The Food and Drug Administration approved Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday for use in the U.S., the third vaccine to be approved since the pandemic began.
Texas could initially receive more than 200,000 doses, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, but the agency hasn’t received a timeline for when they would arrive. The company has said it plans to ship 20 million shots in the U.S. by the end of March and an additional 80 million doses before the end of June.
Texas received about 1.5 million vaccine doses by Pfizer and Moderna this week, including doses that had been undelivered earlier in the month because of the winter storm.
Unlike those vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s formulation is the first to only require one dose, and it can be stored at regular refrigeration temperatures. The others require two doses, and Pfizer doses must be stored at below-freezing temperatures.
In clinical trials, the new vaccine worked especially well in protecting recipients from severe disease and hospitalizations, but its efficacy rate of 72% in U.S. trials is less than its competitors, which were shown to be 94% to 95% effective against COVID-19.
However, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was tested while COVID-19 variants were becoming more widespread; it’s unclear whether the other two vaccines’ efficacy rates could be affected by variants.
Five million vaccine doses have been administered overall in Texas as of Feb. 25. That equals about 5.8% of the state’s population — a long way from the 70% to 80% that experts estimate is necessary to achieve herd immunity. It would require nearly 100% of adults to be vaccinated to reach those figures, according to census numbers.
Scientists are still monitoring how well vaccines prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and health officials advise those who are vaccinated to continue wearing masks, social distance, and follow other COVID-19 safety guidelines.
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday that he and other state officials are considering when to remove the statewide mask mandate and other emergency orders related to COVID-19. He said he would make an announcement “pretty soon.”
But even as hospitalizations and deaths have declined in recent weeks, U.S. health officials have warned governors to avoid removing restrictions too soon.
Those declines “may be stalling,” said Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a COVID-19 White House briefing Friday. The CDC has also continued to sound the alarm about variants of the virus that continue to spread in the U.S, he said.
“It’s important to remember where we are in the pandemic. Things are tenuous,” Walensky said. “Now is not the time to relax restrictions.”
Crime Stoppers and the Houston Police Department’s Burglary and Theft Division need the public’s assistance identifying the suspect responsible for Felony Theft.
On Sunday, December 13, 2020, at approximately 11:37 p.m., an unknown suspect stole items from a business located in the 5000 block of Westheimer Road in Houston, Texas. During the incident, the suspect forced open the cabinet doors of a kiosk and stole over $8500 of Versace sunglasses. The suspect fled the scene in an unknown direction of travel.
Crime Stoppers may pay up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification, charging, and/or arrest of the suspects in this case. Information may be reported by calling 713-222-TIPS (8477), submitted online at www.crime-stoppers.org, or through the Crime Stoppers mobile app. Only tips and calls DIRECTLY TO Crime Stoppers are anonymous and eligible for a cash reward.
The language in this press release is intentional and could have legal implications. Please do not change the copy of the paragraph above.
Senate Democrats are seeking another way to raise hourly wages for Americans after suffering a blow Thursday when a key Senate official ruled a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour could not stay in President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 stimulus plan making its way through Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was considering amending the massive $1.9-trillion legislation with a provision to penalize large corporations who did not pay their workers at least $15 per hour, according to a senior Democratic aide speaking on condition of anonymity, though the details of the provision were not yet available.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said Friday he would work to amend the stimulus plan to tax 5% of corporations’ total payroll if workers earned less than a certain amount. His proposal would also provide income tax credits to small businesses equal to up to 25% of wages, up to $10,000 per year per employer, if they paid their workers higher wages.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Thursday evening following the ruling he would work with Senate colleagues to amend the bill to strip tax breaks from large corporations who do not pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide incentives to small businesses to raise wages.
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled Thursday the provision raising the wage from $7.25 to $15 by 2025 would have to be removed and considered as a standalone bill or as part of other legislation. The senators’ proposed changes would also be subject to rulings by the parliamentarian.
The ruling is key because the COVID relief package is being considered under “reconciliation” rules that bypass the filibuster and allow a simple majority to pass the bill. Progressives who have been pushing for the $15 wage hike say attaching the provision to Biden’s American Rescue Plan legislation was their best shot because a standalone measure would require at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster.
Progressive House Democrats, many of whom said the $15 minimum wage was a key part of the relief proposal, expressed their displeasure with the parliamentarian’s decision and signaled they would continue to push for the minimum wage.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told reporters on Capitol Hill “a tax break is just not a replacement” for a minimum wage increase, referring to the proposals in the Senate, but said, “I think that Sen. Sanders is doing the right thing by trying to include something last minute.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the parliamentarian’s ruling was just an “advisory opinion.”
“We had Black, brown, indigenous, working poor people who came out and voted for us. And now we have to show that it’s going to make a difference that we’re not going to get caught up in the tyranny of the minority that exists in the Senate,” she said.
Democrats were not alone in proposing wage hikes after the parliamentarian’s ruling. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Friday he would propose legislation to require corporations with annual revenues of $1 billion or more to pay employees at least $15 an hour.
Other senators have proposed smaller wage increases.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., who opposed the $15 wage, has proposed an increase to $11.
GOP Sens. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton are proposing a $10 wage but only if businesses are required to use the internet-based E-Verify system designed to prevent employers from hiring undocumented workers.
Both senators say their proposal provides a dual benefit for American workers: raising the pay floor for the first time in more than a decade while also ensuring that documented employees would be the beneficiaries.
Congress hasn’t raised the federal minimum wage – currently, $7.25 an hour – since 2007, even though a recent Pew Research poll shows Americans overwhelmingly favor an increase. Then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to boost the minimum wage in 2014, but the effort went nowhere. The House voted in 2019 to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, only to see the Senate kill the proposal.
Currently, 31 states have a minimum wage law that allows at least some workers to be paid less than $10, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. No state has a minimum wage at $15 or above.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released earlier this month estimated that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would boost the pay for as many as 27 million Americans and lift nearly 1 million out of poverty but also would result in the loss of as many as 1.4 million jobs.
Higher wages increase the cost to employers of producing goods and services, and those costs are generally passed on to consumers who usually react by purchasing fewer goods and services, according to the CBO. As a consequence, employers faced with having to scale back their output usually cut back their workforce.
Backers of the Romney-Cotton bill, called the Higher Wages for American Workers Act, say a $10 wage phased in through 2025 (and then indexed to inflation after that) would cost no more than 100,000 jobs and would raise wages for approximately 3.5 million Americans.
And by mandating E-Verify within 18 months of the law’s signing, they say the proposal “would preserve American jobs for legal workers and remove incentives for increased illegal immigration.”
For more than 15 hours, lawmakers asked tough questions about what caused the state’s power system to fail. The outages left more than a dozen people dead and countless homeowners are trying to fix busted pipes.
During the first day of hearings, Texas legislators heard from the chair of the Texas Railroad Commission, Christi Craddick who said ERCOT did not fully understand that cutting power to certain areas of natural gas production was compounding problems, and there needed to be better communication about priorities during outages.
Craddick’s testimony countered ERCOT CEO Bill Magness’s reports that freezing temperatures and precipitation are what unexpectedly knocked dozens of power plants offline, and natural gas was hit harder than most. Craddick fought back those claims.
“When you ask if we have enough gas in this state, the answer is yes, if we can keep the electricity on,” Craddick said. “Time and time again, the number one problem we heard from our operators was the lack of power at their production sites.”
Magness said his team warned the power company about the damage frigid temperatures can cause.
“We saw the danger and we continued to amp the communications with the people who are really going to operate and manage the grid during that time,” Magness said.
With a tense day, one in the books, day two of hearings will pick back up Friday at 9 a.m.
February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year.
Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.
Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask-wearing, social distancing, and virtual schooling — were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19. A push to get more people vaccinated against flu probably helped, too, as did fewer people traveling, they say.
Another possible explanation: The coronavirus has essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs that are more common in the fall and winter. Scientists don’t fully understand the mechanism behind that, but it would be consistent with patterns seen when certain flu strains predominate over others, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan.
Nationally, “this is the lowest flu season we’ve had on record,” according to a surveillance system that is about 25 years old, said Lynnette Brammer of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hospitals say the usual steady stream of flu-stricken patients never materialized.
At Maine Medical Center in Portland, the state’s largest hospital, “I have seen zero documented flu cases this winter,” said Dr. Nate Mick, the head of the emergency department.
Ditto in Oregon’s capital city, where the outpatient respiratory clinics affiliated with Salem Hospital have not seen any confirmed flu cases.
“It’s beautiful,” said the health system’s Dr. Michelle Rasmussen.
The numbers are astonishing considering flu has long been the nation’s biggest infectious disease threat. In recent years, it has been blamed for 600,000 to 800,000 annual hospitalizations and 50,000 to 60,000 deaths.
Across the globe, flu activity has been at very low levels in China, Europe, and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. And that follows reports of little flu in South Africa, Australia, and other countries during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter months of May through August.
The story of course has been different with coronavirus, which has killed more than 500,000 people in the United States. COVID-19 cases and deaths reached new heights in December and January, before beginning a recent decline.
Flu-related hospitalizations, however, are a small fraction of where they would stand during even a very mild season, said Brammer, who oversees the CDC’s tracking of the virus.
Flu death data for the whole U.S. population is hard to compile quickly, but CDC officials keep a running count of deaths of children. One pediatric flu death has been reported so far this season, compared with 92 reported at the same point in last year’s flu season.
“Many parents will tell you that this year their kids have been as healthy as they’ve ever been because they’re not swimming in the germ pool at school or daycare the same way they were in prior years,” Mick said.
Some doctors say they have even stopped sending specimens for testing because they don’t think the flu is present. Nevertheless, many labs are using a CDC-developed “multiplex test” that checks specimens for both the coronavirus and flu, Brammer said.
More than 190 million flu vaccine doses were distributed this season, but the number of infections is so low that it’s difficult for CDC to do its annual calculation of how well the vaccine is working, Brammer said. There’s simply not enough data, she said.
That also is challenging the planning of next season’s flu vaccine. Such work usually starts with checking which flu strains are circulating around the world and predicting which of them will likely predominate in the year ahead.
“But there are not a lot of (flu) viruses to look at,” Brammer said.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo joins 99 other history-makers in “TIME” Magazine’s “Top 100 Next” series.
In the essay penned by former 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, he said it’s hard to imagine a tougher first set of circumstances to confront her first term of office, and the ability to expand Early Voting sites, which had tripled during the 2020 Election.
“[Hidalgo] has really distinguished herself and makes us proud—not just as Democrats but as Texans,” O’Rourke wrote. “That’s what leadership looks like.”
“Proud to represent Harris County on the #TIME100Next list,” Hidalgo tweeted. “Thank you [Beto O’Rourke] for the incredible words, and for all you’re doing in the wake of this disaster.”
As an expansion to the original TIME Magazine’s Top 100, the ”TIME100 Next” series is focused more on emerging leaders who are shaping the future from the present, wrote TIME Editor-in-Chief and CEO. Notable individuals who made the list included Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman, talk show host Amber Ruffin, and country music artist Luke Combs.
H-E-B is going above and beyond to make sure Texans have food on their table by donating $1 million to food banks across Texas.
The donation was highlighted by Ellen DeGeneres during her talk show Wednesday, where H-E-B was a sponsored donor.
According to a news release, working directly with food banks affiliated with Feeding Texas, H-E-B’s donation will support 18 food banks throughout the state.
So far, the Texas grocery chain has donated 23 truckloads of food and $100,000 in Meal Simple meals to food banks, per the release.
H-E-B also responded to the ongoing water crisis in Texas by partnering with Zen Water and Florida-based Publix, who each donated 10 truckloads of water to Texas food banks this week. More truckloads of water are also being distributed by other partner suppliers, totaling more than 725,000 bottles of water.
H-E-B customers can donate to help other Texans with food or water difficulty by making monetary donations between $1 and $5 at the register, or donating online here. All donations will support Texas food banks with Feeding Texas.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Houston Friday as Texas recovers from the winter storm.
The president will also meet with Gov. Greg Abbott at the FEMA vaccine super-site at NRG around 5 p.m. Friday. This will be Biden’s last stop after touring several locations.
Biden is expected to survey damage and recovery efforts following the deadly winter storm.
White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki said this is not a partisan issue for the president.
“The president doesn’t view the crisis and the millions of people who have been impacted by (the storm) as a Democratic or a Republican issue,” Psaki said. “He views it as an issue where he’s eager to get relief, to tap into all the resources in the federal government, to make sure the people of Texas know we’re thinking about them, we’re fighting for them, and we’re going to continue working on this as they’re recovering.”
According to the White House, the president and first lady will arrive at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base at noon. Then they will make stops at the Houston Food Bank, Harris County Emergency Operations Center before taking a tour at the FEMA super-site.
Here is a look at their full schedule:
9: 40 a.m.: President and the first lady depart the White House en route Joint Base Andrews
12 p.m.: The couple arrives in Houston
12:50 p.m.: The first lady visits Houston Food Bank
12:55 p.m.: Biden tours Harris County Emergency Operations Center
2:20 p.m.: President, the first lady tour Houston Food Bank and meet volunteers
5 p.m.: Biden delivers remarks at the FEMA COVID-19 vaccination facility at NRG Stadium
6 p.m.: The couple departs from Houston en route to Washington, D.C.
Abbott said he will join the president during the tour to discuss several key issues impacting Texans.
“The first thing that we will talk about will be the winter disaster that occurred,” Abbott said. “…And then, on top of that, we will be visiting one of the vaccine super sites they have located in Houston.”
According to the White House, Biden will deliver remarks after touring the vaccination site.
Houston Police Cheif Art Acevedo told people to expect traffic delays throughout the day.
The torch relay for the postponed Tokyo Olympics is to start in a month, which should be a sign that the troubled Olympics are on track to begin on July 23.
It was at this stage at the start of the torch relay just under a year ago — just after the Olympic flame arrived from Greece — that the Olympics were postponed because of the coronavirus.
Organizers on Thursday read out a list of rules regarding health measures for the 10,000 torchbearers and others who are to take part, including fans. They also cautioned that changes to the route or runners could come without much notice.
“No shouting, no cheering. Please cheer by clapping your hands and maintain appropriate distance in case there is overcrowding,” Yukihiko Nunomura, the vice director-general of the organizing committee, told a briefing.
Torchbearers will be allowed to run without wearing a mask, but all others are required to wear one.
The relay begins on March 25 from the northeastern prefecture of Fukushima and will crisscross the country. It ends on July 23 at the opening ceremony in the National Stadium in Tokyo.
Fukushima is the part of Japan that was heavily damaged on March 11, 2011, by an earthquake, tsunami, and the meltdown of three nuclear reactors.
The precise starting point of the relay will be J-Village located in the town of Naraha.
There was talk after the postponement of dropping all or part of the torch relay for safety reasons or to save money and simplify the games.
But it was kept, partly because it is a heavily sponsored event backed by Coca-Cola and Toyota, and other large sponsors such as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Nippon Life Insurance, Panasonic, All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Visa.
Local sponsors have poured in about $3.5 billion to these Olympics, many without much chance of a return because of the COVID-19 pandemic, limited tourism for the games — if any — and the one-year delay.
The local sponsorship contribution is at least twice as large as any previous Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee and organizers announced earlier this month the so-called Playbooks for the Olympics. They spell out how the Olympics in Tokyo will be held. They are to be updated in April and June with more details.
The cost of the Tokyo Olympics continues to soar. The official price tag is $15.4 billion, but Olympic costs are notoriously difficult to track. Several government audits have said costs are at least $25 billion and maybe more.
