Tag: Vaccination

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As Rollout Falters, Scientists Debate New Vaccination Techniques

As Rollout Falters, Scientists Debate New Vaccination Tactics

As governments around the world rush to vaccinate their citizens against the surging coronavirus, scientists are locked in a heated debate over a surprising question: Is it wisest to hold back the second doses everyone will need, or to give as many people as possible an inoculation now — and push back the second doses until later?

Since even the first shot appears to provide some protection against Covid-19, some experts believe that the shortest route to containing the virus is to disseminate the initial injections as widely as possible now.

Officials in Britain have already elected to delay second doses of vaccines made by the pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer as a way of more widely distributing the partial protection afforded by a single shot.

Health officials in the United States have been adamantly opposed to the idea. “I would not be in favor of that,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN on Friday. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.”

But on Sunday, Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser of Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to accelerate vaccine development and distribution, offered up an intriguing alternative: giving some Americans two half-doses of the Moderna vaccine, a way to possibly milk more immunity from the nation’s limited vaccine supply.

The rising debate reflects nationwide frustration that so few Americans have gotten the first doses — far below the number the administration had hoped would be inoculated by the end of 2020. But the controversy itself carries risks in a country where health measures have been politicized and many remain hesitant to take the vaccine.

“Even the appearance of tinkering has negatives, in terms of people having trust in the process,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida.

The public rollout remained bumpy over the weekend. Seniors lined up early for vaccinations in one Tennessee town, but the doses were gone by 10 a.m. In Houston, the Health Department phone system crashed on Saturday, the first day officials opened a free vaccination clinic to the public.

Nursing home workers in Ohio were opting out of the vaccination in great numbers, according to Gov. Mike DeWine, while Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, now a center of the pandemic, warned that vaccine distribution was moving far too slowly. Hospitalizations of Covid-19 patients during the past month have more than doubled in California.

The vaccines authorized so far in the United States are produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Britain has greenlit the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.

All of them are intended to be delivered in multiple doses on a strict schedule, relying on a tiered protection strategy. The first injection teaches the immune system to recognize a new pathogen by showing it a harmless version of some of the virus’s most salient features.

After the body has had time to study up on this material, as it were, a second shot presents these features again, helping immune cells commit the lesson to memory. These subsequent doses are intended to increase the potency and durability of immunity.

Clinical trials run by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna showed the vaccines were highly effective at preventing cases of Covid-19 when delivered in two doses separated by three or four weeks.

Some protection appears to kick in after the first shot of vaccine, although it’s unclear how quickly it might wane. Still, some experts now argue that spreading vaccines more thinly across a population by concentrating on first doses might save more lives than making sure half as many individuals receive both doses on schedule.

That would be a remarkable departure from the original plan. Since the vaccine rollout began last month in the United States, second shots of the vaccines have been held back to guarantee that they will be available on schedule for people who have already gotten their first injections.

But in Britain, doctors have been told to postpone appointments for second doses that had been scheduled for January, so that those doses can be given instead as first shots to other patients. Officials are now pushing the second doses of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines as far back as 12 weeks after the first one.

In a regulatory document, British health officials said that AstraZeneca’s vaccine was 73 percent effective in clinical trial participants three weeks after the first dose was given and before the second dose was administered. (In cases in which participants never received a second dose, the interval ended 12 weeks after the first dose was given.)

But some researchers fear the delayed-dose approach could prove disastrous, particularly in the United States, where vaccine rollouts are already stymied by logistical hurdles and a patchwork approach to prioritizing who gets the first jabs.

“We have an issue with distribution, not the number of doses,” said Saad Omer, a vaccine expert at Yale University. “Doubling the number of doses doesn’t double your capacity to give doses.”

Federal health officials said last week that some 14 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines had been shipped out across the country. But as of Saturday morning, just 4.2 million people in the United States had gotten their first shots.

That number is most likely an underestimate because of lags in reporting. Still, the figure falls far short of the goal that federal health officials set as recently as last month to give 20 million people their first shots by the end of 2020.

Covid-19 Vaccines ›

Answers to Your Vaccine Questions

With distribution of a coronavirus vaccine beginning in the U.S., here are answers to some questions you may be wondering about:

    • If I live in the U.S., when can I get the vaccine? While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.
    • When can I return to normal life after being vaccinated? Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.
    • If I’ve been vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask? Yes, but not forever. Here’s why. The coronavirus vaccines are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This appears to be enough protection to keep the vaccinated person from getting ill. But what’s not clear is whether it’s possible for the virus to bloom in the nose — and be sneezed or breathed out to infect others — even as antibodies elsewhere in the body have mobilized to prevent the vaccinated person from getting sick. The vaccine clinical trials were designed to determine whether vaccinated people are protected from illness — not to find out whether they could still spread the coronavirus. Based on studies of flu vaccine and even patients infected with Covid-19, researchers have reason to be hopeful that vaccinated people won’t spread the virus, but more research is needed. In the meantime, everyone — even vaccinated people — will need to think of themselves as possible silent spreaders and keep wearing a mask. Read more here.
    • Will it hurt? What are the side effects? The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection into your arm won’t feel different than any other vaccine, but the rate of short-lived side effects does appear higher than a flu shot. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. The side effects, which can resemble the symptoms of Covid-19, last about a day and appear more likely after the second dose. Early reports from vaccine trials suggest some people might need to take a day off from work because they feel lousy after receiving the second dose. In the Pfizer study, about half developed fatigue. Other side effects occurred in at least 25 to 33 percent of patients, sometimes more, including headaches, chills and muscle pain. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign that your own immune system is mounting a potent response to the vaccine that will provide long-lasting immunity.
    • Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.

Many of these rollout woes are caused by logistical issues — against the backdrop of a strained health care system and skepticism around vaccines. Freeing up more doses for first injections won’t solve problems like those, some researchers argue.

Shweta Bansal, a mathematical biologist at Georgetown University, and others also raised concerns about the social and psychological impacts of delaying second doses.

“The longer the duration between doses, the more likely people are to forget to come back,” she said. “Or people may not remember which vaccine that they got, and we don’t know what a mix and match might do.”

In an emailed statement, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, endorsed only the strictly scheduled two-dose regimens that were tested in clinical trials of the vaccines.

The “depth or duration of protection after a single dose of vaccine,” he said, can’t be determined from the research published so far. “Though it is quite a reasonable question to study a single-dose regimen in future clinical trials, we simply don’t currently have these data.”

The vaccine makers themselves have taken divergent positions.

In a trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, volunteers in Britain were originally intended to receive two doses given four weeks apart. But some vaccinated participants ended up receiving their doses several months apart, and still acquired some protection against Covid-19.

An extended gap between doses “gives you a lot of flexibility for how you administer your vaccines, dependent on the supply that you have,” said Menelas Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development at AstraZeneca.

Delayed dosing could help get countries “in very good shape for immunizing large swaths of their populations to protect them quickly.”

Steven Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, struck a far more conservative tone. “Although partial protection from the vaccine appears to begin as early as 12 days after the first dose, two doses of the vaccine are required to provide the maximum protection against the disease, a vaccine efficacy of 95 percent,” he said.

“There are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days,” he added.

Ray Jordan, a spokesman for Moderna, said the company could not comment on altering dosing plans at this time.

There is no dispute that second doses should be administered sometime near the first dose. “They key is to expose the immune system at a time when it still recognizes” the immunity-stimulating ingredients in the vaccine, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University.

During a public health emergency, “companies will tend to pick the shortest period they can that gives them that full, protective response,” said Dr. Dean of the University of Florida.

But it’s unclear when that critical window really starts to close in the body. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who supports delaying second doses, said she thought the body’s memory of the first injection could last at least a few months.

Doses of other routine vaccines, she noted, are scheduled several months apart or even longer, to great success. “Let’s vaccinate as many people as possible now, and give them the booster dose when they become available,” she said.

Dr. Robert Wachter, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, said he was originally skeptical of the idea of delaying second doses.

But the disappointingly slow vaccine rollout in the United States, coupled with concerns about a new and fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, have changed his mind, and he now believes this is a strategy worth exploring.

“The past couple weeks have been sobering,” he said.

Other researchers are less eager to take the gamble. Delaying doses without strong supporting data “is like going into the Wild West,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “I think we need to follow what the evidence says: two shots 21 days apart for Pfizer, or 28 days apart for Moderna.”

Some experts also fear that delaying an immunity-boosting second dose might give the coronavirus more opportunity to multiply and mutate in partly protected people.

There is some evidence to support the alternative strategy of halving the dose of each shot, suggested on Sunday by Mr. Slauoi of Operation Warp Speed.

In an interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Dr. Slaoui pointed to data from clinical trials run by Moderna, whose vaccine is typically given in two doses, four weeks apart, each containing 100 micrograms of active ingredient.

In the trials, people between the ages of 18 and 55 who received two half-doses produced an “identical immune response to the 100 microgram dose,” Dr. Slaoui said. The F.D.A. and Moderna are now considering implementing this regimen on a more widespread scale, he added.

While there’s little or no data to support the soundness of delayed dose delays, Dr. Slaoui said, “injecting half the volume” might constitute “a more responsible approach that will be based on facts and data to immunize more people.”

But Dr. Dean and John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University, both pointed out that this regimen would still represent a departure from the ones rigorously tested in clinical trials.

A half-dose that elicits an immune response that appears similar to that triggered by a full dose may not in the end deliver the expected protection against the coronavirus, Dr. Moore noted. Halving doses “is not something I would want to see done unless it were absolutely necessary,” he said.

“Everyone is looking for solutions right now, because there is an urgent need for more doses,” Dr. Dean said. “But the dust has not settled on the best way to achieve this.”

Categories
Health

In Minority Communities, Docs Are Altering Minds About Vaccination

In Minority Communities, Doctors Are Changing Minds About Vaccination

Like many black and rural Americans, Denese Rankin, a 55-year-old accountant and receptionist in Castleberry, Ala., Did not want the Covid-19 vaccine.

Ms. Rankin was concerned about side effects – she had seen stories on social media of people who, for example, developed Bell’s palsy after being vaccinated. She thought the vaccines came too quickly to be safe. And she feared that the vaccinations might prove to be another example in the government’s long history of medical experimentation on blacks.

Then, one weekend, her niece, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta, came to town. Dr. Zanthia Wiley said one of her goals on the trip was to speak to friends and family back home in Alabama and let them learn the truth about the vaccines from someone they knew, from someone who is black.

Across the country, black and Hispanic doctors like Dr. Wiley to Americans in minority communities who are suspicious of Covid-19 vaccines and often distrust the officials who watch them on TV that they should be vaccinated. Many oppose public announcements, say doctors and the federal government.

Although vaccine adoption is growing, Black and Hispanic Americans – among the groups hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic – are still the most reluctant to roll up their sleeves. Even health care workers in some hospitals refused to be shot.

But the assurances from black and Hispanic doctors can make a huge difference, experts say. “I don’t want us to benefit the least,” said Dr. Wiley. “We should come first to get it.”

Many doctors like her now not only urge friends and relatives to get the vaccine, but also post messages on social media and make group video calls to ask people to share their concerns and offer reliable information.

“I think it makes a big difference,” said Dr. Valeria Daniela Lucio Cantos, Infectious Disease Specialist at Emory. She has hosted online town halls and webinars on vaccination, including one with black and Hispanic staff from the university’s cleaning staff.

She believes that they are listening, not only because she is Spanish and speaks Spanish, she said, but also because she is an immigrant – her family is still in Ecuador. “Culturally, they have someone to relate to,” said Dr. Cantos.

Many of the vaccine-reluctant people are pivotal points for health in their own families. Ms. Rankin, for example, takes care of Dr. Wiley’s blind grandmother and her grandfather, who cannot walk. Mrs. Rankin looks at Dr. Wiley’s mother, whose health is fragile. And she is a single mother of three girls, including a 14-year-old who still lives at home.

“If my aunt got infected, my family would be in very difficult shape,” said Dr. Wiley.

Dr. Wiley met with Ms. Rankin, her daughter, and her mother in the living room of a brick ranch house on a quiet street – socially distant and in masks. Dr. Wiley answered questions and explained the science behind the vaccine.

No, she said, the vaccine is not made from live coronaviruses that could infect people. No, just because someone was vaccinated and got sick doesn’t mean the vaccine made them sick.

And yes, the vaccine has been tested on tens of thousands of people and the data has been carefully scrutinized by scientists, with nothing to be gained and all to be lost by getting it ahead of schedule.

Covid19 vaccinations>

Answers to your vaccine questions

With a coronavirus vaccine spreading out of the US, here are answers to some questions you may be wondering about:

    • If I live in the US, when can I get the vaccine? While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary from state to state, most doctors and residents of long-term care facilities will come first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.
    • When can I get back to normal life after the vaccination? Life will only get back to normal once society as a whole receives adequate protection against the coronavirus. Once countries have approved a vaccine, they can only vaccinate a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority remain susceptible to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show robust protection against disease. However, it is also possible that people spread the virus without knowing they are infected because they have mild or no symptoms. Scientists don’t yet know whether the vaccines will also block the transmission of the coronavirus. Even vaccinated people have to wear masks for the time being, avoid the crowds indoors and so on. Once enough people are vaccinated, it becomes very difficult for the coronavirus to find people at risk to become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve this goal, life could approach a normal state in autumn 2021.
    • Do I still have to wear a mask after the vaccination? Yeah, but not forever. Here’s why. The coronavirus vaccines are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This seems to be sufficient protection to protect the vaccinated person from disease. What is not clear, however, is whether it is possible for the virus to bloom in the nose – and sneeze or exhale to infect others – even if antibodies have been mobilized elsewhere in the body to prevent that vaccinated person gets sick. The vaccine clinical trials were designed to determine whether people who were vaccinated are protected from disease – not to find out whether they can still spread the coronavirus. Based on studies of flu vaccines and even patients infected with Covid-19, researchers have reason to hope that people who are vaccinated will not spread the virus, but more research is needed. In the meantime, everyone – including those who have been vaccinated – must imagine themselves as possible silent shakers and continue to wear a mask. Read more here.
    • Will it hurt What are the side effects? The vaccine against Pfizer and BioNTech, like other typical vaccines, is delivered as a shot in the arm. The injection in your arm feels no different than any other vaccine, but the rate of short-lived side effects seems to be higher than with the flu shot. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. The side effects, which can be similar to symptoms of Covid-19, last about a day and are more likely to occur after the second dose. Early reports from vaccine trials suggest that some people may need to take a day off because they feel lousy after receiving the second dose. In the Pfizer study, around half developed fatigue. Other side effects occurred in at least 25 to 33 percent of patients, sometimes more, including headache, chills, and muscle pain. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign that your own immune system is having a potent response to the vaccine that provides lasting immunity.
    • Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to boost the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide inside. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus that can stimulate the immune system. At any given moment, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules that they produce to make their own proteins. As soon as these proteins are made, our cells use special enzymes to break down the mRNA. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can only survive a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a little longer, so the cells can make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. However, the mRNA can hold for a few days at most before it is destroyed.

Dr. Wiley told them she was looking forward to being vaccinated herself.

Dr. Virginia Banks, an infectious disease specialist in Youngstown, Ohio who is Black, understands the community’s longstanding distrust of the medical facility.

But she’s seen too many people – and not all of those who are old – suffering and dying from the pandemic, she said. And Dr. Banks worries about her own risk while caring for patients. “I feel like I’m playing Russian roulette,” she said.

So she recites stories for those who hesitate to get the vaccine, like one about a patient she recently treated who gasps. He asked her, “Will I get out alive?” She told him she didn’t know.

“We have to tell these stories to black Americans,” she said. “And it has to come from someone who looks like her.”

“My friends and family say, ‘Even if the risk is one in a million, I won’t take it,” she added. “I say,’ I understand your suspicions, but that goes beyond Tuskegee. This is beyond from “The immortal life of Henrietta is missing”. We are now in a pandemic. We have to trust science. ‘”

Dr. Banks emphasizes the impact of individual decisions: “If you don’t take this vaccine and it’s safe, we’ll be wearing masks for some time. If you want your life back, if you want to return to normal, you have to rely on trustworthy messengers like me. “

Dr. Leo Seoane, a Spanish intensive care doctor at Ochsner Health in New Orleans, has already been vaccinated. When he started talking to friends, family, and others in the community, virtually everyone said they would not get the shot.

They feared the vaccine was being developed too quickly, that it wasn’t sure, that it might not be effective, or that it was infecting them with the coronavirus. Now, after gentle persuasion, “they have all changed their minds”.

But few believe that it takes a conversation or two with a trusted doctor to turn vaccine skeptics into believers.

“When they first discussed the possibility of a vaccine in April, I said, ‘No way,'” said Phelemon Reins, a 56-year-old federal government official. He was suspicious of the pace of vaccine development and knew too well the history of the medical system’s mistreatment of blacks.

“The Trump administration has done nothing to inspire anyone to have confidence in anything that comes out,” he added. “I refuse everything you say.”

But Dr. Banks, a friend, made him reconsider his reluctance. “In the end, it will be people like her that I depend on,” said Reins. “I trust her.”

“How do you convince the African American community?” he said. “You may have to have people who look like you.”

Categories
Politics

U.S. Officers Say Covid-19 Vaccination Effort Has Lagged

U.S. Officials Say Covid-19 Vaccination Effort Has Lagged

Vaccine distribution in the United States has started more slowly than expected, federal health officials confirmed in a press conference Wednesday, but also expressed confidence that the pace would accelerate in the coming weeks.

As of Wednesday, more than 14 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been shipped to the United States, up from 11.4 million doses on Monday morning. However, according to a dashboard from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 2.1 million people had received their first dose on Monday morning.

“We agree that this number is lower than hoped,” said Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to accelerate vaccine development and distribution. He added, “We know it should be better and we are working hard to do better.”

The 2.1 million doses administered by the CDC are an underestimate of the real number due to delays in reporting. And a CDC official said in a separate press conference Wednesday that 2.6 million people had received their first dose. Whatever the number, it falls far short of the goal that federal officials put forward just this month of having 20 million people vaccinated by the end of this year.

The Operation Warp Speed ​​press conference came the day after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. gave a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, criticizing the Trump administration for these delays. Mr Biden said that at the current vaccination rate, it will take “years, not months” to protect the whole country.

When he takes office on January 20, Mr. Biden will employ a law called the Defense Production Act to “direct private industry to expedite the manufacture of the materials and protective equipment needed for vaccines.” However, the Trump administration has already used that law to expedite manufacturing and Mr Biden has given few details on how his plan will be different. He has promised to give 100 million shots in the first 100 days of his tenure – or enough for about 50 million people if he uses the two-dose vaccines.

Covid19 vaccinations>

Answers to your vaccine questions

With a coronavirus vaccine spreading out of the US, here are answers to some questions you may be wondering about:

    • If I live in the US, when can I get the vaccine? While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary from state to state, most doctors and residents of long-term care facilities will come first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.
    • When can I get back to normal life after the vaccination? Life will only get back to normal once society as a whole receives adequate protection against the coronavirus. Once countries have approved a vaccine, they can only vaccinate a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority remain susceptible to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show robust protection against disease. However, it is also possible that people spread the virus without knowing they are infected because they have mild or no symptoms. Scientists don’t yet know whether the vaccines will also block the transmission of the coronavirus. Even vaccinated people have to wear masks for the time being, avoid the crowds indoors and so on. Once enough people are vaccinated, it becomes very difficult for the coronavirus to find people at risk to become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve this goal, life could approach a normal state in autumn 2021.
    • Do I still have to wear a mask after the vaccination? Yeah, but not forever. Here’s why. The coronavirus vaccines are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This seems to be sufficient protection to protect the vaccinated person from disease. What is not clear, however, is whether it is possible for the virus to bloom in the nose – and sneeze or exhale to infect others – even if antibodies have been mobilized elsewhere in the body to prevent that vaccinated person gets sick. The vaccine clinical trials were designed to determine whether people who were vaccinated are protected from disease – not to find out whether they can still spread the coronavirus. Based on studies of flu vaccines and even patients infected with Covid-19, researchers have reason to hope that people who are vaccinated will not spread the virus, but more research is needed. In the meantime, everyone – including those who have been vaccinated – must imagine themselves as possible silent shakers and continue to wear a mask. Read more here.
    • Will it hurt What are the side effects? The vaccine against Pfizer and BioNTech, like other typical vaccines, is delivered as a shot in the arm. The injection in your arm feels no different than any other vaccine, but the rate of short-lived side effects seems to be higher than with the flu shot. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. The side effects, which can be similar to symptoms of Covid-19, last about a day and are more likely to occur after the second dose. Early reports from vaccine trials suggest that some people may need to take a day off because they feel lousy after receiving the second dose. In the Pfizer study, around half developed fatigue. Other side effects occurred in at least 25 to 33 percent of patients, sometimes more, including headache, chills, and muscle pain. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign that your own immune system is having a potent response to the vaccine that provides lasting immunity.
    • Will mRNA vaccines change my genes? No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to boost the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide inside. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus that can stimulate the immune system. At any given moment, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules that they produce to make their own proteins. As soon as these proteins are made, our cells use special enzymes to break down the mRNA. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can only survive a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a little longer, so the cells can make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. However, the mRNA can hold for a few days at most before it is destroyed.

“This will be the greatest operational challenge we have ever faced as a nation,” said Biden, “but we will make it.”

In a tweet on Tuesday, President Trump appeared to blame the governors, saying it was “a matter for states to distribute the vaccines as soon as they are brought into designated areas by the federal government.” But several governors recently said their states were in trouble because they didn’t get enough money from the federal government.

Speaking at the Operation Warp Speed ​​press conference Wednesday, General Gustave F. Perna, the effort’s logistics director, said his team had no clear understanding of why these delays were occurring. He said the CDC is collecting data to better understand the factors driving slow absorption. “To get more specificity at this point after two weeks, I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he said.

However, General Perna pointed out a few possible factors. In addition to the delays in coverage, the holiday season and winter weather have delayed recording. Hospitals and other institutions that administer the vaccines are still learning how to store the cans in very cold temperatures and how to administer them properly. And the states have set aside many doses to be dispensed to their long-term care facilities. This initiative is currently in preparation and is expected to take several months.

So far, most of the vaccines given have been dispensed in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. Dr. Slaoui and General Perna both said they expected the pace of rollout to accelerate significantly once pharmacies start offering vaccines in their stores.

The federal government has agreements with a number of pharmacy chains – including Costco, Walmart and CVS – to dispense vaccines in their stores and other locations as soon as vaccines become more widely available. To date, 40,000 pharmacy locations have signed up for this program, General Perna said.

“What we should look at is the rate of acceleration over the coming weeks,” said Dr. Slaoui, “and I hope it’s going in the right direction.”

Categories
World News

E.U.’s Mass Vaccination Marketing campaign Begins, With Nursing Houses as Focus

E.U.’s Mass Vaccination Campaign Starts, With Nursing Homes as Focus

BERLIN – From nursing homes in France to hospitals in Poland, older Europeans and the workers who care for them rolled up their sleeves on Sunday to receive coronavirus vaccination shots as part of a campaign to protect more than 450 million people across the European Union.

The vaccinations offered a rare respite as the continent grappled with one of its most precarious moments since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Despite national bans, restrictions on movement, closings of restaurants and cancellations of Christmas gatherings, the virus has haunted Europe into the dark winter months. The spread of a more contagious variant of the virus in the UK has caused such an alarm that much of continental Europe closed its borders to travelers from the country, effectively quarantining the nation as a whole.

In Germany, a nursing home in eastern Saxony-Anhalt did not wait for the planned introduction of the vaccination campaign across the European Union on Sunday and vaccinated a 101-year-old woman and dozens of other residents and employees on Saturday. Hours after the cans arrived. People were also vaccinated in Hungary and Slovakia on Saturday.

Early Sunday, dozens of minivans carrying coolers filled with dry ice to keep the doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine from rising above minus 70 degrees Celsius fanned out into nursing homes across the German capital as part of the vaccination wave. The rollout comes as Europe’s largest nation is facing its deadliest phase since the pandemic began.

With nearly 1,000 deaths per day in Germany in the week before Christmas, a crematorium in the Saxon state was in operation around the clock to keep up.

“I’ve never seen it so badly,” said Eveline Müller, the director of the facility in the city of Görlitz.

More than 350,000 people in the 27 countries of the European Union have died of Covid-19 since the first death was recorded in France on February 15. For many countries the worst days have come in recent weeks. In Poland, November was the deadliest month since the end of World War II.

While doctors have learned to better care for Covid-19 patients, effective medical treatment remains difficult to achieve. So the rapid development of vaccines is being celebrated not only as a remarkable scientific achievement, but also as a hope for a world that is off its axis.

However, the joy that greeted the news of successful vaccine candidates in November was tempered when its launch in the UK and United States highlighted the challenges ahead.

Vaccination campaigns in Russia and China use products that have not passed the same regulatory hurdles as the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are currently being rolled out in the West.

Mexico became the first country in Latin America to start vaccinating its population on Friday. And regulators in India are expected to approve the use of a vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University soon.

By the New Year, the greatest vaccination effort in human history is expected to be in full swing. However, supply bottlenecks, logistical hurdles, misinformation, public skepticism, and the scale of the effort make it an uphill battle against an ever-evolving virus.

While experts said there was no evidence that any known variant would affect the effectiveness of vaccines in individuals, they said more study was needed. And the higher the infection rate, the more urgent vaccination is.

The new variant is spreading in the UK with such ferocity that there is a growing debate over whether to give more people a single dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which is about 50 percent effective at preventing disease, rather than one fewer people taking the two doses are required for levels of protection estimated at 95 percent.

Still, the launch of the vaccine was celebrated across Europe.

“Today we turn the page in a difficult year,” wrote the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Twitter. “The vaccine # COVID19 was delivered to all EU countries.”

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Apr. 27, 2020 at 1:48 am ET

The Greeks call their vaccination campaign “Operation Freedom”. As in much of Europe, there is great skepticism about coronavirus vaccines, and the slogan aims to influence indecisive people.

For Italians – whose suffering served as a warning to the world at the start of the pandemic and whose current death toll is again among the worst in Europe – a 29-year-old nurse stood up to take the first shot.

“It’s the beginning of the end,” said nurse Claudia Alivernini after she was vaccinated early that morning at Spallanzani Hospital in Rome.

“We health workers believe in science, we believe in this vaccine, it is important to be vaccinated for ourselves, for those around us, for our loved ones, the community and our patients,” she said.

The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte celebrated this moment.

“Today Italy is waking up again. It’s #VaccineDay, ”he wrote on Twitter. “This date will stay with us forever.”

For some countries, the first vaccinations offer a chance of some sort of reimbursement for errors made during the first wave of the pandemic.

In the spring, when the virus entered nursing homes in France, the crisis remained in the shadows until deaths reached levels that could no longer be ignored. There was therefore a symbolic response when the residents of nursing homes were selected to receive the first vaccinations in the country.

In Spain, where more than 16,000 people died in nursing homes in the first three months of the pandemic, the vaccination campaign should also begin in a nursing home in the city of Guadalajara.

European Union member states showed solidarity by waiting for the bloc’s regulator, the European Medical Association, to approve the vaccine before embarking on coordinated national campaigns. But how these will develop in individual countries is likely to vary.

All EU Member States have national health systems so people are vaccinated for free. But just as hospitals in poorer member states like Bulgaria and Romania have been overwhelmed by the recent virus wave, networks in these countries will face challenges in distributing vaccines.

While each nation determines how their campaign will be conducted, the first phase generally focuses on those most at risk of exposure and most likely to experience serious health problems – healthcare workers and the oldest citizens.

Most Member States have announced that the vaccine will reach the general public by spring and a return to a sense of normalcy could hardly come too soon.

France was among the first nations in Europe to introduce a second lockdown in October, and while it has started lifting the restrictions, the reopening has not come as quickly as many had hoped.

Museums, theaters, and cinemas, originally scheduled to reopen on December 15, will remain closed, and there is a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. across the country. The lights in the trees along the Champs-Élysées in Paris still twinkle every night, but no vacation shoppers or tourists are there to bask in their glory.

Chairs stacked in empty bars, restaurants and cafes are a reminder of the absence in 2020.

Nathalie and Adrien Delgado, a Parisian couple in their fifties, said they would get vaccinated as soon as possible. “It’s an act of citizenship,” said Ms. Delgado, who celebrated Christmas with the couple’s two children in Paris instead of visiting their mother. “It’s not even for me, but it’s the only way to stop the virus.”

Others weren’t so sure.

Sandra Frutuoso, a 27-year-old housekeeper who had also canceled plans to visit her family in Portugal, said she feared the disease – her husband was infected and has since recovered – but will not be vaccinated for “long”.

“You did it too quickly,” she said. “I’m concerned that the side effects could be worse for someone my age than the Covid itself.”

Germans’ willingness to get vaccinated has also decreased in recent months, and the government hopes that adoption will increase with the introduction of the vaccines.

When asked last week how long it could be before life could return to normal, Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech, warned that despite immunization, the virus would persist for the rest of the decade.

“We need a new definition of” normal, “” he told reporters, though he added that with adequate vaccinations, lockdowns could end as early as next year.

“This year we won’t have any control over the number of infections,” said Sahin, “but we have to be sure that we have enough vaccines next year to make it normal.”

Melissa Eddy reported from Berlin and Marc Santora from London. The reporting was written by Aurelien Breeden from Paris, Niki Kitsantonis from London, Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome, Raphael Minder from Madrid and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels.