.....After a discussion of the issue Wednesday, the CDC advisory panel agreed that the coronavirus vaccine could be given at the same time as other vaccines. The American Academy of Pediatrics was expected to issue a policy statement Wednesday supporting the administration of the coronavirus vaccine with other childhood or adolescent inoculations — such as vaccines targeting human papillomavirus, known as HPV, or meningococcal disease. There are few vaccines that pose a problem when administered with other shots.

Adults are more likely to report mild and moderate side-effects after mixing doses of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer Covid vaccines, a study indicates.

Chills, headaches and muscle pain were reported more frequently when different vaccine doses were combined.

Any adverse reactions were short lived, with no other safety concerns.

The US state of Ohio is giving five people $1m (Ł710,000) each for getting their Covid-19 vaccines.

It's part of a lottery launched to boost flagging take-up of jabs.

To convince the undecided, eye-catching giveaways - including beer, donuts, tickets to sporting events and cash prizes - are being offered in different parts of the country.

CDC 'really let the country down' on COVID-19 testing, says White House adviser Peter Navarro
- Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar agreed it was not a question of "health versus economy," but "actually health versus health." "We see suicidality. We see reduction in cardiac procedures, cancer screenings, pediatric vaccinations. There is a very real health consequence to these shutdowns that must be balanced against as we try to reopen this economy and move forward," Azar said on CBS News "Face the Nation."

But Azar disputed Navarro's criticism of the CDC. "I don't believe the CDC let this country down," he said. When asked if he took responsibility for the early failure to develop a test for the virus, Azar said, "We were confronting a situation here that's completely novel. There has never been a national, immediate testing regime across public and private sectors. We have had to literally build this from the ground up," Azar said. He argued that the CDC's job was to develop a test for the "initial diagnosis" and that it was the role of private companies to produce them on a large scale.

"What problem did the CDC have?" Azar asked, downplaying the early testing issues. He said a contamination problem with a reagent at the end stage of the test development, "which never led to false negatives or false positives," slowed down the ability to ramp up distribution of the tests for a "couple of weeks”.

"But that was never going to be the backbone of testing, of broad mass testing in the United States," Azar said. –

Covid-19: Five days that shaped the outbreak
- "It was reportable," says Professor Lawrence Gostin, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on national and global health law at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and a member of the International Health Regulations roster of experts. "The failure to report clearly was a violation of the International Health Regulations."

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist who would become the agency's Covid-19 technical lead, joined the first of many emergency conference calls in the middle of the night on 1 January. "We had the assumptions initially that it may be a new coronavirus. For us it wasn't a matter of if human to human transmission was happening, it was what is the extent of it and where is that happening."

It was two days before China responded to the WHO. But what they revealed was vague - that there were now 44 cases of viral pneumonia of unknown cause. China says that it communicated regularly and fully with the WHO from 3 January. But recordings of internal WHO meetings obtained by the Associated Press (AP) news agency some of which were shared with PBS Frontline and the BBC, paint a different picture, revealing the frustration that senior WHO officials felt by the following week. "'There's been no evidence of human to human transmission' is not good enough. We need to see the data," Mike Ryan WHO's health emergencies programme director is heard saying.

The WHO was legally required to state the information it had been provided by China. Although they suspected human to human transmission, the WHO were not able to confirm this for a further three weeks. "Those concerns are not something they ever aired publicly. Instead, they basically deferred to China," says AP's Dake Kang. "Ultimately, the impression that the rest of the world got was just what the Chinese authorities wanted. Which is that everything was under control. Which of course it wasn't." –

The Panel has taken a systematic, rigorous and comprehensive approach to its work. It has sought to listen to and learn from a wide range of interlocutors. Since mid-September 2020, the Panel has reviewed extensive literature, conducted original research, heard from experts in 15 round-table discussions and in interviews, received the testimony of people working on the front lines of the pandemic in town-hall-style meetings, and welcomed many submissions from its open invitation to contribute.

The Panel has examined the state of pandemic preparedness prior to COVID-19, the circumstances of the identification of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease
it causes, coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and responses globally, regionally and nationally, particularly in the pandemic’s early months. It has also analysed the wide-ranging impact of the pandemic and the ongoing social and economic crisis that it has precipitated.

This report presents the Panel’s findings on what happened, the lessons to be learned from that, and our recommendations for strategic action now to end this pandemic and to ensure that any future infectious disease outbreak does not become a catastrophic pandemic.