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Coronavirus Updates: As Vaccine Supply Evaporates, NYC Banks On An "Uncertain" Hail Mary
By
Sydney Pereira
and
Nsikan Akpan
Published Jan 25, 2021
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John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock
By
Sydney Pereira
and
Nsikan Akpan
Published Jan 25, 2021
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This is our daily update of breaking COVID-19 news for Monday, January 25th, 2021. Previous daily updates can be found here, and up-to-date statistics are here.
New York City is in Phase 4 of reopening now, which includes zoos, botanical gardens, museums, and gyms. Citing rising hospitalization rates, Governor Andrew Cuomo suspended indoor dining in NYC starting December 14th. After being shut down for several weeks, NYC public schools partially reopened on December 7th for 3K-5th grade students, with students with special needs returning on December 10th. Certain parts of Staten Island remain under a zoned shutdown.
Get answers to questions you may have with our "Ask An Epidemiologist" series, or learn more about NYC COVID-19 testing options with our explainer. Here are some local and state hotlines for more information: NYC: 311; NY State Hotline: 888-364-3065; NJ State Hotline: 800-222-1222.
Here's the latest:
- Man In NJ Federal Prison Dies From COVID After Being Denied Compassionate Release
- Partygoers Fined For Attending Pandemic Basement Rager In Queens With High Levels Of Carbon Monoxide
- If You Think Keeping A Restaurant Open During A Pandemic Is Expensive, Just Try Closing One
- Confusion And Mass Cancellations Of Vaccine Appointments In NY As Supply Dwindles
No one in the United States seems to know how many COVID-19 vaccine doses are available for awaiting recipients, as confirmed Sunday by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s a staggering reality 10 months into a pandemic that’s claimed 400,000 lives and infected more than 25 million people--and one that NYC officials are desperately trying to overcome as appointment cancellations sweep over the city.
On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted that the city would fall short of vaccinating one million people by the end of January, but he and two health advisors laid out options for revamping the rollout. Chief among the proposals is a vaccine candidate being developed by Johnson and Johnson. It requires only one shot and can be stored in a regular refrigerator for up to three months--both logistical advantages compared to the two-shot options from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Jay Varma, the mayor's top public health adviser, added they’re targeting the end of February or early March to receive a supply from Johnson & Johnson.
“On top of that, the fact that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be just a matter of weeks away, that's going to be a game-changer as well,” Mayor de Blasio said during a press conference. “New York City will be able to vaccinate half-a-million people a week as soon as we have the supply,”
The catch? Johnson & Johnson is reportedly months behind schedule on its production. As part of receiving $1 billion from Operation Warp Speed, the company pledged to deliver 12 million doses by the end of February--on their way to cranking out a 100 million-strong supply by summertime. But according to The New York Times, federal officials say the production schedule has fallen behind and won’t recover until April.
It’s also unclear when the Food and Drug Administration plans to review the company’s application for emergency use authorization, which hasn’t been filed. The drugmaker is expected to release results from its phase 3 trial this week. But its findings from its earlier phases look promising and suggest the vaccine can establish immune defenses against the coronavirus. Varma acknowledged the uncertainty over banking on an unauthorized vaccine to address the supply shortage.
“We don't like [the situation] ourselves, and we know everybody else is facing that same challenge,” he said. “So, we just have to keep managing based on what we know right now, and I think the things that we know right now lead us to be optimistic.”
Later in the day, Governor Andrew Cuomo also voiced his enthusiasm for the candidate at the state’s regular coronavirus briefing. He added that the state may announce a reopening as early as Wednesday, following a drop in test positivity rates.
Coronavirus Updates: NYC Has Fewer Than 20,000 First Shot Vaccine Doses Left
1:19 p.m. The city has just a “few thousand” doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that will be used in the next day or two, according to NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi.
The city’s vaccine data pages show a little more than 19,000 doses remain as of 9:30 a.m. Monday.
Another 100,000 doses are set to arrive Tuesday or Wednesday, and Chokshi told CNN on Monday morning, "that’s a very small number against the number of New Yorkers who are ready to get vaccinated right now."
The remaining supply doesn’t include second doses, which account for more than 212,000 doses, or ones set aside for the federal program to vaccinate long-term care facility residents and staff.
The deficit has compounded an already rocky rollout of the vaccine. Thousands of appointments were rescheduled last week, and the recent expansion of eligibility is straining resources. So far, people ages 65 and up, healthcare workers, long-term care facility residents and staff, and a host of other critical essential workers are eligible to sign-up for an appointment, if they can find one.
COVID-19 deaths are likely undercounted, more so in Trump counties
Political leanings towards former President Donald Trump correlate with whether COVID-19 deaths go uncounted, according to a new analysis from STAT News. The project was led by Andrew Stokes, a global health professor at Boston University School of Public Health.
Stokes found tens of thousands of deaths more than the usual outside of those attributed to the pandemic.
The analysis is a spinoff of a study released earlier this month by Stokes, which analyzed mortality data collected by 787 counties from February 1st to October 17th in 2020. There were 199,124 COVID-19 deaths in those counties during that period, but another excess 88,142 deaths were not attributed to the virus. These excess deaths could be due to overdoses and suicide, amplified from the pandemic’s isolation and economic fallout, according to STAT. His team has submitted their study to PLOS Medicine for academic review.
But when Stokes specifically analyzed political leanings for STAT, he found excess deaths were nearly four times higher in the counties with the most Trump voters in 2020 relative to the national rate.
Medical examiners from across the country told STAT the nation’s systems for keeping up with causes of death are fragmented. How a death certificate is written can be influenced by local politics, pressure from the family of the person who died, or a lack of COVID-19 testing before and after death, they said. Stokes noted testing uptake is lower in conservative counties.
All told in New York City, 26,558 people have died from COVID-19. About 4,927 of those are probable coronavirus deaths. Across the state, 34,069 COVID-19 deaths have occurred, but that does not include probable deaths, which the state does not publish.
Production roadblock for specialized syringe to extract more doses
The main federal contractor for vaccine syringes is unable to ramp up production of a special syringe made to extract an additional dose from Pfizer vials, according to Reuters.
New Jersey-based Becton Dickinson has a contract to manufacture 286 million syringes for coronavirus vaccines. This order includes 40 million “low-dead space” syringes, capable of lapping enough residue to stretch Pfizer’s five-dose vials to six. On December 16th, just two days into the nation’s vaccination campaign, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced an extra dose could be pulled from Pfizer’s vials.
Troy Kirkpatrick, the company’s spokesperson, told Reuters producing those low-dead space syringes would take time.
“We are ready to support the U.S. government but we are trying to make sure everyone understands that those devices are not something we have infinite capacity to produce and bringing up new lines does take time,” he told Reuters.
Additional production lines for the company will be up and running by July, but not for the specialized syringes. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sends vaccination kits to providers, which include both regular and low-dead space syringes, Reuters reported.
Tagged
COVID-19
covid-19 updates
coronavirus
Sydney Pereira
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Nsikan Akpan
Nsikan is the former editor of the health and science desk at WNYC/Gothamist. Nsikan was previously at National Geographic where he worked as a science editor, overseeing its COVID-19 coverage in addition to other topics in science, health and technology. Before National Geographic, he worked for more than four years at PBS NewsHour, where he co-created an award-winning video series named ScienceScope. He shared a 2020 Emmy for the PBS NewsHour series “Stopping a Killer Pandemic” and in 2019 received a George Foster Peabody Award for the PBS NewsHour series “The Plastic Problem.” Nsikan has also worked for NPR, Science News Magazine, Science Magazine, KUSP Central Coast Public Radio, the Santa Cruz Sentinel and as a writer at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. He holds a doctorate in pathobiology from Columbia University and is an alum of the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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