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Updated on February 2, 2021 at 10:16 am
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Pfizer, like other COVID-19 vaccine makers, has been struggling to meet the global demand for shots. Now the company is sharing some good news – Pfizer plans to deliver 200 million doses of its vaccine to the U.S. by May, two months earlier than its initial projection.
The company also said it can potentially deliver two billion doses globally by the end of 2021.
South Africa Strain in Maryland
Two Montgomery County residents were found to have a strain of COVID-19 found in South Africa, Gov. Larry Hogan said Tuesday. The patients had recently traveled abroad. Their close contacts are in isolation and contact tracing is underway, the governor said.
The Biden administration will begin distributing COVID-19 vaccine doses directly to retail pharmacies in an effort to expedite vaccinations across the nation.
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said the program will start with about 1 million doses sent to 6,500 pharmacies beginning next week. The number of pharmacies could ultimately each 40,000. This will provide more sites for people to get vaccinations in their communities, Zients said. And it s an important component to delivering vaccines equitably.
Zients said 10.5 million doses will be distributed to states this week, up 5% from last week and a 22% increase in weekly doses since President Joe Biden took office Jan. 20.
After nearly a year of remote learning, DC Public Schools is welcoming students back to campus on Tuesday. About 9,000 students and 1,800 teachers are expected to return to school buildings. It was a gut-wrenching decision for many families who weighed whether to send children back.
Reopening schools has been a source of great stress and conflict from the start, when unions representing teachers, principals, and nurses first accused the mayor’s team of excluding them from decision-making around safety measures. Strife between school officials and teachers continued into the start of in-person instruction on Tuesday.
While DC Public Schools eventually reached an agreement with the Washington Teachers’ Union over reopening schools in December, the teachers’ union has accused school leaders of breaching it. An independent arbitrator ultimately cleared DC Public Schools to reopen schools this week, in response to a formal complaint issued by the union.
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Speeding up the rate of vaccinations across the nation could help curb the spread of newer, highly infectious forms of COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci says.
Fauci said that while current vaccines may not offer the same level of protection against the variants that they provide against the original virus, they can ease the impact of the disease, including hospitalizations and deaths. As more Americans obtain the vaccine, it could also keep variants from becoming more dominant, he said.