Bay Area counties take scattershot approach to vaccinating homeless people against COVID-19
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Nurse Sonni Belcher-Collins administers a dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to Doug Rosen in Oakland. The Trust Health Center hosted a mass vaccination day for people who are unhoused, housing insecure or staff members of the clinic.Gabrielle Lurie / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Bill Bradley (left), Christy Miles and Lawrence Lincoln wait in line to receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Trust Health Center in Oakland.Gabrielle Lurie/The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Medical assistant Rezika Kahil talks to Christy Miles before Miles receives the Johnson & Johnson vaccine outside of the Trust Health Center in Oakland.Gabrielle Lurie / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Viruses Mutate, But Treatments Are Static. Is There a Way to Change That?
There is a big, global problem: viruses such as HIV and COVID-19 mutate, but treatments for them don’t.
For more than 20 years, Leor Weinberger, PhD, has been thinking about how to make vaccines work more efficiently by being adaptive, rather than static.
A human T cell (blue) is under attack by HIV (yellow), the virus that causes AIDS. Image by NIH
“We’re fighting biology with chemistry,” said Weinberger, director of the Gladstone Center for Cell Circuitry and a professor in the Departments of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San Francisco. “Biology is dynamic, so it evolves. It transmits. Chemistry does neither of those things. It’s static.”
But what does that mean in California, where supply and distribution have been challenging?
ABC7 asked experts across the state. I really hope that we re going to be swimming in vaccine, said Desi Kotis, who is leading UCSF s vaccine distribution. A bit frustrated right now, she said Thursday afternoon, because I just heard my vaccine allocation for next week and it s not that large.
But Kotis says she s thrilled with Biden s announcement. I hear there s going to be a plethora of vaccines in California, and haven t seen it yet, I hear it s going to happen in April. But we ve got our plan, we re ready. We pressure tested our mega site, our drive-thru site, and we re able to do over 250 vaccinations an hour.