July 13 coronavirus news

Former US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams called on politicians, including President Biden and former President Trump, to “put the politics away” and encourage Covid-19 vaccination.

Adams said he believes addressing people’s questions and concerns about the vaccine could have more of an impact on vaccine uptake. 

“We’ve got to do our part and make sure we don't demonize people, that we speak to their mistrust, that we show them that we care and then they'll care what we know,” added Adams, who was surgeon general under Trump.

“I would like to see President Trump and everyone else out there who's in a position to influence people encourage those individuals to get vaccinated.”

The US Food and Drug Administration authorized another batch of Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine ingredients on Tuesday from the troubled Emergent BioSolutions facility in Baltimore.

This is the fifth batch produced by the facility to be authorized, the FDA said in a statement, but did not say how many vaccines the newly authorized batch would account for.

The manufacturing facility has not yet received full FDA authorization to produce Johnson & Johnson doses. After a mix-up earlier this year that involved ingredients for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and AstraZeneca’s vaccine, production was stopped and AstraZeneca moved its contract work elsewhere. Ingredients that could have made up to 15 million vaccine doses were spoiled by contamination. 

The FDA has been giving extra scrutiny to batches produced at the facility, which are shipped to other facilities to be put into vials and finished.

“Today the agency authorized the use, under the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, of an additional batch of vaccine drug substance manufactured at the Emergent facility,” the FDA said.

The FDA not only approves and authorizes new drugs or vaccines, but also authorizes the facilities where they are produced.

The Department of Homeland Security is administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as part of an effort to scale up vaccinations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, ICE told CNN in a statement. 

Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, ICE detention facilities have wrestled with a growing number of positive cases, totaling more than 19,879 confirmed cases and nine deaths. 

Last month, three whistleblowers urged the Biden administration to do more to vaccinate immigrants in ICE detention, claiming that DHS had not implemented a comprehensive plan to address the spread of Covid-19 in immigration detention facilities and criticized guidance putting the onus on detention facilities to contact their states' vaccine resources, such as state or county departments of health, to obtain vaccines.

But now, DHS has received an initial allocation of 10,000 vaccine doses and a nationwide distribution is underway, according to ICE. The doses make up an initial allocation and will be replenished on a rolling basis. 

In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said DHS “remains committed to a public health guided, evidence-based approach to vaccine education that ensures those in our care and custody can make an informed choice during this global pandemic.” 

There are more than 27,600 immigrants in ICE custody, as of July 9.

A group of seven national epidemiology and infection prevention organizations recommended that hospitals and healthcare facilities make Covid-19 vaccination a condition of employment in a statement released Tuesday.

The consensus statement from the groups, which includes the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, “recommends that Covid-19 vaccination should be a condition of employment for all healthcare personnel.”

They note that an exemption from the policy would apply to people who have medical contraindications to all Covid-19 vaccines available in the US. Other exemptions as specified by federal or state law would also apply. 

The statement, published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, also supports the vaccination of non-employees at healthcare facilities, such as students, contract workers and volunteers.

The recommendation is based on several points, the statement said. These include the high efficacy of the authorized vaccines at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 as well as hospitalizations and deaths; several advantages that vaccination offers to patient and employee safety; the fact that the authorized vaccines appear to retain good effectiveness against currently circulating variants; and that prior experience and current information suggest that without Covid-19 vaccination being a condition of employment, sufficient vaccination rates are unlikely to be achieved.

Only a quarter of children ages 12-15 are fully vaccinated – less than any other eligible age group, according to data published Tuesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s the latest CDC data on vaccination efforts in the United States:

The Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) announced on Tuesday that 10% of the Brazilian athletes that will participate at the Tokyo Olympic Games decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

According to COB Sports Director Jorge Bichara at a news conference, 75% of the 301 Brazilian athletes who will represent Brazil at the Tokyo Olympics are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. About 90% of Brazilian athletes received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to figures presented by the committee in the conference.

Vaccination is not mandatory to participate in the event.

Brazilian athletes from nine sports teams are already at the Olympic Village in Tokyo.

After over 40 days without any states on its travel advisory, the city of Chicago has added Missouri and Arkansas back to the list.

Due to an increase in Covid-19 cases in those states, unvaccinated people traveling from Missouri or Arkansas “are advised to obtain a negative Covid-19 test result no more than 72 hours prior to arrival in Chicago or quarantine for a 10-day period upon arrival,” according to the city’s travel advisory.

There were no states on the travel advisory on June 1, the first time since July 2020, the city said in its news release.

Polio survivor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it no secret that he wants Americans to get vaccinated no matter their political party, talking about it most every time speaks publicly when he’s in Kentucky.

CNN asked him if there is more Republicans need to do and what he has been doing back home.

“I think we just have to keep preaching that and try to get people to understand the importance of it and for whatever audience I may have, I am going to keep talking about it," he said. 

Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, opened its sixth Covid-19 unit to help care for patients over the weekend, according to spokesperson Sonya Kullman. 

On Sunday, the Missouri hospital reported 137 patients with Covid-19.

“For context, the high in the last surge was 113 on Dec. 28, 2020,” Kullman said in an email to CNN.