News Room

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, Americans are painfully aware that overcoming the scourge is a marathon, not a sprint. Enter Dave McGillivray, who knows a thing or two about endurance events — and logistics. The race director of the Boston Marathon, which is on hold until fall, has been tapped by the state of Massachusetts to run mass vaccination operations at Gillette Stadium and Fenway Park. Idled at his day job by the pandemic, he’s part of an emerging group of event organizers and other unconventional logistics experts who are using their skills to help the nation vaccinate as many people against COVID-19 as possible.

Of the many things that COVID-19 has made abundantly clear to us, surely one of them is a newfound realization that public health has become increasingly complex. Understanding the challenges to public health — that is, the task of guarding the well-being of the US population — is essential now more than ever. As an engineer, design futurist, and graduate program director, I have seen how COVID-19 has transformed how public health preparedness is viewed and understood. Some say the pandemic has delivered an urgency for a reimagining of public health.

Bill Renda expected to spend this time of year traveling and visiting family, were it not for the pandemic. Instead, the retired orthopedic surgeon from Louisville, Ky., and his wife, Sally, spent much of January in a cold parking lot, directing drivers to a place for observation by medical staff after receiving doses of Covid-19 vaccine. Dr. and Mrs. Renda, a docent at the city zoo, signed up with more than 4,000 others to staff Broadbent Arena, which normally hosts the Kentucky State Fair. This month, the arena was converted into a drive-through site with the capacity to administer 1,600 shots a day. Joining the Rendas are local librarians, parks department workers, students from the local nursing and pharmacy schools and others volunteering 40 hours in exchange for getting vaccinated.

As the Biden administration promises to accelerate the U.S. coronavirus vaccine rollout, it could soon have a new tool: A single-dose vaccine that can survive up to three months in an ordinary refrigerator. Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson released data today showing that its single-dose version provided strong protection against COVID-19. Yet the news came with two caveats: The candidate’s efficacy rate—72 percent in the United States—is lower than the 95 percent rates boasted by the two-dose versions from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna that are currently approved for use in the U.S.

A person living in West Virginia is almost twice as likely to have gotten a COVID-19 vaccine than a person in Alabama. The same goes for Connecticut, New Mexico and North Dakota. Alaskans are more than twice as likely to have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. For people in Alabama, checking the national COVID vaccine statistics has been an exercise in frustration, as Alabama in January hovered near or at the very bottom of state rankings in terms of percentage of the population vaccinated and percentage of doses received that have been administered.