February 25 coronavirus news

By Eoin McSweeney, Hannah Strange and Jessie Yeung, CNN

Updated 0642 GMT (1442 HKT) February 26, 2021

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3:11 a.m. ET, February 25, 2021

No cheering allowed for Tokyo Olympics torch relay, officials say

From CNN's Sarah Faidell and Junko Ogura

The Olympic cauldron is lit during the 'Flame of Recovery' exhibition on March 25, 2020, in Iwaki, Japan. Clive Rose/Getty Images

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Torch Relay will start in Fukushima prefecture on March 25, 2021 with several Covid-19 countermeasures in place, officials announced on Thursday.

The Olympics were originally scheduled for last summer, but were postponed until this year due to the pandemic. In recent months, the Games have been a point of controversy, with rumors of cancelations as Japan deals with a vicious wave of cases -- but authorities have insisted the event will go ahead.

The torch will first go through regions affected by the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami marking the disaster's 10th anniversary, before traveling “around every corner of Japan," officials said.

Covid-19 countermeasures include avoiding “the 3 C’s: closed spaces, crowded places, close-contact settings.” Those who wish to view the relay from the roadside must wear masks, stay home if they feel unwell, and refrain from traveling outside the prefecture they live in.

Spectators are also told to “support with applause or by using distributed goods rather than by shouting or cheering.” The relay will also be streamed live online.

Torchbearers will be required to fill out a daily health checklist two weeks before the relay and refrain from activities that may involve a risk of infection, such as eating out or going to crowded places, officials advised.

“The Olympic Torch Relay will be an event for everyone, and amidst the global threat of Covid-19, it will give hope and courage to people all over Japan,” Tokyo 2020 officials said in the statement Thursday.

Covid cases: The announcement comes as Japan recorded 912 new infections and 63 deaths from Wednesday, according to the country's health ministry. That raises the national total to 429,265 cases and 7,660 deaths.

4:11 a.m. ET, February 25, 2021

Researchers find worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City

From CNN's Maggie Fox

A nurse practitioner administers a Covid-19 swab test at a drive-thru testing site in Shirley, New York, on December 18, 2020. John Paraskevas/Newsday/Getty Images

Two separate teams of researchers said this week they have found a worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast that carries mutations that help it evade the body's natural immune response -- as well as the effects of monoclonal antibody treatments.

Researchers have named the variant B.1.526. It appears in people affected in diverse neighborhoods of New York City, they said, and is "scattered in the Northeast."

One of the mutations in this variant is the same concerning change found in the variant first seen in South Africa and known as B.1.351. It appears to evade, somewhat, the body's response to vaccines, as well. And it's becoming more common.

"We observed a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming rise to 12.7% in the past two weeks," one team, at Columbia University Medical Center, write in a report that has yet to be published, although it is scheduled to appear in a pre-print version this week.

It's "home grown, presumably in New York," Dr. David Ho, Director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia, who led the study team, said by email.

The mutation in this variant that most concerns researchers is called E484K and it gives the virus the ability to slip past some of the body's immune response, as well as the authorized monoclonal antibody treatments.

Read more here.

2:05 a.m. ET, February 25, 2021

New evidence that Covid-19 antibodies lower risk of re-infection

From CNN's Jacqueline Howard

A health worker takes a drop of blood for a Covid-19 antibody test at the Diagnostic and Wellness Center in Torrance, California, on May 5, 2020. Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images

Covid-19 antibodies from a previous infection could significantly lower your risk of becoming re-infected, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

"The results from the study are basically a 10-fold reduction, but I would have caveats around that. In other words, it could be an overestimate of the reduction, it could be an underestimate of the reduction," said Dr. Douglas Lowy, principal deputy director of the National Cancer Institute, who was an author of the study.

"To me, the big message is -- there’s a reduction," he said. "The main takeaway is that being antibody positive after natural infection is associated with partial protection against a new infection."

How they did the study: The researchers examined data on more than 3.2 million people in the United States who had completed an antibody test last year between January and August.

Among those tested, 11.6% tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies and 88.3% tested negative.

0.3% of those with antibodies tested positive for Covid-19 infection later, beyond 90 days.
3% of those without antibodies tested positive for reinfection during the same time period.

But more research is needed to determine a causal relationship, how long protection from antibodies may last, and the risk of reinfection from a variant.