HEARING ON RUINED DOSES: U.S. House lawmakers Wednesday grilled executives of a Maryland biotechnology company that received a $628 million federal contract to manufacture vaccines but ruined nearly 15 million potential doses.
To date, Emergent BioSolutions has not produced a single vaccine dose at its Baltimore manufacturing plant that U.S. regulators have cleared for use, although it has received $271 million of its contract.
The 15 million potential doses that the company threw out after they were contaminated were of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. There are more than 100 million doses on hold as regulators check them for contamination, CEO Robert Kramer said at a Wednesday hearing held by a House subcommittee.
But Saturday s return of the Williamstown Farmers Market is not a sign that organizers are reacting to Monday s announcement that the commonwealth s economy is reopening. I went back and checked my emails to see when we made a decision to open an in-person market for this season, Anne Hogeland said on Wednesday. And it was mid-February. That is when we announced to the community and, most importantly, the vendors at that point, that we would be opening and it would be this weekend. The market returns Saturday at 9 a.m. in the parking lot at the bottom of Spring Street and will be open for business every Saturday from 9 to 1 p.m. through Oct. 16.
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The Berkshire Vaccine Collaborative is a coalition of county healthcare leaders, including Berkshire Health Systems, the county Boards of Health Association, Community Health Programs, Northern Berkshire EMS, the city of Pittsfield and more. For months, the collaborative has worked to distribute COVID-19 vaccines throughout the westernmost county in Massachusetts. This week, the collaborative said it’s beginning to scale down its larger clinics with almost half the county vaccinated. Collaborative spokesperson Jennifer Vrabel, Executive Director of Communications for Berkshire Health Systems, spoke with WAMC Josh Landes.
VRABEL: The most recent data released by the state shows that about 60% of county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 43% have been fully vaccinated. An enormous number of those folks have been vaccinated by our large clinics in Pittsfield, North Adams amd Great Barrington. And we ve been able to serve so many people by collaborating
EMERGENCY PAID SICK LEAVE: A proposal for an emergency paid sick leave program is advancing the Statehouse once again.
House lawmakers advanced a bill Tuesday that includes a section to allow employees up to one week of paid leave for quarantine, vaccination, caring for a family member or other coronavirus-related absences.
Both the House and Senate had included the emergency paid leave proposal in a previous bill, but Gov. Charlie Baker returned that section with an amendment that would have excluded municipal employees from the program. The House rejected the amendment, and the new bill now sits with the Senate.
Large-scale public vaccine clinics to close for first doses by end of May berkshireeagle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from berkshireeagle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.