How to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine in northern Nevada KRNV My News 4
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How to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine in northern Nevada - KRNV My News 4
Starting on Monday, people not need to put their names on a waitlist to get a COVID-19 vaccine with the Knox County Health Department.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. The Knox County Health Department is making changes to the way it schedules people for vaccines. Starting Monday, people will be able to register for an appointment directly instead of putting names on a waitlist.
First, the health department said it would reach out to people currently on the waitlist to tell them about a new opportunity to schedule an appointment. Then, people will be able to schedule appointments online as they become available.
All phases are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to health leaders. Anyone 16 years old and older can receive a shot.
The department said that vaccine supplies are continuing to increase, allowing them to give more people the vaccine. They said they hope the new system will make the vaccination process easier for people.
As of Thursday, the health department said that 204,774 vaccinations were reported among Knox County residents 28.88% of people in the county had received at least one dose.
As of Friday, the waitlist was closed and people could no longer place their names on it as the health department moved into the new system.
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The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE is highly effective at protecting against symptomatic Covid-19 up to six months after the second dose, the companies said.
The findings, released Thursday, emerged from a continuing review of how volunteers in the shots late-stage trial were faring.
The further analysis suggested the vaccine worked effectively against a variant first identified in South Africa, Pfizer and BioNTech said. And the companies said they havent found serious safety concerns so far.
It is an important step to further confirm the strong efficacy and good safety data we have seen so far, especially in a longer-term follow-up, said BioNTech Chief Executive Ugur Sahin.
Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said the additional results provide further confidence in our vaccines overall effectiveness.
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Pfizer, BioNTech Say Covid-19 Vaccine Can Protect for at Least Six Months - The Wall Street Journal
For the majority of people who are not physicians or epidemiologists, the COVID-19 vaccine among other things has brought on new challenges in terminology.
Lesson 1: Efficacy and effectiveness are not the same thing.
Efficacy is the degree to which a vaccine prevents disease and this is key under ideal and controlled conditions like in clinical trials when youre comparing a vaccinated group to a placebo group. You have very defined and selected populations, said Dr. Russell Faust, Oakland County Medical Director.
Effectiveness is how the vaccine protects in the real world.
Now were talking hundreds of thousands or millions vaccinated, were talking anybody goes except its 16 and up right now. Were talking wide demographics, wide geographic areas, wide geographic areas with other endemic diseases, other endemic viruses, were talking about different countries, were talking about people taking different medications, who have different diseases and different ailments, Faust said. Were talking about observational study now in the real world. This is effectiveness.
In most cases when people sign up for a vaccine they are unsure of whether it will be Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. Vaccine shopping is not recommended most specialists agree that any of the three are good.
If you Google any of the three you will find different numbers for efficacy and effectiveness. Dont let your head spin.
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released some of the first real-world evidence that mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna are 90% effective at preventing COVID-19 infections, even asymptomatic cases.
The CDC study featured data from nearly 4,000 healthcare workers, first responders, and essential workers across six U.S. states. By getting both vaccine doses (and then allowing those shots two more weeks to take effect) they were about 90% less likely to catch COVID-19, despite their continued, consistent exposure to the coronavirus on the job.
Lets be really clear about this. Everybody wants 100% effectiveness. Thats what you want, thats what I want. I want to get a vaccine where in the real world the success rate of it, the effectiveness is, 100% to guarantee I'm never going to get this disease, Faust said.
That is not going to happen.
Even vaccines that have what would be considered low effectiveness in the real world prevent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people every year, according to Faust.
The flu vaccine is only 40-50% effective in the real world, but it saves tens of thousands of lives in the U.S. alone, maybe hundreds of thousands, Faust said. Even with a 40% or 50% or 60% effectiveness in the real world, I would be delighted. If I get a 20-percent effective flu vaccine in a year I'm jumping for joy.
There are some years that the flu vaccine is not even 20% effective.
So while it may sound good that the COVID-19 vaccines reached 90% or 95% or 97% efficacy in trials, it is not the real world.
What I really care about in public health is I care about the effectiveness of a vaccine of keeping people from being severely infected where theyre transmitting to others and being admitted to the hospitals and ending up in the ICU, Faust said. I care about that where were shutting down our hospitals remember last March, April, May a year ago it was like warzone medicine. Thats what I care about. If a vaccine prevents that and I can keep people alive thats what I care about the most.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are over 90% effective against severe COVID-19 disease. Johnson & Johnson is over 85% effective in preventing severe COVID-19 disease, according to Faust.
That doesnt mean Johnson & Johnson is a lesser vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna ran their clinical trials almost a year ago when there were no variants.
When were comparing the published numbers were talking apples and oranges because of the different clinical trial times and honestly theyre different clinical trials. Not only different times but Johnson & Johnson went out of their way to run clinical trials in places where variants were known to be popping up, Faust said. I see that as very forward thinking, very progressive and frankly noble that they would stick their necks out like that and expose themselves to a potential failure its totally possible those clinical trials would show horrible results because they knew the variant was everywhere and yet they did very well.
So basically the effectiveness of the three vaccines is about the same.
If one is 90% effective that means once a person is fully vaccinated that the chances of catching the virus are about 10%.
In other words, its much safer to be vaccinated, yet still theres a chance of getting COVID. Thats why masks and social distancing remain important.
No theyre not 100% safe. You cant be fully vaccinated and go out and throw caution to the wind, Faust said. Were in the 25th mile of a 26-mile marathon. This is not the time to stop running. This is not the time to get crazy and get yourself exposed and get sick.
Whats needed to get back to normal is herd immunity. Faust prefers the term community immunity since, after all, we are not cows.
We need to vaccinate as many people as possible, as rapidly possible. Its not just the U.S., also as much of the global population vaccinated as possible, he said.
Understand even if were 100% vaccinated across the U.S. and the rest of the world is unvaccinated, every time someone gets infected with this virus it is mutating. During an active infection, variants are being produced. The risk is that as infections continue around the world the risk is there may be a variant that pops up that is frankly unaffected by your vaccine immunity or by your immunity if youve already had COVID-19, Faust said.
A variant may pop up thats completely immune to your vaccines and then we start all over again wildfire pandemic moving through our population. We need everybody vaccinated to put a stop to this pandemic, he added.
And then he offered a reminder.
We can also do it with masks, this is not rocket science. We can stop transmission person to person by wearing masks and distancing. Yes, I want to get everybody vaccinated so we can go back to a normal life but you know we can also put an end to this pandemic simply by wearing masks and distancing, Faust said.
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COVID-19 vaccine efficacy not the same as effectiveness in real world - The Oakland Press
LONDONThe U.K.s bold call to delay giving people a second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine has put it out in front in the race to inoculate the world against the disease.
Behind that decision: a group of 16 scientists who advocated a controversial move tooverrule some vaccine manufacturers guidelines in order to get more first doses to more people.
The gamble appears to have paid off, with incoming data pointing to durable protection against falling ill after just one vaccine dose.But while some countries, such asCanada,have followed the U.K.s lead, others including the U.S. are refusing, saying to do socould pose a risk to public health.
The decision by British authoritiesholds lessons for other countries as they fight to contain the pandemic. Indeed, the dosing debate raises difficult questions about whether some governments and their scientific advisersfor instance in the European Union, where vaccination campaigns are painfully sloware being too risk averse.
In December, as a highly infectious Covid-19 variant ripped across the U.K., the group of scientists sitting on Britains Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded that delaying a second vaccine dose by upto 12 weeks could save lives.
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Lessons From the Calculated Risk Behind U.K.s Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout - The Wall Street Journal
Scaling Up Covid-19 Vaccination in Africa Lessons from the HIV Pandemic | NEJM nejm.org
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Scaling Up Covid-19 Vaccination in Africa Lessons from the HIV Pandemic | NEJM - nejm.org
A national survey shows 4 out of 5 unvaccinated Maine adults still plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine, one of the highest rates among states and a positive sign as the state hopes to achieve population-level immunity from the deadly virus.
The survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau over two weeks in early March, suggests demand for the vaccine in Maine remains high even though state officials raised concerns this week about some appointments going unfilled after Maines vaccine supply increased.
Overall, just shy of 80 percent of Maine adults surveyed who had not yet received the vaccine said they definitely or probably would get it, compared to only 73.5 percent of unvaccinated adults nationally. Maine was 10th in the nation as rates varied widely by state, ranging from as high as 88 percent in Massachusetts and Vermont to as low as 46 percent in Wyoming.
The survey found the most enthusiasm in the youngest and oldest Maine adults. About 85 percent of unvaccinated Mainers under the age of 40 said they definitely or probably planned to get the vaccine. The most hesitant group was Mainers between the ages of 40-54, only 53 percent of whom said they would definitely get the vaccine while 17 percent said they would definitely not.
Maines vaccine rollout has largely been based on age, so many of the older people enthusiastic about the vaccine have already had the chance to get it. The state extended eligibility to people in their 50s last week. Teachers and child care workers are also eligible to be vaccinated now, while all adults over the age of 16 are set to become eligible April 19.
As of Wednesday, more than 426,000 first doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines had been administered in Maine, along with nearly 266,000 second doses and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
There is not yet scientific consensus on what share of the population needs to be vaccinated to achieve so-called herd immunity for coronavirus, though most estimates have suggested it is at least 70 percent, which would require 950,000 Mainers to be fully vaccinated. If it were 80 percent, the number would be closer to 1.1 million Mainers or the states entire adult population, as a vaccine has not yet been approved for use in children younger than 16.
Among Mainers who said they were probably or definitely not going to get vaccinated, the most commonly cited reason was concern about side effects, followed by distrust of the government or vaccines. Experts agree that the side effects of the vaccine such injection site soreness, chills, fatigue and a low-grade fever are mild compared to symptoms of the coronavirus. Severe allergic reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare, and providers in Maine monitor patients after each dose to ensure treatment can be administered in the event of a reaction.
Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, encouraged Mainers in their 50s to get vaccinated on Tuesday after the state received a record 68,000 doses, leaving many appointments unfilled this week. Maines supply is expected to increase again next week, although federal allocations to pharmacies are not yet known.
Shah noted that the unfilled appointments did not necessarily reflect hesitancy, but could be due to a mismatch between when and where vaccines were available and peoples schedules, noting Mainers in their 50s are more likely to be working during the week compared to previously eligible groups.
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4 of 5 Maine adults who haven't received COVID-19 vaccine plan to get it - Bangor Daily News
The supply of Covid-19 vaccines in the U.S. is increasing with each week, and the pace of vaccinations is picking up. States are opening up eligibility for the vaccines sooner, too, allowing more Americans an opportunity to get the shot.
And yet with so many people getting vaccinatednearly 30% of all Americans have had at least one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionthe number of new Covid-19 cases is on the rise.
Nationally, the seven-day average in cases has risen in recent weeks from over 53,000 cases a day to 65,000 cases. Thats down from the peak in early January, when the number of cases being recorded was more than 250,000, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. But an average of 65,000 cases is still considered high by epidemiologists, and is close to the height of the countrys second surge in July of 2020.
Federal officials have for weeks cautioned about a fourth surge of infections, saying that the U.S. is on a path to follow some other European countries that have seen recent spikes. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky spoke about her recurring feeling of impending doom at a White House press briefing Monday.
In interviews with epidemiologists and public-health officials across the country, common themes emerged that explain the rise in cases. Many cited a mixture of increase in infections among younger people, pandemic fatigue, mixed messaging on public-health measures with the rollback of restrictions, and the spread of more contagious variants.
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Covid-19 Vaccinations Are Picking Up Pace, but New Cases Are Still Rising - The Wall Street Journal
