Los Angeles is expanding the number of mobile vaccination clinics in communities hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Thursday.
The city will increase to 10 its number of so-called mobile equity sites: vehicles that go into high-density, low-income communities, staffed to provide vaccinations, Garcetti said. The goal is to have all 10 in the field by the end of March, the city said in a news release.
Were seeing still disproportionately low vaccination rates among many of our Black and Latino populations and communities, a reflection not only of historic distrust and community trauma, but also the structural barriers that stand between too many Angelenos and their access to vaccines, Garcetti said Thursday at a news briefing. We need to tear those barriers down.
The announcement comes after data released earlier in the month by Los Angeles County showed that Black, Latino and Native American residents 65 and overwere receiving COVID-19 vaccinations at a lower ratethan their white, Asian American and Pacific Islander counterparts. The report showed that 17% of white, 18% of Asian and 29% of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander residents 65 and over had received at least one dose, compared with only 14% of Latino, 9% of Native American and 7% of Black residents 65 and older.
Read the full story atLATimes.com.
President Biden will announce a cash infusion plan to help prop up the global coronavirus response. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption
President Biden will announce a cash infusion plan to help prop up the global coronavirus response.
President Biden is set on Friday to announce a total of $4 billion in contributions to COVAX, the vaccine alliance trying to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income countries, a senior administration official told reporters.
Biden will make the announcement during a virtual meeting of G-7 leaders about the pandemic.
The funding for the program which is co-run by the World Health Organization includes an initial contribution of $2 billion that Congress appropriated in December. That funding should go out by the end of the month, the official said. In addition, Biden will pledge another $2 billion through 2021 and 2022. The first $500 million of that pledge will be available "rather quickly" to help spur other donations, the official said.
"This pandemic is not going to end unless we end it globally," the official told reporters, noting the risk of new coronavirus variants developing and spreading.
The official said the funding would not affect the program to vaccinate U.S. residents, noting the government is on track to have a large enough supply of vaccine 600 million doses for domestic needs by the end of July. If there are vaccines left over from the domestic program, the Biden administration plans to look for ways to donate that to the COVAX program, but no decisions on that have yet been made.
Biden on Friday will urge G-7 and G-20 partners, and others, to put forward their own contributions to COVAX to help expand the supply and distribution for vaccines, the official said. The vaccine alliance GAVI, which helps lead COVAX, said in November that more than $2 billion had been pledged to buy vaccines, but at least $5 billion more was needed.
The U.S. contribution of $4 billion "gets us a lot closer to the GAVI target," which aims to vaccinate 20% of the people living in the 92 countries, the official said. But the Biden administration believes that as much as $15 billion is needed from international donors to expand vaccine supply and boost distribution.
Globally, there have been roughly 110 million cases of the coronavirus. Some 2.43 million people have died from the virus.
Students living at Lakeside Village and University Village began the twice-weekly breath analyzer test as a surveillance tool against COVID-19.
Barely 10 minutes after blowing three deep breaths into a little tube, University of Miami sophomore Allegra Garcia heard the words about her coronavirus test that would give her peace of mind: Youre clear.
I think this is way better than the nasal swab because you know right away, said Garcia, one of hundreds of University upper-class students who this week began a new routine of taking twice-a-week breath tests to detect COVID-19. Imagine all those people you could interact with before youd get your swab results in a day or two. They are potentially at risk because you didnt know you had it.
Eliminating that risk is a big reason why the University is among the first in the nation to employ the COVID-19 Breath Analyzer in its arsenal aimed at halting transmission of the highly contagious virus. Erin Kobetz, vice provost for research and scholarship, explained that any student who gets a Not Clear on the breath test developed by the Israeli-based TeraGroup will take a confirmatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) nasal swab test, and isolate quicker.
The breath test is an innovative tool that allows for close to real-time detection of COVID, and there is power in knowing now, said Kobetz, who took the breath test on Monday to see how it works. It literally took two minutes from the time I blew into the tube until the time that I had results. The benefit of this technology is the rapidity by which the results are produced, allowing for a sort of point-of-care response that is ultimately the best strategy for preventing further transmission of infection.
For now, only students at Lakeside Village and University Village have shifted from the required once-a-week PCR nasal swab to the twice-a-week breath tests. But, Kobetz said, their experiences will help the University decide whether its feasible to expand the use of the breath analyzers.
We may expand beyond these groups, but we wanted to start with a smaller universe of students to get it right, she said. This is more of an extended feasibility study, where we can collect some lessons learned from the rollout and consider if it is a strategy that should be offered to the University at large.
She noted that students in the upper-class residential villages were chosen for the feasibility study for a couple of reasons. First, many student there already volunteered to take the breath tests last year when the University became the first college testing site for the breath analyzer, with the goal of providing TeraGroup and its U.S. subsidiary BioSafety Technologies the data needed to seek emergency use authorization for the new technology from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Universitys Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the use of the breath analyzer as an aid in ongoing surveillance mechanisms on campus, and the FDA is still evaluating the emergency use authorization.
Another reason, Kobetz said, is both villages had the adequate space available needed to accommodate the breath machines and the teams of people needed to supervise the tests.
While some students who arrived at Lakeside Village for their pre-scheduled appointments on Monday had to wait a bit longer for their results than Kobetz did, they agreed that the breath test isas Dr. Roy E. Weiss, the Universitys chief medical officer for COVID-19, has saidas simple as blowing into a kazoo.
After checking in at a reception desk near the villages Music Practice Room, students were directed to one of three test stations in the open space. There, an observer gave each student the small disposable, sterile TeraTube. They each were directed to open it, blow three deep puffs into it and then close it.
From there, each tube was whisked to the nearby music room, where a research assistant inserted it into a freestanding BioSafety Station that, within a minute, usually detected no trace of COVID-19 in the droplets of breath. Soon after, the results were delivered back to the check-in desk, where a UScreen team member gave each waiting student the words: Clear or Not clear.
It was no big deal, said senior Mark Oliger, a computer science major, who like Garcia, appreciated the logic behind having near-instant results. I think the big benefit is it will slow the spread, and its good that theyre making it easy for us to do our part to meet that goal.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media at a COVID-19 vaccination site near the upscale Lakewood Ranch community in Bradenton, Fla., on Wednesday. Chris O'Meara/AP hide caption
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media at a COVID-19 vaccination site near the upscale Lakewood Ranch community in Bradenton, Fla., on Wednesday.
In Florida, Democrats are criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who they claim is allowing politics to play a role in COVID-19 vaccine distribution. DeSantis became testy when questioned by reporters at a vaccination event near Lakewood Ranch, an upscale community on Florida's Gulf Coast.
The vaccination event was the latest in a series of state-sponsored clinics at retirement communities. Under DeSantis' "Seniors First" initiative, the COVID-19 vaccine is being made available to everyone age 65 and over in Florida an estimated 4.5 million people.
According to the Bradenton Herald, DeSantis reached out to the developer of the Lakewood Ranch community, offering to use it as the site for a vaccination drive. Working with a county commissioner, the state reserved shots for residents of two ZIP codes in Manatee County that cover Lakewood Ranch and other well-to-do communities.
At a news conference, reporters peppered DeSantis with questions about the perception that he was favoring one community over another in a county where vaccinations have lagged behind the rest of the state. DeSantis responded by threatening to take the state's vaccination distribution effort elsewhere. "If Manatee County doesn't like us doing this," DeSantis said, "then we are totally fine putting this in counties that want it. We're totally happy to do that."
DeSantis said the 3,000 shots being made available for residents of Lakewood Ranch and nearby communities were in addition to the county's regular vaccine allotment. Commissioners in Manatee County expressed concern that the event favored wealthy neighborhoods over underserved communities.
Democrats immediately sent out news releases criticizing DeSantis for injecting politics into vaccine distribution. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who has suggested she may challenge DeSantis when he's up for reelection next year, said, "There is no reason that Governor DeSantis should be rationing vaccines based on political influence. This is troubling and potentially illegal." State Sen. Annette Taddeo said the governor owes residents of Manatee County an apology. She said, "Veiled threats should not and cannot be tolerated by any public official." Manny Diaz, the new head of Florida's Democratic Party, said DeSantis must stop "playing politics" with vaccine distribution. Diaz said, "Threatening retribution and less vaccine access for communities that criticize the vaccine rollout for its problems is shameful and inhumane."
More than 695,000 people in Minnesota have received COVID-19 vaccine, according to the latest state figures on Wednesday, including nearly 25% of teachers and 40% of senior citizens.
State health officials said the updates represent progress in Minnesota amid plans to reopen more schools to in-person learning over the next month.
"Thanks to vaccines and the hard work of so many people we are getting closer to the end of this pandemic," said Jan Malcolm, state health commissioner.
Of the 695,629 people who have received some COVID-19 vaccine in Minnesota, 246,431 have completed the two-dose series. The state has prioritized limited initial doses for health care workers, long-term care facility residents, educators and senior citizens.
The vaccination progress comes amid declining spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The Minnesota Department of Health on Wednesday reported 10 more COVID-19 deaths and 783 infections bringing the state's totals to 6,390 fatalities and 475,379 infections.
The positivity rate of diagnostic testing a key measure of viral spread in Minnesota has dropped below the 5% caution threshold to 3.7%. The number of Minnesota hospital intensive care beds filled with COVID-19 patients has declined to 54 from a peak of 399 on Dec. 1.
State health officials remain concerned about the emergence of more infectious variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, though. State infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann on Tuesday said genomic sequencing analysis in Minnesota has detected 40 cases of COVID-19 involving a more infectious variant first found in the United Kingdom.
Jeremy Olson 612-673-7744
