New York City has temporarily retooled its door-to-door COVID-19 vaccination program for the homebound, using Moderna instead of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, although the switch limits how many people can be quickly inoculated, officials said Wednesday.
Before its use was suspended earlier this month, while a rare blood-clotting-disorder side effect is investigated, Johnson & Johnson’s shot had been used by New York City for the homebound population. It had been chosen because it is completed with one shot and it doesn’t require certain cold storage like the two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech.
Moderna can still be used for up to 6 hours after it's opened, said Dr. Mitchell Katz, head of the city’s public health system.
"If you’re going to use it within six hours, it does not require that intense frozen storage. So we’re able to take a vial, plan the number of visits we’re going to have within a six-hour period and use all of the vaccine and, therefore, not require the super freezer procedures," Katz said, speaking at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daily news conference.
De Blasio also said getting a vaccine, for those who want to make an appointment at an in-person vaccination center, is "now easy," after months of scarce appointments that came and went within moments.
"People out there have been waiting for a moment when it got easier. That’s this moment right. It’s easy now, literally," de Blasio said.
Meanwhile, the White House is trying to overcome diminishing demand for COVID-19 shots by making it easier for Americans to get vaccinated, even as the United States is set to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of administering 200 million coronavirus doses in his first 100 days in office.
With more than 50% of adults at least partially vaccinated and roughly 28 million vaccine doses being delivered each week, demand has eclipsed supply as the constraining factor to vaccinations in much of the country.
Over the last week, the pace of inoculation in the U.S. has slowed slightly. That is partly a reflection of disruptions from the "pause" in administration of the Johnson & Johnson shot for a safety review, but also of softening interest for vaccines in many places even as eligibility has been opened to all those older than 16.
As the vaccination program progresses, the administration believes it will only get more difficult to sustain the current pace of about 3 million shots per day. Roughly 130 million Americans have yet to receive one dose.
In a White House speech on Wednesday, Biden is expected to discuss efforts to expand vaccine distribution and access in his first three months in office, and outline his administration’s latest plans to motivate more Americans to get shots.
In New York and on Long Island, progress in reducing COVID-19 indicators of infection levels is moving ahead, according to the latest state figures, with the state registering the lowest seven-day average in virus positivity since Nov. 12.
The seven-day average of 2.8% from Monday was hailed by the governor as another sign the state is reversing a surge in cases, positivity levels and deaths that started with the Thanksgiving holiday, continued through Christmas and lasted for weeks.
The seven-day positivity average on Long Island fell to 3.04% after weeks hovering above 4%. New York City's average was 3.01%. During the summer, the positivity rate had tracked as low as 1% on Long Island and statewide.
The number of new confirmed cases in test results from Monday was 277 in Nassau and 290 in Suffolk. That was a sharp drop from some of the levels seen in the holiday surge, when each county registered close to or more than 1,000 cases a day.
Check back for updates on this developing story. Sign up for COVID-19 text alerts at newsday.com/text.
COVID-19 - Latest - Google News
April 22, 2021 at 12:03AM
https://ift.tt/32GVBsp
NYC switching from J&J to Moderna for at-home vaccinations - Newsday
COVID-19 - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VQ2gy8
No comments:
Post a Comment