WNC Workers Protest For Higher Pay bpr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bpr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Talk to Us: COVID Questions. BPR’s Helen Chickering brings us this week’s answer.
This week’s COVID question is from Christine Westfeldt of Fairview.
“Do you have any information on the Novavax vaccine? They have an extensive website and description of their vaccine and vaccine trials that I have not heard mentioned in your reporting. And I m very interested in when it will be available in the U.S.”
“Your listener is right, there is an ongoing Novavax Phase-3 study in the United States and some sites in
Cindy Gay, MD, MPH, Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina
May 5: BPR Presents NPR s Noel King in Conversation bpr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bpr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
4:31
COVID-19 cases in North Carolina continue a “rolling simmer” with the 7-day average of new confirmed cases now hovering around 2,000. At least 1,096 people are hospitalized, up from 1,064 from Friday. Meantime, state and local health officials are grappling with how to keep up vaccine enthusiasm – just a few of the topics BPR’s Helen Chickering and NC Health News editor Rose Hoban tackle in their weekly coronavirus check-in.
HC: So, before we talk vaccines, let s check in on trends. We re not seeing spikes so much more stable with bumps up. I see we have one County in the red critical zone again on NC COVID-19 county alert system map. That s Edgecombe in the eastern part of the state.
Talk to Us: COVID Questions. BPR’s Helen Chickering brings us this week’s answer.
This week s question comes from Dr. Penny Brewster of Franklin.
“I am trying to find out how prevalent the COVID-19 variants are in western NC.” (She was also interested in the amount of sequencing being done for variants, and about effectiveness of the existing vaccines.)
Good question. To find an answer, we checked in with several sources including the NC Department of Health and Human Services Office of Communications where Catie Armstrong writes:
VARIANT SEQUENCING/PREVALENCE “As part of increased national surveillance efforts, the NC State Laboratory of Public Health (SLPH) submits 16 positive specimens each week to CDC’s National SARS-CoV-2 Strain Surveillance (NS3) program. SLPH can also submit additional positive samples each week from vaccine breakthrough cases (someone testing positive at least 14 days after completing vaccination) and from other situa