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Mayor Turner Applauds Houston Methodist and Other Area Hospitals for Transparent COVID-19 Vaccination Process
Area hospitals begin administering COVID-19 vaccine to frontline workers
Memorial Hermann announced Tuesday that it has received 16,575 doses of the Pfizer-produced COVID-19 vaccine and begun administering the inoculant to its frontline staff that works directly with patients affected by the SARS-COV-2 virus. Houston Methodist has also received doses of the vaccine and has begun administering it to staff.
“We have been fighting this battle against COVID-19 since March. I’m thrilled there is now a vaccine to help protect us against this virus, and I am very grateful and proud to be among the first in the country to be able to receive it,” said Robert Luckey, a registered nurse who works in the COVID Intensive Care Unit at Memorial Hermann’s Texas Medical Center location.
According to the Memorial Hermann press release, the CDC recommends health care workers at high risk of contracting COVID-19 be the first in the U.S. to receive vaccinations to protect against the virus.
“I’ve had many describe the day like Christmas morning waiting for Santa’s sleigh to arrive and sitting at the top of the stairs while your parents won’t be down quite yet to open up the presents,” said Dr. Marc Boom, CEO of Houston Methodist regarding his staff’s attitude toward the vaccine. “… I am just thrilled that these brave men and women got the chance to get this (vaccine).”
State guidelines for distribution of the virus include such staff receiving the vaccine first according to a Department of State Health Services publication. They are joined by long-term care staff that works with vulnerable clients such as the elderly living in nursing homes, EMS providers who provide emergency services like pre-hospital care and transport, home health care workers including hospice workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
State guidelines then prioritize staff in outpatient care environments, freestanding emergency rooms, and urgent care clinics, pharmacies, those that work in emergency response centers, last responders such as morticians and medical examiners, and then school nurses who provide care to students and faculty.
Memorial Hermann’s statement said the hospital had registered to obtain as many doses of the vaccine as possible as soon as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. That request allowed it to receive more doses than any other health system in the Greater Houston area.
“It’s been a stressful, exhausting 10 months, so I think I can speak for everyone when I say that it’s an honor for us to be able to offer this vaccine to the individuals who have dedicated nearly a year of their lives to caring for our community during this pandemic,” said Dr. David Callender, president of Memorial Hermann.
Both hospital officials and elected officials said it is unknown how long it will take for the production of the vaccine to ramp up enough for the general public to receive it, but they hoped it would not take long.
“We have not won yet, but we know we will, and so it should bring hope,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said. “But there should also be a reminder for everybody in the community that we’re not through with this and it’s going to take a while for these vaccines to be available to everybody in the country, for there to be enough production of the vaccine so that everybody can get it.”
Nutcracker Ballet is the Latest Holiday Classic to Go Online; Here’s How to Watch It and What It Costs
Few performances are more synonymous with a New York City Christmas than The Nutcracker.
Set to the soul-stirring music of Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky, performed by the New York City Ballet (NYCB), George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker will be available for streaming from December 11th through January 3rd, via a partnership between NYCB and Marquee TV. Marquee is an on-demand streaming platform dedicated to global arts and culture. Tickets are $25. You do not need a subscription nor to buy one for Marquee to purchase a ticket.
“Each year New York City Ballet’s live performances of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® provide a vital introduction to ballet for countless children who attend performances with their families, or attend special matinees for students from New York City’s public schools,” said Katherine Brown, Executive Director of NYCB, in a press release, which shared the following history:
NYCB’s landmark version of the Balanchine favorite, which The New York Times has called ‘the gold standard’ Nutcracker, premiered on February 2, 1954, and helped to establish The Nutcracker and its score as perennial favorites in the United States. A signature event of the holiday season in New York City, with the exception of the 2020 season when performances were canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the treasured classic had been performed by NYCB every year since its premiere more than 65 years ago.
Filmed during the Company’s 2019 season at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, the Marquee TV broadcast features NYCB Principal Dancers Maria Kowroski as the Sugarplum Fairy, Tyler Angle as Her Cavalier, Megan Fairchild as Dewdrop, and more than 50 dancers from NYCB, the largest dance organization in America and one of the world’s greatest ballet companies. The production also features the 62-piece New York City Ballet Orchestra under the direction of NYCB Music Director Andrew Litton, and more than 60 children from the School of American Ballet, the official school of NYCB.
You can purchase a ticket to The Nutcracker at marquee.tv/nycbnutcracker, or through in-app purchase via Apple and Android devices. This will allow you to enjoy the performance on all of Marquee TV’s apps, including browser, iOS, Apple TV, Android TV, Android, Fire TV, Roku, and the soon-to-be-released Samsung app. You can start the performance at your own convenience from December 11th to January 3, and have 48 hours to finish watching after the first play. Marquee TV’s apps also include AirPlay and Chromecast support.
Tremendo triunfo de los Ravens ante unos Browns esperanzadores
¡Qué nivel de partido! Volteretas, jugadas espectaculares, final épico con un gol de campo largo, Lamar Jackson lanzando, Baker Mayfield demostrando que puede hacerlo y donde el ganador se determina en la última jugada. Los Ravens vencieron 47-42 a los Browns en un lunes por la noche que fue espectacular.
Si bien los partidos divisionales siempre suelen ser muy intensos, este superó las expectativas. Baltimore y Lamar Jackson parecen haber despertado y aunque Cleveland perdió el encuentro, definitivamente estos Browns son muy distintos a los de otros años.
Lamar Jackson suele ser criticado por no lanzar el ovoide y justamente en este partido uno de sus pases fue el que puso a las aves de Maryland cerca del triunfo. En total fueron 163 yardas aéreas y un pase de touchdown, además de 124 yardas por tierra.
Y si bien los Browns volvieron a ser los Browns de siempre por momentos, hay que destacar la gran actuación individual de elementos como Baker Mayfield y sus 343 yardas y dos pases para touchdown, además de una anotación individual, pero sobre todo, el liderazgo que proyecta en su equipo.
Al final y después de un concierto de touchdown, le tocó a Justin Tucker definir el encuentro y lo hizo como sabe. Un gol de campo de 55 yardas no lo detuvo y el marcador se fue del lado de los Ravens. Todavía lucharon los Browns en los segundos finales, pero su esfuerzo no fructificó e incluso sufrieron un safety.
De esta forma, Baltimore coloca su récord en 8-5, mientras que Cleveland sigue 9-4 y la lucha por la AFC Norte continúa.
7 Houston hospitals to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses today
Shipments of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are expected to arrive today at seven Houston-area hospitals.
Methodist Hospital is set to receive more than 5,000 doses, which is part of its 13,650 allotments. The shipments will arrive at the loading dock between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
The first round of frontline hospital workers, including the nurses and doctors who deal directly with COVID-19 patients, will get that shot in the arm today.
When the vaccines arrive, they’ll go into freezers with a temperature of -80 degrees Celcius. That’s about -112 degrees Fahrenheit, which is colder than the surface of Mars.
The doses will be stored in the freezer room until they’re ready to thaw for the shots.
The first person who will be vaccinated at Methodist, the nursing director for emergency services, Johnie Leonard.
Leonard says that when she receives the vaccine, she’ll be thinking of her 95-year-old mother. She told that who she will get the shot for, the family members we haven’t been able to see or hug in months.
Leonard encourages everyone to get it for someone they love.
“That is the one thing that you can do that can help the entire country and your neighborhood. I anticipate going over, taking it, and getting right back to work,” she said.
Officials have only five minutes to move the vials into a freezer to make sure they stay cold enough to be effective. The stakes are high with the vaccine as it’s all about timing.
“We’ve got to have a thawing time of 30 minutes. If we thaw it out, it lasts us up to six hours. So we’ve got six hours of administration time,” explained Binita Patel with Memorial Hermann Pharmacy Services.
The first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived Monday in Texas.
MD Anderson Cancer Center was one of four sites in the state to receive 4,875 of the 19,500 doses of the vaccine sent out Monday morning.
“They’ve been preparing for quite some time to manage cold chain storage and they’ve also undergone training for the reconstitution and preparation of the vaccine when it needs to be administered in the clinic,” said MD Anderson Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Welela Tereffe.
More than 80 nurses have volunteered to administer it and they will begin giving the vaccine on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Memorial Hermann’s hospital system is slated to get a total of 16,575 doses and will begin administering the vaccine this week.
It’s unclear how much of that allotment will arrive today, but officials have been preparing with super-cold freezers to store the Pfizer vaccine.
“We actually had to buy these ultra-low freezers because most hospitals don’t have these types of freezers. You don’t need them for traditional medication,” said Patel.
“To put that in perspective, between our employees and our affiliated physicians, we’re in the 31,000-32,000 employee basis so when you start to think about how do we vaccinate the very front line, that 13,650 will actually do a very good job for us at getting into a pretty good proportion of our staff,” said Dr. Marc Boom, the President, and CEO of Houston Methodist.
Even while health officials say they can finally see light at the end of the tunnel with the arrival of the vaccine, a lot of steps still need to be taken in between shipments and giving the vaccine to Houstonians.
According to health leaders in the state, healthcare providers, or workers inside medical facilities, along with nursing home residents and staff, will be the first to get the vaccine. Officials say the focus is on facilities that indicated they will vaccinate at least 975 frontline health care workers since that is the minimum order for the Pfizer vaccine.
Additional shipments are expected to occur later in the week. In all, Texas was allocated 224,250 doses of vaccine to be shipped to 110 providers across the state in Week 1 of distribution.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday, Dec. 11. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then accepted a recommendation from an advisory committee for doses to be distributed to people ages 16 and older.
A spokesperson told Eyewitness News the first round of 3,900 doses will go to the Texas Medical Center location and they expect 975 doses at both Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus in Katy and Texas Children’s Hospital in The Woodlands.
Below is a list of hospitals across Texas and the Houston area receiving the vaccine today:
Tuesday, Dec. 15
- Amarillo: Texas Tech Univ. Health Science Center Amarillo
- Corpus Christi: Christus Spohn Health System Shoreline
- Dallas: Parkland Hospital
- Dallas: UT Southwestern
- Edinburg: Doctors Hospital at Renaissance
- Edinburg: UT Health RGV Edinburg
- El Paso: University Medical Center El Paso
- Fort Worth: Texas Health Resources Medical Support
- Galveston: University of Texas Medical Branch Hospital
- Houston: Texas Children’s Hospital Main
- Houston: LBJ Hospital
- Houston: CHI St. Luke’s Health
- Houston: Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center
- Houston: Houston Methodist Hospital
- Houston: Ben Taub General Hospital
- Lubbock: Covenant Medical Center
- San Angelo: Shannon Pharmacy
- Temple: Baylor Scott and White Medical Center
- Tyler: UT Health Science Center Tyler
A second vaccine, produced by Moderna, is under consideration by the FDA and could be authorized late this week. Moderna’s vaccine will be available in batches of 100 doses.
Receiving the COVID-19 vaccine is voluntary. However, experts say 60 to 80 percent of the population has to be vaccinated to potentially end the pandemic.
US Covid deaths pass 300,000 as first Americans receive coronavirus vaccine
More than 300,000 people have now died because of Covid-19 in the United States, with the latest milestone coming amid record daily fatalities and the national rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
The first shot in the US mass vaccination program was given shortly after 9 am ET on Monday morning at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, New York. Intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person not enrolled in the vaccine trials to receive it.
“It feels surreal,” she said. “It is a huge sense of relief for me, and hope.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo described the vaccine as “the weapon that will end the war”. Donald Trump tweeted: “First Vaccine Administered. Congratulations USA! Congratulations WORLD!”
As hospitals around the US continue to describe a crisis of capacity in intensive care units, experts have described this winter as likely the most perilous time, despite the hopes brought by the recent vaccine progress. It also comes less than a month after the country lost a quarter of a million people to the disease.
The latest figures from Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus resource center show more than 300,456 fatalities in the US and more than 16m cases. It took just 27 days to go from 250,000 deaths to 300,000 – the fastest 50,000-death jump since the pandemic began. Some models project that hundreds of thousands more people could die before vaccines become widely available in the spring and summer.
The US has the highest death toll from the disease in the world, followed by Brazil, India, and Mexico, and the US is among the worst-hit of developed nations in terms of its death rate. Globally, there have been more than 69m cases and at least 1.5m deaths.
Earlier this month the UK became the first country in the world to begin administering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, followed quickly by Canada and the US.
The US government is aiming to distribute the first wave of 2.9 million vaccine doses to 636 locations nationwide by the end of the week. US Army General Gustave Perna said on a Monday press call that severe storms expected in some parts of the country this week could pose challenges to vaccine shipments.
On Sunday, trucks hauling trailers loaded with suitcase-sized containers of Covid-19 vaccine rolled out of Pfizer’s manufacturing facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, launching the largest and most complex vaccine distribution project in the US.
While progress on the vaccine is being celebrated across America, it also comes amid safety concerns and fears of anti-vaccination sentiments that might hinder the rollout.
Lindsay, 52, who is black, told the New York Times she hoped that by being the first person outside of medical trials to get vaccinated, she would help “inspire people who look like me, who are skeptical in general about taking vaccines”.
There are also worries over a potentially chaotic roll-out with local plans for vaccine distribution that vary widely, lack federal funding, and will not reach everyone even in early, limited populations.
The US, which has recently been reporting around 2,200 deaths per day, recorded more than 3,000 deaths on one day for the first time on 9 December.
Cases have been surging in the US since mid-October to more than 200,000 a day and experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci have said the worst of the surge is expected after Thanksgiving – despite official requests not to travel – and likely just before Christmas.
Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, told CNN his fears about Christmas were the same as Thanksgiving: people traveling and not social distancing, “only this may be even more compounded because it’s a long holiday”.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of US president-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, told: “No Christmas parties. There is not a safe Christmas party in this country right now.
“It won’t end after that but that is the period right now where we could have a surge upon a surge upon a surge.”
Hospitals around the country have reported being under huge pressure. One in 10 Americans – especially across the midwest, south, and south-west – live in an area where intensive care beds are either full or available at lower than 5% of capacity, the New York Times reported.
In California, Fresno county’s interim public health officer, Dr. Rais Vohra, told that there was recently one day in the county with zero intensive-care capacity: “I know that those who aren’t in the medical field may not understand or quite grasp just how dire the situation is, but all the things you’re hearing about – how impacted our hospitals are, about how dire the situation with our ICUs is – it’s absolutely true. And that really is the reason that we want everyone to stay home as much as possible.”
Americans willing to receive COVID-19 vaccine but divided on timing: POLL
More than eight in 10 Americans say they would receive the vaccine, with 40% saying they would take it as soon as it’s available to them and 44% saying they would wait a bit before getting it.
Only 15% said they would refuse the vaccine entirely in the new survey, a reflection of growing confidence in the rapidly-developed vaccine, which marks a long-awaited turning point amid an unrelenting COVID-19 pandemic.
Late last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a COVID-19 vaccine, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, for emergency use, facilitating the first batches of the vaccine to be distributed to millions of vulnerable frontline health care workers by Monday.
The decision by the agency to authorize is the first step towards safeguarding a country ravaged by the virus by immunizing enough Americans to halt the spread of the virus, which has killed nearly 300,000 and infected more than 16 million. More than two-thirds of Americans in the poll — 69% — say they or someone they know has been infected by the virus.
Among those who have been more closely hit by the pandemic, 45% said they would receive the vaccine now. Among those Americans who have not contracted the virus or do not know someone who has, only 30% say they would be willing to be inoculated immediately.
The share of Americans willing to take the vaccine falls sharply along demographic lines, particularly by age and education level. While only 7% of Americans over the age of 65 say they will never be vaccinated for COVID-19, that number rises to 20% among those between 18-29.
Meanwhile, 93% of elderly Americans are willing to receive the vaccine, with more saying they will get it right away (57%) rather than further down the line (36%). Eighty percent of U.S. adults under 30 are willing to get the vaccine, but they are more likely to say they will wait (50%) rather than getting it right away (30%).
Americans with higher levels of education are also more likely to be willing to be vaccinated than those with less education. Nine in 10 Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree are willing to get a vaccine, while only 80% of those with a high school degree or less say the same.
Those with a high school degree or less are more than twice as likely to say they would never receive a vaccine compared to those with bachelor’s degrees or higher, 20% to 9%.
Partisanship also plays a role in influencing the public’s outlook on a vaccine. Republicans (26%) are more than four times as likely as Democrats (6%) and nearly twice as likely as independents (14%) to say they would never get the coronavirus vaccine.
Nearly twice as many Democrats (49%) say they are willing to get the vaccine immediately as Republicans (28%). Just over four in 10 independents (42%) say the same. But the possibility of getting vaccinated in the future breaks through party lines. An equal 45% of Democrats, Republicans, and independents said they would first wait before getting a vaccine.
Americans are far more united on who should be first in line for medical achievement. Clear majorities of Americans believe that health care workers (91%), first responders (87%), at-risk Americans with pre-existing conditions (84%), the elderly (83%), teachers (64%), and members of the U.S. military (56%) should be a high priority for accessing the vaccine.
Nearly half of those surveyed believe students (48%) and the average American similar to themselves (44%) should be a medium priority, but the public is more split on elected officials, with 41% classifying them as a medium priority and 42% ranking them as a low priority. Only athletes, of the groups asked about, were deemed to be a low priority by a majority of Americans — 58%.
Americans, though, are far more skeptical of mandatory vaccinations. About four in 10 believe their state should require that people get vaccinated before returning to work or school, compared to 61% who are not on board.
Not surprisingly, it’s a question that evokes partisan rifts, with nearly three in four Republicans against such a mandate, compared to fewer than half of Democrats (45%). Independents fall closer to Republicans, with 63% opposing mandatory vaccinations.
Electoral College officially confirms Biden presidential victory
President-elect rebukes Trump’s attacks on the election and refusal to concede. ‘Democracy prevailed’, Biden says.
United States President-elect Joe Biden claimed victory in the Electoral College after key battleground states gave him and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris a clear majority of electors and he rebuked President Donald Trump for failing to acknowledge the will of the American people.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. And we now know that nothing – not even the pandemic – or an abuse of power – can extinguish that flame,” Biden said in a televised address to the nation from Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday night.
“In America, politicians don’t take power – the people grant it to them,” Biden said, taking direct aim at President Trump’s refusal to concede the November 3 election and attempts by Trump and Republican allies to overturn the results in the courts and with state officials.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden said, calling on Trump to recognize his win as a “landslide”.
There are 538 electors in the Electoral College and a majority of 270 is required to win. Biden went over the top earlier in the day when California, the largest US state, cast its 55 electors for the Democratic ticket. The Pacific island state of Hawaii was the last to cast its votes, bringing Biden’s total to 306 electoral votes. Trump won 232.
All of the election’s most closely contested battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia cast their votes for Biden.
Established in the US Constitution in 1787, the Electoral College is an archaic institution that – after Trump won in 2016 without also winning the national, popular vote – some would like to see eliminated.Each state is awarded a number of electors in the college equal to its number of seats in Congress, which is based on population.
Prior to the election, slates of electors are chosen by candidates and their parties within each state. When US citizens vote, they actually cast ballots to elect a slate of electors for their preferred candidate, not the candidates themselves.
Those electors are often lesser-known party loyalists, but in some cases, they are well-known, as in the case of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served as Biden electors in New York state.
Biden offered thanks to all the election workers and public officials involved in tallying the vote and he decried Trump and his supporters’ attempts to pressure officials into overturning the results.
“They knew this election was overseen – overseen by them. It was honest. It was fair. They saw it with their own eyes,” Biden said.
“That they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different was remarkable because so many of these patriotic Americans are subject to so much enormous political pressure, verbal abuse, and even threats of physical violence,” he added.
Electors in Arizona were forced to meet in an undisclosed location and the Michigan statehouse was closed for business because of threats of violence from Trump supporters, according to US media reports.
By law, the electors met today in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia to formally cast their votes. Those documents are then sent to Congress where they will be read and counted on January 6 in a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Some House Republicans have said they will seek to challenge Biden’s selection in that process. Congress, barring any successful objections, will then declare the winner of the presidential election.
Senator John Cornyn, a top Republican, told reporters at the US Capitol that trying to overturn the Electoral College vote in Congress “would be a bad mistake” and said it is time for Republicans to move on and acknowledge Trump’s loss.
“Comes a time when you have to realize that despite your best efforts, you’ve been unsuccessful,” Cornyn said.
“You have got to have a winner and a loser,” he said.
Most Republicans in Congress have so far refrained from acknowledging Biden’s victory, although that now appears to be shifting.
“When it’s over, it’s over. And it should be over Monday,” Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican who is retiring from Congress, said on a Sunday television talk show on NBC.
Normally, the meeting today of the Electoral College would be a formality but with Trump attempting to challenge Biden’s election at every step of the way, this year is different.Pennsylvania’s 20 electors met in the state capital in Harrisburg to cast their votes for Biden and Harris. It was Pennsylvania that gave Biden the apparent Electoral College win on November 7 after votes were counted
Get ready for taxes: What’s new when filing in 2021
The Internal Revenue Service encourages taxpayers to take necessary actions in the final weeks of the year to help file federal tax returns timely and accurately in 2021.
This is the third in a series of reminders to help taxpayers get ready for the tax filing season. A special page, updated and available on IRS.gov, outlines steps taxpayers can take now to make tax filing easier in 2021.
This year, there are some key items to consider involving credits, deductions, and refunds:
Recovery Rebate Credit/Economic Impact Payment. Taxpayers who received an Economic Impact Payment should keep Notice 1444, Your Economic Impact Payment, with the 2020 tax records. They may be eligible to claim the Recovery Rebate Credit on their tax year 2020 federal income tax return if:
• they didn’t receive an Economic Impact Payment, or
• their Economic Impact Payment was less than $1,200 ($2,400 if married filing jointly for 2019 or 2018), plus $500 for each qualifying child they had in 2020.
If taxpayers didn’t receive the full amount of the Economic Impact Payment for which they were eligible, they may be able to claim the Recovery Rebate Credit when they file in 2021.
Individuals do not need to complete information about the Recovery Rebate Credit on the tax year 2020 Form 1040 or 1040-SR when filing in 2021, unless eligible to claim an additional credit amount.
Interest on refunds taxable. Taxpayers who received a federal tax refund in 2020 may have been paid interest. Refund interest payments are taxable and must be reported on federal income tax returns. In January, the IRS will send Form 1099-INT to anyone who received interest totaling $10 or more.
Charitable deduction changes. New this year, taxpayers who don’t itemize deductions may take a charitable deduction of up to $300 for cash contributions made in 2020 to qualifying organizations. For more information, read Publication 526, Charitable Contributions.
Refunds. The IRS always cautions taxpayers not to rely on receiving a refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills. Some returns may require additional review and processing may take longer.
For example, the IRS, along with its partners in the tax industry, continues to strengthen security reviews to help protect against identity theft and refund fraud. Just like last year, refunds for tax returns claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit or Additional Child Tax Credit, cannot be issued before mid-February. This applies to the entire refund, even the portion not associated with these credits.
The IRS reminds taxpayers the fastest and safest way to receive a refund is to combine direct deposit with electronic filing, including the IRS FreeFile program. Taxpayers can track their refund using the Where’s My Refund? tool.
For more information to plan ahead, see Publication 5348, Get Ready to File, and Publication 5349, Year-Round Tax Planning is for Everyone.
COVID-19 vaccine side effects from the CDC
The COVID-19 vaccination was developed to keep people safe from the novel coronavirus.
But just like any vaccination, there can be some side effects.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “side effects may affect your ability to do daily activities, but they should go away in a few days.”
Common side effects on the arm where you got the shot include pain and swelling.
You could also experience fever, chills, tiredness, and headache.
To reduce pain and discomfort where you got the shot, the CDC recommends that you apply a clean, cool, wet washcloth over the area and use or exercise your arm.
To reduce discomfort from fever, the CDC suggests that you drink plenty of fluids and dress lightly.
In most cases, discomfort from fever or pain is normal. Contact your doctor or healthcare provider if the redness or tenderness where you got the shot increases after 24 hours or if your side effects are worrying you or do not seem to be going away after a few days.
With most COVID-19 vaccines, you will need two shots in order for them to work effectively. The CDC says you should get the second shot even if you have side effects after the first shot unless a vaccination provider or your doctor tells you not to.
It takes time for your body to build protection after any vaccination. COVID-19 vaccines that require two shots may not protect you until a week or two after your second shot.
