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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2021
CDC expands booster rollout
By LAURAN
NEERGAARD and
MIKE STOBBE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Mil-
lions more Americans can
get a COVID-19 booster and
choose a diff erent company’s
vaccine for that next shot,
federal health offi cials said
Thursday.
Certain people who
received Pfi zer vaccinations
months ago already are eli-
gible for a booster and now
the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention says spe-
cifi c Moderna and Johnson
& Johnson recipients qualify,
too. And in a bigger change,
the agency is allowing the
fl exibility of “mixing and
matching” that extra dose
regardless of which type peo-
ple received fi rst.
The Food and Drug
Administration had already
authorized such an expansion
of the nation’s booster cam-
paign on Wednesday, and it
was also endorsed Thursday
by a CDC advisory panel.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle
Walensky had the fi nal word
on who gets the extra doses.
“These past 20 months
have taught us many things,
but mostly to have humility,”
she told the panel. “We are
constantly learning about this
virus, growing the evidence
base and accumulating more
data.”
There still are restric-
tions on who qualifi es and
when for a booster. Start-
ing six months past their last
Pfi zer or Moderna vaccina-
tion, people are urged to get a
booster if they’re 65 or older,
nursing home residents, or at
least 50 and at increased risk
of severe disease because of
health problems. Boosters
also were allowed, but not
urged, for adults of any age
at increased risk of infection
because of health problems
or their jobs or living con-
ditions. That includes health
care workers, teachers and
people in jails or homeless
shelters.
Moderna’s booster will
come at half the dose of the
original two shots.
As for recipients of the
single-shot Johnson & John-
son vaccine, a COVID-19
booster is recommended for
everyone at least two months
after their vaccination. That’s
because the Johnson & John-
son vaccine hasn’t proved as
protective as the two-dose
Moderna or Pfi zer options.
The CDC panel didn’t
explicitly recommend any-
one get a diff erent brand than
they started with but left open
the option — saying only that
a booster of some sort was
recommended. And some of
the advisers said they would
prefer that Johnson & John-
son recipients receive a
competitor’s booster, cit-
ing preliminary data from an
ongoing government study
that suggested a bigger boost
in virus-fi ghting antibodies
from that combination.
“We’re at a diff erent place
in the pandemic than we
were earlier” when supply
constraints meant people had
to take whatever shot they
were off ered, noted CDC
adviser Dr. Helen Keipp Tal-
bot of Vanderbilt University.
She called it “priceless”
to be able to choose a diff er-
ent kind for the booster if, for
example, someone might be
at risk for a rare side eff ect
from a specifi c vaccine.
About two-thirds of
Americans eligible for
COVID-19 shots are fully
vaccinated, and the govern-
ment says getting fi rst shots
to the unvaccinated remain
the priority. While health
authorities hope boosters will
shore up waning immunity
against milder coronavirus
infections, all the vaccines
still off er strong protection
against hospitalizations and
death, even as the extra-con-
tagious delta variant burned
through the country.
And CDC’s advisers
wrestled with whether people
who didn’t really need boost-
ers might be getting them,
especially young, otherwise
Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo
Syringes fi lled with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at a mobile
vaccination site in Miami earlier this year.
healthy adults whose only
qualifi cation was their job.
Dr. Sarah Long of Drexel
University voiced concerns
about opening those peo-
ple to rare but serious side
eff ects from another dose if
they already were adequately
protected.
“I have my own concerns
that we appear to be recom-
mending vaccines for people
who I don’t think need it,”
added Dr. Beth Bell of the
University of Washington.
But she stressed that the
vaccines work and that mov-
ing forward with the recom-
mendations makes sense for
the sake of being clear and
allowing fl exibility when it
comes to boosters.
Despite the concerns by
some members, the pan-
els’ votes ended up being
unanimous.
The vast majority of the
nearly 190 million Ameri-
cans who are fully vaccinated
against COVID-19 have
received the Pfi zer or Mod-
erna options, while Johnson
& Johnson recipients account
for only about 15 million.
Startup opens drone factory in Bend
By TOM BANSE
Northwest News Network
With all the news about
supply chain problems, you
might be wondering how to
get your online purchases
on time. If only the prom-
ised future of aerial delivery
by drone could be realized
during the upcoming holiday
shopping season.
Sorry to burst your bub-
ble. To quote the sci-fi writer
William Gibson, “The future
is already here — it’s just not
very evenly distributed.”
A venture capital-backed
startup has opened a fac-
tory in Bend to build deliv-
ery drones. But Volansi Inc.’s
fl ying machines won’t bring
gifts to you. They are focus-
ing on high-margin, busi-
ness-to-business use cases,
such as delivery of spare parts
and medicines.
Amazon founder and then-
CEO Jeff Bezos planted the
idea for drone delivery in a
lot of consumers’ minds way
back in 2013. That’s when
Bezos went on CBS’s “60
Minutes” to unveil his com-
pany’s prototype Prime Air
drones. It created quite a
buzz, and not just from the
electric octocopter blades.
“I know this looks like sci-
ence fi ction. It’s not,” Bezos
told correspondent Charlie
Rose. “It drops your pack-
age; come and get your pack-
age. We can do half-hour
delivery.”
Bezos predicted this capa-
bility could become reality by
2018-19, but that turned out
to be too optimistic. Amazon
has been fairly guarded about
its drone development pro-
gram and through a spokes-
person Tuesday declined to
give a status update.
Other big companies such
as Walmart, UPS, FedEx and
Google parent Alphabet are
wading into drone delivery
too, but they are limited to
early stage testing in the U.S.
by still evolving regulations.
At the same time, investors
are backing a whole bunch of
startups with delivery drones.
One of these, Volansi, opened
an assembly line in Bend
within the past year.
Vice President for Produc-
tion and Maintenance Ahmad
Ziada gave a rare peek onto
the spotless manufacturing
fl oor earlier this month.
“We build here between
fi ve to 10 per month. Our
‘THERE’S SO MUCH BETWEEN THE
TAKEOFF POINT TO HOW IT GETS
TO YOUR PROPERTY. WHAT IF
YOUR PROPERTY IS SURROUNDED
BY TALL TREES? THERE ARE
JUST SO MANY PROBLEMS.’
Patrick Sherman | a Portland-based instructor and drone pilot
with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
capacity is 10 because of the
people we have, not because
of anything else,” Ziada said
of the growing Bend opera-
tion, which has hired about
45 workers.
Behind him gleamed an
eye-catching row of all-elec-
tric, winged VOLY C10
autonomous aircraft. They
clasp lunchbox-sized stor-
age boxes under their bel-
lies. Volansi’s medium-sized,
vertical
takeoff -and-land-
ing drones can carry up to 10
pounds for as far as 50 miles.
Volansi also manufactures
a larger, longer-range drone
model at a facility near its San
Francisco Bay Area head-
quarters. The VOLY M20
can carry up to 20 pounds of
cargo as well as a sensor pay-
load. It has hybrid gas-electric
propulsion.
As to the cost? “We’re
still trying to fi gure that out,”
Ziada said during a tour.
The small company won’t
try to compete with e-com-
merce giants like Amazon
or Walmart in delivering to
households. VP for Global
Operations Mike Jackson
said Volansi is going after dif-
ferent markets. He mentioned
cargo delivery for the mili-
tary and shuttling spare parts
for commercial customers in
the construction, mining and
oil and gas fi elds. Delivering
medicines or disaster relief
supplies is another promising
proposition.
“We’re not necessarily
going into a neighborhood,”
Jackson said. Instead, Volan-
si’s drones might fl y from
a factory or a warehouse to
a construction site. “We’re
going to solve and provide
value on supply chain prob-
lems for our customers,” he
said.
Jackson fi gured that busi-
ness-to-business drone deliv-
ery will likely win approval
sooner, would be easier to pull
off and turn a profi t quicker.
This summer, Volansi demon-
strated for the U.S. Navy and
U.S. Coast Guard how it
could move small cargoes
between two moving ships
at sea. A separate demonstra-
tion with the North Carolina
Department of Transportation
showed how its drones could
deliver life-saving supplies to
the Outer Banks after a disas-
ter, such as a hurricane.
At this time, Volansi
doesn’t have customers in the
Pacifi c Northwest. So, why
did the San Francisco-based
company pick Bend for its
factory?
Jackson said the selec-
tion criteria during a national
search included talent avail-
ability, cost, proximity to
potential
suppliers
and
partners, favorable fl ying
weather and quality of life for
employees.
“Bend hits the mark on
every single one of those,”
Jackson said.
As for when the aver-
age consumer can order din-
ner or presents and have
the purchase swiftly deliv-
ered by drone, “it’s going to
be a while yet,” according
to Patrick Sherman, a Port-
land-based instructor and
drone pilot with Embry-Rid-
dle Aeronautical University.
“I am certainly not going
to say we will never have a
Christmas gift delivered at
11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve
by a drone, but that is about the
most challenging sort of oper-
ation you could ever hope to
complete with a drone,” Sher-
man said. “There’s so much
between the takeoff point to
how it gets to your property.
What if your property is sur-
rounded by tall trees? There
are just so many problems.”
Sherman said the low alti-
tude air traffi c control needed
for delivery drones to fl y
safely is getting a lot of atten-
tion, but is “far from solved at
this point.” Public acceptance
is still an unknown. Regula-
tors also need to certify the
new aircraft and it would help
to defi ne drone corridors in
the sky to reduce confl icts.
Sherman and Jackson
presented earlier this month
about industry developments
at a drone conference in Bend
put on by the Association
of Unmanned Vehicle Sys-
tems International Cascade
Chapter.
Also at the conference,
Olivier
Defawe,
direc-
tor of health systems at the
Seattle-based global health
nonprofi t
VillageReach,
described how Africa is serv-
ing as a proving ground and
early adopter of cargo drones.
He said his nonprofi t part-
nered with several diff erent
drone companies to show
how “2-way drone deliv-
ery” could overcome logis-
tical challenges of deliver-
ing perishable vaccines to
Tom Banse/Northwest News Network
Volansi executives Mike Jackson, left, and Ahmad Ziada at the
drone delivery company’s Bend manufacturing facility.
remote villages and return-
ing to a central offi ce with lab
samples.
Defawe said Villag-
eReach, with outside spon-
sorship, had supported vacci-
nation campaigns and blood
and medicine delivery tri-
als in the Democratic Repub-
lic of Congo, Central African
Republic, Malawi, Mozam-
bique and the Dominican
Republic. He said a barrier
to wider adoption of drone
delivery was the “big, black
box” of whether the cost per
fl ight will be aff ordable in
the developing world. A cost
study that VillageReach is
involved in is slated to pub-
lish next March.
“It’s a long journey to sus-
tained operation,” Defawe
concluded.
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