Deaths higher than thought in 25-44 age group
While many believe that COVID-19 is a disease that only kills the elderly, a study found that the virus also contributed to excess death in adults between the ages of 25 and 44.
Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that 76,000 Americans in this age range died from March through July, nearly 12,000 more than expected based on prior seasonal trends, according to the research letter published Wednesday in JAMA.
On average, about 38% of those deaths were attributed directly to COVID-19. In some regions, like New York and New Jersey, about 80% of excess deaths were attributed to the disease.
In regions that experienced substantial surges, COVID-19 deaths “equaled or exceeded the number of deaths caused by unintentional opioid overdoses in 2018,” said Dr. Jeremy Faust, lead author and ER physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Other headlines:
• Texas has become the second state to surpass 1.5 million COVID-19 cases, according to Johns Hopkins data. Only 10 countries have topped that figure.
• The other state with more than 1.5 million cases, California, has ordered an additional 5,000 body bags and stationed mobile morgues in hospitals in the hardest-hit counties, including Los Angeles and San Diego, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
• Cases have declined in some Midwestern states, including Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Nebraska. Hospitalizations and deaths are still on the rise due to an earlier surge of infections.
• The U.S. has seen 16.7 million cases and 304,000 deaths.
Pfizer facing vaccine manufacturing problems
The leaders of Operation Warp Speed on Wednesday addressed a report in The New York Times that the Trump administration didn’t secure more doses of the Pfizer vaccine when the option was available.
“It wouldn’t make sense whatsoever to pre-order more from one vaccine manufacturer than any other one before we knew a vaccine works,” said Moncef Slaoui, who leads Operation Warp Speed.
Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Pfizer has come up about half short of what the company expected to produce this year. Azar said Pfizer is working at “maximum capacity” to deliver the 100 million doses it is contracted to supply to the U.S., and that the government is looking to expand the contract in the second quarter.
The government’s relationship with Pfizer is contractually different than to the ones with the other vaccine makers, Azar said.
“On the other five (vaccine makers), we are more intimately engaged in the support of the development and manufacturing of their product on an ongoing basis, whereas the relationship Pfizer wanted with Operation Warp Speed was the guaranteed purchase of vaccine if approved by the FDA,” Azar said.
Vaccine distribution updates
Some 2 million more doses are set to be delivered next week. On Thursday, 886 more deliveries will be made to locations across the U.S. as the country continues “a steady drumbeat cadence of deliveries of vaccine out to American people,” said Gen. Gus Perna, who is heading distribution logistics.
Starting as soon as Friday in Ohio and Connecticut, residents of long-term care facilities will begin vaccinations, Perna said. The efforts in long-term care centers will expand to more than 1,100 facilities by Monday then increase by thousands a day.
Perna also described the efforts to increase distribution of the vaccine at pharmacies around the country, with 19 chains partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Through those partnerships, Perna said he expects a gradual rollout starting in mid-January that will cover 37,000 brick-and-mortar facilities.
Perna said four trays of vaccine, two in California and two in Alabama, dropped below the required storage temperatures when transported. Perna said officials were able to identify those trays and that they never left the trucks. The doses were sent back to Pfizer, which, with the FDA, will determine whether they are still safe and effective.
Ex-CDC appointees detail Trump meddling
Two former GOP political appointees to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described in New York Times interviews how the Trump administration meddled in the agency’s science and corroded trust in the once-apolitical health institution.
“Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped and the CDC was sidelined. It didn’t happen that way,” Kyle McGowan, former CDC chief of staff, told The Times. “It was more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC.”
McGowan and former deputy chief of staff Amanda Campbell, who left the CDC in August, depicted episodes of the White House injecting politics into the agency’s guidance, briefings and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, a noted publication.
“It wasn’t until something was in the M.M.W.R. that was in contradiction to what message the White House and H.H.S. were trying to put forward that they became scrutinized,” Campbell told the Times.