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John Bacon
| USA TODAY
COVID-19: Current vaccines may be less effective in some variants
Variants of COVID-19 are emerging in America and scientists are learning that the vaccine may not work as well against them.
USA TODAY
America will mark Ash Wednesday in alternative ways today, as the threat of spreading COVID-19 affects religious traditions on the first day of Lent.
Catholic priests were instructed by the Vatican to stop making the traditional sign of the cross with ashes on the forehead of the faithful. Some churches are offering drive-thru ash and do-it-yourself bagged ash. The Vatican asks priests to spray the ashes on the heads of their faithful, a practice common in the Vatican and Italy.
“You never see the Pope with ashes on his forehead,” said Rev. Steven B. Giuliano. in Our Lady of Lourdes in Wilmington, Delaware. “They are always placed on top of your head.”
Ash Wednesday comes the day after “Fat Tuesday” – Mardi Gras – which has also seen major changes this year. The parades were canceled and the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans, usually crowded for parties, were relatively quiet. Bourbon Street was silent. Instead, residents decorated their homes with festive colors.
“Thank you all for embracing the spirit of Carnival through your creativity and innovation,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
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In the headlines:
►Doctors across the country have seen an impressive increase in cases of Multisystemic Inflammatory Syndrome in Children or MIS-C, an inflammatory syndrome that strikes some young people, usually several weeks after the coronavirus infection, reports The New York Times. The increase follows the overall increase in Covid cases in the US
The UK Foreign Minister will urge the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to declare a “vaccine ceasefire” in conflict zones to allow the inoculation of COVID-19 in people in those areas, local officials said in a press release.
►A year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of N95 masks are leaving US factories and going to storage, but there is still not enough to go to hospitals, an Associated Press investigation found.
► President Joe Biden is extending the federal government-backed mortgage foreclosure ban for three months and expanding a mortgage relief program to provide relief for families struggling financially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
► California opened on Tuesday mass vaccination sites supported by the federal government in Los Angeles and Oakland to bring vaccines to communities hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
📈 Today’s numbers: The United States has more than 27.7 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and 487,900 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: More than 109.48 million cases and 2.41 million deaths. More than 71 million doses of vaccines have been distributed in the United States and about 55 million have been administered, according to the CDC.
📘 What we’re reading: A next generation coronavirus vaccine is under development. But the initial funding was denied. Read the full story.
American scientists would gain broadly expanded resources to identify potentially more deadly coronavirus mutations under the proposed legislation. A bill approved for debate last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would provide $ 1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. He asks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to organize a national network to use the technology to track the spread of mutations – such as the variants recently discovered in the UK and South Africa – and to guide public health countermeasures.
“We need this data. Otherwise, somehow, we will be flying blind, ”said Esther Krofah, who heads the Milken Institute’s FasterCures initiative, to the Associated Press. “We don’t understand the prevalence of mutations that we should be concerned about in the US”
President Joe Biden made it clear on Tuesday that his goal is for most K-8 public schools to be open “five days a week” by the end of their first 100 days, after the White House received criticism for reducing this. goal last week.
“I think we will be close to that at the end of the first 100 days,” said Biden during a meeting at CNN’s City Hall in Milwaukee. “You will have a significant percentage of them that can be opened.”
Frustrating many parents and opening a new line of attack for Republicans, press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that Biden’s goal is that more than 50% of schools have “some teaching” in person “at least one day a week. “- not necessarily fully reopened – on the 100th day of his presidency.
But Biden said the statement was inaccurate, re-committing to the goal of having most K-8 schools fully open. Asked how he was going to return students to classrooms, Biden said, “We should vaccinate teachers.
He also said that “next Christmas, I think we will be in a very different situation [in terms of normalcy] than we are today. “
The SATs will continue this spring in the pandemic or in health. The College Board, which controls and supervises the exam that many colleges use for admission, instructed school hosts to “make their own decisions about testing and safety standards based on local restrictions,” according to its website. Hosts can close sites until the day of the test, but no closings were posted on the College Board closings page. SAT websites, usually hosted by high schools, are working to update COVID-19 exam security and security protocols to accommodate thousands of students. Hundreds of test sites across the country were closed last spring and this fall due to the pandemic.
“Although the College Board cannot directly control the capacity and availability of the test center, we are working to ensure that as many students as possible can take the test safely,” the nonprofit group said in a statement.
– Carly Q. Romalino, Cherry Hill Courier-Post
The White House has announced that it is doubling the number of doses sent directly to pharmacies and will increase the delivery of doses of the coronavirus vaccine by 23% over the previous week, government officials told governors on Tuesday.
The number of doses that the states will receive will increase from the 8.6 million a week they received during Biden’s first week in office to the 13.5 million that Zients told governors on Tuesday they will receive.
“This is the bare minimum,” Jeff Zients, coordinator of Biden’s COVID-19, told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview before making his weekly call to governors. “Supply will continue to increase.
Cities struggle to vaccinate residents, not only necessary to accelerate the country’s health and economic recovery, but also to slow the virus’s mutation. Although vaccine distribution has increased, vaccination sites across the country are closing, while hundreds of thousands of people are on waiting lists.
– Maureen Groppe
Contributing: Ryan Cormier, Delaware News Journal; The Associated Press