Healthcare

25 Investigates has reported for weeks that many states are outpacing Massachusetts in COVID-19 vaccine distribution. And, we continue to ask why. Massachusetts health officials have frequently blamed the federal government, under the Trump administration, for the slow and bumpy rollout of the vaccines here in the Commonwealth. On Monday, Governor Charlie Baker defended the Massachusetts rollout plan, saying the Commonwealth’s plan was designed to protect vulnerable communities, including people in nursing homes and areas disproportionately affected. He says other states did not prioritize those groups, which he says require a lot of outreach.

Of the many things that COVID-19 has made abundantly clear to us, surely one of them is a newfound realization that public health has become increasingly complex. Understanding the challenges to public health – that is, the task of guarding the well-being of the U.S. population – is essential now more than ever. As an engineer, design futurist and graduate program director, I have seen how COVID-19 has transformed how public health preparedness is viewed and understood. Some say the pandemic has delivered an urgency for a reimagining of public health.

The rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine is going badly. Delivering more doses faster is central to the 200-page White House Covid-19 plan, which was released last week, one day after President Joe Biden took office. The plan, which promises to vaccinate 100 million people in the new administration’s first 100 days, lays out a raft of initiatives for revving up delivery: releasing almost all doses, loosening eligibility criteria, tuning up distribution, and developing new packaging to preserve temperature-sensitive products for transport to rural areas.

The spoilage of nearly 2,000 COVID-19 vaccines at the VA Medical Center in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood sparked a reaction from people in the city. Anna Nagurney, a professor of operations management at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is an expert in supply chains, including vaccine rollouts. She says the loss of 1,900 vaccine doses should never have happened. "I think it's actually unforgivable," she said. "We cannot afford to be wasting our vaccines.

Of the many things that COVID-19 has made abundantly clear to us, surely one of them is a newfound realization that public health has become increasingly complex. Understanding the challenges to public health – that is, the task of guarding the well-being of the U.S. population – is essential now more than ever. As an engineer, design futurist and graduate program director, I have seen how COVID-19 has transformed how public health preparedness is viewed and understood. Some say the pandemic has delivered an urgency for a reimagining of public health.

President Joe Biden’s national distribution plan for COVID-19 vaccines calls for increased access and ramping up production for a pandemic that he warned on Thursday will get worse before it gets better. “More people, more places, more supply,” Bechara Choucair, the Biden administration’s vaccine coordinator, told reporters. “That’s what this boils down to.” Biden wants to expand the number of people with access to vaccines as quickly as possible. His plan seeks to create hundreds of mass vaccination centers around the country. And he wants to compel the manufacturers of vaccines, and of the medical equipment required to administer them, to ramp up production.

One of President Joe Biden’s first official acts is to require the use of masks and social distancing in all federal buildings, on federal lands and by federal employees and contractors. The White House recommends:

• Every American to wear a mask when they are around people outside their household.
• Every governor to make that mandatory in their state.
• Local authorities to also make it mandatory to support their state’s orders.

Health experts and scientists have repeatedly said that wearing masks and social distancing helps stop the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Julie Swann with North Carolina State University has studied the effectiveness of masks. She leads a team chosen by the CDC to create models for supporting states with their decision-making on the coronavirus.

The U.K.'s highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant of the coronavirus is starting to spread throughout the U.S., making the already difficult task of slowing the virus even more challenging. With recent studies confirming that the new variant of the virus is significantly more transmissible than the current dominant COVID strain in the States, some experts are warning that it's safest to immediately stop doing certain activities to avoid the new COVID strain. Read on to see what you should be staying away from as the pandemic rages on, and for an update on where the U.K. variant is already, check out The New COVID Strain Is Now in These 12 States.

The urgency of vaccinating nursing home residents is evident in the numbers. The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 136,000 residents and employees of long-term care facilities in the U.S. alone, accounting for nearly 40% of all U.S. deaths linked to the disease. Echoing that urgency, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar declared in mid-December, “We can have every nursing home patient vaccinated in the United States by Christmas.” Yet, by Christmas, most states had barely begun. Other states were still far behind when West Virginia became the first state to finish round one of the two-dose vaccine series in nursing homes on Dec. 30.

The urgency of vaccinating nursing home residents is evident in the numbers. The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 136,000 residents and employees of long-term care facilities in the U.S. alone, accounting for nearly 40% of all U.S. deaths linked to the disease. Echoing that urgency, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar declared in mid-December, “We can have every nursing home patient vaccinated in the United States by Christmas.” Yet, by Christmas, most states had barely begun. Other states were still far behind when West Virginia became the first state to finish round one of the two-dose vaccine series in nursing homes on Dec. 30.