Healthcare

J&J plans to have 100 million vaccines for Americans by spring, board member says

Carrens January 22, 2021

Johnson & Johnson board member Dr. Mark McClellan told CNBC that “if the clinical trial works out,” the company could significantly increase the nation’s Covid vaccine supply availability within the coming weeks. 

“I do know that J&J is making a very large supply, going all out with its production, both here in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, with the goal of having perhaps enough vaccines for 100 million Americans by spring, by this April or so,” said the former FDA Commissioner in a Thursday evening interview on “The News with Shepard Smith.” 

During remarks at the White House on Thursday, the government’s top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci said that Johnson & Johnson would have enough data on its vaccine to begin analysis within a week or two. McClellan told host Shepard Smith that the most important thing for the company’s vaccine is the large scale clinical trial that is under way now.  

“The independent scientists who are overseeing that study should be taking a close look in the very near future based on those results, and we’ll see how fast the vaccine could go forward,” McClellan said. 

The U.S. is averaging about 883,000 jabs of the

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After a Decade of Lobbying, ALS Patients Gain Faster Access to Disability Payments

Melissa Jenn January 21, 2021

Anita Baron first noticed something was wrong in August 2018, when she began to drool. Her dentist chalked it up to a problem with her jaw. Then her speech became slurred. She managed to keep her company, which offers financing to small businesses, going, but work became increasingly difficult as her speech worsened. Finally, nine months, four neurologists and countless tests later, Baron, now 66, got a diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

ALS, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the New York Yankees first baseman who died of it in 1941, destroys motor neurons, causing people to lose control of their limbs, their speech and, ultimately, their ability to breathe. It’s usually fatal in two to five years.

People with ALS often must quit their jobs and sometimes their spouses do, too, to provide care, leaving families in financial distress. A decade-long campaign by advocates highlighting this predicament notched a victory last month when Congress passed a bill opening key support programs earlier for ALS patients.

In late December, then-President Donald Trump signed the bill into law. It eliminates for ALS patients the required five-month waiting period to begin receiving benefits under the Social Security Disability Insurance program, which

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NJ governor blames Walgreens, federal government for sluggish Covid vaccine rollout

Carrens January 21, 2021

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) blamed Walgreens and the federal government for the Garden State’s sluggish vaccine rollout during a Wednesday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”

“The big reason is the federal program with CVS and Walgreens,” Murphy said. “They basically amassed these doses, they schedule visits to long-term care nursing homes, extended living, and they’re punching under their weight, particularly Walgreens, and that’s where most of the yet to be used doses are.”

Murphy suggested to host Shepard Smith that Walgreens “put more bodies on the case” in order to solve the rollout problem. 

On Tuesday, Murphy said that New Jersey was effectively equipped to dole out the vaccine, but that all the providers were missing “are the vaccine doses.” New Jersey has a population of approximately 8.882 million people, and has distributed 898,550 vaccines, while only administering 432,220 of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Murphy pointed to the Covid vaccine doses under state control and said that they are getting into people’s arms more efficiently.

“You can’t find many doses in hospitals or other distribution points that we control directly, that are going unused,” Murphy said. “We’re

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Advocates View Health Care as Key to Driving LGBTQ Rights Conversation

Melissa Jenn January 20, 2021

When Allison Scott came out as a trans woman in 2013, she told not only family and friends, but also her primary care physician.

She didn’t need his help with hormone therapy. She had another doctor for that. But she wanted to share the information with her doctor of more than 10 years in case it affected other aspects of her health.

She was shocked when he told her he would no longer treat her.

“It was humiliating,” said Scott, now director of policy and programs for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ advocacy organization based in North Carolina. “It’s not because the provider doesn’t have the knowledge they need, but because the provider isn’t comfortable with who you are.”

Surveys in North Carolina and across the nation show that about one-third of transgender people have been refused treatment or suffered verbal or physical abuse from a medical provider.

Such concerns have become more worrisome during the covid-19 pandemic, when being denied health care — or avoiding it due to fear of discrimination and previous negative experiences — can have deadly consequences.

But Scott and other advocates in North Carolina now see an opening to push for city and

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Challenges and problems in vaccine strategy

Carrens January 20, 2021

At Leipzig University Hospital, pharmacy students Anne Brandt (l) and Sarah Schulz prepare six syringes from a vial of Biontech/Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 corona virus vaccine for the vaccination of medical staff. There are currently more requests for vaccination appointments than can be offered at the moment.

picture alliance | picture alliance | Getty Images

Since Germany kicked off its vaccination drive in late December, along with the rest of the EU, it’s come across a raft of logistical challenges.

Now, nearly a month into the program, its sluggish progress is causing frustration and concern among some German lawmakers and health professionals.

Health Minister Jens Spahn had targeted 300,000 inoculations a day, but so far the country has failed to hit that. Data from public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute, published Tuesday showed that in the previous 24 hours, just over 62,000 vaccinations (the majority of which were first doses) were carried out.

In total, since Germany began vaccinations in all its 16 states on Dec.27, almost 1.2 million people in Germany (the priority groups for now are healthcare workers, nursing home residents and staff and the elderly) have received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine and almost 25,000 have

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Biden Covid advisor challenges Cuomo’s letter to buy vaccine directly

Carrens January 19, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid Advisory Board member Dr. Celine Gounder slammed the Trump administration’s piecemeal Covid response as some states across the U.S. scramble to get the vaccine doses they need. 

“I think we’ve already had too much of a patchwork response across the states,” Gounder said in a Monday evening interview on “The News with Shepard Smith.”

In a Friday coronavirus briefing, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the federal government is sending his state 50,000 fewer doses of the vaccine than the week before. The state was getting fewer doses as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded vaccine eligibility to anyone over the age of 65 on Jan. 12.

On Monday, Cuomo sent a letter to Pfizer asking if the state of New York could buy vaccines directly from the company. Last week, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a similar request to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

Gounder told host Shepard Smith that this approach could cause more problems than it solves. 

“I think Governor Cuomo, himself, had said back in the spring that the situation around ventilators was essentially ‘one big Ebay‘ with all of the states bidding against

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