Healthcare

It wasn’t just Covid-19 itself, but the public response to it, which sent shockwaves through our food system and exposed its fragility. Short-term shortages, in the form of bare supermarket shelves, revealed that this highly complex food supply chain is not as resilient as it ought to be. All it took was fear of a toilet paper shortage — there was never a production problem — to turn paper products into the lockdown’s scarcest commodities. While the system adjusted to the strange new dynamic after a few weeks, it only took a small shock to empty the shelves of certain foods and other essentials. What happens if greater pressure were placed on the food supply chain by someone acting intentionally? Would we be able to cope with the result?

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been a nightmare for many Americans as they struggle through multi-step registration and appointment systems. The federal government had envisioned states using one national vaccine scheduling system, and it offered a contractor $44 million to develop it. But that system turned out to be so poorly designed that all but nine states opted out before even trying to adopt it, even though it was being offered by the government for free.

Across the Midwest, the rollout of COVID vaccines has been spotty. Lots of people are having a trouble with online signups. And vaccine demand far exceeds supply. That’s made the process challenging, especially in rural areas. For years, the Girls State Training School in central Iowa has sat mostly empty. But on this day, the main building is buzzing as a local vaccination clinic opens. Rooms labeled for social workers, psychologists and others who once helped delinquent girls are filled with health care workers and elderly residents from the rural area.

College sports venues are providing large, accessible centers to facilitate the final step in the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain. Communities will finally receive their vaccinations in stadiums like Michigan’s Big House and Missouri’s Memorial Stadium. “It’s the last mile which is really critical,” Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson told FOS. “We need large venues, and there are not that many large venues available.”

They all started in the same place, with no one immunized, no stockpiles of vaccine and no choice but to dive in immediately with perhaps the most high-stakes public health campaign in American history. Seven weeks later, the nation’s states are all racing to deliver a potentially lifesaving defense against the novel coronavirus to millions of arms. But some states are having far more success than others. In the states moving fastest, up to 1 in 7 people had received at least their first injection as of Wednesday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. At the other end of the rankings, it was 1 in 17.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been a nightmare for many Americans as they struggle through multi-step registration and appointment systems. The federal government had envisioned states using one national vaccine scheduling system, and it offered a contractor US$44 million to develop it. But that system turned out to be so poorly designed that all but nine states opted out before even trying to adopt it, even though it was being offered by the government for free. The few states that do use the Vaccine Administration Management System, or VAMS, have reported random appointment cancellations and unreliable registrations. Some vaccinators have had to resort to creating records on paper because of system glitches, slowing down the pace of getting shots into people’s arms.

Regularly testing for Covid-19 in K-12 schools can help identify cases and provide an extra layer of protection for staff and families, according to two reports commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation released on Thursday. Implementing testing, however, is an enormous, logistically complex undertaking, and most schools need significant resources to make it feasible, the reports also found. One of the reports, conducted by research firm Mathematica, assessed programs in six pilot locations that either already have started or are planning to implement rapid antigen testing with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic foundation that has focused on Covid-19 testing for much of the pandemic. Tests were provided by the Department of Health and Human Services.

In January 2017, a lengthy proposal showed up at the offices of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in Washington. Running 112 pages, the document described a strategy for stopping future pandemics. It outlined a number of vaccine technologies to pursue, including messenger RNA and adenovirus vectors, and recommended that a team of 180 scientists, doctors, and other experts be created to carry out the plan. There were intricate technical details, an org chart, and an estimated cost: $595 million over 10 years.

Public health experts say the United States is lagging behind other countries in its COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Tinglong Dai- an associate professor at the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University, and an expert in health care analytics- has closely followed the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the United States. He says other countries are doing a better job of making the shots accessible to the public. “Americans are working too hard to get a vaccine,” Dai says. “Look at people in the UK and Israel...you basically don’t have to do anything to get a vaccine.” UK residents receive a letter telling them when they’re eligible for a vaccine and where to go to get it. Then, they simply book an appointment online.

When you share a campus with the world’s foremost coronavirus experts, it says a lot that you’re confident about returning to the classroom. Even as many parts of the United States continue to struggle in the fight against coronavirus, the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland last month resumed some in-person MBA classes. Between 30% and 40% of the Carey MBA class opted to come back to campus in person. And it’s going well — thanks to the preparations of a team of top minds, says Brian Gunia, associate dean for academic programs.