A new plan released by CommuniVax, Equity in Vaccination: A Plan to Work with Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond, provides elected and appointed officials with the tools to create, implement, and support a vaccination campaign that works with BIPOC communities to remedy COVID-19 impacts, prevent even more health burdens, lay the foundation for unbiased healthcare delivery, and enable broader social change and durable community-level opportunities.

The webinar will take place on March 18, 2021, 2 PM EST. Register here

What Does the American Dream Have to do With the COVID-19 Vaccine? Dr. Elisa Sobo explains how conspiracy theories and recent protests in the U.S. over COVID-19 vaccines can’t be untangled from American dreams of freedom and prosperity. (Sapiens, 2/25/21)

We Asked People Behind Bars How They Feel About Getting Vaccinated. The Marshall Project surveyed incarcerated people in state and federal prisons in January and February to understand attitudes toward vaccination. The majority of the 136 respondents said they would get vaccinated when they can. Even wary prisoners were open to vaccination, the survey showed. Most respondents said they’d get vaccinated if their questions were answered, if their friends and family said it was safe, or after guards received their immunizations first. (The Marshall Project, 3/1/21)

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From HPV to Covid-19: Personal stories power anti-vaccine misinformation. Despite the lack of evidence to support direct causal links between the vaccines and chronic health conditions, first-person stories can be tough to beat with facts. They’re difficult to disprove and they exploit people’s fear, tapping into their emotions more than debunks can. (First Draft News, 2/24/21)

Why Americans shouldn't turn their noses up at Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. "My big concern here is that the Johnson & Johnson is being labeled as the inferior vaccine," said Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst and former Baltimore public health commissioner, "when that's not a fair assessment to make." (CNN, 2/27/21)

See also: Here’s Why Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine Only Requires One Dose (Medium Coronavirus Blog, 2/24/21)

U.S. bishops splinter on the morality of taking coronavirus vaccines. Some have urged them to take any available vaccine, while others said they should avoid the newly approved Johnson & Johnson shot because it was made using abortion-derived cells. One bishop said the vaccine was “morally compromised and forbidden.” (Washington Post, 3/4/21)

See also: Pope Francis and the Rights of the Living (The American Prospect, 3/3/21)

5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating. The problem is not that the good news isn’t being reported, or that we should throw caution to the wind just yet. It’s that neither the reporting nor the public-health messaging has reflected the truly amazing reality of these vaccines. There is nothing wrong with realism and caution, but effective communication requires a sense of proportion—distinguishing between due alarm and alarmism; warranted, measured caution and doombait; worst-case scenarios and claims of impending catastrophe. (The Atlantic, 2/26/21)

Vaccine Confidence Isn’t The Main Obstacle To Reaching Herd Immunity. New data from our KFF Vaccine Monitor show that 22% are in a “wait and see” group. That group has been shrinking. Many are likely to get vaccinated as they see family members and friends and neighbors vaccinated without adverse effect. The “wait and see group” should be the focus of vaccine confidence building efforts, especially in Black and Latino communities where the need for building vaccine confidence and addressing information needs and barriers to access is the most urgent. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 3/1/21)

There’s More Vaccine Supply, But What About Demand? With three approved coronavirus vaccines, the U.S. will be able to ramp up supply in the coming weeks but still has work to do in persuading the public to get the shots, said David Kessler, the new chief science officer for the federal government’s coronavirus response. (Bloomberg CityLab, 3/1/21)

The Surprising Key to Combatting Vaccine Refusal. Last week, I called several doctors and researchers to ask how we could reverse vaccine hesitancy among the groups in which it was highest. They all told me that my initial question was too simplistic. “Vaccine hesitancy” isn’t one thing, they said. It is a constellation of motivations, insecurities, reasonable fears, and less reasonable conspiracy theories. (The Atlantic, 2/28/21)

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Early signs of life in travel industry as COVID-19 vaccines revive Americans' wanderlust. AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky told Wall Street analysts he is optimistic that travel will recover from the pandemic, particularly as more companies ditch their offices, giving employees the opportunity to work from different locales. (CBS News, 3/1/21)

Why We Can’t Let ‘Vaccine Envy’ Run Away With Us. On its surface, vaccine envy makes sense; after all, millions of Americans have lost loved ones, jobs, health insurance, and so much more to the COVID-19 pandemic, and living through that kind of collective trauma is guaranteed to engender some kind of emotional response. Rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness have soared over the last year, and it’s natural that those feelings would now calcify into envy. (Vogue, 3/2/21)

F.D.A. Clears Johnson & Johnson’s Shot, the Third Vaccine for U.S. Johnson & Johnson has pledged to provide the United States with 100 million doses by the end of June. When combined with the 600 million doses from the two-shot vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna slated to arrive by the end of July, there will be more than enough shots to cover any American adult who wants one. (New York Times, 2/27/21)

The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine for COVID-19. The COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson uses existing technology that involves a virus called adenovirus, a common cause of respiratory infections. The DNA in the adenovirus is modified so that it produces a key part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus particle to which the body then develops an immune response. (JAMA, 3/1/21)

Scientists get serious about mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines. This month, a team of vaccinologists from Oxford University began recruiting 800 or so people age 50 or older for a complex study to see whether vaccine switching could actually work. (Los Angeles Times, 2/27/21)

Obesity Specialist Says BMI Is A 'Good Measure' For Vaccine Priority Group. More than 42% of adults in the U.S. have obesity, one of the country's most prevalent chronic diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is more common in Black people, and slightly more common in Hispanic people, compared to white people. Black and Hispanic people have been suffering from COVID-19 at disproportionately higher rates. (NPR, 2/28/21)

A Covid Vaccine Side Effect, Enlarged Lymph Nodes, Can Be Mistaken for Cancer. The swelling is a normal reaction by the immune system to the vaccine, and occurs on the same side as the arm where the shot was given. Patients may or may not notice it. But the enlarged lymph nodes show up as white blobs on mammograms and chest scans, resembling images that can indicate the spread of cancer from a tumor in the breast or elsewhere in the body. (New York Times, 3/1/21)

COVID vaccination studies: plan now to pool data, or be bogged down in confusion. Differences in study design will cloud answers and prevent cross-cutting conclusions. If we don’t want our final answers to be a jumble, we must act now to consider how data can be compared and combined. (Nature, 3/3/21)

COVID-19: use intersectional analyses to close gaps in outcomes and vaccination. Socially, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, class and geography are key mediators of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, access to care and the impact of lockdowns. Biologically, age, male sex, obesity and co-morbidities are important risk factors for severe disease and mortality. More investigation is needed on how these factors interact to affect health and vaccination. (Nature, 3/3/21)

Nearly Three Months Out, We Have A Clear Picture Of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety. Now that nearly 80 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been administered, any serious issues likely would have come to light, said Dr. Paul Offit, a renowned virologist and immunologist who directs the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He often quotes vaccine pioneer Maurice Hilleman, who developed more than 40 vaccines in his lifetime, as saying, “I never breathe a sigh of relief until the first three million doses are out there.” (Gothamist, 3/3/21)

Biden promises enough Covid-19 vaccines to inoculate all adult Americans by the end of May. The Biden administration had previously pledged to have enough vaccines to inculcate most adults — roughly 300 million people — by late summer. (STAT, 3/2/21)

To Democratize Vaccine Access, Democratize Production. As wealthy countries inoculate millions of their citizens against COVID-19 and other countries wait to even begin the rollout, G-7 leaders are increasingly struggling to address geopolitically charged vaccine inequities. (Foreign Policy, 3/1/21)

Trump and his wife received coronavirus vaccine before leaving the White House. The secret approach by Mr. Trump came as a number of his supporters have expressed resistance to the vaccine, and as other officials have tried setting an example by getting the shot in public. (New York Times, 3/1/21)

The Role of Telehealth in Expanding Access to Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations for Vaccine Uptake and Monitoring for Adverse Events. During this COCA call, presenters will discuss the role of telehealth in increasing access to healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic and how telehealth can augment COVID-19 vaccine planning in healthcare facilities. The call will take place on March 11, 2021, 2-3 PM EST. (CDC, 3/21)

The Trump administration quietly spent billions in hospital funds on Operation Warp Speed. The Department of Health and Human Services appears to have used a financial maneuver that allowed officials to spend the money without telling Congress, and the agency got permission from its top lawyer to do so. Now, the Biden administration is refusing to say whether the outlay means there will be less money available for hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, and other providers. (STAT, 3/2/21)

Vaccinating Teachers Is Just One Part of the Reopening Puzzle. It is not only teachers who have fears; it is also many parents. Vaccinating teachers does little to address the concerns of some parents who continue to feel that the school building is not safe for their children and their families. (EdWeek, 3/1/21)

How Inequity Gets Built Into America’s Vaccination System. It’s a fact that simply being eligible for a vaccine in America doesn’t mean that you can instantly get one. Yet the ability to get to the front of the line isn’t the same for everyone. ProPublica has found that, whether intentionally or not, some vaccine programs have been designed with inherent barriers that disadvantage many people who are most at risk of dying from the disease, exacerbating inequities in access to health care. (ProPublica, 3/1/21)

In Online Covid-19 Vaccine Scheduling, Inequity for the Blind. Those problems violate the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which established the right to communications in an accessible format, multiple legal experts and disability advocates said. The federal Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights law that prohibits governments and private businesses from discriminating based on disability, further enshrined this protection in 1990. (Undark, 3/1/21)

See also: This women-made tool could help get more disabled people vaccinated (The Lily, 2/25/21)

“We’ve made it so complicated”: Vaccine campaigns are failing to reach the most vulnerable. From signing up for appointments to securing transportation to clinics, many of the people at the highest risk for severe outcomes and death from Covid-19 — older adults, essential workers, and minority communities — are having trouble getting vaccinated when it’s their turn. At the same time, some wealthier people or people at lower risk have gamed vaccine registration systems to get to the head of the line. (Vox, 2/25/21)

ID Requirements Are Meant To Stop Vaccine Tourists, But They Can Also Shut Out Vulnerable Residents. Proof-of-residency and ID requirements are supposed to ensure COVID-19 vaccines are equitably distributed — but the rules are shutting out some of the people they aim to protect. (BuzzFeed News, 3/3/21)

See also: The Next COVID-19 Nightmare for People of Color Is Proving They Got the Shot (Daily Beast, 3/1/21)

In Palm Beach, Covid-19 vaccines intended for rural Black communities are instead going to wealthy white Floridians. Collectively, their demographics reflected a pattern that has played out within Florida and across the United States, where the Black and Hispanic populations disproportionately affected by Covid-19 have been left behind in the vaccine rollout. In Palm Beach County, while Black people make up 18% of residents and Hispanic people 21.7%, these communities had received just 4.1% and 4.7% of vaccines respectively, as of March 1. (STAT, 3/4/21)

See also: Wealthy Keys enclave received COVID vaccines in January before much of the state (Miami Herald, 3/3/21)

Some States Drop CDC Guidelines And Vaccinate People By Age Group. A number of states are breaking with federal guidelines and starting to vaccinate people by age group, drawing criticism from essential workers and people with underlying conditions who are getting bumped back in line. (NPR, 3/3/21)

In Quest for Herd Immunity, Giant Vaccination Sites Proliferate. The sites are one sign of growing momentum toward vaccinating every willing American adult. In addition to using mass sites, President Biden wants pharmacies, community clinics that serve the poor and mobile vaccination units to play major roles in increasing the vaccination rate. (New York Times, 2/28/21)

Vaccine Shipments Present a Security Challenge Worthy of a James Bond Film. In the coming months, billions of doses of coronavirus vaccines will be dispatched via truck, plane, ship, and rail to hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies around the world. With that cargo worth tens of billions of dollars—and some individual shipments valued as high as $70 million—one thing is certain: Crooks will try to steal some of it. (Bloomberg, 3/2/21)

Thousands of Farmworkers Are Prioritized for the Coronavirus Vaccine. A landmark initiative in California is taking vaccines to the fields, targeting an immigrant work force that is at high risk for Covid-19. Many of the workers are undocumented, raising questions about whether they should have priority. (New York Times, 3/1/21)

Mobilizing Civil Society for COVID-19 Prevention and Vaccination. In this session, we will discuss how collaborating with civil society organizations can lend strength to governments’ COVID-19 response efforts. Panelists will share experiences and lessons learned from countries that have harnessed trusted community networks to reach key audiences – and discuss how these same approaches could be used to support vaccine uptake and long-term health system strengthening. Registration is required. The webinar is hosted by USAID and will be held on March 18, 2021, 9 AM EST. (USAID, 3/21)

The Secret Behind North Dakota’s Speedy Vaccine Rollout. The state’s independent rural drugstores are showing the power of small. (Wired, 3/4/21)

See also: Rural Americans in Pharmacy Deserts Hurting for Covid Vaccines (KHN, 3/3/21)