Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

Leyda Valentine, a research coordinator, takes blood from Lisa Taylor as she participates in a COVID-19 vaccination study at Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Fla., in August 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

Leyda Valentine, a research coordinator, takes blood from Lisa Taylor as she participates in a COVID-19 vaccination study at Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Fla., in August 2020.

Tens of thousands of people who volunteered to be in studies of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are still participating in follow-up research. But some key questions won't be easily answered, because many people who had been in the placebo group have now opted to take the vaccine.

Even so, there's valuable information to be had in the planned two-year follow-up studies. And that motivated Karen Mott, a 56-year-old job counselor who stuck with the continuing study.

"I've been taking prescription medicine for the last 25 years," she says, referring to antiseizure drugs she takes. In order to show those drugs worked, people previously volunteered to take them when they were still experimental, "so I felt it was my way of giving back."

Mott, who lives in the Overland Park, Kan., got a strong reaction to the second shot, so she correctly surmised she had received the Moderna vaccine, not the placebo. She was sad to read that one of the volunteers in the placebo group did die of COVID-19.

"I keep thinking about that. Why am I one of the lucky ones?" she says. "And I think that makes me feel like, I need to keep providing the information that we need."

So, when the clinic called her in January and offered to reveal her actual vaccine status it was an easy call for her. She agreed to keep participating in the two-year follow-up study.

Participants provide periodic nose swabs and saliva samples, to see if they've been infected. They also give blood so scientists can better understand how the vaccine is providing protection.

Mott was one of about 650 volunteers who took the experimental Moderna vaccine at a company called Johnson County Clinical Trials in Lenexa, Kan. Dr. Carlos Fierro, who runs the study there, says every participant was called back after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine.

"During that visit we discussed the options, which included staying in the study without the vaccine," he says, "and amazingly there were people a couple of people who chose that."

He suspects those individuals got spooked by rumors about the vaccine. But everybody else who had the placebo shot went ahead and got the actual vaccine. So now Fierro has essentially no comparison group left for the ongoing study.

"It's a loss from a scientific standpoint, but given the circumstances I think it's the right thing to do," he says.

People signing up for these studies were not promised special treatment, but once the FDA authorized the vaccines, their developers decided to offer the shots.

Dr. Steven Goodman, a clinical trials specialist at Stanford University, says losing those control groups makes it more difficult to answer some important questions about COVID-19 vaccines.

"We don't know how long protections lasts," he says. "We don't know efficacy against variants for which we definitely need a good control arm and we also don't know if there are any differences in any of these parameters by age or race or infirmity."

Scientists may be able to infer some of this, for example if it becomes evident that vaccinated people commonly fall ill after exposure to virus variants. Further safety information is also being collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the FDA, based on the experience of millions of people who have now taken the shots.

But clinical trials that include a placebo group are the surest and most definitive ways to gather information about vaccine effectiveness. "I think over time we'll get that data," Fierro says, even without a placebo group.

Scientists have already collected data from the vaccine studies that could help them identify how individuals' immune systems have responded to vaccination. That could eventually let them identify immune system features, called correlates of protection, that could strongly indicate vaccine effectiveness.

But because the best evidence comes from a controlled study, Goodman is thinking about how those could be conducted ethically, now that there are effective vaccines available.

One option is to identify people who are in groups that are not currently eligible for a vaccine, as is happening now with children. Another option is to conduct studies in other parts of the world, where vaccines simply aren't available. But that raises ethical issues, as well: Why not provide those countries vaccine, rather than recruiting them for a study?

"But the fact is we do have an unfair world and there are inequities in global health and financing," Goodman says. So, offering people a chance to participate in a study could be ethical. "The countries themselves may demand it," he says, as they work to understand the risks that virus variants pose to their populations.

Another option is to run a study in which all participants get vaccinated, but not right away. After two months, for example, people would get a second treatment either the real vaccine if they originally got the placebo, or vice versa. One key here, Goodman says, is that nobody should know which was which. That way people wouldn't change their behavior, which itself could influence the outcome of a trial because people who know they are vaccinated might take greater risks.

The appearance of virus variants "may really scramble things up because there may be certain variants where the efficacy of all vaccines might be so low that we're basically back to zero," Goodman says. "We might have to go back to placebo-controlled trials. It's hard to know."

That's the worse-case scenario. The vaccines currently in use in the United States seem to work well against the variant first seen in the United Kingdom and appear to offer at least partial protection from the variant identified first in South Africa, but more evasive new variants could emerge in the months and years to come.

Fierro sees another possibility. Perhaps in a year or two the existing vaccines will have proven so effective that COVID-19 becomes not much more than a nuisance. Under those circumstances, the risk of participating in a study that has a placebo option would be low enough to be acceptable, say, for young people who have not yet been vaccinated.

You can contact NPR Science Correspondent Richard Harris at rharris@npr.org.

Read the original here:

Moderna And Pfizer Vaccine Studies Hampered As Placebo Recipients Get Real Shot : Shots - Health News - NPR

If you know where to look, you can see COVID-19 vaccines starting to save lives in the United States.

Its not in the overall case numbers, though those have been steadily dropping across the United States for weeks. Epidemiologists say there could be a few reasons for that decline: were past the holiday seasons surge and people changed their behavior in response to the winter spikes. And by now, many people have antibodies against the virus because of a previous infection. But vaccines probably arent a driving factor in that drop not enough people had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 when the decline started, and vaccination rates are still relatively low.

Some groups of people, though, have high enough rates of vaccination that the benefits are starting to show. Connecticut was one of the first states to finish vaccinations in long-term care facilities and nursing homes. All residents who wanted a vaccine got their first dose by January 8th, and most were fully vaccinated by the end of January.

The impact was dramatic. At the end of 2020, around 400 nursing home residents in Connecticut were testing positive each week, and around 100 were dying. In the week ending February 2nd, when most were fully vaccinated, there were 101 cases and 35 deaths down nearly 80 percent from the month before.

I have to believe its having an impact, Keith Grant, senior system director for infection prevention at Hartford HealthCare, told the Hartford Courant at the start of February. At that time, trends were just starting to show declines in nursing home cases and deaths. Since then, things have continued to improve.

Overall case trends in Connecticut are going down as well, which contributes to the decline in nursing homes. But the drop is steeper for that group than for the state as a whole.

Other groups of people in the US, including health care workers and other essential workers, are also starting to be fully vaccinated. The shots are already protecting them, as well. A team of researchers looked at around 30,000 vaccinated people with health records with the Mayo Clinic Health System, who the researchers noted should mostly be health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities. The rates of COVID-19 in that group started to flatten a few weeks after their first doses, while rates in a group of similar but unvaccinated people continued to climb.

These victories are still only in subsets of the population. But even though vaccinations may not be driving down overall case numbers quite yet, we could start to see their impacts on hospitalizations and deaths soon. Older adults, who are the most likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19, are among the first groups getting vaccinated across the country. Higher percentages of that group have received shots than in the population at large. As that number ticks up, hospitalizations could start to fall, even if younger people are still getting sick.

Experts point to the 75 to 80 percent threshold as the point when enough people would be vaccinated that the spread of COVID-19 would start to stall out. Still, the vaccines could start flattening overall trends in the US much sooner than that. One modeling study found that if even just 40 percent of the population is vaccinated, cases would fall and hospitalizations and deaths would drop by between 60 and 70 percent.

That isnt showing up in the data quite yet, and its still critical to stick to the COVID-19 prevention measures that are actually driving the US case numbers down: masks, avoiding gatherings, and so on. But there are flickers of hope from the pockets where most people are vaccinated, and eventually, those will start to expand.

Follow this link:

COVID-19 vaccines are starting to work in the US - The Verge

ONTARIO The Ohio District 5 Area Agency on Aging has announced the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services have put together a series of COVID-19 vaccine town halls.

The program will include medical experts, community leaders, and public health professionals to address common concerns and questions from specific communities.

Ohio wants to ensure that communities have the information they need to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. There have been no shortcuts in the vaccine development process. The development process for COVID-19 vaccines involved several steps comparable with those used to develop other vaccines such as the flu or chickenpox vaccine, which have successfully protected millions of Ohioans for years.

Your questions will be answered at Ohio's COVID-19 Vaccine Town Halls. Hear from medical experts, community leaders, and public health professionals.

Certain groups of Ohioans, with limited access to healthcare, may be more hesitant to get COVID-19 vaccines, wanting to wait and see how it goes for others who are receiving their vaccines.

Ohio wants to ensure that all communities have the information they need to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines.

Some communities have had negative experiences with the healthcare system due to lack of access, discrimination, and language barriers. Ohio is making an effort to bridge the gap and address health inequities that lead to disparities in health outcomes.

Watch livestreams on Facebook, YouTube, and at coronavirus.ohio.gov/townhall at the following dates and times:

o Monday, Feb. 22, 6:30 p.m. African American Ohioans.

o Tuesday, Feb. 23, 6:30 p.m. Hispanic/Latino Ohioans.

o Monday, March 1, 6:30 p.m. Asian American and Pacific Islander Ohioans.

o Tuesday, March 2, 6:30 p.m. Rural Ohioans.

How to watch: Watch live or on-demand after the event:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OHdeptofhealth/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OhioDepartmentofHealth1

Online - https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/townhall

Watch later on TV: Watch later on the Ohio Channel. Find your local channel by checking with your PBS station or television provider.

The Ohio District 5 Area Agency on Aging is located at 2131 Park Avenue West in Ontario, provides leadership, collaboration, coordination and services to older adults, people with disabilities, their caregivers & resource networks that support individual choice, independence and dignity.

Do you want to know the who, what, where, why and how in local news? Become a Source member to support the most diverse coverage of our region.

Read the original post:

Ohio COVID-19 vaccine Town Halls to begin Feb. 22 - Richland Source

DHEC's vaccine map shows two providers outside of the local health department in Newberry County.

NEWBERRY COUNTY, S.C. Sammy Singley of Newberry County will be fully vaccinated in March.

"I go to the VA in Columbia because I'm a veteran," said Singley. "The process was easy for me."

DHEC's vaccine mapshows two providers outside of the local health department in Newberry County. Cooperative Health is hosting a limited vaccination clinic Saturday at Pediatrics of Newberry, and they are no longer taking appointments.

"I looked on my tablet last week, and I found there were no places in Newberry giving the shot," said Singley.

According to DHEC, 4,622 vaccines have been administered in Newberry County. Singley says the lack of supply makes the process harder for those who may not have transportation or internet access.

"We want everyone to get the vaccine," said DHEC's director Dr. Edward Simmer. "If you're having trouble getting it in your county, you can go across the line and get it."

Originally posted here:

Getting the COVID-19 vaccine in Newberry County - WLTX.com

The severe winter weather in the U.S. is not hitting the Bay Area directly, but its definitely having a significant impact on its COVID-19 vaccine supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of doses that were supposed to arrive in California Friday didnt because of the deep freeze across much of the country.

In total, six million doses that were set to be delivered nationwide are now delayed.

A mass vaccination site on Berger Drive in San Jose is still administering about 1,400 COVID vaccine shots a day and many people, including Marciel Cardenas, had heard about the vaccine shipment delay and were relieved to get their shot Friday.

Im lucky, said Cardenas. Im a person who is very, very lucky.

How long the luck holds out depends on that severe weather. Governor Gavin Nesom said about 702,000 doses -- mainly Moderna -- were delayed.

We dont have the exact dates. A lot that were going to arrive today didnt so there is going to be some adjustment, he said. There is going to be some impact ... a lot of calls, a lot of stress.

But the presidents COVID-19 task force gave an encouraging update.

One point four million doses are already in transit today. And we anticipate that all the backlog doses will be delivered within the next week with most being delivered within the next several days, said Andry Slavitt.

I just want to reassure everyone that here anybody that has had an appointment to date has been vaccinated, said mass vaccination site lead Rupalee Patel. So its important to come out and get vaccinated if you do have an appointment.

Santa Clara County Public Health acknowledges it has not received all its expected shipments but has enough to fulfill appointments until early next week. After that, a lot depends on the weather.

I think its really important to get these vaccines in before things start to get delayed with this horrible weather that everybody else is having to experience, said vaccine recipient Eileen.

Original post:

Severe Winter Weather Impacts Bay Area's COVID-19 Vaccine Supply - NBC Bay Area

We just want our employees to know how important they are to us. Thats the primary reason we set up this clinic was to help our staff in our schools, our frontline workers who are working everyday with our children, said Superintendent Joseph Eiland.

See the original post:

Hundreds of Butler County school staff, retired teachers receive COVID-19 vaccine - WSFA

Here's how mRNA viruses like COVID-19 mutate, and why certain viruses are harder to develop vaccines for. USA TODAY

If you think the COVID-19 vaccine rollout seems chaotic and incomprehensible, that the numbers don't add up and allocationsdon't make sense, you're not alone.

Even people who study this for a living are at a loss.

None of us know whats going on, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

He has been trying to understand howfigures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and the states fit together, but he cant.

I dont understand why theres not more transparency, he said. They could easily hold a webinar every day to go through the numbers this is how many boxes we shipped, this is how many boxes are coming next week. The more they dont do that, the more acrimony thats created between states and the federal government.

Overallthe trends are positive, but the pace will need to intensify significantly to meet deadlines the White House announced this week.

The White House says winter weather affecting parts of the country has slowed down vaccinations. This comes as the Biden administration admits if Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets approved, it will be slow rollout. (Feb. .17) AP Domestic

Tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: How many people have been vaccinated in the US?

Since Jan. 25, COVID-19 vaccine distribution from the federal government has increased 57%. As of this week, it'sup to 13.5 million doses shipped a week.

"We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,"Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a task force briefing Wednesday.

To get the scheduled two doses of the authorized vaccines to 300 million people, distribution from the federal government will need to ramp up by about one-third. At the current level, it would take until September.

Given how fast things have been increasing, that seemsfeasible. But no actual data on future increases has been announced by the White House.

If things appear to be on track, why is there so much chaos at the state level, with long lines, people unable to get appointments and clinics closing because of lack of vaccine?

There are severalreasons. One is a lack of federal transparency about vaccine supply and shipments and continued fluctuation of vaccine deliveries, all of whichconfuse and confound states.

Public health officials are frustrated over thelack of clarity. It's impossible to know exactly how much vaccine is being shipped and to where and to whom it hasbeen administered information they need so they can plan.

'It's like we're trying our best to help the virus': A fourth wave is looming if US fails to contain COVID-19 variants, experts say

Vaccine is delivered, and tallied,through several separate programs, including ones for states, nursing homes and long-term-care facilities,Federally Qualified Health Centersandprivate pharmacies. Some doses are controlled by states themselves andsome by federal programs.

The National Governors Association sent a public letter to President Joe Biden this week asking for more clarity, including"visibility into the federal vaccination efforts at the facility level happening in our borders."

The letter cited "the anxiety created by the demand and supply of the vaccine" and asked for better reporting to avoid confusion.

States also shoulder a share of the blame.Experts say theyopened up vaccinations to ever-widening groups too quickly, eventhough supplies werein short supply.

We knew all along there would be a limited number of doses at the beginning and we would have to prioritize, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials."Somewhere in there, the vaccine got overpromised."

That hasn't always happened.

The CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices spent months creating a carefully designedseries of vaccine eligibility tiers from the most vulnerable to the least.

Since Jan. 25, COVID-19 vaccine distribution from the federal government has increased 57%.(Photo: John Locher, AP)

Luck, foresight and science:How an unheralded team developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time

Some state officials promptly ignored the recommendations and began opening up vaccinationto broader groups of people, Plesciasaid.

The immunization advisory committee guidelinesfrom December saidfront-line heath care workers and long-term-care facility residents would be first in linein what was known as Phase 1a.Next wouldcome front-line essential workers and people 75 and older, in Phase 1b. People 65 and older and people with high-risk medical conditions would be in a larger Phase 1c.

Just one week after the first COVID-19 vaccine wasdistributed, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis overrode the committee guidelines and unilaterally declaredhis state was prioritizing people 65 and older.

That resulted in long lines, seniors waiting overnight for vaccine, crashing appointment websites and general chaos as Florida's more than 4 million seniors clamored to getvaccinated.

In 35 states plus the District of Columbia,people65 and older can seek an appointment now, according to the White House. But other stateshaven't moved beyondvaccinating essential workers and those 75 and above.

Wisconsin's Legislature is debating this week whether to add teachers to Phase 1a.

Early finger-pointing that states were going too slow may have driven the rush for speed and bypassing of the guidelines.In any case, he said, vaccine got overpromised.

We suddenly skipped through the ACIP guidelines and told all these people they were eligible, he said. "I dont know if that was the most judicious thing to do. It probably would have been better if wed held our ground."

'It doesn't make you a bad person': Vaccine envy is normal, but here's when it can become dangerous

Other states, such as Georgia,have resisted widely broadening who is eligible for vaccines, saidGlen Nowak, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Health and Risk Communications and a former communication director for the National Immunization Program at the CDC.

The governor there has been consistent saying there isn't yet enough vaccine for the first priority groups, so he's not going to open it up yet. "He's saying'I hear you, I want to do that,but we don't have enough vaccine right now,'" Nowak said.

To make the rollout seem as if it's under control, states need to manage expectations. "Broadening it isn't going to help, it's going to make things worse," he said.

Whats needed are honest messages that widespread vaccination cant happen overnight. Though not everyone will get a vaccine immediately, everyone will get one eventually, said Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Groupand editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine.

The cure is tincture of time, he said. But, he acknowledged, thats easy for me to say now that Ive now gotten both my doses.

A big part of the problem, since before the first doses of the vaccine were shipped, has been the lack of clear, consistent communication, experts say. That hasmade the job of explaining what's happening now with the vaccine supply even harder.

Even the man who played a key role in making COVID-19 vaccines possible, Moncef Slaoui, says messaging was a major failure of Operation Warp Speed's otherwise stellar work.

The rollout "was a huge communications failure, honestly," Slaoui said at a recent New York Academies of Science conference.

USA TODAY analysis: What went wrong with COVID-19 vaccine distribution and how it has tarnished the 'miracle'

There was no way everyone in America was going to be immunized immediately, he said, but that message didn't get out. Millions of Americans have expressed anger and frustration about something Slaoui and his team thought they had clearly explained.

"Every single time we said, 'We will produce enough vaccine doses to immunize the U.S. population by the summer of 2021.' It is understood in that statement that it's going to take six, seven months to have enough vaccine to immunize everybody," he said."But, in fact,I think we should have communicated much, much better that there will not be enough vaccine for everybodyimmediately."

It's going to take time to overcome that deficit of trust and information, said Dr. Kelly Moore,deputy director of the nonprofit Immunization Action Coalition.

"We will never recapture the opportunities that were lost tobuild a solid foundation for the vaccination program before vaccines began rolling out," she said,"but were getting back on track, and the signs give me hope.

Contact Elizabeth Weise at eweise@usatoday.com

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/02/17/covid-19-vaccine-rollout-operation-warp-speed-coronavirus/6786555002/

See more here:

'Somewhere in there, the vaccine got overpromised': How the COVID-19 vaccination process turned chaotic and confusing - USA TODAY

By the thousands, U.S. service members are refusing or putting off the COVID-19 vaccine as frustrated commanders scramble to knock down internet rumors and find the right pitch that will persuade troops to get the shot.

Some Army units are seeing as few as one-third agree to the vaccine. Military leaders searching for answers believe they have identified one potential convincer: an imminent deployment. Navy sailors on ships heading out to sea last week, for example, were choosing to take the shot at rates exceeding 80% to 90%.

Air Force Major General Jeff Taliaferro, vice director of operations for the Joint Staff, told Congress on Wednesday that "very early data" suggests that just up to two-thirds of the service members offered the vaccine have accepted.

That's higher than the rate for the general population, which a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation put at roughly 50%. But the significant number of forces declining the vaccine is especially worrisome because troops often live, work and fight closely together in environments where social distancing and wearing masks, at times, are difficult.

The military's resistance also comes as troops are deploying to administer shots at vaccination centers around the country and as leaders look to American forces to set an example for the nation.

"We're still struggling with what is the messaging and how do we influence people to opt in for the vaccine," said Brigadier General Edward Bailey, the surgeon for Army Forces Command. He said that in some units just 30% have agreed to take the vaccine, while others are between 50% and 70%. Forces Command oversees major Army units, encompassing about 750,000 Army, Reserve and National Guard soldiers at 15 bases.

At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where several thousand troops are preparing for future deployments, the vaccine acceptance rate is about 60%, Bailey said. That's "not as high as we would hope for front-line personnel," he said.

Bailey has heard all the excuses.

"I think the most amusing one I heard was, 'The Army always tells me what to do, they gave me a choice, so I said no'," he said.

Service leaders have vigorously campaigned for the vaccine. They have held town halls, written messages to the force, distributed scientific data, posted videos, and even put out photos of leaders getting vaccinated.

For weeks, the Pentagon insisted it did not know how many troops were declining the vaccine. On Wednesday they provided few details on their early data.

Officials from individual military services, however, said in interviews with The Associated Press that refusal rates vary widely, depending on a service member's age, unit, location, deployment status and other intangibles.

The variations make it harder for leaders to identify which arguments for the vaccine are most persuasive. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed emergency use of the vaccine, so it's voluntary. But Defense Department officials say they hope that soon may change.

"We cannot make it mandatory yet," Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, commander of the Navy's 2nd Fleet, said last week. "I can tell you we're probably going to make it mandatory as soon as we can, just like we do with the flu vaccine."

About 40 Marines gathered recently in a California conference room for an information session from medical staff. One officer, who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Marines are more comfortable posing questions about the vaccine in smaller groups.

The officer said one Marine, citing a widely circulated and false conspiracy theory, said: "I heard that this thing is actually a tracking device." The medical staff, said the officer, quickly debunked that theory, and pointed to the Marine's cellphone, noting that it's an effective tracker.

Other frequent questions revolved around possible side effects or health concerns, including for pregnant women. Army, Navy and Air Force officials say they hear much the same.

The Marine Corps is a relatively small service and troops are generally younger. Similar to the general population, younger service members are more likely to decline or ask to wait. In many cases, military commanders said, younger troops say they have had the coronavirus or known others who had it, and concluded it was not bad.

"What they're not seeing is that 20-year-olds who've actually gotten very sick, have been hospitalized or die, or the folks who appear to be fine but then it turns out they've developed pulmonary and cardiac abnormalities," Bailey said.

One ray of hope has been deployments.

Lewis, based in Norfolk, Virginia, said last week that sailors on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is operating in the Atlantic, agreed to get the shot at a rate of about 80%. Sailors on the USS Iwo Jima and Marines in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who also are deploying, had rates of more than 90%.

Bailey said the Army is seeing opportunities to reduce the two-week quarantine period for units deploying to Europe if service members are largely vaccinated and the host nation agrees. U.S. Army Europe may cut the quarantine time to five days if 70% of the unit is vaccinated, and that incentive could work, he said.

The acceptance numbers drop off among those who are not deploying, military officials said.

General James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, used his own experience to encourage troops to be vaccinated. "When they asked me how it felt, I said it was a lot less painful than some of the meetings I go to in the Pentagon."

Colonel Jody Dugai, commander of the Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital at Fort Polk, Louisiana, said that so far conversations at the squad level, with eight to 10 peers, have been successful, and that getting more information helps.

At the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Brigadier General David Doyle, has a dual challenge. As base commander, he must persuade the nearly 7,500 soldiers on base to get the shot and he needs to ensure that the thousands of troops that cycle in and out for training exercises are safe.

Doyle said the acceptance rate on his base is between 30% and 40%, and that most often it's the younger troops who decline.

"They tell me they don't have high confidence in the vaccine because they believe it was done too quickly," he said. Top health officials have attested to the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.

Doyle said it appears peers are often more influential than leaders in persuading troops a sentiment echoed by Bailey, the Army Forces Command surgeon.

"We're trying to figure out who the influencers are," Bailey said. "Is it a squad leader or platoon sergeant in the Army? I think it probably is. Someone who is more of their age and interacts with them more on a regular basis versus the general officer who takes his picture and says, 'I got the shot.'

See the article here:

Thousands of service members are refusing or putting off COVID-19 vaccine - CBS News

A North Bergen resident is administered the COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 16.

A North Bergen resident is administered the COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 16.

Eligible North Bergen residents can get vaccinated at the recreation center at 6300 Meadowview Avenue. To register, call 201-392-2084. When an appointment is available, the township will reach out to registered individuals.

The vaccine distribution site was set up nearly two weeks ago. Vaccinations had been administered at municipal buildings since the first doses of the Moderna vaccine were given to healthcare personnel on Dec. 24.

The Health Department is receiving only about 400 doses per week. As of Feb. 14, about 1,800 first doses had been administered and 360 second doses.

Recipients must receive the doses 28 days apart. According to the township, more than 500 residents are on the waiting list.

Increasing supply

Ever since vaccines were approved by the federal government, the township of North Bergen has been pushing to secure our own supply of the vaccination, said Mayor Nicholas Sacco. Thanks to the efforts made by our Health Department and Township administration, we have been able to do secure a steady supply and have been providing approximately 400 weekly vaccines to eligible personnel in our community. We are still working tirelessly to increase our supply and expand our vaccination operations.

The vaccines are being distributed immediately to residents who qualify according to the states regulations. Currently eligible are healthcare personnel, first responders and individuals at high risk, including residents over age 65 and those under age 65 with medical conditions.

The township has increased capacity as the state provides more doses. According to the township, the distribution site can administer at least twice as many vaccines as soon as the state increases its allotment.

Qualified residents can put their names on a waiting list by calling the Health Department at 201-392-2084. The township has offered a phone number to accommodate residents without the internet, including seniors and Spanish speaking residents.

In the upcoming days we will be launching an online portal for residents to register, Sacco said. Those residents with no internet access can still call our Health Department at 201-392-2084 to be placed on the waiting list.

For updates on this and other stories, check http://www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Daniel Israel can be reached at disrael@hudsonreporter.com.

Read the original post:

How to get the COVID-19 vaccine in North Bergen - The Hudson Reporter

Despite divisive politics, conspiracy theories and a botched U.S. rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, Americans are hungry for information about vaccines, new data from Google reveals.

Over the past month, "Where to get covid vaccine" was the most-Googled question in the U.S., the search giant told CBS MoneyWatch. Pennsylvania was the top state searching for "where to get covid vaccine," followed by Delaware and Washington. The term "covid vaccine near me" was searched three times more frequently than queries related to testing.

Google, which claims more than 90% of internet searches in the U.S., aggregated and analyzed a broad sample of search data in all 50 states and analyzed geographic patterns. The company discovered demand for authoritative vaccination information, including strong interest in where to get the vaccine, how it works and if it's safe.

In West Virginia, for example, astate lauded for its efficient vaccine rollout, the most popular virus-related searches are "is the covid vaccine safe" and "covid vaccine side effects." As vaccinations spread across the U.S. in February, searches for the term "arm sore," a side effect of the vaccine, also spiked.

Google extracted vaccination and testing search data primarily to help public health agencies, the company said.

"We work in partnership with the CDC, [the World Health Organization] and state agencies," said Danny Sullivan, Google's public liaison for search. "Our work in the U.S. is a model for the world overall. We're able to surface information ... to give you, for example, testing locations or vaccination locations, side-effect information and symptoms information."

According to anonymous search data from each state, these are the 10 most frequently searched questions related to COVID-19 vaccines:

Safety is a key concern for most Americans. In the past month, the phrase "Is the covid vaccine safe for..." is searched along with the keywords:

The COVID-19 vaccine has not been extensively tested in children, but according to Dr. Bob Lahita, chairman of medicine at St. Joseph University Hospital, thePfizer vaccine is "extremely safe."

Vaccine search data also indicates that Americans are still anxious about potential vaccine side effects:

People are also apprehensive about how the vaccine might interact with prescription and over-the-counter medications. These are the top keywords appearing alongside searches for "vaccine":

Sullivan is optimistic about the recent shift in search interest in vaccinations. "There's a degree of hope just in the fact that people are searching for the vaccine," he said.

See the article here:

5 things everyone wants to know about the COVID-19 vaccine - CBS News