Also Monday, the WHO designated the variant sweeping through much of India as a more dangerous “variant of concern” that is believed to be more transmissible and possibly more resistant to antibodies.
White House announces free Uber, Lyft rides for anyone going to get vaccinated
Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft plan to offer free rides to coronavirus vaccination sites under a program expected to launch soon, the Biden administration announced Tuesday.
People will be able to use the companies’ apps to choose a vaccination location and follow simple directions to redeem their ride, the White House said in a statement. The partnership is scheduled to begin in the next two weeks and last through July 4.
“By helping Americans get a free ride to a vaccination site, Lyft and Uber are eliminating a potential barrier and driving America closer to the President’s goal of getting 70% of the U.S. adult population with at least one shot by July 4th,” the White House said.
While demand for Uber and Lyft trips has plummeted during the pandemic, the companies said rides have picked up in recent weeks, leading to a shortage of drivers. The vaccination effort could reintroduce passengers to the services they shied away from at the height of the crisis.
CDC director encourages parents to get their children vaccinated
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky encouraged parents to get their children vaccinated during testimony Tuesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The Food and Drug Administration cleared the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in children as young as 12 on Monday, expanding access to the vaccine ahead of the next school year. Walensky said she knew some parents wanted to wait and see how the administration of shots to children goes, but urged children to ask for the vaccine if their parents were hesitant.
“I would encourage all parents to get their children vaccinated. I know many parents are enthusiastic and have been texting me,” Walensky said. “Some parents want to be first, but I’m also encouraging children to ask for the vaccine. I have a 16-year-old myself, and I can tell you he wanted to get the vaccine. He wants his life back. These kids want to go back to school.”
Health officials also said they were prepared to ship up to 60 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine overseas, but that the Food and Drug Administration was still reviewing issues with Emergent BioSolutions’ Baltimore plant, which produced coronavirus vaccines for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. Peter Marks, who heads the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said his agency was working to clear the doses as quickly as possible.
“The FDA feels it’s imperative that before vaccine can be shipped to any other partner, it has to meet the quality standards that it would meet for any American, as well,” Marks said.
Getting American-made vaccines ‘into arms’ around the world would restore U.S. prestige, says Samantha Power
Late last fall, as Joe Biden prepared to take office and act on his promise to restore America’s global leadership, Samantha Power had something to say. It was all well and good for Biden to declare “America is back.” But nothing would prove it more, after four years of Donald Trump, than a show of sheer American competence.
“The United States can reenter all the deals and international organizations it wants,” Power, now the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote in an article in late November for Foreign Affairs magazine, “but the biggest gains in influence will come by demonstrating its ability to deliver in many countries’ hour of greatest need.”
The coronavirus pandemic, she argued, provided just such an opening. By spearheading global vaccine distribution, the United States could beat China at the biggest soft-power contest in generations, regain its reputation as the world’s “indispensable” nation and, not incidentally in Power’s view, do good.
Post-pandemic, will old beauty routines reemerge?
One of the places Julia Craven most wants to visit after her second vaccine dose kicks in is the eyebrow threading salon. For nonessential workers such as her, the past year presented a beauty limbo: With social distancing measures advised and her office closed, there was no one to see and nowhere to go.
Now that many salons are wide open, how much has changed in people’s beauty routines?
Many millennial women say the pandemic pushed them to undergo a wholesale reevaluation of their relationship to beauty, doing the thorny work of trying to separate pleasure from obligatory labor.
Parents at UMass-Amherst fighting back after students suspended for unmasked partying
Three Massachusetts college students were suspended this spring after a photo posted on social media showed them attending an off-campus party unmasked, breaking the university’s covid-related policies. The families of the students have cried foul and say they will challenge the school’s decision.
After another student sent the photograph from the March gathering to school administrators, the freshman female students at University of Massachusetts Amherst were immediately moved out of campus housing and had to attend classes remotely pending a review.
After losing their cases, they were kicked out of school entirely, forfeiting the entire academic semester and $16,000 of tuition each, which the school will not refund, according to parents’ interviews with local media.
“These beautiful young ladies who are honors students have had a full academic year stripped away and their paths broken of their higher education for alleged covid violations,” one parent told ABC affiliate WCVB-TV.
Fauci, other top administration officials to testify on covid response before Senate panel
Several of the Biden administration’s leading officials tasked with combating the coronavirus — including Anthony S. Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser — are scheduled to appear Tuesday on Capitol Hill to update lawmakers on their efforts.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and three other officials are listed as witnesses for a hearing by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Also scheduled to appear: Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; David Kessler, chief science officer for covid response at the Department of Health and Human Services; and Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration.
‘We are finally coming out of this health crisis,’ French prime minister says
French Prime Minister Jean Castex expressed hope Monday that the country was finally emerging from the coronavirus crisis, which has claimed at least 106,000 lives and infected more than 5.8 million people on French soil.
Speaking to Le Parisien newspaper, Castex said the government was striving to reopen and rebuild following months of restrictions, three nationwide lockdowns and several severe waves of infection. He said France’s mass vaccination campaign has played a successful role in helping the country attempt to return to life before the pandemic.
“There is a major difference compared to last summer: We have learned from the past and, above all, we have vaccination,” Castex said. He added that the government is still reviewing rules about lifting restrictions and is consulting with health and scientific experts.
A road map announced by French President Emmanuel Macron aims to slowly loosen limitations across the country in four stages. By next week, outdoor drinking and dining will be allowed, and by next month, tourists will be able to enter the country if they show a “health pass,” as will those hoping to attend mass gatherings.
By July, the country is expected to have fully reopened — apart from nightclubs.
While cases and hospitalizations in France have fallen, officials are urging people to remain vigilant and not let their guard down.
Deadly ‘black fungus’ cases add to India’s covid crisis
As coronavirus cases and deaths soared in India recently, doctors began to notice another disturbing trend. Some covid-19 patients who had been released from hospitals were coming back with different symptoms, including sinus pain, blurred vision, black and bloody nasal discharge, and a dark discoloration around the nose.
The culprit was a deadly fungal infection called mucormycosis that physicians say is increasingly preying on people with immune systems weakened by covid-19 and the steroids used to treat it.
Though cases of the black fungus remain rare, its lethality and increasing prevalence have prompted government warnings, put doctors on high alert and added to the country’s health crisis.
Indian doctors say there’s no evidence smearing yourself in cow dung cures coronavirus
Doctors in India are warning people against using cow manure as a coronavirus deterrent, saying there is no scientific evidence that dung helps ward off the infection or cure it.
Health experts also expressed concern that those covering themselves in the waste product could spark an outbreak of other diseases from animals to humans.
One cow dung therapy attendee told Reuters that many front-line workers visit the site to smear dung over their limbs in a bid to boost their immunity at a time of national crisis that has brought the country’s health-care system to its knees.
At the cow sanctuaries, people cover their bodies in the product and practice yoga or lie on the floor as they wait for it to dry. According to local media, it is then washed off with milk. Some shelters say they have seen a rise in visitors and are capping the numbers of attendees.
In Hinduism, cows are considered sacred animals and a symbol of the Earth.
This is not the first time unusual products have been hailed — and then debunked — as possible coronavirus cures or preventatives.
Last week, the chairman of South Korea’s Namyang Dairy Products resigned after a police investigation into claims from his company that its fermented yogurt drink could help prevent the infection.
The dairy firm was accused of violating food advertisement laws as police branded the claim false and misleading.
The rise of long covid and the push to expand palliative care
The pandemic, which has left an estimated tens of thousands of Americans with long-term debilitating symptoms, has prompted a renewed push to provide full palliative care services to seriously ill patients in their homes.
Palliative and hospice organizations are in talks with the Biden administration to create such a benefit as a demonstration project in Medicare, the health plan for older Americans. If successful, they hope it would become a permanent benefit in Medicare and then be offered under Medicaid, the federal-state program that covers lower-income Americans, and commercial insurance plans, as well.
Advocates point to numerous studies showing that palliative care results in a higher quality of life for patients, better management of their pain and symptoms and lower health-care costs as a result of fewer hospitalizations.
Italian woman accidentally given six doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but still in good health
A 23-year-old Italian woman was accidentally administered six doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine by a health-care worker at a hospital in Tuscany over the weekend. The error sparked concerns that the intern may suffer side effects as a result of the unintentional overdose.
The recommended dosage for the vaccine is two shots, given several weeks apart.
On Monday, Noa Hospital spokeswoman Daniella Gianelli told CNN that the woman was being closely monitored and was in “good health,” despite the mistake. The hospital confirmed she had been treated with fluids and pain relief as a precaution.
Gianelli said that the nurse who administered the shots realized what she had done when she noticed “five empty syringes” shortly after injecting the patient, which meant she had accidentally given the patient all six doses in the vial in one shot. Gianelli added that an internal investigation had been launched.
“Maybe just human error, definitively not on purpose,” Gianelli said, adding that the patient’s immune response would continue to be monitored by health officials. She has been discharged from the hospital.
Italy recorded more than 4 million cases of the coronavirus and at least 123,000 deaths. Like other countries across Europe, the nation’s vaccination effort is underway, although some regions have been criticized for failing to vaccinate quickly enough its vulnerable elderly population.
Other regions are accused of not having a formal vaccination plan.
“In some regions, they vaccinated journalists. In others, they vaccinated lawyers,” professor Roberto Burioni told The Washington Post last month.
Indian actor and vlogger Rahul Vohra dies of covid-19 after sharing video alleging medical negligence
Rahul Vohra, an Indian actor and prominent vlogger, has died from the coronavirus at age 35 after sharing footage of himself in a hospital bed condemning his treatment and alleging in social media posts that the Indian government had failed the population.
“Justice for every Rahul,” his partner, Jyoti Tiwari, wrote alongside an Instagram video post shared to her page Monday that showed the star in a Delhi hospital breathing into an oxygen mask. The footage has been viewed more than a million times.
“You try and call out for the attendant, but they don’t come,” the star said. “They come in an hour’s time or more, and you have to manage in their absence somehow.”
In a post published to his official Facebook page on May 8, the actor said he would have lived if he had received better care, tagging India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, who has been widely criticized for his handling of the health crisis.
Last month, the star told fans he had been struggling with high fever for several days and felt “helpless,” asking on social media where he would be able to find the right treatment for his covid.
“The people at home are not able to handle anything,” he wrote on the website that he had once used to post comedy videos that entertained millions.
On social media, many paid tribute to the star, describing him as “talented” and expressing shock at the news of his death.
India is in the grips of a devastating second wave of coronavirus infections that has overwhelmed hospitals in many of the country’s big cities, resulting in shortages of equipment, rooms and oxygen to treat severe covid-19 cases.
The era of Zoom and the ruining of conversation
When Rabbi Hannah Goldstein would talk to families before a funeral in pre-pandemic times, she remembers how they would share information about a loved one with her. Everyone tended to “jump in, and someone corrects a detail and then someone adds another piece of it,” recalls Goldstein.
That style of conversation — a freewheeling ebb and flow where people interrupt one another — is much harder to pull off in the video communications necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. Suppose someone is speaking and another person, eager to express agreement, chimes in at the end of their sentence. Over Zoom, this tends to derail the discussion or narrative: Rather than a relatively smooth interruption, as might happen face-to-face, the attempt to talk creates moments of “Oh, no, you go ahead.” Awkward lengthy pauses are common. Then there’s the turn-waiting, known from everyone’s school days as raising your hand.
Americans confront unfamiliar inflation risks amid pandemic recovery’s stumbles
Widespread shortages and production snags are driving prices higher for many everyday items, as an uneven economic reopening leaves Americans facing the unfamiliar risk of inflation.
Significant price increases have affected used cars, medical care, appliances, energy, food and cigarettes in recent months, according to government data. Gas prices headed higher on Monday — before ending the day almost unchanged — after a cyberattack forced the closure of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline.
Most economists expect prices for many goods and services to show continued gains on Wednesday, when the Labor Department releases its next monthly inflation report.
The Federal Reserve insists that today’s rising prices — up 2.6 percent over the past 12 months — will not blossom into anything like the economy-wide, double-digit inflationary spiral of the 1970s. Some economists, including Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary, however, warn that President Biden’s free spending could ignite inflation.
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