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A door to door effort in New York city to get people to sign up for vaccinations. 

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India's vaccination drive accelerates with people over the age of 45 years being vaccinated. Over 3 million people are being vaccinated every day. With the surge in the coronavirus cases more effort is going into the vaccination drive. Lockdowns are in place in Maharashtra state.

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US president Biden says about vaccination misinformation- "they're killing people." He said "the only pandemic we are having is among the unvaccinated." Biden cited the risks of the social media companies not doing enough to tackle misinformation on vaccination.

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The US has a history of vaccination mandates, going back to the Revolutionary War under George Washington when all soldiers in 1777 were required to be vaccinated and Boston required the population to be vaccinated in 1809 for smallpox. Vaccine mandates were adopted during the measles, and diphtheria vaccination campaigns, and for other diseases. It is only through the mandates that these diseases were controlled. The coronavirus is no different as states and cities across the US take up mandated vaccination to avoid taking any risks with the fast spreading Delta variant.

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Poliovirus could be present in New York wastewater as early as April 2022 evidence shows. In UK this could as early as February 2022. It shows the need for rigorous polio vaccination programs. Rockland and Orange counties in the New York City area have polio vaccination rates for eligible children as low as 60%, compared to a national rate of 93%. Decades of neglect of healthcare, and lack of investment in healthcare infrastructure and healthcare services, and in education for healthcare that was a major priority in the postwar years in the fifties and sixties have led to a situation where this is happening today. Vaccination rates are wholly inadequate and a 100% consensus that existed on key things such as vaccination needs to be recovered in the US, by changing the entire sense of priorities in society and the way it invests in its people.

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About 60% of Swiss voters in this Sunday's referendum on keeping Covid passes and restrictions in place favor keeping them. The referendum vote is likely to provide $6 billion for increasing nurses pay and benefits, which is a good thing as nurses are exhausted after 2 years of non stop work.  Vaccination rate is 65% of people vaccinated in Switzerland. In the US state of Michigan the vaccination rate is 58%, resulting in a surge in cases. Vaccination rates had stalled in Germany and Switzerland resulting in a surge in cases. New variant from South Africa adds to the problem of the unvaccinated in Europe and the US.

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Closed vaccination centers in Rome soon after the Italian government with EU backing stopped a shipment of Astra Zeneca vaccines made in Italy that were being sent to Australia, show the extent of lack of clear direction in the EU on vaccination. Both the European Medicines Agency and the British Health and Medicines Regulatory agency have said that the Astra Zeneca vaccination of people has benefits that far outweighs any reports of risk from rare kind of blood clots. A professor of Imperial College, London, says that "the pause is a disaster for the vaccination uptake in Europe, which was already on slightly unsteady ground in some countries." 

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The US received a boost in the economy with larger public spending than the European Union countries and more spending on vaccines. This is changing quickly as the EU has secured a large order of vaccines from Pfizer and other companies. France and Germany are now making steady progress in their vaccination drives. Britain has already secured results in the NHS vaccination drive, a leader in the field.

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The Guardian shows pictures of empty vaccination center in Erfurt, Germany, as the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine is temporarily paused. The European Medicines Agency says the vaccination benefits far outweighs any side effects from rare blood clots. UK Health and Medicine Regulatory Agency and health experts also confirm this. Astra Zeneca says its trials showed fewer blood clots in those people who were vaccinated than in the people not vaccinated.

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An estimated 850,000 cases of measles in the US over 25 years is expected if vaccination rates drop in the US, according to one Stanford study.

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Pakistan follows other countries by making vaccination mandatory for all public sector workers. Pakistan also requires vaccination to go to airports. France and some other countries in Europe have taken this action to prevent spread of the Delta variant.

According to the US Census Bureau 3.6 million Americans say they face eviction in 2 months as the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to end suspension of evictions July 31, 2021.

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The US vaccination drive appears to be stalling when it comes to getting younger people vaccinated. On a recent day 1.13 million persons were vaccinated. About 150 million Americans are fully vaccinated or about 47% of the population. About 53% of the population have one dose. This still leaves the rest of the population close to one half unvaccinated as the US is opening up fully and removing the social distancing and mask mandates that existed before. The problem is that the coronavirus delta variant is about twice as transmissible than the original coronavirus of March 2020. Vaccination is uneven across the US. Large parts of the southern states and the western states lag behind. In these areas as well as areas with large urban concentrations of population, the densely populated cities where social distancing and mask mandates are being lifted as if the coronavirus crisis is over, are at risk of seeing a more powerful virus spread quickly before gene sequencing catches up with new variants- making the response lag behind in terms of weeks. That lag in response could lead to another wave in the US. Consider also that tourism is opening up in Europe with removal of mask mandates, that gene sequencing to track variants is tiny in even countries such as Italy and France. A WSJ report on June 22 shows gene sequencing to track variants at 1% of positive tests in Italy, and virologists in Italy saying they feel as if they are flying blind. This report in the Washington Post says surveys show as many as one third of Americans have no immediate plans to get vaccinated. This is showing up in the low numbers for the vaccination drive, of around 1 million a day at this time in June 2021. In April this was 3 million vaccine doses adminstered on a single day on average. India where the new delta variant has had the most serious impact has stepped up its response with the federal government taking complete responsibility for vaccine supplies and vaccination drives. It is now vaccinating aggressively in the range of 6 million to 8 million doses a day during the last 7 days with a plan to ensure enough vaccine supplies for 1.2 billion people to get vaccinated by December 31.  The European Union and the US have  vaccinated just over 50% of their population for a variant that is more than twice as transmissible than the original virus. This leaves the unvaccinated at real risk because all the social distancing and mask mandates that existed earlier are being removed- in the US, in France, in Italy, and other countries. Soccer stadiums are filling up in Europe, the kind of sports events that later hit Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020. Summer tourism is back in Portugal and Greece. The best intentions will not be enough. Are mask and social distancing protocols being lifted too quickly especially in tourist locations reminiscent of last summer in Europe and elsewhere. Germany and Britain are holding on to them a bit longer. Will this be enough to tackle a new variant. ...

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The coronavirus pandemic death toll reaches 700,000 making it the deadliest in history. In 2021 the death toll increased with another wave now in the southern and western states such as Florida, Texas in the south, and California, Idaho in the west, with deaths concentrated among the unvaccinated.

The vaccination drive stalled by August 2021 leaving a large number of people between 18-35 unvaccinated mostly in the south and some in western states. States with large Republican support tended to show higher vaccination resistance though the reasons for not getting vaccinated were complex and some misinformation played apart in fear of vaccines. Vaccine supplies were ample in the US.

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The B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant from UK has changed the level of vaccination needed to where life returns to normal, says the Pasteur Institute in France. The level of vaccination has to be higher than the 70% or 80% earlier thought  to be needed for people over age of 18, in the range of 90% now that more infectious variant spread is happening. This also means social distancing and mask use, healthy foods and habits of exercize remain vital.

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Distorted priorities from the last 2 decades and lack of investment allocation for healthcare are hurting states in the U.S at a critical time. With 16 million cases of coronavirus and 300,000 deaths in December, including over 3000 deaths a day by December 12, the situation is dire. Yet states lack the billions needed to conduct the vaccination program to pay for the trucks, get the refrigeration and storage, pay the nurses and the medical personnel, outreach costs, and other costs for a massive vaccination program. Some estimates are that states need about $9 billion for the vaccination programs. New York alone needs $1 billion. For years billions of dollars were wasted in distorted priorities that benefited certain groups at the expense of society as a whole. The very large companies that benefited paid little or no taxes. 

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The Hindustan Times looks back at one year of lockdowns in India and the progress made. India now has the second largest number of vaccinations in the world at about 45 million and a long way to go.

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Germany faces serious problems in its vaccination drive and efforts to control the pandemic in November 2021. The rate at which people are getting vaccinated has slowed to 150,000 a day and the percentage of the population that is vaccinated is stuck at 67%. This percentage of 67% fully vaccinated in Germany as of November 3 is much lower than that in Spain, France and Italy.  Spain is at 78%, France at 69% and Italy at 72%. (Data from NYT) This report in the Guardian points out that most of the remaining one third of the population is not eager to get vaccinated as surveys show that the those who have refused to get a jab are unlikely to change their minds.There is also the problem of booster shots. Germany's 16 regions conduct the vaccination drives and with many of the vaccination centers not active since September staff has to be retrained or rehired. This makes it harder to give booster shots to everyone that was vaccinated early by the start of winter. Why is it that Germany lags behind Spain in vaccination? There is a great deal of trust in Spain and Portugal in the health service and people are 100% behind their health system. The other countries that have a low rate of fully vaccinated are the US at 58%, Brazil 57%, Russia at 33%. Even the UK with its well respected National Health Service remains at 68% fully vaccinated. Today the US, Russia, Brazil, European Union countries and India have many of the 5 million deaths from coronavirus. India's vaccination drive is approaching 1100 million vaccinated, yet there is along way to go in getting most of the population fully vaccinated because of the large population of 1.3 billion. This is why the Indian prime minister on the first day of returning from the COP26 climate summit devoted his time to meeting with leaders of different states and heads of districts with low vaccination rates to press home the idea that the effort had to be taken up vigorously in the coming months. ...

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Stephanie Nolan's reports from Africa provide the few glimpses one can get today of the situation in Africa where variants are growing as a result of lack of vaccines (vaccine inequality) and the faltering vaccination drive, shortage of medicine and food supplies. Her report from South Africa showed how healthworkers and scientists in South Africa are working hard on the frontlines. This one from Zambia looks at the vaccination centers and vaccination workers as vaccination drives falter. The African continent with 1.4 billion people received 404 million doses. Today only 7% of the population is vaccinated in Zambia and the rest of Africa. People in Zambia do not have car transport so they have to walk 3-6 kilometres to get to a vaccination center, when they turn up at a center and it is out of vaccines they stop coming. Other problems are the social media accounts that show the vaccination drives as harmful to people, or CNN and other news that talk about blood clots that when carefully understood affect a tiny fraction of people. There are other issues also. Ida Musonda, a nurse in a clinic near Lusaka says after not many people turned up that she should go to markets and churches, but says there is no fuel for the vehicle to get clinic workers there. Bernadette Kawango is shown with her children. She works at an auto parts store and lives in a low income neighborhood in the edge of Lusaka. She ignores all the social media accounts that scare people from vaccines, yet she says she worries more about cholera, TB and malaria, and also HIV, AIDS. And she does not know anybody diagnosed with coronavirus.  The result is that there is vaccine shortage resulting in a kind of vaccine indifference (why walk miles to a center if it may not have vaccines), compounded by other problems such as the other diseases that also pose a threat in Africa, and the low incomes in a shrinking economy. And with about 8% vaccinated in Africa, the problem of variants can only be tackled by consistent and not erratic supply of vaccines. ...

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With about 81% of people over 12 years getting 2 doses of vaccination, Netherlands has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe. The recent surge in UK, Germany and Austria has also hit Netherlands with 16,000 new cases per day. A partial lockdown starts on November 13 for 3 weeks in Netherlands.

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The low vaccination rates for the elderly in China is leading to the city of Shanghai being overwhelmed says this report in WSJ.

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Positive vaccine sentiment in Britain rises to a high of 94%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This shows that the UK vaccination drive is not only working but has amazing public support, more than anywhere else in the world.

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Risks are increasing in the southeast and midwestern states in the US where vaccination rates are as low as 30%. The Delta variant of coronavirus is now the dominant virus strain in the US. It is highly transmissible, estimated to be about 50% more transmissible than the original virus. The region covering Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, as well as Wyoming is affected, in addition to the southeastern states, as these states have lower rates of vaccination and vaccine skepticism. As communities in the US and UK reduce pandemic restrictions and open for the summer the risks of last year are being brought up by experts. 

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The death toll from coronavirus reaches 200,000 in Mexico, the third highest after the US and Brazil. Vaccine supplies are low in Europe affecting the vaccination drive. 

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About 67 million doses have been given out of 89 million doses distributed in the U.S. vaccination drive according to this report tracking the drive in the US.

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Over zealous interpretation of data privacy laws is leading vaccination workers to in Lower Saxony state of Germany to guess people's age by their names. The Deutsche Post database used for finding names of people over 80 years only partially includes date of birth. Health ministry of Lower Saxony admits that not all people will receive letters for vaccination who are over 80.  Official records are held by 5283 local authorites across the country. Once again say former federal commissioner for data protection and other data protection officials, "the false impression is created that data protection is the highest good and prevents necessary measures." Post office data should not be used and minimal access ensured for vaccination purposes with a little common sense.