vaccination
vaccination
Last month my wife and I did something that seemed unthinkable for the last two years. We traveled nearly 5,000 miles to spend a week in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. It was a trip we’d talked about since before the COVID-19 pandemic. We dreamed, we planned, we saved. But we postponed it repeatedly, then indefinitely, as the light at the end of the tunnel provided by vaccines and boosters dimmed...
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The CDC issued an urgent health advisory for those currently pregnant, planning a pregnancy or breastfeeding on Sept. 29, 2021. The statement reiterated the importance of vaccination in preventing severe illness and death resulting from COVID-19. It also highlighted the wide gap in vaccination rates with pregnant people who are less than half as likely to have been vaccinated than a member of the general public.
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Many North Carolinians who could benefit from a COVID-19 therapy lack information and access Treatment with special proteins called monoclonal antibodies is keeping some COVID-19 patients out of hospitals and is likely saving some lives. But North Carolina has huge information and delivery gaps to fill before many people who might qualify for the therapy know about it and can get it.
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On a sunny Wednesday a little over a month ago, my 7-year-old daughter bravely held my hand as we walked into Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City to participate in a pediatric vaccine trial. After a numbing agent, a blood draw and a nasal swab, she was finally injected with either a placebo or the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
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Last summer, the idea of a COVID-19 vaccine still seemed as if it might be a fanciful idea that could be years away. Today, just six or so months later (and less than 60 days after the first vaccine received approval for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration), not only do we have multiple vaccines being deployed, but nearly one in ten Americans has already received at least one vaccine shot.
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It's Monday, Jan 11. At least 7,425 North Carolinians did not see the sunrise today after dying of COVID-19. The number of cases and deaths is growing, as the state grapples with record-high daily new cases, a shortage of hospital beds and a slow vaccine rollout. “In the ten months that we have been fighting this pandemic, this is the most worried that I have been for our state,” state Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen said last Friday at a press conference.
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