USA records 400,000th COVID-19 death
Incoming administration pledges to fix vaccine distribution and restore the role of science in public health communications
In case you missed it, here’s a link to Monday’s special edition, in which I shared five things each of us needs to know or do right now to keep safe from COVID-19.
As predicted, the USA crossed the 400,000 death threshold and recorded its its 400,292nd confirmed COVID-19 death as the current presidential term ends. The USA has nearly twice as many deaths as the next worst country on the list, Brazil, where 210,299 have died from COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins tracker.
Incoming Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she starts work Wednesday with urgency because “this is an emergency.” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the infectious disease specialist from Massachusetts General Hospital pledged, “There will be way more communication, the science will be out there.”
The CEO of Plumas District Hospital in Quincy, Calif., disclosed that she tested positive for COVID-19 after an apparent workplace exposure. She told the Plumas News that she was able to keep working remotely, even with some fatigue.
The Washington Post and other media outlets report that the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, even though slower than promised, has started to turn the mood of healthcare professionals from despair to some degree of hope.
Some older people are withdrawing from ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials so that they can get one of the two vaccines now available. This was one of the challenges that FDA advisors wrestled with when considering the Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Such withdrawals could slow down the path towards authorization of new vaccines.
Washington state has asked Starbucks to use its advanced computer modeling system to help improve the state’s vaccine administration program. The Seattle-based coffee chain assigned 11 staff members with expertise in labor, logistics and other skills to the project.