VIRAL GOOD NEWS!
Vaccines for all in May, bid to open schools, deaths plunge
President Biden on Tuesday said the United States will have enough coronavirus vaccines two months earlier than anticipated.
“We’re now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May,” Biden told reporters.
The announcement came among a welcome surge of good news in the battle against the yearlong pandemic:
Biden pushed for states to prioritize teachers and school staff as essential workers to get kids back into in classrooms.
“As yet another move to help accelerate the safe reopening of schools, let’s treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is,” Biden said.
“And that means getting essential workers who provide that service — educators, school staff, child-care workers — get them vaccinated immediately. They’re essential workers.”
To that end, Biden announced a new federal program aimed at vaccinating all teachers by the end of March. The initiative will see the federal pharmacy-vaccination program prioritize educators and child-care workers.
More than 20 percent of the US adult population, 15 percent of the overall population, have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes have dropped nationwide, with all cases of the virus reported across the country plummeting by about 46 percent.
There was a dramatic 82 percent decline in new cases among US nursing-home residents since the peak during the week of Dec. 20, according to a report by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.
And the report, which cited statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
shows that COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes dropped by 63 percent between Dec. 20, when 5,932 deaths were logged, and Feb. 7 when, 2,211 fatalities were recorded.
Coronavirus-vaccination efforts kicked off in the US in mid-December with nursinghome residents and staffers among the first in line.
Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi announced they’re lifting their COVID-19 mask mandates imposed last summer. Those states will also allow businesses to reopen at full capacity in the coming days.
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine was cleared for emergency use by the feds over the weekend, joining the ranks of inoculations made by Pfizer and Moderna, which require two doses.
The White House said it will use the Defense Production Act to help finance a partnership between rival pharmaceutical companies Merck and J&J to more quickly produce the latter’s vaccine, which, unlike the other two, requires only simple refrigeration instead of a deep freeze.
Biden said he hoped that the nation would be back to normal sometime before “this time next year.”