Overnight Health Care: More Johnson & Johnson doses coming next week | This is where schools are back in session | WHO asks rich countries to donate 10M vaccine doses
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The World Health Organization wants rich countries to donate more vaccine, the former CDC director has a theory on the origins of the coronavirus, and New York is setting up a vaccine passport.
We’ll start, though, with more vaccine doses in the US:
White House: 11M Johnson & Johnson doses coming next week
The White House said Friday that Johnson & Johnson will deliver at least 11 million doses next week, a significant increase to hit the company’s target of 20 million total doses delivered to the U.S. by the end of March.
There had been some uncertainty over whether J&J would meet its goal: Johnson & Johnson experienced uneven manufacturing, fueling some doubts in the run-up to the end of the month.
But White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday that the company is poised to meet the goal.
“The company has said they’ll deliver the 20 million by the end of March,” Zients said during a press briefing. “And from our conversations with the company they appear on track to meet that goal with at least 11 million doses delivered next week.”
The White House has been working with the company to try to increase its manufacturing. There was a relatively small number of doses, 4 million, available when the vaccine was first authorized at the end of February.
This is where schools are back in session, and where kids are still learning virtually
About a third of school districts across the nation have resumed in-person learning, while just 1 in 10 school districts continue teaching students entirely remotely, according to a new tracker launched to measure the way local schools adapt to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some trends: The data shows that school districts across the South are the most likely to have sent children back to school already, while California has the highest concentration of districts that remain remote.
But the lack of a clear national strategy for reopening schools, a yearlong problem that is only beginning to be addressed as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention roll out new recommendations for distancing, air circulation and sanitation requirements, has kept most school districts in some type of hybrid learning environment.
A majority: The data, maintained by Return to Learn, a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, shows 54 percent of school districts still operating school in some kind of hybrid model, in which kids attend class in person some days and virtually on others.
WHO to rich countries: How about donating some more vaccine doses?
The World Health Organization (WHO) asked rich countries on Friday to donate 10 million coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer nations.
“COVAX is ready to deliver, but we can’t deliver vaccines we don’t have. Bilateral deals, export bans and vaccine nationalism have caused distortions in the market with gross inequities in supply and demand,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference, Reuters reported.
“Ten million doses is not much, and it’s not nearly enough,” Tedros added.
US priorities: The U.S. has signaled it will not be sending vaccines to most other countries until every American is able to be vaccinated, though the Biden administration has announced a deal to share with its neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
“The president has made clear that he is focused on ensuring that vaccines are accessible to every American. That is our focus,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a press briefing toward the beginning of March. “The next step is economic recovery, and ensuring that our neighbors, Mexico and Canada, have similarly managed the pandemic so that we can open our borders and build back better.”
Redfield tells CNN he believes origin of the coronavirus pandemic is a lab in China
Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told CNN in an interview that aired Friday he thinks coronavirus originated in a lab in China.
“It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker,” Redfield said.
There is no hard evidence that the virus escaped from a lab, and Redfield noted that his comments are “my opinion.”
World Health Organization begs to differ: A WHO team has called the theory that the virus escaped from a lab “extremely unlikely.”
“The findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO expert, said in February.
New York launches nation’s first ‘vaccine passport’
New York has become the first state to launch a “vaccine passport” that can be used to get into certain venues.
Called an Excelsior Pass, the passport will be available on a phone app in the form of a QR code that can be scanned to prove the owner has been vaccinated, USA Today reported on Friday.
The pass will be used at entertainment venues and can allow for increased crowd sizes for events such as weddings.
Other countries including Denmark have already begun implementing their own vaccine passports.
The app for New York is being funded by the state and was built on IBM’s digital health pass platform, USA Today reported.
What we’re reading
What to make of the AstraZeneca vaccine data — and the surrounding controversy (Stat)
E.U. says it has exported more vaccine doses than it has administered, but leaders play down threat to block shipments (Washington Post)
Far-Right Extremists Move From ‘Stop the Steal’ to Stop the Vaccine (New York Times)
State by state
Thousands more COVID-19 vaccine doses headed to Massachusetts daily after FEMA approves site (Boston Globe)
When Texas ended its mask mandate, the event cancellations started — and the losses are adding up (Texas Tribune)
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