OAKLAND California health officials on Tuesday announced they will stop
administering the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine a move that comes after federal health agencies earlier in the day recommended an immediate pause after six women developed a rare and severe type of blood clot after receiving the shot.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the pause should not affect California’s goals of opening vaccine eligibility to most people this week and broadly reopening the economy in June. The state will work to allocate Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots to the roughly 8,800 people who have signed up for J&J shots, he said.
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.”
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Pride in the remarkable feat has been replaced by confusion, accusations of unfairness, frustrating waits and the nightmare of vaccine vials gathering dust while tens of thousands of people die of what is now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.
In Alamogordo, New Mexico, Florence Nightingale is known for being a bit cantankerous.
She’s an older, bigger lady and when she stops working, she often needs some gentle coaxing before she’ll start again. The coronavirus pandemic has pushed her to the brink, and working so much overtime depleted her tank. She spent the holiday break getting some much-needed pampering.
Flo, as her friends call her, is a 40-foot Winnebago turned into a mobile nurse s station. She s Alamogordo Public Schools most lauded health care provider, purchased with CARES funding.
Her most frequent passenger? School nurse Lisa Patch, who is also the health services director for the rural school district just 80 miles from the Mexican border.