The Biden Administration is expected to detail plans to roll out more monkeypox vaccines across the U.S.

The move comes after pressure from states, who have been pushing the Administration to release more doses of monkeypox vaccine from the Strategic National Stockpile which is managed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Related video above: LGTBQ community concerns over monkeypox stigma

The plan will allocate doses based on case rates in a state, focusing on men who have sex with men and their partners, as well as anyone who thinks they might have been recently exposed to the virus, according to two sources familiar with the government's plans who were not authorized to speak with reporters.

Currently, 10 states would be considered to be in the first tier for priority in ordering vaccines.

The plans are expected to be officially announced later Tuesday evening.

They come in the middle of Pride month, a month filled with parties celebrating gender and sexual diversity, and a season that many in public health have worried will only fuel the spread of the monkeypox virus which is spread by close contact, including sex.

The vaccination plan may require the U.S. to use two different types of vaccines.

The first is a newer, modern vaccine called Jynneos which is manufactured by a Danish company called Bavarian Nordic. It was evaluated and developed and to treat monkeypox infection. The U.S. currently has 64,000 doses of this vaccine in the stockpile. The government will make 56,000 of those doses available to states in phase one of the rollout. More doses of this vaccine have been ordered and are expected to be delivered later this year.

The problem is that the U.S. may not have enough doses of Jynneos to vaccinate all who might need it, so public health officials are also considering whether to use a second older type of vaccine called ACAM. The ACAM vaccine was developed to treat smallpox. It's given by using a two-pronged needle that's repeatedly dipped into the vaccine and used to prick the skin on the upper arm, causing a small sore or "pock" to form.

"It's a very kind of like, old-school technology that basically I don't know any clinicians that actually know how to do that. So it's actually very difficult to roll out because you have to train people in a new vaccine methodology," said Dr. Jay Varma, professor and director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response in New York City.

The other complication is that the ACAM vaccine uses a live, but weakened version of a virus to inoculate a person.

"It's presumed not to be safe to be able to be used in people with HIV," Varma said. The primary risk group for monkeypox — men who have sex with men — also have high rates of HIV infection.

During a call with reporters Tuesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, said five additional labs are in place to accelerate testing. She also urged states to make tests readily available and said additional outreach is underway to make health care workers more aware of what monkeypox looks like and how to treat it.

When it comes to vaccines, Walensky said vaccines should be provided for anyone who has been exposed to monkeypox, through both official contract tracing or for those who have been in a location or at an event where there was a case and there was potential exposure.

Vaccination after exposure is meant to reduce the risk of developing the virus, Walensky explained, and vaccination should occur within two weeks of exposure.

Hearst Television contributed to this report.

The window for local, state and tribal governments to challenge their 2020 census figures closes after Friday, and with it the opportunity to correct mistakes in population totals that could cost them millions of dollars in federal funding.

As of this week, almost 160 challenges had been filed through two programs the U.S. Census Bureau started to give governments opportunities to appeal their population totals. Those 2020 census figures help determine how $2.8 trillion in federal government spending is distributed each year.

Some cities like Brookhaven, Georgia, found out this month that their challenge was successful. Officials in the city of more than 57,000 residents in metro Atlanta said new parcels were annexed in late 2019 but the 1,200 residents living in them weren't counted toward the city's figures during the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident, which started three months later.

The U.S. Census Bureau conceded the error, a victory Brookhaven city officials estimate will be worth $10 million in funding streams over this decade.

"This final action ensures that all of Brookhaven's residents were indeed counted as our own," Brookhaven Mayor John Ernst said two weeks ago after receiving a letter from Census Bureau Director Robert Santos confirming the numbers were being revised.

Dozens of other cities like Las Vegas still have their cases pending. Officials in Nevada's largest city, with more than 656,000 residents, believe the census missed two homeless shelters with under 1,000 residents during the count.

Group quarters — including homeless shelters, dorms and prisons — were among the most difficult to count as campuses closed and prisons and nursing homes were locked down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which coincided with the start of the 2020 census. The Census Bureau created a separate program to handle these challenges.

Other cities, like Milwaukee, are still awaiting an answer despite filing their challenges many months ago. Milwaukee officials in a challenge filed last December said 16,500 residents were overlooked in houses and apartments, primarily in communities of color. The 2020 census put Wisconsin's largest city at 577,222 residents, down about 3% from 2010.

City spokesperson Jonathan Fera said in an email that there was "no frustration" surrounding the delay and that "Milwaukee will continue to await a response from the U.S. Census Bureau."

Milwaukee succeeded with another, separate claim that more than 800 jail inmates were missed, part of a challenge organized with other Wisconsin municipalities.

While any changes to the numbers after a successful challenge will be applied to population estimates used for the rest of the decade in determining federal funding, they can't be used to change how many congressional seats each state was allotted during the apportionment process nor for the data used for redrawing political districts.

A final tally on the success of challenges won't be known for several months because of the pending cases. The 2020 census put the U.S. population at 331.4 million residents.

"It will take several months to complete processing and to notify those who have submitted" a challenge, the Census Bureau said Wednesday.

Challenges to 2020 census numbers were less frequent than the nearly 250 requests made for 2010 census figures — a surprise given the hurdles the most recent count faced.

The 2020 census was one of the most difficult in recent memory. Its start coincided with the U.S. spread of the coronavirus in spring 2020, but census-takers during the home-visits phase also contended with wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. Some advocates also believe the Trump administration's failed efforts to add a citizenship question and keep people in the U.S. illegally from being counted for apportionment dissuaded some from participating.

Some cities waited until the last minute to ask for a review of their numbers. Marquette, Michigan, located on the shores of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula, filed a challenge that only was received by the Census Bureau on Monday. Officials in the city of more than 20,700 residents believe 1,000 students living in dorms and other student housing at Northern Michigan University were missed, an oversight that could cost the city $70,000 in state revenue sharing.

"We watched the process play out in other places and chose to take advantage of it when we did," said Sean Hobbins, assistant city manager. "It wasn't like we were trying to run up against the deadline."

As a record number of Americans are infected with COVID-19, largely due to the rapidly spreading omicron variant, some states' health care systems are beset with nearly full intensive care units.

Four states have less than 10% remaining capacity in their ICUs, according to data Wednesday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Kentucky, Alabama, Indiana and New Hampshire.

And as infection spreads, states and health care systems nationwide are handling shortages of available medical workers, who face a greater chance of COVID-19 exposure and must isolate after testing positive.

Members of the National Guard and other federal emergency teams have been deployed to hospitals and long-term care facilities in places such as New Hampshire to alleviate the burden with medical and non-medical tasks.

"This is part of the winter surge, part of the long haul, which is why we put so many of the mitigation strategies and measures in place early on to help provide some flexibility to hospitals and health care systems," New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Wednesday.

Five other states are very close to just 10% of ICU capacity remaining, according to HHS data: New Mexico, Missouri, Rhode Island, Mississippi and Georgia. Nationally, COVID-19 hospitalizations have reached record highs with at least 151,261 Americans need care as of Wednesday.

Early research indicates the omicron variant may produce less of a chance of needing hospitalization than prior COVID-19 variants. But omicron's increased transmissibility means more people at higher risk for severe disease, such as those who are unvaccinated or immunocompromised, will be infected.

"Omicron continues to burn through the commonwealth, growing at levels we have never seen before. Omicron is significantly more contagious than even the delta variant," said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear Monday. "If it spreads at the rate we are seeing, it is certainly going to fill up our hospitals."

While conditions are not as dire as at the start of the pandemic nearly two years ago due to the availability of vaccines and other treatment options, the staffing shortages in hospitals is a real concern during this latest surge, said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

"The problem is that right now we have hospitals where there's not enough nurses to take care of the patients who are coming in, the COVID patients and the non-COVID patients," Spencer told CNN Wednesday.

"That's exactly why we need to do everything we can to try to limit the number of people that are infected, not just those that are older or unvaccinated or not boosted, but everyone. Because each infection represents a potential to infect more people. We need to do what we can to slow that spread right now and ease the pressure on our hospitals," Spencer said.

For those who come into emergency rooms for non-COVID reasons yet test positive, hospitals are still having to invoke quarantine protocols for those patients which puts a strain on operations, he said. And that can have an effect on all patients.

"Right now, we're still seeing sick people that need oxygen, the overwhelming majority of which are unvaccinated. But a lot of the patients that we're seeing right now have underlying chronic conditions that are being exacerbated," Spencer said.

Those patients, he said, can include "someone who gets COVID is dehydrated and needs to stay in the hospital, or someone who gets COVID and is too weak and they can't go home because they're a fall risk. Those aren't as bad in one sense as those kind of classic COVID patients we were seeing before. But every single patient that needs to stay in the hospital takes up a bed. And beds and staffing are what's in short supply right now."

CDC to update mask guidance

Health experts are reiterating the need to wear quality masks as never-before-seen figures of positive COVID-19 cases strike the country.

The U.S. averaged more than 771,580 new COVID-19 cases daily over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University data, more than three times that of last winter's peak average.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to update information about mask-wearing, including the different levels of protection that various masks — such as cloth, surgical or N95 — provide against the spread of COVID-19, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House virtual briefing Wednesday.

Overall, it is important for people to wear any face mask that they have access to, "but Omicron has changed things a bit because it is so transmissible that we know that masks are even more important," Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CNN Wednesday.

"And if you have the chance, if you have the opportunity, if you have access to a better mask, then the recommendation would be to wear it," she said, adding that N95 and KN95 masks need to be fitted properly to provide the best protection possible.

Vaccines effective with adolescents, study shows

The rate of deaths in the U.S. has remained lower than during last year's winter surge, which is often credited to around two-thirds of Americans eligible for vaccines being fully inoculated, according to the CDC.

The country has averaged 1,817 COVID-19 deaths a day over the past week, JHU data shows. The peak daily average was 3,402 one year ago on Jan. 13, 2021.

However, the latest CDC ensemble forecast predicts a potential 62,000 new COVID-19 deaths over the next four weeks, meaning preemptive vaccinations are still needed.

The age group of Americans who are the least vaccinated remains those under the age of 18, and a new study of real-world hospital data between July and late October points to the effectiveness of vaccinations even for those who, by being younger, are generally at lesser risk.

The findings, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appears to be 94% effective against COVID-19 hospitalization among adolescents ages 12-18 in the U.S.

"Vaccination averted nearly all life-threatening COVID-19 illness in this age group," wrote the researchers from the CDC and a collection of hospitals and universities, who found that far more adolescents hospitalized with COVID-19 were unvaccinated compared with those who were hospitalized for other reasons.

Among the hospitalized adolescents with COVID-19, 4% were fully vaccinated, less than 1% were partially vaccinated, and 96% were unvaccinated. In comparison, of those who did not have COVID-19, 36% were fully vaccinated, 7% were partially vaccinated, and 57% were unvaccinated.

New research shows U.S. teens who use electronic cigarettes prefer ones made by Juul Labs, and mint is the top flavor for many of them. That suggests a shift after Juul's sweeter flavors were removed from retail stores.

The results are in two studies published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They include a U.S. government report based on a survey indicating that the U.S. teen vaping epidemic shows no signs of slowing down.

An estimated 28% of high school students and 11% of middle schoolers surveyed earlier this year had vaped within the past month. That amounts to over 5 million young users, versus about 3.6 million last year.

The results follow the Trump administration's call in September to ban virtually all vaping flavors.

Millions of children in America became eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine this week. And some officials are sweetening the deal by including them in various incentive programs.

In New York City, children can claim $100 if they get their first dose of Pfizer's vaccine at city-operated vaccine site. Alternatively, they can get tickets to city attractions such as the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn Cyclones baseball team. The incentive program was already available to other New Yorkers who got vaccinated.

"We really want kids to take advantage, families take advantage of that," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. "Everyone could use a little more money around the holidays. But, most importantly, we want our kids and our families to be safe."

In Chicago, health officials are also offering $100 gift cards for children ages five to 11 when they get the shots at Chicago Public Health events or clinics, officials said.

Plus, the Chicago school district — one of the largest in the nation — is closing on November 12 for Vaccination Awareness Day to make it easier for students to get their shots.

"It is rare that we make a late change to the school calendar, but we see this as an important investment in the future of this school year and the health and wellbeing of our students, staff, and families," Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez said in a message to parents.

The perks come after the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention on Tuesday cleared children as young as 5 for smaller vaccination doses, making most Americans eligible for the shots.

In Texas, San Antonio officials announced that parents and guardians who help their children get vaccinated at a public health clinic may claim a $100 gift card for H-E-B grocery stores. And in neighboring Louisiana, officials said the 5-11 age group could soon also claim $100.

In Minnesota, officials launched the "Kids Deserve a Shot" program intended to bolster vaccine numbers among those ages 12 and 17, officials said. The state is offering a $200 visa card as well as the opportunity to enter a raffle for a $100,000 college scholarship or a Minnesota experience prize package.

However, it's unclear if the various incentives will help bolster the vaccine numbers.

A study published last month in JAMA Health Forum found that incentive lotteries organized by 19 states did not seem to work.

However, the researchers speculated that lotteries may be less enticing than actual cash for vaccines.

A survey in May from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 47% of people who say they want to "wait and see" before being vaccinated said paid time off to get it would make them more likely to do so, and 39% said a financial incentive of $200 from their employer would work.

Overall, the U.S. has fully vaccinated more than 58% of the total population as of Thursday, according to CDC data.

Video above: U.S. mandates vaccines or tests for big companies

More than half of the states in the country have filed or signed on to lawsuits challenging the Biden administration's federal vaccine mandate for large companies.

The law, which is set to take effect Jan. 4, would require companies with 100 employees or more as well as any federal contractors to mandate the vaccine or start weekly testing of their workers. This would impact more than 84 million workers, roughly 31 million of whom are unvaccinated.

At least 27 states s0 far, most of which are Republican-led, have decided to take legal action against the new rules, claiming the mandate is an example of federal overreach and both "unlawful and unconstitutional."

Florida kicked off the states' legal pushback against the mandate, with Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing the Sunshine State's lawsuit on Oct. 29.

"Just months ago, Joe Biden was saying that it wouldn’t be appropriate or lawful for the federal government to mandate these COVID shots," DeSantis said. "But now we have somehow gone from 15 days to slow the spread to 3 jabs to keep your job. The federal government is exceeding their power and it is important for us to take a stand because in Florida we believe these are choices based on individual circumstances."

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said he stands by the mandate, adding that the administration is well-prepared for the avalanche of legal battles.

"We're confident about the rule put together, and I think it's unfortunate that this rule has been out for about eight hours now and people already are suing on it," Walsh said on "All Things Consider," an NPR news program. "This is about protecting workers in the workplace. This is about protecting Americans. This is about increasing our number of people in this country that are vaccinated."

Hearst station WPBF contributed to this report.

While most people seek safety during danger, Ebonique Johnson actually hurries to the frontlines.

“I’m running towards it because that’s where I’m needed the most,” said Johnson, a nursing student at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Set to graduate in December, she’s looking to land a job at an ICU.

“I want to be where I’m needed,” Johnson said. “I want to help the COVID patients.”

That help could come sooner or later depending on where she gets a job.

Some states are waiving certain regulations and allowing nursing students to enter the workforce more easily. Other states, however, have prevented nursing students from working with COVID-19 patients altogether.

“We can’t hit the pause button with what’s going on, nurses are needed now more than ever,” said Dr. Regena Spratling, associate dean for GSU’s school of nursing.

She says coronavirus concerns have limited student access to hospitals for hands-on clinical training and that more courses are now being taught online.

“We’re really focusing on what they would be doing within the health care system as far as taking care of patients,” Spratling said.

Despite changes, GSU is seeing more people looking to join its nursing program.

For GSU nursing student Phillip Parnell, this pandemic is personal.

“One of my older relatives recently passed away with the virus,” he said.

The army veteran is now making his second career his first priority.

“When it hits home, it’s a different level of intensity,” Parnell said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the health care industry needs more than 200,000 new nurses each year through 2026 just to replace retiring nurses.

“Although we never thought we would see a pandemic in our lifetime, it’s here,” Johnson said.

GSU students are happy to be leading the next generation of nurses while also fighting COVID-19 on the frontlines.

“We answer the call to be there for people,” Johnson said. “It’s our time to show up.”

Some governors are beginning to report encouraging signs in their state's COVID-19 numbers, but warn of what could come next if more people don't get vaccinated.

COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU utilization have decreased over the past week in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear announced at a Thursday news conference.

"We are in a decline and we hope it continues for people hospitalized because of COVID," the governor said.

"This is more people getting vaccinated. This is more people wearing their masks. Keep it up," Beshear added, warning COVID-19 hospitalization and ICU numbers in the state are still very high and could tick back up.

Also Thursday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced the state's COVID-19 positivity rate has dropped 20% in the past month and hospitalizations are down 60% from their peak. On the same day, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said that while the state has seen a "significant decline in cases, hospitalizations and percent positive tests" in the past weeks, there could be another surge soon.

"Today, I want to emphasize the importance of not waiting until the next wave of COVID cases to get vaccinated," Kemp said. "Given that our increase in cases and hospitalizations in 2021 were similar in timing to surges seen in 2020, we can only assume that a winter increase is also possible."

Across the U.S., the rate of new COVID-19 deaths is expected to decrease over the next four weeks, according to an ensemble forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And for the third week in a row, Wednesday's CDC forecast predicted hospitalizations will decrease as well — a bit of hope as the more transmissible Delta variant continues to spread.

But currently, an average of nearly 2,000 people die and about 114,000 people are infected with COVID-19 every day, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

"We're going to lose a bunch more people," West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said at a news briefing Wednesday. "All I can possibly do, with a good conscience, is continue to urge you, in every way, to get vaccinated."

Roughly 55.5% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Health experts can't say for sure what proportion of the population would need to be vaccinated to control the spread, but Dr. Anthony Fauci estimates that it would have to be the "vast majority."

Officials and experts are employing multiple strategies to try to increase vaccination protection.

Schools, businesses and employers have implemented mandates for students and employees to be vaccinated against the virus. And the FDA has authorized booster doses to increase vaccine protection for vulnerable populations.

About a third of parents say they'd vaccinate kids ages 5-11 right away, poll finds

Meanwhile, a slightly increasing proportion of parents may be open to children ages 5-11 getting a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as one is available to them, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

No COVID-19 vaccine is yet authorized for ages under 12 in the U.S. But both Pfizer and Moderna have been testing various doses of their COVID-19 vaccines in children under 12, and health experts have said one could be authorized for ages 5-11 later this fall if multiple federal agencies sign off.

In a Kaiser poll published Thursday, about 34% parents of children 5-11 said they would vaccinate their child as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine became available for that age group.

That's up from 26% who said the same thing in a July poll, the foundation said. About 32% of September's respondents said they would wait to see how the vaccine was working, against 40% who said the same thing in July.

The percentage of parents saying they definitely wouldn't seek the vaccine for their child this age group, however, has barely moved. About 24% of respondents said this in September, versus 25% in July, Kaiser said.

About 7% in September said they'd allow their child to get the vaccine only if required, against 9% who said the same in July.

Kaiser noted that the bulk of the interviews for September's poll happened before Pfizer announced on Sept. 20 that its COVID-19 vaccine was safe and generated a "robust" antibody response in children ages 5-11. Pfizer is now submitting that data to the FDA ahead of anticipated attempt to seek the agency's authorization for vaccinating this age group.

The latest Kaiser poll was conducted Sept. 13-22.

Vaccine deadline in effect for California health care workers

On the local and federal level, officials are implementing vaccination mandates to increase protection.

In California, Sept. 30 was the deadline for health care facility workers to complete a COVID-19 vaccination series — unless they receive an exemption — to keep working.

The deadline included anyone who works at a health care facility, including hospitals, long- and intermediate-care facilities and doctor offices and clinics.

Under an order issued Aug. 5, the state health department ordered workers to have a second dose of a two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, or a single shot of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by Sept. 30.

The order allowed workers to ask for exemptions based on religious beliefs or qualifying medical reasons. Anyone granted an exemption was required to submit to regular COVID-19 testing: Twice a week for workers in acute health care and long-term care settings, and once weekly for workers in other health care settings.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced stringent new vaccine rules on federal workers, large employers and health care staff in a sweeping attempt to contain COVID-19.

He directed the Labor Department to require all businesses with 100 or more employees ensure their workers are either vaccinated or tested once a week. Companies could face thousands of dollars in fines per employee if they don't comply.

Biden also said he would require the 17 million health care workers at facilities receiving funds from Medicare and Medicaid to be fully vaccinated, expanding the mandate to hospitals, home care facilities and dialysis centers around the country.

Those requirements are still weeks away from being implemented, but employers should expect them to come this year, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

New York state ordered staff at hospitals and long-term care facilities to receive at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose by last week, unless they received exemptions for medical or religious reasons. Some employees are already facing the consequences of not complying.

The St. Barnabas Hospital Health System had 58 employees who failed to show proof of vaccination as of Wednesday, spokesman Steve Clark said. The employees were suspended and have until Monday morning to show proof of vaccination. If they don't, they'll be terminated, Clark said.

"Patient care has not been compromised at all," Clark said. "Schedules have been created accordingly. People will work overtime, or part-timers or agency personnel will be brought in when necessary."

No health care facility in the state has closed as a result of any staffing shortages resulting from people not complying with the vaccine requirements, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday.

As of Monday evening, 92% of nursing home staff, 89% of adult care facilities staff, and 92% of hospital staff had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, the governor's office said.

New York officials are looking into expanding the vaccine requirement to health care workers at facilities that are not regulated state health department, such as prisons, Hochul said.

Video above: Biden announces more vaccine supply on the way

Two months after the first COVID-19 shots were administered, the race to vaccinate older Americans is gaining traction, with more than a third of people 65 and up having received their first dose in states that have provided data.

The finding comes from an Associated Press analysis of information from 27 states where data is available. Those states account for just over half of all first doses administered nationwide.

“This is very good news. This is a sign we’re doing it right,” said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. Vaccine hesitancy is dropping quickly as older Americans talk to their friends who have been vaccinated, he said. “They’re watching people they know get the vaccine and seeing it’s safe.”

The effort is uneven, with many other states still lagging behind on vaccinations of the higher-risk population.

Mokdad added: “We can do better. I can’t wait for the day when all those who want the vaccine can get the vaccine. The system we have in place is working. We have to keep pushing for more vaccine.”

The proportion of vaccines given to those 65 years and older varies. It's about three-quarters of all first-dose shots in Florida and more than two-thirds in North Carolina.

In Indiana, Alaska and West Virginia, almost half of the population 65 years and older has received the first dose. In North Carolina, Louisiana, Colorado, Florida and Utah, about a third of that population has received the first dose.

Oregon, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Nebraska and Maryland, are on the lower end, with 20% or less of the 65-and-older population. The administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers said Wednesday that they would create a vaccine task force that will brainstorm ways to administer COVID-19 shots more rapidly.

As of Wednesday, the federal government had distributed 46.4 million vaccine doses to states and other jurisdictions, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Older Americans have borne the brunt of the deaths and hospitalizations from the virus, which has claimed more than 473, 000 lives in the U.S. About 80% of the people who have died from COVID have been adults 65 and older.

There’s not yet enough data to analyze whether vaccination is reducing infections and deaths in that age group, Mokdad said. But his research center, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, plans to look at that during the coming weeks.

Experts recommend that people continue wearing masks and practicing social distancing even after receiving COVID-19 shots. Although recipients are expected to get some level of protection within a couple of weeks of the first shot, full protection may not happen until a couple weeks after the second shot. It’s unclear whether vaccinated people can still spread the virus.

Still, the vaccines have already had a real impact on the lives of older Americans.

Stephanie LaBumbard, 80, spent most of last year alone and separated from family at home in Cadillac, Michigan. Now she’s feeling a surge in positivity after getting her second vaccine dose.

“I’m not home free yet, but I feel in a lot better shape,” LaBumbard said. She has yet to change her cautious behavior but is making plans to do so and couldn’t be happier about it. Being able to go out with friends again seems “just an absolute miracle.”

“It’s so wonderful to realize that we can be back to normal or something like it.”

She’s especially happy to be able to worship in person at her church, where she will return Sunday after taking part via Zoom for months. She had to give up volunteering at a hospital and getting coffee and dinner with friends, but she especially missed her family.

“I was alone at Thanksgiving. I was with just one of my sons for Christmas. Especially when you get to my age ... I feel young, but you don’t know, this could be my last Christmas,” she said, adding that she’s pleased with Michigan’s vaccine distribution. “It seems to me that they have done a fantastic job up here. They had everything so well organized.”

It's a different story in North Carolina's rural Warren County, where Leticia Bonilla has been frustrated by an inability to make a vaccine appointment locally and would prefer not to wait in line at a mass vaccine clinic in another county.

The 66-year-old retired teacher said the nurse at her doctor’s office offered to help her get on a waiting list, but she declined because it felt too uncertain.

“I said, ‘Well, how long is the list?’ She said, ‘I don’t know. We don’t have any vaccines yet.’ And I said, ‘Well, why would I put my name there?’ ... And I just hung up,” Bonilla said.

North Carolina’s vaccine distribution process runs through a decentralized system that enables county health departments and vaccine providers to develop their own processes for making vaccine appointments.

Lynn Bender and her husband, Mark Bender, both 70, got their second vaccine dose two weeks ago. The couple are from Monroe Township, New Jersey, but for about 10 weeks a year, they live in a retirement community in Coconut Creek, Florida, that Broward County used for a test rollout. They got to be part of it, and they are happy to be surrounded by people who are also vaccinated.

“It makes it very nice that at least when you feel safe you have somebody to be safe with,” Lynn Bender said. “We’re to the point now that we can socialize with somebody, play cards or mahjong.”

They have especially missed attending art and craft fairs and supporting artists and artisans around the country throughout the year, something they are looking forward to doing when they can let their guard down further.

“We really haven’t changed much, everybody’s still being cautious,” she said. “But as one of my friends says, knowing you’re not going to die makes you feel better.”

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Associated Press Writer Kelli Kennedy in Miami and other AP journalists across the U.S contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON —

The White House moved Monday to pressure state and local governments to swiftly adopt policies to protect renters after an eviction moratorium expired over the weekend, potentially pushing millions of Americans out of their homes.

In a statement on Monday, the White House emphasized that the federal government has provided $46.5 billion to keep renters in their homes. But it accused states and cities of being "too slow to act," preventing that aid from making its way to tenants whose livelihoods have been upended by the pandemic.

The focus on states comes as President Joe Biden faces stinging criticism, including from some in his own party, that he was was slow to address the end of the moratorium. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the prospect of widespread evictions "unfathomable." The Congressional Black Caucus intensified pressure on the White House to issue an immediate extension. And one Democrat, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who has been camped out in protest had a brief conversation at the U.S. Capitol with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday.

Some people were at risk of losing their homes as soon as Monday. But the White House insists there is only so much it can do on its own and that state and local leaders need to step up and get the aid out.

"The president is clear: If some states and localities can get this out efficiently and effectively there’s no reason every state and locality can’t," Gene Sperling, who oversees the administration's coronavirus relief plans, told reporters. "There is simply no excuse, no place to hide for any state or locality that is failing to accelerate their emergency" rental assistance.

Late last week, Biden announced he was allowing the ban to expire. The White House said he would have supported an extension of the moratorium but pointed to the Supreme Court, which signaled in a 5-4 vote in late June that it wouldn’t back further extensions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that Congress would have to act to extend the moratorium. The White House noted that state-level efforts to stop evictions would spare a third of the country from evictions over the next month.

While the administration is still investigating legal options to forestall evictions, officials said their options were limited. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the eviction ban, was "unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium."

Mass evictions could potentially worsen the recent spread of the COVID-19 delta variant as roughly 1.4 million households told the Census Bureau they could "very likely" be evicted from their rentals in the next two months. Another 2.2 million say they’re "somewhat likely" to be evicted.

Sperling said the administration will keep looking for additional legal avenues to keep people in their homes. Yet he stressed the complexity of the problem by also noting that the Trump administration developed guidelines for providing aid to renters and landlords that were unworkable. Those guidelines which required extensive documentation were changed once Biden was in office.

"This is not an easy task," Sperling said. "We as a country have never had a national infrastructure or national policy for preventing avoidable evictions."

Pelosi, for her part, said that she welcomed the administration’s urging of states and cities to impose their own moratoriums. And she said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen would hold a virtual briefing Tuesday with lawmakers as they push to more quickly ensure the states distribute the federal aid.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the powerful chair of the Financial Services Committee, has been talking privately for days with Yellen. She said in a statement that she urged Yellen to use her influence to urge states to push the money out the door and the treasury secretary has personally committed to doing so.

The CDC put the eviction ban in place as part of the COVID-19 response when jobs shifted and many workers lost income. The ban was intended to hold back the spread of the virus among people put out on the streets and into shelters.

Democratic lawmakers said they were caught by surprise by Biden's decision allowing the ban to expire, creating frustration and anger and exposing a rare rift with the administration.

Congress was unable to pass legislation swiftly to extend the ban, which expired at midnight Saturday, and the House Democratic leaders have said it was now up to Biden’s administration to act.

Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., has been leading a protest at the Capitol since the eve of the expiration. The St. Louis-area congresswoman has been joined at times by other top progressive Democrats urging action, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Bernie Sanders were among those stopping by to visit with Bush outside the Capitol. But she also talked briefly with Vice President Kamala Harris.

"I needed her to look me in my eyes and I wanted to look in hers when I asked for help to prevent our people from being evicted," Bush said on Twitter. "Madam Vice President, let’s work together to get this done."

At least 21 states have recorded at least a 10% rise in daily average positive cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University data Thursday, demonstrating that the fight against the pandemic is far from over.

In Michigan, hospitals are increasingly overwhelmed and reaching full capacities in part due to the influx of new coronavirus cases. State and local officials across the country are attempting to avoid a similar situation and are pushing to increase vaccination levels among adults, which shows continuing signs of improvement.

More than 30% of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a CNN analysis has some states being able to vaccinate all willing adults by June.

However, between varying rates of vaccine hesitancy and the pace of vaccinations, the timeline for vaccinating all willing adults varies greatly among states — a growing concern because, for some locations, a new surge may have arrived.

"We have knocked down this virus already three times, but we have to knock it down a fourth time," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday, as the state's infection numbers have increased again.

In order to prevent a new surge as well as the spread of COVID-19 variants that may be more infectious, health experts continue to recommend mask-wearing, social distancing, and above all else, vaccination.

"The vaccines have saved thousands of lives already," Emory University executive associate dean of medicine Dr. Carlos del Rio told CNN. "We've seen mortality in the U.S. decline despite cases going up, and that's because we're vaccinating people."

Dr. Kawsar Talaat, an infectious disease physician and assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN on Thursday that while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data has shown that vaccines cannot fully prevent all COVID-19 infections, such "breakout" cases are rare. Widespread vaccination means that less virus is circulating and there is less opportunity for exposure.

"That's the whole point of getting to herd immunity," Talaat said. "Because once we get to a point where enough people in the community are vaccinated, then if somebody develops COVID in that community, the people around them are protected and it's much harder for that person to spread the virus to somebody else, and therefore the transmission stops."

While more than 78% of those ages 75 and up have received at least one dose of vaccine, the percentage of those vaccinated ages 18-29 is at roughly 25%, CDC data shows. And young and relatively healthy people who have had COVID-19 before should still get a vaccine to prevent reinfection, according to research published Thursday in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

The effect of rising infection rates is being felt on a local level. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday that although more than 36% of residents have received at least one dose of vaccine, hospitalizations are increasing.

"It's a lagging indicator, so not a direction that we want to be going," DeWine said.

"We just have to keep going," DeWine said. "We know how to get out of this. You know, this is not five months ago, four months ago, we know how to get out of this, and we have the tool to get out of it. We just have to use the tool and we've got to use it every day. And that is vaccinate."

States push to get ahead of rising infections

Nationwide, states are racing to inoculate as many residents as possible.

"We know that these vaccines are really responsible primarily for the 90% reduction in deaths we've seen over the first 13 weeks of 2021," Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia's COVID-19 czar, said Thursday.

Aware that transportation can be a barrier for some, Rhode Island announced that free public transit trips to and from vaccination appointments will be available starting Monday.

"This is a big win for Rhode Island's vaccination efforts," Gov. Dan McKee said. "I hope that no-cost trips will enable everyone who wants to get to a vaccine clinic to get there easily."

News coming out of several states was cautiously optimistic, as Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Connecticut and Georgia all highlighted increases in vaccination numbers.

New York reported its lowest number of hospitalizations since Dec. 1 and that more than half of New York adults had received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.

Citing a 95% drop in the daily average of deaths in the state, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced that a mask mandate set to expire Friday will not be renewed.

"The lifting of the mandate does not diminish the importance of wearing a face mask," Sununu said, noting that numbers remain high across the state. "We ask that people continue to take steps to protect their own health, the health of their family and friends, and the health of their community."

Johnson & Johnson vaccine side effects are investigated

As vaccine distribution continues, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine remains paused.

A severe form of blood clot in the brain known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis may be linked to the vaccine, yet the occurrence rate is rare. So far, only six cases have been reported in the U.S. out of the approximately 7 million doses administered to date. One person died and another is in critical condition, an FDA official said Tuesday.

One of the six cases involved a 26-year-old Pennsylvania woman, according to the state's department of health, which recovered after receiving treatment at a hospital. The state, which is pausing J&J distribution until April 24, said that federal oversight of vaccine safety is functioning as intended.

"The safety procedures built into the vaccination process are working and should instill confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the available COVID-19 vaccines," Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said. "I urge individuals who have appointments scheduled to receive a Pfizer or Moderna vaccination to keep those appointments."

After the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration recommended a pause on Tuesday, the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met Wednesday without voting on taking any further action, stating that more information is needed, and vaccine advisers to the CDC have scheduled a meeting for April 23 to determine whether additional intervention is required.

"Hopefully, we'll get a decision quite soon as to whether or not we can get back on track with this very effective vaccine," Dr. Anthony Fauci told a Congressional hearing Thursday.

In response, Johnson & Johnson decided to pause vaccinations in all of its clinical trials while the company updates "guidance for investigators and participants," according to a news release posted Tuesday afternoon.

Recipients of the vaccine who develop a severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination should contact their health care provider, the CDC and FDA said.

For those that received the J&J vaccine more than a month ago, the risk is "very low," said CDC principal deputy director Dr. Anne Schuchat during a virtual briefing on Tuesday.