Pfizer and BioNTech said new data show that doses remains stable when stored for up to two weeks between -13°F to 5°F, which are more common temperatures for pharmaceutical freezers.
The companies said the new temperatures can be an alternative or complement to the existing ultra-cold storage, which keeps doses viable for up to six months. Doses can also be stored for five days at standard refrigeration temperatures, between 36°F and 46°F, before they must be administered.
Experts say the United States could quickly expand the nation’s limited testing supply and improve speed by authorizing rapid, paper-based antigen tests such as Innova’s diagnostic. Advocates say these tests are cheaper, easier to make and can be used two to three times each week to detect when someone is infectious and likely to pass the virus to others.
The drawback: Rapid tests are less precise when compared to lab tests, which take longer to complete and cost $100 or more.
More studies are underway to demonstrate the accuracy of Innova’s test, which costs less than $5 and can deliver results within 30 minutes. Researchers at Harvard, the University of California, San Francisco and Colby College have evaluated the test and other private research groups are conducting trials on people with or without coronavirus symptoms, said Daniel Elliott, president and CEO of Innova Medical Group.
CVS Health plans to contact Americans living in underserved communities to help them schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments amid signs that white people are getting the free vaccine at higher rates than Black Americans .
The drugstore chain said Friday that it will call, email and text-message people living in what the federal government has deemed socially vulnerable areas to provide assistance and education in the vaccine process.
The move also comes as reports circulate widely that Americans are struggling to navigate various scheduling systems, website crashes and a sluggish rollout of the two vaccines approved so far .
CVS also said it will hold vaccine clinics in the most vulnerable communities it serves and send vaccination caravans into neighborhoods to make it easier for people to get their shots.
Research published in 2020 concluded that about 34% of COVID-19 deaths in the period studied were Black people, though they make up only 12% of the American population. CVS said its internal data indicates that 35% of Black Americans do not plan to get vaccinated when they’re first able to do so.
– Nathan Bomey
When can most people get a COVID-19 vaccine? Do teachers need to be vaccinated before schools can reopen? When will life go back to normal?
Those are some of the basic questions that the White House has sometimes struggled to answer as President Joe Biden tackles the biggest issue of his presidency: ending the pandemic and getting the economy and daily life back on track.
Biden has pledged not only to address the challenges more intelligently and capably than his predecessor, but also to admit when things go wrong.
Still, both communication missteps and the difficulty of making predictions for an evolving situation have led to confusion on some goals and timelines.
Biden has also been accused of setting the bar too low in some areas to make it easier to claim victory. Some heath experts questioned whether his pledge of 100 million vaccine shots in his first 100 days was too slow after pace of vaccinations during January increased. Biden is set to blow past the goal, and Andy Slavitt, Biden’s senior adviser for COVID-19 response, called the 100 million goal “a floor, not a ceiling.”
– Maureen Groppe and Courtney Subramanian
A recent study found pregnant women in Washington state were infected with COVID-19 at a 70% higher rate than others at similar ages.
Additionally, rates of infection among pregnant women of color were far higher than researchers expected, according to the study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The study provides further evidence that pregnancy should be considered a high-risk health condition for COVID-19 vaccine priority, said senior author Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, an OB-GYN at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
“Our data indicates that pregnant people did not avoid the pandemic as we hoped that they would, and communities of color bore the greatest burden,” Waldorf said.
While there’s little safety data on the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women, Pfizer-BioNTech announced Thursday the start of its highly anticipated clinical trial to evaluate the vaccine in pregnant women.
Participants received their first doses in the U.S. The trial will enroll about 4,000 healthy pregnant women over 18 years old from countries in North America, South America, Europe and Africa.
– Adrianna Rodriguez
Survivors of COVID-19 who produce lots of disease-fighting antibodies carry within them a weapon in the fight to prevent severe complications from the coronavirus. Their antibody-rich blood plasma helps block the virus, when transfused early into newly diagnosed patients – and may even be helpful against infections with new variants of the coronavirus.
If an outbreak caused by a variant of the coronavirus occurs in a community, its survivors could become the medicine chest for others who fall sick, a New Jersey researcher said.
“They essentially have the treatment for the variants in their body,” said Dr. Michele Donato, lead researcher at Hackensack University Medical Center for a group of studies about COVID-19 survivors’ blood plasma. “The plasma contains the antibodies of the virus that’s in the community at that time.”
Recovered patients would be able to donate plasma after they have been symptom-free for two weeks, and the plasma would be ready to deploy in three days, she said. “Collection of plasma is a very low-tech, easy process.”
– Lindy Washburn, NorthJersey.com
Contributing: The Associated Press
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