Tag Archives: deadly pandemic

New Jersey to require masks in schools as Delta variant spreads

By Maria Caspani

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Kindergarten through 12th-grade students and staff in New Jersey will be required to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status when public schools open in the fall, Governor Phil Murphy said on Friday, reversing his earlier position as the Delta variant of coronavirus spreads.

The change in guidance from just over a month ago reflects a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations spurred by the highly contagious variant, Murphy told a news conference.

“There are issues that are and must always remain above politics, and this is one of them,” said Murphy, a Democrat who is the only incumbent U.S. governor up for re-election this fall.

Debate around masks in U.S. schools reignited last month when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed course and recommended that all students and staff wear masks in school regardless of vaccination status.

A patchwork of policies has emerged from state to state, and even town to town, around the issue that has become deeply political in the United States.

In New Jersey, COVID-19 cases rose 105% over the past two weeks, according to a Reuters analysis of public health data. Hospitalizations have spiked 92% in the past four weeks, the data shows.

About 67% of New Jersey residents have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. U.S. vaccination rates vary widely from a high of 76% of Vermont residents receiving a first dose to a low of 41% in Mississippi.

States with lower vaccination rates have been hardest hit by the fast-spreading variant.

Florida, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi account for half of the country’s new cases and hospitalizations in the last week, White House officials said.

‘MORAL OUTRAGE’

In Florida, the Board of Education on Friday adopted an emergency rule that would allow parents to transfer their child to another school “when a student is subjected to harassment in response to a school district’s COVID-19 mitigation protocols,” including mask protocols.

The newly-approved rule lets parents transfer their kids to a private school or a school in another district under the Hope scholarship, funding that was originally created to allow Florida public school pupils who are victims of bulling to move to a different institution.

During the emergency meeting, one parent called the rule a “moral outrage” that equated a school’s mask mandate to harassment and bullying.

Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, issued an executive order last week blocking mask mandates in the state’s schools.

There were 13,427 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the Sunshine State as of Friday morning, a fresh record high, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Some Florida school districts are keeping mask mandates in place, at least for now, despite the governor’s executive order.

The Broward County Public School Board will meet on Tuesday to decide how to move forward following DeSantis’ order.

Rosalind Osgood, the board’s chairwoman, said she planned to vote to require masks for students and school staff in the county, telling CNN on Friday: “I’m not willing to take a risk with somebody’s life when we have a deadly pandemic.”

Some of the nation’s largest school districts including New York and Los Angeles have made masks mandatory for the upcoming school year.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York and Anurag Maan in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)

J&J vaccine drive stalls out in U.S after safety pause

By Michael Erman

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Safety concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine along with overall flagging demand for vaccinations have slowed its U.S. rollout to a crawl, leaving close to half of the 21 million doses produced for the United States sitting unused.

J&J’s vaccine was supposed to be an important tool for reaching rural areas and vaccine hesitant Americans because it requires only one shot and has less stringent storage requirements than the two-dose vaccines from Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc.

But Americans have largely eschewed it over the six weeks it has been back in use after a pause to study a rare safety issue, according to data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and interviews with health officials and pharmacists in eight states across the country.

“We went from having a waiting list to give somebody a shot to having maybe one shot a day or four shots a day,” Michelle Vargas, owner of independent Lamar Family Pharmacy in Lamar, South Carolina, said of plunging demand for the J&J shot in the small rural community. “They’re concerned for their safety. I think that’s the biggest hurdle right now.”

In the week ended May 25, fewer than 650,000 Americans received the J&J shot, accounting for about 5% of total vaccinations administered and down from nearly 3 million in the week leading up to the pause, CDC data shows.

Demand for all the vaccines has slowed since mid-April, but the drop has been significantly steeper for the J&J shot.

The slowdown may mean some J&J doses will expire unused at a time when global demand for any COVID-19 vaccine is high. J&J doses will be among the 25 million donated by the United States announced by the White House last Thursday.

At least 13 lots of the vaccine have expiration dates of June 27 or earlier, according to a J&J website. It is not clear how many doses that reflects, but the vaccine has a 3-month shelf life and most doses were sent out by early April, including 11 million in the first week. J&J has another 100 million doses on hand but shipment timing is uncertain.

A J&J spokesperson declined to comment on the number of doses expiring before the end of June.

J&J is working with the U.S. government and health authorities to support use of its vaccine, the spokesperson said in a statement, calling it an important tool in the global fight against COVID-19.

“We remain committed to helping end this deadly pandemic as quickly as possible,” J&J said.

‘LET’S JUST STICK WITH PFIZER AND MODERNA’

The CDC and Food and Drug Administration paused use of the J&J vaccine for nearly two weeks in mid-April to investigate links to cases of a very rare, potentially life-threatening condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), which involves blood clots and low platelet counts.

Regulators decided that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh the risk. The condition has also been linked to AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.

David Kohll, pharmacist at Kohll’s Pharmacy with six locations in Nebraska, said before the safety issue, several companies arranged for him to provide J&J vaccines to employees.

“Some of them are trucking companies and some others with more blue-collar or hard-to-get-to employees. They wanted us to go with all J&J,” Kohll said. After the safety pause, “probably 80 percent of them said ‘Let’s just stick with Pfizer and Moderna.'”

Public health officials said during the pause they found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were adequate substitutes in the mobile and walk-up clinics where they had been using J&J.

“Once we get them in for the first dose, we’ve got them and they will come back for the second dose,” said Dr. Karen Landers, a public health official in Alabama.

Use of J&J’s shot has fallen in states like Wyoming and Alabama with low vaccine uptake and in places like Maine and Oregon, where vaccination rates are high, according to state and CDC data.

Not everyone has seen a sharp drop-off in demand for the J&J vaccine. Richard Stryker, who runs the Bayshore Pharmacy in Atlantic Highlands, N.J., said he has seen plenty of interest, particularly from seniors who are at lower risk for the clotting issue and prefer the single injection.

J&J has said it is not currently selling the vaccine for a profit. The lower demand this year is immaterial to its financials, SVB Leerink analyst Danielle Antalffy said at the time of the safety pause.

But competitors Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna could benefit as developed countries sign future deals for booster shots. Pfizer and BioNTech’s EU deal alone could be worth at least $16 billion – as much as double that if all options are exercised – for the companies through 2023, based on current prices.

Rollout of the J&J shot has had other stumbles as well. Regulators shut down production at the largest U.S. plant making the vaccine due to cross-contamination at the site with the AstraZeneca shot. No new doses have been distributed in the United States since mid-May.

U.S. regulators are deciding whether it is safe to release up to 100 million doses of J&J’s vaccine produced at that plant. The dwindling U.S. demand could provide additional flexibility to donate millions of doses.

(Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)