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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the doses expected this week have been delayed by winter weather in other parts of the country, forcing the city to postpone 30,000 to 35,000 vaccination appointments. The city has less than 30,000 first doses left and could run out of the COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, he said in a daily update.
A public health expert said the delays were unacceptable.
“The fact that vaccination centers take snowy days will only help things more than they already are,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety. “The virus doesn’t take snowy days.”
The southeastern United States, hit by power cuts and icy conditions, is experiencing the same problem. Some vaccination sites have canceled consultations and vaccine shipments remain delayed, said Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator.
Samantha Bequer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, said that 200,000 doses of the Modern vaccine expected to arrive on Tuesday are now expected on Thursday.
And in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention postponed last Friday’s shipments in preparation for the winter storm. State officials do not expect deliveries until the end of this week, at least.
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Climate impacts COVID-19 vaccine, test visits
The winter weather is causing the cancellation of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines and testing appointments.
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In the headlines:
►The White House has postponed President Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to Michigan, delaying his visit to the Pfizer facility in Portage from Thursday to Friday, according to sources familiar with the visit. Although details of the delay were not available, Washington is in line for ice and snow on Thursday.
►New York is suing Amazon, claiming that the company failed to provide workers with a safe environment in two warehouses as COVID-19 infections have increased across the country.
►If the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine seems chaotic and incomprehensible, with numbers that don’t add up and allocations that don’t make sense, you’re not alone.
►North Korea attempted to break into the servers of US drugmaker Pfizer to steal information about the coronavirus vaccine, South Korean intelligence officials reported on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.
►In declarations to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged “all countries” to provide all data since the first days of their outbreaks. The comments come days after reports that China refused to provide raw data on the first cases of COVID-19 to a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the pandemic.
Today’s numbers: The United States has more than 27.8 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and 490,400 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Global totals: More than 110 million cases and 2.43 million deaths. More than 72.4 million doses of vaccine have been distributed in the United States and about 56.2 million have been administered, according to the CDC.
📘 What we’re reading: Want a worry-free fourth of July? COVID-19 vaccinations need to be accelerated – and quickly. Read more here.
Air Force Major General Jeff Taliaferro, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says “very old data” suggests that only two-thirds of the military who received the vaccine accepted it. This appears to be a higher acceptance rate than that of the general population – surveys indicate that up to half of Americans say they are unsure whether they will accept the vaccine when it becomes available. Troops, however, often live, work and fight together in environments where social detachment and wearing masks can sometimes be difficult.
“We are still struggling with what the message is and how we influence people to opt for the vaccine,” said Brig. Gen. Edward Bailey, Armed Forces Command surgeon.
The Justice Department is examining New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus task force and trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated data on deaths in nursing homes, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. Cuomo, who was once a national leader in the fight against the virus, is facing calls for an investigation after its top adviser, Melissa DeRosa, told lawmakers last week that the state “paused” the disclosure of certain data from nursing homes COVID -19 for state legislators. Cuomo and DeRosa said they delayed the release of the data because they were focused on a similar investigation by the Department of Justice.
“No excuses,” said Cuomo this week. “We should have done a better job of providing information, we should have done a better job of combating disinformation. I accept responsibility for that. I am in charge.”
– Jon Campbell
Life expectancy in the United States fell to the lowest level in 15 years, and even lower for black Americans and Latinos, during the first half of the coronavirus pandemic, a study released on Thursday revealed. Data up to June 2020 show that life expectancy at birth for the total U.S. population has dropped from 2019 in one year to 77.8 years, the lowest since 2006, according to researchers at the Centers’ National Center for Health Statistics for Disease Control and Prevention. The life expectancy of black populations has decreased more than 2019 – 2.7 years, to 72 years.
“It was disturbing to see that the gains that have been made for the black community and the narrowing of the difference between the life expectancy of African Americans and Americans (white) in the past six years have stopped,” said Dr. Leon McDougle, president of National Medical Association.
– Adrianna Rodriguez
The neutralizing antibody response of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine decreased by two-thirds against the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa, but it is not known how it could impact the level of protection of the vaccine, according to a published preliminary report Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The South Africa variant, known as B.1.351, has been detected in only about 20 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., but has raised concerns due to the possibility of resisting vaccines. Pfizer and BioNTech said there has been “no clinical evidence so far” that their vaccine is not effective against this variant, but they are working on an upgrade or booster injection anyway.
“It is not clear what effect a reduction in neutralization by approximately two-thirds would have on the requested (vaccine) protection of COVID-19 caused by the B.1.351 strain of SARS-CoV-2, ” says the report, authored by researchers at Pfizer , BioNTech and the University of Texas Medical Branch.
The researchers found no reduction in effectiveness against the UK variant.
Two Louisiana residents were arrested for trying to bribe Hawaii airport inspectors to allow them to circumvent the state’s mandatory Safe Travel rules, officials said. Johntrell White, 29, and Nadia Bailey, 28, arrived in Hawaii on February 12 without “valid COVID-19 exemptions or pre-tests,” officials said in a press release. They told an airport inspector that they would give her $ 3,000 to let them go without quarantine.
“The tracker alerted the sheriffs, who arrested them for bribery. White and Bailey were fined and released and immediately flew back to the mainland,” the statement said.
Hawaii’s current travel restrictions allow visitors to pass a negative test prior to arrival or undergo a mandatory 10-day quarantine.
Mexican police arrested six people on Wednesday in Nuevo León, on the northern border, for alleged trafficking in fake coronavirus vaccines. Deputy Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell later said that the counterfeits were presented as Pfizer vaccines, which are only available in Mexico through government vaccination teams. He said the suspects offered the vaccines for sale for the equivalent of about $ 2,000 per dose.
“You don’t play with health and, in these pandemic moments, nobody should profit,” said Secretary of Public Security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez.
Contributing: The Associated Press