An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted unanimously to recommend the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices held an emergency meeting to hear evidence on the effectiveness and possible side effects of the vaccine. The vote was 12-0 with one recusal.
The committee’s recommendation will now go to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky for her signature, which is expected Sunday evening.
This final recommendation paves the way for the release of the third coronavirus vaccine in the U.S. On Friday, the Johnson & Johnson shot was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for people 18 and older. It requires only one dose and does not have to be frozen.
Johnson & Johnson says it will have about 4 million doses available this week, 20 million by the end of March and another 80 million by the end of June. Deliveries are expected to begin this week.
– Elizabeth Weise
Also in the news:
►Israel on Sunday announced plans to vaccinate tens of thousands of Palestinians who work inside Israel and its West Bank settlements. Israel has come under international criticism for not sharing its vaccine stockpile with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
►The Senate becomes the focus of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package after the House approved it Saturday. The measure would provide millions of Americans $1,400 stimulus payments, ramp up vaccine distribution and extend unemployment aid through the summer.
►The federal government has agreed to buy a 100,000 doses of a COVID-19 treatment by Eli Lilly, the company announced Friday. The drug, bamlanivimab, is a monoclonal antibody, meaning it mimics one of the natural antibodies the immune system uses to fight off the virus. The FDA authorized the drug late last year.
►The U.S. on Friday administered the most vaccines in a day so far: nearly 2.4 million shots given, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
📈Today’s numbers: The U.S. has more than 28.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 513,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 113.9 million cases and 2.52 million deaths. More than 96.4 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. and about 75.2 million have been administered, according to the CDC.
📘What we’re reading: Already had COVID-19? You might not need that second vaccine shot.
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Fauci says easing restrictions ‘is really risky’
The much-ballyhooed, steady decline in new coronavirus infections and hospitalizations appears to have stalled. Experts now are trying to determine whether a new surge is underway.
In the seven-day period ending Thursday, 17 states had rising case counts over the previous seven days. In the seven-day period ending Friday, 21 states were up over the previous seven days.
The week ending Saturday saw new cases rise in 23 states from the previous week.
Yet some governors and mayors, encouraged by the steady decline and pressed by small business owners struggling to survive, are easing restrictions. New Orleans is allowing gatherings of up to 75 people indoors, 150 people outdoors. Massachusetts on Monday lifts an order requiring all businesses, including restaurants, to close by 9:30 p.m.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says he thinks easing restrictions could be premature.
“It is really risky to say, ‘It’s over. We’re on our way out. Let’s pull back,’” Fauci said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
New Zealand’s largest city locked down after new infection discovered
Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, began a weeklong lockdown Sunday after a new coronavirus case of unknown origin was found. Two weeks earlier, the city of 1.7 million people was placed in a three-day lockdown after new cases of the more contagious variant first uncovered in Britain were found. They have resulted in 12 new infections.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday the latest patient had experienced symptoms since earlier in the week and could have infected others. The rest of New Zealand will also have increased, though lesser, restrictions.
“We are in the unfortunate but necessary position to protect Aucklanders again,” Ardern said of imposing the lockdown, which calls for residents to leave their homes only for essential work and shopping.
New Zealand, with a population of 5 million, has been one of the pandemic’s great success stories, taking a strict approach and mostly stamping out the coronavirus. The country has recorded fewer than 2,400 infections and 26 deaths.
Pope Francis heading for Iraq despite concerns of infectious disease experts
“It’s a perfect storm for generating lots of cases, which you won’t be able to deal with,” said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious disease control expert at the University of Exeter College of Medicine.
COVID count blurry for Arab Americans
Across the nation, Arab Americans and their advocates fear alarming rates of COVID-19 infection and deaths in their communities. But there is little data to back up these concerns because most are categorized as “white” by the federal government. The nation’s 3.7 million Arab Americans are unable to self-identify as such on the Census and other government forms. As a result, official health care data can be hard to come by as experts and community leaders are forced to rely on patchwork, often self-compiled data.
“We are told we are white when in reality we are deprived of proper and accurate statistical data,” said Hasibe Rashid, with New York City’s planning department. “We are expected to conform to something we do not agree with, and worse yet, something society does not see us as. We do not live the life of white privilege.”
– Marc Ramirez
Plunging demand for COVID-19 tests may leave US exposed
After a year of struggling to boost testing, communities across the country are seeing plummeting demand, shuttering testing sites or even trying to return supplies. U.S. testing hit a peak on Jan. 15, when the country was averaging more than 2 million tests per day. Since then, the average number of daily tests has fallen more than 28%. The drop mirrors declines across all major virus measures since January, including new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Officials say those encouraging trends, together with harsh winter weather, the end of the holiday travel season, pandemic fatigue and a growing focus on vaccinations are sapping interest in testing. But testing remains important for tracking and containing the outbreak.
“We need to use testing to continue the downward trend,” said Dr. Jonathan Quick of the Rockefeller Foundation, which has been advising Biden officials. “We need to have it there to catch surges from the variants.”
Vegas-area schools latest to reopen among large US districts
School bells ring Monday for the youngest students in Las Vegas, where the nation’s fifth-largest school district will return kids to classrooms during the coronavirus pandemic with a “hybrid” schedule for preschoolers through third-graders.
The move in a region hard hit both physically and economically by COVID-19 makes the sprawling Clark County School District, with 315,000 students, the latest of the largest in the U.S. to resume face-to-face but hands-off instruction.
Contributing: Mike Stucka, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
