HOUSTON – Galveston County and local health partners announced Wednesday a new online waitlist application for those seeking to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
Appointments are currently available for high-risk individuals who meet the criteria in Phase 1A and 1B. You do not have to be a resident of Galveston County or a UTMB patient to sign up for the waitlist, officials said.
The waitlist will begin accepting applicants on Wednesday at 4 p.m.
Go to utmbhealth.com/vaccine to register for the waitlist.
“This will be the single portal for people to come on and get in line to get their vaccine.” Dr. Philip Keiser, the Galveston County Local Health Authority said. “There’s a very big need to do this because as you can see, not just for us, but all across the whole region as soon as any appointments open up they go away really quickly.”
Officials said applicants will be asked to create an account and answer a few health questions, which will be used by medical professionals to make sure those most at risk of being hospitalized from COVID-19 will get an opportunity to schedule an appointment as vaccine supplies become available.
The waitlist will be based on the level of risk and people will be able to register for the waitlist on an ongoing basis, officials said.
Once a person is eligible to receive the vaccine based on his or her level of risk, they will receive an email alerting them to schedule an appointment. Within the notification, there will be a link to the website where they can schedule an appointment. The scheduling link will only be valid for 24 hours, officials said.
A separate email address is needed for each person interested in joining the waitlist.
For those who may not have internet access or a working email address, a phone bank can assist them with the waitlist registration process. They will be asked to provide an email and cell phone number for a relative or close friend to ensure they receive scheduling notifications.
The phone bank can be reached at 877-389-2318.
Health officials said the process will help them to prioritize those at higher risk.
”If you sign up, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get vaccinated next week. What it means is that we know who you are and we’re going to get to you as soon as we can,” said Keiser.
Galveston County, UTMB Health and the Galveston County Health District continue to follow Texas Department of State Health Services eligibility requirements and are only vaccinating those that fall under Phase 1A, health care workers, and Phase 1B, those 65 and older or 16 and older with certain medical conditions.
County leaders believe the on-line vaccine waitlist will help simplify the process to get people vaccinated.
”Once we get people on this list we’ll know what the demand is and we’ll know who those people are so that we can better plan as we get more doses of the vaccine,” said Keiser.
Copyright 2021 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.
In modern times, a great deal of research has focused on the way that artificial light sources mess up our sleep and health, due to the unnatural effects of illumination after the Sun goes down.
But just how unnatural is night-time light anyway? After all, humans have always been exposed to variable levels of light at night, due to reflections of sunlight from the waxing and waning Moon – and this shifting radiance stimulates us in ways we aren’t fully aware of, new research suggests.
“Moonlight is so bright to the human eye that it is entirely reasonable to imagine that, in the absence of other sources of light, this source of nocturnal light could have had a role in modulating human nocturnal activity and sleep,” a team of researchers, led by senior author and neurobiologist Horacio de la Iglesia from the University of Washington, explain in a new study.
“However, whether the Moon cycle can modulate human nocturnal activity and sleep remains a matter of controversy.”
To investigate the mystery, the researchers fitted over 500 participants with wrist-based activity monitors, to track their sleep patterns, and conducted the experiment in vastly different locales.
Firstly, they involved 98 participants from the Toba-Qom people, an indigenous community living in the Formosa province of Argentina. Some of these rural participants in the experiment had no access to electricity, others had limited access in their homes, while a final contingent lived in an urban setting with full access to electricity.
In a separate experiment, the researchers tracked the sleep of 464 college students living in the Seattle area – a major, modernised city with all the electrified trappings of post-industrial society.
Tracking the participants’ sleep activity over the lunar month cycle, the researchers found the same kind of pattern could be seen in their sleep and waking, regardless of where the volunteers lived.
“We see a clear lunar modulation of sleep, with sleep decreasing and a later onset of sleep in the days preceding a full Moon,” de la Iglesia says.
“Although the effect is more robust in communities without access to electricity, the effect is present in communities with electricity, including undergraduates at the University of Washington.”
While there was some variance between the results, in general, the data showed that sleep tends to start later and overall lasts a shorter amount of time on the nights leading up to a full Moon, when moonlight provided by the waxing Moon is brighter in the hours following dusk.
While the sample size studied here is not especially large – and there’s certainly more research that could be done here to expand upon these results – that the same pattern was observed in two distinct populations living in separate countries, and with such varying levels of access to electricity between all the volunteers, does tell us some important things, the team says.
“Together, these results strongly suggest that human sleep is synchronised with lunar phases regardless of ethnic and sociocultural background, and of the level of urbanisation,” the researchers write in their paper.
As for what gives rise to these effects, the researchers contend that extended nocturnal activity stimulated by moonlight could be an evolutionary adaptation carried over from the time of pre-industrial human societies – with the ability to stay up and do more under a brilliant full Moon benefitting all kinds of traditional customs still enjoyed by peoples without electricity today.
“At certain times of the month, the Moon is a significant source of light in the evenings, and that would have been clearly evident to our ancestors thousands of years ago,” says first author and sleep biologist Leandro Casiraghi.
According to interviews with Toba/Qom individuals, moonlit nights are still known for high hunting and fishing activity, increased social events, and heightened sexual relations between men and women.
“Although the true adaptive value of human activity during moonlit nights remains to be determined, our data seem to show that humans – in a variety of environments – are more active and sleep less when moonlight is available during the early hours of the night,” the researchers explain.
“This finding, in turn, suggests that the effect of electric light on modern humans may have tapped into an ancestral regulatory role of moonlight on sleep.”
A patent granted to Microsoft(MSFT) last month details a method for creating a conversational chatbot modeled after a specific person — a “past or present entity … such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure,” according to the filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
The technology is reminiscent of a fictional app in the dystopian TV series “Black Mirror” that allowed a character to continue chatting with her boyfriend after he dies in an accident, by pulling information from his social media.
Want to talk music with David Bowie? Or get some words of wisdom from your late grandmother? This tool would theoretically make that possible. But don’t get too excited, or freaked out for that matter: The company isn’t planning to turn the technology into an actual product.
Tim O’Brien, Microsoft’s general manager of AI programs, said in a tweet on Friday that he “confirmed that there’s no plan for this.” In a separate tweet, he also echoed the sentiment of other internet users commenting on the technology, saying, “yes, it’s disturbing.”
Here’s how the technology would work if it were in fact built into a product. According to the patent information, the tool would cull “social data” such as images, social media posts, messages, voice data and written letters from the chosen individual. That data would be used to train a chatbot to “converse and interact in the personality of the specific person.” It could also rely on outside data sources, in case the user asked a question of the bot that couldn’t be answered based on the person’s social data.
“Conversing in the personality of a specific person may include determining and/or using conversational attributes of the specific person, such as style, diction, tone, voice, intent, sentence/dialogue length and complexity, topic and consistency,” as well as using behavioral attributes such as interests and opinions and demographic information such as age, gender and profession, the patent states.
In some cases, the tool could even be used to apply voice and facial recognition algorithms to recordings, images and videos to create a voice and 2D or 3D model of the person to enhance the chatbot.
While Microsoft doesn’t have plans to create a product from the technology, the patent does indicate that the possibilities for artificial intelligence have moved beyond creating fake people to creating virtual models of real people.
The application for the Microsoft patent was filed in April 2017, which O’Brien said on Twitter predates the “AI ethics reviews we do today.” These days, the company has an Office of Responsible AI and an AI, Ethics, and Effects in Engineering and Research Committee, which help oversee its inventions.
LONDON—Doctors began noticing the change last month as the U.K.’s new coronavirus variant spread. In hospital critical-care units, they were seeing more younger people and women with serious cases of Covid-19, a disease that previously inflicted its worst symptoms largely on older patients and men.
The shift—backed up now by statistical studies—is part of an urgent puzzle preoccupying British public-health officials as they race to understand a strain of the virus that is more transmissible and, some studies indicate, could be deadlier than earlier versions.
One early hypothesis, scientists say, is that one of the virus’s genetic mutations makes it better at invading a greater number of cells inside the body, leading to serious sickness in people who with previous Covid-19 variants would only have had mild or no symptoms.
David Strain, a physician and instructor at the University of Exeter’s medical school who is also treating Covid-19 patients, said initial research paints a picture of a virus variant that is like a burglar that has become better and breaking and entering—into vulnerable cells in this case, not houses.
“We think that’s why it’s making people sicker as well as being more transmissible,” Dr. Strain said.
Virologists suspect that it is a particular mutation known as N501Y on the new variant’s spike protein that has enhanced its ability to enter and infect human cells and to move more efficiently through the human body.
Some doctors, such as Dr. Strain, think that is behind the rise in younger people and women—who for most of the pandemic have become ill at lower rates—ending up in the hospital.
Some things, doctors and scientists say, don’t seem to have changed with the new variant. Once hospitalized, patients seem to have the same chance of survival as before and doctors can’t tell from symptoms which variant a patient has.
In London, the southeast and east of England, where the new variant was first identified in a test sample from Sept. 20, the mean age of patients admitted to intensive-care units fell from 61.4 years between September and the end of November to 58.9 years from Dec. 1 to Jan. 21.
The proportion of women admitted into ICUs rose from 30.1% to 35.1% in the same period. Data from the rest of the country show a similar pattern.
As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ
Through December, the proportion of 18- to 54-year-olds admitted to English hospitals with Covid-19 also began to trend up, before a national lockdown was imposed on Jan. 4.
Not all doctors are convinced this is explained by mutations in the new variant. Some think it could also be a matter of behavior changes, with more people, especially younger ones, mixing during the holiday season and becoming infected.
Luke Allen, a local doctor in Oxford, for instance, said he has been treating more younger patients but that he is seeing more Covid-19 patients in general, and the ratio of people seems to be the same as in the first peak.
Parts of London have been hit particularly hard by the new virus variant.
Photo:
May James/Zuma Press
He attributes the increased numbers to the greater transmissibility of the new variant and increased socializing over the holidays. “That increases the chances of their contact with us,” Dr. Allen said.
There is still considerable debate around whether the new variant is in fact deadlier, as some research suggests.
The new variant, which has become the dominant version across the U.K., is estimated to be 30% to 70% more infectious than earlier varieties. Last week, a government health advisory panel said studies suggest there was a realistic possibility that it also could be 30% to 40% deadlier than the previous variant.
The advisers say their conclusions are tentative. “Although there’s uncertainty, we can’t always wait for certainty,” said
Peter Horby,
chairman of the panel, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, or Nervtag.
Julian Tang, a clinical virologist and professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Leicester, said more evidence was needed to prove that the new variant was deadlier, given that social mixing was allowed during the winter months, greatly accelerating hospitalization rates.
“Viruses generally mutate to be more transmissible and less lethal,” he said.
The new variant’s spread has coincided with huge increases in the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 and a rise in the number of people dying from the disease in the U.K., placing the state-run health service under unprecedented strain. Covid-19-related deaths in the U.K. are close to 100,000 since the start of the pandemic.
The disease caused by the variant so far doesn’t appear any different from that provoked by its ancestors, but because the virus itself is able to move around a patient’s system more easily, it can outpace the body’s immune response, doctors suspect.
“If you are getting much stronger binding you may need a lower infectious dose to become infected, which would increase the risk of transmission,” Dr. Horby said. “Then, if it’s been able to spread between cells much quicker within the lungs, then that may increase the rate of disease and the rate of inflammation which may then progress quicker than your body can respond to.”
To determine whether the new variant was deadlier, scientists looked at data from around 850,000 cases of the coronavirus tested in the community where they knew which variant of the virus each person had, including between 1,400 and 1,900 people who died.
“You have to compare people who are as similar as possible to each other,” said
John Edmunds,
an author of one of the studies by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
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The researchers matched groups of people based on age, sex and ethnicity as well as income and where they lived, to reduce the effect that pressure on hospitals might have had on death rates.
Dr. Edmunds’s group found that if two similar people had the coronavirus, the one who had the new variant was around 30% more likely to have died from the disease it causes. A group from Imperial College London found a similar likelihood of mortality with the new variant compared with its ancestor. University of Exeter researchers found a 91% increase in the risk of mortality from the new variant, though that could be because the population it examined skews older, Dr. Strain said.
Another study by Public Health England put the chances of dying after infection with the new variant around 65% higher than with the old version.
The results are preliminary and because only in around 10% of all the cases in the U.K. is the virus variant known, may not be representative of the population as a whole.
Write to Joanna Sugden at joanna.sugden@wsj.com and Max Colchester at max.colchester@wsj.com
In his inaugural address last week, President Joe Biden called for unity. But how can Americans come together, given what seems to be growing political contention and deep divides?
New research suggests the answer can be found in stories, not statistics. People respect those they disagree with more when their position comes from a place of personal experience, not facts and figures, finds a new series of experiments published Monday (Jan. 25) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is especially true when the personal stories are rooted in experiences of harm or vulnerability.
“In moral disagreements, experiences seem truer than facts,” said Kurt Gray, a psychologist and director of the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding at the University of North Carolina.
Related: 13 significant protests that changed the course of history
Respectful debate
Partisan gaps on issues ranging from race relations to the role of government in helping low-income people have grown in the past few decades. The Pew Research Center has found that across 10 issues tracked since 1994, the average gap in opinions between Democrats and Republicans has grown from 15 percentage points to 36 percentage points.
Many studies on political differences focus on persuasion and how people’s opinions change, but opinion change is rare, Gray told Live Science.
“In today’s political climate, we need to think of a more, basic foundational goal, which is just being willing to engage in respectful dialogue with a political opponent,” Gray said.
For the new research, Gray and his colleagues focused on how facts versus experiences affected people’s perceptions of their opponent’s rationality and their respect for that opponent. Over 15 separate experiments, they found that, although people think they respect opponents who present facts, they actually have more respect for opponents who share personal stories.
Related: Why is blue for Democrats and red for Republicans?
The researchers tested this idea in multiple ways. First, they told 251 participants to imagine speaking to someone they disagreed with on a moral issue, such as abortion, and asked the participants to write about would make them respect their opponents’ opinions. Just over 55% said opinions based on facts and statistics would increase respect, while a smaller percentage — 21% — said personal experiences would do the trick. In a second, nationally representative study, researchers asked 859 participants to imagine interacting with one opponent who based their opinions on facts and one opponent who based their opinions on experience. The participants rated the fact-based opponent as more rational and said they would respect that opponent more than the one who argued from experience.
But follow-up studies revealed that most of the participants had it backward. In actual face-to-face interactions, online debates and debates between talking heads on television, experience-based arguments actually garnered more respect between opponents than arguments based on facts.
In one study, the researchers had someone pose as a passerby who was engaging people in political discussions about gun rights and gun control. In the resulting 153 face-to-face conversations about guns, independent coders rated the responses to the topic as more respectful when the faux activist based their opinions on experience over facts. The same was true in the YouTube comments. In 300,978 YouTube comments on 194 videos about abortion, the conversation was more respectful when the videos focused on personal experiences instead of facts and statistics; commenters used a more positive tone, more positive emotional words, and more words associated with affiliation and togetherness.
Similarly, people were more respectful of New York Times op-eds based on personal experiences rather than stats, and opponents on CNN and Fox News interviews between 2002 and 2017 were more respectful, and treated their opponents as more rational, when the conversations were based on experience.
The power of experience
Further experiments found that stories were most associated with increased respect when the experiences were relevant, harm-based and personal. People respected opponents most when they’d been through something themselves, followed by when they shared the experience of a friend or family member, and they were least impressed when someone based an argument on a stranger’s anecdote or story they’d read about.
Related: 5 milestones in gun control history
Then, the researchers explored the idea that perhaps some people’s experiences seemed more trustworthy than others. First, they asked 508 participants to read fact- or experience-based arguments from people who agreed and disagreed with them on guns. The results showed that people doubted political facts presented by their opponents far more than facts presented by someone they agreed with. There was not nearly as large of a gap in doubt, however, between experiences presented by opponents and experiences presented by someone on the participant’s side.
Ultimately, people can always come up with a way to doubt or discount facts, Gray said, but personal experiences are harder to argue away.
“It’s just so hard to doubt when someone tells you, ‘Look, this terrible thing happened to me,'” he said.
The researchers also tested whether people would discount certain life experiences more than others. Given that the experiences of people of color and women are often downplayed, they investigated whether participants would be dismissive of the experiences of a Black woman who disagreed with them on gun control. Again, personal experiences beat out facts for increasing respect for the opponent. In another study, researchers compared how people responded to views on immigration from a scientist. In that study, personal experiences again garnered the most respect, followed by scientific research. Facts cited by a layperson were deemed least worthy of respect.
Personal experiences have fueled recent movements, such as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, Gray said. Even if personal experience does not ultimately lead to persuasion, respectful discussion is an important underpinning of democracy, he said.
“I don’t want this to sound like you shouldn’t be able to condemn people’s views,” Gray said. “[But] you can still have respect for someone as a human being and appreciate the roots of their views, and you at least need to know what those views are.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an order Monday reversing a Trump-era Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender individuals from serving in the military.
The new order, which Biden signed in the Oval Office during a meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, overturns a ban ordered by President Donald Trump in a tweet during his first year in office. It immediately prohibits any service member from being forced out of the military on the basis of gender identity.
“What I’m doing is enabling all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform,” Biden said as he signed the order.
“America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. The military is no exception,” the order says. “Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do and is in our national interest.”
The order directs the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to take steps to implement the order for the military and the Coast Guard. And it says they must reexamine the records of service members who were discharged or denied reenlistment due to gender identity issues under the previous policy.
It requires the departments to submit a report to the president on their progress within 60 days.
Austin, in a statement, voiced support for the change and said the Pentagon will work over the next two months to implement the new policy.
“I fully support the President’s direction that all transgender individuals who wish to serve in the United States military and can meet the appropriate standards shall be able to do so openly and free from discrimination,” Austin said. “This is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do.”
Congress members and advocates hailed the signing.
“This is the triumph of evidence-based policy over discrimination,” said Aaron Belkin, the executive director of the Palm Center, which researches and advocates against LGBTQ discrimination. “The inclusive policy will make it easier for trans troops to do their jobs and to fulfill their missions.”
The Trump policy triggered a number of lawsuits, including from transgender individuals who wanted to join the military and found themselves blocked.
“It is my highest goal to serve my country in the U.S. military and I’ve fought this ban because I know that I am qualified to serve,” said Nicolas Talbott, an aspiring service member involved in one of the lawsuits. “I’m thrilled and relieved that I and other transgender Americans can now be evaluated solely on our ability to meet military standards. I look forward to becoming the best service member I can be.”
Under Biden’s new policy, transgender servicemembers won’t be discharged based on gender identity.
The decision comes as Biden plans to turn his attention to equity issues that he believes continue to shadow nearly all aspects of American life. Ahead of his inauguration, Biden’s transition team circulated a memo from Ron Klain, now the White House chief of staff, that sketched out Biden’s plan to use his first full week as president “to advance equity and support communities of color and other underserved communities.”
The move to overturn the transgender ban is also the latest example of Biden using executive authority in his first days as president to dismantle Trump’s legacy. His early actions include orders to overturn a Trump administration ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries, stop construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, and launch an initiative to advance racial equity.
Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender, but that changed during the Obama administration. In 2016, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017, as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.
After Trump took office, however, his administration delayed the enlistment date and called for additional study to determine if allowing transgender individuals to serve would affect military readiness or effectiveness.
A few weeks later, Trump caught military leaders by surprise, tweeting that the government wouldn’t accept or allow transgender individuals to serve “in any capacity” in the military. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” he wrote.
After a lengthy and complicated legal battle and additional reviews, the Defense Department in April 2019 approved the new policy that fell short of an all-out ban but barred transgender troops and military recruits from transitioning to another sex and required most individuals to serve in their birth gender.
Under that policy, currently serving transgender troops and anyone who had signed an enlistment contract before the effective date could continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
But after that date, no one with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or has transitioned to another gender was allowed to enlist. Troops that were already serving and were diagnosed with gender dysphoria were required to serve in their birth gender and were barred from taking hormones or getting transition surgery.
As of 2019, an estimated 14,700 troops on active duty and in the Reserves identify as transgender, but not all seek treatment. Since July 2016, more than 1,500 service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria; as of Feb. 1, 2019, there were 1,071 currently serving. According to the Pentagon, the department spent about $8 million on transgender care between 2016 and 2019. The military’s annual health care budget tops $50 billion.
All four service chiefs told Congress in 2018 that they had seen no discipline, morale or unit readiness problems with transgender troops serving openly in the military. But they also acknowledged that some commanders were spending a lot of time with transgender individuals who were working through medical requirements and other transition issues.
___
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department work the scene Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021 in Indianapolis where five people, including a pregnant woman, were shot to death. Justin L. Mack/The Indianapolis Star via AP
Five people and an unborn child were killed in a mass shooting inside an Indianapolis home early Sunday morning, a report said.
A juvenile male was also found wounded in what investigators believe was a targeted attack perpetrated by multiple shooters at about 4 a.m., the Indianapolis Star reported, citing police.
“This morning, one of more individuals perpetrated an act of evil in our city,” Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said at a press briefing later Sunday, according to the newspaper.
“What happened this morning was not a simple act of gun violence … what happened this morning was a mass murder,” the mayor said.
Chief of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department, Randal Taylor, said the violence was Indianapolis’ “largest mass casualty shooting” in over a decade, the report said.
Police did not immediately reveal a possible motive for the killings.
The Allegheny County Health Department announced Friday that individuals 65 years old and older will be able to be vaccinated at its Monroeville clinic starting Monday.Officials said an appointment is required for the site, and appointments will be extremely limited as the Health Department continues to vaccinate eligible health care workers and those returning for the second shot in the vaccination series. The appointment links provided by the ACHD were sent out at 7:16 p.m. Friday and all available slots were filled within minutes, Allegheny County spokeswoman Amie Downs confirmed. “Notification of this went out first through Allegheny Alerts and it appears that all available slots have been claimed. Users may try to find an appointment at the Monroeville POD on another day and may check back often to see if an appointment becomes available,” a tweet from the Allegheny County Health Department said Friday evening. Click here to sign up for Allegheny Alerts. The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced this week that Phase 1A of its vaccination plan was expanded to include anyone 65 and older and those 16 to 64 with specific health conditions. As the number of vaccines remains limited, the ACHD said it is unable at this time to provide vaccines to those 16 to 64 with specific health conditions. Until supply increases, individuals in that category are encouraged to speak with their primary care provider about other options to receive a vaccine.The ACHD’s clinic is located inside the DoubleTree Hotel in Monroeville. The clinic is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. by appointment only. Those without appointments will be turned away.Individuals 65 and older and eligible healthcare workers can register for appointments for the week of Jan. 25 using the links below:Jan. 25: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/uJ3AgvJan. 26: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/g1cCdNJan. 27: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/wPuDhOJan. 28: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/2G0meFJan. 29: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/pY84VxvJan. 30: https://cw2-pennsylvania-production.herokuapp.com/clinic/private_registration/QJDATK If there are no slots available for a given day, users will be taken to the PA DOH’s Getting the COVID Vaccine guide. This guide contains an eligibility quiz and a map to help individuals locate a vaccine provider. If someone cancels a scheduled appointment, their appointment will be made available. If users cannot keep a vaccination appointment, please cancel or reschedule in order to provide the appointment to someone else.The vaccine registration system will not work on Internet Explorer but works on other web browsers. Users will be asked about insurance during registration, but insurance is not required for the vaccine. The vaccine will be provided at no cost. The links above connect users to the PrepMod scheduling system used by ACHD and PA DOH. If a vaccination slot is available for a given day, the link will redirect to a page titled “Sign Up for Vaccinations – DoubleTree Monroeville” with the date of the clinic. Individuals will be able to enter their information and select a time for vaccination. Selecting a time for vaccination is the last step of the registration process. After scheduling an appointment, users will receive a confirmation email to the address provided during registration. An email address is not required for registration but is strongly suggested because reminders for second doses will be sent via email. At this time, ACHD does not have the capability to schedule vaccine appointments over the phone. Once that capability becomes available, the Health Department will publicize the phone number. At the clinic (POD), individuals will be asked to provide verification of their age, or employment if a healthcare worker. Anyone who is not able to provide verification, who is under 65 or who is not an eligible healthcare worker, will be turned away. Registering for a vaccine appointment when a person knowingly does not fit the criteria takes away appointments from others in the community in need of appointments. It also hinders the Health Department’s vaccination efforts. Individuals are asked not to register for an appointment at the Monroeville POD if they do not meet the criteria. Individuals who received a first dose of the vaccine through a different vaccine provider should not use the links above to schedule a second dose of the vaccine at the Monroeville POD. Instead, contact the vaccination provider that administered the first dose to arrange the second dose.More information about the COVID-19 vaccines and Allegheny County’s vaccination efforts is available at www.alleghenycounty.us/COVIDvaccine. To receive updates about Allegheny County’s vaccination efforts, sign up for the COVID-19 Vaccine Information subscription in Allegheny Alerts at www.alleghenycounty.us/alerts.
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. —
The Allegheny County Health Department announced Friday that individuals 65 years old and older will be able to be vaccinated at its Monroeville clinic starting Monday.
Officials said an appointment is required for the site, and appointments will be extremely limited as the Health Department continues to vaccinate eligible health care workers and those returning for the second shot in the vaccination series.
The appointment links provided by the ACHD were sent out at 7:16 p.m. Friday and all available slots were filled within minutes, Allegheny County spokeswoman Amie Downs confirmed.
“Notification of this went out first through Allegheny Alerts and it appears that all available slots have been claimed. Users may try to find an appointment at the Monroeville POD on another day and may check back often to see if an appointment becomes available,” a tweet from the Allegheny County Health Department said Friday evening.
Click here to sign up for Allegheny Alerts.
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Notification of this went out first through Allegheny Alerts and it appears that all available slots have been claimed. Users may try to find an appointment at the Monroeville POD on another day and may check back often to see if an appointment becomes available.
— Allegheny County Health Department (@HealthAllegheny) January 23, 2021
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced this week that Phase 1A of its vaccination plan was expanded to include anyone 65 and older and those 16 to 64 with specific health conditions.
As the number of vaccines remains limited, the ACHD said it is unable at this time to provide vaccines to those 16 to 64 with specific health conditions. Until supply increases, individuals in that category are encouraged to speak with their primary care provider about other options to receive a vaccine.
The ACHD’s clinic is located inside the DoubleTree Hotel in Monroeville.
The clinic is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. by appointment only. Those without appointments will be turned away.
Individuals 65 and older and eligible healthcare workers can register for appointments for the week of Jan. 25 using the links below:
If there are no slots available for a given day, users will be taken to the PA DOH’s Getting the COVID Vaccine guide. This guide contains an eligibility quiz and a map to help individuals locate a vaccine provider.
If someone cancels a scheduled appointment, their appointment will be made available. If users cannot keep a vaccination appointment, please cancel or reschedule in order to provide the appointment to someone else.
The vaccine registration system will not work on Internet Explorer but works on other web browsers. Users will be asked about insurance during registration, but insurance is not required for the vaccine. The vaccine will be provided at no cost.
The links above connect users to the PrepMod scheduling system used by ACHD and PA DOH. If a vaccination slot is available for a given day, the link will redirect to a page titled “Sign Up for Vaccinations – DoubleTree Monroeville” with the date of the clinic. Individuals will be able to enter their information and select a time for vaccination. Selecting a time for vaccination is the last step of the registration process. After scheduling an appointment, users will receive a confirmation email to the address provided during registration.
An email address is not required for registration but is strongly suggested because reminders for second doses will be sent via email. At this time, ACHD does not have the capability to schedule vaccine appointments over the phone. Once that capability becomes available, the Health Department will publicize the phone number.
At the clinic (POD), individuals will be asked to provide verification of their age, or employment if a healthcare worker. Anyone who is not able to provide verification, who is under 65 or who is not an eligible healthcare worker, will be turned away. Registering for a vaccine appointment when a person knowingly does not fit the criteria takes away appointments from others in the community in need of appointments. It also hinders the Health Department’s vaccination efforts. Individuals are asked not to register for an appointment at the Monroeville POD if they do not meet the criteria.
Individuals who received a first dose of the vaccine through a different vaccine provider should not use the links above to schedule a second dose of the vaccine at the Monroeville POD. Instead, contact the vaccination provider that administered the first dose to arrange the second dose.
More information about the COVID-19 vaccines and Allegheny County’s vaccination efforts is available at www.alleghenycounty.us/COVIDvaccine. To receive updates about Allegheny County’s vaccination efforts, sign up for the COVID-19 Vaccine Information subscription in Allegheny Alerts at www.alleghenycounty.us/alerts.
FOX Business’ Gerri Willis on how manufacturers are faring right now and Biden’s upcoming ‘Buy American’ plan.
Continuing a flurry of executive action, President Biden signed an order Friday calling on the Labor Department to allow workers to collect unemployment benefits if they quit jobs they fear put them at risk for COVID-19.
Pointing to a Gallup Poll finding that found 43% of Americans live in a household where at least one member has a preexisting condition, the White House wrote in a release: “The President is asking the Department of Labor to consider clarifying that workers have a federally guaranteed right to refuse employment that will jeopardize their health and if they do so, they will still qualify for unemployment insurance.”
Typically workers can only collect unemployment if they are laid off or fired in some cases. In certain instances, workers who quit their job with “good cause” can collect the benefits. Good causes include unsafe work conditions, discrimination in the workplace, harassment, lack of payment, or change in job duties.
As part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief proposal, federal unemployment would be raised for out-of-work Americans to $400 a week, up from the $300 a week boost that lawmakers approved in December.
ANOTHER 900,000 AMERICANS FILED FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS LAST WEEK
Over time, Biden would phase out the higher unemployment benefits, depending on health and economic conditions — seeking to avoid a so-called “fiscal cliff” that could deal a serious blow to American families relying on the aid. He would extend the income support, set to end in March, for about six months through September 2021.
An additional 900,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week.
WHAT’S IN BIDEN’S $1.9T RELIEF PROPOSAL?
The number is nearly four times the pre-crisis level but is well below the peak of almost 7 million that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued in March. Almost 70 million Americans, or about 40% of the labor force, have filed for unemployment benefits during the pandemic.
The number of people who are continuing to receive unemployment benefits fell to 5.054 million, a decline of about 127,000 from the previous week.
Other Americans are receiving jobless aid from two federal programs that Congress established with the passage of the CARES Act in March: one extends aid to self-employed individuals, gig workers, and others who typically aren’t eligible to receive benefits, and the other provides aid to those who have exhausted their state benefits.
FOX Business’ Meghan Henney contributed to this report.
Rep. Steve StiversSteven (Steve) Ernst StiversThe Hill’s Morning Report – Trump finally concedes; 25th Amendment pressure grows GOP lawmaker says he ‘wouldn’t oppose’ removing Trump under 25th Amendment House Republicans who didn’t sign onto the Texas lawsuit MORE (R-Ohio) says he’d be willing to give $1,400 stimulus checks to people who receive the coronavirus vaccine.
In a Thursday interview with Yahoo Live, Stivers discussed issues Republicans can work on with President Biden, who has called for a $1,400 increase in the $600 direct payments to Americans that Congress approved late last year.
“Even the pandemic response, it’s so important that we build herd immunity as soon as we can. While I am not for giving a $1,400 stimulus check for anything, I’d be willing to sign off on a stimulus check of $1,400 for people who take the vaccine,” Stivers said.
“And I hope the administration will look at that option because we actually buy something with our $1,400 and that’s herd immunity,” he added.
.@RepSteveStivers says he’d support $1,400 stimulus checks if they go to people who get the coronavirus vaccine.
pic.twitter.com/GK9lCzbD7D
— Jessica Smith (@JessicaASmith8) January 21, 2021
Biden last week unveiled his proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus and relief plan, which includes $1,400 in direct payments to Americans.
Some Republicans have signaled that they wouldn’t be on board with Biden’s proposal in its current form, arguing it would add too much to the national debt which has seen a 50 percent increase from when former President TrumpDonald TrumpIran’s leader vows ‘revenge,’ posting an image resembling Trump Former Sanders spokesperson: Biden ‘backing away’ from ‘populist offerings’ Justice Dept. to probe sudden departure of US attorney in Atlanta after Trump criticism MORE took office.
Stivers said he’d be willing to take on debt “for the right things.”
“The quickest thing we need to do if we really want to help the American people, is get this economy turned back on — get people back to work, get kids back in school, get ourselves some herd immunity, get the vaccine distributed as quick as we can and get the uptake rate up. That’s why I’d be willing to accept a $1,400 stimulus check if people are willing to take the vaccine,” he said.
The U.S. has been working to speed up coronavirus vaccine distribution after a slower-than-expected rollout. Biden has set a goal to administer 100 million vaccine doses in the first 100 days of his presidency.
More than 37.9 million vaccine doses have been distributed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of which 17.5 million have been administered.
