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Jason Zucker doesnt mind social distancing.
At least in one specific instance.
Its helped me a lot personally just because Im further away from Rusty, the Penguins forward joked in reference to his occasional linemate, Bryan Rust.
So I dont have to deal with him as much on a daily basis. Thats honestly been the best part. Hes miserable to be around the room.
Zuckers playful ribbing of Rusts supposedly splenetic nature noted, the Penguins, like all NHL teams, have made adjustment after adjustment to various protocol changes related to covid-19 the NHL has instituted one month into the 2020-21 season.
The latest round of alterations came Thursday. Perhaps the strictest of those rules related to life way from the rink as the league and the NHLPA each called for all players, coaches and other team employees to be required to remain at home and not leave their place of residence except to attend practices and games, to exercise outdoors on an individual basis, to perform essential activities (e.g., go to the doctor), or to deal with family or other emergencies and other extraordinary circumstances.
The measure also recommended family members or other household members use discretion on activities outside of their domicile. It even called for social engagements of family members to be be limited as much as possible.
While previous protocols already outlined fairly cut-and-dry rules for what could and could not happen at the rink, this was the first time the league and NHLPA issued any sort of missive at least along these lines on the personal lives of players, coaches and other employees since the early days of the pandemic.
The Penguins seem to already have enacted some sort of unofficial but heavily recommended guidelines in terms of their personal lives since the onset of the season.
Quite honestly, weve been conducting ourselves this way for a while now, coach Mike Sullivan said via video conference Saturday. My life has consisted of going to the rink and going home. Its not like were going out to restaurants or anything of that sort, exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk. Were trying to use common sense and be respectful of the pandemic.
Its not like anything has changed from our standpoint other than the protocols have been put in place, explicitly through the memorandums that have been sent around (by the NHL).
The Zucker household, which includes his wife and two children, has been doing what it can to limit any potential exposure for the better part of a year.
For us at home, we really havent changed much, Zucker said. Weve been doing the same thing since all of this started. Trying to order groceries with delivery services and things of that sort to try to stay away as far as possible.
That challenge can be a bit easier for a bachelor.
For myself, I guess it hasnt been too difficult, forward Brandon Tanev said. I dont have a family here with me. In that sense, its a lot easier for me to go home and be in my own confinement. Whereas other guys have families, wives, young children. Things can become a little bit different.
To date, only two Penguins forward Kasperi Kapanen and John Marino have appeared on the NHLs list of players withheld from team activities due to covid-19 protocol.
Kapanens inclusion on the list was related to the Finn undergoing a quarantine after failing to secure a work visa to enter the United States in a timely fashion. For Marino, he declined to explain how he landed on the list last week.
In contrast, a handful of teams such as the Minnesota Wild and New Jersey Devils have had several games postponed after they had double-digit figures of players wind up on the list.
Three games that were postponed because of the Devils issues were against the Penguins.
Its something that we all kind of expected throughout this season, obviously with (covid-19), Zucker said. The league has to adjust as best they can. I think theyre doing a great job in just trying to make sure that they keep these spreads as minimal as possible.
Another change limits how much time coaches and players can be around one other. All team and coaches meetings, as well as video sessions, must be performed in a remote manner.
Its a big challenge because a big part of coaching, I think, is the human interaction and building relationships with these guys, Sullivan said. The human interaction, I think, is a critically important aspect of what we do. But having said that, I also understand the circumstance were in.
Its likely those circumstances will change, and rules probably will get stricter before they get looser.
The Penguins profess to be ready for any further adjustments.
We cant control everything from a protocol standpoint, Sullivan said. Those decisions that are made, they are made by the league. I know their intent is in the right place. Thats to try to keep everybody safe. And were going to adapt.
Follow the Penguins all season long.
Seth Rorabaugh is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Seth by email at srorabaugh@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Categories:Penguins/NHL | Sports
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LOUISVILLE, KY - FEBRUARY 12: A woman walks down the sidewalk toward Bates Memorial Baptist church to receive her Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on February 12, 2021 in Louisville, Kentucky. Friday marked the first day that Norton Healthcare offered the vaccination in predominantly black areas of the city, with black churches being the operation centers for the pop-up clinics.
Brutal weather is throwing a wrench in COVID-19 vaccine programs in several states.
From Oregon to Oklahoma to Texas to Virginia, some vaccine clinics are being temporarily shut down or scaled back due to a parade of winter storms across the country.
In Houston, city-run vaccine sites will be closed the first two days of this week.
"We knew the weather forecast (and) didnt schedule new appointments for Monday or Tuesday," Houston Health Department spokesperson Scott Packard told weather.com in an email Friday.
It's their first weather-related closure. The 100 or so people that were already scheduled will be switched to later in the week, Packard said.
Despite the closures, he said the city would still use all of its allotted vaccine doses for next week.
(MORE: 700,000 Without Power As Dual Winter Storms Pummel East and West)
In the Fort Worth area, Tarrant County Health Department spokesperson Brian Murnahan said turnout for vaccines was lower than usual on Thursday, the day that ice and freezing rain caused a deadly early-morning pileup on Interstate 35.
"We probably saw about 80% of what we normally would have expected," Murnahan said in a phone interview.
On Friday, the county offered vaccine appointments to fewer people. One reason for that was to prevent people from having to wait outside in the cold at one site in particular.
Murnahan said county vaccine clinics would be closed as usual on Sunday, and won't open on Monday because of the Presidents Day holiday. After that remains to be seen.
Were going to be watching the weather and kind of seeing what happens, and well make the best decisions on what were going to do at that point," Murnahan said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a state of emergency for all 254 counties in the state on Friday, ahead of a forecast that includes bitter cold, wind, snow and ice across much of the south from Sunday through Tuesday.
Murnahan said the goal was to at least serve those who have already gotten their first dose.
We dont want people to get behind on those second shots," he said.
The largest vaccination site in Dallas, Fair Park, closed Saturday because of the weather and won't reopen again until at least Tuesday, Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins said in a news release.
"With expected extreme weather conditions, including dangerously low temperatures and hazardous roadways, we must prioritize people's safety," Jenkins said. "As soon as we can safely open again, we will."
On Thursday, Jenkins tweeted that both weather and logistical delays had hampered virus distribution throughout the week. On Friday, Fair Park opened later than usual and only served those who had been scheduled to get their second dose on Feb. 8-11.
Vaccine shippers UPS and FedEx replied to emailed questions with statements saying they have extensive contingency plans in place to help mitigate potential delivery delays.
UPS spokesperson Matthew O'Connor added: "We delivered everything on time during the last storm, as well as the Noreaster at the end of December."
As of Friday, about 69 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been delivered across the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 37 million have received shots, including 13 million who've gotten both doses.
For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.
The Weather Companys primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
Stephanie Hill-Frazier, known to viewers as Mama Steph, joined the KLTV team in 2011. She shares recipes she develops especially for viewers during Tuesday mornings on East Texas News Midday in her segment, 'Mama Steph on East Texas Kitchen.' She also writes feature stories, as well as news, as part of the KLTV digital team.
A drug called molnupiravir, which scientists originally developed to treat influenza, is showing promise as a treatment for COVID-19.
A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, recently published in Nature, found that the drug dramatically reduced the number of virus particles in a mouse model of the disease.
It also protected against infection when given 12 hours before exposure to the virus and every 12 hours thereafter.
Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.
Phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials of molnupiravir are already under way, with some results expected as soon as March 2021.
In addition to testing the drugs safety and efficacy, one of the trials is also investigating its effect on viral shedding, which is the amount of virus released into the environment by people who have it. Analyzing this helps determine how likely a person is to transmit the virus.
Remdesivir, which speeds the recovery of adults hospitalized with the illness and which may reduce mortality rates, is currently the only proven antiviral treatment for COVID-19.
One potential advantage of molnupiravir is that patients can take it orally, whereas remdesivir has to be injected. This would make molnupiravir easier to give to lots of people as a preventive, or prophylactic, drug in high risk settings, such as nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
Another, more long-term benefit of molnupiravir is that it may be effective against other emerging coronavirus infections that like SARS-CoV-2 probably originate in bats.
To test the efficacy of molnupiravir against SARS-CoV-2, the researchers created a completely new model of COVID-19 in mice that may prove useful for testing the efficacy of other antiviral drugs.
Human coronaviruses are unable to infect mouse cells unless researchers either adapt the viruses or genetically modify mice to produce receptors that allow them to invade cells.
These models also fail to reflect the diversity of cells found in human lungs, where the infection can cause life threatening damage.
To get around these limitations, the researchers implanted human lung tissue into specially bred immunodeficient mice that tolerate foreign tissue.
Virus replication in this model occurs in bona fide human lung tissue and does not require any type of adaptation of the virus or the host, the researchers write in their paper.
They demonstrated that the newly emerged human coronaviruses SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 were all able to replicate in the implanted human lung tissue.
Our model allows researchers to directly compare infection between human coronaviruses and the effectiveness of potential preventative and therapeutic approaches, says co-first author Dr. Lisa Gralinski, assistant professor of epidemiology at UNC.
When infected with SARS-CoV-2, the human lung tissue sustained damage similar to that seen in the lungs of COVID-19 patients. The infection also induced an inflammatory response reminiscent of the excess inflammation that characterizes the disease in people.
Next, the researchers treated the mice with molnupiravir, starting either 24 or 48 hours after they were exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
We found that [molnupiravir] had a remarkable effect on virus replication after only 2 days of treatment a dramatic, more than 25,000-fold reduction in the number of infectious particles in human lung tissue when treatment was initiated 24 hours post-exposure, said senior author Dr. J. Victor Garcia-Martinez, professor of medicine and director of the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science at UNC.
When the treatment was started 48 hours after exposure to the virus, the concentration of virus particles fell by 96%.
Finally, the researchers tested the ability of molnupiravir to prevent infection.
When they gave the drug to mice 12 hours before exposure to SARS-CoV-2, and every 12 hours afterward, it reduced the concentration of virus particles by over 100,000-fold compared with untreated mice.
In previous lab-based studies by the same group, the drug showed promise against two other newly emerged coronaviruses that may have originated in bats: SARS-CoV, which causes SARS, and MERS-CoV, which causes MERS.
This suggests that molnupiravir could protect against a range of bat coronaviruses that make the leap into humans.
Overall, these results indicate that EIDD-2801 may not only be efficacious in treating and preventing COVID-19, it could also prove to be highly effective against future coronavirus outbreaks as well, said co-author Dr. Ralph Baric, the William Kenan Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the UNC School of Medicine.
For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.
LACKAWANNA, N.Y. (WIVB) The Christian season of lent starts in just a few days. Now, the Catholic Church is making changes to its Ash Wednesday traditions.
Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica released a video showing what worshipers can expect in the wake of COVID-19.
This year instead of ashes being placed on the forehead, priests will be sprinkling ashes on the crown of the head.
Father David Lipuma says this change, actually goes back to the earliest days of Christianity.
When they were doing penance, they would put on sackcloth and sprinkle ashes on their head, as a sign of their penance, their penitential hearts, but also as a sign of their mortality.
You can watch the full video below:
The changes are going into effect around the world.
The light at the end of this dark COVID-19 tunnel is quickly getting brighter but you still wont have a normal summer.
Even as efforts to distribute and administer the COVID vaccine accelerate, the U.S. is unlikely to achieve herd immunity until mid-September. Thats even with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.31% vaccine that could be authorized for use by the end of February and will provide an alternative to the two-dose Pfizer PFE, +0.84% and Moderna MRNA, +0.16% vaccines already being administered.
And this is the best-case scenario. It assumes we have an adequate supply of vaccine, accessible vaccination sites, staff available to provide vaccines and enough people interested in being vaccinated. Any challenges with those, and it could take longer.
Heres the math:
About 332.2 million people live in the U.S. Using the 70% threshold that many agree would provide herd immunity, more than 249.1 million persons must be vaccinated. But because not everyone who is vaccinated will develop antibodies, we need to exceed that number to have some assurance that at least 70% will develop antibodies.
After subtracting the 73 million people living in the U.S. who are under 18, there are approximately 241.8 million individuals, which is short of the herd immunity threshold of 70%. Children under 16 years currently are not eligible for the vaccine. This is simply because this group didnt participate in any of the clinical trials needed for vaccine approval. This is standard, and there are trials currently being conducted for them. But we still need to count this group when assessing herd immunity.
Read: Fauci says kids will be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as late spring
More than 27 million Americans have already received at least one dose and more than 6 million are fully vaccinated. So we still need to vaccinate more than 226.5 million to achieve the herd immunity threshold.
That goal of 226.5 million currently requires 453 million doses of vaccine (this will change if the Johnson and Johnson vaccine gets approved for use by the FDA since it only requires one dose). The U.S.s average vaccination rate over seven days is running at just under 1.6 million a day.
In my experience, it is taking an average of 4 minutes to administer a shot, about twice as long as it takes to administer a flu shot, excluding paperwork. Assuming 10,000 vaccination stations that operate at least 8 hours per day, including weekends, it would take until Jan. 19, 2022 to reach the 70% herd immunity threshold.
If the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is approved for emergency use, the threshold can be reached in late fall. The FDA has scheduled an advisory committee meeting on Feb. 26 to discuss the matter. If the committee backs the vaccine,the FDA could decide to grant the EUA within daysafter the meeting.
Much of the delay in getting vaccines in arms is simply because there arent enough doses to meet the demand. Thats why we repeatedly hear of people frustrated by their attempts to get an appointment, which is leading to people line-jumping by claiming to be a health-care worker or just hanging out at vaccination sites hoping there are unused doses at the end of the day that shouldnt go to waste.
Pfizer has said that it expects to deliver 200 million doses for the U.S. by July 31 and Moderna aims to deliver 200 million doses by June 30. Johnson & Johnson has said it expects to deliver 100 million one-shot doses for the U.S. in the first half of the year, assuming it gets the regulatory go-ahead.
Update: Biden Says U.S. Struck Deals for 200 Million More Covid-19 Vaccine Doses
While these numbers suggest that the U.S. could have enough vaccines to reach herd immunity by the end of June or early July, its not that simple. There are other variables: the number of vaccination sites, the number of people that can be vaccinated per hour at those sites, and the number of hours those sites operate per day and administrative factors.
People also have to be willing to get vaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy, in which people are skeptical of the vaccine for a variety of reasons, may keep us from reaching that threshold that quickly. It must be countered by actively engaging with those population and offering clear, consistent recommendations from trusted sources.
Read: A third of U.S. adults are skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines, poll finds
Health officials and those providing vaccines must have a positive approach about the safety and importance of getting vaccinated when questioned about the vaccine, be proactive with making appointments, especially among those who struggle to book appointments online, send reminders about initial appointments and boosters, and involve trusted members of the community in encouraging others to get a shot.
These are challenges, but at least we have a path to emerge from this pandemic.
It is important to understand that we wont have a choice about which vaccine we receive when its our turn to be vaccinated. There simply isnt an abundance of supply and while we recognize that while they are different, all are effective in preventing symptoms and, more importantly, severe cases and death. Rather the view should be that any vaccine that prevents severe disease and hospitalization should be utilized and accepted.
In the meantime, the death toll already above 450,000 in the U.S. will continue to grow. So continue to wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance and say yes when youre asked to get the vaccine when you are eligible.
Thomas J. Duszynski is a former director of surveillance and Investigation at the Indiana State Department of Health and now a lecturer and director of epidemiology education at IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI in Indianapolis.
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As more COVID-19 vaccines become available, researchers are testing the impact of pairing different products that require two shots.
By Jon CohenFeb. 12, 2021 , 9:00 AM
Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.
With nine vaccines now showing they can powerfully prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19and vaccines in short supplyresearchers are mulling an issue that, even a few months ago, was only hypothetical: Should people mix and match vaccines that require two shots?
If some combinations work, they may provide needed flexibility whenever production of a vaccine falters, as often happens. And theres even a chance that mixing doses of two different vaccines may boost the protection against COVID-19.
One mixed vaccine trial is already underway: It is examining matching a dose of the Sputnik V vaccine made by Russias Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology with a booster dose of a similar vaccine made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. A second trial, examining a combination of the AstraZeneca-Oxford and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which mixes two different technologies, is just getting started, and others are under discussion.
Until these trials produce results, however, health officials are urging caution. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has discouraged people from mixing vaccines unless there are exceptional situations, such as a shortage of the vaccine they received first because of production or distribution hiccups. In the United Kingdom, Public Health England has taken a similar position.
But the scarcity of COVID-19 vaccinesand the urgency of stepping up vaccination ratesis pushing the mix-and-match issue to the fore. As we have more products that are the interchangeable, thats going to have a huge implications for the conduct of this mass vaccination campaign in a setting of uncertain supplies, says Bruce Gellin, who heads global immunization for the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute.
There are definite advantages to having data that could support a more flexible immunization program, if needed and if approved by the medicines regulator, said Jonathan Van-Tam, the United Kingdoms deputy chief medical officer, in announcing the trial combining the AstraZeneca-Oxford and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
Researchers have past experience with mix-and-match vaccine trials. For more than 20 years, the long-struggling HIV vaccine field has tried to combine different vaccine strategies to elicit more powerful immune responses, but none has succeeded. Johnson & Johnson brought an Ebola vaccine to market in the European Union that combines its preparation with one that uses a completely different formulation made by Bavarian Nordic. Similarly, to trigger more robust protection in the elderly, a shot of a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is boosted by one that contains a pneumococcal polysaccharide. The inactivated polio vaccine, for safety reasons, has also been given before one made with live attenuated virus, which can sometimes cause the disease if the virus mutates. But there are few other examples of using two vaccines approved for market in a one-two punch.
Mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines raises several potential complications. One is regulatory: What if, say, only one is authorized for emergency use? Another is immunological: Whereas some vaccines share the same underlying technology platformssuch as the messenger RNA technology used by both the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Modernaothers do not.
Different platforms may, on the other hand, turn on different arms of the immune system. And pairing matched platforms may dodge unwanted immune responses. For example, both Gamaleyas Sputnik V vaccine and the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine employ different adenovirus (Ad) vectors to deliver a key gene to human cells. Both require a prime shot followed by a booster. The Lancet has published efficacy data for each vaccine, and they have received emergency use authorizations in several countries.
Gamaleya uses two different Ad vectors that contain the spike gene for its priming and booster shots: Ad26 followed by Ad5. AstraZeneca and Oxford use the same chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAd) for both its prime and booster. In theory, AstraZenecas use of the same vector for both shots means the immune response triggered by the first shot could cripple the booster. That potential problem could be avoided by pairing the AstraZeneca shot with the Sputnik V one, presumably in either order.
Gamaleya, in turn, might benefit from using the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine as a booster because the institute, according to a Bloomberg report, has had problems making the Ad5 vector. (Sputnik V representatives told Science they had no comment about the Bloomberg report, but said delays in supplies to Latin America could occur as they upgrade manufacturing facilities.) And many researchers have criticized Gamaleya for choosing Ad5 because of disastrous trials in 2007 with an Ad5-based HIV vaccine that somehow increased the risk of infection with the AIDS virus. So an Ad26-ChAd combination gets around that concern.
Sputnik Vs financial backers also contacted CanSino Biologics, a Chinese company that makes an Ad5 spike vaccine thats used as a single shot, to discuss pairing their vaccines, CEO Yu Xuefeng told Science. But they have not negotiated a deal as of yet. CanSino has not reported efficacy data. (A health adviser to Pakistans prime minister tweeted on 8 February that the CanSino candidate worked in a trial there and in other countries. Yu said he couldnt confirm the report because the company has not seen the data, but believes it is accurate.)
The United Kingdoms National Immunisation Schedule Evaluation Consortium is moving ahead with an elaborate mix-and-match study of the AstraZeneca-Oxford and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. It has eight different strategies that will involve giving the vaccines in different orders and at different intervals. Van-Tam hopes the trial will produce greater insight into how we can use vaccines to stay on top of this nasty disease.
Gellin, for one, is frustrated that more mix-and-match trials arent already up and running. Its got to be a top priority for someone, he says. But Gellin concedes the regulatory issues are daunting. This is something that companies should do, and maybe theyll be able to do it, he says. But theyll probably require more lawyers than volunteers.
For example, if youre vaccinating nursing home patients, there are some nursing home patients that are going to die within the week after vaccination, irrespective of whether they got that vaccine. So, just because theres a temporal association, meaning a time association got a vaccine and you died, doesnt mean that theres a causal association that the vaccine was the reason that you died, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert, said.
CHICAGO Pfizer says it hopes to start testing its COVID-19 vaccine on adolescents within the first part of the year.
A spokesperson told WGN theyve finished enrolling more than 2,000 children ages 12-to 18 for the trial. However, the protocol has not been approved by regulators.
Pfizer is the only manufacturer whose trials may be far enough along to have vaccine data on kids by the end of the summer.
Moderna is still enrolling participants for its adolescent trial.
Nearly 10% of Denver residents have received first COVID-19 vaccine dose as city works to expand inoculation sites Greeley Tribune
