The United States is more than tripling its vaccine allocation to Taiwan, as the island battles a COVID-19 outbreak and resists pressure from Beijing to take China’s homegrown inoculations.Washington has shipped 2.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Taipei, the U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price tweeted on Saturday. After a wildly successful initial run of keeping case numbers down, Taiwan is now battling its first major outbreak and scrambling to combat its low vaccination rate: just six doses have been administered per 100,000 people.
Pennsylvania reported 380 new COVID-19 cases and 19 new deaths Friday. The state also reported 630 people hospitalized, a number that continues to drop. Over 5 million Pennsylvanians are now fully vaccinated, including 56.6% of adults, and the state is averaging more than 37,000 people a day getting vaccinations.
Click here to see data for the number of cases, new cases per day and deaths since March 2020.
Vaccine advisers to the FDA debated what kind of information the agency would need to consider authorizing the use of vaccines in children younger than 12. While a few advisers said it’s too soon to rush the use of vaccines in children because kids are at such low risk from the virus, most argued that it’s important to have authorizations on hand should there be a resurgence of the virus in the fall and winter. And a top FDA official reminded committee members that COVID-19 can and does kill children. The FDA will advise companies on what kinds of clinical trials and data it would like to see, and it’s up to the companies to ask FDA to extend authorization to new age groups.
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