Weekly Roundup COVID-19 Vaccine Development, Policy, and Public Perception in the United States

People, Perceptions, and Polls

OP-ED Here’s what leadership on vaccination would look like. The administration seems to believe its responsibility ends once vaccines are shipped to states. But that’s wrong. Here’s what the federal government should do to infuse urgency into the vaccination efforts. (Washington Post, 1/3/21)

NEWS Large Numbers Of Health Care And Frontline Workers Are Refusing Covid-19 Vaccine. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 29% of healthcare workers were hesitant to receive the vaccine, citing concerns related to potential side effects and a lack of faith in the government to ensure the vaccines were safe. (Forbes, 1/3/21)

NEWS Black Doctors Use Social Media To Share Accurate Information About COVID-19 Vaccine. A third of Black Americans are hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Some Black doctors are finding creative ways to encourage vaccine acceptance. (NPR, 1/1/21) See also: In Minority Communities, Doctors Are Changing Minds About Vaccination (New York Times, 12/31/20) What’s not being said about why African Americans need to take the COVID-19 vaccine (The Philadelphia Tribune, 12/30/20) Vaccinating Black Americans Is Essential. Key States Aren’t Doing the Work to Combat Hesitancy (ProPublica, 12/18/20)

SURVEY National Trends in the US Public’s Likelihood of Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine—April 1 to December 8, 2020. Four cross-sectional internet surveys (3 using convenience samples) from April and May 2020 found that 58% to 69% of adults intended to get vaccinated against COVID-19, with higher percentages reported in April than in May. (JAMA, 12/29/20)

POLL New Poll Reveals Most Effective Language to Improve COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance. The top three statements about side effects they found most reassuring were "the likelihood of experiencing a severe side effect is less than 0.5%," mild side effects "are normal signs that their body building protection," and "most side effects should go away in a few days." (Yahoo! Finance, 12/28/20)

NEWS Even If It's 'Bonkers,' Poll Finds Many Believe QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories. Forty percent of respondents said they believe the coronavirus was made in a lab in China even though there is no evidence for this. The poll results add to mounting evidence that misinformation is gaining a foothold in American society and that conspiracy theories are going mainstream, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. (NPR, 12/30/20)

NEWS Fast rollout of virus vaccine trials reveals tribal distrust. Navajo tribal members accused their government of allowing them to be guinea pigs, pointing to painful times in the past when Native Americans didn’t consent to medical testing or weren’t fully informed about procedures. (AP News, 1/4/21)

RESEARCH Correlates and disparities of intention to vaccinate against COVID-19. Improving intention to vaccinate against COVID-19 to slow the pandemic will require targeted health communication strategies that effectively reach the subpopulations most likely to refuse COVID-19 vaccination and that ameliorate the primary concerns of individuals reluctant to vaccinate using scientific evidence. (Social Science & Medicine, 1/4/21)

GUIDANCE COVID-19 Vaccination Communication: Applying Behavioral and Social Science to Address Vaccine Hesitancy and Foster Vaccine Confidence. This report, which was developed in consultation with leading experts in social and behavioral sciences and public health, outlines evidence-informed communication strategies in support of national COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts across federal agencies and their state and local partners. (NIH, 12/20)

LETTER COVID-19 and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Challenge the United States Must Overcome A significant portion of the U.S. population may experience vaccine hesitancy of a new COVID-19 vaccine, which poses dangers to both the individual and their community, since exposure to a contagious disease places the person at risk, and individuals are far more likely to spread the disease to others if they do not get vaccinated. Many individuals are doubtful, and without the healthcare community, speaking with one voice has led to distrust. (The Journal of Ambulatory Care Management, 1/21) See also: Too Many Americans Still Mistrust the COVID-19 Vaccines. Here's Why. (TIME, 1/5/21) Podcast: Vaccine Mistrust And How To Overcome It (WBUR, 1/5/21) The Best Evidence for How to Overcome COVID Vaccine Fears (Scientific American, 1/7/21)

POLL Trust in COVID-19 vaccine grows after months of decline, polls show. A Pew Research Center survey of 12,648 Americans in late November showed 60% said they’d get the vaccine if it were available today, up from 51% polled in September. (USA TODAY, 1/5/21)

NEWS How vaccine misinformation spreads in Spanish on Facebook. Facebook’s track record when it comes to moderating posts in Spanish is spotty. Even when Facebook puts new, stricter rules in place, “they’re not enforcing those policies when the same content appears in Spanish,” said Carmen Scurato, senior policy counsel at the media advocacy organization Free Press. (Rest of World, 1/7/21)

NEWS What vaccines mean for the return of travel. A December 2020 National Geographic and Morning Consult poll asked how respondents would approach travel after the coronavirus pandemic was under control. Forty-nine percent said they would “travel less due to concern of exposure to other people” and a third (34 percent) said they didn’t expect to travel more in 2021 to make up for the lack of trips in 2020. (National Geographic, 1/21)

R&D

NEWS Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine not affected by mutation seen in contagious coronavirus variant, study indicates. The result is positive, if expected, evidence that existing vaccines will be able to withstand some mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus without losing efficacy. But experts noted that this vaccine and others will still need to be tested against other mutations of concern, and that the new study only looked at one key mutation contained in the variants, not the full variants. (STAT, 1/8/21)

NEWS Moderna increases minimum 2021 Covid vaccine production by 20% to 600 million doses. The company said it’s working to produce up to 1 billion doses of its Covid vaccine this year. The U.S. is on track to secure 100 million shots of Moderna’s vaccine by the end of March and additional 100 million by June, the Massachusetts-based company said in a statement. (CNBC, 1/4/21)

NEWS Another COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Begins Final Clinical Trials. Vaccine maker Novavax, along with federal health researchers, announced Monday that a phase 3 trial will begin on the safety and effectiveness of another COVID-19 vaccine -- the fifth shot to reach this final stage of development. (U.S. News, 12/29/20)

RESEARCH Efficacy and Safety of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine. The mRNA-1273 vaccine showed 94.1% efficacy at preventing Covid-19 illness, including severe disease. Aside from transient local and systemic reactions, no safety concerns were identified. (New England Journal of Medicine, 12/30/20)

NEWS New COVID Vaccines Need Absurd Amounts of Material and Labor. Companies are scrambling to obtain supplies for hundreds of millions of doses of a type of vaccine that has never been made at this scale before. (Scientific American, 1/4/21)

RESEARCH Peer-reviewed data show high protection for leading COVID vaccines. The peer-reviewed data on both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccines are in, demonstrating 94% to 95% protection from the disease. (CIDRAP, 1/4/21) See also: Maintaining Safety with SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines (New England Journal of Medicine, 12/30/20) A New Vaccine to Battle Covid-19 (New England Journal of Medicine, 12/30/20)

NEWS A Shot In the Dark: Endangered Ferrets Get Experimental Vaccine. About 120 black-footed ferrets, among the most endangered mammals in North America, were injected with an experimental Covid vaccine aimed at protecting the small, weasel-like creatures rescued from the brink of extinction four decades ago. (Undark, 1/6/21)

NEWS Decades of basic research paved the way for today’s ‘warp speed’ Covid-19 vaccines. Covid-19 vaccines did not come from nowhere. Decades of research by tens of thousands of scientists worldwide put in place the essential knowledge and methods that underpinned their rapid development. (STAT, 1/5/21) See also: How Nine Covid-19 Vaccines Work (New York Times, 1/7/21)

Policy

VIEWPOINT Mandating COVID-19 Vaccines. Limited vaccine mandates with public support, in special high-risk or high-value settings, and with longer-term safety data can be part of a comprehensive package of interventions to return society to prepandemic life. (JAMA, 12/29/20)

NEWS Fauci reportedly says U.S. will not extend interval between vaccine doses. Article Blurb. (Market Watch, 1/1/21) See also: U.S. officials consider half-doses of Moderna’s vaccine to give more people at least some immunity. (New York Times, 1/21) Instead of debating ‘first-shot’ vs. ‘set-aside’ vaccine approaches, hospitals’ study should compare them (STAT, 1/4/21)

NEWS A Cold War-Era Law and Vaccines. The Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law, grants the president authority to influence private, domestic industry to prioritize and meet the needs of national defense. But it's not typically used in the health and life sciences sector. (Bloomberg, 1/2/21)

STATEMENT FDA Statement on Following the Authorized Dosing Schedules for COVID-19 Vaccines. We have been following the discussions and news reports about reducing the number of doses, extending the length of time between doses, changing the dose (half-dose), or mixing and matching vaccines in order to immunize more people against COVID-19. These are all reasonable questions to consider and evaluate in clinical trials. However, at this time, suggesting changes to the FDA-authorized dosing or schedules of these vaccines is premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence. (FDA, 1/4/21)

VIEWPOINT Problems With Paying People to Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19. Paying people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 might be a reasonable policy if it were necessary to achieve herd immunity. Yet payment-for-vaccination proposals are not only unnecessary, but problematic. (JAMA, 1/6/21)

Public Health Practice

NEWS The cold supply chain can’t reach everywhere – that’s a big problem for equitable COVID-19 vaccination. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many rural hospitals can’t afford ultralow-temperature freezers or might not have reliable electricity, for example – present challenges. (The Conversation, 1/4/21)

NEWS The curse of the incidental illness: Seen as side effects to Covid vaccinations, ailments may have little to do with them. As Covid-19 vaccines go into broad use, some rare side effects of vaccination will almost certainly emerge, like the reports of small numbers of people developing anaphylaxis. But so will medical events whose timing just comes down to random chance — and the potential ripple effects of those reports already have experts concerned. (STAT, 12/28/20) See also: CDC reports severe allergic reactions from COVID-19 vaccinations rare (The Hill, 1/6/21)

WEBINAR PHCC Communications Webinar. he Public Health Communications Collaborative presents its third webinar, COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution: Supply and Logistics Messaging. This session will feature issue experts and focus exclusively on vaccine distribution and related messaging. The webinar will take place on Tuesday, January 12, 2021, 1 PM EST. (Public Health Communications Collaborative, 1/21)

NEWS Sioux Tribe prioritizing vaccine for speakers of native language. Standing Rock Sioux Reservation Tribal Chairman Mike Faith said the logic behind the decision is to make sure traditions and customs don't die out. "It’s something we have to pass on to our loved ones, our history, our culture our language," Faith told KXMB-TV. "We don’t have it in black and white, we tell stories. That’s why it’s so important." (The Hill, 1/2/21)

NEWS Wealthy donors received vaccines through Florida nursing home. MorseLife Health System, a high-end nursing home and assisted-living facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., has made scarce coronavirus vaccines — provided through a federal program intended for residents and staff of long-term-care facilities — available not just to its residents but to board members and those who made generous donations to the facility, including members of the Palm Beach Country Club, according to multiple people who were offered access, some of whom accepted it. (Washington Post, 1/6/21) See also: In California, wealthy patients are offering top dollar to cut the line for a Covid-19 vaccine (CNN, 12/19/20) L.A. officials allowed dozens without medical credentials to get COVID-19 vaccine early (Los Angeles Times, 1/6/21) How the ultra-wealthy could try to cut in line for the Covid-19 vaccine (Vox, 1/5/21)

NEWS Here’s Why Distribution of the Vaccine Is Taking Longer Than Expected. Health officials and hospitals are struggling with a lack of resources. Holiday staffing and saving doses for nursing homes are also contributing to delays. (New York Times, 12/31/20) See also: Messonnier: The slow vaccine rollout should speed up ‘pretty massively’ in coming weeks (STAT, 1/5/21) Why Is It Taking So Long to Get Americans Vaccinated? (New York Times, 1/5/21) Four Ways to Fix the Vaccine Rollout (New York Times, 1/21) COVID-19 Vaccine May Not Get To Long-Term Care Facilities Quickly Enough (NPR, 1/5/21) As the Virus Spikes, Vaccine Distribution Is One More Hurdle for States (New York Times, 1/3/21) COVID-19 Cases Surge In U.S. As Vaccinations Fall Below Government Predictions (NPR, 1/3/21) How small pharmacies are playing a big role in COVID vaccine distribution in rural towns: "It's like the Super Bowl" (CBS, 1/4/21) Andrew Cuomo's Vaccine Distribution Rules Are a Threat to Public Health (Reason, 1/4/21) Hospital Scrambles To Find Patients Before Freezer Failure Ruins 830 Vaccines (NPR, 1/5/21)

This newsletter supports CommuniVax, a research coalition convened by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Texas State University Department of Anthropology, with support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.