CBS News reports that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) expects to fall short of its promised 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by the end of February, with less than 4 million to be ready for shipment after a hoped-for emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company pledged to ship another 25 million by the end of March. "We will have 20 million doses of the vaccine to be made available by the end of March and we're prepared to ship, immediately upon emergency use authorization, nearly 4 million doses of our vaccine," said J&J's Richard Nettles at a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on Tuesday. Although J&J's vaccine is simpler to ship and administer than those from Pfizer and Moderna, states could have problems deciding which sites should be prioritized for shots or how to deal with residents hoping to obtain one vaccine over another. Some guidance could be released this weekend after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meets to discuss J&J's vaccine.

Pfizer and Moderna declared at a congressional hearing on Tuesday that they're on track to deliver 300 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccines each by the end of July, while improvements in production will enable them to boost vaccine shipments even sooner, according to Forbes . Pfizer Chief Business Officer John Young said the company will be able to ship more than 13 million doses by mid-March — up from 4 million to 5 million per week at the start of February — and another 80 million by the end of May. Meanwhile, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said his firm will have shipped 100 million doses of its vaccine to the U.S. government by the end of March, and will accelerate its schedule to send out a second 100 million by the end of May. Pfizer and Moderna's planned vaccine rollout should be enough to inoculate 300 million people by the end of July. Moreover, the federal government is steadily raising the number of vaccines it distributes to states, announcing on Tuesday that states will receive 14.5 million doses this week versus 13.5 million a week earlier.

ABC News reports that the pandemic is encouraging many isolated older adults to shop online. NPD Group's Checkout Tracking estimated that Americans 65 and older purchased an average of nearly $187 per month online last year, a 60 percent year-over-year gain. Instacart President Nilam Ganenthiran expects online groceries will become a "new normal" for seniors even after the pandemic. Moving online has not always been easy for seniors, and adult children and assisted living staff often must assist them. Barbara Moran at Atria Senior Living in New Jersey said a major challenge for residents with devices is familiarizing themselves with tapping rather than pushing. Internet merchants and delivery services hope the over-65 crowd maintains their online shopping habits. Prepared meal delivery service Freshly, for instance, is considering the addition of smaller portions and low-sodium options aimed at seniors, while Instacart has set up a phone support line.

A study in JAMA Oncology indicates that older adults who take aspirin regularly may be lowering the odds of developing colorectal cancer by 20 percent, reports the Washington Post . The researchers pooled data from 94,540 participants tracked over 30 years or so, with regular aspirin use defined as taking either low-dose (81 mg) or standard-dose (325 mg) at least twice a week. However, this benefit seems to apply only to those who began taking a daily aspirin dose at a younger age, usually in their 50s or 60s, and thus had taken aspirin regularly for five or more years before they turned 70. The authors said people who waited until their 70s to start taking aspirin saw no risk reduction. Some health experts think aspirin's potential benefits are derived from its ability to fight inflammation. Aspirin also helps keep blood clots from forming. But research has also shown regular use can irritate the gastrointestinal lining, induce stomach ulcers, and lead to internal bleeding.

NBC10 reports that the Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging has awarded $200,000 in grants to 10 organizations to help connect the state's older adults with their families, by equipping residents in areas hit hard by the pandemic with technology and training them to use it. The Pew Research Center estimated that 41 percent of Rhode Islanders 65 and older do not use broadband, and more than 25 percent are not online. "The Internet is a basic necessity today," explained Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging Director Rosamaria Amoros Jones. "So much of how we manage our lives and connect with one another and to services is driven by technology now; yet inequities persist, with many older adults and families in lower-income neighborhoods lacking access to, or fluency in, digital tools."

Leading U.S. infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said at a White House briefing yesterday that the United States must adopt a strategy for developing antivirals against COVID-19 similar to the "highly successful drug development program for HIV as well as Hepatitis C," reports Fox News . He explained that work must focus on identifying vulnerable targets within the SARS-CoV-2 replication cycle. "This is going to be the direction of the future," Fauci added, noting that the Food and Drug Administration has published updated guidance for medical product developers, including those making vaccines, therapeutics, and tests to address virus variants. He commented that although several therapies have received emergency use authorization, more must be done, especially to address advanced disease. Currently sanctioned therapeutics usually rely on early intervention to see best results. With nearly 500,000 Americans lost to COVID, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said this death toll offsets the progress made in reducing rates of new cases and hospitalizations.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced that nursing and assisted living communities may be allowed more visitations soon if coronavirus positivity rates continue to fall, although guidelines must be complied with, reports NBC4 . "Last week, long-term care communities reported 343 new cases — this is compared to the 2,832 new cases when case numbers peaked in December," DeWine said. "We are definitely making progress." The governor called on communities to check county positivity rates every week to determine their visitation status and to permit compassionate care visits. He added that he would be sending a letter reminding them of these responsibilities. "Compassionate care is not just for end-of-life situations," concluded DeWine. "Rather, compassionate care visitations are special visits in which a family member, or other visitor, provides comfort, support, and assistance to a resident whose well-being is suffering or at risk."

CNBC reports that more than 500,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 in the year since the virus was first detected in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Recent months have been among the worst of the crisis, with 81,000 reported deaths in December and 95,000 in January, exceeding the peak of just over 60,000 in April. Concurrently, U.S. health officials are scrambling to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations nationwide. American fatalities from the virus are almost as many as those in World Wars I and II combined. Cynthia Cox at the Kaiser Family Foundation said the staggering death toll is hard for many people to comprehend, partly because so many deaths have happened in isolation and away from loved ones. Those numbers establish COVID-19 as a leading cause of death in the U.S., while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the disease knocked one year off U.S. life expectancy in the first half of 2020. Although JHU data indicates that average daily COVID deaths have fallen from more than 3,300 in mid-January to just below 1,900, the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation has forecast 571,000 to 616,000 total fatalities by June 1.

State of Reform reports that skilled nursing and other long-term care communities in Hawaii are inoculating an average 78 percent of staff against COVID-19 compared to the 38 percent national U.S. average, according to a study by the Healthcare Association of Hawaii. This highlights growing acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccines, with three Hawaiian communities getting 100 percent of personnel vaccinated, while 13 had staff vaccination rates of 90 percent of higher. Inoculation rates climbed when vaccines reached the second of the three clinics planned as part of the federal pharmacy partnership program to immunize long-term care residents and staff. Hawaiian long-term care residents' average vaccination was 90 percent versus the 78 percent national average for nursing communities. "It's a testament to long-term care providers' hard work in educating staff and working with our federal partners and the Hawaii Department of Health to vaccinate both staff and residents," said the Healthcare Association of Hawaii CEO Hilton Raethel.

A magnetic resonance imaging study published in Neurology suggests white matter hyperintensities (WMH) "are partly independent of vascular pathology and associated with the neurodegenerative process" in behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), reports Healio . The authors looked at 129 patients, including 64 with bvFTD, 65 with AD, and 66 controls. Genetic screening was conducted in 124 participants, including 54 with bvFTD, 44 with AD, and 26 controls. The researchers also had access to postmortem pathology in 18 cases, including 13 with bvFTD and five with AD. They saw no significant differences in age, sex, years of education, and vascular risk across all groups, and no differences in lifetime rates of hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and smoking, or disease duration. More individuals with bvFTD had a strong family history of neurodegenerative disease versus patients with AD and controls. Total WMH volumes were greater in patients with bvFTD compared with those with AD and controls, and WMH volumes correlated with disease severity but not vascular risk in bvFTD carriers. "WMH should be viewed as a core feature of bvFTD and AD that can contribute to cognitive deficits, not simply a marker of small vessel disease," the researchers concluded.