Rhode Island expands eligibility to sign up for coronavirus vaccines

(AP) — Rhode Island Providence is easing some coronavirus restrictions on businesses as vaccination efforts across the state ramp up and hospitalizations continue to decline, Gov. Daniel McKee said Friday.

Starting immediately, restaurants will be able to space indoor tables 6 feet apart, rather than 8, and bar areas where food is being served will be allowed to remain open until midnight, rather than 11 p.m., McKee announced at a news conference.

“Our goal is to continue to identify areas where we can provide businesses with flexibility that will not impact our positivity rates or our hospitalization rates and we will keep moving toward that goal safely,” the Democrat said.

With the spring planting season approaching, capacity limits for outdoor areas at garden shops are being lifted entirely, although indoor restrictions remain, he added.

Mask wearing and social distancing are still required, he said.

Also, state Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor announced a series of restriction-easing measures that take effect next Friday.

They include allowing restaurants to seat up to 75% of indoor capacity, up from the current 66%, and increased attendance at catered events, including weddings, to 100 people indoors and 200 people outdoors, up from current limits of 30 indoors and 100 outdoors.

Houses of worship will also be allowed to host services at up to 75% capacity.

Retail stores would be allowed to have one person per 50 square feet indoors, up from one person per 100 square feet. Big box stores will be allowed to have one person per 100 square feet, up from one person per 150 square feet.

Offices will be able to welcome up to 50% of workers, up from 33% now, although workers are encouraged to continue working remotely if they can.

Rules on gyms and sports facilities, hair salons, and funeral homes are also being relaxed.

“So you can see we are moving systematically and with as much speed as we think is responsible to higher levels of capacity in business and other institutional settings,” Pryor said.

Vaccine eligibility

Rhode Island residents ages 60 to 64 and anyone over age 16 with one or more of several specific underlying health conditions became eligible to sign up for a coronavirus vaccine Friday, state health officials said.

“Our goal is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible, and opening eligibility to this next group of Rhode Islanders is an important and encouraging step toward that goal,” McKee said in a statement. “We will continue to build out and increase our state’s vaccination capacity to ensure we are prepared to get shots in arms when the vaccine supply increases.”

The underlying health conditions that make residents eligible for a shot include diabetes and lung, heart or kidney disease. Residents with a weakened immune system are also eligible, as are pregnant women.

In addition to retail pharmacies and the three state-run vaccination sites, Rhode Islanders can sign up for a shot at one of 30 local vaccination sites and through hospital systems.

Nearly 254,000 people in the state have received at least one dose of a vaccine, while more than 104,000 have been fully vaccinated, the Department of Health said Friday.

Health department statistics

The Rhode Island Department of Health on Friday reported nearly 400 new confirmed coronavirus cases and four more virus-related deaths.

There have now been more than 130,500 known cases and 2,567 COVID-19 fatalities in the state.

Of the new confirmed cases, 315 were people who tested positive for the first time on Thursday, and 67 were people who tested positive for the first time on previous days.

There were 138 patients in the state’s hospitals with the disease as of Wednesday, the latest day for which the information was provided, the lowest one-day total since Oct. 16.

Allan McDonald, a rocket scientist and whistleblower who refused to sign off on the space shuttle Challenger’s launch over safety concerns and, after its explosion, argued that the tragedy could have been averted had officials heeded warnings from engineers like himself, died March 6 at a hospital in Ogden, Utah. He was 83.

The cause was complications from a recent fall, said his daughter Lora McDonald.

For the millions of Americans who turned on their television sets to watch the Challenger take off on Jan. 28, 1986, the image of the space shuttle blowing apart in midair — killing seven astronauts, including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe — was seared into their memory. The disaster is often described as an event on the order of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: Those who lived through it will never forget where they were when it occurred.

McDonald was in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the Challenger was set to take off. He was the senior on-site representative of his company, contractor Morton Thiokol, where he oversaw the engineering of the rocket boosters used to propel the shuttle into space. Among colleagues, the New York Times reported, McDonald had a reputation as one of the most skilled rocket engineers in the country.

Cold snap

It was unseasonably cold in Florida, with weather forecasts predicting that temperatures might drop as low as 18 degrees in the hours before the Challenger was scheduled to lift off. That cold snap became the crux of vociferous debate among McDonald and other engineers, Morton Thiokol executives and NASA officials about whether the mission should go forward.

Citing the cold, McDonald insisted that takeoff be postponed, according to accounts of the deliberations that later emerged in news reports. A critical component of the rocket booster was the O-ring, a rubber gasket that served to contain burning fuel. Because of their composition, O-rings were highly vulnerable to temperature drops, and engineers warned that their effectiveness could not be guaranteed below 53 degrees.

McDonald relayed these concerns in what he described as increasingly frenzied conversations the night before the launch. NASA officials, upset by the last-minute complication, were eager to move forward with the mission; company executives, according to later findings by a presidential commission on the Challenger disaster, appeared to feel pressure to “accommodate a major customer.”

In addition to the matter of the O-rings, McDonald said he raised weather-related concerns including the danger that ice might damage the shuttle’s exterior.

Testimony

“If anything happened to this launch, I told them I sure wouldn’t want to be the person that had to stand in front of a board of inquiry to explain why I launched this outside of the qualification of the solid rocket motor,” he would later testify.

Protocol required the senior engineer to sign off on the launch. When McDonald refused, his supervisor signed for him. The Challenger lifted off at 11:38 a.m. on Jan. 28 and disintegrated approximately 72 seconds later, its remains streaking across the sky.

“My heart just about stopped,” McDonald later said in a public lecture, according to the Commercial Dispatch of Columbus, Miss.

President Ronald Reagan convened a commission to investigate the catastrophe. Led by William Rogers, a former U.S. secretary of state and attorney general, it included astronauts Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride.

McDonald was present at a closed session of the commission — watching from what he called the “cheap seats” — when he heard what he considered misleading testimony by a NASA official about the debate leading up to takeoff.