Covid-19: Alaska Becomes First State To Open Vaccine Access to Everyone 16 and Older – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:Video

transcript

transcript

Today, we want to announce that starting tomorrow, we are going to open up the vaccination program to all Alaskans who live here or work here, 16 and older. So starting tomorrow, youre going to be able to get a vaccine if you want one if youre 16 or older. This is great news for those that want to get a vaccination. So weve had a number of Alaskans that have already gotten their vaccines. Theyre already taking care of that. And weve been very fortunate that weve been able to protect our most vulnerable, our first-line health care workers, many of our folks in rural Alaska, our individuals in our congregate settings, and our senior and elder care centers. And now is an opportunity for other Alaskans to get the vaccine.

Everyone aged 16 and older living or working in Alaska is now eligible to receive the vaccine, Gov. Mike Dunleavy said on Tuesday evening, making it the first state to allow all of its residents access to the vaccine.

Alaska has fully vaccinated 16 percent of its population, the highest rate in the country, according to a New York Times database.

Adam Crum, the commissioner of the state health department, said, If Alaskans had any questions about vaccine eligibility and criteria, I hope todays announcement clears it up for you. He added, Simply put, you are eligible to get the vaccine.

Mr. Dunleavy encouraged all Alaskans that are thinking about getting vaccinated to do so, adding that the vaccine gives us the ability now in Alaska to far outpace other states.

The announcement came as other states were rapidly expanding access to vaccines, with New York and Minnesota announcing on Tuesday that they would grant eligibility to wide swaths of their populations.

Eligible only in some counties

Eligible only in some counties

Eligible only in some counties

The pace of vaccinations in the United States has continued to accelerate, with about 2.15 million doses being given daily, according to a New York Times database. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that about 61.1 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 32.1 million people who have been fully vaccinated by Johnson & Johnsons single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Some parts of Alaska have reached 90 percent vaccination rates among seniors, Governor Dunleavy said in a statement. In the Nome Census Area, over 60 percent of residents 16 and older have received at least one shot.

We want to get our economy back up and running. We want to get our society back up and running, the governor said. We want to put this virus behind us as far as possible, as soon as possible.

The Pfizer vaccine is available to people 16 and older in Alaska, the governor said, while the Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines are available to those 18 and older.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Tuesday that his state would lower its age threshold for Covid-19 vaccine eligibility beginning on Wednesday, allowing anyone older than 60 to be inoculated.

New York State is also opening vaccination eligibility next week to a large number of public-facing workers, including government employees, nonprofit workers and essential building services workers. Those people can begin to get vaccinated on March 17.

New York will join a handful of other U.S. states that allow vaccinations for all people over 60; the majority have set their minimum age eligibility requirement at 65.

Mr. Cuomo, in an appearance in Syracuse, pointed to expected increases in supply from the federal government as the reason behind expanding vaccine eligibility.

Among the workers eligible to get vaccinated next week are public works employees, social service and child service caseworkers, government inspectors, sanitation workers, election workers, Department of Motor Vehicle employees and county clerks.

Appointments will open for those over 60 starting at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo said. People over 65 became eligible for a vaccine in January.

Elsewhere, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota announced on Tuesday that the state would expand eligibility to more than 1.8 million Minnesotans this week, including essential workers in industries like food service and public transit, and people 45 and older with at least one underlying medical condition. The announcement is weeks ahead of schedule, the governor said in a statement, as the state is set to reach its goal of vaccinating 70 percent of Minnesotans 65 and older this week.

In Ohio, residents 50 and older, as well as people with certain medical conditions who had not yet qualified, will be eligible to receive a vaccine this week, Gov. Mike DeWine announced on Monday. The same day, Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina announced that residents 55 and older, those 16 and older with high-risk medical conditions and some frontline workers were eligible.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have reached a tentative agreement to restore in-person instruction, clearing the way for a mid-April reopening of some classrooms in one of the last large school districts to bring students back in substantial numbers.

The deal, contingent on teacher vaccinations, extensive health measures and the countys impending exit from the states most restrictive tier of health regulations, was announced on Tuesday evening in a joint statement by the district superintendent, Austin Beutner, and the union president, Cecily Myart-Cruz.

The right way to reopen schools must include the highest standard of Covid safety in schools, continued reduction of the virus in the communities we serve and access to vaccinations for school staff, they said. This agreement achieves that shared set of goals.

The agreement is subject to approval by the districts school board and ratification of the unions membership.

Under the tentative deal, elementary school and high-need students will be brought back in about six weeks, to allow time for returning school employees to be fully vaccinated, according to officials familiar with district negotiations. As middle school and high school teachers become inoculated, those students will then be phased in.

The agreement will not immediately restore instruction to pre-pandemic levels. At most, officials said, it will be a blend of remote and in-person teaching, allowing students to come into school for several hours a week in small, stable cohorts while still taking classes online. The last day of school is June 11, and the district expects to offer summer school as it did last year.

This month, California began immunizing teachers statewide, with Gov. Gavin Newsom setting aside 10 percent of new doses for school employees and channeling 40,000 doses specifically to Los Angeles school employees.

About 38,000 of the districts 86,000 teachers and other support personnel have been vaccinated, given appointments or waived the privilege, Mr. Beutner said. Most of those have been employed in the districts preschools and elementary schools.

In the governors State of the State address on Tuesday, Mr. Newsom said that theres nothing more foundational to an equitable society than getting our kids safely back into classrooms.

Look, Jen and I live this as parents of four young children, Mr. Newsom noted, echoing the pandemic frustrations of many California parents. Helping them cope with the fatigue of Zoom school. The loneliness of missing their friends. Frustrated by emotions they dont yet fully understand.

He also noted that the state has committed $6.6 billion for tutoring, summer school, extended school days and mental health programs.

We can do this, the governor said. The science is sound.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new freedoms for the fully-vaccinated members of the population, questions about traveling to visit grandchildren, for example, were immediate.

The answer, the C.D.C. director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said was yes, as long as the vaccinated grandparents lived nearby. But the agency continues to warn Americans against traveling in general.

We know that after mass travel, after vacations, after holidays, we tend to see a surge in cases, Dr. Walensky said Monday night on MSNBC. And so, we really want to make sure again with just 10 percent of people vaccinated that we are limiting travel.

To the frustration of airlines and others in the travel industry, the latest guidance comes as students and families are considering spring break plans almost a year after wide swaths of the United States first shut down, and a growing share of Americans tentatively book travel for later in the year.

Given the presence of virus variants in nearly every state and the need for more research on whether fully vaccinated people can still transmit the virus and other questions about the vaccines, Dr. Walensky said nonessential travel should be avoided, at least for now.

Its just a first step, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday, referring to the agencys new guidance for fully vaccinated people. As more people are vaccinated, theyll look at ways to ease additional restrictions.

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it is shipping 15.8 million additional vaccine doses to states, tribes and territories, with another 2.7 million first doses to pharmacies, Ms. Psaki said. Currently, there are 2.17 million vaccine shots being administered a day on average, she said.

What is safe for newly vaccinated Americans and their unvaccinated neighbors and family members has been uncertain in large part because scientists do not yet understand whether and how often immunized people may still transmit the virus. If they can, then masking and other precautions are still needed in certain settings to contain the virus, researchers have said.

We know that the travel corridor is a place where people are mixing a lot, Dr. Walensky said during a White House briefing on Monday. Were hopeful that our next set of guidance will have more science around what vaccinated people can do, perhaps travel being among them.

Airlines for America, an industry organization, has argued that airplanes have a very low risk for virus transmission because of high-end cabin ventilation systems, strong disinfection practices and strict rules requiring that passengers wear masks. The industry has also argued that it plays a vital economic role and that further restrictions to travel could hinder the recovery.

We remain confident that this layered approach significantly reduces risk and are encouraged that science continues to confirm there is a very low risk of virus transmission onboard aircraft, the group said.

The first stimulus bill signed into law nearly a year ago, included $50 billion in grants and loans to prop up the airline industry, which was hobbled by the pandemic. In December, Congress approved another $15 billion in grants to keep airline workers employed. The relief bill passed by the Senate on Saturday, includes $14 billion more for airlines, a measure applauded by the industry.

In a Monday letter to President Bidens coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey D. Zients, a coalition of travel and tourism trade groups asked to work with the White House on federal guidance for temporary virus health credentials, which could be used to securely and uniformly verify test results or vaccination status. Such guidance could also yield benefits beyond aviation, they argued.

It could encourage more widespread adoption of processes to verify testing and vaccination records, from sports arenas to restaurants, business meetings, theme parks, and more, the group wrote.

Ms. Psaki said during the briefing on Tuesday that the Biden administration welcomed ideas that will come from the private sector and nonprofits about how people could demonstrate that they are vaccinated, but that our focus from the federal government is on getting more people vaccinated, and thats where we feel we can use our resources best.

Currently, the Biden administration requires people traveling to the United States from another country to present a negative virus test. At one point this year, administration officials were considering a similar requirement for domestic travel, a move the airline industry pushed back against, saying it was needlessly restrictive and would hurt an already struggling sector. The C.D.C. in February said it was not recommending testing for domestic travel at this time.

Bryan Pietsch contributed reporting.

In the initial months of the Covid vaccine rollout, states sought to balance between prioritizing the elderly, who are most likely to die from the virus, and people in professions most likely to be exposed to it. Under recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with underlying medical conditions, like Type 2 diabetes or cancer, which have been associated with an increased risk for severe virus symptoms, were slated to come next.

But with demand still outstripping the nations vaccine supply, a new skirmish has emerged over which health problems to prioritize.

States, which are not bound by the C.D.C.s recommendations, have set widely varying rules amid a dearth of definitive evidence about how dozens of medical conditions may affect the severity of Covid-19. The confusing morass of rules has set off a free-for-all among people who may be among the most vulnerable to the virus as they seek to persuade health and political officials to add health conditions to an ever-evolving vaccine priority list.

At least 37 states, as well as Washington, D.C., are now allowing some residents with certain health problems to receive vaccines, according to a New York Times survey of all 50 states. But the health issues granted higher priority differ from state to state, and even county to county.

Some people with Down syndrome may get vaccines in at least 35 states, for instance, but some of those states are not offering shots to people with other developmental issues. At least 30 states allow some people with Type 2 diabetes to get vaccines, but only about 23 states include people with Type 1 diabetes. At least 19 states are making the vaccine available to some people with cystic fibrosis; at least 14 have included some people with liver disease; and at least 15 have deemed some smokers eligible. At least 30 states have prioritized vaccines for people who are overweight or obese, according to the Times survey, though they vary even there, some setting the bar at a body mass index of 25, others at 30 or 40.

Eligible only in some counties

Some states require a person to prove they have a medical condition, though at least 16 states and Washington, D.C., do not. And at least 12 states allow a person to get a recommendation from a health professional to get a shot, even if their medical condition has not been given priority by the state.

In the absence of large, rigorous studies of the coronaviruss effect on people with other medical problems, medical ethicists said, there are few clear principles to apply to determine a priority sequence among many conditions. Many states are taking their cues from a list of 12 conditions that the C.D.C. has deemed to have substantial evidence for elevated Covid risks, including obesity, Type 2 diabetes, smoking and Down syndrome. C.D.C. officials have said that they regularly review the scientific literature and will expand the list as warranted.

But some medical ethicists argue that the list itself is misleading, because it suggests that the risk for all diagnoses have been considered and ranked. Is a 50-year-old with Type 1 diabetes at greater risk from Covid than a 25-year-old with sickle cell disease, or a 35-year-old with intellectual disabilities?

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, many American students have been in their classrooms since last fall frequently off and on, as outbreaks have forced quarantines and closures. But in several large cities, students have started returning to school buildings for the first time during the pandemic only in the last few weeks.

The lower grades were the first to go back in much of the country, bolstered by research showing that young children are the least likely to spread the virus or to suffer severe health problems from Covid-19. Elementary and special-needs students led the way in Chicago, where a dispute between the city and its teachers union over school safety dragged out until February.

But gradually, a growing number of older students have been sliding back behind their desks too. Chicago students in sixth through eighth grade began to return on Monday, although there is no plan yet for bringing back high school students, and most of the citys families, at all grade levels, continue to choose remote learning.

New York City, the nations largest public school system, announced on Monday that it would welcome high school students back into classrooms starting on March 22, joining elementary school students, who came back in December, and middle schoolers, who returned late last month.

Many of those New York students spent a few weeks in classrooms last fall, until a surge of cases forced them back onto laptops and tablets. The same was true in New Orleans, where after a weekslong purgatory of remote learning, high school students were able recently to once again walk their hallways.

Many returning students and their family members had some mixture of anxiety and excitement as they waited for the alarm buzzer to announce their first day back.

Its sort of surreal, said Zoe Bell, 16, a student at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans. Youll realize youre in class with only a few people, and everyone is wearing masks. Sometimes Im like, dang, when will we ever get back to normal?

The Times spoke with Zoe and others, from 5 to 18, about what it was like to return to the classroom.

U.S. ROUNDUP

The District of Columbias first attempt at an online system for residents to sign up for coronavirus vaccination performed so badly that the district decided to junk it and start over. The new one rolls out on Wednesday.

This time, the new system is meant to avoid a pitfall that plagued the old one: Huge surges of users frantically clicking at the same time, trying to score an open appointment before theyre all gone.

What we dont want is everyone to rush to the website at one time, Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the director of the citys health department, said Monday at a news briefing.

Thats what was happening every Thursday and Friday when the city posted newly available appointments, said Lindsey Parker, the citys chief technology officer. Thousands of people would constantly refresh the site in their web browsers, hoping to pounce on an appointment as soon as it appeared, and the traffic would slow the site to a crawl.

Any time there are a number of people hitting one website at the exact same time, Ms. Parker said on Monday, youre always going to have a slight lag or youre going to need to ensure that that load on the system is able to be balanced accordingly.

Under the new system, there wont be any pouncing. Residents will enter their information at their convenience; then the system will reach out to them when their turns come around to offer appointments, Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the briefing.

Similar problems have walloped online appointment scheduling systems in a number of states. The Massachusetts website crashed in February when the state opened up eligibility to anyone 65 or older and other categories, adding about a million additional people. The problems infuriated Gov. Charlie Baker, who said in an interview with WGBH at the time that the states advance work had not prepared the system adequately for the rush.

When Virginia set up its vaccine registration system around the same time, some users reported that it immediately crashed and was initially impossible to navigate. The Virginia Department of Health asked users to be patient and keep trying.

New Jersey officials blamed Microsoft for glitches that plagued its vaccine-scheduling software, Bloomberg reported last month. State officials acknowledged the problems and said they were speaking with the company to try to resolve them. In the meantime, though, the state started relying more on appointment websites run by individual counties and hospitals, which were running more smoothly, according to Bloomberg.

In other news from around the country:

Subway ridership in New York City fell by 90 percent last March and has recovered to only a third of what it was before. But it has not fallen equally in every neighborhood: Neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx have retained more of their subway riders. Those subway stations report closer to 40 percent of their pre-pandemic ridership.

Capacity limits on restaurants, stores, places of worship, gyms and personal services in Maryland will be lifted on Friday at 5 p.m., Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said on Tuesday. Bars and restaurants will be open for seated services only no standing around a crowded bar and masking and distancing requirements will stay in place. Other Republican governors, like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, have gone further, rescinding mask mandates and capacity restrictions completely.

The promoters of a Russian coronavirus vaccine known as Sputnik V demanded an apology on Tuesday from a European regulator who compared using it now to playing Russian roulette. The episode highlighted a deepening rift between Russia and the West over accusations of belittling each others vaccines.

The regulator, Christa Wirthumer-Hoche, heads the European Medicines Agency, which approves pharmaceuticals for use in the 27-member European Union.

Three member countries Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have approved or are considering approving Sputnik V. Ms. Wirthumer-Hoche said on Sunday that they should hold off until her agency finishes reviewing the vaccines safety and efficacy. Moving ahead before that, she said, was somewhat comparable to Russian roulette.

The vaccines Russian backers said in posts on Twitter that her comment raised serious questions about possible political interference in the approval process. We demand a public apology, they wrote.

Relations between Russia and the West over vaccine policies have been curdling for months, with each side accusing the other of risking lives by denigrating each others vaccines and feeding public skepticism about vaccination.

The White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said on Monday that the Biden administration was monitoring disinformation spread by Russian websites about the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the first two authorized for use in the United States.

Last fall, the financial company backing the Russian vaccine openly questioned whether the novel genetic technology used in those vaccines might pose a risk of cancer or birth defects. The company also denigrated the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which uses a genetically modified chimpanzee cold virus.

Those statements were made at a time when Western vaccine experts were sharply criticizing the Russian government for approving Sputnik V before large-scale clinical trials had begun.

Since then, clinical trials have found that the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik V are all safe and effective.

The European Medicines Agency announced last week that it was reviewing the Russian trials, and would approve Sputnik V when it had obtained the necessary data. But that approval is not likely to quickly translate into large numbers of doses becoming available to Europeans. Manufacturing plants in Russia have been struggling for months to expand production of the vaccine.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Italy surpassed 100,000 reported coronavirus deaths on Monday, adding more than 300 in the last 24 hours. The bleak tally was crossed one year after former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a national lockdown, as the country became the first in the West to be severely affected by the virus.

Italy is currently facing a large wave of coronavirus infections driven by new variants. Intensive care units are filling up, and the government is scaling up restrictions across the country.

We would have never thought that one year later, we would find ourselves facing such an emergency, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said in a video message on Monday.

Italy ranks sixth in the world for total deaths from the virus, and second in Europe after Britain, according to a New York Times database. More than three million Italians, or about one in 20, have been infected.

Unlike Britain, where about a third of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, Italy has inoculated only 6.2 percent of its population, in part because of organizational problems in distributing doses to Italys regions.

Last week, Italy blocked the export of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia, saying they were needed at home. An Italian company plans to start producing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in the summer, according to a report in Italys main newspaper, Corriere Della Sera.

Link:

Covid-19: Alaska Becomes First State To Open Vaccine Access to Everyone 16 and Older - The New York Times