“This is also really an incredible feat,” Dr. Amanda Cohn, executive secretary of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said during a committee meeting Sunday. “We hope to continue to increase production, in addition to potentially having new products early next year.”
But while the United States is waiting for the distribution of vaccines to more audiences, they have to contend with the possible increase in winter holidays.
More than a million Americans went through airport security checks on both Friday and Saturday, the first since the pandemic began. Cases increased after trips and Thanksgiving meetings, and experts warn that repeating behavior over Christmas could lead to a rise apart from an increase.
Another wave like this is something Tennessee can’t stand, Gov. Bill Lee said Sunday.
“Tennesseans have two weapons to use in the next 30 days: just meet with your home and wear a mask,” Lee said.
Illinois is approaching one million cases
At a time of unprecedented spread of coronavirus, three states have exceeded the threshold of more than one million cases: California, Texas and Florida.
On Sunday, Illinois took it one step further to join that list when it surpassed 900,000 cases since the pandemic began, the state Department of Public Health said in a press release.
New York, which was the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, hopes to mitigate its own rise. As of Monday, the state’s long-term care facilities will begin receiving vaccines, Gareth Rhodes, a special adviser to the state’s Department of Financial Services, said Friday.
Statewide, 618 long-term care centers have been enrolled to get CVS and Walgreens employees to administer vaccines to residents and staff, Rhodes said.
New Jersey will administer the vaccines at its nursing home on Dec. 28, after state officials missed a federal deadline to register their facilities, New Jersey Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said.
“To start on the 21st, there was a deadline for the 7th for the reception of all registered qualified nursing facilities, long-term care centers, assisted living facilities, of which we have about … more than 650. We lost that date, one day, ”he said, citing the amount of information that needed to be entered.
Slaoui believes the vaccines will still be effective after the virus changes
Although both the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and the Modern vaccine have shown efficacy rates of around 95% in clinical trials, there has been growing concern about whether vaccines would work with new variants of the coronavirus, such as one that ‘is spreading in the UK.
Senior health officials say there is still much they do not know about the variant and that to mitigate its spread The growing list of countries has blocked travel from the UK, including Canada, Argentina, Israel, Germany and France.
A scientist from the Army Research Institute Walter Reed is examining the variant and hopes to know in the coming days whether there is concern that vaccines will not work against it.
But “so far, I don’t think there has been a single variant that was resistant to the vaccine,” Slaoui said sadly. “We can’t rule it out, but it’s not there now.”
He said the new coronavirus may be prone to variance. But critical aspects of the virus, such as the peak protein involved in a vaccine, are very specific to the new coronavirus and are unlikely to mutate much.
“Because vaccines use antibodies against many different parts of the ear protein, the chances of them all changing, I think, are low,” Slaoui said.
CNN’s Virginia Langmaid, Raja Razek, Pete Muntean, Jacqueline Howard Melissa Alonso, Hollie Silverman, Naomi Thomas and Gisela Crespo contributed to this report.