[ad_1]
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 2021 won’t be all that different from 2020 if the country (and the world for that matter) doesn’t act together.
As Britain moves forward with a questionable strategy of mixing different vaccine products, the new strain of COVID-19 first reported outside the UK was found in Colorado and California this week, and Los Angeles. continues to face a devastating outbreak of coronavirus cases.
Read more
Los Angeles County and 22 others under indefinite lockdown due to rise in virus
Despite the clearly still active spread of COVID-19, hope that manifested in the form of two highly effective vaccines released in late 2020 is now tempered by a mess of deployment issues.
Although more than 14 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been shipped across the United States, the New York Times reports that only about 2 million people have received even a first dose. The federal government had set a goal of vaccinating up to 20 million people by the end of 2020, but that goal was far from being met and there is no single answer – or clear – why .
The Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed officials have suggested the holiday season may impact vaccination efforts, while Trump blamed individual states for slow deployment. In December, several state governors called on the federal government to ship fewer doses of the vaccine to their regions than had been promised.
But an issue impacting vaccine uptake may also be the reluctance of health workers who have been put on the front lines to receive protection against COVID-19. The LA Times and the NPR report that frontline workers at hospitals in California and Chicago, respectively, have avoided receiving doses of the vaccine.
In Riverside County, California, nearly 50% of eligible healthcare workers have refused the vaccine. While some refusals have come from pregnant frontline workers who are reluctant to take the vaccine (the Center for Disease Control says there is limited data on the safety of vaccines given to pregnant or breastfeeding women), others avoid to receive doses because of fear and mistrust. to the government.
“It’s not shocking, given what the federal administration has been doing over the past 10 months,” Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, told LA Times.
In a December survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, three in ten healthcare workers said they “probably or definitely” would not get the vaccine.
Then there are the incidents where health workers willfully sabotage vaccines or mess up the distribution of doses to those actively seeking them.
In Tennessee, WRCB 3 News reports that on Friday, Hamilton County health officials fired dozens of people who had been lined up in their cars for hours while waiting their turn for a vaccine, citing a limited supply . Later that day, health department officials distributed doses to “close contacts” – people who were friends and family members of those administering the vaccine.
And police arrested a pharmacist working at the Advocate Aurora Health Hospital in Milwaukee, Wis. On New Years Eve on allegations he removed 570 doses of the Moderna vaccine from the refrigerated warehouse and left them. spend the night, intentionally making them “unnecessary”.
Patients were given 57 doses of the spoiled vaccine, according to a statement from Grafton Police, who arrested the worker this week but have not yet named him. Although hospital officials said there were no health concerns associated with receiving the destroyed vaccines, the worker wrote a statement admitting to intentionally spoiling the doses by removing them from the refrigeration. Police say he also knew people who received the lost doses would think they had been protected from the virus when they were not.
The suspect has yet to be formally charged, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has identified Steven Brandenburg, 46, a licensed pharmacist, as being in prison on the preliminary charges described by Grafton Police in their arrest statement.
President-elect Biden has a major battle ahead of him as he takes control of the White House and the ongoing fight against the coronavirus pandemic – the main one of which is to further mobilize the public with a collective response to protect us from disease.
[ad_2]
Source link