February 19 coronavirus news

President Biden is in Portage, Michigan, where he is visiting one of the three manufacturing plants where Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine is produced, according the White House.

The President is touring the facility and meeting with workers who are helping manufacture the vaccine. Biden will then deliver remarks.

Pfizer's vaccine won the FDA's Emergency Use Authorization in December, and is being delivered to millions of people in the US and UK.

Both vaccines on the US market — developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — require two doses to reach about 95% efficacy, and the second doses were intended to be administered 21 days and 28 days after the first, respectively.

Biden addressed his administration's vaccine goals on Tuesday during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, announcing that 600 million doses of vaccine will be available by the end of July.

CNN's Maggie Fox and Dakin Andone contributed reporting to this post.

New York City will increase its indoor dining capacity to 35% by next Friday, consistent with occupancy levels in New Jersey, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The governor noted residents near the border are traveling across state lines to eat. Connecticut and Long Island indoor capacities remain at 50% as of now, he noted. 

Cuomo said the decision follows “data” and “science” as he often says.

New York State reported 3.49% overall statewide positivity, and a 42 day decline according to its seven-day average, Cuomo said during a briefing Friday. The state added 116 deaths, he said.

Hospitalizations are down, day to day, but also on the overall trend statewide. 

The Mid-Hudson region has the highest positivity rate in the state.

The Bronx has a positivity rate double Manhattan, the highest of the boroughs, but not as bad as it was, he said.

Schools may open no matter how much virus is spreading in a community, if they take the right precautions, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday. 

As of Tuesday, CNN analysis indicated about 90% of children live in so-called red zones under the CDC’s guidance – meaning there is a high level of community spread of virus. But even in those conditions, schools can safely reopen if they take precautions, Walensky told a White House briefing.

“The first thing I just want to convey is there are opportunities for in-person learning at all stages of – all states of community spread,” Walensky told the briefing.

“So our numbers are coming down. I would actually invite schools to lean in and to look at what is needed so that in the roadmap to try and get more and more children back to school.”

The CDC has said schools can reopen if they make sure they are mitigating the risk of spread with universal mask use, measures to keep children and staff six feet apart, frequent cleaning and disinfection and testing and contact tracing.

“So in, in the areas that remain red – and there are about two-thirds of districts now, although the numbers continue to decline – in the numbers that remain red, we say with universal masking and physical distancing and densification of classrooms, there are opportunities for in-person learning, as well as for middle and high school learning, and assuming you're able to do the densification that we suggest,” Walensky said.

The US should have vaccine safety data on high school age kids by the beginning of fall, but probably not on younger children until early next year, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.

Companies are just starting tests of younger age groups but have been testing their vaccines on 12 to 17-year-olds, Fauci told a White House briefing.

“You know from Pfizer that they started off with the trial of 34,000 individuals down to 16-year-olds, and then progressed it down to 12-year-olds. So what they're going to be doing in April, starting in April, they are going to be studying 12-year-olds down to 5-to 6-year-olds,” Fauci said.

“That will take likely one year to get the information on that – likely not until the first quarter,” added Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and also chief White House medical adviser.

“However, we anticipate data on high school age individuals, namely individuals 12 years old to 17 years old, by the beginning of the fall. Maybe not exactly coinciding with the first day of school, but sometime in the fall we will have that,” Fauci added.

Companies can tests their vaccines on fewer children because they have safety and efficacy data from adults, Fauci said. “So the bottom line of all of this is as follows. It is highly likely that sometime in the fall we will have data that will give us the capability of saying the safety and comparable efficacy in children 12 to 17, 18 years old,” he added.

“But then also, with the studies that I just mentioned, to getting the information to make the decision in elementary school children, almost certainly will not be firmed down until the first quarter of 2022.”

Hear more from Dr. Fauci:

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus are all dropping in the United States, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday.

“The current seven day average of approximately 77,000 cases is the lowest reported since the end of October, but still higher than the height of last summer,” she added.

The seven-day average of new hospital admission as of Feb. 16 was 7,200, she said – a 56% decline since Jan. 9.

”The latest data indicates that deaths have declined modestly … to an average of approximately 2,700 per day,” Walensky added.

Hear more details about the numbers:

It’s too risky to go to giving a single dose of coronavirus vaccine to stretch out the supply, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday

Fauci said it takes two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to get full immunity to coronavirus infection – and he has not changed his mind after reading an Israeli report published Thursday night that indicated a single dose could provide up to 85% protection three to four weeks later.

Fauci said he worried that if large numbers of people got a single shot and had less than optimal immune responses after that single shot, they could be exposed to the virus and start incubating viral mutations. In theory, new variants could arise, he said.

“You might theoretically be inducing new variants,” he said.

Senior White House Adviser Andy Slavitt announced five new Covid-19 community vaccination centers opening in Florida and Pennsylvania in the next two weeks.

In Florida, there will be four new centers based in Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa. Each site will have the capacity to vaccinate a total of 12,000 individuals per day, Slavitt said during Friday's White House Covid-19 briefing. 

There will be one new center based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which will have the capacity to deliver 6,000 doses of vaccine per day. 

Slavitt said federal teams will be deployed "immediately" to these areas to work with state and local officials. 

Delaware Gov. John Carney announced an easing of restrictions around indoor gatherings.

Limits for private indoor gatherings – including dinner parties, house parties, and birthday parties, remains at 10 people, the release explained.

Organizers can also submit plans to the department of health for larger events up to 150 people, according to the release.

Outdoor gatherings are limited to 50 people or up to 250 with an approved plan from the Division of Public Health.

The order signed by the governor also raises the number of people that can be included in group exercise to 15, excluding staff.

There have been at least 27,901,914 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 493,501 people have died since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases.

So far today, Johns Hopkins University has reported 5,874 new cases and 403 new deaths.

At least 73,377,450 vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 57,737,767 total doses of the vaccine have been administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

You can see the latest Johns Hopkins University US numbers here.