'Survival of the fastest:' Getting COVID-19 vaccine appointment to be more difficult KOMO News
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'Survival of the fastest:' Getting COVID-19 vaccine appointment to be more difficult - KOMO News
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday recommended the COVID-19 vaccine to his supporters, amid concerning recent polls showing Republicans are less likely to get vaccinated.
In a phone interview with Fox News Maria Bartiromo, Trump said: I would recommend [the vaccine]. And I would recommend it to a lot of people that dont want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.
And we have our freedoms and we have to live by that, and I agree with that also, Trump added. Its a great vaccine and its a safe vaccine.
In the interview, Trump also repeated lies that he lost the election fraudulently, and blamed the U.S. Supreme Court for not overturning the election results.
While Trump had told people to get your shot in a speech at CPAC last month, he did not participate in a public-service campaign that features all of the other living former presidents, and had noticeably been quiet about vaccinations. Trump and his wife, Melania, were vaccinated at the White House in January, though that was not disclosed at the time.
Recent polls have found Republicans, especially Trump supporters, are more skeptical of the coronavirus vaccines, leading to calls for Trump to endorse vaccinations.
I just dont get it, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday in a series of TV interviews, saying having Trumps support would be a game-changer.
If he came out and said, Go and get vaccinated. Its really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country, it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him, Fauci said on Fox News Sunday.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said: If former President Trump woke up tomorrow and wanted to be more vocal about the safety and efficacy of the campaign, of the vaccine, certainly wed support that, though later in the day President Joe Biden said local doctors and clergy were more important voices than Trump in convincing people.
As of late Tuesday, about 21% of the U.S. has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with current averages of about 2.5 million shots administered a day, according to an NPR vaccination tracker. However, polls have found about a quarter of the population are not willing to be vaccinated.
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Heres what you need to know:Tara Gallion prepared a dose of the Moderna vaccine at the Delta Health Center in Mound Bayou, Miss., in January.Credit...Rory Doyle for The New York Times
Mississippi will become the second state to open Covid-19 vaccinations to all of its adult residents, following a call from President Biden for all states to do so by May 1.
Alaska opened its vaccination doors last week to anybody 16 or older who lives or works in the state. The change in Mississippi takes effect Tuesday.
Get your shots, friends, Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Twitter. And lets get back to normal!
The pace of vaccinations in the United States has steadily increased as production has ramped up, from well under one million shots per day on Jan. 20, when Mr. Biden took office, to about 2.4 million doses per day on average, according to a New York Times database.
Mr. Bidens team has made key decisions that quickened the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines, but now the country faces the challenge of getting all those shots into arms. Mass vaccination sites across the country are opening up or increasing their capacity, in part to respond to the influx of doses from the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
But more challenges remain, including improving access in communities of color and convincing Americans wary for a variety of reasons that getting vaccinated is safe and effective.
Although Mississippi lags most states in the share of its population that has been vaccinated, it is doing better than all of its neighbors except Louisiana, according to a New York Times tracker. As of Sunday, about 20 percent of Mississippians have received at least one shot, and 11 percent have been fully vaccinated.
The state had already opened eligibility further than most states, to cover everyone 50 or over. Governor Reeves urged older residents to book appointments as soon as possible.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan has said that her state will drop its restrictions on eligibility by April 5, about a month before Mr. Bidens deadline. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut said his state would as well, tentatively opening vaccine eligibility to all adults on April 5.
Its still going to take some time to get the vaccine to everyone who wants it, and I urge patience to the greatest extent possible, Mr. Lamont said in a news release.
Officials in Washington, D.C., said on Monday that they would do the same by May 1, allowing anyone 16 or older who lives in the city to be inoculated.
In New York, where the minimum age was recently lowered to 60, the state will open three new mass vaccination sites on Long Island at the end of the week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday at an appearance. The sites will be on college campuses in Old Westbury, Brentwood and Southampton.
More categories of public-facing workers will become eligible in New York on Wednesday, including government employees, building services workers and employees of nonprofit groups. Mr. Cuomo has yet to announce how or when the state would open eligibility to all adults.
About 92.6 million vaccine doses have been administered since Mr. Bidens inauguration, according to data released on Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the current pace, the country will pass 100 million doses under Mr. Biden before the end of the week.
As a third wave of the pandemic crashes over Europe, questions about the safety of one of the continents most commonly available vaccines led Germany, France, Italy and Spain to temporarily halt its use on Monday. The suspensions created further chaos in inoculation rollouts even as new coronavirus variants continue to spread.
The decisions followed reports that a handful of people who had received the vaccine, made by AstraZeneca, had developed fatal brain hemorrhages and blood clots.
The company has strongly defended its vaccine, saying that there is no evidence of increased risk of blood clots or hemorrhages among the more than 17 million people who have received the shot in the European Union and the United Kingdom.
The safety of all is our first priority, AstraZeneca said in a statement Monday. We are working with national health authorities and European officials and look forward to their assessment later this week.
The timing of the pause in inoculations by some of Europes largest countries which followed a flurry of similar actions by Denmark, Norway and several others could not have been worse.
Europes vaccine rollouts already lag far behind those in Britain and the United States, and there is dawning realization that much of the continent is suffering a third wave of infections. Leading immunologists fretted on Monday that the decision by several of Europes leading nations to suspend the use of AstraZeneca would make vaccination efforts even harder by emboldening vaccine skeptics in countries where they are particularly entrenched.
The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization warned against an exodus from vaccines that would undermine rollout efforts at a pivotal moment.
A year after Italy became the first European country to impose a national lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the nation has fallen eerily quiet once again, with new restrictions imposed on Monday in an effort to stop a third wave of infections that is threatening to wash over Europe and overwhelm its halting mass inoculation program.
As he explained the measures on Friday, Prime Minister Mario Draghi warned that Italy was facing a new wave of contagion, driven by more infectious variants of the coronavirus.
Just as before, Italy was not alone.
We have clear signs: The third wave in Germany has already begun, Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, said during a news conference on Friday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary predicted that this week would be the most difficult since the start of the pandemic in terms of allocating hospital beds and breathing machines, as well as mobilizing nurses and doctors. Hospitalizations in France are at their highest levels since November, prompting the authorities to consider a third national lockdown.
Officials in the United States are watching those developments with wary eyes. At a White House news briefing on Monday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans not to let their guard down as case numbers have dropped from their peak. She pointed to images of young people crowded onto Florida beaches, though generally people are safer outside than inside, and to European nations as a warning.
Each of these countries has had nadirs like we are having now, and each took an upward trend after they disregarded no mitigation strategies, she said. They simply took their eye off the ball. Im pleading with you for the sake of our nations health. These should be warning signs for all of us.
The U.S. death rate remains at nearly 1,400 people every day. That number still exceeds the summer peak, when patients filled Sun Belt hospitals and outbreaks in states that reopened early drove record numbers of cases, though daily deaths nationwide remained lower than the first surge last spring. The average number of new reported cases per day remains comparable to the figures reported in mid-October.
Across Europe, cases are spiking. Supply shortages and vaccine skepticism, as well as bureaucracy and logistical obstacles, have slowed the pace of inoculations. Governments are putting exhausted populations under lockdown. Street protests are turning violent. A year after the virus began spreading in Europe, things feel unnervingly the same.
In Rome, the empty streets, closed schools, shuttered restaurants and canceled Easter holidays came as a relief to some residents after months of climbing infections, choked hospitals and deaths.
Its a liberation to return to lockdown, because for months, after everything that happened, people of every age were going out acting like there was no problem, said Annarita Santini, 57, as she rode her bike in front of the Trevi Fountain, a popular site that had no visitors except for three police officers. At least like this, she added, the air can be cleared and people will be scared again.
For months, Italy had relied on a color-coded system of restrictions that, unlike the blanket lockdown of last year, sought to surgically smother emerging outbreaks in order to keep much of the country open and running. It does not seem to have worked.
History repeats itself, Massimo Galli, one of Italys top virologists, told the daily Corriere della Sera on Monday. The third wave started, and the variants are running.
Unfortunately we all got the illusion that the arrival of the vaccines would reduce the necessity of more drastic closures, he said. But the vaccines did not arrive in sufficient quantities.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg Lauren Leatherby and Mitch Smith contributed reporting.
As President Biden pushes to vaccinate as many Americans as possible, he faces deep skepticism among many Republicans, a group especially challenging for him to persuade.
While there are degrees of opposition to vaccination for Covid-19 among a number of groups, including African-Americans and antivaccine activists, polling suggests that opinions in this case are breaking substantially along partisan lines.
A third of Republicans said in a CBS News poll that they would not be vaccinated compared with 10 percent of Democrats and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls have found similar trends.
With the Biden administration readying television and internet advertising and other efforts to promote vaccination, the challenge for the White House is complicated by perceptions of former President Donald J. Trumps stance on the issue. Although Mr. Trump was vaccinated before he left office and urged conservatives last month to get inoculated, many of his supporters appear reluctant to do so, and he has not played any prominent role in promoting vaccination.
Asked about the issue on Monday at the White House, Mr. Biden said Mr. Trumps help promoting vaccination was less important than getting trusted community figures on board.
I discussed it with my team, and they say the thing that has more impact than anything Trump would say to the MAGA folks is what the local doctor, what the local preachers, what the local people in the community say, Mr. Biden said, referring to Mr. Trumps supporters and campaign slogan Make America Great Again.
Widespread opposition to vaccination, if not overcome, could slow the United States from reaching the point where the virus can no longer spread easily, setting back efforts to get the economy humming again and people back to a more normal life. While the problem until now has been access to relatively tight supplies of the vaccine, administration officials expect to soon face the possibility of supply exceeding demand if many Americans remain reluctant.
Parents of schoolchildren protested in several cities around the United States over the weekend, frustrated by the off-again-on-again reopening policies in some school districts and blanket closures in others a full year after the pandemic began, despite growing scientific evidence that schools can reopen safely if they follow basic procedures.
Several hundred people rallied in downtown Naperville, Ill., on Sunday to urge officials to give students the option of returning to the classroom five days a week. Wielding signs with messages like Get our kids back in school and Flip the school board, demonstrators chanted, Five days a week, The Naperville Sun reported.
In San Francisco, hundreds of parents and children marched on Saturday in support of a five-day in-person learning schedule, arguing that a partial reopening falls short, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Similarly, parents demonstrated at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles on Saturday, according to a local news station, saying a tentative agreement with teachers for a partial reopening in April was not enough.
Parents pressing for in-person classes say that remote learning leaves students feeling emotionally and socially drained at home.
They have the Biden administration on their side. Jill Biden and members of her husbands administration have been traveling the country in a campaign aimed at reopening schools. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines last month saying it was safe for schools to reopen if they could ensure measures like proper masking, physical distancing and hygiene were taken. The recommendations called for every elementary school to open in some fashion.
In early February, The New York Times surveyed 175 experts mostly pediatricians focused on public health who largely agreed that it was safe enough for schools to be open to elementary students for full-time, in-person instruction. Some said that was true even in communities where coronavirus cases were widespread, with proper safety precautions, including adequate ventilation and avoidance of large group activities.
Facebook said on Monday that it planned to expand its efforts to help get people vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The social network said it would roll out a new location-based tool to direct people to the clinics nearest to them that offer vaccinations, which users can find inside Facebooks main app.
The company will also have an information center for Covid-19-related questions and data inside its Instagram photo-sharing app, building on a similar effort that Facebook introduced last year. And it will keep adding automated chat bots to WhatsApp, which can text users information on where to get vaccinated.
By working closely with national and global health authorities and using our scale to reach people quickly, were doing our part to help people get credible information, get vaccinated and come back together safely, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, said in a company blog post.
While Facebook previously allowed anti-vaccination groups on its platform to flourish, last year it pledged to remove Covid-related misinformation from its site. It also labeled posts related to the coronavirus with links to its official information center so it could direct people to sources like the World Health Organization.
But critics have said that false or misleading data about vaccines and the virus continues to be visible in private groups and pages on Facebook.
Nearly nine in 10 Americans who received the first dose of a two-dose Covid-19 vaccine went on to complete the regimen, and most people who received two doses got them within the recommended time frames, federal health officials reported on Monday.
The analyses, by investigators with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, included data on tens of millions of Americans who received the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines between mid-December and mid-February.
The percentage of people completing the regimens varied markedly by jurisdiction and between demographic groups, however. Federal health officials urged local vaccinators to take steps to ensure that everyone comes back, including scheduling a return appointment when giving the first shot, sending reminders, and rescheduling missed or canceled appointments.
While the data were reassuring over all, C.D.C. researchers said, the first groups receiving the vaccine in the United States health care workers and long-term care facility residents had easy access to the second dose, since they were likely to have been vaccinated at their workplace or place of residence.
As vaccines are offered to broader groups of people, the scientists warned, the percentage getting fully vaccinated may drop.
People are not considered fully vaccinated against the coronavirus until two weeks after they receive the second shot of the two-dose regimen (or two weeks after receiving the single-dose vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson).
C.D.C. researchers looked at some 40.5 million Americans who were vaccinated between Dec. 14, 2020 and Feb. 14, 2021.
In one analysis, they reviewed the records of 12.4 million people who had received the first dose of a two-dose vaccine regimen and had enough time to get the second dose. Some 88 percent had completed the series, while 8.6 percent were still within the allowable interval 42 days to receive the second dose. But 3.4 percent had missed that window. (The recommended interval between doses is 21 days for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 28 days for Moderna).
Americans most likely to have missed the second dose varied by locality. Among vaccine recipients for whom information on race and ethnicity were known, the lowest completion rates were among Native American or Alaska Native individuals.
A second analysis of 14.2 million people who completed the full regimen found that 95.6 percent received the second dose within the recommended period, though again the figures varied by community.
The authors of the study urged providers and public health workers to encourage Americans to come back for second doses and to emphasize the importance of full vaccination. C.D.C. officials also asked that vaccinators work to understand what keeps people from completing the series, and whether access or lack of confidence in the vaccines are playing a role.
In the year since the pandemic upended the U.S. economy, more than four million people have quit the labor force, leaving a gaping hole in the job market that cuts across age and circumstances.
An exceptionally high number have been sidelined because of child care and other family responsibilities or health concerns. Others gave up looking because they were discouraged by the lack of opportunities. And some older workers have called it quits earlier than they had planned.
These labor-force dropouts are not counted in the most commonly cited unemployment rate, which was 6.2 percent in February, making the group something of a hidden casualty of the pandemic.
Now, as the labor market begins to emerge from the pandemics vise, whether those who have left the labor force return to work and if so, how quickly is one of the big questions about the shape of the recovery.
There is some reason for optimism. Economists expect that many who have left the labor force in the past year will return to work once health concerns and child care issues are alleviated. And they are optimistic that as the labor market heats up, it will draw in workers who grew disenchanted with the job search.
Moreover, after the last recession, many economists said those who left the labor force were unlikely to come back, whether because of disabilities, the opioid crisis, a loss of skills or other reasons. Yet labor force participation, adjusted for demographic shifts, eventually returned to its previous level.
But the speed with which the pandemic has driven workers from the labor force could leave lasting damage.
Young peoples reports of poor well-being during the pandemic have fueled a global crisis that needs immediate attention, according to a nonprofit organization that surveyed nearly 50,000 people in eight countries, providing a comprehensive overview of the pandemics impact on mental health.
More than one in four respondents reported facing or being at risk of clinical disorders, a number that rose to nearly one in two for those ages 18 to 24, according to the report, which was released by group, Sapien Labs, a U.S. nonprofit group dedicated to understanding the human mind.
The report, based on data collected from an online, anonymous survey whose findings were published on Monday, focused on Australia, Britain, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United States. It found that 40 percent of respondents ages 18 to 24 reported feeling sadness, distress or hopelessness, as well as unwanted, strange and obsessive thoughts.
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated trends that were already there, and made them worse, said Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, the founder and chief scientist of Sapien Labs. Particularly, social isolation has had a larger impact on young people, and its pushed many of them over the edge.
Other studies have shown that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the mental health of young people, women and people of color.
Mental health experts have also warned against the long-term effects of the pandemic, which are likely to include an economic recession and the psychological fallout of long-term social isolation.
The reports authors, Dr. Thiagarajan and Jennifer Newson, urged governments to focus on population-wide policies targeting mental health, instead of individual approaches that are often favored.
While much of the focus in the mental health arena has been on self-care through apps, therapy and other programs, social and economic policy and institutional culture may have a large role to play in the mitigation of our present mental health crisis and prevention of future crises, they wrote.
Two arrests have been made after scenes from a viral video that circulated showed passengers taunting and deliberately coughing on an Uber driver.
In the dashcam video, the driver, who had a hand on his head, looked exasperated. A woman in the passengers seat uttered an expletive about a mask and then coughed on the driver, while using racial slurs. Another passenger joined in, pulling down her mask and laughing. And I got corona, she said.
The driver refused to continue the ride, and the situation escalated. The passenger who had initially coughed on the driver grabbed his phone and tore off his mask, breaking the strap. The women continued screaming profanities.
The San Francisco Police Department said in a statement last Thursday that the driver, identified by KGO-TV as Subhakar Khadka, had picked up three passengers in the early afternoon on March 7, but when he saw that one of the women was not wearing a mask, he told them he would not continue unless they all wore masks.
In a video that was posted on Instagram and has since been removed, one passenger said that the driver was trying to make them exit the car in the middle of the freeway.
Soon, an altercation ensued, the police said.
One woman grabbed the drivers cellphone, which Mr. Khadka eventually retrieved, and another passenger sprayed what is believed to be pepper spray into the car through an open window after they exited the vehicle, according to the police.
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The flare-up is the latest high-profile example of mask conflicts, which have sometimes taken violent turns. Last year, prosecutors in Chicago said two sisters attacked a store security guard with a garbage can. One of the women stabbed the guard repeatedly with a small knife after he tried to insist that they wear masks and use the stores hand sanitizer on entry.
In another case last year, an 80-year-old man in upstate New York was killed after he asked a bar patron to wear a mask; the patron shoved the man to the ground, causing him to hit his head.
Mr. Khadka, an Uber driver from Nepal who came to the United States eight years ago, said in an interview with KPIX that he never said anything bad to the women, and that they had refused to leave his car. Mr. Khadka said he believed he was singled out for their ire because he is South Asian. If I was of another complexion, I would have not gotten that treatment from them, he said. The moment I opened my mouth to speak, they realized Im not among one of them. Its easy for them to intimidate me.
One of the passengers was arrested in Las Vegas on Thursday, the Las Vegas Police Department said. The passenger, Malaysia King, 24, was taken into custody on a warrant for assault with a caustic chemical, assault and battery, conspiracy and violation of a health and safety code, the police said.
A second passenger,Arna Kimiai, 24, turned herself in on Sunday, the San Francisco Police Department announced. Ms. Kimiai was booked on charges of robbery, assault and battery, conspiracy, and violation of a health and safety code.
The behavior captured on video in this incident showed a callous disregard for the safety and well-being of an essential service worker in the midst of a deadly pandemic, said Lt. Tracy McCray, who heads the San Francisco Police Departments robbery detail.
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Covid-19: Mississippi Is Second State to Open Vaccination to All Adults - The New York Times
Moderna is testing its COVID-19 vaccine in young children; its vaccine is currently authorized for people ages 18 and up. Here, third-grade children attend school this month in Berlin, as classes were allowed to meet in person at 50% capacity. Sean Gallup/Getty Images hide caption
Moderna is testing its COVID-19 vaccine in young children; its vaccine is currently authorized for people ages 18 and up. Here, third-grade children attend school this month in Berlin, as classes were allowed to meet in person at 50% capacity.
Children have now received their first doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, as the company studies the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine for kids ages 6 months to less than 12 years old.
In the study, researchers will give two injections 28 days apart of either the Moderna vaccine or a saline placebo to children. Kids who get the vaccine will receive one of three possible doses, from 25 micrograms up to 100 micrograms the same dose that received an emergency authorization for use in adults from the Food and Drug Administration.
Moderna plans to enroll roughly 6,750 children in the U.S. and Canada for the study, which is taking place at sites in at least eight states, from Arizona and California to South Carolina and Texas.
Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine is currently authorized only for people 18 and older. After kids who are in the study receive shots, researchers will be watching for any signs that they have difficulty tolerating the vaccine, as well as its effectiveness in protecting them against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
To monitor the vaccine's effects on children, doctors will check in with families through two telemedicine visits after each injection, followed by monthly check-ins. Parents will also be asked to make diary entries on their smartphones.
The child study, which is being coordinated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is getting underway one year after the first adult participant got a shot of the Moderna vaccine during initial trials last March.
Pfizer, one of the few companies with an authorized vaccine in the U.S., is also testing its vaccine in young people. The company will study its vaccine's effects on kids who are 12 to 15 years old, saying it has fully enrolled the study with 2,259 participants.
Pfizer plans to share data from that study in the first half of 2021, according to Jerica Pitts, the company's director of global media relations. She says Pfizer has not yet begun a separate pediatric study for its vaccine that would focus on children under 12 years old.
In Moderna's statement about its new COVID-19 study, the drugmaker did not give an update on its effort to test the vaccine in people who are from 12 to 18 years old. But a company representative tells NPR that Moderna is already working to study the vaccine's effects on adolescents, having announced that trial in December. It has met its enrollment goal of 3,000 participants, the representative said.
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Moderna Gives 1st Vaccine Shots To Young Kids As Part Of COVID-19 Study - NPR
At right, University Health Services (UHS) nurse Linda Johnsonvaccinates Angela Schelvan, a veterinary technician at the School of Veterinary Medicine, with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 at the Nicholas Recreation Center on March 10, 2021. UHSis vaccinating as many eligible members of the UWMadison community as weekly supply from the state allow,followingWisconsin Department of Health Services criteria. Photo: Jeff Miller
Note: The story has been updated to reflect the change in vaccine eligibility for individuals with high-risk medical conditions after the Wisconsin Department of Health Services moved up the date to March 22. DHS is making frequent changes and these will be reflected in the MyUHS portal as soon as possible, and as vaccine supply on campus permits.
Since Jan. 5, when University Health Services first began providing COVID-19 shots to the campus community, UHS has emailed employees and students to invite those who are eligible to schedule their vaccine appointments. As a result of broader population eligibility and increasing availability of vaccines, UHS has created a new process that does not rely on email.
Beginning Monday, March 15, students and employees will use their MyUHS account found here: go.wisc.edu/myuhscovidvax as a portal to access eligibility information and appointment options. Campus will also continue to share frequent news updates about vaccine eligibility.
This week, UHS is expanding appointments to all non-student employees working in person. These employees will have the option of scheduling an appointment for vaccination at UHS, which is offering the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or through a partnership this week with SSM Health in Dane County, which is offering the one-dose Johnson and Johnson Janssen vaccine at its clinic on Fish Hatchery Road in Madison.
Visitors to the MyUHS portal will log in using their NetID and password and their date of birth. To check availability and schedule an appointment, individuals should look for the following and click or tap on the word appointment to begin: 2. Schedule an appointment for a COVID-19 immunization. A series of prompts will serve as a guide.
At left, University Health Services (UHS) nurse Stacy Kegeltalks with Pazong Chang, a member of UWMadisons custodial staff at Facilities Planning and Management, after giving Chang the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Photo: Jeff Miller
Employees unable to secure an appointment at UHS this week should check back next week, or they should follow the instructions for appointments with SSM, which is offering vaccine hours on Wednesday, March 17; Friday, March 19; and Sunday, March 21.
There are more in-person employees than there are vaccine supplies provided to UHS this week, though UHS expects to continue to receive additional supply. Graduate and undergraduate student employees with in-person roles will begin to be offered appointments the week of March 22 and should access the MyUHS portal then.
Employees who are working remotely will be offered vaccine in the coming weeks. Eligible members of the campus community may also seek vaccine appointments through health care providers and other off-campus providers, such as pharmacies.
In-person instructors at UWMadison, including graduate teaching assistants and student teachers serving K-12 roles, have already been offered vaccines through UHS or through a partnership with Public Health Madison and Dane County.
Each week, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services allocates vaccine supplies to UWMadison and UHS has prioritized vaccinating as many eligible members of campus as it can. Like other vaccinators in Wisconsin, UHS is vaccinating as many people as possible with its weekly supply but cannot provide shots to everyone right away.
To date, UHS has provided more than 10,000 COVID-19 shots to eligible members of the campus community. This includes both first and second doses.
As eligibility expands and more vaccine supplies become available, UHS is able to offer vaccines to more members of the campus community. Photo: Jeff Miller
The state of Wisconsin determines who is eligible to receive vaccines. Following state criteria, UHS has offered appointments to employees and students who:
UHS, the Office of Human Resources and others have worked with the Office of the Provost and schools and colleges to identify eligible members of campus.
Since March 1, all staff in education settings became eligible for vaccination according to DHS, including faculty and staff in higher education settings with direct student contact. Everyone at UWMadison who works with students meets the definition of direct student contact.
However, while vaccine supplies remain limited, DHS asks that anyone working from home, and not required to interact with the public, allow other Wisconsinites with higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 access vaccines first.
Beginning March 22, DHS will expand eligibility to individuals with certain medical conditions that are associated with an increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19. With vaccine supply in flux, DHS continues to make changes to eligibility and UHS will update the portal as needed to reflect these changes. Please continue to visit MyUHS to check your eligibility status and appointment availability.
UHS has primarily received the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech, and community partners who have offered employees and students vaccines in recent weeks have been able to offer the one-shot Johnson and Johnson Janssen vaccine. UHS has also received limited supplies of Moderna in the past.
Each vaccine has been shown in clinical trials to be highly safe and highly effective at preventing vaccinated people from contracting COVID-19, from developing severe disease and from dying of the disease. The vaccines have now been provided to tens of millions of Americans since December 2020. Adverse reactions to the vaccines are rare. Some people report no side effects from the vaccines, though many report mild side effects, such as pain at the injection site and tiredness.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the deaths of more than 534,000 Americans since March 2020. The vaccines were produced in record time in order to save lives. They build upon technology that has been studied for decades and, before securing authorization by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use, they underwent the same rigorous safety testing as all other vaccines authorized for use in the U.S.
Answers to common questions:
Is COVID-19 vaccination mandatory at UWMadison?No, COVID-19 vaccination is not currently required for UWMadison students or employees, though employees are welcome to make vaccine appointments on work time. UHS will be providing modified clinic hours and additional support to second and third shift workers.
I signed in to make an appointment through MyUHS and couldnt find an appointment what should I do?
Keep checking MyUHS; UHS will continue to open appointments as vaccine becomes available. You will not lose your opportunity to be vaccinated if you do not schedule right away.
I was vaccinated off-campus. How do I let UHS know?
Individuals who are vaccinated off-campus who wish to ensure their vaccination is on file with UHS should take the following steps once they have received both doses of a two-dose vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) or a one-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson):
It can take up to five business days for the record to be reflected in your MyUHS account.
What will I be able to do once I am fully vaccinated?
It takes two weeks after a one-dose vaccine, or two weeks after the second shot of a two-dose vaccine, to achieve full protection from current COVID-19 vaccines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers guidance on activities fully vaccinated people may resume: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated-guidance.html.
However, because of the risk of spreading COVID-19, the CDC does not recommend that people travel at this time. This includes people who are fully vaccinated. Anyone who must travel should review this guidance from the CDC, which will be updated again soon: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html.
Additionally, UWMadison is examining whether fully vaccinated people will need to continue regular campus testing and expects to provide more information soon.
UHS hosted a recorded vaccine town hall on March 4. Closed captions are also available:go.wisc.edu/vaccinechat.A second town hall will take place on March 18, from noon until 1:go.wisc.edu/campusvaccinechat.
For answers to many more COVID-19 questions, including vaccine questions, visit:https://news.wisc.edu/tag/covid-questions/
For more information about UWMadisons response to COVID-19, including a searchable FAQ database, go to:https://covidresponse.wisc.edu/
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Efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Covid-19 Vaccine against the B.1.351 Variant | NEJM nejm.org
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Efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Covid-19 Vaccine against the B.1.351 Variant | NEJM - nejm.org
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) China has approved a new COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, one that was developed by the head of its Center for Disease Control, adding a fifth shot to its arsenal.
Gao Fu, the head of Chinas CDC, led the development of a protein subunit vaccine that was approved by regulators last week for emergency use, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology said in a statement Monday.
It is the fifth coronavirus vaccine approved in China and the fourth to be given emergency use approval. Three of those given emergency approval have since been approved for general use. All were developed by Chinese companies.
The latest vaccine was developed jointly by Anhui Zhifei Longcom Biopharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team finished phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials in October and is currently conducting the last phase of trials in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Indonesia, according to the statement.
The vaccine was approved for use in Uzbekistan on March 1. Its a three-dose shot that is spaced out with one month each between shots, a company spokesperson said. Like other vaccines China has developed so far, it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures.
There is no publicly available information in peer-reviewed scientific journals about the clinical trial data showing efficacy or safety. A spokesperson for the company said that the data could not be shared at this time but that the company was providing the information to health authorities.
The protein subunit vaccine is similar to many of the other vaccines that have been approved globally in that it trains the body to recognize the spike protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, although the difference lies in how it tells the body to recognize the protein. Scientists grow a harmless version of the protein in cells and then purify it, before it is assembled into a vaccine and injected.
China has been slow in vaccinating its population of 1.4 billion people, despite having four vaccines approved for general use. The latest numbers, according to government officials at a press briefing Monday in Beijing, is that it has administered 64.98 million doses of vaccines.
China has targeted what it considers key populations for vaccination thus far, namely health care workers, those who work at the border or customs, and specific industries the government has selected. Other groups that have been notably absent thus far in comparison to many other countries are the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.
The approved vaccines have previously been limited to adults 18-59 years old, as officials cited a lack of clinical trial data for those who are older, although the government appears to be signaling the limits are now being set aside.
We will promptly carry out mass vaccination of relevant populations, Li Bin, a vice chair on the National Health Commission, said Monday.
Chinas official Xinhua News Agency reported over the weekend that in certain neighborhoods in Beijing, local health centers started to offer the vaccines to those aged 60 and older.
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This story has been corrected to show that the vaccine trains the body to recognize the spike protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, not the surface of the coronavirus vaccine.
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China approves another COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use - The Associated Press
The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated may get together with other fully vaccinated individuals in small groups without masks. USA TODAY
Consuelo Hermosillos 22-year-old granddaughter didnt want to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The office worker at a special needs center was afraid the shot would prevent her from ever getting pregnant.
The mistrust didnt form out of thin air.
In 1973, Hermosillo, an immigrant from Mexico, worked a smallcatering business at home while her husband bartended and unloaded appliances at a department store. In November of that year, the 24-year-old went to a hospital for an emergency caesarian section to give birth to her third child.
The baby would be her last.
Hermosillo was sterilized without informed consent atthe Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center.
You better sign, or your baby is going to die, she said a nurse told her.
What does victory against the COVID-19 pandemic look like?USA TODAY's vaccine panel weighs in
Her signature is scribbled on aform allowing the procedure, but she doesnt remember signing, saying she was medicated. She didn't know she was sterilized until a doctor's appointment later when sheasked for birth control.
A whistleblower a residentphysician later let go by the hospital leaked that the practice occurred on many women. Hermosillo became one of 10 Mexican and Chicana plaintiffs in the landmark Madrigal v. Quilliganfederal class-action case, which grabbed headlines in the mid-1970s.The judge sided with Dr. Edward James Quilligan, and the women lost, but the case inspired legislation passed in 1979to abolish the practice in California.
The Los AngelesCounty Board of Supervisors issuedan apology in 2018 for the coerced sterilizations, but the women did not receive reparation money as victims did in other states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.
"As far as justice, they never received that," said Virginia Espino, who documentedthe women's stories as co-producer of a filmcalled "No Mas Bebs," ("No More Babies" in Spanish).
Consuelo Hermosillo says she was sterilized at a hospital without her knowledge.(Photo: Claudio Rocha)
Espino, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an expert in reproductive injustice, saidits unclear how many womenwere sterilized at the LAC-USC medical center. The lawyer for the women who brought the lawsuit estimated "hundreds.
Many didnt speak fluent English and didnt understand forms they signed, and in some cases, they werecoerced into signing.Many hadlabor complicationsand were told lies that they or their babies would die if they didn't sign.
Insidious sterilizations didnt occur inside that hospital only. Throughout the 20th century, about 20,000 women and men were sterilized in California alone under state eugenics policies, according to researchers, including University of Michigan professor Alexandra Minna Stern.The policies targeted patients ofstate-run asylums or group homes. A disproportionate number were Hispanic.
As COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues, hesitancy among vulnerable communities, including Hispanic people, is piqued and history is unearthed.
Experts and those within the communities say the skepticism partly stems from unethical medical practices that targeted people of color. Unwanted sterilizations didnt occur just in California among Mexican womenbut among Black women in the South, as well as Native American women.
'It's not a pretty picture': Why the lack of racial data around COVID-19 vaccines is 'massive barrier' to better distribution
From the 1930s through the 1970s, for example, about a third of the female population in Puerto Rico was sterilized under population control policies that coerced women into postpartum sterilization after their second child's birth,according to theUniversity of Wisconsin's Office of the Gender and Women's Studies Librarian annotated bibliography on the topic.
The first large-scale clinical trial for contraceptives involved Puerto Rican women: In 1956, the pills were tested on poor women inRio Pidras, a housing projectin San Juan,according to a historical review published in the Canadian Family Physician journal. The women didn't know they were experimental.
"Women who stepped forward to describe side effects of nausea, dizziness, headaches, and blood clots were discounted as unreliable historians,wrote Dr. Pamela Verma Liao and Dr. Janet Dollin. Theclinical trials involved pills with much higher hormone levelsthan today's contraceptives.
"Despite the substantial positive effect of the pill, its history is marked by a lack of consent, a lack of full disclosure, a lack of true informed choice, and a lack of clinically relevant research regarding risk," the authors said. "These are the pills cautionary tales."
Angelina Zayas, a pastor at Grace and Peace Community Church that servesChicago's majority-Hispanic Belmont Cragin enclave, says many Puerto Rican women in her community are afraid to take COVID-19 vaccines, citing memories of the sterilizations and experiments.
The biggest one is fear, saidZayas, who is Puerto Rican. That's something that they remember, which affects their judgment in getting the vaccination. They're like, Well, how can I trust?
Consuelo Hermosillo listens to a recording of her voice from a trial three decades ago.(Photo: Claudio Rocha)
History'scautionary tales didn't stop the injustices from happening again.
Allegations of unwanted hysterectomies performed on mostly Hispanic women at Georgia's Irwin Detention Center surfaced last year. From 2006 to 2010, more than 100 incarcerated women in California prisons, mostly Black and Latina,underwent hysterectomies without their consent. The Center for Investigative Reporting broke the news in 2013.
Researchers weren't surprised.
"If certain conditions are in place, and these are conditions that often include marginalized populations incarceral spaces, with little oversight of the authorities,those types of conditions can be ripe for sterilization abuse,"said Stern, author of the book "Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America."
Essential health care: For the most vulnerable Americans, these clinics are trusted, accessible and vital to vaccine rollout
We are still very much living with ... eugenic ideas of worth, she said. Who is worthy of having children, and who is worthy of raising children? Those are very much eugenic ideas that are alive and well, and they affect policy and harm certain people.
Under these policies, from 1907 through the 1970s,about 60,000 people underwent compulsory sterilizations nationwide.
Stern is studying a dataset of 30,000 sterilization records. She found thatLatina patients in California were 59% more likely to be sterilized than non-Latinas. Hispanic men were 20% more likely to be sterilized than non-Hispanic men.
The disproportionate operations,Stern said, were rooted in a racist ideology that certain attributes criminal behavior, homosexuality, poor health, welfare usage or education levels were hereditary and could be minimized through preventing procreation.
An institutional evaluation of Andrea Garcia, 19, circa 1940, recommends sterilization.(Photo: BACKSTAGE LIBRARY WORKS/California state archives)
Andrea Garcia, 19, from a Mexican family, was sterilized after being admitted into Pacific Colony, a psychiatric institution, for what evaluators called"truancy" and a low IQ test score.
"Mentally deficient. Sex delinquent girl. Unfit home," reads her evaluation, an archival copy of which is included in Stern's analyses. "Father was illiterate; mother subnormal ... one brother, four sisters thot to be subnormal."
At Pacific Colony, sterilization was a precondition for release another coercive factor, Stern noted. Sometimes people were released back to family members, sent to be helpers in households orperform menial labor jobs.
Garcia's mother took legal actionbut lost the case.
Often,white women at the facilitycould escapethe process, Stern said.
"What you have is a system in place that is stratified in such a way that is most likely to bring in certain people. A young white girl with truancy could get away with it. Unlike Andrea Garcia. She didnt have that luxury, a safety net, she didn't have anything," Stern said, calling the policies and practices "dehumanizing."
Espino, the historian who co-producedthe No Mas Bebs documentary,said the abuses put women in unique difficulties. Some spouses didn't trust that their wives were unwitting and thought they wanted the operations to be promiscuous. Factory worker Dolores Madrigal, the lead plaintiff in Madrigal v. Quilligan, said herhusband took his anger out on her.
The sterilizations sent negative messages to women of color "that their mothering is not valued in the same way," Espino said, "that theyre really only valued when theyre in the service of others: taking care of other peoples childrenor cooking for their masters. ... Women of colors bodies typically are valued when theyre used in the service of making other people wealthy."
The women, Espino said,were "robbed of their decision-making when it comes to the kind of family they want to have."
This man survived COVID-19: His treatment odyssey shows how complicated that can be.
On a recent morningin California, Hermosillo, 71, took a break from babysitting and running the kitchens in her son's four restaurants. Sitting on herporch in Venice, she reflected on the treatment of her and women like her.
"I think they were doing it to lower the value of us Mexicans," Hermosillo said. "That's what I think."
She isgrateful for her three childrenbut dreamed of having more. As one of her fellowplaintiffs said,"Se me acabo la cancion" "My song is finished."
Hermosillo's older sisters had more children. As the family grew, shed fall quiet when relatives asked when she would have more kids. She battled feelings of shame and embarrassment.
I hated baby showers, she said. Something happened to me.
As a girl in Mexico, she lived between her grandmothers house and foster homes. She learned to be a mom at a very young age. As a teenager, she immigrated to the USA with her motherand spent her days looking after her baby brother.
She didn't tell her sisters or friends what happened at the hospital, sharing her story for the first timeduring the trial. She translated her love of babies and motherhood to working at theWomen, Infants and Children (WIC) program for seven years, teaching breastfeeding classes to new moms.
She wears a diamond necklace around her neck that she and her husband bought from one of her clients to help her with rent money.
The struggle stayswith her.
So many years passed," she said, "but you dont forget.
Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@usatoday.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.
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The clinic plans to offer the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Thursdays and the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines the rest of the week.
BOISE, Idaho St. Luke's Health System will open a new dedicated COVID-19 vaccination site in downtown Boise on Thursday.
The St. Luke's Plaza vaccine clinic at 800 East Park Boulevard will be in addition to the health system's other clinics around Southwest Idaho.
Vaccine appointments at the new site will be available Monday through Friday.
Patients who prefer the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine can select an appointment on Thursdays. According to St. Luke's, the one-dose vaccine will be offered on Thursdays, as long as supply remains stable.
The Pfizer vaccine will be administered Mondays through Wednesdays, while the Moderna vaccine will be administered on Fridays. Both Moderna and Pfizer are two-dose vaccines.
Appointments for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, also known as the Janssen vaccine, are now available for Thursday, March 18. Anyone in the state's eligible groups can schedule an appointment directly through myChart. No walk-ins will be allowed.
People unable to access myChart online can call St. Luke's Connect at 208-381-9500 to schedule an appointment. If there are no appointments available, people will have the option to fill out a vaccine questionnaire and they will be contacted when it's time to schedule an appointment.
Patients receiving their vaccine at St. Luke's Plaza are asked to park in the lots north of the building and enter through the back entrance, as the front entrance is closed. A map is available on St. Luke's website.
On Monday, Idahoans age 55 and older with at least one pre-existing health condition became eligible to receive the vaccine. Also eligible are: all Idahoans age 65 and older; healthcare workers, long-term care facility staff and residents; first responders; teachers and school staff; and frontline essential workers.
All Idahoans age 55 and older will be eligible for the vaccine starting on Monday, March 22.
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