National

“I appreciate everything the APGA, PGA TOUR University and Korn Ferry Tour have done for this opportunity to play in the REX Hospital Open, to be exposed to a lot of great golfers, and to compete with them,” said Florida A&M University’s Mulbe Dillard IV. “It was a lot of hard work. I’m just happy that hard work is going to be put to good use, and that I’m going to be able to show that a kid from the south side of Chicago, who went to an HBCU, is going to be out there competing with some of the best golfers in the world.”

With the most recent collaboration between Pfizer Rare Disease and the Black Press, the organizations embarked on a mission to educate and raise awareness to transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy – or ATTR-CM. “ATTR-CM is a rare, life-threatening, underrecognized, and underdiagnosed type of amyloidosis that affects the heart and it is associated with heart failure,” Dr. Kevin Williams, Pfizer’s chief medical officer, told the NNPA in a live interview.

The United States has so far made significant progress in vaccinating adults. At least 25 states, plus Washington, DC, have now fully vaccinated at least half of their adult residents, data published Sunday by the CDC shows. But many experts have identified young Americans as a critical age group for inoculation success -- the key to getting the pandemic under control in the country.

"FDA has done everything we can to ensure that the Covid-19 vaccines we have authorized have met the agency's high standards for quality, safety and effectiveness. We know that every time an American, including members of our own families, receives a Covid-19 vaccine dose, you are putting your trust in us."

According to an administration official, there are a handful of states that are only ordering a percentage of what has been set aside for them, redirecting many of those doses back to a federal pool that was created in anticipation of this drop in demand.

With this funding for Older Americans Act nutrition programs, states will be able to continue home-delivered meals as well as “drive-through” or “grab-and-go” meals for older adults who typically would participate in meal programs at community centers that have been closed due to the pandemic. It will also allow states to re-open meal program locations safely that might have closed during the pandemic.

Pfizer has applied for emergency use authorization for its coronavirus vaccine for teens and children ages 12 to 15. The FDA will have to amend the emergency use authorization for the vaccine, but the process should be straightforward, said the official, who was not authorized to speak about the process publicly and requested anonymity.

Fast forward to the 21st century world of vaccines. Pandemics and health care are decidedly more complex, which has led all to wonder: what is the magic number of people we need to vaccinate so we can all forget these disastrous last 14 months?

The pandemic's outsized effect on female workers was due to women representing a disproportionate share of employees in severely disrupted industries such as hospitality. According to Moody's, the United States had the biggest jump in female unemployment out of any country in the G7, a group of seven nations, which includes the the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan.

"It's going to take us that much longer to get back to life as normal, to stop having to wear masks for our protection, if people don't get vaccinated and we don't have equitable distribution of vaccines," infectious diseases specialist Dr. Celine Gounder told CNN on Sunday.