In March 2020, the pandemic hit Michigan, bringing upheaval to schools. When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer closed schools buildings that month due to the climbing number of COVID-19 cases, districts across the state scrambled to craft a plan to meet students’ needs virtually. Over the last year, the pandemic has highlighted the inequities the struggling, underfunded Partnership schools face while they work to make ends meet during this current school year.
COVID-19 vaccines
The Michigan Senate passed on Tuesday a new $2.3 billion supplemental funding bill for COVID-19 relief that also contains what Democrats referred to as a “political poison pill.”
In Michigan, the seven Democrats in the U.S. House voted for and all seven Republicans voted against President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package early Saturday, in a rush to both boost COVID-19 vaccine funding and get legislation to the president’s desk before unemployment benefits expire in mid-March. The package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, passed 219-212.
States struggling to provide enough COVID-19 vaccines are likely just a few days away from a pivotal development in the vaccination race: the availability of a shot that requires only one dose.
President Joe Biden and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Friday afternoon for a tour of the pharmaceutical company’s Portage facility — home to the first COVID-19 vaccine doses that were shipped in December.
A coalition of organizations is calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to increase its COVID-19 vaccination efforts for the 33,000 people incarcerated in state prisons.
Unconscious bias in medical care and a history of experimentation and exploitation of Blacks for medical knowledge has left many in the Black community questioning everything about the vaccines — from the racial demographics of who has been inoculated already, to whether people of color were studied in the safety and efficacy trials and whether the vaccines even work. State officials hope to ease those concerns and erase racial disparities in COVID vaccination rates.
States will see another increase in the COVID-19 vaccine doses they receive, with the Biden administration announcing Tuesday that the federal government will distribute 11 million doses next week.
Southwest Michigan has officially administered more vaccinations than its number of COVID-19 cases, a trend in line with the rest of the United States.
During an appearance on The Michigan Left with Andrew George last week Dr. Abdul El-Sayed said Americans could see a return to normalcy from the pandemic as early as this summer. With that said, Sayed believes “normal” is too small a bar to hurdle, and shouldn’t be part of the United States’ endgame.
The state’s decision in November to temporarily ban indoor dining, prohibit in-person classes at high schools and colleges, and implement a variety of other social distancing measures may have saved about 2,800 lives and prevented more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases, University of Michigan School of Public Health researchers announced Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) reported Wednesday that 508,736 total Michiganders have tested positive for COVID-19 and 12,918 have died from the virus, which is an additional 4,326 cases and 51 deaths since Tuesday.
The COVID-19 vaccine could be less effective in people with high levels of perfluorinated compounds — PFAS — in their blood, several scientists said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Michigan it will receive about 24,000 fewer doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine next week that was originally planned.
On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for emergency use the first COVID-19 vaccine in the United States. The vaccine from Pfizer and German partner BioNTech began shipping from Kalamazoo across the country over the weekend.
Health officials plead with weary Michiganders to wear masks and social distance, as vaccines are coming.