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The World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan has arrived in China, state broadcaster CGTN announced on Thursday.
The group’s successful arrival comes after WHO announced last week that the team had been blocked from entering China as the necessary permissions to enter the country had not been approved.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week he was “very disappointed,” in a rare rebuke of China from the UN agency.
For months, WHO officials had been negotiating with Beijing to allow a team of global scientists access to key sites to investigate the origin of the virus – first detected in Wuhan in December 2019 – and its likely jump from an unidentified host species to humans.
Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales tested positive for Covid-19 after receiving a routine check-up, Morales’ press officer confirmed to CNN Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, Bolivia has reported 176,761 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 9,454 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
There’s a risk that initial protection against Covid-19 could decrease if the administration of the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is delayed, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said Wednesday.
The second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine is supposed to be administered 21 days after the first shot.
Sahin said that governments and health institutions may need do their own risk-benefit analysis when it comes to getting doses out more quickly.
“There is this discussion that it could be a benefit for the society if the second dose is delayed and more people are vaccinated,” he said.
Protection against asymptomatic infections: Also on Wednesday, Sahin said that BioNTech is expecting data to come in February on its Covid-19 vaccine’s ability to protect against asymptomatic infections.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine was authorized in the United States last month based on data showing it was 95% effective in preventing symptomatic disease. But it remained unclear whether the vaccine prevented people from becoming infected with the virus and spreading it asymptomatically.
Sahin said animal research has suggested that the vaccine is able to provide protection from infection, and that’s the “key to prevent transmission.”
Approximately one in three residents in Los Angeles County has been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to new data published by the county.
As the county continues to experience a coronavirus surge, workplace outbreaks have also increased, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said Wednesday.
Workplace outbreaks are occurring at grocery stores, convenience stores, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and many other workplaces where people come together on a daily basis.
The county has also experienced an increase in outbreaks in schools and daycare settings.
“While almost all the outbreaks were small and well-contained, dozens of staff and a small number of students were affected,” the department said.
It warned that these increases reflect a pattern of transmission from worksite to home and back to worksites.
Infection rate: The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ epidemic model estimates that about one in 115 residents are currently infectious to others compared to one in 125 a week ago.
Hospitalizations: According to county health officials, the number of new patients requiring hospitalization due to the virus has “increased markedly in December,” but “has appeared to level off.”
Due to the time required for new exposures to result in illness severe enough to require hospitalization, health officials explained that the extent of transmission occurring during the last 10 days in December through New Year’s remains unclear.
“This makes it difficult to reliably predict demand for hospital-based services,” they said.
Officials predict a continued shortage of ICU beds and ventilators over the next four weeks.
China has reported its first Covid-19 related death in 242 days as daily new infections reached the highest levels since July, according to health authorities.
The individual died on Wednesday in Hebei province, which has been at the center of China’s most recent outbreak of the coronavirus.
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) reported 138 new Covid-19 infections for Wednesday, including 14 imported cases. Of the 124 locally transmitted cases, 81 cases are from Hebei province.
The NHC also recorded an additional 78 asymptomatic cases detected on Wednesday. China does not include asymptomatic patients in its tally of confirmed cases.
Many NFL and Major League Baseball stadiums, from New York to Los Angeles, have been Covid-19 testing sites – and now some of those same facilities are being repurposed again as Covid-19 vaccination centers.
Yet many health officials warn that balance is needed to ensure Covid-19 testing efforts continue even as the country pushes for more coronavirus vaccinations
That balance is the crux of an issue that public health officials have grown more concerned about, Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told CNN on Wednesday.
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The White House coronavirus task force again suggested the existence of “more transmissible” strains of Covid-19 and a “much more rapid” spread of the virus, in its weekly reports to states.
Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shot down an item included in the January 3 task force state reports that suggested there was a homegrown “USA variant” of coronavirus, a misperception that began on a call with governors, an administration official told CNN.
But the official made it very clear US health officials have not determined that a US variant of the virus exists.
After the holiday season, the US is now seeing “clear continuation of the pre-holiday high rate of spread as measured by rising test positivity, increased cases, increased hospitalization rates, and rising fatalities,” the report said.
There is “full resurgence” of viral spread in “nearly all metro areas,” the reports said, calling for “aggressive action.” The task force outlined measures including the use of masks that are “two or three ply and well-fitting,” as well as “strict physical distancing,” and more proactive testing of young adults.
This week’s reports raised concerns about “significant, continued deterioration from California across the Sunbelt and up into the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast,” so, essentially, the entire continental US.
And as the nation lags in administering vaccinations, the task force emphasized the need to “put (vaccines) in arms now,” noting that “active and aggressive immunization in the face of this surge would save lives.”
An ensemble forecast published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now projects there will be 440,000 to 477,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by February 6.
Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections a few weeks into the future. The previous ensemble forecast, published January 6, projected up to 438,000 coronavirus deaths by January 30.
At least 384,343 people have already died from Covid-19 in the US, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Turkish health regulators approved the Chinese Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use on Wednesday, clearing the way for a mass vaccination program to begin on Thursday.
Immediately after the announcement, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca received the first dose of the vaccine on live television. He told reporters that he and other members of the Pandemic Science Council are being vaccinated immediately and rollout across all 81 provinces in Turkey will begin on Thursday.
The administration did not release details about the data used to determine the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. Advanced, Phase 3 trials are ongoing in Turkey, but the vaccine is also being tested in other countries, including Brazil.
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera announced on Wednesday that his country expects to receive 10 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine. Indonesian President Joko Widodo received the first shot of Sinovac vaccine on Wednesday and announced that vaccination will start across the country immediately.
Questions over Sinovac data: On Tuesday, the government of Sao Paulo published data showing that the Sinovac vaccine was just 50.38% effective in late-stage trials in Brazil, significantly lower than earlier results showed.
While the number exceeds the threshold required for regulatory approval, it falls far below the 78% previously announced.
The United States has tallied over 3 million new Covid-19 cases in 2021 so far, John Hopkins University reports.
It took 167 days to reach the first 3 million cases, from January 22, 2020 (when JHU reported the first US coronavirus case) to July 8, 2020.
So far, 23,044,857 cases and 384,204 deaths have been reported from Covid-19 during the entire pandemic, per JHU.
Major League Baseball teams reached out to county and city health officials this week to offer every MLB stadium in the country as a mass vaccination site, Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CNN on Wednesday.
“These stadiums are wonderful areas to be repurposed for larger, mass vaccination efforts,” Freeman said, but she added that testing is still a priority.
“We have so many places across the country still experiencing high levels of transmission and resurgence of disease, that we can’t afford to let down the testing right now,” she said. “We’re too early in the vaccination process to do that, because we still need to mitigate and manage the spread of the disease, even while we’re vaccinating.”
Many venues – including Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles and Yankee Stadium in New York – already have plans underway to become Covid-19 vaccination centers.
At least 76 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in the UK have been found in 12 US states, according to data posted Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This includes 32 cases in California, 22 in Florida, five in Minnesota, four in New York, four in Colorado, two in Connecticut, two in Maryland, and one case each in Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin and Georgia.
The CDC says this does not represent the total number of cases circulating in the US, but rather just those that have been found by analyzing positive samples. The agency cautions that its numbers may not immediately match those of state and local health departments.
While the variant appears to spread more easily, there’s no evidence that it’s any more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to the CDC. It has been found in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Experts suspect there could be many more cases in the country and have criticized the US for not doing more genetic sequencing of virus samples to surveil for mutations. Earlier this month, a CDC official told CNN the agency plans to more than double the number of samples it sequences by mid-January – with a target of 6,500 per week.
There have been at least 23,044,857 total cases of Covid-19 in the United States and at least 384,207 people have died from it since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
17 other countries in the world have reported over 1 million total Covid-19 cases, according to JHU:
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The President and CEO of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) said Wednesday that pharmacists across the US will have the capacity to administer 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine once supply is available.
NACDS includes 40,000 pharmacies and 155,000 pharmacists, according to Anderson.
Early stage trials of Johnson & Johnson’s experimental coronavirus vaccine show it generated an immune response in nearly all volunteers, with minimal side-effects, after a single dose.
The company expects to report details of more advanced trials later this month and is hoping to apply for authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration soon after.
Researchers who tested the vaccine in a combined Phase 1-2 trial – mostly meant to show safety – found either one or two doses of the vaccine generated both antibody and T-cell responses against the coronavirus. The trials were not designed to show whether the vaccine protected people against either infection or symptoms of coronavirus – that’s what the ongoing Phase 3 trials are designed to do.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of researchers who tested the vaccine in around 800 volunteers said the early stage trials showed it was safe and probably should work.
The FDA has given emergency use authorization to two coronavirus vaccines – one made by Pfizer with partner BioNTech, and another by Moderna. Both were about 95% effective in preventing symptomatic disease in their Phase 3 trials. They use messenger RNA or mRNA – a new vaccine technology.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine arm Janssen uses a different approach for its vaccine, often referred to by its experimental name Ad26.COV2.S. It uses a weakened version of a common cold virus called adenovirus 26 to carry genetic material from the virus into the body, prompting human cells to produce pieces of the virus, which are then recognized by the immune system.
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As some areas of the country push to reopen school buildings, a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that Covid-19 cases were lowest among younger children even after schools restarted for in-person learning. But to safely reopen schools, transmission in communities must be kept in check.
The report, published Wednesday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, considered more than 2.8 million laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases in people under age 24, from March 1 through December 12, 2020.
More than 57% of those cases occurred among people ages 18 to 24. Cases among children and teens paralleled cases among adults through the summer and fall – including spikes in cases in early summer followed by a decline, and then a steep increase in October through December.
By early December, 62% of US K-12 school districts had opened for full or partial in-person learning. Despite that, reports of school outbreaks were “limited,” CDC researchers wrote. Covid-19 incidence among the general population was similar in counties with in-person learning – 401.2 cases per 100,000 people – and those that were all-online – : 418.2 per 100,000 people.
There was no sign that increased cases among school-age children and teens preceded increases in other age groups; however, there were increases among other age groups after cases increased among people ages 18 to 24.
To prevent coronavirus transmission in schools, transmission in the community must be controlled, the report said. Communities and schools should implement mitigation strategies such as wearing masks, and people must adhere to them. CDC recommendations already say K-12 schools should be the last to close after all other mitigation measures have been attempted, and the first to reopen once it’s safe to do so, the report noted.
“When community transmission is high, cases in schools should be expected, and as with any group setting, schools can contribute to COVID-19 transmission, especially when mitigation measures, such as universal and proper masking, are not implemented or followed,” the report said.
There are limitations to the report, including that Covid-19 cases are likely underestimated among young people, and case trends among teachers and school staff members are not available.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged that his administration will reopen most schools within 100 days of taking office.
Portugal is set to enter a new lockdown on Friday but schools will remain open, Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced on Wednesday.
“We have to take over the joint responsibility of stopping this pandemic together,” Costa said in his press conference.
“The fundamental message of the decisions that we are taking is to return to our duty of home curfew – as we had in March and April – when we stopped, with success, the first wave,” Costa said.
“The rules that we are reimposing are essentially the same as March and April, with one exception which is tied with the democratic schedule around the Portuguese elections on January 24; and with the necessity of not sacrificing again our current generation of students and as such, we will maintain all the education systems fully operational as they are currently,” he said.
The announcement comes amid rising concerns over record coronavirus numbers, after Portugal reached its highest number of daily cases and coronavirus related deaths.
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said Wednesday he does not believe variants of coronavirus that have been detected in the UK, South Africa or Brazil, and now seen in many countries, will affect the efficacy of his company’s vaccine.
“I think the question is more medium term as the virus continues evolving over time,” Bancel said Wednesday during the annual JP Morgan Health Conference.
“I’m not worried for the short term but we are watching that very closely because I think that we might be moving into a world where we need new strains of vaccine down the road – but not in the short term,” he said.
Pfizer President Angela Hwang said she is “bullish” about what the Pfizer vaccine is capable of doing in terms of reacting to mutations and variants, but they are watching it closely as well. “What we have to realize is the virus could change and we may need a new vaccine altogether,” Hwang said.
Hwang said Pfizer is ready should the virus change and “that’s where the beauty of the mRNA technology comes in.”
“With the sequence, we are going to be able to make a new vaccine in very short order, in as little as six weeks,” Hwang said.
Both Moderna and Pfizer use a modular type of technology that allows the vaccine formula to be changed quickly in case a viruses mutates so much that it eludes the immune response prompted by a vaccine.
Just over 10 million people have received their first coronavirus shots and 29.3 million doses of vaccine have been distributed, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
The US is still lagging far behind its target vaccination rate, but the new numbers indicate that close to a million people received vaccination shots in a day – although the CDC’s numbers are not reported in real time and states complain that the data is lagging. The CDC reported Tuesday that more than 9 million people had been vaccinated as of 9 a.m. ET.
According to the CDC, as of 9 a.m. Wednesday, 29,380,125 doses had been distributed and 10,278,462 people had received first doses of vaccine.
The Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed announced changes Tuesday aimed at speeding up the vaccine administration process, including releasing more doses of vaccine and urging states to vaccinate anyone 65 and older, and younger people with chronic conditions that might make them more vulnerable to severe disease.
As Covid-19 case numbers continue rising globally, Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, on Wednesday called upon wealthy nations around the world to help bridge a global vaccine inequity gap.
“There are populations out there who want and who need vaccines who are not going to get them unless or until we begin to share better,” Ryan said during a virtual Q&A Wednesday.
In the 36 days since countries started vaccinating, 28 million vaccine doses have been administered, he said. According to Ryan, of the 46 countries who are currently vaccinating, only one is a low income country.
Ryan added there have been 5 million new cases of Covid-19 and 85,000 deaths linked to the virus globally in the past week.
“Essentially all regions apart for Southeast Asia are showing increases,” Ryan said, highlighting that the Americas still account for half of all new cases and 45% of deaths globally.
“We’ve seen that perfect storm of the season, the coldness, people going inside, increased social mixing, and a combination of factors that have driven increased transmission in many, many countries,” Ryan said.
“It’s interesting when we talk about tolerance, kindness and solidarity, that they are probably the most powerful countermeasures we have right now,” he also said. “You have to have the attitude that this disease ends with me.”
