Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

Police, firefighters, teachers and grocery workers will be among those next in line for a COVID-19 vaccine, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel decided Sunday.

The committee voted 13-1 to recommend that Phase 1b include people 75 and older and front-line essential workers. Phase 1c will include people 65 to 74 and people 16 to 64 who have high-risk medical conditions, along with other essential workers.

"My hope is that these short-term recommendations will support efficiency and equity in every phase of vaccination until we can get to the time when all individuals have access to safe and effective vaccines in the U.S. and worldwide," said Dr. Grace Lee, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine and committee member.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices began its deliberations Sunday morning and spent the day discussing who would follow front-line health care workers and people in long-term care facilities in receiving vaccines, a second phase that could begin in February. The committee is responsible for recommending who gets what vaccines when.

They made difficult decisions that were based on getting a vaccine as quickly as possible to people at the greatest risk of contracting COVID-19 and those who will suffer the most severe outcomes, said Dr. Sharon Fry of the Saint Louis University Medical School and a committee member.

"There are no perfect recommendations. and people will continue to become ill with this disease and die from the disease until there are adequate vaccines. So please, I will plead also for our leaders and the government to move quickly on this and support this effort," she said.

There are now two COVID-19 vaccines in use in the United States. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 11. The Moderna vaccine was authorized Friday and should begin arriving at hospitals on Monday.

The United States has created a phased vaccination plan for the coronavirus because there won't be enough vaccine in the beginning of the rollout.

Phase 1a includes front-line health care workers and people in long-term care facilities.

"Essential workers are at high risk because of exposure, by virtue of being in contact with others, in performing their duties. Prevention of disease in essential workers may reduce transmission to others," said Dr. Kathleen Dooling, a CDC physician who is co-lead on the advisory committee's COVID-19 Vaccines Working Group.

These workers are considered essential to the functioning of society and are at substantially higher risk of exposure to SARS-Co/V-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They make up about 30 million people among these groups:

First responders such as firefighters, police

Teachers, support staff, day care workers

Food and agriculture workers

Manufacturing workers

Correction workers

U.S. Postal Service workers

Public transit workers

Grocery store workers

Tho essential workers in Phase 1c make up about 57 million people and would include:

Public health workers

Transportation and logistics workers

Food service workers

Construction workers

Finance workers

IT & Communications workers

Energy workers

Media workers

Legal workers

Public safety engineers

Water and wastewater workers

Medical conditions with sufficient evidence to have been associated with severe COVID-19 disease include:

Obesity

Type 2 diabetes

COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Heart condition

Chronic kidney disease

Immunocompromised state from solid organ transplant

Sickle cell disease

Pregnancy

Smoker (current or with a history of smoking)

Phase 2 would include all people 16 and over who were not in Phase 1 who are recommended for the vaccination. That means people 16 and over with high-risk medical conditions.

Because vaccine supplies are initially limited, Phase 1b isn't expected to begin until February.

Operation Warp Speed, the White House COVID-19 vaccine and treatment accelerator, has said it expects to distribute 20 million doses in December, 60 million in January and 100 million by February. That's 180 million doses by the end of February, which means 90 million people would be fully vaccinated. (Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two doses.)

Exactly how the 20 million doses will be distributed by the end of the month is not clear. Last week, 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were distributed. This week, another 2 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be distributed, together with 5.9 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.

More vaccines are in the pipeline. Another candidate, from Johnson & Johnson, fully enrolled its large-scale human trial Thursday and expects to report its first safety and effectiveness data in January.

A fourth, created by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, is a few weeks behind, and a fifth candidate, by vaccine developer Novavax of Gaithersburg, Maryland, is expected to begin its major U.S. trial shortly.

If all or most of these come through, there should be plenty of vaccine by the end of next summer to cover every American who wants one.

Contributing: Karen Weintraub

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID-19 vaccine: Police, firefighters, teachers will be next in line

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Police, firefighters, teachers will be next in line for COVID-19 vaccine - Yahoo News

COVID-19 vaccines: the pandemic will not end overnight  The Lancet

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COVID-19 vaccines: the pandemic will not end overnight - The Lancet

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- In October, Indonesian diplomats and Muslim clerics stepped off a plane in China. While the diplomats were there to finalize deals to ensure millions of doses reached Indonesian citizens, the clerics had a much different concern: Whether the COVID-19 vaccine was permissible for use under Islamic law.

As companies race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and countries scramble to secure doses, questions about the use of pork products banned by some religious groups has raised concerns about the possibility of disrupted immunization campaigns.

Pork-derived gelatin has been widely used as a stabilizer to ensure vaccines remain safe and effective during storage and transport. Some companies have worked for years to develop pork-free vaccines: Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has produced a pork-free meningitis vaccine, while Saudi- and Malaysia-based AJ Pharma is currently working on one of their own.

But demand, existing supply chains, cost and the shorter shelf life of vaccines not containing porcine gelatin means the ingredient is likely to continue to be used in a majority of vaccines for years, said Dr. Salman Waqar, general secretary of the British Islamic Medical Association.

Spokespeople for Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have said that pork products are not part of their COVID-19 vaccines. But limited supply and preexisting deals worth millions of dollars with other companies means that some countries with large Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, will receive vaccines that have not yet been certified to be gelatin-free.

This presents a dilemma for religious communities, including Orthodox Jews and Muslims, where the consumption of pork products is deemed religiously unclean, and how the ban is applied to medicine, he said.

Theres a difference of opinion amongst Islamic scholars as to whether you take something like pork gelatin and make it undergo a rigorous chemical transformation," Waqar said. Is that still considered to be religiously impure for you to take?

The majority consensus from past debates over pork gelatin use in vaccines is that it is permissible under Islamic law, as greater harm would occur if the vaccines werent used, said Dr. Harunor Rashid, an associate professor at the University of Sydney.

There's a similar assessment by a broad consensus of religious leaders in the Orthodox Jewish community as well.

According to the Jewish law, the prohibition on eating pork or using pork is only forbidden when its a natural way of eating it, said Rabbi David Stav, chairman of Tzohar, a rabbinical organization in Israel.

If its injected into the body, not (eaten) through the mouth," then there is no prohibition and no problem, especially when we are concerned about sicknesses, he said.

Yet there have been dissenting opinions on the issue some with serious health consequences for Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, some 225 million.

In 2018, the Indonesian Ulema Council, the Muslim clerical body that issues certifications that a product is halal, or permissible under Islamic law, decreed that the measles and rubella vaccines were haram, or unlawful, because of the gelatin. Religious and community leaders began to urge parents to not allow their children to be vaccinated.

Measles cases subsequently spiked, giving Indonesia the third-highest rate of measles in the world, said Rachel Howard, director of the health care market research group Research Partnership.

A decree was later issued by the Muslim clerical body saying it was permissible to receive the vaccine, but cultural taboos still led to continued low vaccination rates, Howard said.

Our studies have found that some Muslims in Indonesia feel uncomfortable with accepting vaccinations containing these ingredients," even when the Muslim authority issues guidelines saying they are permitted, she said.

Governments have taken steps to address the issue. In Malaysia, where the halal status of vaccines has been identified as the biggest issue among Muslim parents, stricter laws have been enacted so that parents must vaccinate their children or face fines and jail time. In Pakistan, where there has been waning vaccine confidence for religious and political reasons, parents have been jailed for refusing to vaccinate their children against polio.

But with rising vaccine hesitancy and misinformation spreading around the globe, including in religious communities, Rashid said community engagement is absolutely necessary.

It could be disastrous, if there is not strong community engagement from governments and health care workers, he said.

In Indonesia, the government has already said it will include the Muslim clerical body in the COVID-19 vaccine procurement and certification process.

Public communication regarding the halal status, price, quality and distribution must be well-prepared, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in October.

While they were in China in the fall, the Indonesian clerics inspected China's Sinovac Biotech facilities, and clinical trials involving some 1,620 volunteers are also underway in Indonesia for the company's vaccine. The government has announced several COVID-19 vaccine procurement deals with the company totaling millions of doses.

Sinovac Biotech, as well as Chinese companies Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics which all have COVID-19 vaccines in late-stage clinical trials and deals selling millions of doses around the world did not respond to Associated Press requests for ingredient information.

In China, none of the COVID-19 vaccines has been granted final market approval, but more than 1 million health care workers and others who have been deemed at high risk of infection have received vaccines under emergency use permission. The companies have yet to disclose how effective the vaccines are or possible side effects.

Pakistan is late-stage clinical trials of the CanSino Biologics vaccine. Bangladesh previously had an agreement with Sinovac Biotech to conduct clinical trials in the country, but the trials have been delayed due to a funding dispute. Both countries have some of the largest Muslim populations in the world.

While health care workers on the ground in Indonesia are still largely engaged in efforts to contain the virus as numbers continue to surge, Waqar said government efforts to reassure Indonesians will be key to a successful immunization campaign as COVID-19 vaccines are approved for use.

But, he said, companies producing the vaccines must also be part of such community outreach.

The more they are transparent, the more they are open and honest about their product, the more likely it is that there are communities that have confidence in the product and will be able to have informed discussions about what it is they want to do, he said.

Because, ultimately, it is the choice of individuals.

Associated Press writers Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Concern among Muslims over halal status of COVID-19 vaccine - ABC News

Heres what you need to know:People handing out hand sanitizer on the streets in So Paulo, Brazil, on Friday.Credit...Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

As the coronavirus continues its surge across the United States and Europe, where vaccinations recently began, total infections around the world have now topped 75 million.

In the United States, more than 128,000 people had been vaccinated as of Friday, according to a New York Times database tracking vaccinations. But that total is just slightly more than half the number of new cases reported across the country the same day.

The United States, the worlds largest coronavirus hot spot with more than 17.6 million people who have been infected over all, on Friday reported its first single-day caseload of more than 250,000 new infections.

In Sweden, there have been 66 new daily cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days, a rate nearly identical to that of the United States. Lithuania has the worlds highest current rate of spread, with a daily average of 98.6 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past week.

Over 15 million total cases have been reported in Europe, with the continents boundaries defined by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. India has reported more than 10 million infections, the second most of any country, followed by Brazil with more than seven million.

More than 1.6 million people around the world have died from Covid-19, according to a New York Times database. In the U.S. alone, more than 315,000 people have died 3,611 of them on Wednesday, shattering the previous single-day record of 3,157 on Dec. 9.

Over 137,000 people in the United Kingdom have been vaccinated, according to Bloomberg, with 108,000 of those in England, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday announced plans for a harsh lockdown on London and much of the countrys southeast. The U.K. reported 28,507 new cases on Friday.

China, which has reported only 96,400 cases total, says it has already administered more than a million doses, though its vaccines have not been fully tested. (Chinese officials have said that so far there have been no adverse reactions.)

On Friday, an international body established to promote global access to Covid vaccines, known as Covax, said it had reached deals with manufacturers to deliver a billion doses to low- and middle-income countries.

The announcement included news about a method for countries with excess doses to share them. Wealthy countries like the United Kingdom and the United States have secured a surplus of vaccines. Canada, which could receive as much as six times the amount needed to vaccinate its entire population, said it would contribute its extra doses through Covax. France made a similar commitment.

The sharing would be welcome help for lower-middle-income countries like India, Egypt and El Salvador, which have not secured enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations. Even upper-middle-income nations like Argentina, Turkey and Thailand have not met the 100 percent threshold.

Vaccine preorders as a percentage of population

Latin America

(excluding Brazil)

Vaccine preorders as a percentage of population

Latin America

(excluding Brazil)

transcript

transcript

Last week we kicked off the initial distribution of the Pfizer vaccine, following E.U.A. Through snowstorms, holiday rush and with everything else going on in the country, we delivered the first 2.9 million doses across the country, to every state. And we saw vaccines going into arms. What a remarkable feat. Last night, the F.D.A. granted emergency use authorization to Moderna. And America, we are ready to distribute that vaccine. Now, this week many have heard concerns about allegations of vaccine doses being cut. I want to assure everybody, and I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication. Jurisdictions have asked me for planning numbers, and rightly so. We want to be open and transparent with them at all times. I have to work on the estimates that we know, and we provide them forecasts accordingly. But vaccine manufacturing is a very arduous, technical capability. At the end of the day, the number of doses available to us to allocate ended up being lower. And so as we gave forecasts to the jurisdictions, and governors and states, work their priorities against those forecasts, when we had to decide what was going to eventually be shipped out, I had to lower the allocations to meet the releasable doses that were presented to me. So to the governors, to the governors staffs: Please accept my personal apology if this was disruptive in your decision-making and in your conversations with the people of your great state. I will work hard to correct this.

Gen. Gustave F. Perna, who heads Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administrations multiagency effort to get coronavirus vaccines out to Americans, apologized repeatedly on Saturday morning for confusion over vaccine deliveries to states.

He attributed some of the problems to the federal governments miscalculation of how many doses of Pfizer-BioNTechs vaccine could be shipped. The discrepancies disrupted vaccination plans and stirred consternation in at least 14 states.

General Perna is in charge of the logistics for distributing the coronavirus vaccines to the states, and he took full and sole responsibility for the delays and confusion around the vaccine rollout, and for the discrepancies between the number of doses states were expecting and what they are receiving.

It was my fault, he said. It was a planning error, and I am responsible.

I want to take personal responsibility for the miscommunication, General Perna said at a news conference. He said the number of vaccines available to allocate ended up being lower than initial forecasts.

I had to lower the allocations to meet the releasable doses that were presented to me, General Perna said. So to the governors, he said, please accept my personal apology if this was disruptive in your decision-making.

He added that he did not understand with exactness the requirements for the release of each batch of doses. He referred several times to the Food and Drug Administrations involvement, but was unclear about how that would have delayed shipments.

The F.D.A. merely requires a certificate that includes the results of quality control tests for each lot of vaccine at least 48 hours before distribution and does not require the certificates be reviewed before shipments occur. That enables the F.D.A. to keep track of the batches being shipped. The requirement is included in the emergency authorization paperwork the F.D.A. sent to Pfizer.

Officials in Oregon, Iowa, Washington, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Vermont, Minnesota, Nevada, Connecticut, California, Michigan, Idaho, Virginia and New Jersey said that they were caught off guard on Wednesday when they learned that next weeks shipment of the vaccine would contain fewer doses than the first weeks.

Governors and state health departments have spoken with alarm this week of how few vaccines they have received compared with what had been promised.

This is disruptive and frustrating, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington wrote on Twitter on Thursday. We need accurate, predictable numbers to plan and ensure on-the-ground success.

Dr. Mark Levine, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health, said in a Friday briefing that all my colleagues in the region are reporting a 25 to 35 percent decrease in their allocation for next week.

As we were walking in, I learned as many as 975 doses out of an expected 5,850 doses would not be coming in when we expected, he said. What everyone around the country is upset about, in addition to just the number, is theres been no communication, so theres no understanding of what this really means.

On Saturday, General Perna noted that boxes of the Moderna vaccine, which was approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, were being packed and loaded, and that truckloads would begin rolling out on Sunday.

He said that the government remained on track to allocate about 20 million vaccine doses across the country by the end of December, and that the distribution of those doses would be pushing into the first week of January.

There is no problem with the process, he said. There is no problem with the Pfizer vaccine. There is no problem with the Moderna vaccine.

He also expressed confidence that we will have the agility to correct ourselves and get things right, so that the next time it will go flawlessly.

transcript

transcript

First, we will introduce new restrictions in the most affected areas, specifically those parts of London, the Southeast and the East of England. Second, were issuing new advice on travel. Although the new variant is concentrated in tier-4 areas, it is nonetheless present at lower levels around the country. So were asking everyone in all tiers to stay local. Third, we must, Im afraid, look again at Christmas. And as prime minister, its my duty to take difficult decisions to do what is right to protect the people of this country. Given the early evidence we have on this new variant of the virus, the potential risk it poses, it is with a very heavy heart. I must tell you, we cannot continue with Christmas as planned. In England, those living in tier-4 areas should not mix with anyone outside their own household at Christmas, though, support bubbles will remain in place for those of particular risk of loneliness or isolation. Across the rest of the country, the Christmas rules allowing up to three households to meet will now be limited to Christmas Day only rather than the five days as previously set out. As before, there will be no relaxation on the 31st of January, so people must not break the rules at New Year. They must not break the rules at New Year, its very, very important to emphasize that.

LONDON Alarmed by what he called a faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson abruptly reversed course on Saturday and imposed a wholesale lockdown on London and most of Englands southeast.

The decision, which Mr. Johnson announced after an emergency meeting of his cabinet, came after the government got new evidence of a variant first detected several weeks ago in Kent, southeast of London, which the prime minister asserted was 70 percent more transmissible than previous versions. Cabinet ministers were told that in London, cases had nearly doubled in the last week, with the new variant accounting for 60 percent of those.

The new measures, which take effect at the end of Saturday night, are designed, in effect, to cut off the capital and its surrounding counties from the rest of England. They are the most severe measures the government has taken since it imposed a lockdown on the country in March, and they reflect a fear that the new variant could supercharge the transmission of the virus as winter takes hold.

When the virus changes its method of attack, we must change our method of defense, a somber Mr. Johnson said at a news conference. We have to act on information as we have it, because this is now spreading very fast.

Viral mutations are not usual, and this variant known as VUI 202012/01 has been detected in a handful of other countries, but medical experts expressed alarm about its apparent infectiousness. British ministers have been told that there is no evidence that the new variant is inherently more dangerous, or that it is more resistant to vaccines than others.

Its infectiousness, however, raises the prospect of accelerating infections, leading to more hospitalizations and deaths. The British government said it had notified the World Health Organization about the prevalence of the new variant.

Though Mr. Johnson said a few days ago that it would be inhuman to cancel Christmas, that will be the broad effect of the new restrictions on social mixing. A plan to allow three households to meet together over the holiday will be scrapped in London and the southeast, with no household mixing permitted at all. In other parts of the country, three households will be allowed to gather, but only on Christmas Day.

In the Netherlands, the government said shortly after midnight on Sunday local time that a case of the new variant had been identified there this month. The Dutch government said it would ban flights from the United Kingdom starting Sunday at 6 a.m. until at the latest Jan. 1.

The coronavirus has mutated many times since it emerged in China in 2019, according to epidemiologists. On Friday, South Africa reported it had identified a new variant, which it said was driving a new wave of infections there. It is not clear whether it is same variant as the one identified in Britain.

Senators broke through an impasse late Saturday night over a Republican effort to curtail the powers of the Federal Reserve, clearing away what had been seen as the final hurdle to a deal on a $900 billion stimulus compromise as lawmakers raced against a Sunday-night deadline to avoid a government shutdown.

With time running out for a deal, Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, agreed to narrow his effort to rein in the central bank, according to three aides familiar with the discussion. All three aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, noted that the precise language was still being finalized.

The agreement was a critical breakthrough for lawmakers who have been racing to complete the emergency plan to rush direct payments, unemployment benefits and food and rental assistance to millions of Americans struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as relief to businesses and funds for vaccine distribution. While negotiators were still wrangling over a number of smaller issues, the Federal Reserve language had emerged as the biggest impediment to a final agreement.

If things continue on this path, and nothing gets in the way, well be able to vote tomorrow, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, told reporters as he left the Capitol shortly before midnight. House and Senate.

The breakthrough came as a C.D.C. panel endorsed a second vaccine, by Moderna, and the country confronted another stark reminder of how desperately vaccines are needed: Fridays record caseload of over 251,000 new coronavirus cases, nearly double the 128,000 people who had been vaccinated in the United States as of Friday, according to a New York Times database tracking vaccinations. Officials are warning that hospitals, which now hold nearly 114,000 Covid-19 patients, could soon be overwhelmed.

Mr. Toomey had sought to bar the Fed and Treasury Department from setting up any loan program similar to those established this year that have helped to keep credit flowing to corporate, municipal and medium-size business borrowers during the pandemic recession.

The agreed-upon alternative, offered by Mr. Schumer and still being drafted near midnight on Saturday, aides familiar with the process said, would bar only programs that were more or less exact copycats of the ones newly employed in 2020.

Were right within reach, Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told House Democrats in a party conference call on Saturday. But she said Mr. Toomeys late-stage demands to rein in the Fed were slowing the process.

President Trump, who has been largely absent from the stimulus talks in recent weeks, chastised Congress shortly after midnight on Sunday.

Why isnt Congress giving our people a Stimulus Bill? Mr. Trump said on Twitter. GET IT DONE, and give them more money in direct payments.

The emerging deal would send direct payments of $600 to many Americans and provide enhanced federal jobless payments of $300 per week until early spring. It would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up small businesses, schools and other institutions struggling amid the pandemic.

Lawmakers and aides in both parties acknowledged that the Fed provision presented the most significant hurdle to a final agreement, even though negotiators were still haggling over a number of outstanding technical details, including how to provide for food assistance and the scope of unemployment benefits.

With government funding set to lapse Sunday and both chambers hoping to merge the stimulus package with a catchall measure to cover all federal spending for the remainder of the fiscal year, time was dwindling to find a resolution.

Without action by Congress, two programs designed to expand and enhance unemployment benefits are set to expire in the coming days, leaving about 12 million Americans without federal support. A number of other benefits are set to expire at the end of the year.

An independent panel of experts advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted on Saturday to endorse a second coronavirus vaccine for use in adults 18 and older.

The committees recommendation, by a vote of 11 in favor and none against (with three recusals due to conflicts of interest), followed Fridays announcement that the vaccine, made by Moderna, had been granted an emergency authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

The advisory committees endorsement now awaits final approval from Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the C.D.C., which is expected shortly.

The committees vote signals to hospitals and doctors that they may proceed to inoculate patients with the Moderna vaccine. Some 5.9 million doses are scheduled to ship on Sunday, and the first vaccinations are expected to begin on Monday.

Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which was authorized for use in people 16 and older, Modernas inoculations are intended for adults only. (Moderna did not begin its pediatric studies until Dec. 9 and did not expect to have a full set of data until sometime next year.)

In adults, Modernas vaccine was more than 94 percent effective at preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19. Its still unclear how well the two vaccines fare at curbing coronavirus transmission.

Much of the advisory committees deliberations centered on the severe allergic reactions reported after injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which contains ingredients similar to those in Modernas recipe.

Six cases of anaphylaxis have now been documented in the United States, as well as two in Britain. In addition, milder allergic reactions have been reported. Experts have said these cases shouldnt deter a vast majority of people from getting the vaccine. More than 272,000 doses of Pfizers vaccine have already been doled out nationwide.

Half of the people who received Modernas vaccine in clinical trials also reported some uncomfortable symptoms, including fatigue, headaches and soreness, after their second shot, given about four weeks after the first. Some volunteers also developed fevers or rashes around injection sites.

Incidents like these appear to be much more common with Modernas vaccine than Pfizers, which contains a smaller dose of active ingredients. But most of the side effects disappeared within a day or so of the shot.

Neither Moderna nor Pfizer has yet collected data in people who are pregnant or breastfeeding. But none of the 13 volunteers who became pregnant while participating in Modernas clinical trials, six of whom received the vaccine, reported harmful effects.

Dr. Jacqueline Miller, Modernas senior vice president, also drew attention to the representation of people of varying races and ethnicities in Modernas trials a nod to the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on communities of color.

In discussions this week, experts repeatedly noted the importance of partnering with representatives from communities of color to reaffirm vaccine safety and efficacy for people who might be skeptical of the shots.

On Sunday, C.D.C. officials will deliver more guidance about allocating the newly cleared vaccines.

Arriving at the hospital wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt under his jacket, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first Israeli to be inoculated against Covid-19 on Saturday night, saying he wanted to set an example and encourage all Israelis to get the vaccine.

One small jab for man, and a huge step for all our health, Mr. Netanyahu declared moments after receiving the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccination at the Sheba Medical Center in a Tel Aviv suburb at an event that was broadcast live on television.

His health minister, Yuli Edelstein, went next.

The pair kicked off a national vaccination campaign that prioritizes frontline health workers. Thousands of Israelis over age 60 have also received appointments to be vaccinated as early as this week.

Israel has experienced two major waves of coronavirus and, with numbers of infections on the rise again, may soon be facing a third lockdown.

The country has secured millions of vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, potentially enough for the entire population of nine million, though it is not clear how many have arrived in the country.

In the early hours of Feb. 7, Chinas powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.

The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had become one of its victims. Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Lis death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese governments instinct to suppress inconvenient information.

Yet Chinas censors decided to double down. Warning of the unprecedented challenge Dr. Lis death posed and the butterfly effect it might set off, officials got to work suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages. And they activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.

The orders were among thousands of secret government directives and other documents that were reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.

Though China makes no secret of its belief in rigid internet controls, the documents convey just how much behind-the-scenes effort is involved in maintaining a tight grip on online discourse to enforce the Communist Partys consensus: an enormous bureaucracy, armies of people, specialized technology , the constant monitoring and, presumably, lots of money.

EUROPE ROUNDUP

As President Emmanuel Macron of France entered his third day in isolation after being infected with the coronavirus, his doctor said on Saturday that he was in stable health condition compared to Friday.

He is still presenting the same symptoms of the Covid-19 illness (fatigue, coughing, aches) which do not prevent him from performing his duties, Dr. Jean-Christophe Perrochon said in a statement, adding that regular clinical examinations have proved to be reassuring.

On Friday, a day after the positive results of his coronavirus test were announced, Mr. Macron released a self-made video in which he promised to report daily on the evolution of the disease an event and a commitment that marked a departure from Frances tradition of secrecy around the health of its presidents.

Although it is still unclear how Mr. Macron contracted the virus, Frances health minister, Olivier Vran, said on Thursday that he had probably not been infected at the presidential lyse Palace but possibly at a European Council four or five days ago in Brussels during a dinner with other heads of state.

On Friday, Prime Minister Igor Matovic of Slovakia was reported to have tested positive for the virus. Mr. Matovic attended the same European Council meeting last week.

Speaking of the general situation in France, where the number of new daily cases have recently rebounded, Mr. Macron warned on Friday: We have to be vigilant as the virus is gaining in strength again.

France exited a lockdown imposed to fight back the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic only days ago. But the country is already grappling with a rebound in infections.

The evolution of the pandemic is worrisome, said Jrome Salomon, a top official at Frances health ministry, adding that the upcoming Christmas break could prove a high-risk period.

The number of new daily Covid-19 cases, which had fallen below 10,000 in late November thanks to lockdown restrictions, has picked up again and reached an average 13,000 cases per day over the past seven days.

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Virus Overwhelms U.S. and Europe Even as Vaccines Roll Out - The New York Times

COVID-19 vaccine: Rich patients in Southern California offering top dollar to cut in line for the shot  KABC-TV

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COVID-19 vaccine: Rich patients in Southern California offering top dollar to cut in line for the shot - KABC-TV

Broad skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of potential Covid-19 vaccines has created major challenges for policymakers and health officials as they develop vaccine programs. Much of this has been attributed to the anti-vaccine movement and the constant attacks on science by the outgoing presidential administration.

When discussions focus on skepticism in communities of color, particularly the Black community, the conversation tends to center around the argument that their distrust is rooted in history and a collective memory of racist policies such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and early 20th century forced-sterilization policies. This line of thinking is harmful.

By focusing on historic wounds, we lose sight of the bigger picture and stifle necessary conversation around larger systemic issues that are worthy of critical analysis. When discussing racism, people in the United States tend to compartmentalize it as mainly a historical problem. This serves age-old racist tropes that pathologize and dismiss communities of color as begrudged monoliths that simply cannot get over historical wrongdoing. It ignores the lived experience of people today and fails to acknowledge the impact of racism and racist policies on their lives.

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Communities are being actively disenfranchised today by policies created and enforced by people in positions of power. These partial narratives of historical injustices create the space to absolve policymakers and health care institutions of their roles in maintaining systems that are actively harming people. This is an important and necessary distinction that places the onus of bridging the trust gap squarely where it belongs, on those in power.

This language of distrust around vaccines is too imprecise. The distrust is actually a lack of confidence, which Merriam-Webster defines as faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way. Lack of confidence that institutions will act in right, proper, or effective ways is a direct response to historical and current actions and inactions of those bodies. This context is important if policymakers hope to reach communities of color and bridge the confidence gap.

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Health and health care disparities are crushing communities of color in this country. Health care systems and their practitioners play a significant part in this. Relative to white people, Black people are less likely to have their pain adequately treated. Black and Indigenous women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, regardless of education or socioeconomic factors.

Or consider the current state of HIV/AIDS, a pandemic that emerged in the U.S. in 1981 and that has not yet been quenched. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected that at current rates of HIV transmission in the U.S., the lifetime risk for infection for Black gay and bisexual men is 1 in 2. Compare that with 1 in 4 for Latinx/Hispanic gay and bisexual men and 1 in 11 for white gay and bisexual men. The CDC routinely conducts HIV behavioral surveillance of persons at high risk for HIV infection. In the three years following the CDCs projections for lifetime risk of HIV infection, from 2017 to 2019, Black and Latinx gay and bisexual men consistently reported less awareness and significantly less uptake of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, an effective intervention to curb transmission, compared to their non-Hispanic white counterparts.

Many people of color have had bad health care experiences or have lost loved ones to the shortcomings of the American health care system. In many of these communities there is a collective understanding that blind faith in this system, a system that has failed them time and again, can lead to poor outcomes or even death. In this context, distrust in vaccines or the health care system as a whole is a logical reaction and a protective coping response to overwhelming adversity.

Todays institutions were not created out of thin air, and they do not exist in history-free vacuums, immune to the influence of politics or larger societal problems. U.S. health care institutions have their own troublesome pasts and current practices that operate on theory developed by people deeply invested in maintaining white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal power structures.

But all is not lost. We have the great opportunity to create a new culture of public health.

As jurisdictions design their Covid-19 vaccine programs, I urge them to turn to the newly revised 10 Essential Public Health Services as a framework for direction. Originally developed in 1994 by a federal working group, the revised framework was developed this fall by the de Beaumont Foundation, the Public Health National Center for Innovations, and a task force of public health experts. To communicate effectively and build trust in communities, policymakers and institutions must center equity and account for the ways that systemic racism affects their public perception. To meaningfully address the public health crisis of racism a pandemic of racialized trauma institutions need to improve and innovate their approaches through ongoing evaluation, research, and continuous quality improvement. This will require a paradigm shift on both personal and institutional levels.

To create equitable vaccine programs, we must go beyond addressing historical trauma and account for the traumas people experience in the here and now. Racial trauma is like other forms of trauma: Its impact is widespread, it is intergenerational, and it can have severe social, physical, and psychological consequences. We already have proven public health frameworks, such as trauma-informed care, to address trauma. Its time to broaden their application.

Trauma-informed care would provide a useful framework for public health institutions and policymakers to contextualize collective racial trauma as they build their Covid-19 vaccine programs and engage with communities that have experienced health-care-related racial trauma. Trauma-informed practice understands and considers the prevalence of trauma, the complex impact it has on peoples lives, and promotes healing and recovery rather than practices that may inadvertently retraumatize.

Recognizing that governmental and health care institutions have played roles in the traumatization of communities is key. Similar to rifts in interpersonal relationships, healing the fractured relationship between the health care system and communities of color will take time and will not always be comfortable or easy. But this is necessary work. The methods should actively promote cultural humility, avoid blame, and acknowledge the wounds of the past and present. Efforts should prioritize transparency, safety, and preventing retraumatization.

To earn the trust of communities, institutions must show them that their concerns and needs matter. They should work with communities and hold themselves accountable to them.

For any hopes of a successful vaccine program, public health institutions will need to continually demonstrate their commitment to healing, empowerment, and collaboration as we together create pathways for recovery a commitment to act in a right, proper, and effective way, through policy and action.

Julian L. Watkins is a physician with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and a leader in Culture of Health Leaders, a national leadership program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The opinions expressed here are the authors own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the New York City Department of Health of Mental Hygiene, the Culture of Health Leaders program, or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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To get the Covid-19 vaccine right, stop pathologizing communities of color - STAT

Select a place or agencyAlabamaAlaskaAmerican SamoaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaGuamHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaNorthern Mariana IslandsOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaPuerto RicoRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasU.S. Virgin IslandsUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWashington, D.C.West VirginiaWisconsinWyomingBureau of PrisonsDepartment of DefenseDepartment of StateDepartment of Veterans AffairsIndian Health Service

Alabama officials said 40,950 doses of vaccine had been distributed to 15 hospitals in the state, and 4,489 shots have been administered.

A UPS plane carrying the Pfizer vaccine arrived in Alaska on Sunday night. The initial allocation of 35,100 doses included 11,700 doses that the federal Indian Health Service allocated to Alaska tribal governments. Two health care workers in Juneau had adverse reactions to the vaccine.

American Samoas public health agency said Wednesday that it expected to receive its first shipment soon.

The director of the Arizona health department said that 58,500 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in the state. On Monday, state officials said an initial shipment would be distributed in the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

A spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Health said the state received 25,350 doses of Pfizer vaccine, and that 462 shots had been administered by Wednesday morning.

State officials in California said 33,150 doses arrived on Monday, and that more were expected later in the week. Some county officials provided figures that suggested the states total would be far higher. In Santa Clara County, officials said that 5,850 doses had arrived. And 82,875 doses arrived in Los Angeles County, where they were being distributed to acute care hospitals.

Colorado officials said 34,125 doses had been distributed to 23 sites in the state, and the state published a dashboard that said 12,123 people had been vaccinated with one dose.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that 1,982 doses had been administered in the state. Mr. Lamont said the state had received its entire initial allocation, but his office did not specify how many doses that included.

Delaware officials said 8,775 doses arrived in the state in multiple shipments this week. At least 750 health care workers were given the first shot of the vaccine this week.

Florida officials said Thursday that they had received 184,275 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The state did not answer questions about why it appeared to receive more than the 179,400 doses the federal government had indicated would be initially allocated.

Gov. Brian Kemp said the state had received 84,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine.

Arthur San Agustin, the director of Guams public health agency, said 3,900 doses of Pfizers vaccine had arrived in the territory.

A Hawaii official said 4,875 doses of vaccine arrived in the state this week and were being sent to hospitals. At least a few people had already been vaccinated, with more expected soon.

An official with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said 2,925 doses were delivered to Idaho on Monday and Tuesday, and that more were expected late in the week. As of Friday, 944 people in the state had already received a shot.

A spokeswoman for Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday that 109,000 doses had arrived in the state, about 23,000 of which were assigned to Chicago. At least 3,500 people had been vaccinated. Officials in Kane County, in the Chicago suburbs, said they had received 4,795 doses that were being distributed to five hospitals.

Officials did not answer questions about how many doses had arrived in the state or how many shots had been given. They said more than 50,000 doses were expected at more than 50 hospitals by the end of the week.

Gov. Kim Reynolds said about 500 health care workers received shots by midweek. The first shipments in the state went to hospitals in Iowa City and Des Moines. A spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Health said the states initial allocation of vaccines had been reduced.

Gov. Laura Kelly said 23,750 doses had arrived in Kansas. On Wednesday, more than 600 health care workers at Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka received vaccines.

A Kentucky official said 30,285 doses had arrived in the state, and that at least 269 doses had been administered. Hospitals in Louisville, Lexington and Bowling Green received the first shipments, followed by deliveries to Corbin, Pikeville, Edgewood and Madisonville.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said 39,000 doses had arrived in the state and at least 7,000 people had received a first dose. Seventy-one hospitals in the state received shipments, Mr. Edwards said.

Dr. Nirav Shah, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday that 2,264 individuals have received a first dose of the vaccine.

A Maryland official said 50,700 Pfizer doses had arrived in the state and that hospital workers were already being vaccinated. Residents and staff of long-term care facilities could receive shots as early as next week.

Gov. Charlie Baker said Friday that the state had distributed 59,475 doses to hospitals and had administered 6,200 shots.

The state reported that it received 84,825 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and had given 2,708 shots.

Minnesota officials said 7,000 doses had arrived in the state by Thursday, with more expected later in the week. It was not clear how many doses had been administered.

Mississippi received 25,000 doses of vaccine, according to the states health department.

Gov. Mike Parsons office said almost all of the 51,675 doses the state expected had arrived by Wednesday at 21 sites, and that nearly 1,000 health care workers had received first doses. Hospitals in St. Louis, Kansas City and Jefferson City were among those that received vaccines.

State officials said they expected thousands of doses this week and at least 3,000 shots had been administered to health care workers by Friday.

Nebraska officials said 15,600 doses were expected to be delivered to hospitals by Wednesday evening. At least 4,069 shots have been administered.

State officials announced that 25,350 doses had arrived in Nevada this week. The University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, in Las Vegas, said more than 1,000 employees there would be vaccinated.

Gov. Chris Sununus office said 12,675 initial doses were shipped to New Hampshire. Some employees of Elliot Hospital in Manchester received their first doses on Tuesday. More than 900 health care workers statewide have received a shot.

Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday that New Jersey had received roughly 76,000 doses. An official said 2,149 health care workers had received the first dose of the vaccine as of Friday.

A spokesman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said 17,550 doses had arrived in the state by Wednesday, including 400 doses for three Native American nations that chose to receive their vaccines through the state instead of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at least 87,750 doses had arrived in the state and 19,000 people had received a shot. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said 42,900 doses had arrived there, and that about 5,200 people in the city had received a first dose. A nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center was among the first in the country to receive the vaccine on Monday.

North Carolina officials said they expected to receive thousands of doses that would be distributed to dozens of hospitals, but did not answer questions about how many had arrived or how many shots had been administered. Wake Forest Baptist Health said it received 2,925 doses on Monday and started vaccinating people on Tuesday.

Molly Howell, the states immunization program manager, said the state received 6,825 doses of Pfizer vaccine. At least 831 doses had already been administered.

A territorial official said it expected 5,850 doses in its initial allocation. The governor said Wednesday that some doses of the Pfizer vaccine had arrived.

The state announced that it received 98,475 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

A state official said Oklahoma had received 33,150 doses of the Pfizer vaccine as well as 6,825 doses that went, in part, to the Department of Veterans Affairs and to several tribal governments. Oklahoma indicated that 2,253 doses have been administered.

The state announced it had received 35,100 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. A total of 685 health care workers had received a first dose as of Thursday.

Officials for the state and the city of Philadelphia said that Pennsylvania had received 111,150 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. At least 1,205 people have been given one dose of the vaccine. Philadelphia received 13,650 of those doses.

Puerto Rico officials said the territory had received 30,225 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and had administered 17,875 shots.

A Rhode Island health official said 1,226 doses of the vaccine have been administered to health care workers, and a total of 9,750 have been delivered to the state.

The state announced that it had received 42,900 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

A state official said that South Dakota received 7,800 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The state published a dashboard that said 3,479 people had been vaccinated with one dose.

Tennessee published a dashboard showing that 2,711 people had received a first dose.

The state health department said it received 224,250 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that had been delivered to 110 facilities in 34 counties. Texas published a dashboard showing that 15,352 people had received a first dose.

A health official said the territory had received 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. As of Wednesday, 80 clinical workers had been vaccinated.

A state official said Utah had received 14,625 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The state published a dashboard that said 1,347 shots had been administered.

A Vermont official said, as of Tuesday, that the state had received 3,900 Pfizer doses and that another 1,950 doses were expected to ship directly to pharmacies that would vaccinate people at long-term care facilities.

A state official said Virginia had received 72,150 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

On Wednesday, the state announced that 31,200 doses of the Pfizer vaccine had arrived and that more were expected later in the week. The following day, the state said it was contacted by the federal government and told, without explanation, that its initial vaccine allocation was being reduced. The state had administered at least 1,159 shots to high-risk health workers so far.

Officials in Washington, D.C., said they received 6,825 doses of vaccine.

A health official said West Virginia received 16,575 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and, as of Tuesday, at least 2,788 shots had been given to people.

On Wednesday, a state official said that 32,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine had arrived. She said she expected that about 18,000 doses would arrive later in the week. At least 192 shots had been delivered.

A state official said that Wyoming received 4,875 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

The Bureau of Prisons did not provide the number of doses it had received or the shots it had administered. It said it planned to initially offer the vaccine to full-time staff.

The Department of Defense would not share how much vaccine it had received. It plans to administer an initial allocation of 43,875 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to service members, dependents, retirees, civilian employees and select contract personnel.

State Department officials said they had received a small initial shipment, but declined to provide details of the agencys vaccination program.

The Department of Veterans Affairs said it received approximately 73,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

The federal agency said it received 22,425 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. As of Thursday morning, more than 3,100 doses had been administered to people.

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At Least 128000 People in the U.S. Have Received the Covid-19 Vaccine - The New York Times

Ohio governor meets with US surgeon general after 2nd COVID-19 vaccine is approved  ABC6OnYourSide.com

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Ohio governor meets with US surgeon general after 2nd COVID-19 vaccine is approved - ABC6OnYourSide.com

Back in March, when the pall of the pandemic hung over the city, and long stretches of Broadway were as desolate as a dry creek bed, the New York Police Department began enforcing a mandate to observe social-distancing measures. Between March 17th and May 4th, the Times reported, the police made forty arrests for social-distancing violations; thirty-five of those arrested were African-Americans. Deployed to fight a virus, the N.Y.P.D. delivered the same kind of slanted tallies that result when it is deployed to fight narcotics. COVID-19 has been the defining crisis of the year. But the racially skewed arrest numberslike the racially skewed numbers associated with infections, hospitalizations, and fatalitiessuggest that our perennial problem remains the disparities that mar the society into which the virus was introduced.

Inequalities abound in the narrative of this pandemic. Black people and Latinos have disproportionately lost their jobs in the COVID recession, but they are also more likely to perform the kinds of labor deemed essential, which accounts, in part, for the higher infection, hospitalization, and death rates found among these populations. For this and similar reasons, the fact that, on Monday, Sandra Lindsay, a Black nurse who works at the Long Island Jewish Hospital, became the first American to receive the Pfizer vaccine, and that it was administered to her by Dr. Michelle Chester, a Black doctor with Northwell Health, was laden with significance. Just forty-two per cent of African-Americans are willing to receive the vaccine, despite the fact that they are more likely than white Americans to be infected withand die fromthe virus. Last month, the N.A.A.C.P., in conjunction with two other organizations, released a report, Vaccine Hesitancy in Black and Latinx Communities, which found that just fourteen per cent of African-Americans surveyed mostly or completely trust the vaccines safety. On Wednesday, Trayvon Martins mother, Sybrina Fulton, who last month ran for a county commissioners seat in Floridas Miami-Dade County, posted her doubts on Instagram, asking, I really want to trust the scientist but why do they have a vaccine for COVID-19 so fast but not cancer or AIDS?

Notably, Republicans are another group voicing significant skepticism about the vaccine; according to a Gallup poll conducted in October, less than half were willing to be vaccinated, compared with sixty-nine per cent of Democrats. Donald Trump has been a driving factor among both groups, albeit for very different reasons. Earlier this year, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that eighty-three per cent of Black people think that Trump is a racist, while the N.A.A.C.P.s report notes that only four per cent of Blacks trust the Administration; that distrust has apparently bled into perceptions of the vaccine. Republicans, for their part, having been fed a steady diet of quack cures, pseudoscience, and misinformation by the White House, have been primed to disbelieve much of the science associated with the pandemicand many of the scientists who have been working to put an end to it. This dynamic may change somewhat after Friday, when Vice-President Mike Pence was vaccinated on live television. The net result of all that has preceded that event, however, will be one that we have grudgingly become accustomed to this year: more people will die unnecessarily.

Yet, for Black America, the story extends far beyond Trump. In September, when Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, a historically black institution in Louisiana, announced that he had volunteered for a vaccine trial, and encouraged his students do likewise, the Internet exploded with references to the Tuskegee experiment. In that four-decade-long medical scheme, which began in 1932, nearly four hundred African-American men with syphilis were led to believe that they were receiving treatment, but were, in fact, left untreated, so that doctors could chart the course of the disease. In the nearly fifty years since the experiment was exposed, it has become a central reference point for understanding Black Americans relationship to the medical establishment. The story of Henrietta Lacksa Black woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, and whose cancerous cells had been harvested for research, without her knowledge, by Johns Hopkins Hospital, replicated, sent to labs around the world, and later sold commerciallyhas likewise become shorthand for medical exploitation. That history, chronicled in works such as Harriet Washingtons Medical Apartheid and Dorothy Robertss Killing the Black Body, is, in part, what hampered efforts to recruit African-American volunteers for the trials, and now hampers efforts to get African-Americans vaccinated.

In this context, conversations about the vaccine are inevitably balancing acts between the unknown likelihood of contracting, or succumbing to, the virus and the known medical history of the African-American population. Such concerns are not walled-off by discipline, which is why the coercive approach of the N.Y.P.D. this spring, and the events that sparked the months of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, also contribute to a broader skepticism aboutif not the science itselfthe good faith of the system in which it exists. On Monday, Thomas Fisher, a Black E.R. physician at the University of Chicago Medicine, told me that our essential people are getting sick, but being pushed to deliver food and drive Ubers, and things like that, without P.P.E. He added, Its hard to imagine that we wont also reflect maybe these same inequities with the distribution and uptake of this vaccine.

One outcome of all this has been that many African-Americans who have not outright rejected the vaccine are taking a wait-and-see approach, which, in the short term, will slow the progress toward herd immunity and give the virus more time to circulate in the places where it has already been most deadly. Another result is that the success of the vaccination effort will depend largely on the credibility of the people associated with it. This is why there is such keen interest in Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, an African-American immunologist who was instrumental in the development of the Moderna vaccinewhich, on Friday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized for emergency use in adults. It is also why Black churches have begun sponsoring forums on vaccination. On Tuesday, the Reverend Matthew Watley, senior pastor at Kingdom Fellowship A.M.E. Church, in Silver Spring, Maryland, moderated an online discussion on the issue with the objective of addressing concerns in his congregation and beyond. The goal is to ultimately have vaccinations done in our churches, he told me. We have to get this to where our people are. Amid the remonstrances on the right and among some centrists about identity politics, the situation we find ourselves in now confirms, once more, that identity is, in fact, political. We will solve the riddle of COVID long before we resolve the reasons why, and for whom, it became so deadly.

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African-American Resistance to the COVID-19 Vaccine Reflects a Broader Problem - The New Yorker

Afterahistorically eventfulfewdays for COVID-19 vaccinesfeaturing key meetings at the FDA and CDC, plusan emergency authorizationa massive immunization programkickedoff Monday morning.

Vaccinations with Pfizer and BioNTech's newly-minted shotstartedin the U.S. Mondayless than 11 months after the countrys first COVID-19 case. Whileit's a historic moment, and the speed to market has been unprecedented,SVBLeerinkanalysts point out the hurdlesstill ahead.

Despite high efficacy figuresfor the Pfizer/BioNTech and Modernavaccines in pivotal studies, theres still widespread hesitancy among the general public, the analysts wrote.

Only about50% to 60% of the population plans to get the vaccine, surveys show. Even healthcare workers have their own reservations. Recent stories highlighting cases of anaphylaxis and Bell's palsy after vaccinationhave intensified thoseconcerns, the analysts wrote.

RELATED:It's official: Pfizer, BioNTech COVID-19 shot grabs emergency FDA nod, clearing way for first U.S. vaccinations

Supply will also be alimiting factor formonths. Moderna has said it can make 20 million doses available to the U.S. by the end of the year, and up to 100 million doses by the end of the first quarter of 2021; it agreed Friday to addanother 100 million by the end of Q2.

Meanwhile, Pfizer expects to ship 25 million doses in the remainder of 2020 and up to 100 million in the first quarter of next year.

If the companies meet those targets, about 100 million Americans could get vaccines in the first 3 months of 2021, and 50 million in Q2. Both vaccines require two doses.

As Pfizer ships its first doses, Moderna is gearing up for its own FDA advisory committee meeting this week. The company could be shipping doses next week if all goes well, the analysts figure.

And then there are thenow-well-knowncold-chain requirements for the mRNA vaccines. Pfizer has designed special containers to help its doses stay at ultra-cold temperaturesuntil use, and distributorsfrom air to truck to clinical have been training to handle the vaccine properly on its way to people's arms.

RELATED:Weak clinical data force Sanofi, GSK to delay COVID-19 vaccine

While the Pfizer and Moderna programshave succeededin late-stage testing, the analysts also raised concerns that several of the worlds leading vaccine makershave either suffered R&D setbacks orsignaled awillingness to step away from COVID-19 shot research.

Sanofi and GSKon Friday reported aninsufficient response in older adults for their partnered vaccine so that program will be tied up in thetime-consumingprocess of finding a correct dose, the analysts pointed out. Australias CSL, a leading flu vaccine provider, discontinued its program after itcaused false positiveson HIV tests.

Merck & Co.recentlysaid it would have to carefully look at its own prospects in COVID-19, considering the highbar set by Pfizer and Modernas programs, the analysts wrote.

And all of that follows a high-profile setback for AstraZeneca: Researchers mistakenly gave a half-sized firstdose of its adenovirus vaccine to one group of participants in its phase 3 vaccine, muddying the waters on efficacy and delaying the company's application for an approval.

This then means that four of the worlds large vaccine companies ... are now removed from the forefront of COVID vaccine development, the analysts wrote. Although these actions are justifiable from a research or commercial perspective, we are concerned that there may be only limited backup options behind Pfizer and Moderna.

RELATED:AstraZeneca, J&J COVID-19 shots must succeed to meet U.S. vaccination goal: Slaoui

Its not surprising for companies to see setbacksthrough an R&D process, the analystspointed out. Pfizer,BioNTechand Moderna have thus far managed quite an operational feat, they allowed.

Still, even with those companies' successesand withthe setbacks at Sanofi and other companiesOperation Warp Speed head Moncef Slaoui recently said the U.S. will need doses from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson to meet its demand.

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As Pfizer's first COVID-19 vaccine doses roll across the U.S., analysts size up the hurdles ahead - FiercePharma