(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for records about New York and Pennsylvania nursing home policies and procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) failed to respond to a December 7, 2020, FOIA request (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health of Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-00612)) for:

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Division of Nursing Homes Director Evan Shulman and Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Quality and Safety Oversight Group Director David Wrightand Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Division of Nursing Homes Director Evan Shulman and Pennsylvania Deputy for Quality Assurance Susan Coble regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Quality and Safety Oversight Group Director David Wright and Pennsylvania Deputy for Quality Assurance Susan Coble regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Division of Nursing Homes Director Evan Shulman and New York Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

Communications, including emails and text messages, between Qualityand Safety Oversight Group Director David Wright and New York Department of Health Executive Deputy Commissioner Sally Dreslin regarding policies and procedures for nursing facilities during COVID-19. The timeframe of this request is February 18, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn are investigating New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of that state’s nursing homes during the pandemic. As of March 3, 2021, 15,430 nursing home and other long-term care residents in the state have died from COVID-19, according to the New York Long Term Care Community Coalition.

In February, Cuomo’s top aide reportedly admitted that New York withheld information about the coronavirus death toll in the state’s nursing homes out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal government.

In Pennsylvania, as of February 25, at least 12,000 of the nearly 24,000 deaths attributed to coronavirus in that state reportedly occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Republicans in the state legislature have renewed calls for an investigation into how Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has dealt with these facilities, specifically the state’s policy requiring that the facilities accept COVID-positive patients.

According to a report by Spotlight PA, coronavirus reports from the Pennsylvania Department of Health were “consistently missing data” on nursing homes. The state’s health department was headed during most of the pandemic by Dr. Rachel Levine, who has been nominated for a position in the Biden administration. 

“Thousands of nursing home residents in New York and Pennsylvania may have died thanks to those states’ COVID-19 mandates,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The public, particularly those who lost loved ones due to the policies of the Cuomo and Wolf administrations, have a right to know the full truth about this public health scandal.”

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The post Judicial Watch Sues for Records of New York, Pennsylvania COVID-19 Nursing Homes Policies appeared first on Judicial Watch.

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Here’s the latest news on how COVID-19 is impacting Chicago and Illinois. Follow here for live updates.

Latest

City snuffs out smokers, says they won’t have priority for vaccine

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Being a regular visitor to Flavor Country might get you to the front of the line for a COVID-19 shot in most of Illinois and beyond, but not in Chicago.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised eyebrows when it included smokers on the list of people who should be prioritized for vaccination because of increased vulnerability to the coronavirus due to underlying health conditions.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker followed suit when he expanded the state’s pool of eligible vaccine recipients last month. So did officials in suburban Cook County, which will start inoculating people 16 and older with chronic conditions beginning Monday.

But Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady have snuffed out eligibility for smokers when registration opens to more residents with the city’s launch of vaccination Phase 1C on March 29.

“In this interim period where we just have very limited vaccine, we’re using the state’s 1B+ guidance, but we did not include smokers in that,” Arwady said during an online Q&A last week.

Read the full story from Mitchell Armentrout here.

News

9:17 a.m. Cook County to prioritize vaccinations in 32 suburbs

Cook County health officials will prioritize coronavirus vaccine appointments in more than two dozen of the hardest-hit suburbs to ensure equal access to the life-saving shots.

The 32 suburbs given high priority for shots were predominantly communities of color in the west and south suburbs, the Cook County Department of Public Health announced Friday.

The department used two risk-factor indexes to identify the municipalities most adversely impacted by COVID-19. Those indexes — the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index and Social Vulnerability Index — considered factors including socioeconomic, household composition and disability, minority status and language.

Residents can register for an appointment online at vaccine.cookcountyil.gov.

Read the full story here.

New Cases & Vaccination Numbers

• Public health officials on Friday announced 135,525 more COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered statewide.
• The Illinois Department of Public Health also reported 2,380 new cases of the disease were diagnosed among 92,161 tests.

Analysis & Commentary

9:20 a.m. Loretto Hospital leaders deserve more than a ‘harsh reprimand’ for misuse of COVID shots

I was pleasantly surprised when Loretto Hospital, a small hospital in Austin, was chosen to kick off the city’s campaign to get Chicagoans vaccinated against the deadly COVID-19 virus.

The city’s honor did two things:

• It pushed the issue of health care disparities from handwringing to action.
• And it elevated the profile of a community hospital that desperately needed its own shot in the arm.

Sandwiched between the massive Loyola University Medical Center in nearby Maywood and the sprawling medical district to the east, Loretto has struggled to be recognized as a credible provider of care in an area that desperately needs access to quality health care.

Hospitals like Loretto have suffered because too often community residents with financial resources and good insurance choose to go elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the goings-on since those first shots of the Pfizer vaccine went to Loretto’s hospital workers are shocking. Instead of focusing on the Austin community, where there is no shortage of people waiting to be vaccinated, the vaccine also was given to workers at Trump Tower’s posh hotel and apartments — where Loretto’s chief operating officer, Dr. Anosh Ahmed, owns a unit.

Before the furor died down over that came reports that Cook County judges and their spouses were “invited” to get shots even though it wasn’t their turn. And then this bombshell Friday: 200 members of the hospital CEO’s church, Valley Kingdom Ministries International in Oak Forest, were given doses of Loretto’s supply of the coveted vaccine.

Read Mary Mitchell’s full column here.

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(Bloomberg) Americans must recommit to wearing masks and taking other Covid-19 mitigation measures to avoid a new surge of the virus in the U.S., the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

The former director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, says he believes COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from a lab in Wuhan and may have been circling in the US since September 2019.

The former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump said in an interview he believes that the COVID-19 virus escaped from […]

Continue reading Fauci quick to throw cold water on former CDC chief’s announcement he believes covid escaped from Wuhan lab …

The following article, Fauci quick to throw cold water on former CDC chief’s announcement he believes covid escaped from Wuhan lab, was first published on BizPac Review.

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 19, 2021, there were 44,606 reports of adverse events, including 2,050 deaths and 7,095 serious injuries.

In the U.S., 118.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of March 19.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Every Friday, the CDC makes public all VAERS vaccine injury reports received as of the previous week.

This week’s VAERS data included 2,306 reports of anaphylaxis. Fifty-five percent of anaphylaxis reports were attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 45% to Moderna and 1% to the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine, which was rolled out in the U.S. on March 2.

As The Defender reported earlier this month, the J&J vaccine contains polysorbate 80, known to trigger allergic reactions. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG), also known to trigger anaphylactic reactions.

The latest news report of an anaphylactic reaction to a COVID vaccine was of a 68-year-old Kansas woman who died a day after receiving the vaccine. According to EMS dispatch records, the woman had an allergic reaction at a vaccine clinic site around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, KMBC reported. She had difficulty breathing and speaking and was injected with an EpiPen.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesperson Kristi Zears told The Wichita Eagle that Evans had an anaphylactic reaction during a waiting period after receiving the shot. She was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead a day later. It is not clear whether Evans had underlying health conditions and the Kansas health agency did not indicate which COVID vaccine was administered.

According to the CDC’s website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”

To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), published on Jan. 27.

On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done and the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine.

We also inquired about whether healthcare providers are reporting all injuries and deaths that might be connected to the COVID vaccine, and what education initiatives are in place to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

As of today, 18 days later, the CDC has not responded or followed up with our calls or emails. We have contacted them numerous times and are either told “they received the email,” “they will escalate it and it is in the system” or their press officers are still reviewing it. After our most recent follow up call this Wednesday and giving them an updated deadline of 48 hours, we still have not heard back.

A look at the numbers

Overall, the data released today reflects trends that have been emerging since The Defender first began tracking VAERS reports related to COVID vaccines.

This week’s VAERS data show:

• As of March 19, 321 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 97 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. None of the COVID vaccines approved for Emergency Use Authorization has been confirmed safe or effective for pregnant women, although J&J said earlier this month it would begin testing on pregnant women, infants and the immunocompromised.
• 535 cases of Bell’s Palsy. Of those, 64% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations — almost twice as many as reported (36%) following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine. Three cases of Bell’s Palsy were reported with J&J’s vaccine (about 1%).

Physicians sound alarm about need for pre-screening

Meanwhile, concerns about mass vaccination continued to make national and international headlines this week.

As The Defender reported Tuesday, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate, said we’re taking the COVID pandemic problem — where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying — and compounding it by vaccinating people who are already infected. In an interview with Fox News host and political commentator, Tucker Carlson, Noorchasm said public health officials are making a “dramatic error” by promoting a “one-size-fits-all” COVID vaccination program:

“… the signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

Noorchashm believes that a #ScreenB4Vaccine campaign could save millions from vaccine injuries. He is promoting a screening campaign that consists of “PCR or Rapid Antigen test to determine if there is an active infection and an IgG antibody test that would allow determination of a past infection. If either of these tests are positive, vaccination ought to be delayed for a minimum of 3 – 6 months,” Noorchasm told The Defender. “If at that time IgG levels are waning, it is reasonable to consider getting a vaccine shot. But even then, blood IgG levels should guide whether or not a person gets vaccinated.”

Noorchasm sent a third communication to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week, warning that deaths like that of 32-year-old Benjamin G. Goodman, who died after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, could have been prevented, and that there will be more deaths unless people are screened before being vaccinated.

An article in The Hill this week, by several physicians, also suggested that people be prescreened for COVID before being vaccinated.

The physicians wrote:

“A closer look at the level of protection obtained by a single shot vaccine regimen for those who are ‘COVID-primed’ is needed. Rigorous, effective and efficient antibody prescreening tools to identify these individuals would be required as well.”

AstraZeneca under fire in U.S. and Europe

As far as individual vaccines, AstraZeneca garnered the most headlines this week, in Europe and the U.S.

On March 22, The Defender reported that two independent research teams in Norway and Germany identified antibodies that provoke immune reactions leading to the type of blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.

Although many countries resumed their vaccination program with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after the EMA’s preliminary findings, some countries, including France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, did not lift their restrictions on its use.

According to Reuters, Finland announced Wednesday it was still looking into two cases of blood clots but would resume using the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID for people aged 65 and over. Finland plans to complete its investigation by April 6 at the earliest.

On March 23, U.S. health officials accused AstraZeneca of misrepresenting efficacy data when it included “outdated information” in its clinical trial results, which may have led to the vaccine maker providing the public with an incomplete view of its efficacy data, The Defender reported.

The statement by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came less than a day after the pharmaceutical company said its vaccine was 79% effective against COVID and 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization.

AstraZeneca released updated information on its COVID-19 clinical trial Wednesday which showed an efficacy rate of 76% against symptomatic COVID infection instead of the 79% figure released Monday. The estimated efficacy in people over 65 rose slightly, from 80% to 85%. The vaccine maker identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine.

On March 24, the Ukrainian government urged the public not to jump to conclusions after a servicewoman died two days after getting the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, reported Fox News. Although the woman reportedly had chronic cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities, she experienced no side effects from the vaccine before she suddenly lost consciousness.

According to Reuters, nine other people were given the vaccine from the same batch on the same day and had no ill effects.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

The post 68-Year-Old Dies After Anaphylactic Reaction to COVID Vaccine as CDC Continues to Ignore Inquiry Into Increasing Number of Deaths appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

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Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said he believes the CCP virus, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, originated from a Chinese laboratory. “It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker,” Redfield said in an interview with CNN on […]

The post Former CDC Director: COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Virology Lab appeared first on NTD.

Japan will not allow their athletes to take the Chinese offered vaccine, but the International Olympic Committee has accepted the offer from China.

The former leader of the State Department’s task force investigating the origins of COVID-19 not only believes the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but also that it was the result of bioweapons research.  “The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” says David Asher. “It was operating a…

VATICAN CITY — Trying to save jobs as the pandemic pummels Vatican revenues, Pope Francis has ordered pay cuts for cardinals and other clerics, including priests and nuns, who work at the Holy See.

In a decree published online Wednesday by the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Francis said that starting in April cardinals’ salaries will be reduced 10%. Superiors of the Holy See’s various departments, who, with few exceptions, are clerics, will be hit by 8% cuts while lower-ranking priests and nuns will see 3% vanish from their paychecks.

In the decree he signed on Tuesday, the pope noted that the Holy See’s finances have been marked by several years of deficit. Worsening those financial woes, the pope wrote, was the COVID-19 pandemic, “which has impacted negatively on all the sources of revenue of the Holy See and Vatican City State.”

The belt-tightening “has the aim of saving current job positions,” Francis wrote.

Lower-ranking lay-workers at the Vatican aren’t affected by the salary reductions, but their pay raises, due every two years, are being temporarily frozen under the austerity measures. The lowest-paid lay workers will still get raise, though.

Bans on tourism by many countries and other pandemic restrictions have severely reduced revenues at the Vatican Museums, which, with its Sistine Chapel, is a perennial money-maker for the Vatican,

The Museums opened for some weeks during the pandemic when the situation in Italy improved. But with tourists from the United States and some other countries banned from entering Italy, the museums’ cavernous rooms were eerily uncrowded in the pandemic.

The Museums are currently closed and will stay closed at least through the upcoming Holy Week, which normally is one of Rome’s heaviest periods for tourism.

Earlier this month, the Vatican said it has nearly used up its financial reserves from past donations to cover budget deficits over recent years. It has predicted a 50-million-euro ($60 million) deficit for this year.

Pandemic safety measures have seen many churches shuttered or limiting the number of faithful — many of whom leave monetary donations during services — who can enter.

The Vatican’s economy minister has said that the dwindled Museums revenue, as well as a drop in what Catholics donate, would contribute to a projected 30% reduction in revenue this year.

The pay cuts also apply to several Vatican basilicas in Rome as well as to the Vicariate, or diocese of Rome, which is under the pope’s direction.

Cardinals, other clerics and well as nuns in Rome generally don’t have expenses most lay people have, like market-value rents or mortgages, utility and heating bills, since many reside in housing owned by the Vatican or religious orders.

Some cardinals have spacious, well-appointed apartments in historic palazzi in Rome. A cardinal on the Vatican staff could earn close to 5,000 euros (($6,000) monthly, according to those familiar with Holy See hierarchy.

In any case, Francis noted, the salary reductions won’t apply to anyone who can document that the cuts will make it “impossible to meet fixed expenses related to their health conditions or those of their relatives.”