“This vaccine is almost 100% sure to prevent you or your loved one from developing serious illness,” said Adams. “It is how we are ending this pandemic.”
Officials have begun to distribute vaccines to health workers and long-term residents. But most Americans probably won’t be immunized until 2021, when more doses can be produced and distributed. The US is on track to have 20 million vaccine doses by the end of December, 50 million by the end of January and 100 million by the end of February, Adams said.
While the process of getting the two necessary doses to Americans is a daunting task, Adams said he is more concerned about confidence in vaccines than vaccine delivery.
It’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to ask questions, ”he said. “What is not okay is that through misinformation or mistrust you make a decision that will be bad for your health, the health of your family or the health of your community.”
5 health workers in Alaska have side effects
While vaccines are making their way to the public, some have reported side effects.
Two more health care providers at Providence Health Alaska faced adverse reactions to the coronavirus vaccine, a spokesman told CNN on Saturday. In all, five have had side effects in the state.
Their responses were mild and non-threatening, Mikal Canfield said.
The healthcare company noted that these four employees “represented less than 0.15% of the approximately 3,000 who have received vaccinations from Advocate Aurora Health to date” and that the pause “allowed time to better understand the cause of the reactions.” However, the vaccination went ahead at eight other locations in Illinois and Wisconsin.
The health service said the program will resume on Sunday with a 30-minute extension to the post-vaccination evaluation period out of a plethora of caution.
Adams said allergic reactions to coronavirus vaccines are “not abnormal or unexpected.”
“The system works,” Adams said at a press conference hosted by Ohio government Mike DeWine. “We recognize and deal with these very, very rare side effects.”
‘We need LA to turn into a ghost town again’
With an unparalleled spread rate, California has reinstated its limitations to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Covid-19’s current peak in California “is by far the worst it has been in the past 9 months,” said Dr. Thomas Yadegar, director of ICU at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Los Angeles, during an interview on “CNN Newsroom.”
The state has continuously hit daily record highs in hospital admissions and deaths, and IC bed capacity has dropped nearly zero in many parts of the state.
“Right now we need LA to turn back into a ghost town. That’s what we need. So that we can try to save as many people as possible and heal as many souls as possible,” Yadegar said.
“As hard as we try to get patients better, to stabilize them, and hopefully we get patients home, it looks like there are four more patients who are sicker waiting for that same bed,” Yadegar told CNN’s Paul Vercammen.
Yadegar added that patients come to his hospital “much sicker than in the past four months”.
He thinks many people are waiting too long to get into the already overwhelmed hospitals, he said.
‘In the past week, I had a patient who waited too long. And I asked them, ‘why don’t you come in earlier? “And it broke my heart, but what he said was …” I didn’t want to take someone else’s bed. I didn’t want to take someone else’s bed. I thought someone was going to get sicker and needed it more, ” Yadegar said
CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Hollie Silverman, Gisela Crespo and Paul Vercammen contributed to this report.