Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. Mary Altaffer/AP hide caption
Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y.
Back in early April as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged New York, John J. Lennon was sure he would contract the coronavirus.
As a prisoner at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., social distancing was impossible, he says. Making calls on prison phones, Lennon says, meant being "chest to shoulders" with nearly two dozen inmates. "It was a death-trap situation to use the phone," he says.
Not long after he made his prediction, Lennon started to feel feverish. He lost his sense of taste. The true number of infected inmates will likely never be known; he says incarcerated people at Sing Sing who didn't need medical intervention weren't being tested.
"I would sort of have conversations with my neighbors, sort of swapping symptoms," he told NPR's Morning Edition in early September. "Some guys were being ambulanced out to the surrounding hospitals. And by May, we had five deaths, including one officer."
His symptoms were mild, Lennon says, but he remembers having trouble breathing in part because of anxiety. He remembers he had to talk himself "off the ledge" of a panic attack.
"You got CNN on in your cell TV in the background talking about hundreds of people dying. It's like a torture chamber," he said.
In July, Lennon was transferred to Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y. He's not sure why he was moved there from Sing Sing, but when he arrived, he found a community that hadn't been hit as hard by the virus as the one he came from. He believes that's due to a prison population at Sullivan that is older and with existing health problems, so prison leaders took different precautions. For example, the superintendent keeps a careful eye on incarcerated people at the facility for early signs of the virus.
Lennon has written about what it's like catching the virus and living during the pandemic in prison for New York Magazine.
The interview highlights contain some extra content that did not air in the broadcast version.
On the changing attitude incarcerated people have had to masks
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has issued masks statewide, but they started issuing them in early May. Sing Sing was hit hard in April. By early May, five people were already dead. So that time that we were hit hard, there were no masks. I remember the moment we got masks, it was the first week of May and they started giving the masks out and the whole cell block erupted and they just started cursing and saying 'It's too late now.'
On how the inmates who died of COVID-19 are remembered at Sing Sing
My sort of "money" as an incarcerated journalist is reporting on what's happening inside. I don't know what happened to the men that died.
Calvin Grohoske, he was having a hard time breathing. He was taken out in mid-April and I talked to his neighbor, Paul Davidson, and I asked him what happened. He said, 'I just saw his cell being packed up and guys going in Tyvek suits and putting it in bags. And I never saw him again, and I used to watch the SYFY channel with him. That was my boy.' They were tight. He doesn't know what happened to his body.
There's a lot of unknowns. That seems to be the theme of 2020, the unknown.
On Leonard Carter, a formerly incarcerated person at Sing Sing who served 25 years who died of COVID-19 shortly after he was released
He had made parole, I believe, in February. And he went down to a pre-release facility in Queensborough, and he died there.
It was hard for me when I heard it because, when you know somebody personally I worked with him on the mental health unit when I first arrived at Sing Sing, and he was like a veteran, sort of giving me the ropes. He's like "These guys are having a hard time, they take a lot of antipsychotic medication." Like, he knew the ins and outs of this. So when I learned it was Leonard Carter, everyone called him Mr. Carter, I felt bad because I was like, wow, this guy was probably going to go home and do good work. He was a decent guy.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and labor leaders whose members could bear the brunt of layoffs or furloughs as the city tries to close a yawning 2021 budget deficit called on Illinois' Congressional delegation this week to work toward passage of a federal aid package that could forestall the deepest cuts.
Its not likely the letter they sent to legislators from Illinois will have much impact on the partisan Washington D.C. impasse over aid to cities and other units of government hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the coronavirus in Illinois has passed 8,500, according to state public health officials who say more than 1,600 people are currently hospitalized with the disease, more than 350 of them in intensive care units.
Public health officials said there have been more than 283,000 positive cases of COVID-19 out of more than 5.3 million tests administered in the state. On Friday, 69,793 tests had been done over the past 24 hours, putting the states seven-day positivity rate at 3.6%.
However, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has warned that Region 1 in northern Illinois, which includes the Rockford and Dixon areas, has seen positivity rates rise to 7.5%, near the 8% threshold that would bring additional restrictions on public gatherings.
Heres whats happening Friday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois:
1:37 p.m.: Mayor Lori Lightfoot, labor leaders call for congressional help on Chicagos coronavirus revenue hole
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and labor leaders whose members could bear the brunt of layoffs or furloughs as the city tries to close a yawning 2021 budget deficit called on Illinois' Congressional delegation this week to work toward passage of a federal aid package that could forestall the deepest cuts.
Its not likely the letter they sent to legislators from Illinois will have much impact on the partisan Washington D.C. impasse over aid to cities and other units of government hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it illustrates how Lightfoot and union heads are trying to show theyre working together before the mayor introduces a budget proposal next month that she has warned could include significant payroll cuts in many front line city departments to help close a shortfall for next year she estimates at $1.2 billion.
Whilelaying out that financial holelast month, Lightfoot said a federal revenue deal is the best way to avoid cuts that would impact city services.
1:35 p.m.: Buffalo Grove to allow Halloween trick-or-treating with safety suggestions
Buffalo Grove trustees agreed to accept staff recommendations to not ban trick-or-treating in the village on Halloween, but instead offer alternatives and suggestions to improve safety during the annual candy gathering in the time of coronavirus.
The board agreed with that approach, Assistant Village Manager Jennifer Maltas told Pioneer Press in an interview following Mondays combination virtual and in-person meeting.
Regarding trick-or-treating, Maltas said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has categorized the traditional door-to-door candy collection as a high-risk activity in light of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic and she said the Illinois Department of Public Health is expected to finalize its guidelines in the coming days.
Village officials may tweak their recommendations after reviewing that information, she said.
12:12 p.m.: 2,514 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 25 additional deaths reported
Illinois public health officials reported Friday they had logged 2,514 newly diagnosed cases and 25 additional confirmed deaths of people with COVID-19, raising the statewide tally to 283,885 known cases and 8,563 deaths.
11:42 a.m.: 20 Valparaiso, Indiana, football players quarantined after positive COVID-19 case; games against Crown Point, Merrillville canceled
Valparaiso High School has announced that both junior varsity and varsity football teams will suspend practice and competition until Oct. 5, effectively canceling games against Crown Point and Merrillville.
In a statement sent to football parents, Head Coach Bill Marshall and Athletic Director Stacy Adams said school officials received word of a positive COVID-19 case at the high school.
In collaboration with the Porter County Health Department, those in direct contact with the individual who tested positive were identified, notified and instructed to quarantine for 14 days.
10:59 a.m.: Coronavirus cases are on the rise in the US heartland, where anti-mask sentiment runs high
It began with devastation in the New York City area, followed by a summertime crisis in the Sun Belt. Now the coronavirus is striking cities with much smaller populations in the heartland, often in conservative corners of America where anti-mask sentiment runs high.
The spread has created new problems at hospitals, schools and colleges in the Midwest and West.
Wisconsin is averaging more than 2,000 new cases a day over the last week, compared with 675 three weeks earlier. Hospitalizations in the state are at the highest level since the outbreak took hold in the U.S. in March.
Utah has seen its average daily case count more than double from three weeks earlier. Oklahoma and Missouri are regularly recording 1,000 new cases a day, and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a staunch opponent of mask rules, tested positive for the virus this week. And South Dakota, Idaho and Iowa are seeing sky-high rates of tests coming back positive.
The U.S. is averaging more than 40,000 new confirmed cases a day. While that number is dramatically lower than the peak of nearly 70,000 over the summer, the numbers are worrisome nonetheless. The nations death toll eclipsed 200,000 this week, the highest in the world.
9:09 a.m.: Neiman Marcus is notifying employees of a new round of staff cuts
Neiman Marcus is exiting its bankruptcy with a smaller workforce.
Significant staff cuts at both its Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores have started this week. The company didnt say how many people are permanently losing jobs.
We plan to separate from selling and non-selling associates, the Dallas-based luxury retailer said in emailed statement. These are difficult decisions we must make at this time and we are so grateful for our dedicated stores associates.
7:11 a.m.: What will it take to make diners feel safe indoors? Nearly 60% feel uneasy eating inside, so restaurants try sterilizing UV wands, tabletop air purifiers as winter looms.
The host greeting diners at Formentos, an Italian restaurant in the West Town neighborhood, now offers guests something new alongside the menu and wine list: a portable air purifier for their table.
The tabletop devices are among a series of air quality upgrades the restaurant introduced this month to assure customers they can breathe easy dining inside.
Diners can also expect to see bussers using ultraviolet wands to sterilize glassware and utensils, and little air-sucking robots in various corners of the restaurant that use heat to kill microorganisms. Unseen are new air filters installed in the HVAC system meant to trap virus particles.
The changes were costly for a restaurant that continues to lose money due to COVID-19.
5 a.m.: With the pandemic, parents and educators embrace outdoor preschools. Many hope the move will be permanent.
On a hazy September afternoon near a willow tree, a boy with a bright red backpack spotted something slimy on the ground.
Hello, all the mushrooms, he said, gently tapping the fungus, trying not to crush any as his small feet moved through the grass.
A teacher asked why they might be growing in that spot. The boy thought for a moment. Because its shady and wet!
That was just one lesson for the group of kids at the Chicago Botanic Garden Nature Preschool, a program thats part of the growing field of nature-based early childhood education.
Nature preschools were increasing before the pandemic, more than doubling in the last three years, according to a report from the Natural Start Alliance, a project of the North American Association for Environmental Education. The report estimates 585 schools across the country have nature-based education at their core, meaning a significant amount of time is spent outside. Illinois is among the states with the most programs topping 20. California and Washington, with about 50 programs each, lead the list.
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) Rhode Islanders gathered outside the Department of Health Thursday evening to honor the hundreds of local nursing home residents who have died from COVID-19.
Among the attendees was Vicki Moss, whose mother Dorothy died of COVID-19.
After she passed, we found out that she was now testing positive and that was the cause of death on the death certificate, Moss recalled.
Raise The Bar, the coalition that organized the event, said there have been roughly 800 resident deaths in nursing homes since March.
Eighty percent of the deaths in Rhode Island are in nursing homes and I wanted to make sure that there was a face attached to the tragedy, Bob Raphael, Dorothys son-in-law said.
The family also felt it was important to acknowledge the caregivers who ended up contracting COVID-19 while caring for sick residents.
Adelina Ramos, a caregiver at a nursing home in Greenville, said she ended up testing positive. She said nine residents at her nursing home have died since March.
We are afraid to bring it home to our family, but we still have to go to work every day and take care of these residents because they need us at the end of the day, Ramos said.
Raise The Bar has made it its mission to help the caregivers putting their lives on the line every day.
Coordinator Adanjesus Marin said the coalition is pushing for the Nursing Home Staffing and Quality Care Act to pass in Rhode Island.
It was passed unanimously in the Senate, the House opted instead of taking action to create a study commission which has no power to affect any change, Marin said.
The legislation would make it so each facility has to legally provide a minimum of 4.1 hours to direct nursing care to each resident daily.
Marin said nursing homes will continue to have the most COVID-19 deaths in the state if the legislation isnt passed.
Dorothys family said this is the first time theyve been able to publicly mourn their loss and hopes it spurs action at the State House.
It was important for us to be here today to at least do that a little bit and get that taken care of in some way, Raphael said.
Marin said theres no public record to show how many nursing home caregivers in Rhode Island have died of COVID-19.
The race is not always to the swift, as the cocky hare learned in Aesops classic fable, The Hare and the Tortoise. Those handicapping the so-called competition to develop Covid-19 vaccines would do well to keep an eye on the slower runners in this pursuit.
Corporate giants Sanofi and Merck, which got a relatively late start in developing Covid-19 vaccines, may seem far behind the frontrunners. But experts say they also have such deep experience developing and testing vaccine candidates, and producing vaccine at commercial scale, that both could well close the gap considerably in the months ahead.
Each is developing two vaccines, in partnership with others.
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Saad Omer, a vaccinologist and director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, noted that some companies closer to the front of the pack lack Sanofis competitive advantages.
Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, for instance, has not yet brought a vaccine through the approval process and is now attempting to produce doses of a Covid-19 vaccine at a massive scale. It estimates it should be able to make between 500 million and 1 billion doses a year an output target that would be daunting to even a seasoned manufacturer.
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Would you rather have a company that has done scaled-up manufacturing under strict regulations and has substantial muscle memory of doing that? Omer wondered, speaking about the appeal of a vaccine veteran. That gives you some reassurance.
Robin Robinson, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, similarly noted that Merck, with its large global footprint, has experience conducting clinical trials around the world and significant manufacturing know-how.
They can move fast, he said.
A vaccine being produced by Pfizer in partnership with BioNTech appears poised to be the first to produce data that will show if it protects against Covid-19 infection. Moderna appears to be a close second, followed by a vaccine being developed by University of Oxford and AstraZeneca the study of which is still on hold in the United States because of an adverse event in Britain and Johnson & Johnson, which started its Phase 3 trial this week. Novavax, which also has yet to bring a vaccine to market, is currently running Phase 2 trials.
Sanofi and Merck are behind this group of five. But the race for a vaccine is not a winner-take-all situation. The world is expected to need vaccines from any number of manufacturers to curb the Covid-19 pandemic, and its likely that some that arent among the first to cross the finish line will have advantages the earliest vaccines do not.
The best outcome for us is to have several across the finish line because the global need is tremendous, said Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration who is now vice president at In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit investment group.
Speed is just one parameter. And actually in the global scheme, its not the most important one, said Borio, who stressed the need for safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines.
Sanofi and Merck are both known to prefer underpromising and overdelivering.
Were not a flashy, you know, press-release-everyday kind of company, said Nicholas Kartsonis, who leads infectious disease clinical research for Merck Research Laboratories.
We tend to be more conservative for our positions because we know the complexities and the challenges, especially for making vaccines, said John Shiver, head of vaccine R&D for Sanofi.
Shiver initially estimated that it would take several years to develop and license a Covid-19 vaccine during a meeting with President Trump and other vaccine manufacturers at the White House in March. Trump appeared more taken with Moderna CEO Stphane Bancels projection that his company could generate clinical efficacy data for a vaccine in mere months.
Moderna, along with Pfizer and BioNTech, are making messenger-RNA vaccines, which are far quicker to develop in the early stages than some of the more established vaccine constructs. While there is hope that with that great speed, mRNA vaccines will be the answer to newly emerging diseases in future, some experts question whether the technology is ready for a prime-time debut now. Much rides on how well the vaccines stimulate the immune system and how durable that effect is.
In terms of making billions of doses, were probably a little premature for that to be as cheap and available at some of the other approaches, philanthropist Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the science behind the RNA vaccine platform, told STAT in a recent interview.
Five to 10 years from now, if things go well for that platform, it would be the primary and perhaps even the only response that we make here. So that timings a bit unfortunate, Gates said.
One of Sanofis Covid-19 candidates is an mRNA vaccine, which it is developing with Translate Bio, a Lexington, Mass.-based biotech that has been developing therapeutics using mRNA. The company has a decades worth of experience learning how to manufacture mRNA to substantial scale, Shiver said, adding the partners believe they can make between 90 million and 360 million doses of this two-dose vaccine in 2021.
The mRNA, for example, is a very interesting technology. Thats one of the reasons why were also pursuing that with a partner. But there are no licensed products with mRNA. No ones ever made hundreds of millions of doses either before, he noted, adding thePhase 1/2trial for this vaccine is expected to start by the end of November.
Shiver said the earliest the vaccine might be approved if its proven safe and effective would be the second half of 2021.
Sanofis other vaccine is being developed using the same platform the company uses to make its Flublok vaccine. Thats a plus: Theres always a greater degree of comfort and confidence on the part of regulatory agencies when a vaccine is made using a platform that they are familiar with and that has an established safety record.
(Likewise, by the time Sanofi has data on its mRNA vaccine, it may be able to benefit from the regulatory agencies evaluations of Modernas and Pfizers vaccines, Omer noted.)
This Sanofi vaccine, called a recombinant protein vaccine, will be used with an adjuvant a compound that boosts the immune systems response made by GSK.
A Phase 1/2 clinical trial involving 440 subjects, large for an early trial is already underway. Shiver said the company expects to have safety and immunogenicity data by the end of December. It also expects to have 100 million doses of the vaccine made by then should the Food and Drug Administration start to issue emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines.
Shiver said Sanofi expects to be able to produce 1 billion doses of this vaccine in 2021. The vaccine is likely to require two doses though the company is also testing a single dose.
Another advantage: This vaccine does not need to be shipped and stored at the ultra-cold temperatures of the mRNA vaccines, which makes distribution and administration easier.
One of the Merck vaccines is also being made using a platform that regulatory agencies already know. The vaccine is made by fusing genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, onto a livestock virus that can infect people but does not sicken them. The vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, backbone triggers a rapid and robust immune response and all research on the backbone to date shows it does it with a single dose.
Its the same platform that was used to develop Mercks Ebola vaccine, which has shown strong results. It has not good and not very good, but outstanding efficacy said Robinson, the former head of BARDA.
Merck is developing this vaccine in conjunction with IAVI the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative which is run by former Merck chief scientist Mark Feinberg.
Kartsonis noted Mercks Ebola vaccine worked as well in the elderly as it did in young, healthy adults. Thats not a common feature of vaccines, and if the same is true for a VSV-vectored Covid vaccine, that would be a big selling point given the elderly are at the highest risk from SARS-2. There may be scenarios where this is a great vaccine for the elderly or a great vaccine for certain patient populations, Kartsonis said.
Another potential plus: IAVI is working to see if the vaccine could be given orally. A vaccine that doesnt need to be injected would be the crown jewel of having a vaccine for this, Kartsonis said.
This vaccine is not yet in clinical trials, though Merck expects to start them before the end of the year. The company said it is too soon to say when Phase 3 studies the large studies that show if a vaccine works could take place.
The second vaccine that Merck is making in collaboration with its newly acquired subsidiary, Austrian-based Themis BioScience is already in clinical trials. It uses an attenuated (weakened) measles virus as a vector with which to introduce genetic material from SARS-2 to the immune system. There are no licensed vaccines using this backbone, but clinical trials of a chikungunya virus vaccine using this approach show promise.
Timing is important. Dont get me wrong. Its very important. But at the end of the day where we all want is a vaccine that highly effective, highly well tolerated and safe and is as durable as it can be, Kartsonis said.
He and Shiver both expressed the hope that multiple vaccines will work and that others are approved before their companies products are ready for use. But both expressed a fair amount of confidence that as the Covid-19 market establishes itself, there will be some vaccines that perform better than others.
The race has started. But I mean, how many marathon runners do you know in mile 1 win a race? Kartsonis asked.
With other diseases, being fourth or fifth (or sixth or seventh) to market might make pursuit of a vaccine, even if promising, financially infeasible. But the global need for Covid-19 vaccine has introduced a whole new type of calculus to these considerations, said Omer.
Its not necessarily that the first vaccine is the one that establishes the market share, he said. Because the pie is so big.
A Chinese pharmaceutical company said Thursday the coronavirus vaccine it is developing should be ready by early 2021 for distribution worldwide.
Yin Weidong, the CEO of SinoVac, said he personally has been given the experimental vaccine.
At the very beginning, our strategy was designed for China and for Wuhan. Soon after that in June and July we adjusted our strategy, that is to face the world, Yin said, referring to the Chinese city where the virus first emerged.
Our goal is to provide the vaccine to the world including the U.S., EU and others, Yin said.
Stringent regulations in the U.S., European Union, Japan and Australia have historically blocked the sale of Chinese vaccines. But Yin said that could change.
SinoVac is developing one of Chinas top four vaccine candidates along with state-owned SinoPharm, which has two in development, and military-affiliated private firm CanSino.
More than 24,000 people are participating in clinical trials of CoronaVac in Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia, with additional trials scheduled for Bangladesh and possibly Chile, Yin said. SinoVac chose those countries because they all had serious outbreaks, large populations and limited research and development capacity, he said.
He spoke to reporters during a tour of a SinoVac plant south of Beijing. Built in a few months from scratch, the plant is designed to enable SinoVac to produce half a million vaccine doses a year. The bio-secure facility was already busy on Thursday filling tiny bottles with the vaccine and boxing them. The company projects it will be able to produce a few hundred million doses of the vaccine by February or March of next year.
SinoVac is also starting to test small doses of CoronaVac on children and the elderly in China after noticing rising numbers of cases globally among those two groups.
Yin said the company would prioritize distribution of the vaccine to countries hosting human trials of CoronaVac.
While the vaccine has not yet passed the phase 3 clinical trials, a globally accepted standard, SinoVac has already injected thousands of people in China under an emergency use provision.
Yin said he was one of the first to receive the experimental vaccine months ago along with researchers after phase one and two of human trials showed no serious adverse effects. He said that self-injecting showed his support for CoronaVac.
This is kind of a tradition of our company, Yin said, adding that he had done the same with a hepatitis vaccine under development.
Earlier this year, China permitted emergency use of vaccine candidates for at-risk populations like border personnel and medical workers if companies could show good safety and good antibodies from tests of about 1,000 people, Yin said.
SinoVac received that approval in June along with SinoPharm and CanSino, and was able to provide tens of thousands of doses of CoronaVac to Beijing's municipal government, Yin said.
SinoVac employees qualified for emergency use of the vaccine because an outbreak inside the company would cripple its ability to develop a vaccine, he said. About 90% of the companys staff have received it.
We are confident that our research of the COVI-19 vaccines can meet the standards of the U.S. and EU countries, Yin said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, pictured at a news conference earlier this month, said Thursday that "we're going to put together our own review committee headed by the Department of Health." Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, pictured at a news conference earlier this month, said Thursday that "we're going to put together our own review committee headed by the Department of Health."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he doesn't trust the Trump administration to deliver a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine because the approval process has become so politicized that its integrity can't be taken for granted.
At a news conference Thursday, Cuomo said state health officials will screen any federally approved vaccines.
"The first question is, is the vaccine safe? Frankly, I'm not going to trust the federal government's opinion," Cuomo said, adding, "New York state will have its own review when the federal government has finished with their review and says its safe."
The Democratic governor has often clashed with President Trump over the pandemic response.
"We're going to put together a group [of scientists] for them to review the vaccine," Cuomo said, adding that he wouldn't recommend New Yorkers get vaccinated until that state-run process is complete.
"I want to make sure we know it's safe to take," he said.
On Wednesday, the president said that if the Food and Drug Administration issues stricter guidelines for a COVID-19 vaccine, he might not approve them and accused the agency of playing politics.
"That has to be approved by the White House. We may or may not approve it. That sounds like a political move," Trump said during a press briefing at the White House.
Cuomo brought up Trump's comments during Thursday's announcement.
"The president is once again in a dispute with the FDA," Cuomo said. "The FDA says they want to make the approval more rigorous, more transparent. The president says they're trying to politicize it. Why would the FDA be politicizing the approval? Between the president and the FDA, only one entity is engaged in the political process and is headed for the Election Day. It's not the FDA."
The timing of a vaccine has increasingly been a source of contention. Trump has said a vaccine could be ready for widespread release as early as next month.
"We remain on track to deliver a vaccine before the end of the year and maybe even before Nov. 1," the president said early this month. "We think we can probably have it sometime during the month of October."
That's a timeline some of President Trump's own scientific advisers have called into question.
New York is still the state hardest-hit COVID-19, with more than 32,000 deaths so far, but stringent public health measures have sharply reduced infection rates. Roughly 1% of the state's coronavirus tests now come back positive, and the number of people dying each day has fallen into the single digits, with just two fatalities reported statewide on Wednesday.
A Long Island company plans to begin a clinical trial upstate on a COVID-19 vaccine for cats, which have been found to be susceptible to the virus.
A vaccine potentially could safeguard pet owners by reducing the chance that their cats harbor the virus, said James A. Hayward, president and chief executive of Stony Brook-based Applied DNA Sciences Inc.
"By vaccinating a cat, you not only improve the health of the cat, you lower the proximal reservoir of virus available to humans," he said, noting the relationship between cats and their humans is "up close and personal."
To date, however, there have been no documented cases of cat-to-human transmission, experts said.
In a few cases, however, cats and dogs worldwide have been reported to be infected with the COVID-19 virus, mostly after close contact with humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Evidence suggests the risks of animals spreading the virus to people is low, but humans can infect animals "in some situations," said the CDC, which advises isolating pets from people who become ill.
Cats "are almost always being infected by humans" rather than other cats, said Dr. Colin Parrish, a professor of virology at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. "Most are not going to come in contact with cats outside the house. They're not going to frat parties or bars."
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Americans own 94.2 million cats, according to the American Pet Products Association's 2017-2018 National Pet Owners Survey.
Applied DNA has been developing a COVID-19 vaccine for humans in partnership with Takis Biotech, based in Rome.
In the cat trial, Applied DNA will be joining with Evvivax, a Takis spinout focused on veterinary immunotherapy and vaccines.
The clinical trial, in upstate Brewster, calls for enrolling 30 healthy domestic cats and injecting them with the vaccine once a month for three months to study safety and the cats' immune response.
The trial is scheduled to begin after clearance from the U.S. Agriculture Deparment, which regulates veterinary medicines.
The cats will be monitored for six months to track evidence of antibodies and T-cells, shown to help fight off the virus that causes COVID-19.
The feline trial also will add to the preclinical data required in developing the vaccine for use in humans, Hayward said.
In early April, the Bronx Zoo announced that a 4-year-old Malayan tiger named Nadia tested positive for the virus. Later that month, tests showed that seven other tigers and lions also tested positive.
Parrish said that barring evidence that cats are frequently infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, a vaccine likely would be reserved for special situations.
He said those might include cats that live among the elderly in nursing homes or with people who have diabetes, considered a risk factor in developing serious COVID-19 complications.
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Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.
Well, here we are. The place where no one wanted to be. COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have surpassed 200,000 Americans. Black Americans continue to experience the highest COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide, are almost five times more likely than White Americans to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and twice as likely to die from the disease. Despite those facts, Black people are not participating in the COVID-19 vaccine trials in large numbers.
Theres a lot of discussion about the lack of participation by people of color, particularly Black people, in the vaccine trials, or in research with human subjects in general. CBS News reported that while Black people make up 18 percent of the nations population, they only represent 11 percent and 16 percent of Pfizer and Modernas vaccine trials, respectively. Both pharmaceutical companies are in phase three trials where volunteers test the effectiveness of the vaccine.
Let me share some insight from my perspective, on why there may be a low participation rate, for those of you who see it as a problem (not everyone does, you know).
As a people, Black Americans are not strangers to the disparate impact we face from infectious disease on Black Americans. People of colorminoritiesare often affected by infectious diseases disproportionately compared with their White counterparts.
Now here we are, just over 100 years later, dealing with pretty much the same sh*t.
Because of structural racism, Black Americans, along with Latinx and Indigenous Peoples, experience greater infection and mortality rates from COVID-19, from the elderly down through children of color. As I have written in previous blog posts, the fact is that the reason that pre-existing conditions, which make COVID-19 more deadly, are so widely prevalent is because of racism. Frontline workers, essential workersincluding grocery store clerks, farmworkers, transportation workers, environmental sanitation workers and others are, for the most part, people of color. The data gatheredaround the disparity in COVID-19 testing, treatment and deaths, although incomplete, speaks volumes and is reminiscent of the historical practices described above.
Now if that doesnt provide enough reasons for lack of participation, here are a few more.
Given everything I have mentioned here, which isnt nearly inclusive of everything that has occurred, is there really any wonder why many Black people dont want to be used as guinea pigs or laboratory rats, particularly when initial questions about susceptibility have not even been addressed? There is a legacy of mistreatment in medical trials and that contributes to the lack of participation by Black people.
At the same time, Black people must consider the ramifications of non-participationparticularly when it comes to ensuring the efficacy of a vaccine for people who are more at risk of infection and deaths from COVID-19. Even given the historical context I provide here, participation must be an individual decision, after much consideration.
PA Governor's office/Flickr
Posted in: Science and Democracy, Science Communication Tags: COVID-19 and the Coronavirus Pandemic, ethics, public health, Systemic Racism
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The first doses of the vaccine arrived in Murmansk on the 23rd September and vaccination started the following day, the regional government informs.
It is doctors working in especially exposed areas that are the first to get the vaccine. They will get two shots, the second to be injected 21 days after the initial dose.
Russian health authorities are now distributing the first minor shipments of the vaccine around the country. There are a series of special requirements related to the transportation, the Murmansk Ministry of Health says.
President Vladimir Putin on the 11th March announced that Russia had completed the development of its vaccine against the COVID-19. The vaccine has got the name Sputnik V.
Murmansk is among the Russian regions badly hit by the pandemic. By 25th September, a total of 14,586 people were registered as carriers of the virus. Most of the infected are from the City of Murmansk, but also several smaller towns and municipalities, including Northern Fleet naval town Severomorsk and the district of Pechenga, are seriously affected.
