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City opens vaccine clinic at former Philly Fighting COVID site | Coronavirus Newsletter

Plus, inside how RNA drugs are made.

Health care workers waiting for someone to vaccinate at the city-run vaccine site at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Wednesday.
Health care workers waiting for someone to vaccinate at the city-run vaccine site at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Wednesday.Read moreALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer

TL;DR: Philadelphia opened its first city-run mass vaccination clinic Wednesday after having cut ties with Philly Fighting COVID, which ran a vaccine site at the same location, last week. Read more on the city’s partnership with the group and why that relationship collapsed here. And, the COVID-19 vaccines are the first approved drugs to use RNA, which hasn’t ever been manufactured before. My colleague Tom Avril explains how these vaccines are made.

— Lauren Aguirre (@laurencaguirre, health@inquirer.com)

What you need to know:

🥡 New Jersey’s restaurants, gyms, bars, and other businesses can increase capacity this weekend to 35%.

💉 Philly’s rough COVID-19 vaccine rollout is adding challenges to reaching skeptical Black residents, especially given the history of Black people being mistreated in the name of science.

💻 Comcast is postponing plans to charge new fees for heavy internet users in Northeast states after critics said the policy could harm consumers relying on broadband because of the pandemic.

🩺 Pennsylvania and New Jersey are re-opening their health insurance marketplaces to help with COVID-19 relief.

⚖️ Pennsylvania enacted 140 laws last year. Only 27 of them addressed the coronavirus.

☕ The Philly area is filling up with coffee shops during the pandemic. Most are not open for indoor seating, but they’re still serving as community hubs.

🏀 The Wells Fargo Center got a high health-safety rating, raising hopes that fans can attend Flyers and Sixers games this season.

📰 What’s going on in your county or neighborhood? We organized recent coverage of the coronavirus pandemic by local counties and Philly neighborhoods mentioned in the stories to make it easier for you to find the info you care about.

Local coronavirus cases

📈The coronavirus has swept across the Philadelphia region and cases continue to mount. The Inquirer and Spotlight PA are compiling geographic data on tests conducted, cases confirmed, and deaths caused by the virus. Track the spread here.

City Council on Friday will hold a hearing on how Philadelphia’s partnership with Philly Fighting COVID started and ended up collapsing. But after severing ties with the organization, the city is planning to open six mass COVID-19 vaccination sites with the aim of inoculating 500 people a day. The first city-run clinic opened Wednesday. Grocery and drugstore pharmacies are also set to begin offering shots to residents 75 and older. City officials are hoping some hospitals will also open mass vaccination clinics as they finish inoculating health-care workers.

The COVID-19 vaccines are the first approved drugs to use RNA, and so manufacturing millions of doses was bound to take time. There are a lot of challenges involved in distribution, but ultimately, you need the vaccine itself in order to administer it. The COVID-19 vaccines are being manufactured at a handful of high-tech facilities where stainless-steel bioreactors are steadily synthesizing the genetic code. Here’s more on how it all works.

Helpful resources

  1. Doubling up on masks can help protect against the coronavirus variants. Here’s what experts want you to know.

  2. It’s impossible for the RNA vaccines to cause infection. And no, they can’t change your DNA. This is how they actually work.

  3. If you’ve hit a COVID-19 wall, here are ways to cope.

  4. The coronavirus is mainly transmitted through the air. Here’s how to tell if your ventilation is OK.

  5. How does the virus affect your entire body?

You got this: Watch Philly dogs at the Puppy Bowl

The Super Bowl is this Sunday, but the matchup that’s sure to take your mind off of everything is this year’s Puppy Bowl. It’s the 17th year, hosted on Animal Planet and Discovery+, featuring 70 adorable dogs — including six from the Philly area. Be sure to keep an eye out for these hometown cuties.

👐 Missing touch in your life? So are we. Here’s what to do about it.

🚭 Should you stop smoking pot during the pandemic? What about vaping? We talked to experts to find out.

🏥 Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and New Jersey all have different schedules for who can get the vaccine and when. Find out what’s happening in your county with our look up tool.

Have a social distancing tip or question to share? Let us know at health@inquirer.com and your input might be featured in a future edition of this newsletter.

What we’re paying attention to

  1. Vox dives into how Congress learned to stop worrying and start handing out pandemic stimulus cash.

  2. Pfizer spent months working to extract the extra sixth dose from its vaccine vials, Washington Post reports.

  3. President Joe Biden’s promise of 100 million COVID-19 shots in 100 days, if achieved, still wouldn’t get us back to normal. Kaiser Health News has more.

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