A free COVID-19 vaccine clinic will be held at Tre Shadez salon in Prince George's County, Maryland, sponsored by Luminis Health and the University of Maryland Center for Health Equity, including CommuniVax coalition members. No appointment is needed to receive the free Pfizer vaccine. The event will also feature music, food and giveaways.

The next national report from the CommuniVax coalition will be released next month, and will feature findings from our local teams across the country. In the meantime, be sure to check out our previous reports, view our webinars on COVID-19 vaccination, and download our implementation toolkit.

COVID-19 Vaccines Work Way Better Than We Had Ever Expected. Scientists Are Still Figuring Out Why. The vaccines are the success story that, so far, has kept on going. Vaccinations are proving to be just as effective in the real world as they were in clinical trials, while remaining highly protective against the more contagious variants spreading worldwide. And two recent studies found that immunity to the virus could last for years.. (BuzzFeed, 6/5/21)

The ‘two societies’: 97% of new COVID cases are among people who haven’t gotten the shots. It effectively meant the only people still catching coronavirus here in King County are people who haven’t gotten the shots. It also means the disease that just a few months ago threatened the entire nation is now almost exclusively circulating among a shrinking few. (Seattle Times, 6/5/21)

What My Covid-19 Vaccine Saga Taught Me About the U.S. Health Care System. This isn’t a story about how dangerous vaccines are. To the contrary, it’s a story of how I struggled to get fully immunized against a disease that has killed around 600,000 people in the United States and at least 3.7 million more around the globe. Two months, five doctors, one nurse-practitioner, two blood tests and one EKG later, I’m not 100 percent sure if I had an allergic reaction, a strange side effect or, as befitting a life-long overachiever, both at once. But the real shocker was how hard it was for me to switch to a different vaccine, one that wouldn’t send me into anaphylactic shock or something equally scary. (POLITICO, 6/6/21)

An Anti-Vaccine Film Targeted To Black Americans Spreads False Information. With this free, online film, Robert F. Kennedy and his allies in the anti-vaccine movement resurface and promote disproven claims about the dangers of vaccines, but it's aimed squarely at a specific demographic: Black Americans. The film draws a line from the real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field — such as the Tuskegee syphilis study — to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern-day vaccines. (NPR, 6/8/21)

Vaccines Now Outweigh Demand. Do Us Queers a Favor: Go Get Vaxxed Already. LGBTQ+ people, especially queer people of color, have been hit disproportionately hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report showing that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to have the kinds of underlying health conditions that can lead to worse COVID-19 outcomes, and called for better data collection about the risks faced by our community. (Them, 5/12/21)

COVID-19 Vaccine-Reluctant in U.S. Likely to Stay That Way. Among those not planning to be vaccinated, 78% say they are unlikely to reconsider their plans, including 51% who say they are "not likely at all" to change their mind and get vaccinated. That leaves one in five vaccine-reluctant adults open to reconsidering, with 2% saying they are very likely and 19% saying they are somewhat likely to change their mind and get vaccinated -- equivalent to 5% of all U.S. adults. (Gallup, 6/7/21)

COVID-19 Vaccination and Children: Answering Parents’ Questions. Join us on Wednesday, June 23 from 1:00-2:00p.m. ET / 10:00-11:00a.m. PT for a free webinar focused on COVID-19 communications to answer parents’ questions about COVID-19 vaccination for children. Karen Remley, MD, MBA, MPH, FAAP, Director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the CDC and former Executive Director and CEO of American Academy of Pediatrics and Nicole Alexander-Scott, MD, MPH, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health will share insights and answer your questions. (Trust for America's Health, 6/21)

Telegram And Amazon Are Hosting Fake Vaccine Card Merchants. It’s not unusual for people to use Telegram to sell illegal goods. But selling fake American vaccination cards presents a unique risk, undermining ongoing efforts to keep a pandemic in check that has so far killed nearly 600,000 people in the US. It also hurts efforts by states and businesses that rely on accurate vaccine documentation as a condition of allowing access to certain locations and services — bars in New York City, for example, or certain international flights. (BuzzFeed News, 6/8/21)

Despite Ample Shots and Incentives, Vaccine Rates Lag Far Behind in the South. As reports of new Covid-19 cases and deaths plummet, and as many Americans venture out mask-free into something approaching normalcy, the slowdown in vaccinations presents a new risk. As coronavirus variants spread and restrictions are eased, experts fear that the virus could eventually surge again in states like Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, where fewer than half of adults have started the vaccination process. (New York Times, 6/9/21)

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Administration of Selected Routine Childhood and Adolescent Vaccinations — 10 U.S. Jurisdictions, March–September 2020. Analysis of immunization information systems data from 10 U.S. jurisdictions indicated a substantial decrease in administered vaccine doses during March–May 2020 compared with the same period during 2018 and 2019. Although administered doses increased during June–September 2020, this increase was not sufficient to achieve catch-up coverage. (CDC, 6/11/21)

An Open Letter to President Biden re: Funding Grassroots Organizations Doing the Work of Covid-Vaccine Education. Free beer and Mets tickets and random lotteries are all fine and well and serve their ends, but they do nothing to deliver crucially required aid to organizations like ours, or like Epicenter-NYC, or like Vaccine Brigade-Chicago — organizations that are looking at things through the lens of equity that the Biden Administration has promoted as its filter for all policy. (Medium, 6/4/21)

How California’s Salinas Valley went from covid hot spot to a model for vaccination and safety. D’Arrigo California, a longtime Salinas Valley company that grows 35,000 acres of mostly vegetables, was approved as the first site for mass vaccination for farmworkers in Monterey County in February. D’Arrigo partnered with the Grower-Shipper Association of Central California and Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas, a community-based health-care provider, and received a supply of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines directly from the federal government. (Washington Post, 6/5/21)

CDC director urges parents to vaccinate teens, pointing to increase in severe cases. Researchers suggest that the increased hospitalization among adolescents in March and April may be related to several factors, including more transmissible and potentially more dangerous virus variants; larger numbers of youths returning to school; and changes in physical distancing, mask-wearing and other prevention behaviors. (Washington Post, 6/4/21)

Are Health Centers Facilitating Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccinations? A June 2021 Update. Among those with known race/ethnicity information, people of color made up the majority of people who received vaccinations at community health centers between January 8 and May 21, including 64% of people receiving the first dose and 61% of people receiving the second/final dose of the vaccine. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 6/2/21)

Building the Next Generation of Public Health Leaders. As our nation continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) is partnering with Lead For America (LFA) to build the next generation of public health leaders. Together, ASTHO and LFA will place fellows in U.S. state public health agencies for a paid two-year fellowship. Fellows strengthen state health agency efforts to build healthy and resilient communities with a particular immediate focus on equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Applications are due June 15th. (ASTHO, 6/21)

Baltimore Shifts Focus To Mobile, Pop-Up COVID-19 Vaccination Sites To Reach Under-Vaccinated Communities. As mass vaccination sites close, Baltimore is shifting its vaccination resources to mobile and pop-up vaccination sites. Mayor Brandon Scott announced that the city has held 200 vaccination pop-ups, and he said the efforts will continue “in a big way.” The focus will be on under-vaccinated communities.. (CBS, 6/4/21)

Which US vaccine plans actually helped hard-hit communities? So far about 63% of US adults have gotten at least one covid-19 shot, and President Joe Biden has set a goal of increasing that to 70% by July 4. But many people in hard-hit communities still haven’t received effective communication about vaccines, and they may continue to face practical barriers to getting shots. As a result, their communities are still more severely affected. (MIT Technology Review, 6/7/21)

New tools to support vaccine access and distribution. To help public health officials and researchers in the U.S. reach people facing these challenges, we’re introducing new tools to better understand the vaccination needs of a community. This builds on our work of providing data, insights and tools to public health, epidemiologists, researchers and policymakers since the early days of the pandemic. (Google, 6/9/21)

Biden’s global vaccine strategy draws scrutiny ahead of G-7 pandemic talks. Biden’s surprise push to temporarily waive patent protections for coronavirus vaccines to bolster production in the developing world created new tensions with the European Union, which criticized the idea as wrongheaded and inadequate because it would not boost vaccine production for months or even years. (Washington Post, 6/8/21)

Mandatory SARS-CoV-2 Vaccinations in K-12 Schools, Colleges/Universities, and Businesses. Mandatory vaccination has historically served as a tool to reach and sustain high immunization coverage and to prevent transmission in K-12 schools, colleges/universities, and health care facilities. Vaccine mandates could extend to workers and customers in businesses to ensure safer environments. This Viewpoint examines the epidemiologic, public health, and legal considerations for mandatory SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations in each setting. (JAMA, 6/7/21)

Biden turning to Black-owned barbershops for vaccine outreach. Participating barbershops and salons are expected to provide and display vaccine information and educational materials, as well as host vaccination events with assistance from local partners. (The Hill, 6/2/21)

See also: Barbershops to Cut Through Vaccine Hesitancy (UMD, 6/2/21)

What does full FDA approval of COVID-19 vaccines actually mean? Obtaining full FDA approval will always be important. It should remain the threshold that among other things allows companies to initiate direct to consumer marketing, it will allow for the vaccines to remain in the market once there is no longer a public health emergency, and it will also allow many businesses and institutions to feel more comfortable requiring employees to be vaccinated. (The Hill, 6/2/21)

Heart reaction probed as possible rare Covid-19 vaccine link in teens. The boys, aged 14 to 19, received Pfizer shots in April or May and developed chest pain within a few days. Heart imaging tests showed a type of heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis. The CDC hasn’t determined if there’s really a link to the shots, and continues to urge that everyone 12 and older get vaccinated against Covid-19, which is far riskier than the vaccine. (STAT, 6/4/21)

We’ll Probably Need Booster Shots for Covid-19. But When? And Which Ones? Although many scientists estimate that the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines authorized in the United States will last at least a year, no one knows for sure. It’s also unclear whether emerging variants of the coronavirus will change our vaccination needs. (New York Times, 6/6/21)

A New Type Of COVID-19 Vaccine Could Debut Soon. A new kind of COVID-19 vaccine could be available as soon as this summer. It's what's known as a protein subunit vaccine. It works somewhat differently from the current crop of vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. but is based on a well-understood technology and doesn't require special refrigeration. (NPR, 6/6/21)

FDA extends expiration dates on Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses. The company said a Food and Drug Administration review concluded the shots remain safe and effective up to 4 1/2 months. The announcement comes after state officials warned that many unused doses in storage would expire before the end of the month. (NBC, 6/10/21)