Vaccine efforts redoubled as US death toll draws near 500K

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — States redoubled their efforts to get the coronavirus vaccine into arms Monday after last week's winter weather closed clinics, slowed vaccine deliveries and forced tens of thousands of people to miss their shots — all while the nation drew close to recording 500,000 deaths from COVID-19.

President Joe Biden planned to mark the milestone with a moment of silence and a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House. He will also order U.S. flags lowered at federal buildings for the next five days.

In Louisiana, state health officials said doses from last week's shipments were delivered over the weekend and were expected to continue arriving through Wednesday. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week's supply arrived Monday. And in Nashville, Tennessee, health officials were able to vaccinate more than 2,300 senior citizens and teachers over the weekend after days of treacherous weather.

“We’ll be asking the vaccine providers to do a lot,” said Louisiana’s top public health adviser, Dr. Joe Kanter, who expects it to take a week or two to catch up on vaccinations after a storm coated roads with ice and left many areas without running water.

Snow, ice and weather-related power outages closed some vaccination sites and held up the necessary shipments across a large swath of the nation, including in the Deep South.

As a result, the seven-day rolling average of adminstered first doses fell by 20 percent between Feb. 14 and Feb. 21, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The White House said that about a third of the roughly 6 million vaccine doses delayed by bad weather were delivered over the weekend, and the adminstration planned to work with shippers and states to catch up this week. Press secretary Jen Psaki said catch-up doses will be sent to...