New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said doses expected this week were delayed by winter weather elsewhere in the country, forcing the city to hold off making 30,000 to 35,000 vaccination appointments. The city has less than 30,000 first doses left and might run out of the COVID-19 vaccine Thursday, he said in a daily update
One public health expert said the delays were unacceptable.
“Having vaccine centers take snow days is just going to back things up more than they already are,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The virus doesn’t take snow days.”
The southeastern U.S., walloped by power outages and icy conditions, is experiencing the same trouble. Some vaccination sites canceled appointments, and vaccine shipments continue to be delayed, said Jeff Zients, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator.
Samantha Bequer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, said 200,000 doses of Moderna vaccine expected to arrive Tuesday are now expected on Thursday.
And, in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention postponed last Friday’s shipments in preparation for the winter storm. State officials do not expect deliveries until later this week, at the earliest.
USA TODAY is tracking COVID-19 news. Keep refreshing this page for the latest updates. Want more? Sign up for our Coronavirus Watch newsletter for updates to your inbox and join our Facebook group.
In the headlines:
►The White House has postponed President Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to Michigan, delaying his tour of a Pfizer facility in Portage from Thursday to Friday, according to sources familiar with the visit. Although details of the delay were not available, the Washington are was in line for ice and snow Thursday.
►New York is suing Amazon, claiming the company failed to provide workers with a safe environment at two warehouses as COVID-19 infections surged nationwide.
►If the COVID-19 vaccine rollout seems chaotic and incomprehensible, with numbers that don’t add up and allocations that don’t make sense, you’re not alone.
►North Korea tried to hack into the servers of U.S. drugmaker Pfizer to steal coronavirus vaccine information, South Korean intelligence officials reported Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.
►In remarks to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on “all countries” to provide all data from the earliest days of their outbreaks. The comments come days after reports that China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a World Health Organization team probing the origins of the pandemic.
📈 Today’s numbers: The U.S. has more than 27.8 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 490,400 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 110 million cases and 2.43 million deaths. More than 72.4 million vaccine doses have been distributed in…
Go to the news source: New York City, Texas vaccine shipments; 490K US deaths
