I believe its a good thing. Itll get the kids back. Our goal is to get all the kids back into the classroom, Banks said. So me taking the vaccine, it will make my job a lot better, a lot less stressful, to know that Im protected.
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WINNEBAGO COUNTY (WREX) We continue to learn more about the plan to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to the general population in Winnebago County.
Dr. Sandra Martell, the Public Administrator with the Winnebago County Health Department, says the health department launched an online registration tool for the vaccine over the holiday weekend.
RELATED: COVID-19 positivity rate increases three straight days in Region 1; now over 10 percent
Dr. Martell says it is not a first-come-first-serve basis for those who register, but it will help determine those who will get vaccinated based off someone's risk/occupation. Dr. Martell says because of this, households may not get vaccinated at the same time.
The online registration tool is designed to help set reminders for appointments and recalls for those who miss appointments. The tool was also designed to enable trust with the community, according to Dr. Martell.
It was also set up to help eliminate data entry errors by health officials.
Once you sign up through the registration tool, the information will go to the state's database as well, to ensure no one is getting the vaccination more than once.
More than 4,500 people have registered as of Monday afternoon, according to Dr. Martell.
The registration site does support multiple languages.
To register for the COVID-19 vaccine, click either one of the links below:
"We're hoping this will allow us to have efficient use of our staff as well to provide vaccination, rather than to set up appointments and scheduling and having people sign up and stand in line like they are in Florida or Texas lining up in cars. Our goal is to be efficient with the use of your time and the use of staff time to effectively use our staff to vaccinate," Dr. Martell said.
The state is currently still in phase 1A for giving the vaccine, meaning healthcare workers and those on the frontlines. Dr. Martell says the state is likely to be in phase 1A through mid-January at least.
Dr. Martell says there's been approximately 6,200 people in Winnebago County who have received the vaccine thus far.
Also on Monday, health officials announced 424 new cases of the virus in Winnebago County from Friday-Monday, including a 7-month-old child. There's now been 23,309 confirmed cases in Winnebago County since the pandemic started.
The county also reported 3 more deaths, bringing the county's death toll up to 361 since the pandemic started.
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Here's how you can sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine in Winnebago County - WREX-TV
Its been a crazy day, our phone has been ringing off the hook, in fact, we had so many phone calls come in today that it shut down our phone system for a while. But were back up and running and weve gotten over 100 phone calls from people that are interested in getting the vaccine, said Michelle McCalope the Communications Director at CareSouth Medical and Dental in Baton Rouge.
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Many frustrated with how fast COVID-19 vaccine appointments fill up - WAFB
Sikich senior auditor Priyank Shah works alone in a 25,000-square-foot space at the company's office in downtown Chicago, as most of his co-workers work from home, on Aug. 18, 2020. Sikich took the dramatic step of saying its employees could continue remote work indefinitely. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
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Will COVID-19 vaccines accelerate a return to the office? - Chicago Tribune
LA CROSSE, Wis. (WXOW) - Bethany St. Joseph Care Center residents and staff received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning.
Administrator Larry Pupp said most of the residents and staff agreed to take the vaccine.
Eighty-six-year-old resident Ginny Dockweiler was one of the first residents to get vaccinated. She moved into the facility right before the pandemic started and is thankful that this could help her see her family sooner.
"I'm excited to soon be able to see my family again," Dockweiler said. "Maybe I can go out and get somebody to take me shopping again."
Pupp said he's hopeful regulations could relax by mid-February depending on Wisconsin Department of Health Services recommendations.
"We're finally at the point where we can start to get back to normal somewhere down the road," Pupp said.
Hillview staff is set to receive a vaccine shipment on Tuesday.
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Care center residents and staff receive COVID-19 vaccine - WXOW.com
Frontline healthcare workers are the first in line to get the COVID-19 vaccine but some in the Inland Empire are declining it.
Health officials in Riverside County said about half of the workers at their 17 acute care hospitals have said no to the vaccine.
The question is: why?
In mid-December, frontline healthcare workers were the first in line in Riverside County to get the COVID-19 vaccination. County officials say many of them chose to get it, and many others did not.
Facilities already overwhelmed by coronavirus cases are preparing for even more patients in the wake of holiday travel.
"We also noticed that about half of our healthcare workers at our acute care hospitals were declining to take it at the initial time," said Riverside County spokesperson Brooke Federico.
Federico said frontline health care workers cannot be forced to get the vaccine.
But she also says the vaccines are not going to waste. Instead they are being given to the next in line, like firefighters, paramedics and EMTs.
"And that was sooner than we anticipated we would be able to offer to those groups," Federico said.
According to health experts, vaccine hesitancy isn't just an issue in Riverside County.
"To be really clear, healthcare workers were interested in getting this vaccine in general but many of them just wanted to wait for more information," UCLA epidemiology professor Anne Rimoin said.
Since September, Rimoin has been conducting surveys about vaccine hesitancy.She says initially, about 66% of healthcare workers didn't want to be the first to get the COVID-19 vaccination for several reasons.
"Politicization of the process, lack of information about the vaccine and concern about the side effects," Rimoin said.
But in a recent survey, Rimoin said the number had actually flipped after the election and after the FDA released more information about the safety of the vaccines.
"Sixty six percent of healthcare workers were wanting to get the vaccine as soon as possible," Rimoin said.
Rimoin said communication is the key for more healthcare workers to feel comfortable about getting vaccinated.
How Coronavirus Has Grown in Each State in 1 Chart
This chart shows the cumulative number of cases per state by number of days since the 50th case.
"We need to make sure these people have the information and if they have questions their questions are answered," Rimoin said.
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Some Health Care Workers Decline to Get COVID-19 Vaccine. But Why? - NBC Southern California
Both vaccines will be administered in two doses and stored at standard refrigerator temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit).
The approval is a crucial step in India's effort to contain its coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 10 million people, trailing only the United States in total caseload.
The Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker, is producing the AstraZeneca and Oxford vaccine locally, having taken on a huge risk to manufacture the vaccine months before approval from regulators.
"It's a great day for India and the world, because this is going to be the most affordable vaccine, that will be equitably distributed as much as possible across the globe," the institute's CEO Adar Poonawalla told CNN Sunday.
But the vaccines, locally branded Covishield, won't be available to other countries until March or April, as the Indian government has restricted them for export, according to Poonawalla.
"This is not going to go to the private market, private hospitals and other places right now. We're given a restricted license to only give it and provide it to the government of India, because they want to prioritize for the most vulnerable and needy segments first," he said.
India's coronavirus vaccines are an important alternative for developing countries, which may not be able to afford the more expensive vaccines made in the West, or have the cold storage capacity to transport vaccines that require ultra-cold temperatures, such as the ones developed by Pfizer and Moderna.
In September, the Serum Institute of India pledged to manufacture and deliver 200 million doses for COVAX -- a World Health Organization vaccine alliance set up to ensure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines. But the export of vaccines to "low-and middle-income countries" may not begin until the restrictions ease.
Poonawalla said Covishield would be sold initially to the Indian government for $2.74 per dose -- roughly its production cost. It'll be priced between $3 to $5 per dose for export, and at $13.70 for the private market, he added.
Mass vaccination drive
The Serum Institute of India is expecting to sign a formal deal with the Indian government "imminently," and people will start getting vaccinated in the "next seven to 10 days," Poonawalla said.
The institute has already stockpiled 50 million doses of the vaccine ready for distribution this month, and is ready to send them to 30 to 40 government locations across the country. From there, they'll be distributed to the smaller centers and clinics that have been set up, he said.
India already has a vast, established network under its Universal Immunization Program, which inoculates about 55 million people per year. Analysts have said that means the country's health system is relatively well geared up for the Covid-19 vaccinations.
Ahead of the mass vaccination drive, the Indian government has also been recruiting and training additional vaccinators and ramping up its stocks of cold-chain storage equipment such as walk-in coolers and freezers, deep freezers and ice-lined refrigerators over the past few months.
Lack of data
India's drug regulator also approved Covaxin, the country's first homegrown coronavirus vaccine developed jointly by Bharat Biotech and the government-run Indian Council of Medical Research.
But the government has faced heated criticism from experts and opposition leaders for not revealing the vaccine's efficacy results or any other data from its clinical trials.
"Its use should be avoided till full trials are over. India can start with the AstraZeneca vaccine in the meantime," he tweeted.
Dr. Randeep Guleria, director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, agreed.
"I would say that we should in the first phase focus predominantly on the Serum Institute of India -- the Astra Zeneca vaccine, and the Bharat Biotech is only as a standby or a backup in case there is a surge in the number of cases," said Guleria, a member of the national task force on Covid-19 management.
"EUA for COVAXIN is different from COVISHIELD because its use will be in clinical trial mode. All COVAXIN recipients to be tracked,monitored as if they're in trial," he wrote.
In a news release Sunday, Bharat Biotech said its Phase 3 clinical trial for Covaxin started in mid-November, with a goal to include 26,000 volunteers.
"COVAXIN has been evaluated in approximately 1000 subjects in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials, with promising safety and immunogenicity results, with acceptance in international peer reviewed scientific journals," the release said.
Vaccine rollouts in Asia
Across Asia, a growing number of countries have started vaccinations against Covid-19.
The Chinese government aims to inoculate 50 million people against Covid-19 ahead of February's Lunar New Year celebrations. The country has already administered 4.5 million doses of experimental Chinese vaccines since June under its emergency use program, which included frontline workers such as health care workers and customs officers.
The next step is to inoculate vulnerable groups such as the elderly and people with underlying diseases, before vaccinating the general population, officials said last week.
In Beijing, the municipal government started vaccinating targeted groups of the population, including frontline workers and students and employees who need to go overseas, on January 1. It has set up 220 vaccination sites across the city and inoculated 73,500 people as of Saturday.
Compared with the swift rollouts in India and China, the Japanese government has faced criticism over its slowness in rolling out the vaccines.
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The first Americans inoculated against COVID-19 began rolling up their sleeves for their second and final dose Monday, while Britain introduced another vaccine on the same day it imposed a new nationwide lockdown against the rapidly surging virus.
New York State, meanwhile, announced its first known case of the new and seemingly more contagious variant, detected in a man in his 60s in Saratoga Springs. Colorado, California and Florida previously reported infections involving the mutant version that has been circulating in England.
The emergence of the variant has added even more urgency to the worldwide race to vaccinate people against the scourge.
In Southern California, intensive care nurse Helen Cordova got her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center along with other doctors and nurses, who bared their arms the prescribed three weeks after they received their first shot. The second round of shots began in various locations around the country as the U.S. death toll surpassed 352,000.
Im really excited because that means Im just that much closer to having the immunity and being a little safer when I come to work and, you know, just being around my family, Cordova said.
Over the weekend, U.S. government officials reported that vaccinations had accelerated significantly. As of Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said nearly 4.6 million shots had been dispensed in the U.S., after a slow and uneven start to the campaign, marked by confusion, logistical hurdles and a patchwork of approaches by state and local authorities.
Britain, meanwhile, became the first nation to start using the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, ramping up its nationwide inoculation campaign amid soaring infection rates blamed on the new variant. Britains vaccination program began Dec. 8 with the shot developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old dialysis patient, received the first Oxford-AstraZeneca shot at Oxford University Hospital, saying in a statement: I can now really look forward to celebrating my 48th wedding anniversary.
The rollout came the same day Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a new lockdown for England until at least mid-February. Britain has recorded more than 50,000 new coronavirus infections a day over the past six days, and deaths have climbed past 75,000, one of the worst tolls in Europe.
Schools and colleges will generally be closed for face-to-face instruction. Nonessential stores and services like hairdressers will be shut down, and restaurants can offer only takeout.
As I speak to you tonight, our hospitals are under more pressure from COVID than at any time since the start of the pandemic, Johnson said.
Elsewhere around the world, France and other parts of Europe have come under fire over slow vaccine rollouts and delays.
Frances cautious approach appears to have backfired, leaving just a few hundred people vaccinated after the first week and rekindling anger over the governments handling of the pandemic. The slow rollout has been blamed on mismanagement, staffing shortages over the holidays and a complex consent policy designed to accommodate vaccine skepticism among the French.
Its a state scandal, Jean Rottner, president of the Grand-Est region of eastern France, said on France-2 television. Getting vaccinated is becoming more complicated than buying a car.
Health Minister Olivier Veran promised that by the end of Monday, several thousand people would be vaccinated, with the tempo picking up through the week. But that would still leave France well behind its neighbors.
French media broadcast charts comparing vaccine figures in various countries: In France, a nation of 67 million people, just 516 people were vaccinated in the first six days, according to the French Health Ministry. Germanys first-week total surpassed 200,000, and Italys was over 100,000. Millions have been vaccinated in the U.S. and China.
The European Union likewise faced growing criticism about the slow rollout of COVID-19 shots across the 27-nation bloc of 450 million inhabitants. EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said the main problem is an issue of production capacity, an issue that everybody is facing.
The EU has sealed six vaccine contracts with a variety of manufacturers. But only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved for use so far across the EU. The EUs drug regulators are expected to decide on Wednesday whether to recommend authorizing the Moderna vaccine.
In the U.S., Dr. Mysheika Roberts, health commissioner in Columbus, Ohio, said demand has been lower than expected among the people given top priority for the vaccine. For example, the citys 2,000 emergency medical workers are all eligible, but the health department has vaccinated only 850 of them.
She said some people were hesitant to get the vaccine and wanted to see how others handled it. The vaccine also arrived the week of Christmas, and a lot of people were on vacation and didnt want to be bothered during the holiday, she said.
I think we all assumed that people would want this vaccine so badly, that when it became available, people would just come get it, Roberts said.
Roberts noted there has been no effective mass marketing campaign explaining why people should get vaccinated.
From the president on down, so many people have been touting the fact that were going to have a vaccine and get this vaccine out. But so many of those same people who were talking about it now have gone silent, she said. That could help if those same people would be more vocal about it.
Elsewhere around the globe, Israel appears to be among the world leaders in the vaccination campaign, inoculating over 1 million people, or roughly 12% of its population, in just over two weeks. The effort has been boosted by a high-quality, centralized health system and the countrys small size and concentrated population.
Hoping to spur a halting vaccination effort that has only given about 44,000 shots since the third week of December, Mexico approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use Monday. Previously, the Pfizer vaccine was the only one approved for use in Mexico.
On Sunday, India, the worlds second-most populous country, authorized its first two COVID-19 vaccines the Oxford-AstraZeneca one and another developed by an Indian company. The move paves the way for a huge inoculation program in the desperately poor nation of 1.4 billion people.
India has confirmed more than 10.3 million cases of the virus, second in the world behind the U.S. It also has reported about 150,000 deaths.
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COVID-19 vaccination campaign picks up speed around the world - KTLA Los Angeles
Bad data and poor planning have left people calling clinics, hospitals and health departments with few answers
FORT WORTH, Texas When Texas expanded access to COVID-19 vaccines last week, millions of people were left searching for doses and providers became flooded with calls with little to vaccine to give.
Brad Kaminsky lives in Collin County and is diabetic.
Im getting a different story everywhere I go because theres no uniformity, he said. Nobody knows.
He and his wife Doreen have called pharmacies, hospitals and clinics across the county.
They really just werent prepared, and every county is different, Doreen Kaminsky said.
Last week, Texas told providers to start the 1B group: those with health conditions putting them at higher risk of hospitalization or death if they contract COVID-19, and those over 65.
Many providers, though, say theyre still on 1A: healthcare workers.
Hospitals are frustrated that they were told to give out 1B, but they don't have any vaccine to do it yet, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said. Hopefully that gets better this week.
Jenkins said the countys registration website for COVID-19 vaccines averaged one person every three seconds when it went online Saturday night.
Tarrant Countys health department has registered more than 100,000 people on its vaccine website.
But each county health department counts as only one provider in the county. According to DSHS data, Tarrant County providers have received 59,875 doses as of Sunday to 83,250 in Dallas.
But Tarrant Countys health department has received about 15,000 doses to just 1,200 for Dallas County. Jenkins says they dont know why.
We're trying to get that clarification, he said. We want to get as much as we can because we need the vaccine for our residents.
Jenkins says the state is planning to launch a site for people to register for all providers in mid to late January.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services said that the site is something that is a little further down the road than mid-January. We are working to stand up an event management system that will allow any Texan to search for available vaccines near their address and register to be vaccinated at DSHS-coordinated events. It doesnt have a launch date yet. Additional functionality may be added later. People in Phase 1 (1A & 1B) should reach out to their providers and their local health department to either make an appointment or get on the waitlist for an appointment.
The state that was supposed to be doing the website for everyone didn't have the website ready, Jenkins said. It led to the hospitals and the counties having to get together and scrambling, saying, OK, what do we do now?'"
Collin County has not shared a registration website but has asked people to call its appointment line: 214-491-4804. Denton County has a registration website but shut down the link after it was overwhelmed, and is currently working to figure out a waitlist system.
For now, the state says the best option is to contact one of the thousands of providers who say theyve been overwhelmed with calls.
The Kaminskys say pharmacies and hospitals seem unclear about when theyll move on to 1B because its up to each provider to decide when healthcare workers have been vaccinated.
Theyre not making it mandatory or putting any sort of urgency or timeline on it, Doreen Kaminsky said.
Jenkins says the health department and county hospitals plan to use a scoring system to prioritize 1B patients.
Basically, who, if they get COVID, is going to do the worst? In a variety of factors and try to give to those people first, Jenkins said. People with active cancer might get it, say before someone who is overweight.
Jenkins said it could be a few weeks before the countys health department hits that stage.
He says the state mistakenly started Phase 1B early thinking there were excess doses going unused because of data on the state site that was wrong.
Their website is slow to update and inaccurate, Jenkins said. The politicians that changed it to 1B didn't understand that.
Now, families across the state are scrambling for answers.
What Id really like to see is some really clear and concise information across the board, Doreen Kaminsky said.
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Texas' answer to sign up for a COVID-19 vaccine could be weeks away - WFAA.com
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 23: Members of the FDNY EMS speak in the waiting area receiving the ... [+] coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine at the FDNY Fire Training Academy on Randalls Island in New York City. Members of FDNY EMS were given doses of the Moderna coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine allotted for the department. The vaccine will not be mandatory for EMS workers or firefighters.(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) show that between 431,000 and 470,000 excess deaths have occurred since the Covid-19 pandemic began. An additional 200,000 deaths are projected by April.
Along with strong mitigation measures to curb the spread, vaccines are powerful tools that will enable us to subdue and eventually end the pandemic. Last months emergency use authorization of two vaccines offers real hope in this regard. But, availability of vaccines is not the same thing as actual uptake.
Trump Administration officials had previously predicted there would be 20 million first dose vaccinations by the end of December, but as of January 2nd, only about 4.2 million people have had their first dose, according to a CDC tracker.
At an average of 225,000 administered doses per day, the U.S. daily new infection total often exceeds the daily rate of first dose vaccinations.
It is encouraging that the pace of first dose vaccinations has picked up in recent days. Nonetheless, at the current daily level of uptake its going to take years to vaccinate the American people.
Is this a supply problem? A demand issue, such as vaccine hesitancy? Or both?
Clearly, there have been supply problems. Ten days ago, General Gustave Perna of Operation Warp Speed, said he took sole responsibility for confusion regarding allotment of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to states, shortly following its emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. More than a dozen governors complained that they had received far fewer doses than originally promised.
Evidently, there are glaring demand issues as well. For instance, 60% of people working in nursing homes in Ohio are electing not to be vaccinated. This begs the question why taking a vaccine is elective for those working in nursing homes. Given that for many decades schools primary, high school, and college - require proof of multiple vaccinations prior to enrollment, as do many employers in the private and public sectors, its puzzling that nursing homes wouldnt require that caregivers be vaccinated for Covid-19.
But, ultimately resolving supply and demand issues related to a public good like the Covid-19 vaccine requires adequate planning and logistics.
The Trump Administration purposely did not establish a national plan for the distribution and administration of vaccines. On December 29th, President Trump tweeted: It is up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government.
The logistics of the rollout have therefore largely been left up to states to navigate. But most states lack the capacity to properly administer the rollout. Moreover, hospitals and pharmacies are scrambling, trying to figure out where to set up vaccination sites. And, long-term care facilities are sorting out who can administer vaccinations, to whom, and where.
For quite some time, state and local public health officials have warned that they would need more than $8 billion in additional funding to create the infrastructure required to administer vaccines. Instead, the Trump Administration provided states with a paltry $340 million in funding to prepare for vaccinations. This implies that on average states have received less than $7 million each for vaccine readiness.
As Professor Jha, Dean of Brown Universitys School of Public Health, lamented the worst part is no real planning on what happens when vaccines arrive in states. No plan, just hope that states will figure this out.
Perhaps this reflects a larger problem in the U.S. in which medical advances, such as the Covid-19 vaccines, capture an inordinate amount of attention from the media, the public, and politicians. But, ensuring breakthroughs are given to patients in a timely, efficient manner is equally important. Yet, this requires a universally well-functioning system to deliver care, which the U.S. doesnt have. The federal government invests billions of dollars in the development of breakthroughs enterprise, but much less in the delivery side. The saying all breakthrough and no follow-through may be a slight exaggeration, but it gets the point across that there is insufficient investment in the follow-through part.
Many leaders have chimed in on the need for more federal involvement in follow-through, as certain issues like the Covid-19 pandemic are uniquely federal because of their interstate and international scope. Senator Romney (R Utah) bemoaned the fact that comprehensive inoculation plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models. He considers this as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.
Sooner rather than later the nation is going to have to vaccinate people at a rate thats much faster than the current pace of infections. President-elect Biden is pushing for 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, which he said would require a pace five to six times as fast as is currently the case.
Perhaps the Biden Administration can learn from Israels warp speed inoculation of its population.* Israels daily vaccination rate of nearly 2% of the population is astonishing. Israel has already vaccinated 12% of the population, including 42% of people over the age of 60. By comparison, it was pointed that Israel, with roughly the same population as New York City, has at least 10 times as many people.
While vaccinating round the clock, the Israeli government is simultaneously carrying out an extensive public education campaign against anti-vax dis- and misinformation.
As a relatively small nation with a national health insurance and patient registration system Israel has a distinct comparative advantage. Nevertheless, there are other small countries with similar health insurance and patient registration systems which are not (yet) doing nearly as well.
Several European countries, for example, havent even begun to vaccinate, including the Netherlands. It appears, however that government officials there as well as other European nations want to first ensure that theyve got an executable plan in place for comprehensive, mass vaccinations of priority groups to take place safely in, among other sites, long-term care facilities, hospitals, clinics, arenas, convention centers, school gyms, and libraries.
Covid-19 vaccines are public goods. As such, their appropriate distribution isnt governed by free market principles. Ideally, inoculation programs are informed by a system carefully planned by federal and state authorities for distributing vaccines as effectively and equitably as possible. A lesson to be drawn from the bumpy rollout is that prior to vaccine emergency use authorization there ought to have been a comprehensive distribution plan that included continuous federal assistance to help states establish and maintain a robust vaccination infrastructure.
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