Month: January 2021

In a statement, a spokesman for the federal health department said that nearly 13 million doses were made available to states so they could order their first and second doses, which is “millions more” than previous weeks. The spokesman, Michael Pratt, also said that many states have not ordered up to the full amount that they have been allocated by the federal government.

“I think states have been doing their best to plan with whatever information they can get from the feds on expected future allocations, and then revising those plans if they get less,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the …

counties shifted gears immediately, among them Orange County, which said anyone 65 or older could book an appointment at the vaccination site it opened this week at Disneyland. But the scheduling website was quickly overwhelmed, making finding a shot seem like trying to score Taylor Swift concert tickets.

Neighboring Los Angeles County, however, stuck with its strict priority rules, and said that vaccines there would continue to be available only to health care workers.

The dueling approaches illustrate the tension across the country between two competing imperatives: getting as many doses as possible out quickly, and getting those who are …

Ms. Khatoon, 34, fled Rakhine State in 2017 and gave birth to her second child in the camp. She said she had turned her small hut into a home for her family. Now, she said, she and her family had no food to eat and nowhere to go.

More than 750,000 Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since a campaign of killing, rape and arson began against them in 2017. The area near Cox’s Bazar, in southern Bangladesh, has turned into a makeshift home for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing the campaign of …

How does eligibility vary by state, and why? Although the C.D.C. issued recommendations last month for which groups states should vaccinate initially, while the vaccine supply is still relatively low, the priorities are not binding and each state has come up with its own groupings. Nor can the federal government require states to change the prioritization plans they have already announced, although the new pressure from Mr. Azar, and growing public impatience as deaths from the virus keep hitting new peaks, may sway many to do so. In coming up with priority groups, state officials considered criteria like who is …