Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

Gov. Mike DeWine said last week that Ohio plans to administer Moderna vaccines to frontline health care workers, whereas Pfizer vaccines will be given to staff and residents at long-term care facilities.

The Pfizer vaccine, which was the first to receive emergency use authorization by the FDA, arrived in Ohio last week. Nine hospitals across the state received their first shipments last week, including Springfield Regional Medical Center.

The FDA authorized the Moderna vaccine on Friday.

The state is expected to receive another 140,400 Pfizer vaccines this week, as well as 201,000 Moderna vaccines.

Upper Valley Medical Center in Troy received 600 doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine Monday morning.

Credit: Premier Health

Credit: Premier Health

Under Ohios vaccination distribution plan, shots are being administered to health care workers and staff at long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, assisted living centers, veterans homes, psychiatric hospitals and care facilities for those with developmental disorders or mental health disorders.

Both the Morderna and Pfizer vaccines require two doses of the shot to be vaccinated. As of Sunday, 5,930 people in Ohio had received their first shot, according to the state health department.

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Coronavirus: Troy hospital gets first batch of vaccines, will administer them to frontline workers - Dayton Daily News

Vice President Mike Pence received a COVID-19 vaccine on live television Friday in an effort to promote the shots safety and encourage the public to get one once its available to them. New polling shows, however, that Pences move did little to boost the publics willingness to get inoculated including among members of his own party.

In a Morning Consult survey conducted Dec. 17-19 among 2,201 U.S. adults, 56 percent said they would get a coronavirus vaccine if one became available: the highest level since Aug. 31 but just an increase of 2 percentage points from the previous week and within the polls 2-point margin of error.

A quarter of adults said they would not get the vaccine, and 19 percent did not know or had no opinion on the matter.

Vaccine willingness among Democrats remained roughly the same, at 64 percent, compared to the previous week, while just over half of independents (51 percent) said the same, a 6-point increase from a week earlier.

Despite Pences inoculation, the willingness among GOP adults to get the vaccine was about the same: 48 percent said they would get a coronavirus shot, compared to 47 percent a week earlier. A third of Republicans in the newest poll said they would not get the vaccine, and 18 percent didnt know or had no opinion.

Pences vaccination came as other high-profile politicians, including former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have all pledged to receive the coronavirus shot in public to convince skeptics to get inoculated. President-elect Joe Biden received a vaccination Monday afternoon.

Health officials have also considered tapping celebrities to get vaccinated in efforts to promote wide-scale vaccination, though a Dec. 10-15 Morning Consult survey showed adults are most likely to be swayed by their own family members or public health leaders, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

An exception for Republicans could be President Donald Trump, who 41 percent said would make them more likely to get the coronavirus vaccine. Trump, who was hospitalized in October after being diagnosed with COVID-19, has not yet committed to receiving a vaccine.

While 44 percent of adults in the most recent Morning Consult survey said they dont plan to get the coronavirus vaccine or didnt know if they would, a large portion of the skeptics could change their mind over time once they see others get the shot, according to a recent study by MassINC Polling Group.

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Pence's Televised COVID-19 Inoculation Wasn't a Shot in the Arm for Vaccine Acceptance - Morning Consult

A second vaccine cant come soon enough as the countrys daily death count continues to top 2,400 amid over 210,000 new daily cases, based on weekly averages of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The devastating toll is only expected to grow in coming weeks, fueled by holiday travel, family gatherings and lax adherence to basic public health measures.

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FDA confirms safety and effectiveness of second coronavirus vaccine, this one from Moderna - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Katalin Karik works at BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer to make the first COVID-19 vaccine to get emergency authorization in the United States. Jessica Kourkounis hide caption

Katalin Karik works at BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer to make the first COVID-19 vaccine to get emergency authorization in the United States.

Hungarian-born scientist Katalin Karik believed in the potential of messenger RNA the genetic molecule at the heart of two new COVID-19 vaccines even when almost no one else did.

Karik began working with RNA as a student in Hungary. When funding for her job there ran out, Kariko immigrated to Philadelphia in 1985. Over the years, she's been rejected for grant after grant, threatened with deportation and demoted from her faculty job by a university that saw her research as a dead end.

Through it all, Karik just kept working.

If new COVID-19 vaccines help life in the U.S. get back to normal next year, the nation will have many immigrants such as Karik to thank. Scientists and investors born outside the U.S. played crucial roles in the development of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It's a remarkable vindication for the argument often made by the biotech industry that innovation depends on the free movement of people and ideas.

Now Karik is a senior vice president at BioNTech, the company that partnered with Pfizer to make the first COVID-19 vaccine to get emergency authorization in the United States. BioNTech is a company based in Germany and led by immigrants from Turkey.

President Trump listens as Moncef Slaoui, the former head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines division, speaks about coronavirus vaccine development in May. Slaoui, an immigrant, is the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

President Trump listens as Moncef Slaoui, the former head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines division, speaks about coronavirus vaccine development in May. Slaoui, an immigrant, is the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed.

Immigrants are playing key roles in nearly every aspect of the vaccine effort in the United States. Even the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's vaccine distribution program, is an immigrant Moncef Slaoui, the former head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines department.

President Trump often takes credit for the record-breaking speed of vaccine development and for "unleashing America's scientific genius," as he puts it.

But people in the biotech industry say that American genius depends on a pool of global talent.

"We are an intellectual magnet for the best of the best from around the world," said Jeremy Levin, CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the U.S. industry trade group.

Levin, who was born in South Africa, said high-skilled immigrants are attracted to the U.S. for its great educational institutions and for its biotech industry that's willing to take big risks.

"We in America are willing to take a chance," Levin said. "It is the willingness to fail in the endeavor to find a medicine that could make the difference to millions of people around the world. And that characteristic is what's drawn so many from abroad ... who are just going to have a go at it."

Jeremy Levin attends a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2012. He is the CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Nir Elias/Reuters hide caption

Jeremy Levin attends a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2012. He is the CEO of Ovid Therapeutics and chairman of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.

Levin said nearly one-third of the biotech workforce here was born outside the United States. If you also count the children of immigrants, he said, it's roughly half. But Levin worries it's gotten harder in recent years for those people to get here.

The Trump administration has placed more restrictions on immigrants who want to study and work in this country. Immigration hardliners accuse pharmaceutical companies and other tech-driven industries of using foreign workers to hold down wages.

The president says he wants to protect American jobs and often talks about immigrants as a threat and a burden. That's how he talks about the coronavirus as well, referring to it as the "China virus."

"It's a very racist comment," said Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. He's an expert on global health who was born in China.

"We all recognize this appears to be a blame game, right? To divert your responsibility by saying that somebody else gave it to us," Dzau said. "A virus does not see any borders."

Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, attends the 2015 World Health Summit in Berlin. Jrg Carstensen/picture alliance via Getty Image hide caption

Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, attends the 2015 World Health Summit in Berlin.

The virus has spread around the world, killing at least 1.6 million people, including more than 300,000 in the United States. Now the U.S. has developed two vaccines, and doses are being shipped around the country.

Both use the mRNA technology pioneered in part by Karik at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, Karik said, she applied for dozens of grants to support her work.

"I never get the grant. All of them were rejected," she said. "Nobody was really interested in messenger RNA therapy."

As the rejection letters piled up, Karik was demoted from her faculty position. But she persisted. "When you do science, you know, the whole wide world just does not exist. So as long as you have an idea and some experiments to do, you know, it is fun," she said.

Karik and her colleagues at Penn eventually solved some of the key problems holding the technology back.

This week, Moderna's vaccine became the second to win a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation for emergency authorization. The company, which was started 10 years ago in Boston, is also led by immigrants.

"This country has done amazing things. And I think that a big part of that is people who bring in their own capabilities, their own dreams, aspirations," said Noubar Afeyan, Moderna's chairman. He was an early investor in the company and also runs his own venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering.

Afeyan was born in Lebanon, lived in Montreal and trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said he thinks there's a link between the immigrant experience and innovation.

"I think of innovation as a form of intellectual immigration," Afeyan said. "You leave your comforts behind you. You face unrecognizable challenges. You take nothing for granted. You don't feel like in your new country people owe you anything."

It took scientists at Moderna and BioNTech less than a year to bring these new vaccines to market. It was an unprecedented race against time made possible by decades of work from some of the best minds in the world.

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If COVID-19 Vaccines Bring An End To The Pandemic, America Has Immigrants To Thank - NPR

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work by eliciting an immune response. That comes with some temporary side effects, like muscle aches or fever.

Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines are unlike any we've seen in the past. Instead of injecting people with a dead or weak version of the virus, like the flu shot, they use something called Messenger RNA, which trains the body to fight off coronavirus before ever coming in contact with it.

Since the vaccine puts your immune system to work, a lot of people are asking whether getting the vaccine will make you sick. The Verify team brought that question to the experts.

Will the COVID-19 vaccine make you sick?

Yes, but that means it's working.

In a Verify story back in November, Dr. Paul Spearman helped us explain how an mRNA vaccine works, starting with what Messenger RNA is:

It is a genetic code, basically, that is sort of ready and in someone's body to make protein, Dr. Spearman said.

Dr. Spearman said in the case of these vaccines, the mRNA has the blueprints for a protein of the coronavirus. It allows your muscles to start making these nasty proteins.

The immune system sees it as if the person had been infected, but it's just that one little piece, he said. So the immune system reacts to it in a very desirable way.

To break it down: mRNA vaccines give your body the genetic code of how to fight the virus.

An mRNA vaccine is designed to elicit a specific immune response in your body so it's ready to fight off the severe effects of coronavirus should you be infected. Dr. Barry Bloom says that's the reason you may feel sick for a few days after getting vaccinated.

"Virtually any vaccine that stimulates the immune response is going to produce a local reaction," Dr. Bloom said. "Any vaccine that contains RNA and encapsulated in lipids is very likely to stimulate an innate immune response."

Dr. Lisa Maragakis agreed and gave some examples of what this immune response could feel like.

"Vaccine developers report side effects that can include pain at the injection site, fever, muscle aches, fatigue and headaches, mostly lasting about a day or two," Dr. Maragakis told us via email. "If symptoms persist, you should call your doctor."

There have reportedly been four cases, two in Britain and two in Alaska, of people who received the Pfizer vaccine and experienced severe allergic reactions. Pfizer says they are monitoring and assessing these reports. They include the following guidance for vaccination providers:

"Appropriate medical treatment used to manage immediate allergic reactions must be immediately available in the event an acute anaphylactic reaction occurs following administration of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, explained that this is an example of the way that observations for safety don't end when clinical trials end.

"When the clinical trial gets its result, you have to keep monitoring for safety. And that's what's happening," Dr. Fauci says. "So what likely will be is that people who have a history of allergic reactions will be told either to not take this vaccine, or if you do take it, take it in a place where they're able to observe you, and if you do get an allergic reaction, to treat you right away."

You can watch the full interview with Dr. Fauci here:

The Verify team is keeping a close eye as more information and research is released pertaining to these allergic reactions.

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VERIFY: Yes, the COVID-19 vaccine might make you feel ill. That means it's working - WUSA9.com

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WJZ) The Maryland Department of Health has launched its new COVID-19 vaccine information page.

The page can be found by clicking here.

CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:

The page, which is part of MDHs COVID-19 public information hub, will serve as the home base for COVID-19 vaccine updates as information continues to evolve.

The new page includes information about Maryland COVID-19 vaccine priority groups; vaccine status and dosing information; and resources about vaccine development, clinical studies and emergency use authorization approval.

For the latest information on coronavirus go to theMaryland Health Departments websiteor call 211. You can find all of WJZs coverage oncoronavirus in Maryland here.

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Maryland Department Of Health Launches New COVID-19 Vaccine Information Page - CBS Baltimore

Dr. Anthony Fauci said when he becomes a chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, he would push to vaccinate teachers as a priority.

SACRAMENTO, Calif Dr. Anthony Fauci took questions from California State University faculty on a range of topics, including when teachers could receive the new coronavirus vaccine.

Dr. Fauci said when he becomes a chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, he would push to vaccinate teachers as a priority.

"It's extremely important to get children back in school and kept in school and the idea of vaccinating teachers is very high up in the priority," Dr. Fauci said.

Dr. Fauci said essential workers could be vaccinated by spring if it all goes according to plan.

"By the time we get April, May, June, July, August, we can get the overwhelming majority of people in this country vaccinated," Dr. Fauci said.

Some school districts are considering in-classroom learning this winter. Dr. Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease doctor, said that if people stick to the vaccine rollout schedule, he's willing to predict when students could return to the classroom.

"By the time we get to the 2021-2022 term I think we could be in good shape," Dr. Fauci said. "So I am cautiously optimistic that we can do that and get back to some form of normality.

UC Davis officials sent out a letter that they're optimistic they could return to pre-pandemic in-person learning for the Fall quarter of 2021.

Continue the conversation with Chris on Facebook.

Read more from ABC10

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When teachers could expect to receive the new coronavirus vaccines - ABC10.com KXTV

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TribCast: The COVID-19 vaccine arrives in Texas - The Texas Tribune

A text message program designed to track side effects in COVID-19 vaccine recipients is currently only available in English, which could limit the data it is able to collect.

The program, called v-safe, is one way the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will follow up with people who take the vaccine. It was rolled out with the first wave of vaccinations last week.

When youre talking about technology, literacy and language are usually second tier, says Jorge Rodriguez, a health technology equity researcher at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. Version one is English-speaking, and the Spanish version will come later, the Mandarin version will come later.

The CDC plans to roll out a Spanish version of v-safe fairly shortly, Tom Shimabukuro, a member of the Vaccine Safety Team on the COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, told The Verge. The agency also plans to offer v-safe in simplified Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, but Shimabukuro did not have a timeline for when that might be available. Theyre all in the process of undergoing a translation from English to these other languages, he says.

The agencys information toolkit around the COVID-19 vaccines, which includes fact sheets for the health care workers who are part of the first wave of vaccinations, is also still only available in English. Translations of the kit into other languages are in progress Spanish first, and then other languages, the CDC says. The lag is a concern for the approximately 25 million people in the United States who speak limited English. Information about vaccines must be available for people with low literacy and broadly translated, said David Curry, executive director of the New York University and Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia-affiliated Center for Vaccine Ethics and Policy.

We energetically urge and are confident that CDC will extend a special effort to enhance these materials, he said in a public comment made during the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting, held on December 12th.

Until those translations are complete, the agencys vaccination information and the v-safe program may not be easily accessible for non-English speakers. Even after translation, people who speak languages other than those that v-safe plans to include may not be able to participate.

The portion of vaccine recipients not covered by these languages might not be enormous, but it overlaps with groups that tend to already be underserved by the health care system. Non-English speakers tend to have worse health outcomes overall, and theyve had worse outcomes from COVID-19 as well. Given the disparities that weve seen in terms of outcomes in the pandemic, for this specific vaccination campaign, its even more critical to really get the information out in various languages, Rodriguez says.

Pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies made a notable effort to enroll diverse populations in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. Dropping some of that focus during vaccine follow-ups like v-safe could stall that work. You do wonder how much you will lose on the progress made in those trials by having this be one of your primary ways to collect data on symptoms and follow up after the vaccine, Rodriguez says.

V-safe is only one of a number of ways the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will monitor the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. Other systems include the two-decade-old Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), where doctors and individuals can report any reactions that they think could be linked to a vaccine. Its a spontaneous surveillance system the federal agencies depend on people sending in reports, Shimabukuro says.

V-safe, in contrast, is the agencys active surveillance program and the way the CDC is reaching out to people and asking them about their experience with a vaccine. Itll capture a different set of information than VAERS, including information from people who had no or minimal side effects. By starting with English, and only including a handful of other languages later on, that data could be limited, Rodriguez says. Youre setting yourself up for disparities in vaccination tracking, he says.

The CDCs information page on v-safe is already available in multiple languages, which is a good start, Rodriguez says. Translating the page only changes the text on the page, not the information in the images of the app in action. Its going to exclude a good chunk of the population, and thats the same underserved group that may have low literacy, which is often essential workers, who may have had worse health outcomes during the pandemic, Rodriguez says.

Thats why its important to have multiple ways to collect data on vaccination outcomes. Im a big fan of technology, he says. But we have to acknowledge its limitations and capture some of this information in other ways to make sure the sample youre getting is really representative of the population.

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COVID-19 vaccine monitoring program limited to English speakers - The Verge

Provided by Best Life

The United States is expected to have a 100 million doses of the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate ready by the beginning of 2021, Anthony Fauci, MD, said on June 2 during a live question and answer session with the Journal of the American Medical Association. While this is encouraging news regarding the progress toward an effective coronavirus vaccine, there are still a number of unknownsa major one being the length of immunity a potential vaccine would provide recipients.

In the same Q&A, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), did not shy away from expressing his concern regarding the "durability" of a vaccine, saying "it likely isn't going to be a long duration of immunity." He attributes his worry to how vaccines for other types of coronavirus have performed in the past.

"When you look at the history of coronaviruses, the common coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the reports in the literature are that the durability of immunity that's protective ranges from three to six months to almost always less than a year," Fauci said. "That's not a lot of durability and protection."

And CNN reports that, according to Fauci, when people develop antibodies to fight common colds caused by other strains of coronavirus, that protection typically only lasts about a year, meaning that people would have to be vaccinated annually, as is necessary with the flu.

As far as whether or not the vaccine will be effective, the fact that the majority of people are able to recover from COVID-19 has Fauci "cautiously optimistic."

"[This] tells us, that if the body is capable of making an immune response to clear the virus of natural infection, that's a pretty good proof of concept," he said. "Having said that, there is never a guarantee."

The first vaccine candidate is expected to go into Phase IIIthe final stages of trial in volunteersby mid-summer and will be tested in individuals between the ages of 18 and 55, as well elderly volunteers with underlying health conditions. And for more on the COVID-19 vaccine, check out This Is Who Could Be Last to Get the Coronavirus Vaccine, Doctors Say.

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This Is How Long a Coronavirus Vaccine Will Make You Immune