Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Biden gets vaccine, assures it’s ‘nothing to worry about’
NEWARK, Del. — In a nationally televised moment, President- elect Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve Monday to be inoculated against the coronavirus and assure Americans the shot was safe.
Biden took a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at a hospital not far from his Delaware home, hours after his wife, Jill Biden, did the same. The injections came the same day that a second vaccine, produced by
Moderna, started arriving in states. It joins Pfizer’s in the nation’s arsenal against the covid-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 319,000 people in the United States and upended life around the globe.
One of Biden’s most formidable tasks when he assumes
office Jan. 20 will be overcoming the public’s mistrust of vaccines and other public health measures.
“I’m ready,” said Biden, rolling the left sleeve of his turtleneck all the way up to his shoulder, then declining the option to count to three before the needle was inserted into his left arm.
“You just go ahead anytime you’re ready,” he told the nurse practitioner who administered the shot.
Biden emphasized the safety of the vaccine and said President Donald Trump’s administration “deserves some credit” for getting the distribution process “off the ground.”
“I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it’s available to take the vaccine,” he added. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
He noted, however, that distributing the vaccine is “going to take time,” and he urged Americans to take precautions during the holiday season to avoid the spread of the virus, including wearing masks.
“If you don’t have to travel, don’t travel,” he said. “It’s really important.”
Biden also thanked health care workers, and offered praise and an elbow bump to Tabe Mase, the nurse practitioner.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband are expected to receive their first shots next week.
Other top government officials have been in the first wave of Americans to be inoculated against covid-19 as part of the largest largest vaccination campaign in the nation’s history.
Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., and other lawmakers were given doses Friday. They chose to publicize their injections as part of a campaign to convince Americans that the vaccines are safe and effective amid some skepticism.
Trump is discussing with his doctors the timing for taking the vaccine, the White House has said. He tweeted earlier this month that he was “not scheduled” to take the vaccine but that he looked “forward to doing so at the appropriate time.”
White House officials said the decision was complicated by the fact that Trump was hospitalized with covid-19 in October and likely had a few months of natural immunity from his recovery. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review committee recommended that those who received the type of medical treatment that Trump did wait at least 90 days for a vaccination.
“I think there is an open question as to whether, ultimately, he will be one of the ones to take it on air,” a senior administration official said Dec. 7. “And that’s simply a function of whether that would actually serve the desired purpose, given the fact that he’s a recovered patient.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, and other experts have recommended that Trump be vaccinated without delay as a precaution.
EU WELCOMING VACCINE
As shipments of the Moderna vaccine started to arrive throughout the U.S. on Monday, the European Union gave approval for the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer to be used across the 27-nation bloc, raising hopes that countries can begin administering the first shots to their citizens shortly after Christmas.
The EU’s executive commission gave the green light just hours after the European Medicines Agency said the vaccine meets safety and quality standards, though Brussels had been expected to take two or three days.
“As we have promised, this vaccine will be available for all EU countries at the same time, on the same conditions,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is a very good way to end this difficult year, and to finally start turning the page on covid-19.”
Deliveries of the vaccine had been penciled in to start Saturday, with inoculations beginning across the EU between Sunday and Dec. 29, she said.
The same vaccine was authorized in Britain and the United States weeks ago, prompting pressure from EU governments for the European Medicines Agency to speed up its approval process as virus cases surged again across the continent.
The agency originally set Dec. 29 as the date for evaluating the vaccine, but moved up the meeting to Monday after calls from the German government and others for the agency to move more quickly.
Harald Enzmann, head of the agency’s expert committee, dismissed any suggestion that political influence had affected the decision.
“The focus was exclusively on the science,” he told reporters. “That was a scientific assessment, full stop.”
The Amsterdam- based European Medicines Agency is responsible for approving all new drugs and vaccines across the 27 EU member nations, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. It is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccine has already been given some form of regulatory authorization in at least 15 countries.
Britain, Canada and the U.S. authorized the vaccine to be used according to emergency provisions, meaning the shot is an unlicensed product whose temporary use is justified by the pandemic that has killed almost 1.7 million people worldwide, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University.
CALIFORNIA MIGHT RATION CARE
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged Monday that a state projection model shows hospitalizations could hit nearly 100,000 in the next month and that he’s likely to extend stay-at-home order for much of the state.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said the state fears some hospitals “may go beyond the existing surge capacity that they currently have planned.”
The state is updating its planning guide for how hospitals would ration care if everyone can’t get the treatment they need, Ghaly said. It still hopes to avoid reaching that stage by beefing up staffing, makeshift hospitals and mutual aid with regions that might have precious remaining beds.
Some of the cases heading inevitably toward overtaxed hospitals are already in the pipeline based on the 525,000 cases the state has recorded in the past two weeks. A projected 12% are likely to wind up in the hospital — 63,000 people.
Newsom gave Monday’s briefing from his home as he began a 10-day quarantine Sunday for the second time in two months after a staff member tested positive for the virus.
Newsom was tested and his result came back negative, as did the tests of other staffers who were in contact with the person.
Until vaccinations become widespread, hospitals are preparing for the possibility of rationing care. A document recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals run by Los Angeles County calls for them to shift strategy: Instead of trying everything to save a life, their goal during the crisis is to save as many patients as possible. That means those less likely to survive won’t get the same kind of care offered in normal times.
Plans for rationing care are not in place yet, but they need to be established because “the worst is yet to come,” said Los Angeles County’s health services director, Dr. Christina Ghaly.
Many hospitals already have implemented emergency procedures to stretch staff and space.
Corona Regional Medical Center southeast of Los Angeles has converted an old emergency room to help handle nearly double the usual number of ICU patients. It’s using space in two disaster tents to triage ER patients because the emergency room is filled with patients who need to be hospitalized.
In hard-hit Fresno County, a new 50-bed alternate-care site opened recently near the community Regional Medical Center. The beds for covid-19- negative patients will free up space in area hospitals, where just 13 of some 150 ICU beds were available Friday, said Dan Lynch, the county’s emergency medical services director.
Lynch said he expects they will have to use the Fresno Convention Center, which can accommodate up to 250 patients.
Fresno and three neighboring counties also have taken the unprecedented step of sending paramedics on emergency calls to evaluate people. They won’t be taken to the emergency room if they could go to an urgent care facility or wait a few days to talk to their doctors, Lynch said.
Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Jaffe, Jill Colvin, Jonathan Lemire, Don Thompson, Aleksandar Furtula, Frank Jordans, Christopher Weber, Tom Murphy, Kimberlee Kruesi, John Seewer, John Antczak, Maria Cheng and Lorne Cook of The Associated Press; and by Evan Halper and Chris Megerian of the Los Angeles Times.