Biden urges more people to get vaccinated as FDA panel recommends Moderna booster

There is a chain of events that has almost certainly happened at least once in the United States this year. A person eligible for a coronavirus vaccination decides against getting it, having seen articles in right-wing media or coverage on Fox News misleadingly or falsely downplaying the efficacy and safety of immunization. That person has then contracted covid-19 and died.

Figuring out how many times this has occurred is trickier. For one thing, there can be myriad reasons for not getting vaccinated, including lack of access to calculated opposition. For another, vaccination vastly reduces the chances of contracting and dying of covid-19, but that still can occur. For a third, examples that we might have are necessarily anecdotal: Just because one woman’s child says that a conservative media personality persuaded her not to get vaccinated before her death doesn’t mean that’s common or even true.

The best we can do, then, is to look at broad patterns and figure out whether we can see the sort of correlation we would expect to see with vaccinations, politics and deaths. And: We can.

TORONTO — Canada’s public safety minister said Thursday that “work is ongoing” to ensure that fully vaccinated Canadians with mixed vaccine doses will be able to cross the U.S.-Canada land border when restrictions on nonessential travel at the frontier ease next month.

More than 3.9 million Canadians have been fully vaccinated with doses that came from two different pharmaceutical companies. They include Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who received a first dose of a vaccine made by AstraZeneca and a second dose from Moderna.

Canadian officials gave the green light for mixing doses this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by contrast, says that “vaccines are not interchangeable” and that both doses should come from the same pharmaceutical company.

When the Department of Homeland Security said this week that it would soon allow fully vaccinated Canadians to cross the U.S.-Canada land border for nonessential purposes, it was silent on those with mixed doses.

“We understand the concern about mixed doses,” Canadian Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told a Canadian radio show Thursday.

He said that Canadian officials have been sharing data with their U.S. counterparts about the efficacy of mixed doses, and that Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, has also raised the issue with U.S. officials.

President Biden on Thursday announced that the United States is sending 17 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to the African Union, where vaccination rates remain perilously low.

Biden made the announcement in an Oval Office meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“We’re continuing our shared fight against covid,” Biden said. “The United States has donated 28 million doses of vaccine to Kenya as part of the 50 million doses we’ve donated to the African Union. And I am proud to announce today that we’re making an additional historic one-time donation of 17 more million doses of J&J vaccine to the AU. And we’re going to be sending some more by the end of the year to Kenya.”

The Kenyan president thanked Biden for “helping Kenya but also the rest of the continent access the vaccine.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday afternoon that all 17 million doses “are available for delivery immediately and will be delivered to the African Union in the coming weeks.”

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 90 percent of high-income countries have fully vaccinated 10 percent of their population against covid-19. But among Africa’s 54 countries, only 30 percent have achieved that level of vaccination.

Six of every 7 coronavirus infections in Africa go undetected, the WHO said Thursday.

An independent advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously recommended a booster dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine for people 65 and older and adults who are at high risk of severe illness or are exposed at work.

The recommendation mirrors the eligibility criteria for the Pfizer-BioNTech booster, which was authorized in September. Nearly 70 million Americans have received both doses of the Moderna vaccine.

The vote comes after a full-day examination of data on the safety and effectiveness of a booster, and the recommendation will now be considered by FDA officials, who are expected to reach a decision on the Moderna booster within days. An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that makes recommendations on how vaccines should be used is scheduled to meet Wednesday.

One day after the Brooklyn Nets told Kyrie Irving that he could not play in games or participate in practices until he fulfilled the terms of New York City’s coronavirus vaccine mandate, the seven-time NBA all-star broke his silence, confirming that he remained unvaccinated and calling the decision a “personal choice” that was made without political motivations.

Irving, who went on Instagram’s video streaming service to deliver his first public comments in more than two weeks, repeatedly said he had no plans to retire and expressed hope that he would be able to rejoin Kevin Durant, James Harden and the rest of the Nets. But with Brooklyn’s season set to open Tuesday, he gave no indication that he plans to get vaccinated in the near future.

Amid controversy and investigations about the origin of the coronavirus, it is the story of Nipah — and an encyclopedia of zoonotic diseases that includes rabies, West Nile, Ebola, HIV, MERS and SARS — that has led many scientists to argue that the most likely explanation is a natural spillover that occurred in the wild, not a leak from a lab.

This week, the World Health Organization unveiled an advisory group that will study the origins of the coronavirus and guide research to prepare the world against Disease X — shorthand for an unknown virus capable of causing human epidemics. Nipah, WHO officials wrote in the journal Science, was the Disease X of its time.

As much as 75 percent of new infectious diseases in humans are zoonotic, and spillover is happening with increasing frequency as a swelling human population comes into greater contact with wildlife and raises more livestock. That heightens the possibility of more frequent pandemics in the future, scientists say.

President Biden said medical experts will make a decision on whether young children should be vaccinated within the next few weeks.

“I know parents out there are anxiously waiting for a vaccine for children ages 5 to 11,” he said Thursday. “The good news is the FDA and outside experts, the CDC, are set to make its determination as to whether the vaccine will be authorized for that age range in the next few weeks. If authorized, we are ready.”

The Post previously reported that federal officials could begin to push out as many as 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine to immunize America’s school-age children as early as November.

The president gave an update on the coronavirus pandemic Thursday from the White House, about a month after he announced his support for more mandates to slow the spread of the virus that has taken nearly 720,000 lives in the United States.

Biden said his advocacy for requiring businesses to implement vaccine mandates — a move a Post-ABC poll shows most Americans support — has played a role in decreasing daily cases and hospitalizations.

“The plan I laid out in September is working,” he said. “We’re headed in the right direction. We have critical work to do, but we can’t let up.”

In remarks at the White House on Thursday afternoon, President Biden hailed the progress that has been made in vaccinating Americans against the coronavirus but said more work needs to be done, citing misinformation among the reasons some people refuse to get vaccinated.

“Businesses and organizations that are implementing requirements are seeing their vaccination rates rise by an average of 20 percent or more to well over 90 percent,” Biden said. He added: “Vaccination requirements should not be another issue that divides us. That’s why we continue to battle the misinformation that’s out there. And companies and communities are setting up, they’re stepping up, as well, to combat the misinformation.”

Biden said that over the past six weeks, daily cases have decreased by 47 percent, and hospitalizations are down 38 percent.

But he noted the number of unvaccinated people currently stands at 66 million Americans — “still an unacceptably high number” — down from nearly 100 million in July.

“It’s important progress. But now is not the time to let up,” Biden said.