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Millions of Americans are at increased risk for more severe Covid-19 because of tobacco use, according to a new report from The American Lung Association.
The annual report, published Wednesday, added, “In addition, 16 million Americans live with a tobacco related disease.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that smoking can cause more severe symptoms of Covid-19.
The association makes the point that, similarly to the coronavirus, smoking also has disproportionate impacts on certain communities, particularly those of color.
Some 50.6 million Americans are currently using tobacco products, the report says, with use of commercial products particularly high among Native Americans and Alaskan Natives – 29.3% – and Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual adults – 29.9%.
Adults with mental illness and substance abuse also have higher rates of smoking, the report says.
South Africa is granting emergency use approval to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and will continue reviewing applications from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, the country’s health products regulatory authority (SAHPRA) said in a news conference Wednesday.
The approval was granted under Section 21 Authorisation, which grants emergency use of a health product that is unregistered in South Africa.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said that the government expects the first 1 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to arrive on February 1.
Upon arrival in South Africa, the vaccines will undergo a quarantine lasting a minimum of 10 days, in which they will be tested for quality assurance, Mkhize said.
The vaccines will be manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and 1.5 million doses in total will eventually be flown into South Africa to begin immunizing the country’s 1.25 million healthcare workers.
South Africa has been battling an aggressive second wave of Covid-19 infections caused by a new variant of the virus, known as 501Y.V2, which was first discovered in November. With more than 1.4 million recorded cases and 41,000 fatalities to date, South Africa has recorded more infections and deaths than any other country in Africa.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the US must focus on minorities in order to efficiently distribute Covid-19 vaccines.
The bigger picture: Black and Latino Americans are receiving the Covid-19 vaccine at significantly lower rates than White people, a disparity that health advocates blame on the federal government and hospitals not prioritizing equitable access.
A CNN analysis of data from 14 states found vaccine coverage is twice as high among White people on average than it is among Black and Latino people.
The analysis found that on average, more than 4% of the White population has received a Covid-19 vaccine, about 2.3 times higher than the Black population (1.9% covered) and 2.6 times higher than the Hispanic population (1.8% covered).
Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti announced that his government expects the first 1 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine to arrive in the next few days.
In a televised address Tuesday evening, Sagasti announced the country will start its vaccination plan in February with frontline health workers as the priority group.
The President also announced he will be among one the first people in the country to receive the vaccine.
The Peruvian government has also finalized two other agreements with Sinopharm for half a million doses in February and 1.5 million doses in March, Sagasti added.
Sagasti’s government has faced strong criticism for the delay in achieving vaccine agreements with different laboratories. Peru’s Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete told Congress last week the country has negotiated 28 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.
Peru has taken part in the Sinopharm vaccine’s clinical trials, however the vaccine has yet to be approved by Peruvian regulators.
New restrictions: Peru announced new lockdowns for 10 of its 25 regions, including the capital Lima, as Covid-19 cases rise and hospitals reach a breaking point. The lockdowns will start on January 31.
The country is also racing to address a shortage of intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid-19 patients, Peru’s President Francisco Sagasti, said during his address Tuesday.
“We expect to add another 350 (beds) in the next two weeks,” he said.
An aggressive second wave has seen Peru pass 40,000 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to data released by the country’s Health Ministry. Infections are also spiraling – with about 100,000 new cases recorded in the past month alone – as officials warn of burned out doctors and overwhelmed intensive care wards.
Read more about the crisis in Peru:
Roughly one in 55 people in the United Kingdom has coronavirus, England’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said Wednesday.
He was speaking at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reiterated the announcement he made earlier in Parliament that schools would not reopen February 22 as planned, but could perhaps reopen starting March 8.
On Wednesday, Johnson also announced that the UK would be introducing government-provided accommodations, for example hotels, for 10 days for those who cannot be refused entry into the UK from high-risk countries.
It comes as the UK surpassed 100,000 coronavirus deaths – the first country in Europe to do so.
On Wednesday, the UK reported 25,308 new Covid-19 cases and 1,725 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the chair of President-elect Biden’s Covid-19 equity task force, said there is much work to be done in making sure communities of color around the US accept and receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
More context: Black Americans remain among the groups that have the least confidence in the vaccine, according to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The findings come as the nation’s top health leaders urge Black people to trust the vaccine, by hosting live events where Black health professionals are among the first to receive and administer it.
The Kaiser study found that 35% of Black Americans would probably or definitely not get the vaccine if it was determined to be safe by scientists and widely available for free.
A question asked at CNN’s town hall tonight was whether there are contingency plans in place for alteration and redistribution of the mRNA vaccines in case one of the current or future coronavirus variants renders them less effective.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that this is something that health experts are working on in collaboration with the pharmaceutical companies.
“One of the beauties of the mRNA approach is that it’s highly adaptable,” Fauci said.
These vaccines work by using genetic material called messenger RNA, a kind of genetic software that instructs cells to make a piece of the coronavirus spike protein.
“So what you have is this bit of RNA and you stick in the part of the RNA that codes for the protein of the spike that is in the virus that is now circulating in our country,” Fauci said.
He added that when you want to adapt the vaccine to protect against new variants, such as the one first identified in South Africa, “you take that same mRNA and instead of sticking in the coding component for the virus that’s circulating in our own country, you quickly stick in the one that codes for the South African isolate.”
This approach means that you don’t have to conduct large-scale trials, he said.
Whether it’s the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, there is no evidence that shows one is better than the other when administered to a person of color, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, said during tonight’s CNN coronavirus town hall.
The bigger picture: Black and Latino Americans are receiving the Covid-19 vaccine at significantly lower rates than White people, a disparity that health advocates blame on the federal government and hospitals not prioritizing equitable access.
A CNN analysis of data from 14 states found vaccine coverage is twice as high among White people on average than it is among Black and Latino people.
The analysis found that on average, more than 4% of the White population has received a Covid-19 vaccine, about 2.3 times higher than the Black population (1.9% covered) and 2.6 times higher than the Hispanic population (1.8% covered).
Answering a question from a teacher during CNN’s town hall tonight, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, addressed fears of sending kids and staff back to school with few protective measures in place.
Walensky said that while the Biden administration “has very much said and emphasized the importance of getting our children back to school,” there needs to be resources in place to do so safely, especially in Covid hotspots.
Walensky said that there is a federal plan to get children back into schools but more resources are needed.
“The federal plan is linked to having resources for the school which is why we so badly need the American rescue plan to be funded so we have resources for mitigation for ventilation and PPE, and importantly, for testing,” she said.
“A really key part of getting our children back to school is to do testing amongst teachers and among children and the funding for that testing is all on this American rescue plan.”
Walensky also raised concerns of the other impacts on kids who are not in school.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, said work has already begun on developing a “booster” that would vaccinate people against the South African strain of Covid-19.
Fauci added: “So we’re already trying to stay one or two steps ahead of the game so that if in fact, we have a situation where the South African strain is prevalent here, it’s here but certainly not dominant, and you want to get ahead of it from a protection standpoint, you’re going to want to have a vaccine that specifically addresses that strain and that’s what we’re working on.”
More context: As researchers around the world race to see if new coronavirus variants will pose a problem for the vaccines, a second study in two days says the South African variant could possibly do just that.
The variant was first spotted in South Africa in October and has now been found in more than 30 countries, according to the World Health Organization.
In both studies, the work was done in the lab and not in people, so more research is needed to gauge the true threat of the new variant.
In the most recent study, which was small, researchers took antibodies from six people who were hospitalized with Covid-19 before the new variant was discovered. They found to varying degrees, that antibodies for all six of the survivors were unable to fully fight off the virus.
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Speaking on CNN’s town hall Wednesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it’s “going to take awhile for us to feel like we’re back to a sense of normalcy.”
Answering a question from CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who asked where the US will be with the number of Americans vaccinated after the first 100 days, Walensky said that she believes 100 million Americans will be vaccinated within that timeframe.
“That will be protection for perhaps about 50 million, some people will be after two doses, some people will still be in the process of getting their second dose,” she said.
Walensky said that after the first 100 million Americans have been vaccinated, that will still leave 200 million more.
“We are working to figure out where the bottlenecks are and to resolve those bottlenecks but it’s going to take some time to get 300 million Americans vaccinated twice,” she said.
Walensky also said that even if you’ve been diagnosed with Covid-19, the advise is to get vaccinated.
“We’re asking people to wait 90 days from the time infected. We don’t know a lot about the long term immunity of this disease, so we are still recommending it,” she said.
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Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke this evening about why only a fraction of the 47 million Covid-19 vaccines distributed around the US have been administered.
First of all, some of the vaccines only just arrived today or Tuesday, Walensky said during CNN’s coronavirus town hall.
Some of the vaccines are also “in the several day long distribution process to get them to the final state where they will actually be administered into the arm,” she added.
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At least 315 cases of a coronavirus variant first spotted in the UK have been detected in 28 US states, according to data posted Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This includes 92 cases in Florida, 92 in California, 22 in New York, 17 in Michigan and 14 in Georgia. The following states have found fewer than 10 cases each: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
One thing to note: The CDC said 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.
The variant — which is known as B.1.1.7 and appears to spread more easily — has also been found in at least 70 countries worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
Between vaccination coverage and natural immunity among those who have recovered from an infection, about 12% — and perhaps as much as a third — of the US population may currently have some degree of protection against Covid-19, according to a CNN analysis.
About 6% of the US population has been vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Close to 20 million people have received at least one dose of the two-dose regimen — which trial data shows can offer partial protection against the virus — and more than 3.8 million people are fully vaccinated.
Studies show that people who recover from Covid-19 are largely immune to the virus for a period of time. About 25 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported to the CDC, representing about another 8% of the population with some protection against Covid-19.
However, the CDC estimates that just a fraction of total Covid-19 cases in the US have actually been reported. The latest estimates show that total cases may have topped 83 million through December. Along with the 5 million or so cases that have been reported in January, about 88 million people – more than a quarter of the US population – may actually be protected from Covid-19 after recovering from infection.
Experts say that people who have already had Covid-19 should still get the vaccine. The immunity you get from contracting Covid-19 does last for a certain amount of time, but the nature of the vaccine should provide longer immunity, according to CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
The CNN estimates of current protection against Covid-19 do not account for any potential overlap among individuals who may be counted in both the number of people who have been vaccinated and those who have been infected.
With at least one vaccine dose administered to about 6% of the population and potentially a quarter of the population immune after infection, as many as about 1 in 3 people in the US may currently be at least partially protected against Covid-19.
That said, trial data shows that one dose of vaccine only offers partial coverage. And while some studies found that immunity to Covid-19 may last years after infection, others have found it may wane after just five months.
On Tuesday, President Biden announced a boost to vaccine supply allocated to states and promised to have enough doses to vaccinate at least 300 million people by late summer or early fall.
President Biden’s Covid-19 team will soon appear on CNN’s global coronavirus town hall tonight to answer questions from readers and viewers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith will join CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the hour-long event at 8 p.m. ET.
The White House Covid-19 response team gave their first virtual briefing earlier today to address vaccine distribution problems and questions about a vaccine stockpile that top officials said does not exist.
The briefing also addressed the spread of new coronavirus variants that are more contagious threatens to add stress to an already overwhelmed health care system, Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday.
The briefing included an updated US coronavirus death forecast from Walensky, who said the CDC’s ensemble forecast now projects there will be 479,000 to 514,000 deaths by Feb. 20.
Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections a few weeks into the future. The previous ensemble forecast, published Jan. 20, projected up to 508,000 coronavirus deaths by Feb. 13.
At least 425,406 people have already died from Covid-19 in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
A portion of the briefing was also devoted to emphasizing that equitable distribution of medical care and vaccines is key to the administration’s national coronavirus plan, a priority amid recent research that has showed communities of color are not being vaccinated in proportion to their share of the population.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the US must focus on minorities in order to efficiently distribute Covid-19 vaccines.
Fauci’s remarks come after CNN published an analysis that found that on average, more than 4% of the White population has received a Covid-19 vaccine, about 2.3 times higher than the Black population (1.9% covered) and 2.6 times higher than the Hispanic population (1.8% covered).
“You really want to get it to the people who are really the most vulnerable, you want to get it to everybody, but you don’t want to have a situation where people who really are in need of it, because of where they are, where they live with their economic status is, that they don’t have access to the vaccine,” Fauci said.
A possible explanation is emerging for why federal data shows only about half of the vaccine supply delivered in the US has been administered.
The nation’s vaccine distribution figures have baffled observers for weeks, with states claiming they need more vaccine when the data indicates they still have many doses on hand.
Health officials for President Biden sought to explain on Wednesday, at least in part.
Speaking at a media briefing, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said not all vaccine that’s been delivered to states is available for “inserting into people’s arms.”
White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients took that explanation a step further.
“Some of what the states have right now is inventory to do the very, very important second shot,” Zients said. “I think it’s important that when you’re looking at state’s inventories that you recognize that some of that inventory is being held for the very important second shot.”
The Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines currently available for emergency use in the US require two doses. A federal dashboard tracks the nation’s distribution of these vaccines. The data shows how many doses of vaccine have been delivered to each state, but it does not differentiate between first and second doses.
Consider Florida, where the federal data on Wednesday showed about 3.1 million doses had been delivered and about 1.6 million had been administered. That’s roughly 50% of the doses going into arms.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki used similar figures to suggest that Florida had a good deal of vaccine, after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed the state wasn’t getting enough supply from the federal government and needed more.
“I will note, because we’re data-first here, facts-first, they’ve only distributed about 50% of the vaccines they’ve been given in Florida,” Psaki said. “So, clearly they have a good deal of the vaccine.”
On Wednesday, DeSantis pushed back against those comments from the White House, explaining the federal data didn’t account for vaccine earmarked for second doses.
“When the person at the White House says that Florida has all these doses, those are second doses,” DeSantis said.
Other states also say part of their vaccine inventory is intended for second shots.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has started to express the state’s vaccine distribution figures in terms of first and second doses, announcing Wednesday that 96% of the state’s allocated first doses have been administered, excluding the federal long-term care facility vaccination program with CVS and Walgreens.
On Tuesday, Cuomo said his state was “basically out of vaccine,” but that same day New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had also complained about being short on vaccine, said the city did have doses intended for second shots in its inventory.
“I’ve got a hundred thousand second doses,” de Blasio told MSNBC.
De Blasio went on to say the doses were “sitting on a shelf” and “can’t be used for weeks.” He said President Biden should order governments across the country to take second doses in their inventory and use them right now for first doses.
“Even a first dose gives folks about 50% protection,” he said.
Cuomo said on Tuesday second doses aren’t being distributed as first doses due to uncertainty over how quickly additional doses of vaccine can be made.
“The fear is, until you really know what the production schedule is, if you start using the second dose as the first dose, you have to have a dramatically increased supply otherwise you’re going to leave people without a second dose when their appointment is due,” said Cuomo.
It’s unclear how many states have an inventory of second doses, or how many states may be handling distribution of second doses differently. The White House and the Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiries for additional details.
In Maryland, the state is not holding onto any reserve doses in its warehouses aside from doses to be administered that week, according to Charlie Gischlar of the state’s department of health. Gischlar says Maryland has requested the federal government automatically distribute second doses to providers who were provided with first doses.
A major voice for the tourism industry is urging the Biden administration against requiring coronavirus tests for travel within the United States, a possibility a federal official said Tuesday is under consideration.
The official said the government is “actively looking at” the possibility of domestic travel testing requirements, as well as requirements for travelers entering the US on roads connecting the country to Canada and Mexico.
“These are conversations that are ongoing and looking at what the types and locations of testing might be,” said Marty Cetron, director for Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He spoke Tuesday at a State Department briefing.
“We realize that there’s been a dramatic evolution and increase in both testing platforms and testing capacity. I think this is a really important part of our toolkit to combat this pandemic.”
The US Travel Association said Wednesday it supports the requirement that any traveler flying into the US must present a negative Covid test, but that it believes requiring domestic travelers to present a negative result is “extremely problematic” and impractical. Some states and local governments do require at least some travelers to quarantine upon arrival or obtain a test, but the counsel from the CDC against travel are only guidelines.
Barnes said the group has “articulated this concern on this point to the Biden administration,” including the White House and other agencies. She said it would “really hamper not only the mobility of the country but put a huge further dent into the overall national economy.”
She estimated that to accommodate pre-travel testing at the current level of travel, the US would need to grow testing capacity by up to 42%. Travel has slumped since the holidays, and the Transportation Security Administration said it screened fewer people on Tuesday than any single day in six months.
It is unclear how seriously the new administration is considering such a plan while it rolls out other measures to address the spread of coronavirus. White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide details about the topic when asked at Monday’s briefing.
Last week, President Biden directed federal agencies to develop a plan for requiring passengers on virtually all forms mass transportation to wear masks. The requirement for passengers on international flights into the US to present a recent negative coronavirus test took effect on Tuesday. And Biden prevented the lifting of travel restrictions from certain countries, including those where scientists found aggressive variants of the virus spreading.
Cases of coronavirus are starting to decline slightly across England, but this is likely to be driven by significant regional variation, a major survey finds.
The study by scientists at Imperial College London found that Covid-19 cases are declining in the southeast and southwest of the country, including London, but are rising in other regions, notably the East Midlands. And overall, the prevalence of infections remains high.
The study, called REACT-1, randomly sampled 167,642 people across England between Jan. 6 and 22. Of them 2,282 or 1.57% tested positive. The results show the national prevalence remained stable up until Jan. 15, then started to show a slight decline in the last week of the survey.
However, the researchers believe this is due to declines in the South bringing the national average down — with the Southwest seeing the greatest fall in infections. Other regions either had minimal no decline, or in the case of the East Midlands, saw an increase.
Despite the decline, London continued to have the highest burden of Covid cases, with 2.83% of people sampled testing positive. In terms of age groups, the highest prevalence was seen in people aged 18 to 34 or close to 2% of that population. Close to 1% of people over 65 nationally were infected and 2% of people over 65 in London.
Unlike government data, which has results for people who come forward for testing, REACT-1 selects people at random and so includes people with and without symptoms and who may not suspect they’re infected. The study also monitors people’s movements using mobility data from Facebook apps. Through this they could see that people while there was a decrease in activity towards the end of December, this was followed by a rise in January.
Elliott said more people are active now than they were in the first lockdown, with more people going to work and more children in schools. This is all adding to the reduced impact of the national lockdown.
Students at University of Michigan are being asked “stay in place” on campus in Ann Arbor to slow the spread of cases of the Covid-19 B.1.1.7 variant on campus until Feb. 7, according to a news release sent Wednesday.
The recommendation comes in coordination with the Washtenaw County Health Department, and is directed at undergraduate and graduate students, as well as student-athletes who are currently living on and off campus, the release said.
The school says it has increased Covid-19 testing among students, and has reported 175 Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the winter term. Fourteen of those cases are the B.1.1.7 variant.
“This recommendation is intended to slow any possible spread and give us a better understanding of the extent of the presence of B.1.1.7 variant on campus and to aid in containing any current spread,” said Rob Ernst, associate vice president for student life and executive director of the University Health Service. “We encourage all students to stay in place and only leave their residence for essential activities, including getting tested weekly for COVID-19.”
