Name: Merck plant could see hiring boom from coronavirus vaccine production
Uploaded: 2021-03-11T21:55:35-0500
Duration: 155846
Description: The federal government has awarded Merck more than $100 million to produce coronavirus vaccine at its Durham plant, which could mean more jobs.

Raleigh police arrested a teenager on Wednesday in connection to the death of a 13-year-old girl earlier in the week. According to the Raleigh Police Department, Mykia Daniel, an eighth-grader at Ligon Middle School, was shot and killed on Monday in a north Raleigh Apartment. Police said the investigation is ongoing and more information will be released at the appropriate time.

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The federal government has awarded Merck more than $100 million to produce coronavirus vaccine at its Durham plant, which could mean more jobs.

THESE ARE NOT JUST NUMBERS ON A GRAPH, THEIR FRIENDS, FAMILY MEMBERS AND LOVED ONES WHO LOST THEIR LIVES TO CORONAVIRUS. >>> DESPITE RELUCTANCE TO TAKE THE VACCINE, THOSE VACCINES CONTINUE TO BE THE BEST BUT TO BE THE VIRUS. $100 MILLION FEDERAL DOLLARS AWARDED TO MERCK IN DURHAM. THAT WILL HELP PRODUCE THE JOHNSON & JOHNSON VACCINE. DURHAM REPORTER SARAH KRUEGER LIFE TO EXPLAIN HOW IT IS MORE THAN JUST A VACCINE, IT IS ALSO AN ECONOMIC IMPACT. >> Reporter: OUTSIDE THE MERCK FACILITY IN DURHAM RIGHT NOW. I LEARNED FROM THE COMPANY TODAY IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE TO PRODUCE THAT J&J VACCINE HERE, IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THEY MAY NEED TO HIRE MORE PEOPLE. THE WORK HAPPENING INSIDE THE SMIRK BUILDING IN DURHAM WILL SAVE LIVES. WE LEARNED FROM THE COMPANY THIS SITE WILL PRODUCE THE DRUG FOR THE JOHNSON & JOHNSON VACCINE. A MERCK FACILITY IN PENNSYLVANIA WILL BE THE ONE TO PUT THAT DRUG IN VIALS. >> THE OBVIOUS DIRECT ECONOMIC BENEFIT IS THEY DIRECT PEOPLE FROM THE COMMUNITY. >> Reporter: HE WORKS TO ATTRACT LIFE SCIENCE COMPANIES TO THE STATE. DURHAM SELECTION IS A TESTAMENT TO THE WORK MANY HAVE DONE IN OUR STATE OVER DECADES TO BUILD UP THE BIO MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY HERE. >> READILY AVAILABLE WORKFORCE HERE IN THE REGION THAT HAS THE SPECIALIZED SKILLS BECAUSE OF THE FOLKS AT DURHAM TECH AND WAKE TECH AND NC STATE TRAINING SPECIFICALLY TO THOSE NEEDS. >> Reporter: A SEARCH ON LINKEDIN SHOWS A NUMBER OF JOBS OPEN AT MERCK AND DURHAM SOME POSTED HOURS AGO. IT IS NOT CLEAR WHEN THE SITE WILL START PRODUCTION OR HOW LONG THEY WILL DO SO. ONE QUESTION LINGERING FOR RESEARCHERS EVERYWHERE IS, HOW OFTEN WILL WE NEED THE COVID VACCINE? >> WILLOUGHBY ANNUAL THING LIKE A FLU SHOT? >> THE SHORT ANSWER WE DON'T KNOW YET. >> Reporter: DR. THOMAS HOLLAND WITH THE UNIVERSITY SAYS STUDIES ARE HAPPENING NOW TO TEST OUT HOW LONG THE VACCINES PROVIDE PROTECTION. >> WE NOTE NATURAL PROTECTION WITH COVID IMMUNITY THAT IS PRETTY GOOD AT LEAST THROUGH SIX MONTHS AND PROBABLY LONGER THAN THAT, I EXPECT THE SAME IS TRUE FOR VACCINE IMMUNITY. >> Reporter: THIS FACILITY ALREADY DEVOTED TO MAKING VACCINES FOR OTHER THINGS. THEY MAKE A VACCINE FOR SHINGLES AND ONE FOR CHICKENPOX. THIS IS SOMETHING VERY MUCH IN THEIR WHEELHOUSE ALREADY, SOMETHING THEY ARE PREPARED TO DO.

Sarah Krueger

Vinnie Boccanfuso

Matthew Burns

Merck plant could see hiring boom from coronavirus vaccine production

Merck plant in Durham

WRAL-TV News Broadcasts: Watch each newscast live or watch the most recent newscast on demand.

WRAL Late News 

Get the latest WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast whenever you need it, including the DUALDoppler5000 and the 7-Day Forecast.

I'm meteorologist K Campbell in the wr a severe weather center. It's been a warm spring so far. In fact, when you look at the spring to date numbers, it's actually the second warmest on record at RDU running about 4.5 degrees above normal and for rainfall about an inch and a half below normal. And we really need some rain. You know, it's been a pretty dry April so far we've seen less than an inch inch of rain this month tomorrow. It's a nice dry day for us, but I, you know, at least it's gonna be a nice day, right? 72 in the Triangle, as well as Siler City in Wilson. 70 in Rocky Mount. 67 though in Roxboro and 67 for Roanoke Rapids, a little cooler to the north. 76 degrees in Fayetteville, 73 Goldsboro in Smithfield and 75 in Southern Pines. It is going to be a little bit cooler in the morning because cold front moved through 50 degrees for the low in the triangle, right around 7 a.m. by 10 a.m. We're in the upper fifties, lunchtime, mid sixties and then in the lower seventies during the afternoon, dinner time, temperatures dip back into the upper sixties. A cold front passed earlier this evening and behind it, we are going to be drying out but cooling down briefly. It's not a huge drop in temperatures, but we will see this dip in the jet stream delivering some cooler air. We start to see a reversal of the jet stream flow and that changes really on Sunday with a warming southwest wind at the surface and at the jet stream level, that's going to drive temperatures up to 80 beginning on Sunday and the eighties will last into next week with a strengthening ridge of high pressure. So we expect a big climb in temperatures just throughout the course of the weekend, 48 degrees Friday morning, but back up to 80 by Sunday afternoon and then much warmer weather is on the way for next week. We're looking at seventies for the next few days with mostly cloudy skies for the weekend days. The sun's back out though next Monday and with a warming wind, we're back in the upper eighties three days in a row all the way up to 89 on Tuesday. Tuesday might be the 1st 90 degree day of the year for parts of North Carolina.

WRAL WeatherCenter Forecast

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 drawings are held at 3 p.m. daily. They can be seen as live or on-demand video.

Good afternoon. I'm Luis Fernandez. Welcome to this afternoon's drawings for Wednesday, April 24th, 2024. Let's get started with Carolina pick three. The first pick three number is two, second is eight and the third is eight and our pick three fireball number is five. Join me for this afternoon's drawing is our auditor for mcconnell LP. Now let's move to Carolina pick four. The first pick four, number is five. The second is one, the third is three and the fourth is zero and our pick four. Fireball number is five. The North Carolina Education lottery has contributed over $10 billion to education and thanks for your support.

Daytime Pick 3 and Pick 4 Drawing

Brian Shrader flies over the site of a plane crash at Raleigh-Durham International Airport approximately three hours after the accident.

Seen some activity just in the past 10 minutes or so. I want to take you outside Sky five right now for a live look at the scene. We saw a van being escorted to the runway there and someone got out and now there appears to be a really careful inspection of the debris going on. So we're working to confirm if that may be the NTSB investigation team arriving at the scene. Let's zoom out and give you some about where this is. There are two main runways at RDU International and this is in the grassy field next to the runway that mostly serves terminal one on the east side of the airport, that runway remains closed while this investigation continues at the top of your screen. That is the other main runway that serves terminal two, mostly that runway is open. So we have two things going on here that could affect your flights for the rest of the day and maybe even into tomorrow, the airport takeoff and landing capacity is roughly reduced by half because they are only working with one runway. And if you have a flight coming out of terminal one, maybe Southwest, you're going to have to take that crossover all the way out to that other runway. It's going to add a lot of extra time.

Sky 5 flies over RDU plane crash 3 hours later 

A UNC Health physician and pilot were taken to the hospital Wednesday after a small plane crashed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU).


Sky 5 flies over plane crash at RDU

RDU Airport Authority gives an update on a plane crash that sent a physician and pilot to the hospital. The crash occurred Wednesday morning on a flight that took off from Wilmington.

<p>Landguth first, I want to extend my thoughts to those affected by this morning's aircraft accident and thank our first responders for their quick action to respond. The airport authority and its mutual aid partners responded to an aircraft accident at RDU involving a general aviation aircraft. The accident occurred at approximately 10:10 a.m. in the grass next to runway five, right 23 left. The flight was arriving from Wilmington, North Carolina. The A the aircraft is owned by medical Air Inc and operated by UN C air operations. The aircraft had two people on board, one pilot and one passenger. Both were transported to area hospitals. The federal A Bush administration issued a ground stop that was lifted at approximately 1130 this morning. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have both been notified. The National Transportation Safety Board is en route and expected to arrive within the next hour at which time we will conduct an accident investigation. Rdu's runway five left 23 right reopened to departing and arriving aircraft around 11:30 a.m. this morning. Are you experiencing approximately 70 delays and several arriving flights were diverted to other airports? Until ground stock was lifted, travelers should contact their airline for the latest updates regarding the flight status. And of course questions about the identity and condition of the pilot and passenger should be directed to UN C health. And at this time I'll try to answer any questions. You may have, uh, the one, any other accidents in, in the past. I'm not familiar with any other accidents have occurred with that operation. I don't know, uh, that's the role of the National Transportation Safety Board. They'll actually come in and do the investigation. Uh, and at some point in the future, they write up a report and determine what the cause of the accident was. You know, that there was no notification to the airport authority or to the FAA uh about any type of emergency on board. Do we have a guy? We don't, all we know that we've got them out of the airplane and we've got them transported to local hospitals. We know situations like this and delays have a ripple effect on, you know, flights. Do you have any idea what type of impact we'll see here in our view and for not sure, but what we're going to encourage everybody to do is reach out to your airlines. We'll be able to give you real time information about the impact of your particular flight. Ok. I believe some of them went to Greensboro and I think a couple went to Charlotte as well. What, what to be impacted due to the NTSD. Say that one more time at this point in time, what we call the west side of our airport is now open the investigation they'll conduct will all be on the east side. So at this point, we are anticipating normal operations returning to normal operations from this point forward. I don't think that anything that they're doing regarding the investigation or where they would have to investigate would have any impact to the west side of the airport. No, the aircraft is still on the airfield itself. It's on the east side of the field. So terminal one that runways the east side of the field, that's where the debris field actually sits, the west side of the field is open and operational and safe to operate. Not that I'm aware of in operations for you throughout this event today. What was your main concern concerning the passengers that were in the internals? Right. I think our primary focus when, when that accident occurred were the two people sitting in that aircraft? Our primary mission is to make sure we can get to them and try to rescue them and try to make sure that we can get them in a safe condition as fast as we possibly can. Uh secondarily is trying to figure out then how we recover and get our operations back up and running. Mhm. How does that affect? What goes on term? Yeah, so great. Question. So the team has figured out a way to get all the aircraft they're gonna operate at terminal one. Your Southwest develops. Uh We've got a crossover taxi way that we can actually get them through our general aviation aircraft. We've got a crossover taxiway, we can get them to. But the rest of the uh accident scene is actually kind of isolated and closed and locked off. Yeah, you're terminal one at this point in time. Once they can get back on their schedule, it's going to be a normal operations. All right. Thank you guys. All right. Thank you. Grab your phone, right.</p>

News conference: RDU plane crash sent 2 to hospital

A small plane crashed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) Wednesday morning.



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A small plane crash with injuries was reported Wednesday at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

Merck plant could see hiring boom from coronavirus vaccine production

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