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#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyCovid-19 Live Updates: Global Vaccine Push Fuels a New Race, This Time for SyringesSan Diego Zoo apes get an experimental animal vaccine against coronavirus.March 4, 2021, 9:56 a.m. ETMarch 4, 2021, 9:56 a.m. ETSome gorillas in a troop at the San Diego Zoo tested positive for the coronavirus in January. Zoo officials have been using an experimental vaccine on other apes, like orangutans and bonobos. Credit…Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Global, via, via ReutersThe San Diego Zoo has given nine apes an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Zoetis, a major veterinary pharmaceuticals company.In January, a troop of gorillas at the zoo’s Safari Park tested positive for the virus. All are recovering, but even so, the zoo requested help from Zoetis in vaccinating other apes. The company provided an experimental vaccine that was initially developed for pets and is now being tested in mink.Nadine Lamberski, a conservation and wildlife health officer at San Diego Zoo Global, said the zoo vaccinated four orangutans and five bonobos with the experimental vaccine, which is not designed for use in humans. Among the vaccinated orangutans was an ape named Karen, who made history in 1994 when she became the first orangutan to have open-heart surgery.Dr. Lamberski said one gorilla at the zoo was also scheduled to be vaccinated, but the gorillas at the wildlife park were a lower priority because they had already tested positive for infection and had recovered. She said she would vaccinate the gorillas at the wildlife park if the zoo received more doses of the vaccine.Mahesh Kumar, senior vice president of global biologics for Zoetis, said the company is increasing production, primarily for its pursuit of a license for a mink vaccine, and will provide more doses to the San Diego and other zoos when possible. “We have already received a number of requests,” he said.Infection of apes is a major concern for zoos and conservationists. They easily fall prey to human respiratory infections, and common cold viruses have caused deadly outbreaks in chimpanzees in Africa. Genome research has suggested that chimpanzees, gorillas and other apes will be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the pandemic. Lab researchers are using some monkeys, like macaques, to test drugs and vaccines and develop new treatments for the virus.The Coronavirus Outbreak

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySome Scientists Question W.H.O. Inquiry Into the Coronavirus Pandemic’s OriginsThose who still suspect the outbreak in China may have been caused by a lab leak or accident are pressing for an independent investigation.Members of the World Health Organization’s team investigating the origins of the coronavirus arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology last month.Credit…Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 4, 2021阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版A small group of scientists and others who believe the novel coronavirus that spawned the pandemic could have originated from a lab leak or accident is calling for an inquiry independent of the World Health Organization’s team of independent experts sent to China last month.While many scientists involved in researching the origins of the virus continue to assert that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic almost certainly began in a leap from bats to an intermediate animal to humans, other theories persist and have gained new visibility with the W.H.O.-led team of experts’ visit to China. Officials with the W.H.O. have said in recent interviews that it was “extremely unlikely” but not impossible that the spread of the virus was linked to some lab accident.The open letter, first reported in The Wall Street Journal and the French publication Le Monde, lists what the signers see as flaws in the joint W.H.O.-China inquiry, and state that it could not adequately address the possibility that the virus leaked from a lab. The letter further posits the type of investigation that would be adequate, including full access to records within China.The W.H.O. mission, as with everything involving China and the coronavirus, has been political from the start as the international team’s members acknowledged.Letter Seeking International Inquiry Into Origins of the CoronavirusSome scientists are calling for an investigation independent of that under way by a team of scientists and the World Health Organization into the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.Read DocumentRichard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and one of the scientists who signed the letter, said it grew out of a series of online discussions among scientists, policy experts and others who came to be known informally as the Paris group. Many of those who signed the letter were based in France and Dr. Ebright, who has been outspoken about the need to investigate a possible laboratory leak, said such discussion had been less vigorous in the United States.He said that no one in the group thought that the virus had been intentionally created as a weapon, but they were all convinced that an origin in a lab through research or by accidental infection was as likely as a spillover occurring in nature from animals to humans.Dr. Ebright said the letter was released because the Paris group expected to see an interim report from the W.H.O. on Thursday. The letter, he added, “was communicated to high levels of the W. H.O. on Tuesday.”The Huanan seafood market, now closed, last month in Wuhan.Credit…Getty ImagesAsked to respond to the letter, Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the W.H.O., replied in an email that the team of experts that had gone to China “is working on its full report as well as an accompanying summary report, which we understand will be issued simultaneously in a couple of weeks.”The open letter noted that the W.H.O.’s study was a joint effort by a team of outside experts, selected by the global health organization, who worked along with Chinese scientists, and that the team’s report must be agreed on by all. The letter emphasized that the team was denied access to some records and did not investigate laboratories in China.The Coronavirus Outbreak

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightReutersAustralia has asked the European Commission to review Italy’s decision to block the export of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the country.It is the first time new rules have been used that allow a ban on EU exports if the drug provider fails to meet its obligations to the bloc.The move has heightened a tense dispute between AstraZeneca and EU countries over supply issues and delays.Australia said losing “one shipment” would not badly affect its rollout.Prime Minister Scott Morrison said while he had requested the review, he could also understand why Italy made the decision.”In Italy, people are dying at the rate of 300 a day. And so I can certainly understand the high level of anxiety that would exist in Italy and in many countries across Europe,” he said.Why is the EU having vaccine problems?Italian PM brands vaccine delay ‘unacceptable’ EU-AstraZeneca disputed jab contract made publicItaly has been hit badly by the pandemic, and its decision to block the exports has reportedly been backed by the European Commission. The country has registered more than 2.9m cases and nearly 99,000 deaths. Australia, on the other hand, has reported just over 29,000 cases and 900 deaths.Australia’s Finance Minister Simon Birmingham told Sky News: “The world is in unchartered territory at present – it’s unsurprising that some countries would tear up the rule book.”There has been no official comment on the Italian move by the EU or AstraZeneca.image copyrightEPAWhat does Italy say?Last week, the Italian government told the European Commission it intended to block the shipment from its plant in Anagni, near Rome.In a statement on Thursday, the foreign ministry explained the move, saying it had received the request for authorisation on 24 February.It said that previous requests had been given the green light as they included limited numbers of samples for scientific research, but the latest one – being much larger – was rejected.Italy said Australia was not on a list of “vulnerable” countries, that there was a permanent shortage of vaccines in the EU and Italy, and that the number of doses was high compared to the amount given to Italy and to the EU as a whole. What about the rest of the EU?France’s Health Minister, Olivier Véran, has told BFM TV France could potentially do the same thing with the vaccines being made there.Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, has said drug makers must honour their contracts to EU countries, but has not seen any reason to block shipments to other countries so far. AstraZeneca is not produced in Germany, but some of the final product is bottled there.EU media was fast to comment on the move.Italy’s Corriere della Sera said the move was decided together with Europe and motivated by the “plight of the desperate”.”Australia is angry with Italy’s vaccine blockade,” said Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.”The relations between the European Commission and the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca could not be thornier,” Spain’s ABC daily said.In Poland, the Onet.pl news portal said the European Commission could have overruled Italy’s export ban, “but it did not dare do so”.Why is there a row with AstraZeneca?The EU signed a deal with AstraZeneca in August for 300 million doses, with an option for 100 million more, but earlier this year the UK-Swedish company reported production delays at plants in the Netherlands and Belgium.Instead of receiving 100 million doses by the end of March, the EU is now expected to get just 40 million.The EU accused the company of reneging on its deal, with EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides saying that UK factories making the vaccine should make up the shortfall.Ms Kyriakides also rejected AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot’s characterisation of the contract as one of “best effort” rather than an obligation to meet a deadline for delivery of vaccines.As a result of the row, the EU announced export controls which began on 30 January, known as the “transparency and authorisation mechanism”.Italy has become the first EU country to call on the guidelines and block the Australian shipment.What’s the latest with Australia’s vaccine rollout?People have started to be vaccinated, with the prime minister receiving his first jab – which was the Pfizer vaccine – in late February.Scott Morrison hopes four million Australians will have been vaccinated by the end of March.image copyrightEPAAustralia has a contract with AstraZeneca to receive 53.8m doses of the vaccine. About 3.8m of those will be imported from overseas.It has already been sent 300,000 doses, which the government says will last until late March, when it will begin making its own AstraZeneca vaccines domestically.

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerElderly citizens arrived for vaccinations last month at St. Anthony’s Parish Center in Pawtucket, R.I. The state was hit hard by the coronavirus. Credit…David Degner for The New York TimesHow Rhode Island Fell to the CoronavirusA dense population of vulnerable citizens set the stage for a frightening epidemic.Elderly citizens arrived for vaccinations last month at St. Anthony’s Parish Center in Pawtucket, R.I. The state was hit hard by the coronavirus. Credit…David Degner for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETPROVIDENCE, R.I. — The numbers began ticking up in September. After a quiet summer, doctors at Rhode Island Hospital began seeing one or two patients with Covid-19 on each shift — and soon three. Then four.Cases climbed steadily until early December, when Rhode Island earned the dubious distinction of having more cases and deaths per 100,000 people than any other state in the country. The case rate still puts it among the top five states.Where did this tightly knit state go wrong? Former Gov. Gina Raimondo’s “pauses” on economic activity were short-lived and partial, leaving open indoor dining, shopping malls and bowling alleys. But the shutdowns were no patchier than those in many other states.Until late summer, she was lauded for reining in the virus. Even now, few residents blame her for the bleak numbers. (Ms. Raimondo was sworn in as the secretary of commerce on Wednesday night.)Experts point instead to myriad other factors, all of which have played out elsewhere in the country but converged into a bigger crisis here.The fall chill sent people indoors, where risk from the virus is highest, and the holidays brought people together. Rhode Island is tiny — you can traverse it in 45 minutes. But crammed into that smallish area are a million people, for a population density second only to that of New Jersey. If everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation, Rhode Islanders seem to be connected by maybe two.Central Falls, the epicenter of Rhode Island’s epidemic, has a density of 16,000 people per square mile, almost twice that of Providence. “Just imagine, 16,000 people per square mile — I mean, that’s amazing,” said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a member of the government committee that guides Covid vaccine distribution in Rhode Island. “It doesn’t take much for the spark to create an outbreak.”Apart from its density, Rhode Island has a high percentage of elderly residents in nursing homes, accounting for the bulk of deaths. Packed into the state are multiple urban areas — Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence — where language barriers, mistrust and jobs have left immigrant families in multigenerational homes particularly vulnerable. The state is also home to multiple colleges that set off chains of infection in the early fall.For months, the hospitals in Rhode Island were understaffed and overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses were trying to cope with rising caseloads, often without the protective equipment they needed, with constantly shifting guidelines and with their own resilience stretched to the limit.Dr. Megan Ranney, a researcher and public health advocate, is also an emergency room physician at Rhode Island Hospital who has witnessed the full scope of the state’s crisis firsthand. What she saw unfold over a single shift offers a window into what happened.Dr. Megan Ranney, an E.R. physician at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence. “I’ve just got to plow through it,” she said during a surge in December.Credit…David Degner for The New York TimesAn ambulance outside Rhode Island Hospital last month.Credit…David Degner for The New York TimesA map on the asphalt of a school parking lot in Pawtucket.Credit…David Degner for The New York TimesPlowing Through ItOne day in late December, as the crisis reached new heights, Dr. Ranney girded for a long eight-hour shift. The sores behind her ears, where her glasses and the straps of the N95 and surgical masks dug in, still had not healed. But how could she complain, Dr. Ranney said, when her medical residents “eat, sleep, breathe Covid” five days a week?The patients had it worse, she knew. Anxious and isolated, they became even more discomfited by the masked and unrecognizable doctors and nurses rushing around them. During Dr. Ranney’s shift the prior week, she had seen a broad spectrum: elderly people on a downward spiral, otherwise healthy young Latino men, Cape Verdean immigrants with limited English comprehension.These demographics are partly what made Rhode Island particularly susceptible, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University in Providence: “Certainly in New England, it is the poorest state — so a lot of poverty, and a lot of multigenerational poverty.”As in most of the country, the Latino community has borne the brunt of the epidemic. In Rhode Island, Latinos have 6.7 times the risk for hospitalization and 2.5 times the risk of death, compared with white people. In the days before her shift, Dr. Ranney had been working in a part of the hospital intended to deal with non-Covid cases. But even people with other ailments, like ankle fractures, turned out to be positive for the virus, she found.“I never know from day to day how bad the surge will be,” she said. “I’ve just got to plow through it.”It turned out to be an extraordinarily busy day. “The E.R. is full, the hospital is full, the intensive care unit is full,” Dr. Ranney said. “All of our units are moving as quickly as they can, but the patients keep coming in.”Every time she took off masks during a shift, she ran the risk of contaminating herself. She had had four cups of coffee before this shift, and nothing since.The average age of the patients that night was about 70. One elderly woman who had trouble breathing could not isolate because she lived with her children and grandchildren. At any rate, she arrived at the hospital 10 days into her illness, too late for isolation to matter.The Coronavirus Outbreak

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythe new old ageCan Long-Term Care Employers Require Staff Members to Be Vaccinated?As legal experts and ethicists debate, some companies aren’t waiting.Joe Pendergast, a resident of Juniper Village, a nursing home in Bensalem, Pa., with Kevin Birtwell, a wellness nurse manager there. All staff members at Juniper are required to be vaccinated.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETFor much of the winter, Meryl Gordon worried about the people caring for her 95-year-old mother, who was rehabbing in a Manhattan nursing home after surgery for a broken hip.“Every week they sent out a note to families about how many staff members had positive Covid tests,” said Ms. Gordon, a biographer and professor at New York University. “It was a source of tremendous anxiety.”Ms. Gordon feels reassured now that her mother is fully vaccinated and has returned to her assisted living facility. But what about the two home care aides who help her 98-year-old father, David, in his Upper West Side apartment?Neither has agreed to be vaccinated. David Gordon’s doctor has advised him to delay Covid vaccination himself because of his past allergic reactions.Ms. Gordon has not insisted that the caregivers receive vaccinations. “You’re reluctant to do something that could cause you to lose the people you rely on,” she said. But she remains uneasy.It’s a question that many long-term care employers, from individual families to big national companies, are confronting as vaccines become more available, although not available enough: In a pandemic, can they require vaccination for those who care for very vulnerable older adults? Should they?Some employers aren’t waiting. Atria Senior Living, one of the nation’s largest assisted living chains, has announced that by May 1 all staff members must be fully vaccinated.Silverado, a small chain of dementia care homes, most on the West Coast, mandated vaccination by March 1. Juniper Communities, which operates 22 facilities in four states, has also adopted a mandate.“We felt it was the best way to protect people, not just our residents but our team members and their families,” said Lynne Katzmann, Juniper’s chief executive. Of the company’s nearly 1,300 employees, “about 30 individuals have self-terminated” because of the vaccination requirement, she reported.Juniper’s experience supports what public health experts have said for years: Vaccine mandates, like those that many health care organizations have established for the flu vaccine, remain controversial — but they do increase vaccination rates. As of Feb. 25, 97.7 percent of Juniper residents had received two vaccine doses, and so had 96 percent of its staff members.Tamara Moreland, executive director at Juniper Village in Bensalem. The company operates 22 facilities in four states and reports about 30 “self-terminations” of its nearly 1,300 employees.Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesThat stands in stark contrast to staff vaccinations in many facilities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that during the first month of vaccine clinics in nursing homes, only 37.5 percent of staff members received the first shot, along with 77.8 percent of residents.The results of opinion surveys vary, depending on who is asked and when. In January, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that 29 percent of health care workers expressed doubts about vaccination.A national recruiting platform for health care companies, myCNAjobs.com, last month polled 250 companions, aides and nursing assistants in facilities and in home care; it interviews thousands more daily. It estimates that 35 percent plan to be vaccinated, 20 percent do not and more than 40 percent remain unsure.The Coronavirus Outbreak