Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Vaccinations in U.S. pushed to 4 million
The U. S. ramped up covid- 19 vaccinations in the past few days after a slower-than-expected start, bringing the number of shots dispensed to about 4 million, government health officials said Sunday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, also said on ABC’s “This Week” that President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to administer 100 million shots within his first 100 days in office is achievable.
And he rejected President Donald Trump’s claim on Twitter that coronavirus deaths and cases in the U.S. have been greatly exaggerated.
“All you need to do … is go
into the trenches, go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The U. S. death toll has climbed past 351,000, the most of any country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, while almost 20.6 million people nationwide have been infected.
Fauci said he has seen “some little glimmer of hope” after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 per day, a marked increase. He said that brings the total to about 4 million.
About 4.28 million doses had been administrated by Saturday, according to the Bloomberg News vaccine tracker.
Fauci acknowledged the U.S. fell short of its goal of having 20 million doses shipped and distributed by the end of December. But he noted the “multiple stages” involved, from allocation to staging and distribution, and finally getting shots into arms.
Officials have blamed the delays on a delicate vaccine with complex storage requirements, uncertainty over the supply of doses and strain on local health agencies already facing historic challenges.
“There have been a couple of glitches. That’s understandable,” Fauci said. “We are not where we want to be, there’s no doubt about that, but I think we can get there if we really accelerate.”
He expressed optimism that the momentum will pick up by mid-January and that ultimately the U. S. will be vaccinating 1 million people a day. Biden’s “goal of vaccinating 100 million people in the first 100 days is a realistic goal,” Fauci said.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief science adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine development and distribution effort, told CBS that 17.5 million doses have been shipped. About 13 million of those have been distributed to clinics, hospitals and other places where they will be administered, Fauci said.
Slaoui said the effort has been successful in transporting vaccines to locations, but states need to make “a specific ask” if they need help in getting the inoculation into people’s arms.
“We stand by to help with any specific request,” he said on CBS. “We have an agreement with CVS and Walgreens, and we are starting to ship vaccines to those locations as allocated by the states — that is really the key point.”
Asked when there will be data on whether the virus is transmittable even after a person has received the first shot, Slaoui said the studies will be based on observation data, which won’t be available before late spring.
The 20 million-dose goal hasn’t been reached in part because local health departments and medical facilities had to stay focused on testing to handle a surge in cases, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said. And the holiday season meant health workers were taking time off, he said.
“I don’t want anyone to think I’m being Pollyannish here. There’s what we delivered, and we hope that those will be translated into vaccinations. That has not occurred to the way that we would like,” Adams said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
‘FAR EXAGGERATED’
On Sunday morning, Trump tweeted that the outbreak has been “far exaggerated” because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “ridiculous” methodology. He complained, too, that Fauci has been credited by the news media with doing “an incredible job” when he “works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work.”
Yet states have reported record numbers of cases over the past few days, and funeral homes in Southern California are being inundated with bodies.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the pandemic is getting worse as the virus spreads rapidly within households and people let their guard down with news of vaccines’ arrival. “This is a virus that preys off of our weakness, preys off of our exhaustion,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Fauci and others are warning that an additional surge is likely because of holiday gatherings and the cold weather keeping people indoors.
“It could and likely will get worse in the next couple of weeks, or at least maintain this very terribly high level of infections and deaths that we’re seeing,” Fauci said.
Arizona on Sunday reported a one-day record of more than 17,200 new cases, eclipsing the previous mark of about 12,000 set in early December. Health officials said the jump appears to reflect infections from Christmas gatherings but was also probably inflated by a reporting lag over New Year’s weekend.
North Carolina and Texas reported record numbers of people in the hospital with covid-19 — 3,600 and 12,500, respectively.
“We need to double down on the things we talk about all the time,” notably wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding “congregate” settings, especially indoors, Fauci said.
BRITONS WARNED
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Sunday that more onerous lockdown restrictions are likely in the coming weeks as England reels from the new coronavirus variant that has pushed infection rates to their highest recorded levels.
Johnson, though, insisted he has “no doubt” that schools are safe and urged parents to send their children back to the classroom in areas where they can. Teacher unions have called for schools to use remote learning for at least a couple more weeks because of the variant, which scientists say is up to 70% more contagious.
While Fauci said the U.S. needs to do its own study, he noted that British researchers believe the mutated version is no deadlier or more likely to make people sicker and that vaccines are effective against it. But Scott Gottlieb, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner who serves on the board of vaccine maker Pfizer, said on “Face the Nation” that the variant “really creates more urgency around trying to get this vaccine out more quickly and get more people vaccinated.”
The U.K. is in the midst of an acute outbreak, recording more than 50,000 new infections a day over the past six days. According to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University, it is alternating with Italy as the worst- hit European nation.
The U. K. has reported more than 2.66 million confirmed cases, including more than 75,000 deaths.
“We are entirely reconciled to do what it takes to get the virus under control; that may involve tougher measures in the weeks ahead,” Johnson told the BBC. “Obviously there are a range of tougher measures that we would have to consider.”
Johnson conceded that school closures, curfews and the banning of household mixing could be on the agenda for areas under the most stress. London and southeast England are facing extremely high levels of new infections, and there is speculation that restrictions there will have to be tightened.
Johnson’s Conservative government is using a tiered restrictions system. Most of England is already at the highest, Tier 4 level, which involves the closure of shops not selling nonessential items and places such as gyms and recreation centers as well as stay-at-home instruction.
It’s “a very tough system, and, alas, probably about to get tougher to keep things under control,” Johnson said. “We’ll review it and we have the prospect of vaccines coming down the tracks in their tens of millions, offering people literally life and hope.”
Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labor Party, urged Johnson to impose further national restrictions in the next day or so, though he stopped short of calling for the closure of schools, as he said he didn’t want to “add to the chaos” that is likely to emerge today.
“The virus is clearly out of control,” Starmer said. “”We can’t allow the prime minister to use up the next two or three weeks and then bring in a national lockdown, which is inevitable.”
One area in which the U. K. has moved quickly is the vaccination front. It was the first to begin vaccinating people older than 80 and health care workers on Dec. 8 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Last week, regulators approved another vaccine made by Oxford University and AstraZeneca that is cheaper and easier to use.
Hundreds of new vaccination sites are due to be up and running this week as the National Health Service ramps up its immunization program with the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot. Officials say about 530,000 doses of the vaccine will be in place today as the country moves towards its goal of vaccinating 2 million people a week as soon as possible.
INDIA VACCINATIONS
In India, two vaccines were authorized Sunday, paving the way for a huge inoculation program to stem the pandemic in the world’s second-most-populous country.
The country’s drugs regulator gave emergency authorization for the vaccine developed by Oxford and AstraZeneca, and another developed by the Indian company Bharat Biotech.
Drugs Controller General Dr. Venugopal Somani said both vaccines would be administered in two dosages. He said the decision to approve the vaccines was made after “careful examination” by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, India’s pharmaceutical regulator.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the vaccine approval a “decisive turning point to strengthen a spirited fight.”
“It would make every Indian proud that the two vaccines that have been given emergency use approval are made in India!” Modi tweeted.
AstraZeneca has contracted Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, to make 1 billion doses of its vaccine for developing nations, including India.
But questions have been raised by health experts over the vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech. They point out that clinical trials began only recently, making it almost impossible for the company to have analyzed and submitted data showing effectiveness.
India has confirmed more than 10.3 million cases of the virus, second in the world behind the U.S., though its infection rate has come down significantly from a mid-September peak. It has reported more than 149,000 deaths.
The country’s initial immunization plan aims to vaccinate 300 million people — health care workers, frontline staff including police, and those considered vulnerable because of other diseases or old age — by August. More than 20,000 health workers have been trained so far to administer the vaccine, the Health Ministry said.
EGYPTIAN DEATHS PROBED
In Egypt, prosecutors opened an investigation into the deaths Sunday of at least four coronavirus patients at a public hospital, after a video of nurses struggling to keep the patients alive was shared widely on social media.
The governor of Sharqia province denied allegations by a relative of one of the patients that the deaths were caused by a lack of oxygen at the government-run intensive care unit treating covid-19 patients. Gov. Mamdouh Ghorab said the patients — reportedly two women in their 60s and two men, 76 and 44 — died because they suffered chronic diseases in addition to the virus. The relative, who also filmed the video, offered no immediate evidence to back up the claim that the hospital ran out of oxygen.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most-populous country with more than 100 million people, is facing a surge in cases and renewed calls for the government to impose a lockdown to contain it.
The deaths follow similar allegations by a relative last week that two patients died because of a lack of oxygen at a government-run hospital elsewhere in the Nile Delta. Prosecutors in Menoufiya province also launched an investigation into the cause of the deaths.
Egypt’s top health authority has announced that a Chinese vaccine made by Sinopharm has been approved for emergency use, and inoculations would begin within two weeks. In televised comments Saturday, Health Minister Hala Zayed said negotiations were also underway to procure the vaccine from Oxford and AstraZeneca, as well as one from Pfizer and BioNTech.
Egypt has reported almost 141,000 confirmed cases, including 7,800 deaths.