“Overall, things are definitely looking up,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, told CNN on Friday.
An FDA advisory committee will meet on the request on February 26. The panel will make a recommendation that the FDA will consider when making an authorization decision.
And experts pointed out the potential advantages: unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson would give just one injection; it does not need to be stored in freezers; and can be stored for three months at refrigerator temperature.
The addition of a new vaccine will increase the supply and allow more people to be inoculated more quickly, said Offit and other experts.
And “the weather will get warmer and when it does, it will be less easy for this virus to be transmitted,” said Offit.
“I really think we will get over it in the summer or late summer, because I think everything is now going in the right direction,” said Offit.
Dr Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s school of public health, also said on Friday that the vaccination situation in the United States “is improving.”
New York to offer vaccines to people with underlying diseases
New York may be the first state to offer access to the vaccine to people with a comorbidity or simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions, regardless of their age.
The governor’s office listed cancer, chronic kidney disease, lung disease and heart problems as some of the underlying comorbidities and conditions that the state will use to determine eligibility for the Covid-19 vaccine.
Starting on February 15, doses reserved for hospital staff will be relocated to those with comorbidities if hospital staff have not used them, Cuomo said on Friday.
Approximately 75% of hospital staff have been vaccinated, and those who have not done so will still have to get their vaccines before access is open to others.
Health departments will work with the state and the CDC to determine which medical conditions qualify.
The model predicts a steady drop in the mortality rate – unless variants intervene
The speed with which the variants spread versus the speed of vaccinations will be a key factor in the number of coronavirus deaths in the coming months, according to a forecast by the University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Assessment.
Currently, the IHME projects that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the country per day will drop steadily until June 1, in part because of the launch of vaccines and surveys that show growing percentages of Americans saying they are willing to get vaccines.
The United States averaged more than 3,230 Covid-19 deaths per day last week, not far from the record average of 3,357 set on January 13, according to Johns Hopkins University.
But in the worst case, including the spread of the rampant variant, daily death rates could rise again in March – and even exceed 2,600 a day in mid-April before falling, says the IHME.
“If variants are more widespread and people return to their previous lives faster” after being vaccinated, “then you approach our worst scenario we launched,” said IHME director Dr. Chris Murray, Anderson Cooper of CNN on Friday night.
Genetic tests showed that the patient, who had an underlying disease that weakened his immunity, had been infected with the same virus all the time, but that he was evolving as he reproduced.
“It was incredible,” said Dr. Jonathan Li, who heads a laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston that studies viruses and their mutations and was called in to help study the patient’s case.
For now, cases of Covid-19 and hospitalizations in the United States have been decreasing after a sudden increase in the holiday era.
The country averaged about 130,402 new Covid-19 cases per day last week – down more than 47% from a peak average of more than 249,000 per day on January 8, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
The number of people in US hospitals on Thursday was 88,688 – the lowest since November 24.
CDC Director: Guidance on reopening schools will be launched next week
“Our goal is to get the kids back to school,” said Walensky on Friday. “Schools must be the last places closed and the first open. Our goal is to ensure that when children return to schools, we do this with the safety of children and teachers ”.
“One of the things we need to do to ensure that schools are safe is to ensure that the spread of the disease in the community decreases,” said Walensky. “We are actively working on the guidance, the official guidance, which will be released next week.”
So far, 24 states and Washington, DC, are explicitly allowing some teachers or school staff to receive the vaccine.
The Biden administration plans to make 60 million tests available at home this summer
The Biden government announced on Friday that, under the Defense Production Act, some 60 million Covid-19 home tests will be available to the public by the end of this summer.
These tests will be in addition to Ellume’s home tests that the government previously announced, said Tim Manning, Covid-19’s supply coordinator, during a press conference at the White House.
“The country is right behind where we need to be in testing,” said Manning.
“In the coming weeks, the United States government has plans to invest in six other suppliers to rapidly increase testing capacity,” said Manning.
On Monday, Andy Slavitt, the senior White House Biden consultant to Covid’s response, said during a meeting at the White House that the Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are working with the Australian company. Ellume to provide more of your mindfulness. Covid-19 conducts domestic testing to the United States and ships 100,000 test kits per month to the United States from February to July.
Now, “having another 60 million home tests available during the summer is exactly what the country needs,” said Slavitt during Friday’s briefing.
CNN’s Michael Nedelman, Maggie Fox, Andrea Diaz, Jacqueline Howard, Sara Murray, Naomi Thomas, Kristina Sgueglia and Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.