Healthcare

In the winter of 1991, Karen Lynch sat by her Aunt Millie’s hospital bed. Lynch wasn’t the eldest of her family’s four siblings, but in the 16 years since their mother’s death, the 28-year-old had become Millie’s primary caretaker.When a priest arrived to deliver Millie’s last rites, Lynch was the only family member present. Hospital staff escorted her out of the room for the ceremony but brought her back in when Millie, fiery to her last days, protested. 

New York (CNN Business)The various Covid-19 vaccines currently being distributed around the globe have the potential to end the worst pandemic in a century. They also will mean hundreds of billions dollars in sales for the pharmaceutical companies that make them.

When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic a year ago Thursday, the top ranks of the U.S. government had little grasp on how much the virus would mangle the country.

An executive order issued by President Joe Biden has the potential to become one of the most important government documents in years directed at carriers and their customers working within the country’s transportation sector.

North Carolina is among the best-performing U.S. states when it comes to distributing vaccines evenly among Black and white residents. That’s partly because the state is by far the best at collecting demographic data. About 11% of North Carolina’s Black population has received at least one shot, compared with 17% of the state’s white residents, the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker shows. That puts North Carolina in fourth place for the smallest spread between the two groups among states with the most comprehensive data sets. Other states might be doing as well or better than North Carolina in terms of equality, though huge numbers of incomplete records obscure the national picture.

The U.S. government has invested billions of dollars in manufacturing, used a wartime act dozens of times to boost supplies and yet there’s still not enough COVID-19 vaccine on the way to meet demand — or even the government’s own goals for national immunization. President Joe Biden, in remarks at the National Institutes of Health this month, said the nation is “now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July.” But at the current rate of production, Pfizer and Moderna will miss their targets of providing at least 100 million doses each by the end of March, let alone 200 million more doses each has promised by July.

More than 50 million Americans have received at least one dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. So far, Americans have been largely brand-agnostic, but that’s about to change as a new vaccine rolls out. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been hailed as a game changer. It requires only a single dose rather than two doses spaced weeks apart, and it does not need freezer storage, making it a natural fit for hard-to-reach rural areas and underserved communities with limited access to health care and storage facilities. But while many people are excited about the prospects of only one shot, the new vaccine is also getting backlash. Part of that is coming from lack of clarity about the vaccines’ efficacy numbers, and part of it is more nuanced.

The effort in the United States to produce and distribute a coronavirus vaccine appears to be a bright spot in the nation’s response to the pandemic. The U.S. has managed to get at least one dose to nearly 24 out of every 100 adults in the country. Only Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom have done better. In total, over 54 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine since vaccination began on Dec. 14. “I think when we look back at this, we will look at this as the turning point where we started to get things right and make some progress,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

The pharmacy in Hankinson, North Dakota, a town of about 900 people at the state’s extreme southeastern tip, has been in operation since 1897. The town was a decade old by then and had quickly swelled with settlers enticed by ads for good farmland along the railroad. A pharmacy was one of those signs of a town’s arrival; a knowledgeable druggist was essential. This remained true through the years, even though it turned out that the region’s population had already peaked and was slowly dwindling, as it still is. The earliest owners of Hankinson Drug had kept a stock of jewelry as well as pharmaceuticals, and both traditions remain alive with the current proprietors. In recent years, their pharmacy has been the only one in the county outside Wahpeton, a bigger town 30 minutes away on the Minnesota border.

Experts now say there’s a simple reason why Nevada’s COVID-19 vaccine allotment has seemed low for months. Fast-growing states have been disadvantaged due to the federal government’s reliance on old population data. Weekly vaccine allocations are proportional to each state’s estimated adult population recorded in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014-18 American Community Survey. The 2015-19 estimates show Nevada with a 1.9 percent larger adult population, one of the biggest increases in the nation. “We get a smaller share of the vaccines compared to what we should have because we’re using kind of older data, and Nevada has grown since then,” UNLV epidemiologist Brian Labus said. “The farther back you look, the greater the gap is going to be.” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Monday the allocation method will continue as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine comes online.