Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

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(PAP) at/md July 03, 2021

Up to 1.5 million Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, 470,000 Jannsen vaccines and 222,000 Moderna vaccines will arrive in Poland over the next few days, the head of the government's Strategic Reserves Agency has told PAP.

Micha Kuczmierowski said that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines would arrive on Monday, Jannsen vaccines on Wednesday, and Moderna vaccines most probably on Saturday.

"As far as a supply of AstraZeneca vaccines is concerned, we are still waiting for confirmation," Kuczmierowski added.

Covid vaccinations began in Poland on December 27, 2020 with Poles getting vaccines from one of four companies, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson&Johnson.

According to data published on government websites, to date, 29.5 million Poles have already received jabs against Covid-19 and nearly 13.5 million people have been fully vaccinated.

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More Covid-19 vaccines to arrive in Poland this week - The First News

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Steven Boggan has worked in the restaurant industry most of his life, bringing him into contact with many people.

Boggan, who lives in Clevelands West Park area, knew getting COVID-19 vaccine would be essential to him feeling safe working with the public during a pandemic. Boggan was hesitant at first, but he took the shot because he knew hed have to work around a lot of people.

While some, like Boggan, are vaccinated, many Black residents of Cuyahoga County have not received vaccinations at the same rate the countys white residents have.

I was (hesitant) in the beginning, Boggan, who is Black, said of taking the vaccine. But I wanted to give it time to see how the results were, and then I had to wait for my time to get the shot.

As of Thursday, 56.63% of Cuyahoga Countys white residents have received their first round of vaccinations, whereas just 31.85% of the countys Black residents have received their first round. However, of the 655,253 residents who have taken at least one dose of a vaccine, 18,331 people did not disclose their race, so countywide data isnt a complete picture of who is vaccinated.

Public health officials, experts and community leaders point to several reasons why vaccinations rates in Black communities lag behind some other groups. They include lack of access to the shots, a historical mistrust of the government and vaccines in some corners of the Black community and lack of sound knowledge about the vaccines themselves.

Many of these problems stem from the exclusion of Cleveland-areas Black communities from conversations about COVID-19 during the pandemics infancy, said Yvonka Hall, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition.

Nobody bothered to tell African Americans just how impacted they were by COVID, Hall said. So you started out the gate wrong. Not telling the community their risk factors. The issues around the disease, even what we knew. The little that we knew.

According to the states COVID-19 dashboard, Black Ohioans make up 13%, or 2,640 people, of the 20,309 deaths. Black residents make up 14% of the states overall population. Black Ohioans comprise 11% of 1.1 million total cases, and they account for 19% of 60,662 hospitalizations.

The lack of equitable access was a primary issue for Black residents during the winter when mainly older Ohioans were eligible to receive the vaccine. During the winter, Hall noted the potential lack of access to transportation posed a hurdle -- and it could still pose problems for residents. But as summer surges on, accessibility problems are diminishing in some corners of the community as more places have the vaccine available.

The Cleveland Clinics Langston Hughes Health and Education Center offers vaccines, with walk-ins available Mondays from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cleveland Clinics Lutheran Hospital has walk-ins available Tuesdays during the same time frame.

Vaccinations are available daily, and theyre available for extended hours at Langston Hughes, said Dr. Lee Kirksey, a vascular surgeon at the Clinic. And thats another issue. You have to recognize that people work, people have different shifts, people have home care issues. And those are issues that sometimes affect certain communities more than others, so providing access in a non-traditional way, we found that to be very important.

Since April, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health has offered vaccinations once a month at the Salvation Army in East Cleveland, said health commissioner Terry Allan. The board of health has also vaccinated residents at the Cleveland Heights Community Center, Bedford Heights Community Center, and the Imani United Church of Christ and River of Life Church in Euclid.

Along with its endeavors to vaccinate at various locations, the health board offers mini-grants with money it received from the CDCs Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health program to barbershops, salons, churches, restaurants and businesses so they can promote the vaccine. Allan said the board of health received $629,640 from the CDCs REACH program.

Theres a social vulnerability index that the state has in identifying the zip codes where the lowest vaccination rates are occurring, and of course they are in many cases theyre in African American neighborhoods, Allan said. And so were focusing on reaching new locations there, and were going to continue to do that through the summer and into the fall.

Allan said some of the targeted locations include East Cleveland, Maple Heights, Warrensville Heights and Euclid.

But despite the improved access, some Black residents are still unsure of whether they want the vaccine.

Danielle Sydnor, the Cleveland NAACP President, was working closely with the state and the NAACPs local partners to develop transportation strategies for the Wolstein Center vaccination site and messaging about the vaccination. The Wolstein Center has a bus station next to it. While Sydnor didnt have any involvement with choosing the arena as a vaccination site, she said access to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Transit Center was considered.

Sydnor said in what she and others heard from people, residents were aware the COVID-19 vaccine was widely available, but they chose not to take it.

And even the efforts to make the vaccine more available through community sites, (we) still did not see the increased participation that many had hoped for, Sydnor said.

She said in the coming weeks, the NAACP will implement a messaging campaign that will provide reliable and accurate information about the vaccine.

Because from all of the information that weve been able to obtain thus far, its not a lack of access, Sydnor said. Its an intentional choice for people not to get the vaccine because they dont trust the federal government. They dont understand how the vaccine was able to be created so quickly. They dont understand the technology behind the vaccine. And theres a significant amount of misinformation thats happening.

Sydnor added that people who dont have a strong relationship with a primary care physician where they can get reliable medical advice are making decisions in groupthink with others who have similar hesitancies.

The lack of education and information is critical in explaining why vaccinations rates among Black residents continue to lag behind public health officials expectations.

Hall offered one example of how a lack of information contributed to the low vaccination rate. When vaccines began at some inner-city clinics and recreation centers, residents who lived by the recreation centers didnt know vaccinations were happening.

And if you looked at some of those lines, they were all white, Hall said. So how can white people in the suburbs get some information about a vaccine clinic thats going on in your neighborhood, and you dont know it?

Inner-city and rural Ohioans suffer from a similar lack of access to broadband internet, meaning they lack access to information and easy methods to make vaccine appointments as required by many clinics and pharmacies.

If the message went out in avenues that African Americans did not have a larger access to, then that means stuff could be going on right under our nose, which it was, vaccination clinics, Hall said. And we had not a clue in the world. And we cant do that. So that means that the message has to come to us in a different way.

As overall vaccine demand wanes across the country, churches and community centers that serve as vaccine sites will continue to be important because theyre trusted locations in the areas Black communities. Black residents who already received their shots play an important role as well, noted David Miller, a professor at Case Western Reserve Universitys Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.

Miller said those who have received the vaccine could tell people how it will protect them and the surrounding community.

Were the ones who are dying from this, Miller said. Were the ones who are in the multi-generational households, who are essential workers, who are being exposed because of transportation. Having to take the bus or crowded vehicles. That becomes a part of it as well. Getting that information out. I think the job has been done, or theyre doing it, but I think it could be much better. Particularly when you have these numbers such as this. That is such a wide, wide disparity.

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Continued disparity for receiving COVID-19 vaccine between Black and white Cuyahoga County residents is from - cleveland.com

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. Charlie Fink is alive today from the gift of organ transplant.

But he takes medicine to quiet his immune system so his body wont reject someone elses kidney. And those immunosuppressants impacted the level of protection hes received from the COVID-19 vaccine.

And hes not alone.

READ: See where you can find the COVID-19 vaccine in your county

A John Hopkins Study shows that only 17% of organ transplant patients showed antibodies after the first shot.

Dr. Aftab Khan said hes worried people on immunosuppressants will have a false sense of security from the shot, not realizing the drugs theyre on may interfere with their immune systems ability to create antibodies.

In the John Hopkins study, the number of transplant patients with antibodies improved to 54% after the second shot. But that still means nearly half are left unprotected.

READ: Orange County officials working to fight misinformation to increase COVID-19 vaccinations rates

John Hopkins suggest a third booster shot may be the answer for those patients.

WFTV Free Apps for Coronavirus Information WFTV is committed to bringing you the most accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic in Central Florida. (Cindy Kelly)

2021 Cox Media Group

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Organ transplant patients are experiencing issues with the COVID-19 vaccine. Here's why - WFTV Orlando

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. As more and more people receive the Covid-19 vaccine doctors are now studying the potential side effects.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville at looking at two studies where patients developed myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle after getting a Covid-19 vaccine.

What we found is that it was particularly common in young men between the ages of 18 to 30 after the second vaccine, Dr. Leslie Cooper the chair of the department of cardiovascular medicine said.

He said the first study published in JAMA Cardiovascular looked at 23 healthy men in the military.

A couple days after receiving a Covid-19 shot they complained of chest pains and were hospitalized.

These men had received Pfizer or Moderna shots which are mRNA vaccines.

However, doctors say more than 2.8 million doses of the vaccine were given out to members of the U.S. military and the majority were perfectly fine.

Dr. Cooper said the chances of developing myocarditis or inflammation of the heart after getting a Covid-19 vaccine is extremely rare and that the overall benefits of getting a vaccine far outweigh the risk.

The risk of the vaccine is incredibly low even when you look at millions of people who receive the vaccine there are very small risk. Those risk are far lower than the risk of the actual virus and therefore the vaccine is the best choice always, Dr. Cooper said.

A second study published in the Circulation looked at eight men between the ages of 21 and 56 who were also hospitalized and diagnosed with myocarditis after receiving the vaccine.

But again, Dr. cooper said its not something most people need to worry about.

If you look at a city like Jacksonville and you take, say a million people who live here the chances of getting myocarditis are 220 per year. So about 220 per year in a city out of a million, he said.

Doctors said its important to note that all these young men who had heart inflammation after getting a Covid-19 shot recovered within one to two weeks.

2021 Cox Media Group

Originally posted here:

Mayo Clinic: heart inflammation in younger men following COVID-19 vaccinations are rare - ActionNewsJax.com

The most reliable way to inflame the heart is to bother it with a virus. Many types of viruses can manage itcoxsackieviruses, flu viruses, herpesviruses, adenoviruses, even the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Some of these pathogens bust their way straight into cardiac tissue, damaging cells directly; others rile up the immune system so overzealously that the heart gets caught in the crossfire. Whatever the cause, the condition is typically mild, but can occasionally be severe enough to permanently compromise the heart, requiring lifesaving interventions including ventilators or organ transplants; in very rare cases, its fatal.

That is decidedly not what were seeing in the CDCs recent reports. The agency has confirmed more than 500 cases of myocarditis or pericarditisinflammation of the heart itself or of the lining that shrouds itin people younger than 30 who recently received Pfizer-BioNTechs or Modernas two-shot COVID-19 vaccines. These events are, so far, not matching the most terrifying versions of the condition, which have been observed with coronavirus infections. Rather, compared with more typical cases of myocarditis, the ones linked to the vaccines, on average, involve briefer symptoms and speedier recoveries, even with less invasive treatments. Still, the incidents are showing up in the few days that follow each vaccines second dose at higher-than-expected rates, especially in boys and young men, and no one is yet sure why.

The CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, met last week to weigh the risks and benefits of keeping the vaccines in circulation among the nations eligible youngest. It rapidly reached a familiar verdict: The perks of immunization far outweigh the potential drawbacks of these side effects and others. Days later, the FDA appended a warning about the rare events onto its fact sheets for the vaccines. Most of the experts I spoke with enthusiastically backed both agencies decisions without reservation. Vaccines, they said, remain our most powerful defensive tool against the coronavirus; if anything, staying unimmunized is the bigger gamble when it comes to severe organ inflammation. But several of them also noted that this particular side effect, and the countrys response to it, represents a new type of stumbling block for our inoculations.

The shots themselves, which are excellent, havent changed. But the context in which were deploying them has. This potential side effect is the first to concentrate like this in children, who are still relatively new to COVID-19 vaccination. Post-vaccine myocarditis still isnt well defined; neither are the full consequences of pediatric COVID-19. For more than a year now, the pandemic has forced people to pit a pile of risky unknowns against another pile of risky unknowns, but anything that concerns kids health is bound to make tensions run particularly high. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that recent news of heart problems was a top-of-mind concern for many parents, who are often less likely to vaccinate their children than themselves.

The countrys situation is also very different from when the vaccines first arrived. Different types of shots are probably on their way, offering alternative routes to vaccination, perhaps without this particular risk. More versions of the virus are on our doorstep as well, and experts cant confidently forecast our fates through the fall and winter. We are, once again, engaged in a game of pandemic chess, one thats not getting much easier over time. Were still figuring out the pieces were handling, and the crafty opponent on the other side; were relearning the rules, and the landscape of our board. And this next round, some of the most prominent players are our kids.

That the recent cases of post-vaccination myocarditis are relatively mild is, to start, very reassuring, said Judith Guzman-Cottrill, a pediatric-infectious-disease physician at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), who helped identify some of the earliest instances of inflammation back in April. Symptoms have lasted just a couple of days; most of the inflammation has been fairly straightforward to treat. According to Katherine Poehling, a pediatrician at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and an ACIP member, no deaths or severe outcomes had been reported at the time of last weeks meeting. This is not like any myocarditis Im used to seeing, said Grace Lee, a pediatrician at Stanford and a member of ACIP. Though most of the identified patients have been hospitalized, its because we wanted to monitor them, out of an abundance of caution, said Sallie Permar, the chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine and New YorkPresbyterian Komansky Childrens Hospital. Many of these patients were discharged after receiving little more than over-the-counter pain medication as therapy. Even the kids are asking, Why am I going to the hospital? Permar said.

But vaccine-induced heart inflammation of any severity still warrants concern, especially without a known root cause. Myocarditis and pericarditis, which mysteriously skew young and male, can arise from an array of triggers, including bacteria and fungi as well as medications and autoimmune disease, but many cases go entirely unexplained. Theres no curative, or even standard, treatment for either condition; doctors try to manage symptoms and tamp down inflammation, said John Jarcho, a cardiovascular-medicine specialist at Brigham and Womens Hospital, in Boston.

Cases related to vaccines are more puzzling still. Only a few immunizations have previously been linked to heart inflammation, among them the smallpox vaccine, which looks nothing like the jabs were doling out now. Researchers remain unsure whats triggering the body to act out, or which children, especially which adolescent boys, might be most vulnerable. Mark Slifka, a vaccinologist at OHSU, told me he suspects the inflammation is caused by a bit of friendly firean extreme manifestation of the side effects already known to come with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, especially after the second injection. Perhaps immune cells are pumping out excessive alarm signals that marshal forces to the heart, or maybe the bodys defenders, confused by a vaccine ingredient, mistakenly wallop cardiac tissue. (Kids immune systems are generally feistier than adults.)

We also dont yet know whether these brief bouts of inflammation are leaving lasting damage, perhaps through subtle scarring of the heart, said Jeremy Asnes, a co-director of Yale New Haven Childrens Hospital Heart Center. His team has seen about a dozen adolescents with the conditions and will conduct follow-ups over the next several months. Guzman-Cottrill is doing the same in Oregon.

All of these factors make the risk of this complication tough to quantify, and several researchers have criticized the CDCs recent evaluation. But most of the experts I spoke with said that the calculations still come out strongly in favor of vaccination, in part because of another set of disconcerting ambiguities, this time on the side of the virus.

SARS-CoV-2 does, on average, cause less severe disease in kids. But less is no longer a terribly comforting qualifier. Millions of young people have been infected; thousands have been hospitalized; more than 300 younger than age 18 have died. We still dont know how many kids hit by the virus will go on to develop long COVID, and the CDC has also logged more than 4,000 cases of a severe inflammatory complication called MIS-C. This condition can itself involve severe myocarditisfar worse than the cases that typically follow vaccinationand seems to carry a 1 percent fatality rate. It also disproportionately impacts people of color. If you think about all the risks that come with getting COVID itself, those are way more common than the very low myocarditis rates were seeing with vaccines, Permar told me. If youre playing the numbers, every time you would choose to vaccinate your child to prevent disease. Thomas Murray, a pediatric infectious disease physician and the associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Childrens Hospital, agreed: If I had to take my chances, Id rather take my chances with the adverse effects of myocarditis down the road than with an actual viral infection.

Not all experts have taken the same stance; some have argued that theres no rush to vaccinate kids. Coronavirus transmission in the United States has, after all, been dropping for months. But while absolute numbers of infections are down, the face of COVID-19 in this country has shifted. With vaccines concentrated among older adults, younger individuals are now shouldering more of the nations coronavirus burden: About a third of the infections reported to the CDC in May were in people ages 12 to 29, many of them unvaccinated. And the low spread were seeing right now wont necessarily hold against the rise of highly contagious variants like Delta. Its a terrible time to lose the momentum weve gained. Im not looking at transmission rates now, Guzman-Cottrill told me. Im looking at what might happen in fall and winter. Vaccination would shield kids, as well as those around them; immunizing more today means better protection later, even if we cant yet see the threats on the horizon.

Read: The 3 simple rules that underscore the danger of Delta

Doctors are carefully monitoring new cases that come their way. If the inflammation theyre seeing continues to be mild, Asnes said, the people who experience it might be able to leave the hospital even earlier, or never check in at all. But if theres an unexpected uptick in severity, experts will reassess.

More vaccine options could also change these calculations. For now, Pfizer is the only COVID-19 shot that can be used in children. But other vaccines with gentler side-effect profiles, including those from J&J and Novavax, could be easier on the heart, OHSUs Slifka said.

In the interim, some experts have floated the notion of tinkering with Pfizer and Moderna dosing to safeguard younger heart tissue. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist at UC San Francisco who has been very critical of the CDCs evaluation of heart inflammation, told me hed like to see the agency consider skipping second doses, or trimming doses down for at-risk populations. Neither of those strategies has been rigorously tested, though. Dose-reducing revisions run the risk of blunting protection, which might have contributed to the failure of the CureVac mRNA vaccine. Forgoing second doses could also backfire: Repeat shots seem crucial for conferring strong protection against variants like Delta.

Then again, kids arent just tiny adults, and adapting vaccines to their needs isnt just a matter of bending down to stick a needle in a shorter, smaller person. Youthful immune systems react more enthusiastically to certain inoculations, which can mean more side effects, or simply that they need less vaccine to mount a defense. Several existing vaccines, such as the ones we use for chickenpox/shingles and tick-borne encephalitis, come in lower doses for children; Moderna and Pfizer are adopting this same strategy in their clinical trials for kids under 12. As theyre ushered into younger populations, our vaccines can be expected to undergo some growing pains.

The key, experts told me, is to stay flexible. Everyones chess board will end up looking a little different. Yales Murray, whose two older children have already gotten their shots, told me he and his younger son, who will soon turn 12, will be talking through the risks. But Murray is firm on one thing: I dont want him to have to worry about him getting COVID. So, he added, Well see what we need to do to get him vaccinated. Cornells Permar told me her family heard of the myocarditis reports the day before her 12-year-old son, Sam, was scheduled to receive his second dose of Pfizer. We didnt question it, she said. Looking at the numbers, there are so many more benefits of my son getting the vaccine. Still, she kept a close eye on him for a few days after his shot.

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Is Heart Inflammation a Hurdle to Vaccinating Kids? - The Atlantic

BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine and correlates of humoral immune responses and dynamics: a prospective, single-centre, longitudinal cohort study in health-care workers  The Lancet

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BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine and correlates of humoral immune responses and dynamics: a prospective, single-centre, longitudinal cohort study in...

State health officials are conducting informal focus groups and outreach to try to ease pastors concerns about discussing vaccination, but progress is often elusive, they said. Many pastors said they have already lost congregants to fights over coronavirus restrictions and fear risking further desertions by promoting vaccinations. Others said their congregations are so ideologically opposed to the vaccine that discussing it would not be worth the trouble.

If I put forth effort to push it, Id be wasting my breath, said Nathan White, a pastor at Liberty Baptist Church in Skipwith, Va., a small town near the North Carolina border.

The pastors POLITICO spoke with are located across Virginia and Tennessee, mostly in predominantly white communities. Some in rural areas lead overwhelmingly conservative congregations while some in more suburban areas said their churches were more politically mixed. Each pastor had been vaccinated but not all were eager to discuss it with their congregations.

Polls have consistently shown that white evangelicals are among the groups most hardened against vaccination. The most recent, a June survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 22 percent of white evangelicals said they would definitely not get the vaccine, a figure thats barely budged since April. About 11 percent said they wanted to wait and see how the vaccines perform.

NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins testifies before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee looking into the budget estimates for National Institute of Health. | Sarah Silbiger/Pool via AP

NIH Director Francis Collins, a devout Christian who has used his ties to the faith community to promote public health measures during the pandemic, said he regretted that pastors have faced such a barrage of negative responses from congregants.

Its heartbreaking that its come to this over something that is potentially lifesaving and yet has been so completely colored over by political views and conspiracies that its impossible to have a simple loving conversation with your flock, Collins said in an interview. That is a sad diagnosis of the illness that afflicts our country, and Im not talking about Covid-19. Im talking about polarization, tribalism even within what should be the loving community of a Christian church.

Biden administration officials have often talked up the role faith leaders could play in the vaccination effort. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships holds a call at noon every Thursday with faith leaders from across the country offering tips and sharing resources that can help them encourage people to get vaccinated, an administration official said. Collins has appeared with evangelical leader Franklin Graham to tout the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines, and Biden has talked up vaccination during his Easter message and the National Day of Prayer.

Since day one of this administration, faith leaders have played a key role in the vaccination effort, said Josh Dickson, a White House senior adviser on faith engagement. As trusted community voices, they continue to be essential partners in our work to connect with people of all backgrounds and geographies about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

Besides Graham, some other prominent evangelical leaders have encouraged vaccination. Robert Jeffress, who called the vaccines a gift from God, hosted a vaccination clinic at his 14,000-member megachurch, First Baptist Dallas. Conversely, there are also prominent examples of pastors cautioning worshippers not to get vaccinated.

Some faith leaders told POLITICO they lamented that Covid vaccines have become the latest flashpoint in the countrys growing political divide.

Folks at one point who felt they could at least straddle the political differences in their congregation now feel that it is almost impossible to do that, said Dan Bagby, an emeritus professor of pastoral care at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va. It is a significant issue for a number, if not a majority, of congregations.

Virginia vaccine coordinator Danny Avula in focus groups hes led with evangelical pastors has sought to persuade them to play a more active role in promoting vaccinations. The state offers content that can be plugged into church newsletters, testimonials that faith leaders can share and holds virtual town halls for pastors. These efforts have been slow-going, Avula said.

People are raising the question: Is it our role? he said. Is this a stance the church should take given the politicization of this?

Tony Brooks, a field strategist with the Baptist General Association of Virginia, said he repeatedly urged pastors in northern Virginia to meet with Avula but found almost no takers.

Most are still gun-shy from all the criticisms they have received over the last 15 months from members on both sides of Covid guidelines, he said.

To be sure, some faith leaders have actively promoted Covid vaccines. Bill Christian, a spokesperson for the Tennessee health department, said the state Office of Faith Based and Community Engagement speaks with leaders from all faiths and tries to answer any questions.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and resulted in several hundred small pop-up vaccine events in both minority and vulnerable communities in the state, Christian wrote in an email.

Black churches have a long history of activism, and many pastors across the South have eagerly spoken about the vaccine. Black adults are now among the least likely to say they will definitely not get vaccinated, according to KFF polling.

We have not encountered the level of resistance from the clergy, said Albert Mosley, senior vice president at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis, Tenn. The health systems staff has advised pastors on how to field questions about vaccine side effects and misinformation. Thats part of the overall role the Black clergy see themselves occupying, Mosley said.

Church members listen to a service. | Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo

Some pastors who have urged congregants to get vaccinated said theyve been careful not to seem judgmental or hostile when theyre confronted by misinformation. But they acknowledged feelings among many congregants are especially raw over the pandemic.

Ricky Floyd, a pastor who hosted a vaccine clinic in early April at the Pursuit of God, a large predominantly Black church in Frayser, Tenn., said hes lost congregants over the past year because of disagreements over reopening and masks.

Ive been pastoring for 20 years and Covid has done more damage to the church than anything Ive seen more than sex scandals, more than racism, he said.

Floyd said he was reluctant at first to promote Covid vaccines because he felt that city and state officials werent doing enough to make the shots available in his community, though it had been hard hit by the virus. Now, he said, he is more aggressive about promoting vaccines, but resistance among his congregants has hardened.

When the momentum for the vaccine was high, we didnt make it available to people, he said. We missed the opportunity to convince, convict and convert people.

Josh Hayden, a pastor in Ashland, Va., decided to host vaccine clinics this spring at his church despite reservations over how they would be received. But he said many of his peers are emotionally spent after intense conversations around race and the coronavirus.

They are really tired of addressing complicated issues and many are worn out, he said. Everything you say or do can make someone frustrated.

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Wasting my breath: Southern faith leaders wary of promoting vaccines - POLITICO

Back when Philip Felgner was a kid in a Michigan farming town in the 1950s science was cool. Walt Disney TV specials focused on the wonders of space exploration, Watch Mr. Wizard featured fun experiments, Henry Fords Greenfield Village celebrated American resourcefulness and ingenuity, and Sputnik spurred a nation to action.

The conviction that science can and should make lives better always ran deep in Felgner, and his painstaking work over the past 35 years laid the groundwork for the mRNA vaccines that are so startlingly effective against COVID-19. The UC Irvine professor has seen his work take off in ways he never quite expected, and soon hell be rubbing elbows with Spains King Felipe and Queen Letizia as they honor him alongside the German creators of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and four others for outstanding advances in technical and scientific research.

Felgner, director of UCIs Vaccine Research and Development Center and Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility, has won Spains Princess of Asturias Award in recognition of his contributions. The award includes a $60,000 prize and a grand reception in Oviedo in October, where the whole town comes out to celebrate.

While not quite as well-known as the Nobels Felgner had to do a bit of research himself the Asturias prizes are awarded in eight categories each year, including for the arts, social sciences, literature and sports as well as science. They were created in 1980 and are bestowed by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, a private nonprofit.

Its just going to be a real thrill, said Felgner, also a professor in residence of physiology and biophysics at UCI. What a gift. I dont have to keep telling the lab members what a great job theyre doing the Spanish are telling them, too. Its fantastic.

Those who marvel at how fast COVID-19 vaccines were developed dont understand that it all really began 35 years ago. Felgners work paved the way.

After getting his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Michigan State University in 1978, he did postdoctoral work at a biophysics lab at the University of Virginia and delved into the study of liposomes tiny round membranes made of fat that could encase a drug, and then carry that drug into cells.

It was the biotechnology heyday and entrepreneurs were so interested in these liposomes for pharmaceutical applications, he said. That was a beginning for scientists understanding what they actually were and how they could be used.

Soon he joined Syntex Research as a staff scientist. There, on a beautiful campus next to Stanford University, he developed lipofection technology using a lipid nanoparticle to deliver DNA to cells. It was a tremendous breakthrough and a surprisingly simple matter of attraction.

We could improve the delivery of all kinds of drugs with these positively charged liposomes because theyre like magnets, and they attach themselves to cells because all of our cells are negatively charged, he said. So if you want to deliver a drug to a cell, put it in a positively charged liposome. We did a lot of experiments like that.

It was the 1980s, and the promise of gene therapy using genetic material to treat or cure disease had become a holy grail. If liposomes were so good at carrying drugs into cells, might they also be good at carrying genes into cells?

Yes. Felgner put DNA inside those liposomes and, sure enough, the cells began to produce the protein that was encoded by the gene. He was eager to take the next step gene therapy experiments in animals and hell never forget what his bosses said: Gene therapy will be something for the year 2020. It was only 1987, and the company had to work on products that would help the bottom line in some foreseeable future.

He soon left for San Diego and became director of product development and founder of Vical Inc. Working with former researchers from UC San Diego, they were able to deliver DNA into mice, and the mice made the new proteins. The gene was expressed, he said with some wonder. All these things, they worked the first time.

Then came another big surprise. Naked DNA, without nanoparticle, could also be expressed in mouse muscle tissue. That was so wacky, he said. If you put DNA on cultured cells nothing happens. But in an animal, you could inject DNA in and get expression. Thats because, when you inject into muscle, it makes transient breaks in the membrane that allow the DNA to get in.

Felgners findings led to the development of DNA vaccines, and Vical became the naked DNA vaccine company. It was in business for about 30 years when it merged with Brickell Biotech in 2019.Companies like BioNTec and Moderna built on this work to create the COVID-19 vaccines, using single-stranded RNA rather than double-stranded DNA.

Our Awards give us hope, because they constitute a recognition of those who, with dedication, work tirelessly to jointly achieve the advancement and well-being of the whole of society, said The Princess of Asturias in a statement.

Felgner came to Irvine in 2002. Here he has studied the proteome the entire complement of proteins that is, or can be, expressed by a cell, tissue, or infectious microorganism and has begun to manufacture the first microarray of the human proteome. Thats a lab tool used to detect antibodies against thousands of individual proteins at the same time.

Growing up in a farming community made him a very practical scientist, he said. In farming, you have to make things other people can use right away, so I think that came through in a lot of what we do in the lab. We learn things, but we want to use the products of what we learn, he said.

He has authored more than 250 articles that have been cited more than 38,000 times, and holds 50 U.S. patents. He loves playing Spanish classical guitar, and was torn in his youth about whether to pursue music or science. The world may be grateful that he chose the latter.

Todays COVID-19 vaccines are the culmination of decades of work by hundreds of scientists and numerous biotechnology companies, fueled by the investment of billions of public and private dollars.

For 35 years we prepared the science to react and have a successful outcome, Felgner said. Well continue to work on vaccines here its great to see the vaccine science developing and theres plenty to do. More targets, more work to be done to understand how theyre working as well as they are, to understand and reduce side effects and make them even safer than they are right now. Were going to learn a lot more about the immune system and be even better prepared for the next time.

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UCI professor wins international prize for work that led to COVID-19 vaccines - San Bernardino County Sun

Science

Among those who haven't vaccinated (but also among some who have), there's a real fear that COVID-19 vaccines could have serious side effects that only become apparent many months or even years after getting jabbed. Is that concern valid? And what would have to happen inside our bodies for something like that to even happen?

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What are the long-term side effects of COVID-19 vaccines? - Deutsche Welle

VNA Health Care has reached out to over 80 community groups, employers and churches to try to connect with people who are unvaccinated, officials said. By answering questions, helping with transportation, arranging for house visits for those who are homebound, Windel said they hope to make the vaccination process easier.

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While VNA, Kane County celebrate COVID-19 vaccination milestones, officials say there is still work be done - Chicago Tribune