January 25 coronavirus news

CVS pharmacies will begin offering on-site vaccinations in 11 states in February, Dr. David Fairchild, associate chief medical officer at CVS Health said Monday.

CVS partnered with the federal government to vaccinate residents and staff in long-term care facilities. It announced Monday that it completed first-round doses in all participating facilities. Fairchild said CVS will soon begin vaccinating other eligible people.

In an interview hosted by the American College of Physicians and Annals of Internal Medicine, Fairchild said CVS will begin dispensing vaccinations at 272 retail locations across 11 states in February.

Fairchild said locations are distributed across the country geographically and across the social vulnerability index.

“We worked with an outside organization to help identify where our stores fell in terms of this vulnerability index, and our stores are pretty much distributed evenly across that index, so that’s a good thing in terms of assuring equity,” he noted.

Fairchild noted that vaccine eligibility varies by states, and the CVS digital screening tool will account for that.

“We can schedule first doses, and we also have the ability to have people come in just for their second dose if they got their first dose somewhere else,” he said. “And of course, the vaccinations are done in a way that’s no cost to them even if they do not have insurance.”

The United Kingdom announced on Tuesday it will offer its genomics expertise in identifying new variants of the coronavirus to countries that do not have the resources to do so, according to a statement released by the country’s Department of Health and Social Care.

“Countries will be offered UK capacity to analyze new strains of the virus through the launch of the New Variant Assessment Platform,” the statement read. 

The platform will initially be led by Public Health England (PHE), which is working with National Health Service Test and Trace and the World Health Organization’s SARS-CoV-2 Global Laboratory Working Group.

The department said the UK has carried out more than half of all SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences submitted to the global database, a capability which helped PHE’s scientists detect the variant in Kent late last year.  

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock is expected to deliver remarks on Tuesday regarding this announcement and outline his vision for a collaborative global health system to ensure the world is better prepared against future threats.

“Not only will this Platform help us better understand this virus and how it spreads, but it will also boost global capability in this important field, so we’re all better prepared for whatever lies ahead,” Hancock is expected to say.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to the President, said the new variant of coronavirus called P.1 identified in Minnesota in someone who had recently traveled from Brazil, could become “more dominant.”

Additionally, Fauci said that they are paying close attention to this new variant as well as to the strain also recently found in California.

“Up until recently, we haven’t had a comprehensive genomic surveillance, which the CDC is really increasing together with a little bit of collaboration, in fact, a lot of collaboration with the NIH, that will get a much better feel for what is circulating in our own country,” said Fauci.

Vaccines vs. variants: Current vaccines for Covid-19 that are currently being administered are likely to be effective against the new variants, Fauci said.

“The good news is the vaccines as they exist now still would be effective against the mutants. The sobering news … as you get more and more replication, you can get more and more of evolution of mutants, which means you always got to be a step ahead of it,” Fauci said.

Fauci said the antibodies that are induced by both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine seem to be effective in blocking the variant first found in the UK. He said the evidence also indicates vaccines will protect people against infection with variants first spotted in South Africa and Brazil.

“When you’re dealing with South Africa and Brazil – but mostly South Africa, we haven’t looked at Brazil as carefully as South Africa – although it’s been diminished somewhat it’s still well within the cushion range of being an effective vaccine,” Fauci said.

Additionally, Fauci said surveillance needs to increase so that scientists can stay on top of mutations in the virus.

CNN’s Erin Burnett speaks with Dr. Anthony Fauci:

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The Biden administration’s official goal still remains 100 million vaccine shots in their first 100 days in office, despite the US President expressing optimism that the total number could be even higher, a White House official told CNN.

President Joe Biden said that he was hopeful that the United States could soon be administering 1.5 million coronavirus vaccines a day – 50% more than the 1 million doses per day goal he had been promising since before inauguration.

But the White House is still aiming for the original goal, which the administration still views as “ambitious but achievable,” the official said. However they also anticipate that plenty of things could go wrong given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. 

The official stressed that the hope now was to surpass that original goal of 100 million vaccine shots in the first 100 days.

Describing Biden as an “optimist,” the official also said the President has been pushing his Covid team to aim for progress beyond their initial goal of 100 million vaccines doses in 100 days.

Read more about Biden’s vaccine hopes:

Related article Biden raises the bar on vaccines and suggests US will get to 1.5 million a day

Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helú, is recovering from Covid-19, according to his son, Carlos Slim Domit.

Slim Domit announced on Twitter late Monday afternoon that his father “had shown a favorable response to Covid after (experiencing) a week of mild symptoms”. Domit also said his father “preventively” went to the National Institute of Nutrition for “clinical analysis, monitoring and due treatment.”  

Billionaire businessman Slim Helú, 80, heads a global telecoms conglomerate that includes mobile companies Telmex, América Móvil and Grupo Carso. 

The family’s namesake nonprofit Carlos Slim Foundation and AstraZeneca signed an agreement in October of last year to help manufacture and distribute the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine at no profit across Latin America, with an initial supply of some 150 million doses and first shipments expected in the first half of 2021. 

Details of the agreement are published on the Carlos Slim Foundation website.

About 0.01% of a large group of people who received two doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine tested positive for coronavirus after their second shot – and those patients had only a mild illness, according to preliminary data from an Israeli health care system. 

Maccabi Healthcare Services found that out of approximately 128,600 people who received two doses of the vaccine, 20 became infected and tested positive more than a week after their second dose.

Maccabi did not test all patients after receiving their second dose. Instead, they tested an unspecified number of people who developed symptoms or who were exposed to someone with Covid-19.  

The clinical trials for Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine showed it to be about 95% effective. 

The press release stated that the data is “preliminary” but that “the numbers are very encouraging.” 

Of the 20 patients who tested positive, 50% suffer from chronic illnesses. All of the 20 patients experienced a mild illness with symptoms including headaches, cough, weakness or fatigue. No one was hospitalized. 

Out of a population of just over 9 million people, Israel has given first vaccine doses to about 2.5 million people, and second doses to about 1 million people.

Police in the Netherlands have deployed teargas and water cannons in an attempt to control anti-lockdown rioting in several cities across the country on Monday, a spokesperson for the national police said on Dutch television Monday evening.

This is the third consecutive night of confrontations with police in the Netherlands. A national, nightly curfew designed to reduce social contact came into effect in the country on Saturday, and runs from 9 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.

Police in several cities reported mostly young people setting off fireworks, throwing stones, and looting stores.

Groups of rioters have been “seeking confrontation with the police, and in a number of locations have been looting, especially in Rotterdam,” police spokesperson Willem Woelders said.

He said that police had deployed water cannons, and used tear gas in Haarlem and Rotterdam. Police had already made at least 151 arrests, Woelders said. At least 250 people were arrested on Sunday, police said.

“Tonight we are on the street again to enforce the curfew,” police said in a statement on Twitter. “If you deliberately do not adhere to it and you commit or call for criminal offenses, know that we can arrest you for this later.”

Close to a quarter of all first responders in New York City appear to have been infected with coronavirus during the first wave of the pandemic, researchers reported Monday. 

Antibody tests of more than 22,000 police, fire, emergency medical technicians, corrections and other workers between May and July showed 22.5% of them had antibodies indicating a previous infection with coronavirus, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-led team reported.

That’s close to the population as a whole in the hard-hit city, the team reported in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. But there were some telling differences from one type of worker to another—and some big surprises.

The study found that the percentage of police and firefighters with antibodies was similar to the overall seroprevalence of the population.

Seroprevalence is the number of people in a specific population who test positive for a disease.

“Seroprevalence was highest in correctional staff (39.2%) and emergency medical technicians (38.3%) and lowest in laboratory technicians (10.1%) and medicolegal death investigators (10.8%),” the team wrote.

Across the city as a whole just under 20% of residents had antibodies to the virus in tests done over the same time period. 

“We found that seroprevalence for police and firefighters was close to that of the general population,” the researchers wrote. “Among healthcare workers, EMTs had a seroprevalence of 38.3% and the strongest association with seropositivity after adjustment.”

One surprise finding: People who said they always wore gloves were more likely to have antibodies to the virus. This could be for two reasons: people may not take their gloves off properly, and infect themselves while doing so, or people who use more protective equipment are doing so because they are already in high-risk situations, the researchers said.

More than 22.7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the US, according to data published Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Nearly 6% of the US population – more than 19 million people – has received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 3.3 million people are fully vaccinated. 

In Alaska, about 11% of the population has received at least one dose, followed by West Virginia where more than 9% of the population has received at least one dose, the data shows.

Nationwide, about 55% of the 41.4 million distributed doses have been administered.

States have 72 hours to report vaccine data, so data published by the CDC may be delayed – and may not necessarily mean all doses were given on the day reported.

As Covid-19 continues to evolve, it’s important to prove that vaccines provide protection against new strains, Moderna President Dr. Stephen Hoge said Monday.

“The virus is evolving,” Hoge said during a panel hosted by investment institute iConnections. “It’s not sitting still.”

He said that the emergence of new strains will “change the calculus” of vaccines.

“I think as we look at the efficacy of any of these vaccines, we should hope and assume that they’re going to work across them, but we need to prove that case, time and time again,” Hoge said.

“Now, usually, probably just with measuring the vaccine’s ability to provide neutralizing antibodies in the blood, but in some cases over time we may need to go look at whether or not we’re actually protecting in the real world against some of these new strains,” he added. 

Hoge said this process could continue for years.

“Until we’ve got this thing sort of fully suppressed and in control, and people are broadly vaccinated or seropositive and protected against it, it’s going to be an ongoing battle for the next couple of years,” he noted.

Los Angeles County will allow restaurants to reopen for outdoor dining with safety modifications on Friday, county officials announced in a news conference Monday.

The announcement comes after the state lifted its regional stay-at-home order, which also included a ban on outdoor dining, after a four-week projection of intensive care unit bed capacity is expected to meet the 15% threshold in all five regions. 

L.A. County implemented the ban on outdoor dining in November amid a surge of new infections to reduce the possibility of exposure to coronavirus. The decision sparked controversy, drawing lawsuits from the California Restaurant Association and local restaurants hoping to overturn the ban.

County health officials also announced that starting today, museums, zoos, and aquariums can reopen for outdoor operations as well as fitness facilities and faith-based services. Personal care services can reopen for indoor operations with 25% capacity.

Private gatherings are also permitted as long as they are held outdoors and are limited to three households with a maximum of 15 people, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer announced. 

While some businesses will be able to resume operations effective immediately, Ferrer reminded residents that “this is not the time for people to think we can get back to our normal businesses and our normal ways of interacting with each other.”

She urged people to be careful and follow health orders to “prevent another increase in cases that leads us back to more restrictions.”

The Department of Defense is weighing options to assist President Biden’s plan to vaccinate as many as 1.5 million people per day within months. 

Discussions are taking place about deploying thousands of US troops to help with the vaccination efforts, according to four officials familiar with the talks who said a plan could be unveiled by the end of the week.

The discussions are at an early stage and no decisions have been taken yet, the officials caution. One official when pressed for an estimate said that as many as 10,000 troops could be deployed as part of the effort.

Such a deployment could start with medical units that have already been on standby orders for some time and have deployed in recent months to some of the hardest hit areas, one official said. The clock is already ticking on Biden’s first 100 days in office with the goal of delivering 100 million vaccine shots within that timeframe. 

“It’s all about how we can get better involved in the vaccinations,” another official told CNN. “Planning efforts are ongoing, but there are no decisions.”

It’s unclear at this point if the plan would involve the use of active-duty troops, members of the National Guard, or some combination. Any plan will require that an approved request be sent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the Department of Defense, a process that takes time. 

“I think with the grace of God, the goodwill of the neighbor, and the creek not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 1.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day,” Biden said on Monday. “But we have to meet that goal of 1 million a day, and everything points that we’re going to have a) enough vaccine b) enough syringes, and all the paraphernalia needed to store, keep, [and] inject into your arm the vaccine.”

Biden also stressed the importance of needing more people to administer the vaccine.

Nationwide, 31 states are already using their National Guard to help administer vaccines, involving 23,000 troops, director of the National Guard Bureau Gen. Daniel Hokanson said Monday. 

“We stand ready to assist in any way that we can to make sure that we can really help as much as possible. And that’s related not only to the state plans but also related to Operation Warp Speed,” said Hokanson.

A new variant of coronavirus that worries health officials has been detected in the United States for the first time, officials in Minnesota said Monday. They said they had detected the P.1 variant of coronavirus in a traveler from Brazil.

P.1 is one of four variants being closely watched by officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Until Monday, it had only been reported in Brazil and among a group of four travelers from Brazil to Japan.

“The variant was found through the MDH’s variant surveillance program. Each week this program collects 50 random samples from the University of Minnesota clinical laboratories, Infinity Biologix Laboratory in Oakdale, and other testing partners and then conducts special testing using a process called whole genome sequencing,” the Minnesota Department of Health said in a statement.

The P.1 variant carries a pattern of mutations that appears to make the virus more easily transmitted.

“The emergence of this variant raises concerns of a potential increase in transmissibility or propensity for SARS-CoV-2 re-infection of individuals,” the CDC says on its website.

It’s been the most common variant of the virus detected in a surge of cases seen in and around Manaus, the largest city in Brazil’s Amazon region.

There’s no evidence it causes more severe disease, however.

“One of the reasons we are able to detect those variants of concern in Minnesota so quickly is that we have one of the best public health laboratory surveillance systems in the US,” Minnesota Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm said in a statement.

“We know that even as we work hard to defeat COVID-19, the virus continues to evolve as all viruses do. That’s yet another reason why we want to limit COVID-19 transmission – the fewer people who get COVID-19, the fewer opportunities the virus has to evolve,” Malcolm added.

Republican Sen. Shelley Moore-Capito described the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine as a key area of common ground for the bipartisan group of senators who took part in a call with the White House on Sunday. 

“I think we all recognize we have a ways to go with vaccine distribution and therapeutics and that’s a top line on commonality among everybody,” Moore-Capito said Monday afternoon. 

President Biden said earlier on Monday he does not want to take a piecemeal approach with his Covid relief bill, but instead hopes Congress will pass one large bill encompassing a number of issues. 

Moore-Capito elaborated on some of the questions and concerns shared on the call. 

“We presented questions about money that still hasn’t been expended, are we targeting it well with individuals and everyone got a chance to kind of weigh in on that,” she said.

Moore-Capito said she didn’t know about plans for the group to meet again but said she imagined they would. 

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has formally requested legislative leaders to extend his emergency authorization due to Covid-19 through April 20. 

“We think by April 20 we’re going to have a really good handle on where we stand in terms of vaccinations, where we stand on supply of vaccinations, where we stand on bending the curve, where we stand compared to that super contagious variant of the germ that’s out there, hitting us every day right now, I think that’ll be a very good time,” Lamont said Monday.

Lamont said the state has identified four additional cases of the B.1.1.7 Covid-19 variant in the state, for a total of eight known cases. The governor said the state is assuming the variant is much more widespread than just the eight recorded cases. 

According to Lamont, 27% of the people 75 years old and above in Connecticut have now received their first vaccine dose. At least 308,502 vaccine doses have been administered in total and Connecticut expects to have about 585,000 doses delivered by the end of this week, including first and second doses, according to Connecticut’s Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe.

Note: These numbers were released by the state’s public health agency and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University, The Covid Tracking Project and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scaling up manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines can’t be done overnight without sacrificing quality, officials from vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna said Monday.

“In collaboration with our partner, we’re adding new abilities to supply, adding new material suppliers and growing that infrastructure as quickly as we can,” Dr. Rich Pelt, director of regulatory affairs at Pfizer, said during a panel hosted by investment institute iConnections. 

It takes time to get that right, Pelt noted.

Moderna president Dr. Stephen Hoge said vaccine makers have an obligation to maintain quality and consistency as they scale up capacity. 

“There can be no defects and there can’t be any quality concerns,” Hoge said. “It can’t be that it’s only 90% as potent, as you said. It has to be what you made the first time.”

He said the goal is to produce a consistent product at any manufacturing plant.

“There is six, nine months for us to bring new capacity online, no matter who does it, because you want to make sure that by the time it gets up and operating, that it’s really high quality,” Hoge said.

“That’s the frustrating thing about scaling up,” he added.

Hoge said that the introduction of new Covid-19 vaccines will be part of the solution.

“We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we expect J&J, Johnson & Johnson, to have a vaccine here shortly and many others,” Hoge said. “We’re optimistic that actually the solution will not just be that we make more, but that actually there’s many more options available.”

President Biden indicated on Monday that he thinks anyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get it by this spring – a target similar to one set under the Trump administration.

He also said that his administration does know how many coronavirus vaccines are available in the US, shortly after his top spokesperson and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director both told press they weren’t sure how much vaccine was in the American supply.

Asked when any American who wants a vaccine will be able to get it, Biden said during an executive order signing at the White House, “I think it’ll be this spring. I think we’ll be able to do that this spring.”

“I feel confident that by summer we’re going to be well on our way to heading toward herd immunity and increasing the access for people aren’t on the first – on the list, all the way going down to children,” he said. “I feel good about where we’re going and I think we can get it done.” 

Biden indicated that his administration knows the number of vaccines available in the US. 

“(W)e are optimistic that we will have enough vaccine. And in very short order. As you know, we came in office without knowledge of how much vaccine was out being held in abeyance are available. Now that we’re here, we’ve been around a week or so, we now have that,” Biden said at an executive order signing at the White House.

Some context: Hours earlier, White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not provide details on the current coronavirus vaccine supply in the US, blaming problems inherited by the Trump administration for the Biden administration’s lack of information about the current supply levels.

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The Covid-19 variant first found in the United Kingdom has been detected in Nevada, Dr. Mark Pandori, director of Nevada State Public Health Laboratory, said on a conference call Monday afternoon.

The state’s first known case of the variant was found in a symptomatic Las Vegas woman in her 30s after genomic sequencing was conducted at the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory in Reno, Pandori said.

“It is very normal for viruses to be changing, but it really does add to the messaging and the importance that yet another problem with letting this virus circulate wildly in a community is that you will have more variation and opportunities to have variants of this nature,” Pandori continued. 

“Yes, it’s here and yes there’s reason to be concerned about its biological capacity, that’s been shown, but the opportunity is here to prevent any further spread of it, or at least significant threat, or at least to stem its spread, because we believe we caught it pretty early,” Pandori said.

President Biden said he expects the US will soon be able to vaccinate 1.5 million people a day. That moves the goalposts to roughly 500,000 more vaccinations than his target of one million per day in his first 100 days in office. Biden suggested the US could surpass that initial target in about three weeks. 

“I’m quite confident that we will be in a position within the next three weeks or so to be vaccinating people at the range of 1 million a day or in excess of that,” he told reporters Monday, clarifying that he was referring to 100 million shots, not necessarily 100 million people, since some of the vaccines require more than one shot. 

“I think with the grace of God the goodwill of the neighbor and the creek not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 150 – 1.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day. But we have to meet that goal of 1 million a day, and everything points that we’re going to have a) enough vaccine b) enough syringes and all the paraphernalia needed to store, keep, inject move into your arm the vaccine. Three, a number of vaccinators people administering the vaccine, which is not an easy task of those who have those facilities like the nursing homes and hospitals,” Biden continued.

He said his administration is working to produce additional vaccinators and feels “confident” they can do so. He also referenced the importance of creating a forum where Americans “can show up, stand in line, and get their vaccine without having to stand in line for eight hours, being able to pick up the phone, call the pharmacy and get your name on the list, etc.”

The number of new coronavirus cases reported over the past seven days is 22% lower than a week ago and the seven-day average has been trending down for 10 days, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.

Deaths were also lower than a week ago – by about 7% – but January is on track to be Covid-19’s deadliest month in the US. 

At least 73,259 people were reported to have died of Covid-19 in January, according to the most recent data from Johns Hopkins University – more than one death every 30 seconds. More than two cases were reported every second.

Despite the improvements, the average number of new cases and deaths reported each day in January are higher than any other month. The seven-day average for new cases and deaths both hit a peak in the first half of the month.

Dr. Ronald Moolenaar, deputy chief medical officer for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 Emergency Response, gave similar statistics in a briefing Monday to faith leaders. “So these statistics provide us with some valuable information, and when the percentages are decreasing, it tells us that mitigation efforts are working, and that we need to keep up the good work to reduce the spread of Covid,” Moolenaar said during the call.

The European Union has accused AstraZeneca of lack of clarity and said the company had provided “insufficient explanations” for delays in supplying its Covid-19 vaccine to member states.

“Discussions with @AstraZeneca today resulted in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanations,” the European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, tweeted after a meeting with the pharmaceutical giant on Monday. “EU Member States are united: vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities they need to uphold.”

“With our Member States, we have requested from AZ a detailed planning of vaccine deliveries and when distribution will take place to Member States,” Kyriakides also said, adding that another meeting with AstraZeneca would be held on Wednesday. 

Earlier on Monday, Kyriakides said the pharmaceutical giant’s delays were “not acceptable.”

“The European Union has pre-financed the development of the vaccine and its production and wants to see the return,” she also said, adding that the bloc wants to know how many doses the company has produced, and who they’ve been sold to. 

President Joe Biden said he believes the US will be able to administer 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine each day in about the next three weeks

“I’m quite confident that we will be in a position within the next three weeks or so to be vaccinating people at the range of a million a day or in excess of that,” he said on Monday.

Biden said manufacturers have said they are able to produce more vaccine “in a relatively short period of time and then continue that down the road.”

With that volume of vaccinations, Biden said there also needs to be enough infrastructure in place – which includes things like medical equipment to inject the vaccine into people’s arms and freezing units to store the vials.

Biden also said there needs to be enough people to administer the doses and facilities were people can go to receive it, “which is not an easy task,” he added.

“It’s really important that we have the place, the facility, the circumstance where people can show up, stand in line and get their vaccine without having to stand in line for eight hours,” he said. “All those mechanical things are really. They sound simple but they’re all consequential when we’re trying to get out a minimum of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days,” he added.

“It’s going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we’ve ever tried in this country. But I think we can do that,” Biden said.

President Biden was pressed Monday on school reopenings, in light of reports that the Chicago Teachers Union has voted to refuse in-person work, and outlined the steps that must be in place for safe reopening as the country continues to battle Covid-19.

“I believe we should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers, and for the help that’s in those schools maintaining the facilities,” Biden said, citing ventilation systems and testing for both teachers and students. 

“We need the capacity, capacity to know the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone,” he said, adding that every school should be “thoroughly sanitized.”

Teachers, Biden said, want to work. 

“They just want to work in a safe environment… And we should be able to open up for every school, kindergarten through eighth grade,” he said. 

Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine could have a major effect on the rollout of vaccines because the company plans to make so many doses, one of the researchers who helped develop it said Monday.

“If this vaccine proves to be safe and effective, it could have major implications for the vaccine rollout because J&J has committed to producing and deploying at least a billion doses of vaccine during this calendar year, including at least 100 million doses for the US population,” Dr. Dan Barouch, a Harvard Medical School researcher who helped develop Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate, said.

“If it’s a single-dose vaccine, then a billion vaccine doses would translate into a billion people vaccinated,” Barouch said during an episode of the podcast Coronavirus Fact vs Fiction.

“I’m optimistic that if we can have not just two vaccines, but potentially three to five vaccines rolled out, then we can get a substantial fraction of the population vaccinated during this calendar year,” Barouch added.

Barouch also serves as the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston which began collaborating with Johnson & Johnson on this vaccine in March. 

Last week, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Johnson & Johnson is “right around the corner” from seeking emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Michigan now has at least 17 cases of the UK variant of Covid-19, Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh Khaldun announced during a news conference Monday.

These 17 cases are inclusive of the cases previously announced Sunday. 

Four of the B.1.1.7 variant cases were in Wayne County, which covers Detroit and Dearborn, and 13 in Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor, according to Khaldun.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services had previously ordered the University of Michigan to pause its athletic activities after variant cases were linked to the program.

Khaldun urged Michiganders to take advantage of testing and to be vaccinated when able.

“We do not want to have to go backwards, to slow the great progress we’ve already made,” Khaldun said. “We want to continue to reopen our economy, and get back to a sense of normalcy.”

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer welcomed the new director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Elizabeth Hertel, while noting that all of the state’s vaccines have either been administered or scheduled, according to Whitmer.

“The fact of the matter is we don’t yet have the kind of supply that we nee – yet,” Whitmer said. “We do have a plan for 50,000 shots in arms per day, once we have the vaccines that we need.”

Major Gen. William Walker, head of the DC National Guard, said that about 200 members have tested positive for Covid-19 and are being treated for the virus.

Walker said he was “deeply troubled” by the number of members who have tested positive and said they have been following US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocols to avoid spreading the virus to others while deployed in Washington.

Chief of the National Guard Bureau Gen. Daniel Hokanson said that 200 out of 25,000 guards is “less than one percent” infected total.

Thousands of national guards were mobilized to the US capital following the deadly Capitol riot and in response to potential unrest around President Biden’s inauguration.

California on Monday reported another 27,007 cases to its Covid-19 count, bringing the state total to 3,136,158 cases, according to the state Department of Public Health (CDPH), marking the first full week of fewer than 30,000 cases each day since early December.

The CDPH announced 328 new deaths, well below the 14-day average of 504 deaths, for a total of 37,118 since the start of the pandemic. The deaths and case count each increased 0.9% from the prior day total.

The 14-day average positivity rate also continues to decline, falling to 9.4%, down more than 4% over the latest 14-day period.

Hospitalizations due to confirmed and suspected Covid-19 cases are down by 291 patients for a total of 18,347.

Availability of intensive care unit beds statewide are also showing signs of improvement with 1,168 available beds, up 52 from the prior day after plunging to all-time lows last week.

Monday morning, health officials lifted regional stay-at-home orders for the state. The Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California regions, three of the state’s five groups of counties, show a four-week projected ICU capacity of above the 15% threshold. The state also lifted the overnight curfew for residents in the purple tier, the most dire of the four-level color coded system signifying the infections are widespread. 

NOTE: These numbers were released by the California Department of Public Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Monday that wearing two masks is likely more effective to stop the spread of Covid-19.

When asked about whether double masking or using an N95 mask makes a difference, Fauci told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that it likely does. 

“Because, I mean, this is a physical covering to prevent droplets and virus to get in,” Fauci said. “So, if you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective and that’s the reason why you see people either double masking or doing a version of an N95.” 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people wear masks in public settings and anywhere they will be around other people, and says people should wear masks that have two or more layers of fabric that fit snugly over the nose and mouth.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not provide details on the US’ current coronavirus vaccine supply, blaming problems inherited from the Trump administration for the Biden administration’s lack of information about current supply levels.

Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during Monday’s briefing whether there was a ballpark amount of the US’ vaccine supply, Psaki said, “Well, our team is working right now. We’ve been here for five days to evaluate the supply, so that we can release the maximum amount while also ensuring that everyone can get the second dose on the FDA recommended schedule.”

“The confusion around this issue, which we acknowledge there is some confusion, speaks to a larger problem — which is what we’re inheriting from the prior administration, which is much worse than we could have imagined,” Psaki said. “So, we are assessing now what we have access to, and ensuring that we have more of a rapid engagement with states so that they have more of a heads up on what to expect in the weeks ahead.”

The comments come a day after the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, told “Fox News Sunday,” “I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have, and if I can’t tell it to you then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials.”

Walensky indicated during the interview that the lack of knowledge about the US’ vaccine supply was a result of “the challenges” the Biden administration has been left with by the Trump administration.

Psaki would not acknowledge Army Gen. Gus Perna’s role working on the supply issue, and whether Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, would have more answers. Asked whether Perna, who oversaw vaccine logistics under Trump, would have more information on the current supply, Psaki said, “Again, there is a new CDC director who is in charge, hence who spoke to this, and I think what we’re trying to do is fully assess what we have access to.”

President Biden on Monday will sign a presidential proclamation on travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This move will reinstate the Covid-19 travel restrictions that former President Trump lifted last week, and includes non-US citizens who have been in Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, as well as the new addition of South Africa.

“The President will sign a presidential proclamation to reduce the spread of Covid-19 through travel, especially as we see faster spreading variants emerging across the world,” press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday’s briefing.

She continued, “On advice of our administration’s medical and Covid team, President Biden has decided to maintain the restrictions previously in place for the European Schengen area, the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and Brazil. With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variant contagious variants spreading, this isn’t the time to be lifting the restrictions on international travel,” noting that in light of a and in light of the contagious variant, B1351, South Africa has been added to the restricted list.”

Psaki also announced that beginning Tuesday, international travelers to the United States “must provide proof of a negative test within three days of travel to airlines prior to departure.”

Asked later for clarification, Psaki said that the new negative testing requirement includes all people boarding planes, including US citizens, coming from overseas.

Hear more from the press briefing:

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The European Union’s Health Commissioner says AstraZeneca’s delays in supplying its Covid-19 vaccine to member states are “not acceptable.” 

“There is a problem on the supply side. Last Friday the company, AstraZeneca, surprisingly informed the Commission and the European Union member states that it intends to supply considerably fewer doses in the coming weeks than agreed and announced,” the European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said during a news conference in Brussels on Monday. “This new schedule is not acceptable to the European Union.”

“The European Union has pre-financed the development of the vaccine and its production and wants to see the return,” she also said, adding that the bloc wants to know how many doses the company has produced, and who they’ve been sold to. 

Kyriakides went on to say she’d written to AstraZeneca over the weekend, seeking clarification, and that the issue was again discussed between member states and the company during a joint steering board. A second meeting is scheduled for later today because according to the EU Health Commissioner, AstraZeneca’s answers “have not been satisfactory.”

“The European Union wants the ordered and pre-financed doses to be delivered as soon as possible, and we want our contract to be fully fulfilled,” she said. 

The European Union purchased 400 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for its member states. The vaccine is in the final stages of approval with the European Medicines Agency and, according to Kyriakides, if all requirements are met, market authorisation could be granted by the end of this week.

Stocks fell on Monday, with the Dow sinking 250 points, the S&P 500 down 0.5% and the Nasdaq about flat.

Investors are worried about vaccine availability after Merck pulled its Covid-19 vaccine plans.

Investors are also worried that President Biden’s stimulus plan won’t pass as easily or quickly as previously believed.

“We are turning a critical corner,” California’s top health official said as he announced the state is lifting regional stay-at-home orders. 

The orders applied to Southern California, San Joaquin Valley, and Bay Area regions, encompassing over 90% of the state’s population. The four-week intensive care unit capacity projections for these regions are above 15%, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), the threshold that allows regions to exit the order. 

“Californians heard the urgent message to stay home as much as possible and accepted that challenge to slow the surge and save lives,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, CDPH Director said in a news release. “Together, we changed our activities knowing our short-term sacrifices would lead to longer-term gains. COVID-19 is still here and still deadly, so our work is not over, but it’s important to recognize our collective actions saved lives and we are turning a critical corner.” 

Southern California and San Joaquin Valley regions have been under the state order since Dec. 6 and the Bay area since Dec. 17. The mandate, aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19, instructed residents to stay home as much as possible and not mix with other households. It closed hair salons, museums, movie theaters, and restricted restaurants to take-out only service. 

The other two areas, Northern California and Greater Sacramento, are not currently under the order. The mandate was triggered when intensive care unit capacity in a region falls below 15%. 

Counties not under the regional order will abide by the state’s four-color tiering system:

The CDPH said the majority of the counties of the San Joaquin Valley, Bay Area, and Southern California regions are in the purple tier, the strictest. Outdoor dining and personal services may resume with modifications required by local jurisdictions.

The United Kingdom reported 22,195 new Covid-19 cases and 592 new deaths within 28 days of a positive test on Monday, the government’s dashboard showed.

The total number of people in the UK who have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test now stands at 98,531.

According to the government’s data, 6,573,570 people have received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, whilst 470,478 people have received the second dose.

Mexican health officials expect Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine to be delivered in the country “soon,” Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said after a phone call took place between the presidents of both countries on Monday.

After a “cordial and successful” conversation between Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López Gatell will work with the Russian government to advance the delivery of the vaccine, Ebrard said.

The phone call between President López Obrador and President Vladimir Putin is one of the first scheduled engagements for López Obrador since he tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday.

López Obrador participated in the call from his residence at the presidential palace.

Some background on Russia’s Sputnik V:

Read more about Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine here

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said today that over 600,000 vaccines have been administered since the beginning of its effort, though he stressed the city “urgently” needs more supply, and flexibility to vaccinate.

As of now, the city has on hand just over 19,000 first doses remaining, with just over 107,000 expected in resupply this week, he said.

The city can stay on track for second doses, he said, and remains at capacity to vaccinate at 500,000 per week. Appointments continue to be rescheduled.

For context – 628,831 doses have already administered – the number can be compared to more than the entire population of Louisville, Kentucky, the nation’s 29th largest city, the Mayor said to ensure confidence in the effort.

Mega sites like CitiField and Yankee Stadium are “ready to go” he said adding “but we don’t have the vaccine.”

De Blasio noted that he and other mayors spoke with the Biden administration last week specifically about increasing vaccine capacity, noting the administration is “supremely focused” looking for every “conceivable way” to move vaccines quicker. He is “hopeful” they will get answers this week that will “fundamentally” change the reality.

What the numbers look like: New York City added 4,743 new cases of probable and confirmed Covid-19, marking 8.44% positivity, according to the Mayor.

Mayor de Blasio said Monday 240 patients were admitted to hospitals for suspected Covid-19, and the city is reporting at rate of 5.18 individuals hospitalized per 100k people.

A German hospital that was placed under quarantine following an outbreak of the coronavirus variant has registered further cases of the UK variant.

Regional director of the Vivantes Humboldt-Klinikum hospital in Berlin Juergen Kirschbaum said in a press conference that so far 12 patients and 10 staff members had tested positive for the SARS-CoV2 variant of the type B.1.1.7 — the variant that was first identified in the UK — on the internal medicine and cardiology department. 

The increase brings the total number of patients to 63.

In a different Berlin hospital, the Klinikum Spandau, two additional cases were found where patients had contact with the UK variant at the Vivantes Humboldt-Klinikum.

The hospital has been testing all patients since Sunday, it said, as well as immediately isolating patients who show Covid-19 symptoms. Kirschbaum added that while 1,100 staff members have been tested by 12 p.m. CET, not all results have come back yet.

The facility is expected to provide a further update later on Monday evening Central European Time.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reflected on why the US was hit so badly by the coronavirus: mixed messaging, divisiveness and the federalist approach. 

“We had a situation where instead of concentrating from the top on the science and realizing that we must make decisions based on data and based on evidence, there was a considerable amount of mixed messaging about what needed to be done from the top down,” Fauci said. “And that really cost us dearly.” 

Fauci, who was speaking at a panel during the Davos World Economic Forum on Monday, added, there was “a profound degree of” divisiveness in the country and public health issues — such as mask-wearing – became political statements. “You cannot imagine how destructive that is to any unified public health message.”   

Finally, Fauci spoke about the federalist approach in the US: 50 states and territories which are given a degree of flexibility to do things their own way. 

While he said that under different circumstances this works well, in the pandemic, when the government didn’t want to tell the states what to do, there was a situation where he said that the states were “sort of left on their own,” meaning “we had a disparate, inconsistent response from one state to the other, which is antithetical to the fact that the virus is the same, it doesn’t know the difference between New York and Pennsylvania, between Louisiana and Mississippi, it’s all the same.”

“We needed to have a good cooperation between the federal government and the individual locals, which we did not have,” he said.  

The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine created antibodies that neutralized coronavirus variants first found in the United Kingdom and South Africa, the company said in a news release on Monday.

Two doses of the vaccine “is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to date,” according to the release.   

The company’s study showed that the variant first found in the UK had “no significant impact” on the vaccine’s effectiveness.  

The results for the variant first spotted in South Africa, however, were not as optimistic — and some early studies have suggested vaccines may be somewhat less effective against this strain.

In the press release, Moderna noted that “a six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was observed with (the variant discovered in South Africa) relative to prior variants.”  

The company said the vaccine was still expected to be effective.  

“Despite this reduction, neutralizing titer levels with (the variant discovered in South Africa) remain above levels that are expected to be protective,” according to the press release.   

David Montefiori, a virologist at Duke University Medical Center, said while he’s “cautiously optimistic” Moderna’s vaccine will work well against this strain, he’s still not sure.  

The variant first identified in the UK has also appeared in more than 45 other countries, including 195 cases in the US.   

The variant first identified in South Africa has appeared in more than 20 other countries. No cases have been identified in the US, but experts say it’s likely there are cases and US surveillance, which has been widely criticized, has not yet found them.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Good Morning America on Monday that it was a “prudent decision” for the new administration to reinstate travel restrictions.

He said that he thinks the travel ban will be important “in addition to having a situation where anybody coming into the country now is going to be required to have a negative test before they even get on the plane, when they land to have a degree of quarantine, as well as another test.” 

“I believe it was prudent, even though it’s never perfect, there’s always a possibility, and even a likelihood of some slippage, but I think the ban, which was discussed very intensively by the group, was the right decision,” Fauci said. 

Some context: On Sunday, CNN reported that Biden would reinstate Covid travel restrictions on non-US citizens who have been in Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and much of Europe. The restrictions were also extended to travelers who have recently been in South Africa. The reinstating of the travel restrictions came one week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would have lifted them on Jan. 26.  

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the idea of quarantining people arriving into the country in hotels for 10 days as a Covid-19 measure is “definitely” being “looked at.”

The Prime Minister suggested that more must be done to protect people with the threat of new variants spreading from other countries saying we have “got to be able to keep that under control.”

As coronavirus infections and death rates soar across the country, schools in England have been closed to most pupils since a third national lockdown began on January 5, as well as large sections of 2020. Now pressure is building on the British government to reopen them.

On Monday, Johnson said people “mustn’t assume” that schools will be closed until Easter, following recent media reports, warning decisions are dependent on Covid-19 infection rates.

He said parents and teachers will be told of any decisions “as soon as we can” but the government is not yet able to give a timeframe for when pupils will return to classrooms.

Europe continues to battle further waves of the coronavirus pandemic. Here are some of the key lines from the continent today:

A rural county in Washington state is lapping the field when it comes to distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.

Kittitas County says its experience in triaging and managing disasters, especially wildfires, is the secret to why it is outpacing the vaccine rates in the state.

“We’re a fairly rural county, and we get significant weather events, mostly wildfires,” said Rich Elliott, the deputy fire chief of Kittitas Valley Fire and Rescue.

“Our county has a 25-year history of just sort of everybody – the hospital, the school districts, law enforcement, fire agencies, federal state partners – we just cooperate.”

When the pandemic started and there was a need for personal protective equipment and testing, groups working with the emergency management center banded together to respond.

Now the cross-functional team of essential workers and volunteers are working to distribute the vaccine and it’s working, says Elliott, who is in charge of vaccine distribution for the county. In fact, he says a single dose hasn’t been wasted.

Read more on this story here:

Rich Elliott receives the Covid-19 vaccine in Kittitas County, Washington.

Related article A rural county in Washington state hasn't wasted a single Covid-19 vaccine dose. Here's its secret

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday that he didn’t think that the vaccine was responsible for the plateau of Covid-19 cases yet. 

“What I think this really is is just the natural peaking and then plateauing and coming down,” he told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie. “The number of vaccines that we’ve gotten into the arms of people, you know, good start, we want to keep going, get a lot of people vaccinated, but I don’t think the dynamics of what we’re seeing now with the plateauing is significantly influenced yet  — it will be soon — but yet by the vaccine. I just think it’s the natural course of plateauing.” 

However, he said that people can’t get complacent, because the coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom is now circulating in the US and it transmits more easily from person to person. 

“The good news is what you just said, that we seem to be plateauing,” Fauci said. “The sobering news is that we cannot bring our guard up and lose the intensity of being able to use the public health measures to prevent the further spread, because if in fact the variant becomes dominant, if the variant that has greater degree of transmissibility becomes dominant, we’re going to be faced with another challenge of a virus that has a more efficient capability of spreading.”

Hong Kong has greenlit the Fosun-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine – the first shot to be approved in the city – according to a government statement released on Monday.

The statement said the initial batch of 1 million doses is expected to arrive in Hong Kong in late February, where on arrival the government would begin the rollout “as soon as possible.”

Some background: The approval of the Fosun-BioNTech shot comes after an advisory panel unanimously voted in favor of the vaccine for emergency use last week, where the 12-member panel were in agreement the vaccine met the safety and quality requirements in Hong Kong for emergency use.

The vaccine’s approval makes it the first in the financial hub and comes at a time where the government is expected to implement new quarantine measures for cabin crew next month, as the region battles to contain another wave of coronavirus.

Hong Kong’s airline Cathay Pacific said in a statement they would expect their passenger rates to reduce by nearly 60% and cargo capacity by 25% if the government does go ahead with plans.

Under the proposed plans by the government, pilots and cabin crew would be expected to face a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine when they return from an overseas trip.

CVS, a partner in the US’ federal program to vaccinate residents and staff of long-term care facilities, says it has completed the first round doses in all participating skilled nursing facilities as of Monday. The company has administered 1,039,365 doses in 7,822 skilled nursing facilities.

As part of the federal partnership program, CVS and Walgreens are contracted to administer Covid-19 vaccines to more than 40,000 long-term care facilities, including skilled nursing facilities, assisted living and other facilities. CVS anticipates completing administration of first round doses in all long-term care facilities by mid-February. 

“We’ve administered nearly two million shots to one of our most vulnerable populations through onsite and, in many cases, room-to-room visits,” Karen Lynch, executive vice president of CVS Health, said in a press release.

Walgreens and CVS have come under fire for a slow rollout, with some nursing homes saying it has taken too long to get the shots. The company says that doses administered out of doses allocated is not an accurate way to its track progress; dose allocations were based on long-term care facility bed counts and multiplied by two to account for staff, “but at most facilities occupancy is far less than bed count and staff uptake remains low.”

Walgreens said last week it expected to complete administering nearly all of its first Covid-19 vaccine doses to nursing home residents and staff on Monday.

In its news release on Monday, CVS said that a Covid-19 vaccine will eventually be available to the public at its pharmacies based on vaccine availability and prioritization recommendations, and it has the capacity to administer 20 to 25 million shots per month. Currently, CVS pharmacies in Indiana, Massachusetts and New York are offering vaccines to specific age groups.

New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi told CNN Monday that the city “does not have enough doses” of Covid-19 vaccine to “be able to meet the demand we know exists among New Yorkers.”

Speaking to CNN New Day’s Alisyn Camerota, Chokshi said the current supply, only a few thousand doses, will be used in the next 24 to 48 hours and that New York City had the ability to administer more vaccines if there was more supply.

During one week in January, every three seconds a New Yorker was being vaccinated equaling more than 220,000 doses being administered in one week, but Chokshi said the number of vaccinations could easily double or go even higher if they had the supply. 

More than 20,000 vaccine appointments scheduled for last week had to be rescheduled, Chokshi added.

He expects to get a re-supply Tuesday and Wednesday of 100,000 doses, but he says those doses will be gone by the end of the week.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to lift regional stay-at-home orders in the state Monday, allowing for gyms and restaurants to have limited outdoor activity according to a letter from the California Restaurant Association to its members and shared with CNN, which said it had been notified of the plan Sunday evening by the governor’s office.

Currently, counties in Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley, and the Bay area are under regional stay-at-home orders which were instituted in early December as Covid-19 cases began to surge.

The Los Angeles Times reported that while hospitals in southern and central parts of the state remain under pressure from a high number of patients, the Newsom administration projects that intensive care unit capacity in those areas will exceed 15% over the next 4 weeks, which would allow for the lifting of regional shutdowns under the governor’s December order. State officials have not shared how they make the “four-week ICU calculations,” according to the LA Times.  

Once announced, the change is expected to take effect immediately with all counties reverting to a colored tier system that assigns risk based on the numbers of cases and rates of positive Covid-19 tests, the newspaper reported.

It is unclear whether stay-at-home orders in Los Angeles County — where hospitals continue to be overwhelmed — will be lifted when the order is canceled, the L.A. Times reported.

People in the United Kingdom have been living under lockdown for the past three weeks, hoping their sacrifice would bring the country’s latest coronavirus surge – caused by the new, more contagious variant of the virus – under control.

But despite the harsh restrictions, case numbers are not dropping as fast as experts have hoped. Deaths continue to rise and public health experts and government are starting to warn people that the country will be in this battle for the long run.

The new variant, known as B.1.1.7, has wreaked havoc in the UK, fueling a surge in cases towards the end of 2020 despite a national lockdown being in place. Data showing an uptick in cases in younger people suggests this was largely because schools had stayed open, enabling the variant to spread rapidly.

For many experts, the decision to enter another lockdown came too late.

“It’s amazing that we seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again – with increasing loss of life,” Dr. Julian Tang, clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, noted in comments to the UK’s Science Media Centre.

Read the full story here:

TOPSHOT - Pedestrians walk through central Glasgow as Britain enters a national lockdown in London on January 5, 2021. - Scotland is to impose a nationwide coronavirus lockdown for the rest of January because of a surge in cases, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced. (Photo by Andy Buchanan / AFP) (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article Three weeks into harsh lockdown, weary Brits fear it will take much longer to beat the new variant

Pharmaceutical giant Merck announced Monday it is discontinuing development of its Covid-19 vaccine candidates, after early studies showed immune responses were inferior to natural infection and other Covid-19 vaccines.

Merck said it plans to submit results from Phase 1 trials of its vaccine candidates, known as V590 and V591, for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Two Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna have already been authorized for emergency use in the United States by the US Food and Drug Administration; both are about 95% effective after two doses.

Japanese police reported an increased number of people who died at home from Covid-19 in January and December, according public broadcaster NHK.  

NHK reports the National Police Agency confirmed 75 deaths between January 1 and January 20 and 56 deaths in the month of December. In total, it has recorded 197 deaths at home since March 2020.

The broadcaster says many cases of infection were only confirmed in post-mortem examination and that people could not be seen swiftly by doctors despite falling ill.

Some background: To date, Japan has reported more than 368,000 coronavirus cases, according to the tally from Johns Hopkins University.

Earlier this month, the country expanded its state of emergency in several prefectures and banned all foreign nationals from entering the country.

The state of emergency orders companies to encourage their staff to work from home and reduce office populations by 70%. Residents of the affected areas are also urged to avoid non-essential outings and restaurants have to stop serving alcohol by 7 p.m. and close by 8 p.m. Sports and entertainment events in Japan are also requested to limit the number of attendees.

German health ministry spokesman Hanno Kautz said he expects the European Union to approve the AstraZeneca Covid-19 shot this Friday.

The vaccine – which has already been approved for emergency use in the UK – has been under review by the European Medicines Agency since January 12. The bloc has already fast-tracked the reviews for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot as well as the Moderna vaccine and both have been authorized for use.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke to AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot on Monday morning over the phone and “made it clear that she expects AstraZeneca to deliver on the contractual arrangements foreseen in the advance purchasing agreement,” EU Commission chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said.

The conversation between the two comes after the EU expressed its “deep dissatisfaction” on Friday, after being informed by AstraZeneca that vaccine deliveries to member states – pending authorization – would not arrive before the end of the first quarter of 2021, as originally forecast.

Von der Leyen reminded AstraZeneca that “the EU has invested significant amounts in the company up front, precisely to ensure that production is ramped up even before the conditional marketing authorization is delivered by the European Medicines Agency,” Mamer said.

“Of course, production issues can appear with a complex vaccine but we expect the company to find solutions and to exploit all possible flexibilities to deliver swiftly,” Mamer added.

Separately EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides sent a letter to AstraZeneca Sunday “to request further clarifications” over the shortfall of its deliveries, EU spokesperson Stefan de Keersmaecker said Monday.

“In this letter the Commissioner stresses the importance of deliveries in line with the schedules laid down in the agreement, and she reiterated that the scaling up of the production capacity has to happen concurrently with the conduct of clinical trials to ensure the availability of vaccines as quickly as possible. This is really important premise of the contract,” de Keersmaecker added.

Google Maps are set to roll out a new feature, beginning in four US states, that displays locations offering Covid-19 vaccinations, the company announced on Monday.

Google (GOOGL) announced the feature would roll out in the coming weeks in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They added that since the beginning of the year the search for “vaccines near me” have increased five fold and was introducing this feature to ensure it provides “locally relevant answers.”

The results will be shown in designated panels in search results about if an appointment is required, if the vaccine available to certain groups only and if there is a drive-thru.

Google said it’s working with “authoritative sources” for the information, including local governments and retail pharmacies.

It’s the latest change to Google Maps in relation to the pandemic. In September, the Maps app began displaying seven-day averages of new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people.

The company intends to roll out information about vaccine sites to other states and countries at a later point.

Read the full story here:

Related article Google Maps will soon display Covid-19 vaccination sites

British lawmakers are calling on the country’s government to set out a “route map” for the reopening of schools, amid media reports that students might not return to in-person teaching until after the Easter holidays.

Chairman of the education select committee, Conservative MP Robert Halfon, tweeted Sunday that he had asked to table an urgent question on the matter in Parliament.

“Given media speculation on schools no longer opening post Feb half-term, I’ve written to Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to ask for House of Commons Urgent Question to get clarity,” Halfon added. 

“We know the significant damage this is doing to children in terms of mental health, educational attainment, safeguarding hazards and their general wellbeing,” Halfon said in an interview with Sky News on Monday. 

He said he’d like a plan for support staff and teachers to be given the vaccination as a priority after the clinically vulnerable. He added he was not a lockdown skeptic but worried hugely about the effects of school closures on children. 

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey told BBC Breakfast she was “not aware of any decisions being made yet” over when schools would reopen.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, also called for a government plan on schools, including which children could be brought back first and when, in an interview with BBC News on Monday. He asked whether there could be a rota system in place and said the “sense of a plan would give a reassurance for parents.”

Writing in the Daily Mail newspaper on Monday, UK Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: “The last thing any parent wanted was to see schools closing to most pupils – as they had to at the start of this month.” On returning to classrooms, he said “as soon as Covid infection rates are back under control then we will get them back there as quickly as we can”.

It comes as other Conservative MPs, such as Esther McVey, are backing a campaign to reopen schools. McVey tweeted Sunday: “Schools need to reopen for the child’s best interest and for families too. If vaccinating teachers, after the most vulnerable in society, removes the barriers to reopening schools then we should do it. You can’t close schools and not have a workable alternative.”

Schools in England have been closed to all students expect for children of key workers and vulnerable pupils since the start of a national lockdown on January 5.

Read more on what history can tell us about the long-term effects of disruptions to education:

A United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) French soldier escorts on August 14, 1993 a group of children after they left their Kobilja Gava school in Sarajevo neighbourhood a few hundred meters from the front line. A Serb sniper killed already a young girl and wounded another one from this school. AFP PHOTO GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo by Gabriel BOUYS / AFP) (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article How will school closures affect children in the long run? Wars, disease and natural disasters offer clues

Austria became the latest European country to make medical-grade face masks mandatory in some public places on Monday.

People must now switch their face coverings to FFP2 filtering facepiece respirators or N95 masks when traveling on public transport as well as when visiting shops, markets or when picking up takeaway food from restaurants.

The new mask mandate is for all individuals aged 14 and over, the Austrian Health Ministry website said. Children from the age of six can instead wear a mouth and nose covering, while children below six are exempt from mask use.

Some context: France and Germany introduced similar measures in public spaces last week.

France’s Health Minister Olivier Veran on Tuesday said homemade masks were made with the best intentions but “do not necessarily offer all the necessary guarantees.”

A few days later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cited the spread of new coronavirus variants, which were first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil, as the reason for stricter requirements in the country. “I urge people to take this seriously. Otherwise it is difficult to prevent a third wave,” Merkel told journalists in Berlin on Thursday.

Austria has reported a total of 398,399 Covid-19 cases as of Monday, according to data from the country’s health ministry. 

Read more on European countries revising their mask regulations here:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel puts on her face mask after giving a press conference on the Covid-19 situation in Germany at the house of the Federal Press Conference (Bundespressekonferenz), on January 21, 2021 in Berlin. (Photo by Michael Kappeler / POOL / AFP) (Photo by MICHAEL KAPPELER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article European countries mandate medical-grade masks over cloth face coverings

Pfizer Korea has applied for approval of its vaccine developed with BioNTech in South Korea, the country’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety said Monday.

The ministry aims to review the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine within 40 days, and quality assurance certification within 20 days.

South Korea plans to import 10 million doses of the vaccine and reported last month it was working to move up delivery to the second quarter of the year.

AstraZeneca applied for approval of its vaccine in South Korea earlier this month.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has condemned the violence of anti-lockdown demonstrators, saying their behavior was “unacceptable.”

On Sunday, police and protesters clashed during a demonstration against Covid-19 restrictions in central Amsterdam, where more than 240 arrests were made, according to Reuters.

Police used water cannon, dogs and riot police on horseback to disperse the protesters.

According to NOS, riot police were deployed in at least 10 cities and towns after a new nightly curfew came into effect on Saturday night. Vehicles were set alight, police had stones thrown at them and public property was destroyed.

Rutte added that 99% of people in the country are sticking to the curfew.

Since mid-December, schools and non-essential shops have been shut in the Netherlands. There have been more than 13,600 coronavirus-related deaths and more than 962,000 infections in the country so far, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Some background:

Israel’s main international airport will be almost completely shuttered for the next week, after the government banned all incoming flights by non-Israeli airlines, in an effort to stop the entry into the country of new variants of the coronavirus. 

The measures came into effect at midnight and will last until January 31, according to a joint statement from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Health Ministry Sunday. 

Israeli carriers are also facing “temporary restrictions” on their operating licenses, meaning they are also expected to cancel all flights, with exceptions permitted on departing flights if they are for medical treatment, legal proceedings that require participation, or to allow for attendance at the funeral of a relative. 

Foreign carriers are now only be allowed to land in Israel if the flight is a medical emergency evacuation or a cargo plane.

South Korea reported its first case of an animal Covid-19 infection after a household cat tested positive for the virus, according to the country’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA.)

The cat tested positive for Covid-19 on January 21, KDCA said in a news release Monday. 

Three cats were tested after their owners – a mother and her daughter – tested positive for the virus. One of the three animals also tested positive.

The prayer home where the cats live is located in South Korea’s South Gyeongsang province, where the mother and daughter also stayed. At least 112 Covid-19 cases have been linked to the prayer home in the past week, KDCA added. 

The cat has been separated from other cats to prevent spread within a pet care shelter.

KDCA said there has been no reports of pets infecting humans, but the care unit is looking after the infected cat with PPE gear as a preventative measure.

Health authorities and the Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency will work on a Covid-19-related guideline for pets.

The head of the scientific council advising the French government on the Covid-19 pandemic said Sunday that France would “probably need a new lockdown” and that there is an “emergency” in the country. 

France enacted two lockdowns in 2020. The first started in March and lasted until May while the second “lockdown light” began late October and ended in December. 

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said a third lockdown would be inevitable if the restrictive measures currently in place did nothing to curb the infections driven by the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK.

“If the numbers don’t go down, if the variants start to spread everywhere, then we will take additional measures, of course. It’s called lockdown,” Veran told newspaper Le Parisien Sunday. 

The average number of new infections in France has been gradually increasing from 18,000 per day to more than 20,000, according to figures from the country’s Health Ministry. 

France passed the threshold of 3 million Covid-19 cases on Friday and so far more than 1 million people have been vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry. 

Measures to fight the pandemic: On Sunday, new border controls went into effect for people entering France from other European Union countries by air or sea. Travelers must be able to show a negative PCR test carried out fewer than 72 hours before departure.

Nine days ago, the start of a nationwide curfew was brought forward by two hours to 6 p.m. 

French President Emmanuel Macron will chair a Defense Council meeting Wednesday to decide on new restrictions. 

With the US now tallying more than 25 million Covid-19 cases, experts say now is the time to double down on safety measures and speed up vaccine rollouts before a variant further surges infections.

“The best way to prevent the emergence of new variants is to do all of the things we’ve been talking about for months,” infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder told CNN Sunday night. “The more you let the virus spread, the more it mutates, the more variants you’ll have.”

But the US continues to add staggering numbers of cases daily and faces several major challenges when it comes to vaccines. States say they don’t have enough doses, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Sunday there’s a lack of information on supply.

“I would say one of the biggest problems right now is I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have,” Walensky told Fox News. “If I can’t tell it to you, then I can’t tell it to the governors and I can’t tell it to the state health officials.”

“If they don’t know how much vaccine they’re getting, not just this week but next week and the week after, they can’t plan.”

It likely will be months from now until the vaccine is widely available to the American public, Gounder, who is also a former member of the Biden transition Covid-19 advisory board, said.

Read the full story:

Virgina Mason advanced registered nurse practitioner Erin Forsythe loads a syringing with the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine during a partnership with the hospital network and Amazon to increase the efficiency of vaccinations, at the Amazon Meeting Center in downtown Seattle, Washington on January 24, 2021. - Amazon is partnering with Virginia Mason for a one-day pop-up clinic on January 24. 2021 that aims to vaccinate 2,000 people at the companys Meeting Center near downtown Seattle. Virginia Mason is handling vaccine administration, while Amazon is providing the location and help with logistics. (Photo by Grant HINDSLEY / AFP) (Photo by GRANT HINDSLEY/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article 'Healthy, young' Americans will likely get Covid-19 vaccine in mid- to late summer, expert says

A second batch of 6.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech arrived in Istanbul early Monday, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.  

Turkey received 3 million doses of Sinovac vaccine in December. The country’s drug authorities approved it for emergency use on January 13, before starting a mass vaccination drive the day after.    

Ankara has previously said the deal with Sinovac Biotech is for 50 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. 

Turkey has so far inoculated over 1.25 million people, mostly health workers and the elderly, according to the Turkish Health Ministry.  

The country has nearly completed vaccinating healthcare workers and has begun an at-home vaccination program for the elderly over the age of 85 across all 81 provinces, the ministry said Friday.  

The Australian government has suspended quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders arriving in Australia for a minimum of 72 hours, after a South African variant of Covid-19 was detected in a woman after 14 days of quarantine in New Zealand.

Travelers coming from New Zealand to Australia in the next 72 hours will be required to enter mandatory hotel quarantine for up to 14 days on arrival or other such arrangements in individual states and territories, according to a media release from Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt.

In addition, anyone who arrived in Australia from New Zealand on or since January 14 is asked to get tested and remain in isolation until they receive a negative test. This change comes into effect immediately, the release said.

The move comes after New Zealand said on Monday that a woman who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving quarantine in New Zealand had been infected with the South African variant.

Since October, travelers coming from New Zealand did not need to complete a 14-day mandatory quarantine if they have been in New Zealand for 14 days prior to travel.

A woman in New Zealand who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving quarantine likely contracted it from another returned traveler on the same floor in her quarantine hotel, according to the country’s health officials.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health confirmed to CNN in an email that the case is “not due to community transmission.”

The 56-year-old woman recently returned from Europe and underwent 14 days of quarantine at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland. She returned two negative tests during her stay before leaving quarantine on January 13, according to a media release from New Zealand’s Ministry of Health Sunday. She later developed symptoms and tested positive for the virus.

“The source of infection is highly likely to be a fellow returnee during the person’s stay at the Pullman hotel,” New Zealand’s Minister for Covid-19 Response Chris Hipkins said Monday. “The two people occupied rooms in close proximity to each other on the same floor of the Pullman hotel.”

Genome sequencing results of the woman and another guest who was in the quarantine facility are identical, according to a media release from New Zealand’s Ministry of Health Monday. Early information suggests the transmission occurred between January 9 and 13, the release said.

The ministry added that the woman had contracted the South African variant. She has 15 close contacts, who are all self-isolating and have been tested.

At least 18,111 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in Japan are waiting for a hospital bed or space at isolation centers in the 11 prefectures in the country under a state of emergency, according to local health officials.

CNN spoke to health officials in each prefecture where the virus is most prevalent.  

Coronavirus cases in Japan have surged drastically in the past two months. As of Sunday, the country has reported a total of 360,661 infections, a 74% increase from a month ago and 165% increase from two months ago.

Satoshi Hori, an infectious disease expert at Juntendo University, told CNN that high-risk groups – such as the elderly and those displaying severe symptoms – should be admitted to hospital upon receiving a positive result. People who develop mild symptoms after contracting Covid-19 are sent to designated facilities for isolation, Hori said.

Overwhelming surge: Prefectures are in charge of local protocols of where and when to move people who test positive for Covid-19. The 18,111 patients reported Sunday includes people with mild or no symptoms who are waiting for space in an isolation center. 

Among the 11 prefectures under a state of emergency, Tokyo has the highest number of infected people on the waiting list, having jumped nearly five times from December 19 to more than 7,500 people on Sunday, according to a Kyodo News Agency report Sunday. Meanwhile, the western prefecture of Hyogo has seen its number increase almost six times to at least 727 people.

Japan’s Ministry of Health declined to give CNN comment on the number of people waiting for hospital or isolation accommodation and said it does not release statistics on those cases.

This post was updated with the latest available figures.

Residents of a city in northeast China have taken to social media to complain that a stringent coronavirus lockdown has left them short of food and medicine, triggering an online uproar and an apology from local officials.

Tonghua, a city of about 2 million in Jilin province, has been locked down since January 18 amid rising Covid-19 infections. All flights, trains, buses and taxis have been suspended, and residents barred from leaving their homes.

Under the restrictions, people must order daily necessities online, and have them delivered to their residential compounds by volunteers, according to the municipal government.

However, Tonghua residents complained on Chinese social media last week that there had been a delay in deliveries, causing a shortage of food, medicine, and infant milk powder.

The backlash: The residents’ posts ignited a wave of criticism against the Tonghua government, with some accusing local officials of disregard for people’s livelihood in order to meet epidemic control targets.

Following the backlash, city officials admitted Sunday that the delivery of daily necessities is “untimely and unavailable” to some residents, citing a shortage of manpower.

“The municipal party committee and the municipal government express their sincere apologies,” Deputy Mayor Jiang Haiyan said at a news conference.

On Sunday night, some residents posted photos online of vegetable packages they received, but many others said they were still waiting.

The Tonghua government said Monday that vegetables had been delivered to nearly 67,000 households, and more than 7,000 officials and volunteers would continue to distribute food to the rest of the residents.

Stark contrast: Some social media users pointed to the disparities between the harsh lockdown measures in Tonghua and the more humane quarantine policies in some major cities.

In Shanghai, the government was lauded for allowing residents of “medium-risk” neighborhoods to bring their pets to government-designated hotels for quarantine.

The Beijing municipal government said it would allow each household to leave one family member at home to take care of pets if they are ordered to go into quarantine.

The United States reported 130,485 new coronavirus infections and 1,769 virus-related fatalities on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

According to JHU’s tally, the nationwide totals now stand at 25,124,954 cases, including 419,209 deaths.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.

Vaccine numbers: At least 41,411,550  vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 21,848,655 shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN is tracking US cases here.

Reduced yields in the European supply chain are the reason that lower volumes of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine will initially be delivered to EU member states, according to a spokesperson for the drugmaker.

The European Union expressed its “deep dissatisfaction” on Friday, after being informed by AstraZeneca that vaccine deliveries to member states – pending authorization – would not arrive before the end of the first quarter of 2021, as originally forecast.

An AstraZeneca spokesperson told CNN that reduced yields at a manufacturing site in the European supply chain have caused the lower volumes of initial deliveries, but there is no schedule delay to the start of shipments once its vaccine receives approval in Europe.

“We will be supplying tens of millions of doses in February and March to the European Union, as we continue to ramp up production volumes,” the spokesperson said, without offering details on how much lower the initial volume of vaccine supply would be.

EU’s expectations: The EU was expecting 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the first quarter of this year. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) received an application for conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford on January 12. The decision on granting marketing authorization could be given by January 29.

“The European Commission will continue to insist with AstraZeneca on measures to increase predictability and stability of deliveries, and acceleration of the distribution of doses,” European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides tweeted Friday.

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) detected 80 new coronavirus cases on Sunday – 65 of them transmitted locally, according to a Monday statement.

Most of the cases were identified in the north of the country, where some provinces have in recent weeks been battling to contain localized outbreaks of the virus

Some 29 cases were found in China’s northernmost province, Heilongjiang, while 19 were detected in Hebei province, which surrounds the capital, Beijing. The northern province of Jilin reported 12 cases.

Quarantine center: Nangong, a city in Hebei, has built 1,500 temporary quarantine treatment rooms following the emergence of coronavirus clusters in the northern province.

A further 6,500 rooms will be built in the coming days, according to the state-owned China News Service.

The single-occupancy rooms are equipped with their own heaters, toilets, showers, and other amenities, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Wuhan, one year on: On Saturday, China marked the anniversary of the start of a 76-day lockdown in the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.

The case numbers in Wuhan today are zero, which is a stark contrast to January 25, 2020, when the city reported 618 infections and 45 deaths.

On the surface, Wuhan bustles like a city that has never known a paralyzing 76-day lockdown.

At dawn, market vendors busily unload fresh fruits and vegetables. Office workers fill popular eateries during lunch break. As dusk falls, elderly couples descend on the city’s parks, practicing dance moves by the Yangtze River. Red lanterns have been erected around the city in anticipation of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

A year has passed since the central Chinese city of 11 million people was placed under the world’s first coronavirus lockdown on January 23. At least 3,869 Wuhan residents eventually died from the virus, which went on to claim more than 2 million lives around the globe.

The world was stunned when flights, trains and buses leaving Wuhan were canceled, highways were blocked and people were ordered to stay in their homes, relying on officials and volunteers for daily necessities. Initially, it was difficult for patients, families and even some healthcare workers to get to the hospital.

But the Chinese government has since heralded those drastic steps as crucial to curbing the initial outbreak, and similar measures have now been enforced in countries around the world – with some cities outside China undergoing multiple lockdowns.

In that context, Wuhan has become a success story in taming the virus. It has not reported a local coronavirus infection for months.

On December 31, as millions of people in other countries spent New Year’s Eve in the confinement of another lockdown, Wuhan’s residents packed glittering streets to celebrate the arrival of 2021 with a midnight countdown.

Today, residents speak proudly of the resilience and strength of their city, and the efforts they made to ward off Covid-19.

But the severe measures also came at a huge personal cost to residents, and despite the apparent return to normal life, deep emotional scars haunt the city.

Some residents who lost loved ones to the virus are still living in grief, angry at the government for its early missteps in preventing people from knowing facts that could have saved lives.

Read the full story:

WUHAN, CHINA - DECEMBER 31: (CHINA OUT) Residents buy sausages for the upcoming Chinese Spring Festival on a street famous for its sausages on December 31, 2020 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Chinese citizens flocked to buy sausages and cured meat for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. Wuhan, with no recorded cases of community transmissions since May, is gradually returning to normal. (Photo by Getty Images)

Related article A year from lockdown, Wuhan returns to normal life, but is still haunted by emotional scars

Dr. Anthony Fauci opened up about his experience working under the Trump administration, his relationship with the former president and threats to his personal safety, in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times published Sunday.

As cases rapidly escalated in the Northeast, the former president had “almost a reflex response” to try to minimize the situation, Fauci said.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that he was concerned about who Trump was getting his information from. He said Trump based his assessment of coronavirus treatments on anecdotes rather than data from clinical trials.

When leadership of the White House coronavirus task force changed last February, into the hands of the White House, the situation turned from “the standard kind of scientifically based, public-health-based meetings,” to “the anecdotally driven situations, the minimization, the President surrounding himself with people saying things that didn’t make any scientific sense,” Fauci said. 

When Fauci contradicted Trump’s misinformation, he said the White House response started to become “somewhat nefarious - namely, allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say. Or to have the White House press office send out a detailed list of things I said that turned out to be not true.”

Fauci said that Trump even called him personally to ask why he wasn’t being more positive about the pandemic.

Fauci said he and his family received death threats, starting in the spring. He said the death threats to his family upset him more than anything else. He shared an experience where he received a letter containing white powder, which turned out to be nothing. He recalled the moment, saying:

“My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was. I looked at it somewhat fatalistically. It had to be one of three things: A hoax. Or anthrax, which meant I’d have to go on Cipro for a month. Or if it was ricin, I was dead, so bye-bye.”

Australia has granted “provisional approval” for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, making it the country’s first coronavirus vaccine to receive regulatory approval, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said in a statement Monday.

The TGA said the vaccine met “strict standards for safety, quality and efficacy” and the provisional approval is for individuals 16 years and older.

The Pfizer vaccine went through Australia’s normal regulatory process, which is why it has come later than some other countries that approved it for emergency use.

The first vaccines will be given in late February, starting with 80,000 doses a week, Health Minister Greg Hunt said in a news conference Monday. Australia has purchased 10 million Pfizer doses, enough for 5 million people in a country of 25 million.

Australia had hoped to start its vaccination program in mid-February but the Pfizer rollout was delayed by global supply issues.

The vaccine rollout is expected to begin across 30-50 hospital sites and those who need protection the most, such as frontline health workers and quarantine border workers, will be the first to receive the shots, according to a joint press release from the country’s prime minister and health minister 

The vaccine will be rolled out in five phases over the coming months and will eventually involve more than 1,000 vaccination administration sites, the release said.

“I welcome the TGA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine, with our own Australian experts finding it is safe, effective and of a high standard,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

Despite the Pfizer vaccine being first to receive approval, most people in Australia will receive the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, which is still going through regulatory approval. Australia plans to make that vaccine in a domestic production facility, which is expected to produce approximately 1 million doses a week from late March.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has tested positive for Covid-19, he said on Sunday evening.

The President, who tweeted from his official Twitter account, said his symptoms are mild and that he was receiving medical treatment.

“I regret to inform you that I have contracted Covid-19. The symptoms are mild, but I am already receiving medical treatment. As always, I am optimistic. We will move forward,” Lopez Obrador wrote.

He added that Secretary of the Interior Dr. Olga Sanchez Cordero will represent him at the daily morning briefings.

Mexico is one of 17 countries in the world that has reported more than 1 million Covid-19 cases. Newly confirmed deaths and cases have risen steadily throughout the country since early October, with recent daily numbers some of the highest since the beginning the pandemic.

Lopez Obrador, who rarely wears a mask, has faced widespread criticism over his handling of the pandemic.

Read the full story:

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - SEPTEMBER 26: President of Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during the Ayotzinapa case report at Palacio Nacional on September 26, 2020 in Mexico City, Mexico. On september 26 of 2014, 43 students of Isidro Burgos Rural School of Ayotzinapa disappeared in Iguala city after clashing with police forces. The students were accused of attempting the kidnap of buses to be used for protests. The government of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto led an investigation which revealed that corrupt police officers kidnapped the students and then were handed to members of a drug cartel who killed them after a few hours. Known as the 'Verdad Historica' (Historical Truth) this version has been refuted by the current government to find evidence that proves what actually happened to the students. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

Related article Mexican President tests positive for Covid-19

More than three dozen Capitol Police officers have tested positive for coronavirus since the Capitol riot on January 6, the union representing the Capitol Police told CNN Sunday.

It’s unclear how many of the 38 officers may have been on duty during the attack or when they contracted the virus. But health officials have worried that the mass of largely unmasked people, many shouting and pushing, would result in the spread of the virus. Several police officers were directly assaulted during the insurrection.

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Police hold off Trump supporters who tried to break through a police barrier, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. As Congress prepares to affirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory, thousands of people have gathered to show their support for President Donald Trump and his claims of election fraud. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Related article 38 Capitol Police officers test positive for Covid-19 after Capitol riot

US President Joe Biden on Monday will reinstate the Covid travel restrictions on non-US citizens who have been in Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, a White House official told CNN.

Additionally, the President will extend the restrictions to travelers who have recently been to South Africa, the official said.

This will come one week after former President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting the restrictions on travelers from these countries effective January 26 – a move the Biden transition quickly said Biden would reverse as president.

Reuters was first to report these details.

Read the full story:

Related article Biden to reinstate Covid-19-related travel restrictions lifted by Trump

Scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are speaking with UK health officials to learn more about British data that suggests a new coronavirus variant could be more deadly.

“The CDC has reached out to UK officials and is reviewing their new mortality data associated with variant B.1.1.7,” a CDC official told CNN Saturday, using the scientific name for the variant first spotted in the UK in November.

A UK report released Friday states there is “a realistic possibility” that the new variant has a higher death rate than other variants.

While the data is not conclusive, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “there is some evidence that the new variant … may be associated with a higher degree of mortality.”

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LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 02: A patient is transported out of an ambulance by medics at the Royal London Hospital on January 2, 2021 in London, England. As of December 28th, NHS statistics showed there were 23,823 people in hospital with covid-19, higher than the spring peak of 21,683 recorded on 12 April. Today, the UK reported a further 57,725 people have tested positive for covid-19, a new daily high. (Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)

Related article CDC reviewing new data that suggests coronavirus variant identified in UK could be more deadly

It took just over a year for the US to go from one to 25 million coronavirus infections.

That’s an average of about 67,934 new infections every day, or an average of one new infection every 1.2 seconds since January 21, 2020.

As infections kept soaring this weekend, so did the death toll. As of Sunday, more than 419,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The US death toll could reach 569,000 by May 1, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation – even though “42,800 lives will be saved by the projected vaccine rollout.”

Variants threat: While some states have reported recent dips in their daily Covid-19 numbers, new coronavirus variants have many scientists worried.

“It is, first of all, good news to see that curve bend down a little. We’re still at a very high level of infections,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
“But I am very worried about whether we’re going to be able to sustain this or not. If we move quickly on vaccinations … then we can keep that curve heading down. But if the variants take hold first, that curve will turn back up. And things will get much worse,” he said.
“So this is a race. Obviously, I hope we win.”

Read the full story:

A healthcare worker wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) places a Covid-19 swab test into a vial at a United Airlines testing sire inside San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2021. California reported 459 daily virus deaths, the second-highest tally since the pandemic began, as the most-populous state continues to battle a surge of cases that has strained health-care facilities. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Related article Just over a year since the first reported Covid-19 case in the US, the country nears 25 million infections