CBS News -
June 1, 2021
Employers are allowed to require the COVID-19 vaccine, and can also legally provide incentives, including cash, to workers who get jabbed, according to updated guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Companies must still provide reasonable accommodation for employees who are exempt from mandatory immunization under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The commission also stated that employer incentives must not be "coercive," but stopped short of providing examples of illegal offers.
AP -
June 1, 2021
The pop-up clinic 60 miles (96 kilometers) east of Reno is one of 28 locations in the state where FEMA has dispatched mobile vaccination units to ensure people in far-flung rural areas and one stop-light towns can get inoculated. … In tiny towns, churches, ballparks, strip clubs and even marijuana dispensaries, officials are setting up shop and offering incentives to entice people as the nation struggles to reach herd immunity.
CBS News -
June 1, 2021
With more than 40% of the country fully vaccinated, and the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases falling to about 12,000 per day — numbers not seen since March 2020 — Americans are revving up for post-pandemic life. The Indianapolis 500 became the largest sporting event since the pandemic began, with 135,000 fans in the stands on Sunday. But as America starts to return to normal, there are reminders the pandemic isn't over.
NBC News -
June 1, 2021
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is on a collision course with one of the state's biggest industries over a law he signed banning businesses from asking customers whether they've been vaccinated against Covid-19. Cruise ship operators, who sail out of Florida's large southern ports, say the order will make it make it harder for them to safely return to the seas, possibly imperiling a major economic driver in the state.
AP -
June 1, 2021
Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting across the continent, after Europe led the world in new cases last fall and winter in waves that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, forced more rolling lockdowns and overwhelmed intensive care units. Now, vaccination rates are accelerating across Europe, and with them, the promise of summer vacations on Ibiza, Crete or Corsica.
BBC -
June 1, 2021
Peru has more than doubled its Covid death toll following a review, making it the country with the world's highest death rate per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The official death toll now sits at more than 180,000, up from 69,342.
The New York Times -
May 28, 2021
The survey found big increases over last month in Latinos getting the shot and in unvaccinated people who say they have made an appointment. … A new poll suggests the US could be on track to vaccinate at least 70 percent of the adult population against Covid-19 by this summer. In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 62 percent of respondents said they had received at least one dose of a vaccine, up from 56 percent in April. At the same time, about a third of those categorized as “wait and see” reported that they had already made vaccine appointments or planned to do so imminently.
HealthDay -
May 28, 2021
A third antibody treatment designed to keep high-risk COVID-19 patients from winding up in the hospital was approved for emergency use by the FDA on Wednesday. Importantly, in lab tests the newly authorized drug, dubbed sotrovimab, neutralized the highly infectious virus variant that is crippling India, as well as variants first spotted in Britain, South Africa, Brazil, California and New York.
ABC News -
May 28, 2021
Production of another potential vaccine against COVID-19 will begin within weeks, its developers Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday as they launched a large trial enrolling 35,000 adult volunteers in the United States, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The study will test vaccine candidate formulas against the original coronavirus that spread from Wuhan, China, and against the variant first seen in South Africa, the pharmaceutical firms said. If the trial is successful, regulators could approve the vaccine for use in the last three months of the year, the drugmakers said in a statement.
ABC News -
May 28, 2021
Scientists had been waiting for more details about the two vaccines, even though they already are being used in many countries, and one recently won the backing of the WHO for emergency use. The report, published online in JAMA, concluded the two vaccines are about 73% and 78% effective, as Sinopharm has previously claimed.
AP -
May 28, 2021
California is giving away the country’s largest pot of vaccine prize money — $116.5 million — in an attempt to get millions more inoculated before the most populous state fully reopens next month. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced the prizes, which include $1.5 million each for 10 Californians, the largest single award offered in any state.
NPR -
May 28, 2021
It's the rare individual who actually looks forward to getting jabbed with a needle, even if what's in the needle can protect them from a serious disease such as COVID-19. But several teams around the world are working on a way to inject a vaccine without the ouch. The trick is to make the needles small. Really small. So small they don't interact with the nerve endings that signal pain.
Science -
May 28, 2021
On 5 May, Fox News host Tucker Carlson … announced that almost 4000 people had died after getting COVID-19 vaccines, and added that those data “comes from VAERS,”—the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a U.S. government program that collects reports of side effects possibly caused by vaccines. It was a misleading statement. … But the TV segment pulled VAERS, a 31-year-old early warning system widely relied on by scientists, even deeper into the culture wars over vaccination.
The New York Times -
May 27, 2021
Immunity to the coronavirus lasts at least a year, possibly a lifetime, improving over time especially after vaccination, according to two new studies. The findings may help put to rest lingering fears that protection against the virus will be short-lived. Together, the studies suggest that most people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who were later immunized will not need boosters. Vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need the shots, however, as will a minority who were infected but did not produce a robust immune response.
CNN -
May 27, 2021
Data obtained exclusively by CNN shows that interest in getting vaccinated against Covid-19 increased right after Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, announced two weeks ago that vaccinated people could take off their masks. … The data comes from vaccines.gov, where people look up vaccination sites by zip code.
AP -
May 27, 2021
President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory. After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off GOP complaints the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press China on alleged obstruction. Biden asked U.S. intelligence agencies to report back within 90 days.