December 28 coronavirus pandemic and Omicron variant news

Several European countries — such as France, the UK, Italy, and Portugal — are currently seeing a large increase in daily new cases, many even setting new records since the pandemic began as the Omicron variant continues to spread. Despite the rising trend in daily cases, those figures haven’t translated into more deaths and hospitalizations, particularly when compared to the same period a year ago. 

France reported a record high of 179,807 new confirmed coronavirus cases in a 24-hour period on Tuesday, setting the highest number since the start of the pandemic, the French health authorities said. 

The latest data shattered the previous record of 104,611 new daily cases, which was set on Saturday.

The increase in daily figures is a huge increment of 176,847 new cases when compared to last year’s figures, yet despite a rise in hospitalizations and ICU occupancy, France latest data is showing less deaths.

French authorities’ data shows that in the last 24 hours, France recorded 290 coronavirus related deaths, 484 people hospitalized and 83 people in ICU beds.

A year ago, the country recorded 363 deaths, 25 hospitalizations and 44 people under intensive care.

Meanwhile, the UK has also set a new daily record of Covid-19 cases with 129,471, according to British government data released Tuesday. 

Elsewhere in Europe, Portugal has also recorded the highest number of new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, with a total of 17,172 new coronavirus cases, the Portuguese Health Ministry said on Tuesday.

The highest count of daily infections took place on Jan. 28, with 16,432 cases reported at the time.

Looking back at last year’s figures, the latest data shows a large increase of 15,079 new daily cases, however, despite the rise in cases, Portugal is showing a lower number on deaths, hospital admissions and ICU occupancy.

The data shows that currently, Portugal has 936 people hospitalized, with 152 of them in intensive care and 19 deaths, whereas a year ago Portugal was recording 2,967 hospitalizations, with 503 of them in ICU units and a total of 58 deaths. 

Italy is seeing a similar situation, with the country also reporting their highest daily new cases since the start of the pandemic with 78,313 people infected in the last 24 hours, according to the country’s Health Ministry data.

The latest figures show that the trend of rising cases continues after the country reported recently new daily case records for three consecutive days.

Despite the rise in daily cases, Italy has recorded lower figures in hospitalizations and deaths when compared with data from a year ago.

On Dec. 28, 2020, Italy recorded 8,585 new infections, 445 Covid-19 related deaths and 2,565 ICU beds occupied, which reveals a significant contrast to the most recent numbers of 78,313 new infections, 202 deaths and 1,145 ICU occupancy.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that France's ICU occupancy and hospitalizations are down in comparison with last year. The country's latest data shows only deaths are down in comparison.

Covid-19 hospitalizations in England have risen by 25% over the course of one week as the country continues to grapple with the Omicron variant.  

The latest data from the UK government dashboard showed an additional 1,374 hospital admissions in England on Tuesday. This represents a 25% increase compared with the Dec. 21 figure of 1,098.

There are currently 9,546 people in hospital with Covid-19 in the country.

This comes as England set a new daily record for Covid-19 cases on Tuesday when 129,471 cases were reported.  

The UK's public health agency, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has warned there may be "temporary pauses" in ordering or receiving home testing kits as authorities try to cope with the "exceptional demand."

The agency has ramped up delivery capacity since Dec. 18, delivering 900,000 test kits daily. They encouraged people to revisit the UK government site "every few hours" to try get tests, urging them to make sure they are using "any tests they already have at home before ordering or collecting more.” 

Since Dec. 12, fully vaccinated close contacts of a positive Covid-19 case in England have been advised to take lateral flow tests for seven days, causing a huge spike in demand for LFTs in the country. 

Hopes of New Year's Eve celebrations were kept alive on Monday when the UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced that no further restrictions would be imposed in England before Dec. 31. 

UK Care Minister Gillian Keegan advised people on Tuesday to "be cautious," take a lateral flow test before heading out to New Year's celebrations and seek out "ventilated spaces."

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added three European destinations to its highest-risk category for travel on Tuesday, including Sweden.

In its weekly update of Covid-19 travel advisories, the CDC also added Malta and Moldova to its "Level 4: Covid-19 Very High" category.

The CDC places a destination at Level 4 when more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents are registered in the past 28 days.

Last week, the CDC added eight destinations to the Level 4 category.

Separately on Tuesday, President Biden revoked a proclamation put in place last month that enacted travel restrictions on eight southern African nations, including South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday released new isolation and quarantine guidelines for people infected with or exposed to Covid-19.

Important to note: These are guidelines, not mandates, but many industry groups and organizations use them to set their own policies. While these guidelines offer more detail, the old adage applies: If you feel sick, stay home.

Here is a list of basic things to know:

For people who test positive for Covid-19:

For people exposed to Covid-19:

These are based on what studies show about how and when people are likely to infect others.

If you are boosted, have received your first two Pfizer or Moderna doses in the last six months or your single J&J dose in the last two months: 

If you are unvaccinated, or are eligible for a booster and haven’t received one: 

President Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation on Tuesday revoking a proclamation put in place last month that enacted travel restrictions on eight southern African nations, including; South Africa, as the Omicron variant began to spread. 

CNN had previously reported Biden’s intent to lift the restrictions.

The travel restrictions had come under fire across the globe, described by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as “travel apartheid.”

Biden administration officials repeatedly defended the move as an action to give the US more time to understand the variant and its spread.

Tuesday’s proclamation noted that scientists have determined that people vaccinated against Covid-19 “are protected against severe disease and hospitalization from the Omicron variant.”

It also said that the variant is now in over 100 countries and is “prevalent” in the US, where cases have been rising for weeks. It said that “substantial progress” has been made in understanding the Omicron variant.

The previous proclamation will be lifted at 12:01 am EST on Dec. 31.

New York City public schools, the largest public school system in the country, will reopen as planned on Jan. 3 following a winter recess, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. 

The city is revamping its Covid-19 testing policies in an attempt to keep more students in school during the latest surge, de Blasio said. 

Schools will be provided at-home testing kits for classrooms when a student has tested positive, and students will take two tests per day over seven days, he said. With this new policy, any student who doesn’t have symptoms and tests negative after one day of two rapid tests will return to school the next day, he continued.  

The previous policy mandated that fully vaccinated students identified as close contacts did not have to quarantine if they were symptom-free and tested, but unvaccinated students had to quarantine for 10 days or test out.

While he emphasized that New York City schools are some of the safest places in the city, the city will adjust its testing process to catch cases sooner and keep more students in school. 

The city will also double the amount of PCR Covid-19 tests they do at schools per week and will include both vaccinated and unvaccinated students, de Blasio said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams joined Tuesday's news conference to show support for the adjusted school testing plan. 

The announcement comes after Hochul said on Monday that two million testing kits, which contain two tests each, are going to New York City schools by Friday. An additional 3 to 3.5 million testing kits are expected to be sent to schools throughout the rest of the state, she said. 

CNN's Elizabeth Stuart and Melanie Schuman contributed reporting.

Covid-19 vaccines help prevent breakthrough infections even among immune-compromised people such as organ transplant recipients and rheumatoid arthritis patients, researchers reported Tuesday. 

But these patients are at higher risk of breakthroughs than other vaccinated people and should take extra precautions, the researchers reported.

Dr. Jing Sun, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues studied the records of 660,000 people who received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine through Sept. 16.

“Overall, the incidence rate for COVID-19 breakthrough infection was 5.0 per 1,000 person-months among fully vaccinated persons but was higher after the Delta variant became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain,” they said. Before June, the rate of breakthrough infections was 2.2 per 1,000 people per year. That rose to 7.3 afterward, as Delta spread.

“People with a breakthrough infection after full vaccination were more likely to be older and women. People with HIV infection, rheumatoid arthritis, and solid organ transplant had a higher rate of breakthrough infection,” they wrote.

People with other types of immunocompromising conditions did not have higher rates of breakthrough infections, they found.

Vaccination protected everyone, the researchers reported. But they said those getting immune-suppressing drugs for rheumatoid arthritis or because of organ transplants, as well as HIV patients, should take care to wear masks and avoid situations where they might be exposed.

Dr. Mary Nakamura, an immunologist at the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and rheumatologist Dr. Alfred Kim of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the findings should encourage the immune-compromised to get vaccinated and boosted.

“SARS-CoV-2 vaccine clinical trials did not initially include individuals with immune dysfunction conditions, which has led to some hesitancy in using the available vaccines in this population,” they wrote in an accompanying commentary.

“However, several recent retrospective studies have reported reassuring data regarding the safety of these vaccines in immunocompromised patients, and the general consensus is that the potential benefits of vaccination substantially outweigh the risks," the said.

The Omicron variant caused 58.6% of new coronavirus cases in the US last week, which is significantly lower than previously thought, according to estimates posted Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last week, the agency estimated Omicron accounted for 73.2% of cases the week ending Dec. 18.

A CDC spokesperson told CNN last week there was a broad range of uncertainty for those numbers — as low as 34% and as high as 95%. She added agency would "adjust based on additional sequencing.” The agency has adjusted the estimate for that week even lower, from 73.2% to 22.5%.

Over the past four weeks, Omicron has risen rapidly in estimates – accounting for 0.6% of cases ending December 4, to 6.9% the following week, then 22.5% and now 58.6%. The Delta variant makes up nearly all of the rest.

More on the CDC estimates: Not every Covid-19 test is sent for the extra genetic sequencing needed to detect which variant has infected someone. The CDC works off samples and extrapolates its estimates based on that extra testing. 

Omicron’s estimated prevalence varies widely based on geography. For example, in the region that includes New York and New Jersey, as well as the region covering Texas and its bordering states, Omicron was estimated to have caused upwards of 86% of cases last week.

A new Covid-19 vaccine designed to be cheap and easy to manufacture has won emergency use authorization in India, Texas Children’s Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine said Tuesday.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine specialist and co-director of Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development, and co-director Maria Elena Bottazzi, designed the vaccine, and made it using traditional vaccine technology.

The idea is to distribute the technology so developing countries can make the vaccine themselves.

“Protein-based vaccines have been widely used to prevent many other diseases, have proven safety records, and use economies of scale to achieve low-cost scalability across the world,” Bottazzi said in a statement.

“Our decade-long studies advancing coronavirus vaccine prototypes has led to the creation of this vaccine, which will fill the access gap created by the more expensive, newer vaccine technologies and that today are still not able to be quickly scaled for global production," she added.

Hotez told CNN’s Poppy Harlow that they were "over the moon this morning" after the authorization was announced by the Indian regulators alongside the vaccine producer partners.

“This is the first Covid vaccine specifically for global health, for the world's low and middle-income countries. It's a recombinant vaccine that uses similar technology that makes the Hepatitis B vaccine,” he added.

“They have now 150 million doses ready to go and are now producing 100 million doses a month with plans to produce a billion doses. As of today, our Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor has equaled or doubled the US government commitment to global health equity. It's so exciting for us," Hotez told CNN.

More on the vaccine: The vaccine, called Corbevax, was tested in 3,000 volunteers in two trials, the hospital said. No serious adverse events were seen, the hospital said, and the trials showed people developed an immune response that should be expected to correlate with 90% protection or better against the original coronavirus strain and 80% against the Delta strain for preventing symptomatic illness. 

It's made using a genetically engineered piece of coronavirus grown in yeast, combined with immune-stimulating compounds called adjuvants. It’s been licensed by BCM Ventures, Baylor College of Medicine’s commercialization team, to Biological E. Limited based in Hyderabad, India. 

See Bottazzi's tweet about the vaccine: