Category: Corona Virus

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand will start vaccinating priority groups including health workers against COVID-19 by the end of this week, its prime minister said on Tuesday, a day ahead of the arrival of the countrys first coronavirus vaccines.

FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker takes a nasal swab sample from a migrant worker during proactive testing at their work place, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand January 29, 2021. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

Thailand will receive the first 200,000 of two million doses of Sinovac Biotechs CoronaVac on Wednesday. The Chinese vaccine was given emergency use authorisation on Monday.

We will start injecting the target groups within three days after the vaccines arrive, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said in a Facebook post.

The Sinovac vaccines will be given to priority groups in 13 provinces, the COVID-19 taskforce said. More than half of the 200,000 doses will be earmarked for Samut Sakhon, the epicentre of Thailands latest outbreak, and the capital, Bangkok.

Prayuth said 800,000 more doses will arrive in March and the remaining one million in April, some of which will be used for the second inoculations for priority groups.

Prayuth also said that 26 million doses of vaccines on order from AstraZeneca, which has authorised a Thai firm to manufacture its vaccine, will be ready around May to June.

Thailand has also reserved a further 35 million doses from AstraZeneca.

Thailand will also receive 117,000 imported doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, health minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters.

Those were part of the 150,000 early doses he had previously said AstraZeneca would provide from another Asian country.

Authorities have received some documents from Johnson & Johnsons Janssen and have been contacted by Moderna and Pfizer, all with a view to registering their COVID-19 vaccines, according to Prayuth.

Thailand is aiming to administer 10 million doses a month from June when its mass vaccination campaign is in full swing.

Reporting by Panarat Thepgumnpanat; Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Martin Petty

Read more from the original source:

Thailand to start first coronavirus vaccinations this week - Reuters

The most obvious interpretation of beating COVID-19 would be that transmission of the coronavirus has stopped, a scenario some public-health experts have hashtagged #ZeroCOVID. But the experts I spoke with all agreed that this wont happen in the U.S. in the foreseeable future. This would require very high levels of vaccination coverage, said Celine Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist at NYU who served on Joe Bidens coronavirus task force during the transition. The U.S. may never reach vaccination rates of 75 to 85 percent, the experts said.

Read: The good news of COVID-19 is sticking for now

The question is not when do we eliminate the virus in the country, said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center and an expert in virology and immunology at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. Rather, its when do we have the virus sufficiently under control. Well have a much, much lower case count, hospitalization count, death count, Offit said. What is that number that people are comfortable with? In his view, the doors will open when the country gets to fewer than 5,000 new cases a day, and fewer than 100 deaths.

That latter threshold, of 100 COVID-19 deaths a day, was repeated by other experts, following the logic that it approximates the nations average death toll from influenza. In most recent years, the flu has killed 20,000 to 50,000 Americans annually, which averages out to 55 to 140 deaths a day, said Joseph Eisenberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. This risk was largely considered acceptable by the public, Eisenberg said. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at UC San Francisco, made a similar calculation. The end to the emergency portion of the pandemic in the United States should be heralded completely by the curtailing of severe illness, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19, she said. Fewer than 100 deaths a dayto mirror the typical mortality of influenza in the U.S. over a typical yearis an appropriate goal.

The flu test proposed here is not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Deaths attributed to COVID-19 are directly reported to public-health authorities, while the mortality numbers from seasonal flu are CDC estimates based on national surveillance data that have been fed into statistical models. But researchers believe that the straightforward counts of influenza deathsjust 3,448 to 15,620 in recent yearsare substantially too low; while direct counts of COVID-19 deaths are likely to be more accurate. One big reason: Far more COVID-19 tests are done in a single day than flu tests in an entire year, and flu tests have a greater tendency to return false negatives.

In any case, we are nowhere near 100 COVID-19 deaths a day. Since last spring, states have not reported fewer than 474 deaths a day, as measured by a rolling seven-day average at the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. Right now, the country as a whole is still reporting close to 2,000 deaths a day, and just two weeks ago that number was more than 3,000. So, if were going by the flu test, we still have a very long way to go.

Read more here:

A Simple Rule of Thumb for Knowing When the Pandemic Is Over - The Atlantic

San Franciscos public schools have been virtual-only for nearly a year, despite increasing pressure from parents and politicians to reopen for in-person instruction. Even the city attorney has called on the school district to immediately reopen elementary schools.

The school district is set to vote on a plan Tuesday that would allow schools to reopen in Californias second-most-restrictive red tier once staff is fully vaccinated.

But local politicians say that plan is still too restrictive, given the reality that vaccinations are proceeding slowly because of lack of supply.

Some have noted that other major school districts across the U.S. have opened to some form of in-person schooling despite having higher levels of community transmission than San Francisco.

In New York City, where an average of 51 people per 100,000 are testing positive for the coronavirus every day, elementary schools have been open on a hybrid schedule for months, and middle schools are in the process of reopening. Other large school districts, including Atlanta and Miami, have fully reopened for elementary, middle and high school students (with remote learning options), despite having higher daily case rates than San Franciscos current rate of 9 per 100,000.

Supporters of San Franciscos prolonged closures have argued that keeping children and teachers at home is part of whats driving the citys low case rates, and that opening schools too quickly could lead to transmission among students and teachers.

We need a clear and coordinated state, county and local plan that puts the health and safety of our communities first and does not take shortcuts toward the path of opening schools in person, the California Teachers Association wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom in late January as part of an effort to keep schools in counties under the states widespread purple tier closed for 100 days.

The idea that keeping schools closed has kept coronavirus numbers low isnt supported by the evidence, according to numerous Bay Area health experts.

There is not data to support that claim, Dr. Jeanne Noble, head of UCSFs emergency department COVID-19 response, said in an email. Noble cited a December study published by the CDC that found that, among children younger than 18 in Mississippi, attending school or child care did not make students more likely to test positive for the coronavirus. Instead, children who didnt consistently wear masks or had close contact with people outside of their household were more likely to test positive.

In fact, Noble said, the study found that kids who had gone to school or day care where masking was enforced during the previous 14 days were more likely to test negative for the coronavirus.

In other words, not only did attending in person not raise the risk for acquiring COVID, attending a school with universal masking actually lowered the childs risk for acquiring COVID, suggesting that schools may indeed be protective, she said.

In another recent study of 90,000 students and 10,000 teachers in North Carolinas school system, only 32 in-school transmissions occurred all of which were related to breaches in masking protocol, Noble said.

Carrie Byington, executive vice president of University of California Health, said the rate of coronavirus within a community remained an important factor when considering whether and how to reopen schools.

Case rates and other indicators of community transmission are important considerations when planning for school openings or any in-person activity, she said in an email.

But she agreed that opening schools was unlikely to drive San Franciscos infection rates up: There is now evidence from the U.S. and other countries that in-person school is not a primary driver of community transmission of SARS-CoV2, she said.

Some experts said that case rates a factor that the CDC has weighed heavily in its school reopening guide should not even be considered when making the decision to reopen.

We have seen major cities all over the country including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Boston open to some component of in-person learning (hybrid or full-time) despite much higher case rates than San Francisco without significant issues of school-based transmission, Dr. Mitul Kapadia, associate clinical professor of pediatrics at UCSF, said in an email.

Kapadia pointed out that many public schools in Marin County have been open since October, with more than 17,000 students attending school in-person on a daily basis. With similar case rates Marin Countys daily new case rate is at 12 per 100,000 residents Marin has seen minimal school-based transmission and zero transmissions from student to teacher, he said.

Safe school reopening can happen despite high levels of community transmission, Kapadia said. The biggest predictor of transmission within schools is consistent implementation of layered mitigation strategies particularly mask use and physical distancing.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Susieneilson

Original post:

San Francisco has the lowest coronavirus case rate of major U.S. cities. But its schools are among the last to reopen - San Francisco Chronicle

Few victims of public shaming have become as famous as Mr. Cronk, the New Brunswicker who contracted coronavirus on a business trip.

He initially had no symptoms, so was not required to self-isolate upon returning, he said.

Nine days later, he exhibited a few symptoms and tested positive for the coronavirus, so the health department began contact tracing. After the local news media did a story about a frustrated store owner disbelieving his staff had been exposed to the virus, Mr. Cronk worried hed be outed as the source of the exposure, knowing he had visited the store.

Saint John is very small, he said. I knew it was matter of time before my name was spoken. So, he approached the C.B.C. network to get the story straight, before chatter got around. To his knowledge, none of his contacts tested positive and he was never ticketed by the police for breaking public emergency regulations, he said.

Afterward, a video clip from his Instagram account promoting his marijuana supply business, Cronk Grow Nutrients made the rounds on Twitter. In it, Mr. Cronk said he cant taste a thing right now and detailed the many trips he had taken that month. Many assumed he had been knowingly, carelessly spreading the virus.

The optics, and the timing, were terrible: As the memes multiplied, the provinces top doctor announced a surge in cases and the premier declared a crackdown on Christmas travel and gatherings. Online, Mr. Cronk was deemed New Brunswicks infector in chief.

There wasnt a lesson to be learned, said Mr. Cronk. I was shamed for no reason.

Historically, stigma and shaming have faithfully trailed pandemics, said David Barnes, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the history of infectious diseases and epidemics. During the plague in Europe, Jewish people became convenient scapegoats. During the cholera epidemic in Britain in the 19th century, working-class Irish people were blamed, Mr. Barnes said.

Most recently, gay men and Haitians were stigmatized during the AIDS epidemic in the United States.

We make ourselves feel safer and superior by associating disease with people who are not like us, do things we dont do, or come from places unlike our place, said Mr. Barnes. We shouldnt be surprised.

Follow this link:

Positive Coronavirus Test? Canadians Worry Their Neighbors Will Find Out - The New York Times

More than 20 new cases of the more contagious U.K. and South African coronavirus strains have been found in South Carolina.

COLUMBIA, S.C. Its been less than a month since the first two U.S. cases of the more easily spread South African coronavirus strain were found in South Carolina.

Since then, more than a dozen new cases of the virus have been found.

According to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), the new strain, which was first discovered in adults in the Pee Dee and Low Country regions, has now been discovered in at least 15 people in the Pee Dee region, five in the Low Country and one in the Midlands.

Its not immediately clear whether these cases are linked.

Dr. Helmut Albrecht, director for the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at Prisma Health and the University of South Carolina, said mutations are common in viruses as a lifeline. One of the main concerns with the current strains, however, is how mutations may impact the effectiveness of available vaccines.

Theres always in every surge, there are new strains coming to the forefront and this is what you expect from the virus, Albrecht said. What should worry us is the future when this strain picks up two, three more mutations, it will make our vaccine efforts more difficult.

Across the country, few cases of the South African strain have been reported.

The U.K. strain, however, appears to be more widespread with 42 states reporting cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Palmetto State is only reporting three cases of the U.K. strain.

Neither of these variants, while more easily spread, are known to be more deadly than the original strain at this time.

Dr. Albrecht said travel could be a factor in why the U.K. strain hasnt been reported more locally. He added that DHEC has started a larger scale effort to test for variants like the South African strain, which could be why more cases of that strain have been found.

Still, he said, its just a matter of time before the U.K. strain becomes more prevalent.

and the South African strain too, Albrecht said.

For now, safety guidance like mask wearing and social distancing are the best defense at keeping variants at bay until the vaccines become more widely available, according to Albrecht.

Follow this link:

More than 20 cases of U.K. and South African COVID-19 variants found in South Carolina - WLTX.com

With declining rates of new infections and the rollout of vaccines, some are beginning to speak of an end to COVID-19. But that rhetoric, in my opinion, is ill-considered and premature. Based on what we know now of SARS-CoV-2, it may no longer be a question of months before an end to the pandemic but a question of years, if not decades. We should plan for it.

Viruses exist to thrive. Those that infect humans are faced with an impressive array of defensive weaponry, not just our natural adaptive immunity but also our intelligently designed defensesvaccines, drugs and social controls. For a virus to survive, it must be adapted to its chosen ecological nichein this case, usand capable of further intricate adaptation to overcome our best efforts at prevention and treatment.

Initially, many assumed that coronaviruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular were more stable and less prone to adaptation than other RNA viruses because of their error-proofing mechanisms. But we have since been proven wrong. Last summer, a researcher in Texas noticed that a mutated SARS-CoV-2 virus with a substitution in the spike protein had overtaken previous forms to become the dominant strain. Since then, multiple new variants have emerged with mutations that can make the virus more transmissible, more lethal and more able to evade our immune defenses.

These variants have seemingly been forged in fires of our own making. In Boston, a middle-aged man struggled with a COVID-19 infection for five months before succumbing to the disease. He was undergoing treatment with immunosuppressive drugs when he fell ill, and, during his illness, he received multiple rounds of additional treatment, with remdesivir nonimmune gamma globulin, and with monoclonal antibodies. Under this intense immune pressure, key mutations in the virus emerged. The doctors and scientists who witnessed their birth called it accelerated viral evolution.

Other viruses, like influenza, have shown themselves similarly capable of rapid evolution when faced with our best defenses. Indeed, based on what weve seen of SARS-CoV-2 and its capacity for variation, Id say this virus is much more like influenza than any other virus known to date.

Which means influenzas evolutionary pathway may hold important clues about the road COVID-19 will follow.

Influenza, as we know, comes and goes in seasonal waves in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In the tropics it occurs throughout the year, with only shallow peaks. This pattern mimics what we know of cold-causing coronaviruses, which, ever since their discovery in the 1960s, have returned annually to infect us. For the flu, antigenic driftthe accumulation of small genetic changes in the virushas been the primary explanation for recurrent seasonal epidemics. Dominant flu strains evolve from year to year, and the immunity we develop in response to a previous strain has only a muted effect on the new strain. Weve learned more recently that immunity to influenza also fades, often disappearing within a year, which also makes us susceptible to reinfection.

We used to believe that the cold-causing coronaviruses were stablemeaning no antigenic driftbut returned yearly because of faded immune protection. But over the past year, our understanding of coronaviruses has improved and we now know that at least one of the cold-causing coronaviruses, designated 229E, undergoes antigenic drift similar to that of influenza.

SARS-CoV-2, like 229E, has already shown that it can drift. But, like influenza, it has also shown itself capable of much more abrupt and substantial changes.One way these major changes happen occurs when a virus jumps to a new population, for example from animals to humans or back again. When a virus makes this jump, big thingsand often bad thingsmaterialize. Both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 have huge animal reservoirs. Coronaviruses have infected every type of vertebrate, from whales and bats to salamanders and snakes. Influenza is similar. This means they both have the potential to evolve to become much more damaging to our population. The two previous coronavirus outbreaks both started when coronaviruses jumped from animals to humans, from civet cats in 2003 with SARS and from camels with MERS in 2012. The 1918 influenza pandemic likely started with a jump from animals too.

If were lucky, SARS-CoV-2 will evolve, like the 1918 virus dubbed the Spanish flu, to become less lethal. After infecting an estimated 500 million worldwide and killing at least 50 million, the 1918 flu virus receded. But hope that this coronavirus will attenuate over time is no guarantee that it will. We already know that coronaviruses can become much more lethal; we need look no further than SARS-CoV-1, which killed 50 percent of those aged 65 and older, and MERS, which killed one out of three infected.

So where does that leave us?

First, we must accept the harsh truth told by this virus and its variants. We can expect it to come backpotentially for years to comeand we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that when it does, it may be more lethal and even more transmissible than the variants that exist today. We must adjust our vaccine development pipelines and public health interventions to account for emergent and future variations. Much like what has been proposed with influenza, we must develop COVID risk assessment tools that can identify the viral properties of dominant strainshow transmissible they may be or how resistant they are to current drugs or vaccinesto help us align our public health response with the level of risk. Otherwise, well be setting ourselves up for failure once more.

I have often likened SARS-CoV-2 to the mythical Proteus in Homers Odyssey. Like Proteus, SARS-CoV-2 is the quintessential shape-shifter, able to alter its form whenever grasped. It is only through sheer persistence that Menelaus, the great hero, is able to wrestle Proteus to a standstill. By claiming victory too soon, we risk losing our battle with this shape-shifting virus, a tragedy that would unfold this time not in words but in many more millions of lives lost.

This is an opinion and analysis article.

Read the original here:

How Will the Coronavirus Evolve? - Scientific American

As coronavirus cases plummet nationwide and vaccinations total 1.7 million Americans a day and rising, health experts are increasingly striking a new tone in their pandemic assessments: optimism.

I could be wrong, but I dont think were going to see a big fourth surge, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. I think weve seen the worst of it.

Many epidemiologists and other scientists, while still cautious, say they feel increasingly hopeful that the rest of 2021 will not replay the nightmare of last year.

The arrival of spring will likely aid the ongoing precipitous drop in coronavirus cases, as warmer weather allows people to spend more time outdoors and creates a less hospitable environment for the virus, experts say.

But the biggest factor, paradoxically, is something the nation spent the last year trying to prevent.

While 12% of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, far more people approximately 35% of the nations population have already been infected with the coronavirus, Offit estimated. Studies have found that people who survive COVID-19 have immunity for several months, though it likely lasts even longer.

UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford said one of the reasons why cases are dropping so fast in California is because of naturally acquired immunity, mostly in Southern California. He estimated that 50% of Los Angeles County residents have been infected with the virus at some point.

Were really talking something starting to sound and look like herd immunity although that true herd immunity is a ways off in the future, Rutherford said recently.

Herd immunity is reached when so many people have immunity that a virus cannot find new hosts and stops spreading, resulting in community-wide protection. Scientists believe that in the case of the coronavirus, the threshold could be as high as 90%. The United States has not met this threshold but each step toward it slows transmission, experts say.

The effects may be greatest in places that endured the worst COVID-19 surges, including Los Angeles. After a horrific autumn and winter wave that has killed more than 12,000 people, an estimated 33% to 55% of county residents have already been infected with the coronavirus, according to USC researchers.

Those past infections have blunted transmission of the coronavirus so significantly that they have changed the current trajectory of the outbreak in L.A. County, where new daily cases have been falling for five weeks, said Dr. Roger Lewis, director of COVID-19 hospital demand modeling for the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

If you had the exact same behavior and type of virus circulating that we have right now, but we were at the beginning of the pandemic and no one was immune yet ... wed be in the midst of an ongoing surge, he said. The fact that cases are going down right now, as opposed to going up, is because approximately a third of everybody in Los Angeles County is immune to COVID.

But experts caution that the battle is not yet won.

New coronavirus variants could undermine these projections, either by proving more resistant to existing vaccines or by finding a way to spread more easily. Shifts in behavior could also render this good news moot, as it holds only if people stick to the precautions they have been taking thus far, experts say.

I dont want to provide a false sense of assurance here, said L.A. County chief science officer Dr. Paul Simon, who pointed out that 60% of Angelenos would remain vulnerable even if more than a third have already been infected with the coronavirus. Unless theyve had vaccination, they continue to be susceptible. I think we need to continue to be vigilant.

Nationwide, coronavirus cases have dropped to levels not seen since late October, according to federal officials. In California, approximately 7,000 people are testing positive for the coronavirus each day, compared with 45,000 at the peak of the states winter surge.

In L.A. County, officials currently estimate the R value a measure of how many people a person with the virus goes on to infect to be around 0.8. Anything below 1 means an outbreak is shrinking, and anything above 1 means its growing.

If so many people in the county werent already immune, the R value would be about a third higher, or just above 1, Lewis said. Even that slight increase has major consequences for a virus prone to spreading exponentially.

The fact that the virus only has two-thirds as many people to jump to as it did early on slows it down, Lewis said.

Since the pandemic began, nearly 30 million Americans have tested positive for the coronavirus, but the true number who have contracted the virus is likely three or four times higher due to low levels of testing and the fact that many people who are infected never develop symptoms, experts say.

The large number of infections has come at a high cost. The nations death toll is approaching 500,000, far greater than any country in the world, and even more have survived but continue to suffer lingering effects of their illnesses, some of them severe. Allowing COVID-19 to run rampant to quickly achieve herd immunity, as some had promoted early in the pandemic, would have led to even more deaths and chronic health problems, experts say.

It remains unclear exactly what the threshold for herd immunity is with this virus with some scientists estimating that herd immunity may be achieved when 50% of people are immune, while others believe the threshold is closer to 90%, said L.A. Countys Simon. The uneven geographical distribution of infections may also leave some pockets of the county more vulnerable than others, he said.

We dont know quite yet what level of vaccination and protection would be required to get herd immunity across the county, Simon said in briefing Friday. As we see the number of new cases drop dramatically that will be I think the best clue that were reaching herd immunity, particularly if we see it across the county.

The biggest obstacle to ending the pandemic is the proliferation of coronavirus variants, especially if they are more transmissible or less susceptible to vaccines. For instance, the B.1.1.7 variant that emerged in the United Kingdom is about 50% more contagious than its predecessors and could fuel outbreaks in places where large swaths of people remain vulnerable to disease.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Baylor College of Medicines National School of Tropical Medicine, said he thinks that flying to visit friends and family will be normal and safe by August. But because of the variants he cautioned people to beware the Ides of March.

Thats, I think, the biggest crisis facing us right now in our COVID-19 pandemic, he said in a recent interview with the American Medical Assn. As bad as 2020 was, now were looking at version 2.0 of this pandemic from the variants.

But others are more optimistic. Offit said he would be concerned if people who already had COVID-19 or who had been vaccinated were being hospitalized due to infections caused by a new variant.

That line hasnt been crossed, he said. You just want to keep people out of the hospital and it looks like to date theres not a variant that has escaped either disease- or vaccine-induced immunity.

At a UCSF Department of Medicine COVID seminar last week, Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist, put it simply: Try not to worry about the variants.

Offit said he remains hopeful about the nations trajectory through the summer and as more people get vaccinated. What worries me a little bit is when you hit September, and then it gets colder again, and there may be a variant that emerges, and people stop wearing masks and physically distancing, Offit said.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against viewing the downward case trends as a reason to let up on masking and other safety precautions.

In an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Walensky said she hoped for the best, but also warned of a worst-case scenario that people will stop wearing masks and physically distancing too early and that many will prematurely declare theyve had enough of the pandemic and wont get vaccinated.

How this goes is going to depend on 330 million individuals, Walensky said. Because while I really am hopeful for what could happen in March and April, I really do know this could go bad so fast. And we saw it in November. We saw it in December. We saw what can happen.

Dr. Annabelle de St. Maurice, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA, said she sympathizes with officials trying to walk a fine line between keeping morale up and not making people feel so optimistic that they led their guard down.

In L.A. in particular, the numbers have improved drastically, she said, but they remain almost as high as they were during the deadly summer surge.

It is reason to celebrate, and you want people to celebrate it, but you want them to do that physically distanced while wearing a mask, she said.

Excerpt from:

COVID-19 surge is now helping to create herd immunity - Los Angeles Times

Federal officials will open a mass COVID-19 vaccination site at the Tampa Greyhound Track, one of four such locations to open in Florida that are meant to get more of the valuable shots into arms more quickly.

In recent days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been working with states to open several large-scale vaccination sites around the country.

Florida will have four of these sites, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday: the one in Tampa, at 755 E Waters Ave.; at Valencia Colleges West Campus in Orlando; at the Gateway Mall in Jacksonville; and at Miami-Dade Community Colleges North Campus in Miami.

The sites will open March 3 and will operate seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to a release from the governors office. Each one is expected to administer 2,000 shots per day. In addition, every site will have two smaller mobile satellite sites, each conducting 500 vaccinations a day in underserved areas, according to the release.

Altogether, the four sites would be capable of administering about 12,000 shots a day a helpful boost to the states vaccination efforts. The supply will come from the federal government and will be in addition to doses the government gives Florida each week to allocate as the state sees fit.

The federal government is working with the state to open the sites. People wanting to get vaccinated at these locations should use the states pre-registration system, myvaccine.fl.gov, or call the designated county phone number.

DeSantis initially called President Joe Bidens idea of using FEMA to build vaccination clinics across the U.S. a big mistake. But he later changed course and said he would help with the sites to get more vaccine doses into the state.

The sites will primarily use federal staff, according to a news release from the White House. It said the sites were chosen using a number of factors, including each areas score on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Social Vulnerability Index.

The White House said Hillsborough County was identified as one of nine counties in the state with significantly underserved or marginalized populations. It said the mobile vaccination clinics could also help reach part of the Seminole Tribe of Florida population and serve nearby counties vulnerable communities, specifically pointing to cities such as Lake Alfred, Lakeland and Bowling Green.

The eligibility criteria at these sites will mirror the states requirements, according to the White House news release. In Florida, people who are 65 and older, are frontline health care workers or are staff or residents of long-term care facilities are currently eligible to get vaccines.

We couldnt be more excited, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said of the new federal site in her city. She said the city and the county worked with the Department of Health and state Division of Emergency Management to find it.

Castor said she knows theres been a lot of frustration in the early weeks of the states vaccine rollout. Officials are working to get shots administered efficiently and to as wide a population as possible, she said. We have done all in our power to ensure everyone has availability to the vaccine.

It appears some details and communication regarding how the four federal sites will operate may still be getting worked out. The governors office said the Florida National Guard will be assisting with the effort. But as of early Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman said she was unaware of the guards involvement.

The Tampa Greyhound Track got involved on Wednesday after the governors office reached out, said Greg Gelyon, vice president of finance for parent company Tampa Bay Downs.

When they ask for something this serious, to help out, we cant say no, Gelyon said. He said the facilitys east and west parking lots have been leased for the effort but added he doesnt have further details about how exactly the site will be used.

Greyhound racing is no longer allowed in Florida, but the Tampa Greyhound Track, which also goes by TGT Poker & Racebook, still offers poker and simulcast race wagering, according to a spokeswoman.

As of Friday, more than 2.6 million Floridians had received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to state data. In Hillsborough County, 124,906 people had received at least one dose, while 121,996 people in Pinellas County had.

Staff writer Ileana Najarro contributed to this report.

HOW CORONAVIRUS IS SPREADING IN FLORIDA: Find the latest numbers for your county, city or zip code.

VACCINES Q & A: Have coronavirus vaccine questions? We have answers, Florida.

FACE MASKS: Read the latest on guidelines, tips for comfort and long-term wear

GET THE DAYSTARTER MORNING UPDATE: Sign up to receive the most up-to-date information.

THE CORONAVIRUS SCRAPBOOK: We collected your stories, pictures, songs, recipes, journals and more to show what life has been like during the pandemic.

A TRIBUTE TO THE FLORIDIANS TAKEN BY THE CORONAVIRUS: They were parents and retirees, police officer and doctors, imperfect but loved deeply.

HAVE A TIP?: Send us confidential news tips

Were working hard to bring you the latest news on the coronavirus in Florida. This effort takes a lot of resources to gather and update. If you havent already subscribed, please consider buying a print or digital subscription.

Go here to read the rest:

Tampa will have one of four FEMA coronavirus vaccination sites in Florida - Tampa Bay Times

Students living at Lakeside Village and University Village began the twice-weekly breath analyzer test as a surveillance tool against COVID-19.

Barely 10 minutes after blowing three deep breaths into a little tube, University of Miami sophomore Allegra Garcia heard the words about her coronavirus test that would give her peace of mind: Youre clear.

I think this is way better than the nasal swab because you know right away, said Garcia, one of hundreds of University upper-class students who this week began a new routine of taking twice-a-week breath tests to detect COVID-19. Imagine all those people you could interact with before youd get your swab results in a day or two. They are potentially at risk because you didnt know you had it.

Eliminating that risk is a big reason why the University is among the first in the nation to employ the COVID-19 Breath Analyzer in its arsenal aimed at halting transmission of the highly contagious virus. Erin Kobetz, vice provost for research and scholarship, explained that any student who gets a Not Clear on the breath test developed by the Israeli-based TeraGroup will take a confirmatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) nasal swab test, and isolate quicker.

The breath test is an innovative tool that allows for close to real-time detection of COVID, and there is power in knowing now, said Kobetz, who took the breath test on Monday to see how it works. It literally took two minutes from the time I blew into the tube until the time that I had results. The benefit of this technology is the rapidity by which the results are produced, allowing for a sort of point-of-care response that is ultimately the best strategy for preventing further transmission of infection.

For now, only students at Lakeside Village and University Village have shifted from the required once-a-week PCR nasal swab to the twice-a-week breath tests. But, Kobetz said, their experiences will help the University decide whether its feasible to expand the use of the breath analyzers.

We may expand beyond these groups, but we wanted to start with a smaller universe of students to get it right, she said. This is more of an extended feasibility study, where we can collect some lessons learned from the rollout and consider if it is a strategy that should be offered to the University at large.

She noted that students in the upper-class residential villages were chosen for the feasibility study for a couple of reasons. First, many student there already volunteered to take the breath tests last year when the University became the first college testing site for the breath analyzer, with the goal of providing TeraGroup and its U.S. subsidiary BioSafety Technologies the data needed to seek emergency use authorization for the new technology from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Universitys Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the use of the breath analyzer as an aid in ongoing surveillance mechanisms on campus, and the FDA is still evaluating the emergency use authorization.

Another reason, Kobetz said, is both villages had the adequate space available needed to accommodate the breath machines and the teams of people needed to supervise the tests.

While some students who arrived at Lakeside Village for their pre-scheduled appointments on Monday had to wait a bit longer for their results than Kobetz did, they agreed that the breath test isas Dr. Roy E. Weiss, the Universitys chief medical officer for COVID-19, has saidas simple as blowing into a kazoo.

After checking in at a reception desk near the villages Music Practice Room, students were directed to one of three test stations in the open space. There, an observer gave each student the small disposable, sterile TeraTube. They each were directed to open it, blow three deep puffs into it and then close it.

From there, each tube was whisked to the nearby music room, where a research assistant inserted it into a freestanding BioSafety Station that, within a minute, usually detected no trace of COVID-19 in the droplets of breath. Soon after, the results were delivered back to the check-in desk, where a UScreen team member gave each waiting student the words: Clear or Not clear.

It was no big deal, said senior Mark Oliger, a computer science major, who like Garcia, appreciated the logic behind having near-instant results. I think the big benefit is it will slow the spread, and its good that theyre making it easy for us to do our part to meet that goal.

View original post here:

Breath analyzer test deployed to help better screen coronavirus - University of Miami

President Biden will announce a cash infusion plan to help prop up the global coronavirus response. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

President Biden will announce a cash infusion plan to help prop up the global coronavirus response.

President Biden is set on Friday to announce a total of $4 billion in contributions to COVAX, the vaccine alliance trying to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income countries, a senior administration official told reporters.

Biden will make the announcement during a virtual meeting of G-7 leaders about the pandemic.

The funding for the program which is co-run by the World Health Organization includes an initial contribution of $2 billion that Congress appropriated in December. That funding should go out by the end of the month, the official said. In addition, Biden will pledge another $2 billion through 2021 and 2022. The first $500 million of that pledge will be available "rather quickly" to help spur other donations, the official said.

"This pandemic is not going to end unless we end it globally," the official told reporters, noting the risk of new coronavirus variants developing and spreading.

The official said the funding would not affect the program to vaccinate U.S. residents, noting the government is on track to have a large enough supply of vaccine 600 million doses for domestic needs by the end of July. If there are vaccines left over from the domestic program, the Biden administration plans to look for ways to donate that to the COVAX program, but no decisions on that have yet been made.

Biden on Friday will urge G-7 and G-20 partners, and others, to put forward their own contributions to COVAX to help expand the supply and distribution for vaccines, the official said. The vaccine alliance GAVI, which helps lead COVAX, said in November that more than $2 billion had been pledged to buy vaccines, but at least $5 billion more was needed.

The U.S. contribution of $4 billion "gets us a lot closer to the GAVI target," which aims to vaccinate 20% of the people living in the 92 countries, the official said. But the Biden administration believes that as much as $15 billion is needed from international donors to expand vaccine supply and boost distribution.

Globally, there have been roughly 110 million cases of the coronavirus. Some 2.43 million people have died from the virus.

Originally posted here:

Biden To Give $4 Billion To COVAX, Global COVID-19 Vaccine Effort - NPR