Forty-five percent of the Americans who have not been inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines say they definitely do not have any plans to get the shots, according to a new poll.Another 35% are a little less sure and say they will probably not get the vaccines, the survey, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said.Meanwhile, 3% of those polled said they would definitely get the shots, while 16% say they would probably get the vaccines.In addition, 64% of the unvaccinated Americans who participated in the survey told the pollsters that they had little to no confidence that the vaccines are effective against the COVID-19 variants, including the highly transmissible delta variant. Eighty-six percent of those vaccinated believe the vaccines work.U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky recently called the current U.S. surge in cases “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” because nearly all current patients and those who have recently died from the coronavirus are unvaccinated.Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, says it is “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the current surge in cases. The Republican governor said the vaccines are “the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID.” She said the unvaccinated “are letting us down.”The European Union’s main drug regulator has given its nod for the use of the Moderna vaccine for use in children 12-17 years old. The Moderna vaccine is already authorized for people 18 and older. The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that the protocol for the use of the vaccine with children would be the same as with adults — “two injections in the muscles of the upper arm, four weeks apart.” The European Commission must give the final approval.Thousands of people have staged an anti-lockdown rally in Sydney, Australia, in defiance of the city’s stay-home order to curb a COVID-19 outbreak. The Associated Press reported that “mounted police and riot officers” were on the scene and several demonstrators were arrested. AP reported that New South Wales police said the demonstration was a breach of public health orders.Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Saturday that there are more than 193 million confirmed global COVID cases with more than 4 million deaths.Some information for this report came from the Associated Press.
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