Maskless crowds alarm health officials
CDC director fears a repeat of last summer's Spring Break surges, while White House plans $1.5 billion advertising campaign to promote vaccines among the reluctant, recalcitrant and vulnerable.
“It’s so great to see everybody without a mask.”
That’s how a musician greeted a packed crowd at a Fort Worth nightclub Friday night. The club provided hand sanitizer stations and placed stickers on the ground to “encourage” social distancing, but the Dallas News reports that precautions were mostly ignored. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifted COVID-19 prevention mandates effective last Wednesday.
The White House plans to use $1.5 billion of the COVID-19 relief funding to support local programs — including communications — aimed at reaching everyone, including those who either don’t know about the vaccines or don’t want them.
“We know that people are not looking to be convinced by the government or by some other entity,” said White House Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt, although he declined to confirm the price tag. “They want to have conversations with people locally in their community, whether it's a doctor or pharmacist or other people that they trust.”
Politico reports that the CDC has started holding “vaccine confidence consultations” with some communities as part of this effort.
Efforts to promote vaccination among Black Americans requires acknowledging that many people of color report everyday experiences of being treated poorly by doctors and other healthcare professionals, says Denise Herd, a professor of behavioral sciences at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
The CDC and local health departments are adding messaging that advises people not to consider one vaccine “better” or “worse” than another because there is no head-to-head data.
“The Pfizer and Moderna trials were done earlier, when there were few of the virus variants circulating. In contrast, the Johnson and Johnson trial was conducted later, when the variants of concern were circulating at much higher levels,” said one health department notice.
“They have not been compared one to the other,” says NIAID Director Dr. Tony Fauci. “We have three highly efficacious, safe vaccines that are now available to the American public.”
More than 5 million Americans received COVID-19 vaccinations this weekend, according to the White House. That’s the good news. The bad news is that over 1.3 million travelers passed through airports Friday, making it the largest single travel day since the pandemic began. This plus Spring Break photos showing maskless crowds heightens concern, says CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. She noted that the recent surges in Europe occurred in this same scenario.
A CDC study found that a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 63% effective at preventing new COVID-19 infections among nursing home residents. This is consistent with clinical trial data but confirms that benefits begin after the first shot and increase after the second shot of the two-dose regimen.
The White House announced it would increase the fees paid to healthcare providers for giving shots under Medicare from $23 to $40 and would reimburse states the full cost of administering shots to people covered by Medicaid (which is controlled by states.)
Republican members of Congress are refusing to disclose to the U.S. Capitol physician whether they have been vaccinated or are refusing to get COVID-19 vaccinations, challenging any effort to relax anti-COVID-19 precautions such as limiting the number of members in the House chamber, according to Axios.
At least five countries are pausing use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine over reports of blood clots associated with the shots, despite European regulators and the World Health Organization both saying there are no indications that the vaccine is causing these adverse events. A safety and efficacy study for potential use of this vaccine in the United States is underway.
A topic to watch: As the vaccine rollout accelerates and the potential impact of those who refuse to take the vaccines becomes more visible, expect to see efforts to “verify” whether someone has been vaccinated before they can travel or enter a workplace, event or other gathering. White House officials have indicated that this ought to be left to the private sector, provided that any “vaccination passport” protects privacy and is accessible for anyone without charge — even if they don’t have a smartphone or computer. “It’s not the role of government to do that,” says White House Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt.
And there’s more than just COVID-19 to watch out for: Scientists are concerned about a genetic analysis of the latest Ebola outbreak that finds the new cases are directly linked to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in the region. This means that the virus likely was lurking within a survivor for five years, a finding that renown infectious disease journalist Helen Branswell labels a “bombshell.”
You can watch the White House COVID-19 briefings at this link. The administration currently is doing these every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.