How does the leading state in vaccine distribution do it? Using the National Guard since November for logistics, local partnerships, IT systems that work properly planned well in advance, a pre-registry system, an operations command center that focused on inter-agency communications, and mobile vaccination vans to provide the vaccine to people. 'We crushed it': How did West Virginia become a national leader in Covid vaccination? West Virginia, a small, rural state with an older population, was expected to struggle with Covid and any vaccine rollout. Things turned out differently. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...west-virginia-become-national-leader-n1256276 Since December, Ken Reed and his wife Tally, the owners of a small chain of pharmacies in the eastern part of this state, have been waking at dawn to travel to rural counties to vaccinate as many long-term care residents as possible. The Reeds say their familiarity with the people in counties like Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, and Pendleton makes all the difference in gaining their trust. “These are your neighbors, your friends, your friend's parents, and you just treat them like you'd want to be treated,” Ken Reed said. West Virginia, a small and mostly rural state with a large elderly population, was tagged early on as a place likely to struggle with Covid-19 and any vaccine rollout. But the state is now being hailed as a vaccination success story, with 85 percent of its delivered doses already used, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, putting it second in the country behind North Dakota as of last week. A key part of the strategy, health officials say, was the decision not to activate a federal partnership with the CVS and Walgreens pharmacy chains and instead rely on independent drugstores like those owned by the Reeds. “We are a scrappy state that's resilient,” said Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia's coronavirus czar and vice president and executive dean of health services at West Virginia University. “But we absolutely rely on the creativity and the innovation of all of our people. Because we don't want to rely on external resource requirements for us to be able to do what we need to do.” West Virginia's early success is all the more striking given that a study published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in April 2020 ranked it as the state with the greatest share of adults at risk of serious illness if infected with Covid. In an Appalachian state known for country roads, mountains and a dying coal industry, the population has long suffered from high rates of co-morbidities, including smoking and chronic conditions that drive its low overall health ranking. But the state's unique characteristics have in many ways aided its Covid-19 response. The relatively small and homogenous population has contributed to its success, said Dr. Gabor Kelen, director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. And the state actually outperforms the nation in some aspects of health care, including access to primary care physicians and percentage of insured patients. Only 6 percent are uninsured, compared to 9 percent nationally, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. “Access to primary care physicians for the population at least allows people to have trust … in the public health system,” said Kelen. Much of that population lives more than a 45-minute drive from any outlet of the pharmacy chains that dominate most other states. Health officials say that leaves local independent pharmacists, like the Reeds, best situated to provide operational and medical expertise. Ken Reed said there was no red tape involved in joining the state's vaccination effort when he got a call from a health official. “Because we're the boss,” he said, as he and wife Tally laughed. “There is no middle management. … She asked if we could do it, and there was no decision-making chain. She hit the top of the decision-making chain.” West Virginia was actually ahead of much of the nation in its Covid-19 response from the start of the pandemic, due to careful planning and its closeknit, small-town culture. A serendipitous encounter at a football game gave the state an edge in Covid-19 testing last spring, they said. Two months before the White House required testing of all nursing home residents in mid-May, West Virginia was already negotiating with an executive of Labcorp, a national chain of blood and medical test sites. Dr. Marsh, the state Covid-19 czar, had met the executive, a West Virginia University graduate, at a college football game in Morgantown. Marsh got in touch and the two men were soon hatching a plan for state-wide testing, which they rolled out on March 5. Their public-private partnership tested all 28,000 of West Virginia's nursing home residents in just two weeks. The state also created a “team of teams," leveraging the National Guard early on to come up with and run an operations command center that focused on inter-agency communications and work with the Department of Health and Human Resources, the governor's office, and the state's health officers. The National Guard has been involved with the state's response since November, running distribution from the state's five hubs. That includes logistical support for the receipt and transport of vaccines, helping to repackage vials and appropriate refrigerated containers to sites where stability can be maintained. Through a partnership with another company, Everbridge, the consortium has now created a pre-registry system so that each person can be assigned a place in line and notified when and where they can be vaccinated. In the first four days after launching the system, Marsh says over 100,000 people signed up. After initially experimenting with first come, first served clinics unsuccessfully, he says it was trial and error that led his team to the registry platform. Without the ability to predict the precise dose allotments it will receive each week, it was a challenge to meet demand, something the pre-registry system is now intended to address. According to the CDC, as of Saturday West Virginia had given out more second doses per capita than any other state, with more than 3 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Or, as Ken Reed puts it, “We crushed it.” The Reeds spend their nights and early mornings plowing through the paperwork on their kitchen table and inputting data so the state can track the doses it has administered. Ken says he's also taken to dispelling misinformation about the vaccine — what he calls “garbage" — on social media. In line with the state's progress, the Reeds finished administering their share of second doses at long-term care centers last week and are set to take up work at schools. “There's nothing like being able to help your neighbor,” said Tally. As case rates have started to decline across the country, and are down about 35 percent in West Virginia as of last week, according to CDC data, Marsh points to the vaccine rollout. “We've seen a great diminution of the rate of transmission, hospitalizations, ICU hospitalizations, ventilator use … I'm ascribing that to the vaccine," Marsh said, adding that it's too early to take a victory lap. Supply remains the critical issue. Marsh's team says it's currently positioned to vaccinate as many as 23,600 people each week and has the ability to scale up to 100,000, but not the necessary supply of vaccines. “We need more,” he said. While allotment is currently based on population, conversations with the federal government have led to the promise of additional doses of the Moderna vaccine. “We are very optimistic. But right now the supply chain doesn't seem to be able to fulfill the opportunity.” West Virginia's remotest rural communities also remain a challenge. About 40 percent of residents don't have access to broadband internet, in part because of topography that makes connectivity a challenge. To address that, Marsh's team is creating mobile vaccination vans and engaging with local health departments and faith-based organizations with a special focus on vulnerable groups and communities of color. “When it comes to an opportunity to come together, to help each other, to lift each other, that's what West Virginia does best,” Marsh said. “And we're seeing that now.” For a native West Virginian like Marsh, success in the face of so much adversity has also meant burnishing the image of his state. “Right now we're changing the narrative externally,” he said. “And we're not doing it to do that. But that's a really, really great side effect.”
Some of these articles that are posted in scattershot manner by different posters may or may not obscure areas where there is agreement among those who might appear to disagree. When I see articles such as the one above that report success by using the state national guard working with the state chosen pharmacies to partner with, I think "GOOD." But when I see articles, such as one and many others posted earlier, that refer to Biden planning to run things through the Pentagon and FEMA, then I think "BULLSHIITE." Not all troops and agencies are same. I think the W. Virginia folks reporting success would agree with that.
One perspective on the J&J vaccine... Why Even a 66 Percent Effective Vaccine Is Such Good News The exact efficacy might not matter as much as the increased ease of distribution. https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-could-be-game-changing.html Today Johnson & Johnson shared results from the clinical trial for a coronavirus vaccine that is administered with just one shot, instead of the two, and has an efficacy of 66 percent against moderate to severe disease. In other words: We have another effective inoculation against the virus, and one with slightly different attributes compared with the others already on the market. “This is cause for celebration,” tweeted virologist and Slate contributor Angela Rasmussen. And yet, because the vaccine is not as effective as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s, one expert described the clinical trial results as “disappointing” to Stat News. Perhaps you feel a little disappointed too. The reason for the lowered effectiveness might be that it might be less effective against new variants—the efficacy is higher in the U.S., at 72 percent, and lower in South Africa, a hot spot for the new variant, at 57 percent. But the most important takeaway is that it still has a high efficacy against severe disease: 85 percent overall, according to a press release from the drugmaker. Importantly, none of the participants in the trial who received the shot was hospitalized for COVID-19, and none of them died. “If you can prevent severe disease in a high percentage of individuals, that will alleviate so much of the stress and human suffering and death,” Anthony Fauci told reporters Friday. Plus, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has advantages over the other options. In addition to being a single-dose inoculation, meaning that people can be vaccinated faster and with fewer clinic resources, it can be stored longer at warmer temperatures. The vaccine can be kept for up to three months in a normal refrigerator, according to the manufacturer. Moderna’s vaccine can be kept at that temperature for one month, while the Pfizer vaccine stays good for just five days outside of an ultracold freezer or carefully packed shipping container equipped with dry ice. This means that it will be particularly useful in areas and countries where cold storage is an issue. The announcement of another vaccine with slightly different attributes and possible lower effectiveness brings up immediate questions about which vaccine will be the “best” to get. But getting vaccinated ultimately isn’t an individual matter—it’s a collective one that involves the whole world. Everyone being vaccinated, and less coronavirus circulating generally, ultimately matters more than you having the most protective vaccine in your own body. In that light, another option to deploy to reduce illness and spread is incredibly useful. “An efficacious one-dose, easy to transport vaccine is huge,” tweeted statistician Natalie Dean, adding that she did want to see more on the data behind Johnson & Johnson’s press release. As with anything in this pandemic, we won’t know for a while just how well this tool will hold up to further scrutiny, whether it will be granted an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, and how it will work out in the real world, both scientifically and in the tricky and unpredictable mechanics of actually getting the technology to people and into their arms. But there is reason to be hopeful—even reason to think that things could go better in some respects with this new tool than the press release numbers suggest. Stat News reporter Helen Branswell pointed out that “the immune response seemed to improve over time,” meaning that it’s possible that the vaccine is more effective if you look at people who are several weeks out from getting it, rather than just a month. It could also be more effective with a booster shot. According to its website, Johnson & Johnson is also running another study with two doses of the vaccine “to see if a second dose might provide greater, or longer, protection.” But knowing now that we have a vaccine that works pretty well with just one dose? That’s good news.
I not on board yet with this continual theme that the J and J "vaccine is not as effective." We need to see more data and trials on that. What we can probably say is that it is less effective as currently being dosed and administered. I have no reason or data to believe that a two dose J and J is less effective than a two dose moderna or pfizer. It is just that they are playing the edges by trying to get by with one dose. As I said a couple days ago, J and J is currently doing 2-shot trials. I dont have a dog in the fight so the data can come out however it comes out and I will react from there, but I would not be surprised if the "less effective vaccine" recurring statements get revised to "when administered as one shot."
Fewer than 10 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses would be available in coming weeks, health official says https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-...s-02-01-21/h_4ac125bae6e6f77aca477b57659f76b0 Johnson & Johnson would have fewer than 10 million vaccine doses available if the US Food and Drug Administration authorizes it for emergency use in the coming weeks, a federal health official tells CNN. The official said the number of doses available would be in the single-digit millions, but that number would ramp up to 20 or 30 million doses by April. Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine was shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe disease in a global phase 3 trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, the company announced Friday. The vaccine was 72% effective against moderate and severe disease in the US. CNN has reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment.
U.S. likely to start COVID-19 vaccination in children by late spring or early summer https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-children-idUSKBN29Y2FX The United States will likely start vaccinating children by late spring or early summer, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Friday, as studies are underway to test the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccines in children under 16. “Over the next couple of months, we will be doing trials in an age de-escalation manner so that hopefully by the time we get to the late spring and early summer we will have children being able to be vaccinated according to the FDA guidance,” Fauci said, speaking at a White House press briefing.
The next counterfeit item coming out of China.... fake COVID vaccines consisting of saline solution... China arrests more than 80 people in 'fake vaccine' ring crackdown https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/01/asia/china-fake-covid-vaccines-intl/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...id-vaccination-data-offers-hope-exit-pandemic Israel Covid vaccine data shows extremely low rate of infections Only 0.04% of people caught virus a week after second dose and 0.002% needed hospital treatment Israel’s health ministry released its first official results last week, showing that only 317 out of 715,425, or 0.04%, of people became infected a week after becoming fully vaccinated against the disease – the time when increased immunity is expected to kick in. Of the vaccinated people who were infected, 16 had to be treated in hospital, or 0.002% of the total. One domestic healthcare provider, Maccabi Healthcare Services, released an encouraging smaller study on Thursday. It revealed that out of 163,000 Israelis given both shots, only 31 were infected, compared with nearly 6,500 infections among a control group of unvaccinated people.
This is all information I found on the vaccines. Information seems to come directly from the pharmaceutical companies. I will receive an invitation to get vaccinated. I asked if I could choose which vaccine I wish. The answer was: NO, we decide what is best for you.
This should be a reminder that both Russia and China have approved, used, and sold their vaccines across the globe before Phase 3 trials were even started. The Phase 3 trials for these vaccines are still not completed. Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19, interim trial results suggest https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/health/russia-sputnik-v-phase-3-intl/index.html After criticism last year for an early rollout, Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and 100% effective against severe and moderate disease, according to an interim analysis of the vaccine's Phase 3 trial results. The preliminary findings were published in The Lancet on Tuesday and are based on data gathered from 19,866 participants, of which around three-quarters (14,964) received two doses of the vaccine and a quarter (4,902) were given a placebo. Sixteen cases of symptomatic Covid-19 were confirmed in the vaccine group 21 days after participants received the first vaccine dose. Sixty two cases were found in the placebo group -- equating to an efficacy of 91.6%. The trial included 2,144 people over the age of 60 and a sub-analysis conducted on this group revealed the vaccine was well tolerated and had a similar efficacy of 91.8%. The team also analyzed the efficacy of the vaccine against severe and moderate Covid-19 disease and 21 days after the first dose no severe or moderate cases were reported in the vaccinated group, while 20 were reported in the placebo group. Serious adverse events associated with vaccination were also rare -- less than 0.2% in people who received the vaccine. The majority of side-effects that were reported were mild side, such as pain at the injection site, flu like symptoms and low energy levels, according to the study. The analysis includes only symptomatic cases of Covid-19, however, and the authors note more research is needed to understand the vaccine's efficacy against asymptomatic Covid-19, transmission and how long protection may last. The majority of participants in the trial were also white so further research is needed to confirm the results across other ethic groups. The trial is also ongoing and is aiming to include a total of 40,000 participants. Dr. Inna V Dolzhikova, co-lead author of the study, said the analysis suggested the vaccine had "high efficacy, immunogenicity, and a good tolerability profile in participants aged 18 years or older." Dolzhikova works at Russia's Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, which developed the vaccine. The people in the trial were given PCR Covid-19 tests when they received the second shot. They took a further test if they reported symptoms of respiratory infection. The Sputnik V vaccine is a two-dose adenoviral vector vaccine using two different adenoviruses for each dose, with doses administered 21 days apart. With this type of vaccine, an adenovirus is altered so that it can deliver a piece of genetic material from the virus that causes Covid-19 into the body and get cells to express the spike induce found on the virus and induce an immune response. It's an approach similar to the vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. The authors say that using a different adenovirus vector for the booster vaccination may help create a more powerful immune response. One advantage of adenoviral vaccines is that they do not need to be stored and transported in extremely cold temperatures, scientists say. Sputnik V only needs to be refrigerated and costs $10 per dose, according to Russian Direct Investment Fund, which funded vaccine production and is responsible for selling it globally. "This is a useful addition to the published data on Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness," said Dr. Julian Tang, clinical virologist at the University of Leicester. But he highlighted that "median follow up was 48 days from the first dose, so the study cannot assess the full duration of protection." The vaccine's production has been funded by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is also responsible for selling it globally. The vaccine is already approved in Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Argentina, Bolivia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Guinea, Tunisia and Armenia. Sputnik V has so far been administered to more than 2 million people worldwide. Russia drew criticism from scientific circles last year when it approved Sputnik V for public use in August -- before the crucial Phase 3 trials had been completed. "Despite the earlier misgivings about the way this Russian Sputnik V vaccine was rolled out more widely - ahead of sufficient Phase 3 trial data - this approach has been justified to some extent now," Tang said.