Local COVID-19 Roundup: Slow Vaccine Rollout and UK Variant Detected

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and speaking of those vaccines and vaccinations, the message sent by Governor Cuomo at his news conference yesterday was use it or lose it, as he told hospitals that they must distribute the vaccinations that they've been allocated or receive a fine.

Governor Cuomo: If you don't use the allocation you've received by the end of this week, you can be fined and you won't receive further allocations, we'll use other hospitals who can administer it better.

Brian: Now that fine could be $100,000. According to the state's numbers on average, just 46% of all the vaccines allocated to hospitals across the state have been used in the three weeks since they began receiving them. Around 300,000 New Yorkers have received the first dose of the vaccine so far, including mostly hospital workers, nursing home residents, and nursing home staff.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, just a quarter of the vaccines delivered to the state have been administered. Do you think 46% is bad in New York? How about 26% in New Jersey, or around 100,000 out of the 400,000 the state has received. In Governor Murphy's news conference yesterday, the State Health Commissioner blamed the holidays for the lag.

Governor Murphy: I think it's people after the holidays will be lining up. We did get anecdotal information that people did not want to get vaccinated during the holidays in case they didn't feel well. Hopefully, by the end of this week, we'll have much better reporting.

Brian: That's New Jersey's Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli. Both New York and New Jersey plan to open mass vaccination sites in the coming weeks. Mayor de Blasio and the New York City Council have vowed to hasten efforts in the city pledging to deliver 100,000 doses by the end of this week, and more every week after that. Other local COVID news in the area, some health care workers in that top one A category received their second and final dose of the vaccine this week, so they're starting with the second doses.

Here's the first nurse in New Jersey who received the vaccine receiving her second dose yesterday.

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Maritza Beniquez: I now have body armor.

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Brian: With all the background sound there, it might have been hard to hear Maritza Beniquez, an emergency room nurse at the University Hospital in Newark declaring that she now has body armor amid all those cheers. In less inspiring news, yesterday Governor Cuomo also announced that the first case of the COVID-19 virus variant from the United Kingdom has been identified in New York, it was upstate in Saratoga Springs.

With me now are Elizabeth Kim, senior editor for Gothamist covering COVID in New York, and Karen Yi, WNYC reporter covering it in New Jersey. Happy New Year, Liz, and Happy New Year, Karen.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Karen Yi: Happy New Year, Brian.

Brian: Let's start with that last piece of news first. Liz, what do we know about where the new variant was found and how it was identified?

Elizabeth: It was detected in a 60-year-old man who worked in a jewelry store. Health officials are concerned because they think it's likely an indication of community spread, which means that it's really more broadly spreading in the community. It's not completely unexpected, prior to New York, it had been identified in Colorado as well as California. As soon as the variant was announced in the UK, a lot of top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci just said, "It's probably here already."

Brian: Governor Cuomo said, "If it's in Saratoga, it's probably in a lot of other parts of the state as well." It's thought to be more contagious, but no more deadly and no more resistant to the vaccine, though they don't really know for sure. Anything that they're saying specifically about those things?

Elizabeth: The assertion that it's more contagious is based on modeling that was done by a very respected group of scientists in the UK. The UK is actually considered like the top specialists when it comes to doing this kind of study of what they call genomic sequencing. They have said that the variant could be as much as 70% more transmissible, which was extremely alarming.

I think since that time, they've scaled back that estimate. There have been some scientists who have argued that we really don't have the kind of lab studies to back up this claim, but at the same time, there are a lot of others who say they're seeing that this particular variant is driving a resurgence in the UK. That's reason enough to worry, even if it's not causing more severe illness, the fact that it's driving more cases and driving more people to go to the hospital and more vulnerable people to die, that by itself makes it very scary.

Brian: If there are more cases, because it's more contagious, they're gonna be more hospitalizations just as a matter of percentage and more deaths. That's why they're locking down in the UK so much. Boris Johnson, maybe some of you saw this on the news yesterday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing a real serious six-week or so lockdown, and then see what happens, back to don't leave your homes unless your jobs require you to work outside your homes and that kind of thing in the UK, again, because of the contagion of this new variant, even if it's not worse.

Karen Yi, has Governor Murphy talked about the new variant yet?

Karen: He hasn't. It hasn't been found in New Jersey yet. Like Liz said, if it's likely in New York, there's a lot of transit, a lot of movement between New York and New Jersey, if there's community spread, it's probably in New Jersey as well. The Governor and the Health Commissioner have said that there's no evidence of that yet. He hasn't been asked about that recently, but last week, he had said there was no evidence of it in the state at the moment.

Brian: How's the vaccine rollout going in New Jersey as far as your reporting indicates?

Karen: It is going but it is slow going. It's at this point 101,000 doses, mostly first doses have been distributed. That's out of 405,000 that the state has received both Pfizer and Moderna, so about a quarter, but they're progressing. You have the Federal pharmacy partnerships, CVS and Walgreens, they're doing site visits to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, vaccinating residents there and staff members.

You have 200 sites now open across the state. This includes, the pharmacies, Shoprite pharmacies, urgent care centers, counties are putting up sites, the state is opening too what they're calling mega sites in Gloucester and Morris County on Friday. I would be cautious about calling it mega sites, each site is going to do about 1,000 inoculations a week. In Essex, you have that happening, 1,000 inoculations a day across four sites. [crosstalk]--

Brian: What's this mega-site? I think Murphy was ahead of Cuomo on this in terms of announcing that there will be mega sites. How much detail do we have about what those are going to look like? Florida's Governor DeSantis has been boasting that they have mega sites, and yet I saw TV news coverage yesterday that showed long, long, long lines of cars, and specifically people getting ready to sleep out over last night to be ready to get their vaccines this morning, sleeping in their cars over last night into today.

What's this mega-site going to look like, or multiple mega sites in New Jersey, how detailed are they getting?

Karen: We haven't gotten much detail about these mega sites. We know that there are going to be six, they're going to open in January. They're going to be regionally distributed across the state. People have access to one nearby or close-ish. Two of them are opening on Friday, and these are going to be state-run. At some point, they're going to be doing 1,000 vaccines a week each one, and then they will transition depending on what category we're in of eligible people who are able to get the vaccine.

New Jersey categorizes people by like 1A, 1B, 1C. Right now we're in 1A. Unclear to me if it's going to be drive-thru, walk-in. I think at this point, most places are doing by appointment only. Again, those details are still unclear to me at least at this point in whether they will vary site by site. Hopefully, it'll be able to ramp up capacity beyond the 1,000 a week as we get more supplies.

Brian: Listeners, we can take some phone calls as we have Liz Kim from Gothamist covering COVID in New York, and Karen Yi from WNYC news covering COVID in New Jersey, 646 435 7280. Listeners, maybe one way you can help us report this story some of you is by telling us if you work in a hospital, how is the vaccine rollout going in your hospital? 646 435 7280 is our phone number, 646 435 7280.

Have you received the vaccine if you work in a hospital or are you still waiting even if you want one? What can you tell us about how slow or fast vaccine distribution is going? If you're in the first priority groups of people for the vaccine, do you have the sense that things are moving slowly or efficiently? Have you been able to get the vaccine if you want it, or if you've had to wait?

646 435 7280, 646 435 7280, or anything else that our New York and New Jersey COVID reporters might be able to answer for you, 646 435 7280, and Dan in Harlem you're on WNYC. Hi, Dan. Happy new year. Thank you for calling in today.

Dan: Hi, Brian. Happy new year to you. Thanks for all you do.

Brian: Thank you very much. What you got?

Dan: I guess my question is for both of your guests. It's more of a question based on the variant that was just discovered in someone in Saratoga Spring. I think my question is how is the current testing apparatus able to test for the variant? Are people who are getting PCR tested now able to find out whether they have the-- Sorry, that's my daughter in the background-- Able to figure out whether they have the classic coronavirus, or are they able to find out whether they have the variant at this point?

Brian: Dan, thank you. I'll say that our guests are journalists, not doctors or medical experts but Liz, do you happen to know the answer to that, how they determine that the COVID you have is the new variant versus the old variant?

Liz: Yes, my understanding is it's not as simple as just looking at all the standard PCR tests and then testing for the variant, that it's actually a more rigorous process that involves sequencing for this particular gene, and that both States and the CDC can only do a limited number, like maybe several hundred in a day. The answer according to my understanding is no, the city's lab does in fact have the capability to sequence for the variant.

My understanding it's not doing it for every single test sample that comes through the lab, which would be tens of thousands, instead, it's selecting some of them and trying to see if it is able to find the variant in those samples.

Brian: Interesting. Liz, we have a little breaking DeBlasio news on this. I see that he's calling this morning holding a news conference and calling for a travel ban to be imposed by the federal government on anybody coming in from the UK where this new variant got identified first. The quote is, "We need the feds to step up and ban all travel to and from the UK."

I don't know if you've seen this come across yet this morning yourself. It has already sparked a question among our producers who've been texting back and forth. Basically, how does a travel ban makes sense if a guy in Saratoga had the UK variant but had never traveled to the UK? What can you tell us if anything about what the mayor is calling for this morning?

Liz: Well, since the start of this, when the variant was first announced, many scientists said that basically, the genie is out of the bottle already. We could have done something at the very start when maybe the UK first announced that they had identified the variant, but by the time it took for there to be restrictions, and now this call for a travel ban, it just seems as if it's really way too late, it's already been identified in at least three states and several countries at this point, it seems very hard to contain a virus.

Brian: I thought there already was a travel ban in effect from the UK, except for US citizens. Maybe I had that wrong, but--

Liz: No, basically they were asking travelers, including US citizens to produce a negative test before they arrive in the US. Again, I don't know how much now this is a total ban. I guess there's always the risk that even a negative test that a person can arrive in the US and still be carrying the virus and test positive later on. I guess that would eliminate that possibility. If it's in Saratoga already from a man who hasn't traveled to the UK, at this point how much does that really help I guess is the question.

Brian: Didn't travel from the UK and didn't have contact with anybody who had recently traveled from the UK from the reporting that I saw. It's community spread indeed. Here's a health care worker--

Liz: The same was true with the man in Colorado, the first person in the United States to be identified with the variant, that individual had also not traveled.

Brian: Correct Deborah, a healthcare worker in Montclair, you're on WNYC. Hi, Deborah happy new year. Thank you so much for calling in.

Deborah: Hi, Brian, longtime listener. I just want to report I'm a private practice physical therapist, and I just kept digging and digging for information about when I would be eligible for that vaccine. The sites in Essex County are amazing. They're basically empty. I was able to get an appointment within two days of it starting there. I also found out through my professional organizations about all the sites at the ShopRite pharmacies and all through the state, you have to dig a little bit, but I went to newjersey.com.

I called my Montclair health department. Then I started receiving after I got the vaccine big shiny postcards announcing what Essex County was doing. I give hats off to my governor because I think they did an amazing job in rolling it out and giving me information as opposed to I'm trying to get my 91-year-old parents in the Bronx help them figure it out and there's just no information about that at all.

Brian: Really interesting, a positive comparison of New Jersey's rollout to New York's from Deborah in Montclair. Deborah, thank you. Phil a healthcare worker at the Jersey Shore. You're on WNYC. Hi Phil. Thanks for calling.

Phil: Hey, Brian, how are you? First time, long, long, long-time listener. I love your show.

Brian: Thank you.

Phil: I just got my shot maybe 15, 20 minutes ago, and I'm driving away right now. It was really, really a smooth operation. I'm a nurse for one of the big conglomerates around here and I was in and out. I did the booking online through our internal website, was able to do the follow-through right onsite with the state, the CDC site that is tracking the progress of the vaccine.

The one thing that I am troubled by is just seeing that a lot of my nurse friends are reluctant to get the shot at this point and we work on the COVID unit. A lot of them think that their previous infection was enough to cover them, but talking to the pharmacist, the vaccine is still a couple of notches higher as far as efficacy is concerned. I'm just disappointed that not everybody's jumping at it.

When we're saying that only 25% of the doses that are available are being administered so far, what are we, like a month in at this point, I don't know, I just wish that a lot of people would be more excited to get it. [crosstalk]--

Brian: Phil, what else are you hearing from your colleagues besides those who've had COVID already thinking that that gives them protection? Are you hearing resistance from your fellow nurses for particular reasons?

Phil: Yes. I was going to say that the political climate now is part of it, between the rush to get the vaccine developed compared to historical cases where it would take, two, three, four years to develop a vaccine, and now we're doing it in under a year under the current executive branch and what they're saying, and patting himself on the back and all this other stuff. On both sides of the political argument, I'm seeing people reluctant to do it.

Brian: Phil, thank you for checking in, even though that's some disturbing analysis. It's really important to hear, and I'm glad you were able to get your vaccination so that among other reasons you are more safe. Karen Yi, we just spoke to two healthcare workers from New Jersey, and it's pretty interesting, especially hearing Phil's call because in the clip that we played earlier of the New Jersey Health Commissioner she made it sound like the reason that only a quarter of the vaccines that they have have been put into people's arms isn't a problem with administering them, it's a problem of demand.

Karen: Right. The commissioner was saying that people were hesitant to line up around the holidays because, and this is anecdotal, and she even said this was what she was hearing, people were worried that maybe they were going to have some reaction to the vaccine or get sick because sometimes you get sick after you get a vaccine or a flu shot, and they didn't want to feel ill right around the holidays.

That's the anecdotal evidence that she was hearing, but there's also what Phil said, hesitancy in the community. The DOH did a poll survey, I think it was only of healthcare workers.

I don't think it wasn't any broader than that, but essentially, at the beginning of December, about 44% of those polled, I think there was about 1,000 people polled, said they would take the vaccine, and then that slowly increased to the end of December to about 53%.

You do see half of the people polled are still reluctant to get this vaccine, but the confidence in the vaccine is starting to increase. I think as you have people like Phil who get the vaccine and go back to their communities, go back to their workplace and say, "Hey, I'm okay." That's going to grow, and some of the experts I've spoken to said the same. As more people get inoculated, that confidence, and that hesitancy, hopefully, will go away eventually.

Brian: Yes, it makes logical sense. We'll see if it works out that way. Liz, according to a colleague, Fred Mogul who did some reporting on this yesterday, part of the low numbers in New York come from resistance among people who work in hospitals. He cited numbers, for example, from one hospital in Bed Stuy, where only 30% of staff surveyed said they would be willing to get the vaccine, albeit that was up from 20% a few weeks ago, so backing up what Karen was just reporting.

Hospital workers were supposed to be the low lying fruit, Liz, the relatively easy people to get vaccinated. Are you surprised by the resistance there?

Liz: Yes and no. The city, the mayor has been very reluctant or they have not really wanted to address this issue of hesitancy among frontline workers, but I did speak to the city's health commissioner last week. He's been just been visiting hospitals, he's been visiting nursing homes. Part of his role there is he wants to ask people, "Are you getting the vaccine? If you're not getting the vaccine, why?" He told me, I asked him, "What are the main reasons that people aren't getting the vaccine?"

He said, "One theme that keeps reoccurring is people are saying that they don't want to get it in the first round, that they'd rather wait and see other people line up and get it and see what kind of reactions it has in other people." Basically, people don't want to be seen as "guinea pigs" for this vaccine. I think that's understandable. The mayor has been pressed on this issue at his press conferences.

He says that anecdotally that there is a lot of excitement about the vaccine, but I think what the city really needs to produce is some actual data. They obviously know who's agreeing to get the vaccine in these hospitals and who's declining. If we were to get some real numbers on that in addition to the number of daily vaccinations, I think that would really clear up a lot of the confusion about why are the rates so low right now.

Brian: We will leave it there for now as we continue to cover the COVID crisis every day on this show and try to give you as good information as we can. Tomorrow, we will have a vaccine expert from Johns Hopkins who's going to try to bust some myths about vaccinations in general and this one in particular. Good information today coming from Liz Kim, senior editor for Gothamist, covering COVID in New York, and Karen Yi, WNYC reporter covering COVID in New Jersey. Liz and Karen, thanks a lot.

Karen: Thanks, Brian.

Liz: Thanks, Brian.

 

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