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Severe winter season storms in Texas and the Midwest have actually delayed shipment of a minimum of 6 million dosages of COVID-19 vaccines, White Home officials stated Friday in a rundown.
White Home senior consultant for COVID-19 reaction Andy Slavitt stated the 3 days of postponed shipping developed the backlog of doses. Delivery centers at UPS, FedEx, and McKesson have actually reported staffing shortages, and roadway closures have actually contributed to the problem.
” As climate condition enhance, we’re currently working to enhance this backlog,” he stated, adding that 1.4 million doses are on their way today.
More than 2,000 vaccine circulation sites remain in areas affected by the interruptions, Slavitt said. UPS and FedEx will work on Saturday deliveries today.
He reported the opening of four new vaccination centers in Florida, which will be able to immunize 12,000 individuals daily, and one brand-new site in Pennsylvania that will offer 6,000 dosages daily.
The brand-new centers in Florida will be in Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, and Tampa, and Pennsylvania’s website will be at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. They will all be up and running within the next 2 weeks, Slavitt said.
Anthony Fauci, MD, the White House COVID-19 Response Team’s primary medical adviser, likewise reported that Pfizer will study vaccine impacts on children as young as 5 or 6 years old beginning in April, with Moderna studying kids as young as 6 months old starting in March. Both companies will likely have information on high school-aged children by the fall, the effects on younger kids will not be reported until the first quarter of 2022.
Finally, Fauci called into question a brand-new study that shows a single shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine can be highly efficient. The study has actually left some individuals questioning the requirement for a second dosage.
” Even though you can get a reasonable degree of ‘defense’ after a single dose, it’s clearly not durable,” he stated.
The research study, released by Israeli scientists in the Lancet medical journal, discovered the very first dosage of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination to be 85%reliable versus infection 2 and 4 weeks after it was given.
But according to Fauci, the effects of the very first dosage may not last without an increase from the second one.
Source:
White House COVID-19 Reaction Team rundown, Feb. 19, 2021
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