Merck; Johnson & Johnson; stimulus checks; WHO

Defying warnings from federal health officials about the need to stay vigilant against the coronavirus, the Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi said Tuesday they’re lifting COVID-19 restrictions, including mask mandates. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’s moving to “open Texas 100%” and will issue a new executive order to take effect March 10 rescinding most of his earlier orders, including restrictions on business occupancy and the July 2 statewide mask order. 

“Texas is in a far better position now than when I issued my last executive order back in October,” Abbott said, referring to his order allowing bars to reopen under certain conditions. Cases spiked after he eased business restrictions in the fall.

Abbott said state residents have learned to avoid COVID-19 and “people and businesses don’t need the state telling them how to operate.”

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted that, starting Wednesday, all county mask mandates will be lifted and businesses will be allowed to operate at full capacity.

“Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is time!” Reeves’ tweet said.

On Monday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned states that “now is not the time” to remove coronavirus restrictions, citing a reversal in the decline in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths of recent weeks. Walensky said that in the last week, the average number of infections and deaths had increased by about 2%. The spread of virus variants has stalled progress despite the expanding vaccination program.

“Please hear me clearly,” she said. “At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.”

Also in the news:

►The federal government has crossed the 100 million mark vaccine doses distributed, and more than 78 million of them have been administered, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

►The National Fraternal Order of Police reports that 439 law enforcement officers have died in the line of duty due to COVID-19. Texas, with 105, has the highest death toll of officers on the FOP list.

►Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says his country and Denmark will stop relying solely on the European Union for coronavirus vaccines and will work with Israel to produce second-generation vaccines. The EU has faced criticism for its slow vaccine rollout while Israel is a world-leader in per-capita vaccinations.

►Many states prioritized COVID-19 vaccines for people over 75, then moved to those over 65, but they shouldn’t keep stepping down by age, an advisory committee to the CDC said. 

📈 Today’s numbers: The U.S. has more than 28.6 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 515,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 114.6 million cases and 2.54 million deaths. More than 102.3 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. and about 78.6 million have been administered, according to the CDC.

📘 What we’re reading: Drugstore giants CVS and Walgreens and big-box stores such as Walmart and Kroger received most of the initial allotment of COVID-19 vaccines sent  to retail pharmacies. Community pharmacies want their share. Read the full story.

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.

New Orleans archdiocese labels J&J vaccine ‘morally compromised’; Merck to help manufacture it

Two pharmaceutical giants are forming a historic collaboration aimed at sharply increasing production of the first single-shot COVID-19 vaccine to win FDA authorization.

The Biden administration said Tuesday that Merck & Co. will help manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which won emergency authorization just days ago. Merck, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, abandoned its own effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine.

“You don’t often see such fierce competitors partner to increase production capacity of pharmaceutical products,” said Kaitlin Wowak, assistant professor of IT, analytics and operations at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “But unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures.”

The vaccine has drawn a thumbs down, however, from the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The archdiocese says it wants Catholics who elect to be vaccinated to select the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, saying the Johnson & Johnson version used “morally compromised cell lines.”

In November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines involved some testing using the abortion-derived cell line. But the bishops said the vaccines “do not rely on cell lines from abortions in the manufacturing process and therefore can be morally acceptable for Catholics as the connection to abortion is extremely remote.”

A month later, the Vatican said that when “ethically irreproachable” vaccines are not  available, “it is morally acceptable” to use vaccines that used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production.

The New Orleans archdiocese said in a statement Friday that the development of the J&J vaccine involved cells from two abortions, one in the 1970s and one in the 1980s. It described the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as “morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing.”

Coming soon: Stimulus payouts – but not to as many people as planned

Americans could begin seeing the latest round of stimulus payments in about two weeks, but the number of people expected to cash in is likely to be pared down this week. The Senate could debate the crucial $1.9 billion stimulus package as soon as Wednesday, and Democrats are hoping for a Senate vote Friday. That would allow the House a few days to approve changes and President Joe Biden to sign it by March 14. Stimulus money could start rolling out before the ink is dry.

The Biden administration likely will need all 50 Democratic senators to get the legislation passed. Some moderate Democrats led by West Virginia’s Joe Manchin want to lower the threshold for the $1,400 checks, calling for helping “the people that need help the most.” Manchin also opposes the minimum wage measure and wants to continue the current $300 weekly unemployment boost, instead of the $400 called for in the legislation.

The measure would also provide hundreds of billions of dollars for schools and colleges, COVID-19 vaccines and testing, mass transit systems, renters and small businesses. Child care, tax breaks for families with children and assistance for states to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income residents also would get funding.

‘Vaccine angels’ try to rescue broken system for scheduling shots

The nation’s vaccine appointment system is broken in many places, leading to a race to find appointments that often works best for the lucky, the internet-savvy or the mobile. To help bridge the gap between the elderly and others without the means to connect online, strangers are stepping in. “Vaccine angels” or “vaccine hunters” have appeared online to help others find spots or simply to share information. One site, vaccinefinder.org, is still being built out but gives users in some states current vaccine eligibility for their ZIP code and what appointments are available nearby. The site’s getting millions of hits and helping people get immunized.

“Even though they still have to register for an appointment, the site told them where there was vaccine near them, which cuts down on frustration,” said John Brownstein, the site’s creator and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Read more here.

– Elizabeth Weise

Frontier Airlines accused of antisemitism after canceling flight

Frontier Airlines canceled a flight from Miami to New York on Sunday night, saying a “large group” refused to wear masks as the plane prepared for departure. The group was made up of Hasidic Jews, and the incident drew outrage from the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, which tweeted that even people who were not part of the group were accusing the airline of bigotry. The council posted videos of angry passengers and the confusion on board the plane. The Anti-Defamation League tweeted that “a visibly Jewish family was asked to leave a @FlyFrontier flight allegedly due to lack of mask compliance; while deplaning, apparent #antisemitic comments made by crew or others. @ADL formally calls for a full & transparent investigation.”

The airline said in a statement that members of the group, including adults, refused to wear masks as Flight 2878 was preparing to depart from Miami. “Repeated requests to comply with federal law necessitated their removal from the flight,” the airline said.

Stimulus bill would expand Obamacare

The Biden administration’s stimulus package includes measures that would be the first significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, since its 2010 passage. Though temporary, the more generous ACA provisions could lead to permanent – and even bigger – changes to the law that prompted a GOP-led government shutdown in 2013. It’s a law President Donald Trump and Republicans failed to repeal when they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Republicans haven’t made the insurance subsidies a focus of their opposition to the stimulus bill they’ve dismissed as a “far-left wish list.”

Some experts say the measure is overdue. “In the U.S., we have done very little to address the underlying cost of health care, which is why health insurance is so expensive,” said Cynthia Cox, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

– Maureen Groppe and Courtney Subramanian

WHO warns end of 2021 might not mean end of pandemic

Health care experts are warning that it might be too soon to think the COVID-19 pandemic will be over by the end of 2021. The emergencies chief of the World Health Organization said it was “premature” to think that the pandemic might be stopped by the end of the year, but the rollout of vaccines could at least help dramatically reduce hospitalizations and deaths. Dr. Michael Ryan said at a press briefing Monday that the world’s singular focus right now should be to keep transmission of COVID-19 as low as possible. And President Joe Biden’s top public health officials warned Monday that the U.S. could “lose the hard-earned ground we have gained” if cases plateau at their current level.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was “deeply concerned” as new case counts stall but states continue their rollbacks of virus-related restrictions.

Amid uneven vaccine rollout, states work to get shots in arms

States and counties are getting better at the nitty-gritty of what’s required to get COVID-19 vaccines into arms, but distribution still varies because of the nation’s fractured and underfunded health system. That has led to broad disparities in state vaccination rates. 

“This is really a function of the total chaos of 50 state health systems in an uncoordinated, unresponsive, underreported system to the federal government,” said Barry Bloom, an immunologist and former dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Crazy as that may be, that’s the American way.”

What’s remarkable, experts said, is how many find ways to make it work. A look at the map of vaccine uptake shows a wide range across the USA. As of Monday, Alaska led with 23% of its population having received at least one vaccine dose, followed by New Mexico at 22%. On the low end were Georgia and Utah at 12% and Alabama, Tennessee and Texas at 13%.

– Elizabeth Weise and Karen Weintraub

Ivory Coast becomes first country to receive COVAX vaccine in UN initiative

Health care workers in the Ivory Coast in Africa became the first to receive a vaccine shipment form the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative. The program is meant to ensure inoculations against COVID-19 for the world’s most vulnerable but has been hampered by limited global supply and logistical problems.

Colombia also received a shipment Monday, becoming the first country in the Americas to receive a vaccine shipment. The arrival of 117,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to the capital city of Bogota came days after the one-year anniversary of the first coronavirus case discovered in the region.

COVAX plans to initially deliver more than 330 million vaccine doses in the first half of 2021 for the 145 participating countries. Its goal is to distribute 2 billion vaccine doses before 2022.

Twitter works to stop misinformation, labeling COVID vaccine falsehoods

Twitter is bolstering its efforts to point out misinformation on the platform, a long-standing problem across social media that has taken on new urgency amid last year’s election and through the pandemic. 

“Starting today, we will begin applying labels to Tweets that may contain misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to our continued efforts to remove the most harmful COVID-19 misleading information from the service,” Twitter said in a blog post Monday.

Since introducing COVID-19 guidance last spring and announcing it would remove harmful, misleading information about vaccines in December, Twitter has removed more than 8,400 tweets and “challenged” 11.5 million accounts across the globe.

At first, labels will be applied to tweets by Twitter’s team when they determine that the content violates the company’s policy. After a while, those assessments will be used to inform Twitter’s automated tools to label similar content across the social media platform. 

– Morgan Hines

Contributing: The Associated Press

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