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Biden administrationUS surgeon general: Covid misinformation ‘spreading like wildfire’ on social mediaVivek Murthy: rise seen ‘among the unvaccinated in particular’Biden administration renews attack on Facebook Richard Luscombe in Miami@ More
PfizerUS officials call for more data on vaccine boosters as Pfizer pushes for third shot Pharma company presses case with senior health officials WHO urges priority for nations with low Covid vaccination rates Ankita RaoTue 13 Jul 2021 08.29 EDTLast modified on Tue 13 Jul 2021 08.49 EDTPfizer, the pharmaceutical company that created one of the first Covid-19 vaccines to be approved, has been making a hard sell for emergency approval of boosters – additional doses given to those already vaccinated, especially immunocompromised adults.But in private meetings with Pfizer on Monday, senior US officials said they needed more data – prompting the latest debate over how to curb a pandemic which has claimed more than 620,000 lives in the country. Last week, the US health department also rebuked Pfizer for pressing for a booster shot, and Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has said there isn’t enough evidence to support needing a third shot.Pfizer pushes for US booster shots as WHO says greed is driving vaccine disparitiesRead more“It was an interesting meeting. They shared their data. There wasn’t anything resembling a decision,” Fauci said in a Monday evening interview with the New York Times. “This is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle, and it’s one part of the data, so there isn’t a question of a convincing case one way or the other.”In the US, almost half of the population is fully vaccinated, while a little over half has received one dose, according to data from the Mayo Clinic. Still, vaccination rates lag in huge swaths of the country, giving the virus more opportunities for community outbreaks.Pfizer’s experts have pointed to Israel, where the government has decided to give a third Pfizer vaccine shot to vulnerable adults. But leaders from the World Health Organization and other organizations have pushed back, highlighting the vast lack of access and inequality in global vaccine distribution. More than 3.4 billion people have been vaccinated worldwide, but some countries, such as India, have rates as low as 5%.The debate over booster shots is the latest in the many public health decisions the Biden administration has faced since January. With the country largely relaxing Covid-19 rules and opening the economy, the path forward continues to be difficult, with emerging science being incorporated in real time.In next steps, Pfizer says it will submit more evidence to the government. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, will further study breakthrough infections – which happen when people who are vaccinated contract Covid-19.TopicsPfizerCoronavirusPharmaceuticals industryVaccines and immunisationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
US newsRepublican governors urge vaccine-hesitant residents to get Covid shotsLeaders of Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah describe high stakes as Delta variant poses threat Edward Helmore in New YorkMon 5 Jul 2021 14.02 EDTLast modified on Mon 5 Jul 2021 14.03 EDTSeveral Republican governors with lagging vaccine rates in their states have urged residents to accept the shots as the Biden administration comes under pressure to reopen US borders to overseas visitors.The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, West Virginia’s Jim Justice and Spencer Cox of Utah warned against vaccine hesitancy, which some disease experts, including the White House chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said could create “two types of America”.“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. About 32% of people in Arkansas are fully vaccinated, compared with 47.9% nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. “If we stopped right here, and we didn’t get a greater per cent of our population vaccinated, then we’re going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter.” The solution, he said, “is the vaccinations”.In a Fourth of July address on Sunday, Joe Biden called vaccination “the most patriotic thing you can do”, saying the US had moved into a new phase of virus response. But he also warned that while the country is “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus”, the effort was not complete. “We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said.Justice told ABC’s This Week: “Red states probably have a lot of people that are very, very conservative in their thinking and they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.”01:28West Virginia, which has been offering vaccine incentives from college scholarships to free hunting and fishing licenses, has a similar rate of vaccination to Arkansas.“When it really boils right down to it, they’re in a lottery to themselves,” Justice said. “We have a lottery that says if you’re vaccinated, we’re going to give you stuff. Well, you’ve got another lottery for them, and it’s a death lottery.”Cox called Utah’s low vaccination rates “troubling”, and placed blame on the state’s youthful population. He told CBS’s Face the Nation “hopefully reason will rule”.Cox’s delicacy in urging his state’s residents to accept vaccination comes as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 74% of people who have not been vaccinated said they probably or definitely would not get the shots.The divide corresponds to political affiliation, the survey found, with 86% of Democrats and only 45% of Republicans having received at least one vaccine shot. Six per cent of Democrats and 47% of Republicans said they were unlikely to get the shot.Asked about whether he is concerned the Delta variant of coronavirus could cause outbreaks in the US, Fauci said: “I don’t think you’re going to be seeing anything nationwide. Because fortunately, we have a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So it’s going to be regional. … We’re going to see, and I’ve said, almost two types of America.” Persistent resistance to vaccination in red states led Fauci to warn on Sunday that fully vaccinated Americans should “go the extra step” and wear masks when traveling to parts of the country with low rates.“If you put yourself in an environment in which you have a high level of viral dynamics and a very low level of vaccine, you might want to go the extra step … even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective,” Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press.Fauci added that the situation was lamentable: “When you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death, it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”The warnings came as the administration’s Covid response coordinator, Jeff Zients, acknowledged that it had narrowly missed its goal of 70% of adults having at least one shot by the Fourth of July.“I think we’re much further along than anyone would have anticipated at this point, with two out of three adult Americans with at least one shot,” Zients told CNN, noting that 90% of those age 65 and older had received at least one shot.The situation comes as the administration comes under increasing pressure to lift international travel restrictions that have been in place since March 2020.Steve Shur, president of the trade group Travel Technology Association, told the Hill on Monday that the administration’s travel bans were “frozen in time.”With exceptions for citizens, green-card holders, students and some family members, US entry bans remain in place for travelers from China, Iran, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Brazil, India and South Africa.“We believe it’s possible now, at least for countries of low risk, to start to reopen international travel” to the US, Shur told the outlet.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, came under pressure late last month from European heads to reciprocate the EU’s recent reopening of borders to vaccinated travelers from the US.“I can’t put a date on it,” Blinken said at a press conference in Paris on 25 June. “I can tell you we’re working very actively on this right now, and we are – like France, like our other partners in Europe – both anxious and looking forward to restoring travel. But we have to be guided by the science. We have to be guided by medical expertise.”TopicsUS newsArkansasWest VirginiaUtahVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
With Covid vaccination penetration in the US likely to fall short of Joe Biden’s 70% by Fourth of July target, pandemic analysts are warning that vaccine incentives are losing traction and that “two Americas” may emerge as the aggressive Delta variant becomes the dominant US strain.Efforts to boost vaccination rates have come through a variety of incentives, from free hamburgers to free beer, college scholarships and even million-dollar lottery prizes. But of the efforts to entice people to get their shots have lost their initial impact, or failed to land effectively at all.“It’s just not working,” Irwin Redlener at the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University, told Politico. “People aren’t buying it. The incentives don’t seem to be working – whether it’s a doughnut, a car or a million dollars.”In Ohio, a program offering five adults the chance to win $1m boosted vaccination rates 40% for over a week. A month later, the rate had dropped to below what it had been before the incentive was introduced, Politico found.Oregon followed Ohio’s cash-prize lead but saw a less dramatic uptick. Preliminary data from a similar lottery in North Carolina, launched last week, suggests the incentive is also not boosting vaccination rates there.Public officials are sounding alarms that the window between improving vaccination penetration and the threat from the more severe Delta variant, which accounts for around 10% of US cases, is beginning to close. The Delta variant appears to be much more contagious than the original strain of Covid-19 and has wreaked havoc in countries like India and the United Kingdom.“I certainly don’t see things getting any better if we don’t increase our vaccination rate,” Scott Allen of the county health unit in Webster, Missouri, told Politico. The state has seen daily infections and hospitalizations to nearly double over the last two weeks.Overall, new US Covid cases have plateaued to a daily average of around 15,000 for after falling off as the nation’s vaccination program ramped up. But the number of first dose vaccinations has dropped to 360,000 from 2m in mid-April. A quarter of those are newly eligible 12- to 15-year-olds.Separately, pandemic researchers are warning that a picture of “two Americas” is emerging – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – that in many ways might reflect red state and blue state political divides.Only 52% of Republicans said they were partially or fully vaccinated, and 29% said they have no intention of getting a vaccine, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll. 77% of Democrats said they were already vaccinated, with just 5% responding that were resisting the vaccine.“I call it two Covid nations,” Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told BuzzFeed News.Bette Korber, a computational biologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said she expected variant Delta to become the most common variant in the US within weeks. “It’s really moving quickly,” Korber told Buzzfeed.On Friday, President Biden issued a plea to Americans who have not yet received a vaccine to do so as soon as possible.“Even while we’re making incredible progress, it remains a serious and deadly threat,” Biden said in remarks from the White House, saying that the Delta variant leaves unvaccinated people “even more vulnerable than they were a month ago”.“We’re heading into, God willing, the summer of joy, the summer of freedom,” Biden said. “On July 4, we are going to celebrate our independence from the virus as we celebrate our independence of our nation. We want everyone to be able to do that.” More
A US public health expert has warned that though cases of Covid-19 are at their lowest rates for months and much of the country is returning to normal life, young Americans are still “a vulnerable host” for the coronavirus.Dr Richina Bicette, associate medical director at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told CNN children were now accounting for nearly 25% of US cases.“As adults get vaccinated and become more protected and immune,” she said, “the virus is still in the community looking for a vulnerable host and pediatric patients fit that description.”Children aged 12 and above are eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, one of three in US use. Federal authorities will this week debate extending vaccines to children aged 11 and under.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data shows that 52% of the US population over the age of 12 has had at least one vaccine dose and 42% is fully protected.The Biden administration wants 70% of US adults to have received at least one shot by 4 July. A range of incentives are being offered.Deaths in the US have slowed drastically, the toll a little under 590,000. But with virus variants causing problems as other countries reopen, experts have voiced concern over slowing rates of vaccination, particularly in Republican states.On Sunday the Republican governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union.Mississippi is 50th and last among states in vaccinations, with 30% of residents fully protected and 40.5% aged 12 and older having received at least one dose, according to the CDC. The states with the highest vaccination rates are Vermont (80.6% – with a Republican governor, Phil Scott), Hawaii (78.6%) and Massachusetts (76.8%).“I believe the vaccine works,” Reeves said. “I believe it’s safe. I believe it’s effective. I took my first dose in January, as did my wife, on TV live, and I have encouraged Mississippians to do the same.“But I also want to point out that President Biden’s goals for 4 July or otherwise are arbitrary to say the least.”Reeves said his focus was on providing “quality care” for people with Covid-19 – and trumpeted a steep decline in hospitalisations.“At our peak, we had 1,444 individuals in the hospital,” he said. “Today, we have 131. We’re down 90%. At our peak, we had 2,400 cases per day over a seven-day period. Over the last seven days, we have had barely 800 cases in total.“And so, for that entire year period, the goalpost was, let’s reduce the number of cases. And we have been successful at doing that. The question is, why?“We have had a million Mississippians that have gotten the vaccine, but we have also had 320,000 Mississippians that have tested positive for the virus. Many people believe that somewhere between four and five times more people have gotten the virus that have not tested [positive].“And so we have got probably a million or so Mississippians that have natural immunity. And because of that, there is very, very, very little virus in our state. But we’re still working to get the vaccine distributed, and hope we will continue to do so.”Asked if he was worried unvaccinated Mississippians could be “sitting ducks” to any surge involving a virus variant, Reeves avoided the question, complaining instead about political clashes with Biden officials.Host Jake Tapper changed tack, saying: “You seem to be arguing everybody should get vaccinated, and yet it’s not that big a deal that not everybody’s getting vaccinated. And those seem to be in conflict.”He then asked if Reeves would agree that Mississippians should go get vaccinated.“I would absolutely agree,” Reeves said. “I think that all Mississippians and all Americans should go get vaccinated, because I think it’s safe, I think it’s effective and I think it’s one way to continue to drive down the numbers.” More
First it was a lottery to win $1m in Ohio. Then another lottery was set up in West Virginia.In Illinois people could get free tickets to the Six Flags amusement park.In New Jersey it meant a free beer.The governor of Minnesota announced giveaways that included fishing licenses, gift cards and state park permits, among others.And West Virginia upped the ante, adding the chance to win hunting rifles or shotguns.Governors across the country are resorting to almost shameless incentives to lure Americans who haven’t gotten a coronavirus vaccine to willingly take a jab. And a few folks who have entered in these raffles have come away winning prizes – even $1m.It’s partially a move of necessity. There are still Americans who are either actively refraining from getting a Covid-19 vaccine or just haven’t got round to it yet.Businesses, too, have stepped in to nudge the unvaccinated. The percentage of a state’s population that has been vaccinated varies dramatically. Some states are approaching 70%, and others are still below 50%.So governors have had to get creative. On Thursday, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state announced a “shot of a lifetime” state lottery for getting a vaccine, with prizes including a lottery for $2m, game systems and speakers, and “higher education tuition and expense assistance”.In New Jersey, the governor, in partnership with the state’s department of health, set up a “shot and a beer” incentive program, which lets any New Jerseyan of legal drinking age who gets their first vaccine shot in May to also enjoy a free beer through breweries participating in the program.That sort of approach got a shoutout from Joe Biden on Wednesday when he announced a month of action to reach the goal of vaccinating 70% of US adults by the Fourth of July holiday, with the president nodding to a beer-maker’s proposed giveaway by saying: “That’s right, get a shot and have a beer. Free beer for everyone 21 years and over to celebrate independence from the virus.”The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, echoed this on Thursday at the daily briefing.“Free beer – that seems to be very appealing to the public, it seems, by [the] headlines,” Psaki said.In a video that went viral in May, Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia sat at his desk with his English bulldog, named Babydog, in his lap.“If you won’t do it for your family, you’ve got to get vaccinated for Babydog,” Justice tells the camera. “That’s all there is to it. Now she wants you vaccinated so badly and she’s going to absolutely be the one to lead us through on this all these incentives. And without any questions she’ll give you a high five right now but you have got to get yourself vaccinated.”The incentive programs have become a bipartisan trend with governors from deep-red states like West Virginia or deep-blue states like California offering a range of inducements.And already there have been some million-dollar winners. In Ohio, Jonathan Carlyle of Toledo won the state’s Vax-a-Million lottery.“I kept hemming and hawing about it, and I work all the time, and when the Vax-a-Million thing started I immediately went down there and got it. It pushed me over the edge,” Carlyle told the Toledo Blade. He said he would use the money to pay off some bills and buy a house.Not every governor has rolled out prizes. In Utah, Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, says he’s monitoring how effective the lotteries are.“It would be really great if we didn’t need any incentives at all. Hopefully, not dying is a great incentive,” the governor said according to the Deseret News.In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is considering a vaccine lottery.“We need to do everything we can to make sure we can get as many shots in arms as possible,” Cooper said according to ABC affiliate KATV.North Carolina already has a $25 cash-card giveaway incentive program for vaccine shots.In South Carolina, the state house of representatives minority leader, Todd Rutherford, has proposed using leftover Covid-19 relief money to set up $1m prizes for people to get vaccinated. In an interview, when the Guardian suggested it was surprising that some people still had not been vaccinated, Rutherford lamented with a groan: “You and me both!“The only way that I think we can start breaking through is to use what’s working in other states and I think Ohio saw a 29% uptick in their vaccinations because of this,” Rutherford said. “And if we can get that kind of uptick by spending a million, two million dollars, I think it’s a no-brainer.” More
