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Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine could be authorized for use in the U.S. as early as next week, but officials warn there won't be a lot of doses at launch. Online sign ups for vaccines are favoring the wealthy and those who are tech-savvy. Bertha Coombs has that story. The CDC is also being criticized for new guidance on safely reopening schools, Will Feuer writes.
| | Moncef Slaoui's first move post-Operation Warp Speed | It's a new model for research & development, a company that merges 10 private biotechs under one umbrella – almost like an Operation Warp Speed for other diseases. The new company focuses mainly on cancer and rare diseases – not infectious diseases. Slaoui joined us with the new company's CEO, Saurabh Saha, to discuss the model, as well as the vaccine rollout and his response to early criticisms.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | J&J has only a few million doses ready as it nears U.S. launch | J&J will have "a few million" doses manufactured when its single-shot vaccine is likely authorized by the FDA later this month, members of President Joe Biden's Covid-19 response team said this week. The disclosure is likely to disappoint state health officials who were expecting supply to rapidly increase once the vaccine was cleared for use. J&J has a deal with the U.S. to supply 100 million doses. The company told me it still expects to complete is agreement in the first half of 2021.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | | | Those better off have a better shot at vaccine | Online sign ups for Covid vaccines are supposed to make the process more fair, but so far the system seems to favor the wealthy and those who are tech-savvy. Pharmacies say they are trying to level the playing field by targeting hard hit communities in low-income neighborhoods. But will they be able to combat gentrification of those vaccine appointments, when the odds of getting a slot online can be like trying to hit the winning lotto number?
-Bertha Coombs | | | | Vaccine diplomacy is here to stay, analysts warn | International diplomacy is likely to determine who gets access to coronavirus vaccines over the coming months with countries such as Russia and China seen using one of the world's most in-demand commodities to advance their own interests abroad. It is hoped the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines could help to bring an end to the pandemic. While many countries have not yet started vaccination programs, even high-income nations are facing a shortfall in supplies as manufacturers struggle to ramp up production.
-Sam Meredith | | | | CDC school reopening guidance catches criticism | The CDC's long-awaited guidance on how to safely reopen schools during the pandemic caught some criticism this week from doctors and epidemiologists who feel it's too cautious and doesn't do enough to get kids back in the classroom. At the heart of the criticism is the CDC's decision to tie reopening decisions to how severely the virus is spreading in the surrounding county. More than 90% of the country falls into counties with "substantial" or "high" levels of spread, according to the CDC's own data, meaning that schools should remain mostly closed for in-person learning.
-Will Feuer | | | | Experts warn contagious variants could 'delay control of the pandemic' | The U.S. needs to rapidly deploy Covid-19 vaccines and ramp up its surveillance before highly contagious variants take hold or the virus mutates again and delays the nation's grasp on the pandemic, the nation's top health experts warned in an opinion published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, on Wednesday. In the U.S., the level of viral spread in the community needs to be "aggressively decreased" and Americans should postpone travel and avoid crowds to ensure the variants don't continue spreading, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC's Covid incident manager, wrote in the paper. If a more contagious variant, such as B.1.1.7 found in the U.K., takes hold in the U.S., modeling suggests it could "reverse the present downward trend" in new cases and "further delay control of the pandemic," they wrote.
-Noah Higgins-Dunn | | | | Food and its packaging are highly unlikely to transmit Covid, officials say | It's been a little more than a year into the global Covid-19 pandemic and there's still "no credible evidence" that people can catch the virus from food or food packaging, top U.S. food and health officials said this week. While there have been some scientific studies that have identified Covid-19 particles on food packaging, most of that is the genetic fingerprint of the virus, not live virus that can result in human infection, according to a joint release from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the FDA and the CDC.
-Rich Mendez | |
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