Day: December 20, 2020

In US, People Over 75 and Essential Workers Next in Line for Vaccine

An expert committee put people 75 and older and essential workers like firefighters, teachers and grocery store workers next in line for COVID-19 shots as a second vaccine began rolling out Sunday to hospitals, a desperately needed boost as the nation works to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.The developments occurred as the nation seeks to ramp up a vaccination program that only began in the last week and so far has given initial shots to about 556,000 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The vaccines from Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech, as well as the one from Moderna Inc., which was approved by regulators last week go first to health care workers and residents of long-term care homes, based on the advice of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.The committee voted 13-1 on Sunday to put people 75 and older as well as certain front-line workers next in line for the vaccines.Those essential workers include firefighters and police officers; teachers and school staff; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit and grocery store workers.The committee also voted that behind those groups should be other essential workers; people ages 65 to 74; and those aged 16 to 64 who have certain medical conditions — like obesity and cancer — that put them at higher risk for severe disease if they get infected with COVID-19.The expert panel’s recommendation next goes to the CDC director and to states as guidance to put together vaccination programs. CDC directors have almost always signed off on committee recommendations. No matter what the CDC says, there will be differences from state to state, because various health departments have different ideas about who should be closer to the front of the line.Pfizer’s shots were first shipped out a week ago and started being used the next day, kicking off the nation’s biggest vaccination drive.Earlier Sunday, trucks left the Olive Branch, Mississippi, factory, near Memphis, Tennessee, with the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health. The much-needed shots are expected to be given starting Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency rollout.In Louisville, Kentucky, UPS driver Todd Elble said his vaccine shipment was the “most important load that I’ve hauled” in a 37-year career. His parents contracted COVID-19 in November, and his 78-year-old father died. He said the family speculates that his father got infected while traveling on a hunting trip with four other relatives to Wyoming, and some are still sick.“I’m going to take the vaccine myself. I’m going to be first in line for my father — I’ll tell you that much — and any others that should follow,” he said. “I feel in my heart that everybody should, to help get this stopped.”He added: “To bring this back, I feel Dad was in the truck with me today.”Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser to the federal government’s vaccine distribution effort, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that nearly 8 million doses will be distributed Monday, about 5.9 million of the Moderna vaccine and 2 million of the vaccine from Pfizer Inc. He said the first Moderna shots should be given Monday morning.Public health experts say the shots — and others in the pipeline — are the only way to stop a virus that has been spreading wildly. Nationwide, more than 219,000 people per day on average test positive for the virus, which has killed over 316,000 in the U.S. and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.Slaoui also predicted the U.S. will experience “a continuing surge,” with larger numbers of coronavirus cases possible from gatherings for Christmas.“I think, unfortunately, it will get worse,” he said.There won’t be enough shots for the general population until spring, so doses will be rationed at least for the next several months. President-elect Joe Biden pledged earlier this month to have 100 million doses distributed in his first 100 days in office, and his surgeon general nominee said Sunday that it’s still a realistic goal.But Vivek Murthy, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said it’s more realistic to think it may be midsummer or early fall before coronavirus vaccines are available to the general population, rather than late spring. Murthy said Biden’s team is working toward having the shots available to lower-risk individuals by late spring but doing so requires “everything to go exactly on schedule.”“I think it’s more realistic to assume that it may be closer to mid-summer or early fall when this vaccine makes its way to the general population,” Murthy said. “So, we want to be optimistic, but we want to be cautious as well.”Meanwhile, Trump’s surgeon general, Jerome Adams, defended the administration’s handling of the Pfizer vaccine Sunday, a day after the Army general charge of getting COVID-19 vaccines across the U.S. apologized Saturday for “miscommunication” with states over the number of doses to be delivered in the early stages of distribution. At least a dozen states reported they would receive a smaller second shipment of the Pfizer vaccine than they had been told previously.Gen. Gustave Perna told reporters in a telephone briefing that he made mistakes by citing numbers of doses that he believed would be ready. Slaoui said the mistake was assuming vaccines that had been produced were ready for shipment when there was a two-day delay.“And unless it’s perfectly right, we will not release vaccine doses for usage,” he said. “And, sometimes, there could be small hiccups. There have been none, actually, in manufacturing now. The hiccup was more into the planning.”But Adams, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said that “the numbers are going to go up and down.”“It absolutely was not poor planning,” he said. “There’s what we plan. There’s what we actually allocate. There’s what’s delivered, and then there’s what’s actually put in people’s arms.”Adams, who is Black, said he understands that mistrust of the medical community and the vaccine among Blacks “comes from a real place,” the mistreatment of communities of color. He cited the decades-long Tuskegee experiment in Alabama, where Black men with syphilis were not treated so the disease could be studied.He also said immigrants in the U.S. illegally should not be denied the vaccine because of their legal status because “it’s not ethically right to deny those individuals.”“I want to reassure people that your information when collected to get your second shot, if you get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, will not be used in any way, shape or form to harm you legally,” Adams said. “That is something that I have been assured of.”Both the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech shot require two doses several weeks apart. The second dose must be from the same company as the first. Both vaccines appeared safe and strongly protective in large, still unfinished studies.
 

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Transporting COVID Vaccines, Keeping Them Ultra-Cold Poses Challenges

Because the first coronavirus vaccine approved for use in the U.S. needs to be transported in ultra-cold conditions using dry ice, that has created some unique challenges. As Lesia Bakalets reports in this story narrated by Anna Rice, transporting the Pfizer vaccine has led to a huge demand for dry ice.
Camera: David Gogokhia

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Global COVID Cases Pass 76 Million

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Sunday there are 76.3 million global COVID-19 cases.The U.S. continues to lead the world in case numbers at 17.6 million, followed by India with 10 million and Brazil with 7.2 million.U.S. lawmakers are expected to vote Sunday on a nearly $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. The package includes, among other things, $300 supplemental unemployment benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to many Americans.“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday as he announced new restrictions for London and southern England, where a mutant strain of the coronavirus is spreading and where there is now a virtual lockdown, with people urged to stay home.All nonessential stores in the region are set to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeastern England.South Korea recorded 1,097 new infections Sunday, the fifth consecutive day it recorded more than 1,000 new cases.A South Korean Justice Ministry official said an outbreak at a prison in Seoul has infected 184 prisoners and one worker.Starting Monday, the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland are banning people arriving from Sydney, where a 70-person coronavirus cluster has emerged in its northern beach suburbs which have now been placed under a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve.Thailand said Sunday it will test more than 10,000 people in the southwestern province of Samu Sakhon after a daily surge of more than 500.

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British Prime Minister: ‘We Can’t Continue with Christmas as Planned’

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center said early Sunday there are 76.3 million global COVID-19 cases.The U.S. continues to lead the world in case numbers at 17.6 million, followed by India with 10 million and Brazil with 7.2 million.U.S. lawmakers are expected to vote Sunday on a nearly $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package. The package includes, among other things, $300 supplemental unemployment benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to many Americans.“We can’t continue with Christmas as planned,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday as he announced new restrictions for London and southern England, where a mutant strain of the coronavirus is spreading and where there is now a virtual lockdown, with people urged to stay home.All nonessential stores in the region are set to close, and people should not enter or leave the British capital or large parts of southeastern England.South Korea recorded 1,097 new infections Sunday, the fifth consecutive day it recorded more than 1,000 new cases.A South Korean Justice Ministry official said an outbreak at a prison in Seoul has infected 184 prisoners and one worker.Starting Monday, the Australian states of Victoria and Queensland are banning people arriving from Sydney, where a 70-person coronavirus cluster has emerged in its northern beach suburbs which have now been placed under a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve.Thailand said Sunday it will test more than 10,000 people in the southwestern province of Samu Sakhon after a daily surge of more than 500.

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One Year on, Wuhan Residents Share Lockdown Memories, Hopes for 2021

In China’s Wuhan, the original epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, the city’s residents are returning to normal life, even as they continue to grapple with memories of the early outbreak, which struck fear in the city.It’s been almost seven months since the city recorded a locally transmitted case of the disease due to a strict city-wide lockdown and a mass testing event of almost all the city’s 11 million residents.Today, restaurants, shopping streets and bars are crowded, but locals are still experiencing the lasting impact of the lockdown on mental health and work.Reuters asked people throughout Wuhan to share images and videos they took during their outbreak, as well as their hopes for 2021, as the city approaches the one-year anniversary of the outbreak. City health officials released the first public notice of the then-unknown virus on Dec. 31, 2019.Like the city itself, most people are enduringly optimistic, even as they reflect on the city’s toughest year in recent memory.An Junming, Wuhan volunteerAn worked as a volunteer during the city’s strict 76-day lockdown, delivering food to people trapped in their homes.“At that time, I could only eat one meal a day, because there was indeed a lot of work to do, but there were very few people doing this, so I was very anxious.“I hope that the entire city will prosper in 2021.“It can be said that in 2020 there were no people on the streets of the whole Wuhan – only animals were active outside.”An Junming poses for a picture on a street, almost a year after the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Dec. 15, 2020.Zhang Xinghao, lead singer Of Wuhan band Mad Rat“At that time, I couldn’t do anything at home. It was very boring, so I thought I needed to write some music and sing some songs to find some fun in my life.“It made me reflect on a lot of things, and it is the first time in my life that I have experienced such a disaster.“The epidemic must not be ignored. I see that the news about foreign countries has a lot of infections, so this must not be ignored. We should not think that we are very powerful. In fact, I think we humans are quite fragile.”Duan Ling, 36, businesswomanDuan’s husband, Fang Yushun, caught COVID-19 in February while working as a surgeon.“I had my birthday on the day he was hospitalized during the epidemic, and he spent a day editing and sent a video to me. So I felt very moved.“We have experienced a lot of things in the year 2020, and I want to say goodbye to the 2020. But in the new year, I wish we could have a baby.”Lai Yun, 38, Japanese restaurant owner“At this time, every one of us in Wuhan feels like time flies very fast. Like closing the city only feels like yesterday.”Lai said he cherished memories of his children putting on performances in the family living room.“I think the inspiration that COVID-19 gives us is that a healthy body is more important than anything else.”Student Wu Mengjing, 22, right, poses with her friend on a street, almost a year after the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Dec. 16, 2020.Wu Mengjing, 22, design student“I think the Wuhan epidemic has affected too many people. Many companies went bankrupt and residents were unemployed. This has a great impact on the entire development of Wuhan.“I am very worried that there will be a second wave in Wuhan, because there were some recurrences of the epidemic in various parts of the country, and the number of college students in Wuhan is particularly large.”Jiang Honghua, 34, street food vendor“During the epidemic, our whole family is together, and this time like this is very rare, and I felt very happy,” said Jiang, sharing photos of her son and daughter playing.“I thought my year in 2020 was actually OK – I felt lucky that I could maintain the livelihood of the whole family. I hope in year 2021 I can have good business.”Liu Runlian, 58, street dancer“2021 is coming, and I don’t expect much from myself. But I want to live a peaceful life, and then I hope everyone is safe.”

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Overwhelmed California Hospitals Contemplate Rationing Care

California hospitals are battling to find beds for patients amid fears the explosion of coronavirus cases will exhaust staffing resources.As of Saturday, nearly 17,400 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections — more than double the previous peak reached in July — and a state model that uses current data to forecast future trends shows the number could reach 75,000 by mid-January.More than 3,600 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients were in intensive care units. All of Southern California and the 12-county San Joaquin Valley to the north have exhausted their regular intensive care unit capacity, and some hospitals have begun using surge space, meaning space converted for intensive care. Overall, the state’s ICU capacity was just 2% Saturday.The enormous crush of cases in the last six weeks has California’s death toll spiraling ever higher. Another 272 fatalities were reported Saturday and in the last week nearly 1,600 people died.In hard-hit Los Angeles County, Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer implored people to stay home as much as possible, not mingle with others outside their household and wear a mask and social distance when around others.”Places where people from different households gather and do not follow safety directives contributes to unnecessary COVID-19 spread that results in hospitalizations and deaths that could have been avoided,” she said. “Following the safety measures saves lives and is our only way to protect essential workers and our hospitals.”LA County health officials announced Saturday they had modified their health orders to comply with recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings calling for places of worship to be allowed to have outdoor and indoor services, with appropriate health safety precautions.On Saturday night, Apple Inc. announced that it is temporarily closing all 53 of its stores in California because of the coronavirus outbreak. Under the stay-at-home order in effect for nearly the entire state, retail stores are limited to 20% capacity.Clinicians evaluate a patient in a triage tent set up outside Providence St. Mary Medical Center amid a surge in COVID-19 patients in Southern California on Dec. 18, 2020, in Apple Valley, Calif.As businesses struggle during what should be a very busy holiday shopping season, many hospitals are preparing for the possibility of rationing care. A document recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals run by Los Angeles County calls for them to shift strategy: Instead of trying everything to save a life, their goal during the crisis is to save as many patients as possible. That means those less likely to survive won’t get the same kind of care offered in normal times.”Some compromise of standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system, or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,” the document obtained by the Los Angeles Times reads.The county’s Health Services director, Dr. Christina Ghaly, said the guidelines were not in place as of Friday night but that they were essential to develop given that the surge has arrived and “the worst is yet to come.”Many hospitals have implemented emergency procedures to stretch staff and space.Corona Regional Medical Center southeast of Los Angeles has converted an old emergency room to help handle nearly double the usual number of ICU patients. It’s using space in two disaster tents to triage ER patients because the emergency room is filled with patients who need to be hospitalized.In hard-hit Fresno County in central California, a new 50-bed alternate care site opened Friday near the community Regional Medical Center. The beds for COVID-19-negative patients will free up space in area hospitals, where just 13 of about 150 ICU beds were available Friday, said Dan Lynch, the county’s emergency medical services director.Lynch said he expects they will have to use the Fresno Convention Center, which can accommodate up to 250 patients, given current demand.Fresno and three neighboring counties also have taken the unprecedented step of sending paramedics on emergency calls to evaluate people. They won’t be taken to the emergency room if they could go to an urgent care facility or wait a few days to talk to their doctors, Lynch said.Some hospitals have canceled non-essential elective surgeries, such as hip replacements, that might require beds that may soon be needed for COVID-19 patients. Others are increasing staff hours or moving patients to free up space.

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Graffiti Explodes Across Pandemic-era New York

Graffiti, part of New York’s history for more than 50 years, is flourishing during the coronavirus pandemic, a sign of decadence for some, but vitality for others.As dusk becomes nightfall, graffiti artist Saynosleep takes a quick look around and then gets to work on a luxury store closed since it was looted in June during protests over George Floyd’s death.”If you’re not painting right now, I don’t know what you’re doing,” the 40-year-old said, adding an expletive. “There has never been a time like this.”The facades of hundreds of stores that have shut because of the pandemic are “an invitation” to artists, Marie Flageul, curator at New York’s Museum of Street Art (MoSA) said.Walls, bridges, sidewalks and subway cars — 34 of which have been painted since the beginning of the month — are canvases.”It’s a big surge, a renaissance of graffiti,” said Saynosleep, who uses a different pseudonym for his legal artwork.Graffiti was first accepted by the art world in the 1980s when it moved into galleries.Expressive street art then captured the imagination of the general public in the 2000s when it went from illegal to legal spaces.FILE – In this Feb. 22, 2006, photo, the 7 Train passes by the 5 Pointz Building in Long Island City, Queens, New York.But since March, it is the raw, illegal type of graffiti that has spread in a disorderly fashion.”Everybody wants to express themselves,” said Saynosleep, who said he has seen a woman in her 60s drawing graffiti. “People are bored. They need something to do.”The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement following Floyd’s killing in the custody of a Minnesota police officer in May has accelerated the trend, with protesters scribbling racial justice slogans and demands on buildings.In a year when socializing has virtually stopped and streets no longer throng with activity, graffiti is artists’ way of saying: “‘It feels like New York is dead and you don’t see us, but we are still here,'” Flageul said.The creative impulses are not to everyone’s taste, however. New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the graffiti was “another sign of decay,” along with an increase in homicides and shootings in New York City.He indirectly blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for supposedly taking a lax attitude toward it.Critics were also angry that the city government, because of budgetary constraints, cut its graffiti removal program that had cleaned almost 15,000 sites in 2019.”I think it’s horrible,” said Darcy Weber, who has recently settled in New York. “Some say it’s art, but did they get permission for that? No, so it’s vandalism.”FILE – In this Aug. 1, 2018, photo, artist Lynne Yun’s mural project on a corrugated metal shed is seen near One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan in New York.For some, graffiti reminds them of the dark days of the 1970s and ’80s when New York was broke and crime was rife.”From the beginning of the shutdown, I’ve been seen by police and I kept going, multiple times,” without being arrested Saynosleep said.A spokesperson for the New York Police Department told Agence France-Presse the force is “fully aware of the importance of addressing graffiti-related crime,” and said such incidents were down 17% from last year.Flageul, who is also a spokesperson for the 5Pointz graffiti collective, says it’s “a bit of a cliche” to say that more graffiti means New York is regressing.Brooklyn President Eric Adams, who wants to become New York’s mayor next year, says tags spray-painted onto public and private property “is quickly destroying our borough’s landscape.””It costs home and business owners hundreds of thousands of dollars and tremendous efforts to erase it,” he added, drawing a distinction between “vandalism” and “amazing street murals.”Ken Lovett, an adviser to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman, noted that cleaning graffiti from trains is draining resources when the MTA is facing “the worst financial crisis” in its history.New Jersey resident Emile Fu says he’s not too bothered.”There’s other things to be concerned about,” she told AFP.Bryce Graham, who lives in the Chelsea neighborhood, said the graffiti would shock him in somewhere like Ottawa “where everything is super clean.””But here in New York, it’s a … mix of what is clean and what is dirty,” he said.

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India Crosses 10M Mark as Infections Slow

Even as new infections slip to the lowest levels in three months, on Saturday, India crossed the 10 million mark of total infections since the pandemic began, second behind the U.S. mark of 17 million, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.India’s falling infections, down from its record of about 100,000 new cases daily to about 25,000 cases reported Saturday, give health experts some reason to hope. India has suffered more than 145,000 deaths, Johns Hopkins says.”If we can sustain our declining trend for the next two to three months, we should be able to start the vaccination program and start moving away from the pandemic,” Dr. Randeep Guleria, a government health expert, told The Associated Press.Some of the world’s biggest vaccine makers are located in India, and there are five vaccines in clinical trials. Two vaccines, by Oxford University-AstraZeneca and India’s Bharat Biotech, are nearing authorization for emergency use. The South Asian nation with a population of 1.3 billion people hopes to vaccinate 250 million people by July.As India’s cases are waning, Canada was approaching 500,000 cases Saturday, an increase of 25% since two weeks ago, when the North American country surpassed 400,000 cases.”COVID-19 is spreading among people of all ages, with high infection rates across all age groups,” Canada’s chief medical officer Theresa Tam said.Cases surging in CanadaCanada is to receive 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in January, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. And about 168,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine should arrive soon. It is expected to receive emergency-use approval by Canadian health officials soon.However, Minister of Public Services and Procurement Anita Anand said there will not be enough shots for every Canadian who wants one until September.Santa ‘good to go’One person who won’t have to wait for his shot is Santa Claus, thanks to Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert.”I took care of that for you because I was worried that you’d all be upset,” he said Saturday during a CNN and “Sesame Street” coronavirus town hall for families, after worried youngsters asked whether Santa could safely enter homes on Dec. 25.”I took a trip up there to the North Pole; I went there, and I vaccinated Santa Claus myself. I measured his level of immunity, and he is good to go,” Fauci said.”He can come down the chimney, he can leave the presents … you have nothing to worry about,” he said.US general apologizesGen. Gustave Perna, the U.S. Army general in charge of distributing COVID-19 vaccine across the U.S., apologized Saturday to the governors of more than a dozen states that will be getting fewer doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine than they expected.”I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication,” he told reporters during a telephone briefing. “I know that’s not done much these days. But I am responsible. … This is a Herculean effort, and we are not perfect.”Perna said he mistakenly cited the number of doses he believed would be ready, not understanding the difference between manufactured doses and those ready to be released.Between the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna Inc. vaccine, Perna said the government is expecting to deliver 20 million doses to the states by the first week of January.Moderna and its partners have started distributing its vaccine, the second approved for emergency use in the country. Trucks will begin shipping the vaccine to more than 3,700 U.S. locations on Sunday, Perna said Saturday during the virtual news conference.Perna said the Moderna vaccine will reach health care workers as early as Monday, but that the delivery of some of the first 20 million doses of vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer Inc. could be delayed until the first week of January.Nearly 76 million people around the world contracted the coronavirus as of midday Saturday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. tops the list as the country with the most cases, with 17.6 million; India is second, with more than 10 million, followed by Brazil, with 7.1 million, according to Johns Hopkins.Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China’s National Health Commission, said Saturday the country would focus on vaccinating high-risk groups over the next several months before beginning to vaccinate the general public.”During the winter and spring seasons, carrying out novel coronavirus vaccination work among some key population groups is of great significance to epidemic prevention,” Zeng, who also is director of State Council’s vaccine R&D working group, said.The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has gained access to 2 billion doses of several coronavirus vaccines.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said access to the vaccines ensures that some 190 countries will be able to inoculate their populations “during the first half of next year.”

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