Austin Public Health has distributed 134,000 COVID-19 vaccines as of Saturday and is looking toward a “new normal” as Austinites continue to get vaccinated, APH director Stephanie Hayden-Howard said at an in-person media event Saturday.
Laura Ungar and Samantha Young
Kaiser Health News
California mom Megan Bacigalupi has had enough. She wants her kindergartner and second-grader back in their Oakland classrooms.
But the coronavirus is spreading too quickly to open schools in Alameda County, based on current state standards. And the local teachers union hasn’t agreed to go back – even after teachers have been vaccinated. So she expects her kids will be logging on to school from home for a while.
“The impediments to opening are just too great,” said Bacigalupi, who is lobbying California lawmakers to establish firm, statewide health metrics that, once met, would require schools to open. “In the end, it comes down to a lack of political will to get the kids back in the classroom.”
(Image courtesy of National Human Genome Research Institute via Courthouse News)
(CN) The United States marked a new age in vaccine science when the first candidates it deployed against the coronavirus also marked the first time a vaccine has relied on messenger RNA, or mRNA.
Like all vaccines, the goal of mRNA vaccines is to prime the immune system to respond to a specific foreign agent. In preventing the spread of Covid-19, the target is the pandemic-unleashing coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines like the Oxford-AstraZeneca version which is available in Europe but not yet approved in the United States achieve that goal using virus DNA: Genes from the spike proteins that stud the coronavirus are put into a cold virus that has been weakened, and then injected into patients.
APH, WCCHD offer more COVID-19 vaccines to educators
By Carissa Lehmkuhl
APH, WCCHD offer more COVID-19 vaccines to educators
Right now, even if an educator qualifies for the 1A or 1B groups, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to get a vaccine right now.
AUSTIN, Texas - Local health districts are stepping up to try and prioritize teachers when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations.
Right now, even if an educator qualifies for the 1A or 1B groups, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to get a vaccine right now. That’s because there are over 500,000 people in Travis County that fit into that category, according to Austin Public Health.
USA TODAY
In late December, the idea that safe, effective vaccines against COVID-19 had been created in less than a year seemed miraculous – a triumph of science and American ingenuity.
It took only six weeks to tarnish that image.
Pride in the remarkable feat has been replaced by confusion, accusations of unfairness, frustrating waits and the nightmare of vaccine vials gathering dust while tens of thousands of people die of what is now a preventable disease.
Even people leading the effort are at a loss to explain how and why things took such a bad turn so fast. I would love to understand it, said Moncef Slaoui, head of the vaccine development effort under the Trump administration and an adviser to the Biden administration.