January 11 coronavirus news

The spread of coronavirus is increasing, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday, likely due to indoor, maskless gatherings around the December holidays.

Murphy announced 5,042 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, and 51 additional deaths.

Hospitalizations in the state are holding steady, with 3,653 people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases. Of those hospitalized, 649 are in intensive care.

Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli reiterated on Monday that hospitalizations and deaths are so-called “lagging indicators,” and may yet go up as a result of infections transmitted last month.

Persichilli added that the state has reported two new cases of Covid-related multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome in children.

According to the governor, there have been 214,443 doses of Covid-19 vaccine distributed statewide, and 14,984 of those were administered as a second dose. Nearly 15,000 people have received a full course of vaccine statewide.

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

People line up for COVID-19 vaccinations at Nassau Community College on January 10 in Garden City, New York.

Nearly 9 million people have received their first doses of vaccine against coronavirus in the United States and nearly 25.5 million doses of vaccine have now been distributed, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

As of Monday morning, 35.3% of doses distributed have been administered, compared with 30.2% on Friday.

The CDC said 25,480,725 doses of vaccine had been distributed as of 9 a.m. Monday and 8,987,322 people had received their first doses of vaccine.

The CDC also said Monday that 4,239,775 of the distributed doses had gone to the federal program for long-term care facilities, and 937,028 people in such facilities had received their first doses.

The US continues to struggle to catch up to the promised target of 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. States have said they don’t have enough staff or money to administer coronavirus vaccines at the needed rate.

A healthcare worker administers the COVID-19 vaccine to residents living in the Jackson Heights neighborhood at St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church on January 10 in Tampa, Florida.

States are increasingly abandoning guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and taking their own approaches to giving people coronavirus vaccines, a new analysis finds.

“Overall, we find states are increasingly diverging from CDC guidance and from each other, suggesting that access to COVID-19 vaccines in these first months of the U.S. vaccine campaign may depend a great deal on where one lives,” the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care policy, said in a report issued Monday.

The report finds 40 states are still in Phase 1a either fully or partly. Ten states and Washington, DC, are in Phase 1b. Only Michigan has moved to at least part of Phase 1c.

While all states and Washington, DC, are giving priority to health care workers and long-term care residents and staff in Phase 1a of their plans as recommended, they are increasingly taking their own tacks in Phase 1b and 1c of the rollout. Ten states and Washington, DC, have moved to Phase 1b.

The Kaiser analysis found that 10 states have added first responders, including law enforcement and firefighters, the Phase 1a. These states are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming. Utah added K-12 teachers and child care workers, while Louisiana limited health care workers to hospital staff only.

Four states added seniors to the 1a group: people 65 and older in Georgia and Florida, 75 and up in Tennessee, and 80-plus in West Virginia.

Fourteen states follow CDC advice precisely on who should be in Phase 1b, while 30 add extra age groups and others including educators, prisoners and the homeless.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock speaks at a coronavirus press conference inside 10 Downing Street on January 11 in London.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was still unclear the extent to which being vaccinated reduces one’s risk of transmitting coronavirus.

“We know that the vaccine reduces your chances of getting Covid and then of being hospitalized or dying from Covid,” Hancock said.

“We very much hope that it has a significant downward impact on that transmissibility after you are vaccinated,” he added.

Hancock made the comments at a news briefing Monday where he announced that approximately 2.3 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivers his State of the State address virtually from The War Room at the state Capitol on January 11 in Albany, New York.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered his annual State of the State address from the Capitol’s War Room, saying the setting was fitting because “we are at war, a war that continues today” with Covid-19.  

“This is a national challenge. It is a war,” Cuomo said. “And like every war before, it must be financed by Washington.”

He placed blame on the federal government for the state’s damage from Covid-19, calling the federal government’s response to the virus “an act of gross negligence.”

Cuomo said the state’s main areas of focus for the coming year are “crushing Covid” and addressing “the short-term economic consequences for our state.” He pressed the federal government to help fund recovery efforts. 

Cuomo will expand on his plans for the state in three more speeches in the coming days.

A patient receives an injection of a Covid-19 vaccine at the NHS vaccine centre at Robertson House on January 11 in Stevenage, England.

Around 2.3 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Monday.

Hancock said the UK was on track to deliver a first dose of the vaccine to “everyone in the top four cohorts” – which account for 88% of Covid-19-related deaths – by Feb.15.

He said that two-fifths of people over 80 and almost quarter of older care home residents have now received first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Israel’s Health Minister Yuli Edelstein is seen at the French National Assembly in Paris on May 16, 2018.

Israel’s Health Minister has told CNN he does not believe Israel has an obligation or responsibility to supply Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with a vaccine for the coronavirus but stressed instead co-operation on treatment to avoid a surge in new cases of Covid-19 in the Palestinian territories. 

Yuli Edelstein’s comments come after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had held informal discussions with Israel’s Health Ministry regarding the possible supply of vaccines for the Palestinian health workforce as an “immediate priority target group.” 

“We are cooperating with the Palestinians to make sure that they get proper treatment to coronavirus patients. At this stage we are not supplying vaccines, but we do understand that it is in Israel’s interest to make sure we don’t get into a situation where we are vaccinated and out of trouble, and on the Palestinian side there is another surge in numbers,” Edelstein said on CNN’s New Day.  

Israel is leading the world in vaccinating its people, with almost 20% of the population having received at least one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. But it has come under criticism from some human rights groups which say it has obligations under international law to provide vaccines to Palestinians as well. 

Amnesty International, for instance, said last week: “The Israeli government must stop ignoring its international obligations as an occupying power and immediately act to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are equally and fairly provided to Palestinians living under its occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” 

Groups like Amnesty point to the Fourth Geneva Convention which, among other duties of an occupying power, speaks of ensuring “measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Israel argues that the Oslo Accords, signed with the Palestinians in the 1990s, hand responsibility for health care provision for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA). 

The Director General of the Public Health Directorate at the Palestinian Ministry of Health told CNN the PA had not sought Israel’s assistance with vaccines, something that was contradicted by the President of the Union of Medical Relief Committees, Mustafa Barghouti, himself a leading Palestinian politician. He told CNN reports the PA had sought about 10,000 doses for health care workers were correct. Barghouti said the request had been rejected by Israel. 

The WHO said it was told the Israeli Health Ministry was ready to “explore the option” of immediate vaccines for medical workers in the Palestinian territories but had been told it was “currently not in a position to supply vaccines because of a shortage of vaccines in Israel.”

Edelstein told CNN: “It is our interest; it doesn’t mean in any way it is our obligation or our responsibility. The Palestinians are running the Palestinian Authority … but as has been happening for the last several months, we were always ready to help with equipment, with good advice, with products or with medicine, and this sort of cooperation will continue.”  

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Monday it had registered the Russian Sputnik V vaccine for what it called emergency use, with an initial batch expected to arrive in the territories within a month, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which sponsored the vaccine’s development. The Health Ministry says it has also signed contracts with three other Covid-19 vaccine suppliers.

People line up to receive an injection of a Covid-19 vaccine at the NHS vaccine centre at the Millennium Point centre on January 11 in Birmingham, England.

The United Kingdom plans to have “tens of millions” of people immunized by spring with over 2,700 vaccine sites established across the country, the Department of Health said on Monday. 

It has set out plans to “rapidly scale up” the vaccine programme, pledging to have capacity to deliver “at least two million” vaccinations in England per week by the end of January at over 2,700 sites in the UK. 

Every adult in the country is to be offered a vaccine according to a press release and 10,000 care homes will have access to a vaccine by end of the month, it says. 

“The next few months will present a significant opportunity to turn the tide of battle against Covid – I am looking forward to watching these plans bring more reassurance and hope back to people’s lives after a difficult year,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. Hancock is expected to announce the plan to expedite vaccinations later on Monday during a daily government press briefing. 

Workers carry boxes containing the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at the Pfizer Global Supply manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on December 13.

In a presentation posted by BioNTech on Monday the company said, it can “potentially” deliver about 2 billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine by the end of 2021.

Previously, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the companies would manufacture 1.3 billion doses in 2021, but noted, “We are working very diligently to increase this number.”

BioNTech pointed to the updated label allowing for six doses as one of the factors to help increase supply capacity.

Originally, product labels said each vial had five doses available after dilution, but after it was discovered that there was enough leftover solution to potentially squeeze out extra doses, the FDA updated its guidance to say, “it is acceptable to use every full dose obtainable (the sixth, or possibly even a seventh) from each vial.”

BioNTech also said the 2 billion doses goal, “is based on continuous process improvements and expansion at our current facilities, and contingent upon adding more suppliers as well as contract manufacturers.”

The company also said 32.9 million doses have shipped globally as of Jan. 10, 2021. 

The New York Police Department had already vaccinated about 400 of their members by just after 7 a.m. ET Monday morning, on the first day the group became eligible, the NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea told CNN affiliate NY1 Monday.

He described members as “definitely eager to get it” adding “at the same time …we’re New Yorkers, so you know everything that you see in the general population you see with us, and there’s also some hesitancy I’m sure.”

“I think it’s going to take some momentum” he said, adding that as more people get it and do not experience side effects it should ramp up across the board. 

Shea contracted the virus Friday and has been working remotely.

He told NY1 via a phone interview “I’m doing ok,” adding “myself and a lot of other officers unfortunately and new Yorkers have contracted this.”

“We’ll get through it,” he continued.

Shea described his symptoms as akin to a “bad flu, the chills the aches, the breathing is the one you got to be careful with,” he said adding he is “recovering at home” and looking forward to “getting back to work soon.”

A person walks through a deserted shopping arcade in Munich, Germany, on Monday, January 11.

Germany strengthened its Covid-19 restrictions on Monday, which include longer school closures and travel limits. These measures will last until at least January 31.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will discuss extending the measures past February 1 with federal state leaders on January 25. She said Germany was entering the most difficult phase of the pandemic in the coming weeks, during her weekly podcast this weekend.

The country’s new restrictions include: residents may only have one home visitor at a time; those living in high-incidence regions are confined to a nine-mile radius around their houses; only grocery stores and drugstores can remain open; and travelers entering Germany from high-risk areas must register upon arrival, quarantine for 10 days, and be tested for the virus.

Germany has been seeing record Covid-19 infections as it struggles with a winter surge. On Sunday, it recorded 16,946 new infections and 465 deaths – pushing the total death toll to more than 40,000.

As the UK tackles a surge in Covid-19 cases and record hospital numbers, CNN is hoping to hear from health care workers about the realities on the frontline.

Use the form below to share your experiences:

Read more about the situation in the UK here:

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 08: A patient arrives by ambulance at the Royal London hospital on January 8, 2021 in London, England. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has warned that "if we do not take immediate action now, our NHS could be overwhelmed and more people will die" as cases of covid-19 in the capital rocket and the UK R number increases to between 1 and 1.4. There are currently 7,034 people in London hospitals with COVID-19, over a third higher than the first peak of the pandemic in spring 2020. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Related article UK entering 'worst point' of coronavirus pandemic as cases rise and bodies pile up

Cars line-up at the Dodger Stadium COVID-19 testing site on January 4.

The Dodger Stadium will become a Covid-19 vaccination site by the end of the week and will no longer offer testing after today, according to a statement from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. 

Once the site is fully operational, up to 12,000 people can be vaccinated per day, the statement said, adding that the transition to a vaccination site will reduce testing capacity in the county but will triple the number of vaccines available to residents. Plans are underway to scale up testing at other locations throughout the county. 

“In this moment of darkness where cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are skyrocketing, this bold step of offering both Covid-19 testing and vaccines in the heart of Los Angeles, reflects the dual nature of this moment – it is dark, but simultaneously hopeful,” said L.A. County Board of Supervisor Chair Hilda Solis. 

On Sunday, California’s public health department announced that anyone in the higher priority groups known as phase 1A — including health care workers, nursing home residents and staff, and those living in congregate settings, such as shelters — will be eligible for a vaccination starting today.

Data from the health department shows about 33% of the doses received have been administered statewide.

Hear from Los Angeles EMT workers struggling to keep pace:

Video Ad Feedback

82c6489c-80db-4e0c-903a-b244eb827f5d.mp4

03:14 - Source: cnn

Police officers clear the Nymphenburg Canal in Munich, Germany, on Sunday.

A frozen canal in the German city of Munich got so busy with people breaking coronavirus rules Sunday that police had to intervene and close it down.

The Schlosskanal, also known as the Nymphenburg canal, was packed with ice skaters, families playing ice hockey, people sledging and walkers.

Police initially tweeted a warning the canal was very busy. “A minimum distance cannot be upheld here any more. Please wear a mask. We are advising walkers to find somewhere else, to enjoy the weather,” the post said. 

Officers then added that two people had broken through the ice, but were not injured. “We are therefore closing the entire area because of a danger of breaking ice,” police tweeted. 

The Bavarian capital added 365 coronavirus cases to its tally on Sunday, bringing the total to 47,630, according to the city’s website. Munich has recorded 658 deaths.

The World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 2020.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it welcomes China’s announcement earlier today, which stated that a WHO team investigating the origins of Covid-19 would arrive in the country on Thursday.

China’s announcement effectively greenlights the team’s entry into the country. It comes after Beijing blocked the arrival of the global experts last week as the necessary permissions to enter China had not been approved.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the time that he was “very disappointed,” in a rare rebuke from the UN health agency.

Gaining access: For months, WHO officials have 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 the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 – and its likely jump from an unidentified host species to humans.

In May, WHO agreed to hold an inquiry into the global response to the pandemic after more than 100 countries signed a resolution calling for an independent probe.

Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, attends a news conference at 10 Downing Street in London, on January 5.

The United Kingdom is now at the deadliest point of the coronavirus pandemic, with numbers higher now than during last year’s peak, England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said on Monday. 

“We’ve got to be very clear that we’re now at the worst point of this epidemic for the UK, in the future we will have the vaccine, but the numbers at the moment are higher than they were in the previous peak – by some distance,” Whitty told the BBC. 

He said he expects the next few weeks to be the “most dangerous time,” before the vaccines that are being rolled out across the country can have an impact. Currently, there are over 30,000 people in hospital and that number is still rising, Whitty added.

Whitty’s warning comes as seven mass vaccination centres are opened in England, as efforts continue to massively ramp up the numbers receiving the shot. People over 80 years old and health and social care workers who live near to the sites are being offered the chance to book appointments.

The UK is aiming to vaccinate around 15 million of its most vulnerable members of society by mid-February, according to vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi.

“This is really a race against time,” he told the BBC’s Radio 4 program.

“Once we open up more vaccination centers next week and the week after and of course the community pharmacies … nobody should be more than a ten-mile radius of a site.”

UK Health Minister Matt Hancock told the BBC on Sunday that all adults in the UK would be inoculated by the autumn. Hancock will hold a press conference later on Monday to announce the delivery plan.

The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, which was approved for use by European Union regulators last week, will start arriving in Germany Monday, according to the country’s health minister.

“The delivery … of the vaccine from Moderna will happen today … tomorrow it will go to the federal states and they can then begin to vaccinate,” Jens Spahn told on German public broadcaster ZDF.

He added that by the end of the first quarter of 2021, “we expect two million doses of Moderna, during this year we have ordered 50 million doses.”

Vaccine pace: Members of the EU vaccine procurement scheme, agreed in June, are reliant on regulators granting authorization of Covid vaccines – but the EU has taken longer than the UK, the US and Canada to give the green light.

So far, the European Medicines Agency has authorized the BioNTech/Pfizer shot and, last week, the Moderna vaccine – with initial orders for 300 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and 160 million of Moderna.

Germany, which started its campaign in December, has administered over 500,000 shots but also faced criticism for the speed of its vaccination campaign. Amid calls for the country to take control over purchases from European Union authorities, Spahn said there will be “enough vaccine” and urged patience.

Read more about the world’s vaccine push:

TOPSHOT - A nurse injects a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a member of the medical staff at the Croix Rousse Hospital, on January 6, 2021, in Lyon as part of France's national vaccination campaign to fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP) (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article As the world begins its vaccination push, delayed rollouts draw criticism and concern

Clinicians reposition a Covid-19 patient into the supine position at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California, on January 6.

With Covid-19 hospitalizations surpassing 100,000 for 40 days in a row, officials are trying to ramp up the pace of vaccinations across the United States.

On Sunday, 129,229 people were in US hospitals with coronavirus, but the day marked only the sixth highest in pandemic history, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Experts have long said the best defenses against surging cases are preventative measures like masks and social distancing, as well as widespread vaccination. So far, at least 22.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed and nearly 6.7 million have made their way into patients’ arms.

Health officials had hoped to get 20 million people vaccinated at the start of the new year, but the administration of vaccines has undergone delays and roadblocks.

Gottlieb’s warning comes just days after the US crossed a grim threshold for the first time – reporting more than 4,000 new Covid-19 deaths in a single day on Thursday. Since the pandemic began, more than 374,000 people have died in the US and more than 22.4 million people have been infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Read the full story:

Related article The US has reported more than 100,000 coronavirus hospitalizations 40 days in a row

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal leaves the Élysée Palace after a cabinet meeting in November 2020.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told radio station Europe 1 that “at this stage we aren’t planning a lockdown,” adding that authorities are following the coronavirus pandemic closely.

“We are looking at what’s happening around us, at other countries that are in lockdown where the virus is circulating twice, sometimes three times faster than here because the French have made a lot of efforts and we took decisions early on,” Attal said on Monday. 

Arnaud Fontanet, a government health advisor, told BFM TV Monday that to limit the spread of the virus France needs to vaccinate 10 to 15 million people by the end of March. Fontanet also said the country should consider closing its borders with the UK because the new variant of the virus first discovered in England is a “big threat.” 

France has been under fire for the sluggish pace of its vaccination campaign since it started on December 27. Only 516 people were given the jab in the first week, according to data from the French health authority on January 1. 

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said last Thursday more than 50,000 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine would be ready for use this week. 

In his New Year’s Eve address, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not tolerate any “unjustified slowness” in the country’s vaccination campaign.

France has been one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, with almost 68,000 deaths from the virus as of January 11, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Read more:

France's coastline, including the rocky coves of Provence, is one of Europe's best.

Related article Traveling to France during Covid-19: What you need to know before you go

A nurse prepares a Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at St. John's Well Child & Family Center in Los Angeles, on January 7.

Political leaders are promising that mass vaccination campaigns will see life return to normal, as a more contagious variant of the coronavirus spreads across dozens of countries, adding urgency to the race to end the pandemic.

But vaccination efforts are rolling out slower than promised, raising doubts about an imminent way out of the crisis.

In nations where vaccines have been authorized, criticism is mounting over shortages and delays to getting shots into people’s arms. And solutions devised to stretch supplies – from administering half doses to spreading out the time between two doses – have raised concerns from some experts.

Some governments are pointing the finger at manufacturers for bottlenecks, while vaccine developers say it’s an issue of supply. Others cite complications with distribution plans and a lack of trained staff to administer shots. But most public health experts say the slow pace is the inevitable consequence of creating a new vaccine rollout in real time.

Read the full story:

TOPSHOT - A nurse injects a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to a member of the medical staff at the Croix Rousse Hospital, on January 6, 2021, in Lyon as part of France's national vaccination campaign to fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP) (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article As the world begins its vaccination push, delayed rollouts draw criticism and concern

North Korea claims to have tested 13,257 people and found no positive cases of Covid-19, according to a report issued on January 8 by the World Health Organization.

The report is based on data from 15 laboratories in North Korea, which the country’s Ministry of Public Health provided to WHO.

The report also said that travel restrictions in North Korea have been imposed and all points of entry are closed for an undefined period of time. 

The North Korean government has maintained that there have not been any positive cases of Covid-19 detected in the country, a claim widely questioned by experts.

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock leaves 10 Downing Street in London, on January 6.

The UK government will publish its Covid-19 UK Vaccines Delivery Plan on Monday, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock scheduled to hold a news conference at Downing Street in the afternoon to provide details on the program.

The plan will lay out the strategies behind the development, manufacturing and deployment of the vaccines, according to a government statement.

The Health Secretary will visit one of the seven new regional vaccination centers to see an element of the plan in action.

More than 1,000 vaccination sites have already been established across the United Kingdom, helping those who are most at risk from Covid-19 to access vaccines for free, regardless of where they live.

Mexico on Sunday reported its first case of the Covid-19 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, a Mexican Health Ministry official said.

Mexico’s Director General of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said the patient is a 56-year-old British citizen who traveled from Amsterdam to Mexico City on December 28, and then to the northeast city of Matamoros.

On Sunday, the patient was intubated in hospital. 

It’s the first confirmed case of the UK variant in Mexico. Health officials have tested more than 500 suspected cases of the variant but this is the first verified case. 

Mexican health authorities are tracking cases from people who traveled on the same plane as the patient from Mexico City to Matamoros. On Sunday, two people who showed symptoms tested negative to Covid-19. Another 31 are asymptomatic and there are still 12 people who haven’t been found, Alomía said.

According to the Health Ministry, at least 1,534,039 total Covid-19 cases have been recorded in Mexico, including 133,706 deaths.

The United States reported 213,905 new Covid-19 cases and 1,814 additional virus-related deaths on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The latest figures bring the nationwide total to 22,406,747 cases with at least 374,322 people dying from the virus in the US.

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

Vaccine rollout: So far, 22,137,350 Covid-19 vaccine doses have been distributed, with at least 6,688,231 shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Track the US cases: 

A medical worker collects a swab sample from a resident at a community Covid-19 testing site in Shijiazhuang, China, on January 7.

China’s northern Hebei province Sunday completed a mass testing program in an effort to contain the country’s worst coronavirus flare-up in months, according to the provincial deputy mayor, Xu Jianpei.

About 17 million people were tested in the drive – more than 10.2 million of them in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang and 6.7 million in Xingtai city, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The mass testing began last Wednesday as both cities reported the biggest local outbreak in mainland China for months.

On Sunday, Hebei province reported 82 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, according to the country’s National Health Commission. Among the new local cases, 77 were reported in Shijiazhuang, while five were confirmed in Xingtai.

Last week, China put Shijiazhuang into lockdown, imposing some of the strictest measures since the country largely contained the spread of the coronavirus in March.

Residents were barred from leaving the city and are required to self-quarantine at home for seven days after taking the compulsory Covid-19 test. All public transport has been suspended, major highways were blocked, and train and bus stations closed and flights canceled.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine, speaks during a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on March 5, 2020.

As part of the hunt for new coronavirus variants, an international database shows the United States ranks 61st in how quickly virus samples are collected from patients, analyzed and then posted online.

Countries with far fewer resources, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Suriname, process samples more quickly than the US does.

The median number of days from the time a sample is collected from a patient’s nose until the time its genetic sequence is posted on GISAID, an independent data sharing initiative, is 85 days, according an analysis of GISAID data by the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“By the time you wait (85) days, a sequence can go from being a rare variant to being half of the circulating virus in a population,” Hotez said.

Read the full story:

Related article Much of US data to catch newest coronavirus variants is several months old

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva, on July 3, 2020.

The World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic will arrive in China later this week, China’s National Health Commission announced on Monday.

Last week, WHO said that China blocked the arrival of the team of global experts as the necessary permissions to enter the country had not been approved.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 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.

In May, WHO agreed to hold an inquiry into the global response to the pandemic after more than 100 countries signed a resolution calling for an independent probe.

CNN has reached out to WHO for comment. 

California has recorded more than 2.6 million Covid-19 cases and at least 29,701 Californians have died from the virus.

The state continues to see a surge that’s not slowing down.

Here’s what’s happening in the Golden State:

Japan’s Health Ministry says passengers who traveled from Brazil, quarantined, and tested positive for Covid-19 in early January were later found to have been infected with virus-carrying mutations that appear similar to variants of the coronavirus first seen in Britain and South Africa.

The travelers had been in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and landed at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on January 2, the ministry said in a statement Sunday. They tested positive at the airport quarantine. 

The Brazilian Health Ministry said it was notified by its Japanese counterpart Saturday.

Health authorities have been concerned about new variants of the virus, like those first identified in the UK and South Africa, because they appear to be more easily transmitted.

There’s no evidence that new variants of the virus are any more dangerous or can affect the efficacy of the vaccines. 

Japan’s Health Ministry is not yet able to say whether the variant found in passengers from Brazil is more transmissible.

The spokesperson for Mexico’s President announced on Sunday that he has tested positive for Covid-19.

Mexico has reported more than 1.5 million Covid-19 cases, including at least 133,204 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The United States reported 129,229 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Sunday, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP).

This is the sixth highest number reported and the 40th consecutive day that the US has remained above 100,000 current hospitalizations.

 The highest hospitalization numbers according to CTP data are:

In some hospitals, health centers and pharmacies in the United States, there are vials of Covid-19 vaccines that aren’t making it into arms.

Out of the more than 22 million doses of vaccine that have been distributed to hospitals and pharmacies so far in the US, only about 6.7 million people have received their first dose, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There’s no one reason for the slow rollout or doses going unused; experts say it was never going to be easy to begin a mass vaccination campaign during a pandemic. It takes time to vaccinate and monitor large numbers of people, and some facilities are staggering staff vaccinations to avoid having too many health care workers out at once.

The supply and demand don’t always line up. Some in the highest priority groups – health care workers and and long-term care facility residents – don’t want the vaccine, or at least, not yet. At the same time, the American Medical Association on Friday said it was “concerned” that some health care workers not employed by hospitals or health care systems face difficulties accessing the vaccine.

To speed up the process, the federal government is urging states to offer the vaccine to people who are older or in higher-risk groups, but some areas are still focusing on the earliest priority groups – even if that means doses brought out of cold storage go unused.

Read the full story:

Syringes wand vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine are prepared to be administered to front-line health care workers under an emergency use authorization at a drive up vaccination site from Renown Health in Reno, Nevada on December 17, 2020.

Related article Hospitals thought they'd see Covid-19 vaccine shortages. Sometimes, they have to throw away doses

"Covid" is written on a casket containing a deceased person who died from the coronavirus. The coffins stand in the crematorium's worship room before cremation in Saxony, Meissen, Germany, on January 8.

More than 40,000 people have died from symptoms related to the novel coronavirus in Germany, according to data from the country’s center for disease control.

The daily tally from the Robert Koch Institute showed an additional 465 deaths in a span of 24 hours, bringing the country’s total death toll to 40,343.

The country also recorded 16,946 new infections in the same time frame, bringing total cases to 1,908,527.

Germany, which was praised for its handling of the first wave of the pandemic, reported its largest 24-hour increase in Covid-19 fatalities on Friday. With this, the country’s death toll increased by 1,188 in 24 hours.

Lockdown extended as cases surge: Earlier in the week, the government extended the country’s national lockdown – originally scheduled until January 10 – until the end of the month, while tightening restrictions on movement and contact to curb the spread of the virus.

Germany pushes ahead with vaccine drive: On Saturday, Health Minister Jens Spahn announced that half a million people across the country had been vaccinated against Covid-19.

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced Saturday that the nationwide Covid-19 vaccination drive would start from January 16, 2021.

The country of 1.35 billion people is embarking on one of the world’s most ambitious mass immunization programs ever undertaken, with plans to inoculate 300 million frontline workers, and elderly and vulnerable people by August. Preparations have been months in the making.

On Saturday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to review the status of Covid-19 in the country along with the preparedness for the vaccination rollout, according to a statement from the Ministry of Health. 

The country conducted its third nationwide dry-run on Friday across 615 districts covering 4,895 session sites in 33 states and Union Territories.

More than 61,000 program managers, 200,000 vaccinators, and 370,000 other vaccination team members have been trained so far. 

Read more about India’s vaccine drive:

A Health official takes part in dry run or a mock drill for Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine at a Urban Community Health Centre in Ajmer, Rajasthan, India on 02 January 2021. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Related article India embarks on one of the world's most ambitious vaccine rollouts