Scaling vaccine production up... way up

Vaccine makers promise 140 million more doses in next five weeks, while supply shortage cuts European vaccine production.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

The makers of the two mRNA vaccines currently authorized for emergency use in the United States say they have solved supply chain and other manufacturing issues and will deliver 140 million additional doses by the end of March.

Here are today’s other top stories:

• The White House says vaccine makers are on track to deliver 600 million Covid19 vaccine doses by the end of July.

  • “States will now receive 14.5 million doses this week, up from 8.6 million doses per week when the President took office,” said spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

  • Johnson & Johnson says it has four million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine ready to ship as soon as the FDA grants emergency use authorization. A FDA panel will review the vaccine’s data on Friday. J&J has a contract for 100 million doses of its single-shot vaccine to the U.S. Government.

  • Supply shortages may cause AstraZeneca to deliver fewer than half the vaccine doses ordered by the European Union, Reuters reports.

• Doctors in Germany report a case of a patient who had a severe relapse of COVID-19 four months after recovering from a severe case of the disease. Most alarming: genetic tests indicate that the second bout was caused by a slightly mutated variant of the original virus that caused her first disease. The virus “persisted and evolved” within the patient’s body, the researchers reported in the journal Leukemia.

• President Biden plans to visit a Covid vaccination site during his trip to Houston Friday.

• The FDA published an advisory for consumers to not rely too much on pulse oximeters, especially because they are not reliable in people with darker skin tones.

• The CDC has added more resources to assist in COVID-19 vaccine communications, including website widgets and printable stickers.

• Some psychologists suggest a “fake commute” may be one of the keys. to sanity during the pandemic’s extended work-from-home period.

  That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, commenting and sharing.