March 10 coronavirus news

Preliminary data shows that the coronavirus variant first identified in New York, B1526, “is a more infectious variant” and coupled with the variant first identified in the UK, accounts for 51% of all cases in New York City at present, city health officials said Wednesday.

Preliminary analysis indicates that the B1526 variant first identified in New York, “is probably more infectious than older strains of the virus,” Varma said. “It may be similar in infectiousness to the B117, the UK strain, but we’re not certain about this yet.”

The variant identified in New York in particular “is increasing in prevalence across New York city, representing about 39% of all samples sequenced by the pandemic response lab” compared to 31% the week prior, according to New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi. “The increasing prevalence suggests the B1526 variant is a more infectious variant.”

Varma notes preliminary analysis does not show that the variant first identified in New York causes more severe illness or reduces the effectiveness of vaccines.

“It’s important to emphasize of course this is preliminary” he said as the city works with the state and health officials across the country.

A couple weeks ago, two separate teams of researchers said they found a worrying new coronavirus variant in New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast that carries mutations that help it evade the body’s natural immune response — as well as the effects of monoclonal antibody treatments.

A person receives a Covid-19 vaccine on March 9 in North Miami, Florida.

The new recommendations for fully vaccinated people mark the first step toward a return to pre-pandemic life, but some precautions are still essential, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues wrote in a JAMA Viewpoint article published Wednesday.

The CDC released long-awaited guidelines Monday, offering limited freedoms for people who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

The team notes that more than 31 million people – 9.4% of the total population – have completed a vaccination series. These people now have a reduced risk of severe illness or death from Covid-19.

“In addition, preliminary but rapidly increasing evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people likely pose little risk of transmission to unvaccinated people,” Walensky and colleagues write.

In creating the guidelines, the CDC considered the risks to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. As many people remain unvaccinated, public health precautions are still important, they note.

“CDC guidance will evolve as vaccination coverage increases, disease dynamics in the country change, and new data emerge,” the team writes. “With high levels of community transmission and the threat of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, CDC still recommends a number of prevention measures for all people, regardless of vaccination status.”

The agency still recommends all people wear masks, avoid large gatherings and postpone travel. It also stresses the importance of community-level prevention strategies, such as universal mask mandates and occupancy restrictions.

“Once vaccinated people make up a greater proportion of the general US population, these community-level restrictions will be readdressed, but not yet,” the team wrote.

While Covid-19 vaccines offer a path toward ending the pandemic, increasing vaccine access and confidence is essential, Walensky and colleagues note.

Texas restaurant owner Mike Nguyen wants his business open but he is also battling cancer. He says that by lifting the statewide mask mandate, Gov. Greg Abbott has put him, and many others like him, in danger.

Nguyen say he will only allow customers who wear masks to dine at his establishment. Since masks are a really divisive topic, he doesn’t expect everyone to adhere to it and that means his business will not bounce back 100%.

“And my biggest thing is if we have another surge and we get a setback, my business may not survive this,” he added.

Before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will “liberalize” its guidance for fully vaccinated people, it’s watching for coronavirus case increases and waiting for evidence about whether protection is fading among people who were vaccinated early on, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told ABC’s Good Morning America.

When asked why vaccinated people shouldn’t travel, as CDC guidelines currently suggest, Walensky said there has been a surge in virus cases every time there’s a surge in travel.

Walensky said that the CDC was waiting for data and evidence about whether people who were vaccinated early on, in December and January, should be concerned about their protection fading.

“We are not suggesting that people who are vaccinated can go out and take off their masks and do things in public settings, gather in big gatherings,” Walensky added. “Really, we’re taking baby steps to make sure that we can still protect the 90% of people who aren’t yet vaccinated.”

It’s just after 10 a.m. ET in the US where vaccination efforts continue across the country and the House is expected to vote on a Covid-19 relief plan that includes direct payments to Americans.

Here’s what you need to know about the pandemic to get up to speed this morning:

Used vials of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, the newest vaccine approved by the U.S. FDA for emergency use, sit in a box at an event put on by the Thornton Fire Department on March 6, 2021 in Thornton, Colorado.

President Biden will announce Wednesday that he is directing the US Department of Health and Human Services to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, a White House official confirms to CNN.

The administration and the pharmaceutical giant still need to negotiate when these 100 million doses will be available, another person familiar with the matter told CNN.

This source predicts it will likely happen later this year as Johnson & Johnson works to ramp up production.

The New York Times first reported the expected announcement.

The White House told governors Tuesday to expect fewer than 400,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week, far below what they initially expected would be available.

Biden will make the announcement during a meeting this afternoon with Johnson & Johnson and Merck, which is helping to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine under a deal brokered by the White House.

Biden announced last week that the US would have enough Covid-19 vaccine doses for every adult American by the end of May, which was a two-month acceleration of the previous timeline his administration had laid out.

The new goal was made possible by a rare partnership between competitors Merck and Johnson & Johnson. The White House says it is utilizing the Defense Production Act to help equip two Merck facilities to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Read more here.

Candles are placed before a candlelight vigil and moment of silence outside the U.S. Capitol, on February 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congressional leaders held a candlelight ceremony to mark the more than 500,000 U.S. deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An ensemble forecast published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now projects there will be 547,000 to 571,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by April 3.

Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections a few weeks into the future. The previous ensemble forecast, published March 3, projected up to 564,000 coronavirus deaths by March 27.

At least 527,705 people have already died from Covid-19 in the US, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Utah will lift its mask mandate on April 10 after negotiations between the state’s governor and legislature stopped an effort to end the measure immediately, a spokesperson for the governor’s office confirmed in a statement.

Last week, the governor’s office announced plans to open vaccinations to any adult who wants one by April.

“We … will likely have 1.5 million first doses in the state by April 10,” Napier-Pearce noted.

Napier-Pearce also pointed out that the mandate will continue after April 10 in schools and for large gatherings.

“Also, businesses can still require masks,” she added.

Seat belts inside an electric school bus parked at a mass vaccination site in a parking lot at Hollywood Park adjacent to SoFi stadium during the Covid-19 pandemic on March 1, 2021 in Inglewood, California. 

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Good Morning America Wednesday that the agency isn’t ready to create standards for states to ease restrictions – but if schools are still closed, other places shouldn’t be opening.

“We’re not quite ready to create those standards because we still have 90% of people unprotected,” Walensky said when asked what the standard should be for easing restrictions state by state. 

The CDC released operational guidance several weeks ago to safely get children and teachers back to school.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s New Day Wednesday that there are two ways of going about booster shots for Covid-19 vaccines against variants: boosting against the regular virus or boosting against specific variants. 

The vaccines in use now seem to be working against the variants, Fauci explained. 

For the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK, antibodies induced by the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine are “quite effective,” Fauci said. Looking at the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa in the lab, it appears the efficacy of vaccines is slightly diminished.

He said that people need to continue to be careful and not overly optimistic, “but I think what we’re seeing is that boosting with just the wild type virus vaccine – wild type means the standard one, not a variant – can actually protect you against a variant.” 

Tests are starting now to make vaccines directed specifically against variants, Fauci noted.

A medical worker handles a test tube after administering a nasal swab to a patient at a coronavirus testing center, on February 18, in Dunkirk, France, where the UK variant has been detected.

The coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, is associated with an estimated 64% higher risk of dying from Covid-19, suggests new research published in a peer-reviewed journal. 

A sample of people in the UK infected with the variant appeared to be between 32% and 104% — so around a probable 64% — more likely to die than those infected with the previously circulating variants, according to the study published in the medical journal the BMJ on Wednesday.

The variant was originally found to be more easily transmissible and the new data support claims from UK officials, based on preliminary data, that the variant may be more deadly, as well.

The researchers, from various institutions in the UK, analyzed data on more than 100,000 patients who tested positive for Covid-19 between October through January, and were followed up with until mid-February. The researchers took a close look at whose tests detected the variant compared with those from previously circulating variants.

The study showed that the new variant was associated with 227 deaths in a sample of 54,906 patients — compared with 141 deaths among the same number of patients infected with previous strains. 

More research is needed to determine whether similar findings would emerge among more patients from other parts of the world.

“The variant of concern, in addition to being more transmissible, seems to be more lethal,” the researchers wrote in their study. “We expect this to be associated with changes in its phenotypic properties because of multiple genetic mutations, and we see no reason why this finding would be specific to the UK.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases expert in the US, has been reflecting on the year since the coronavirus pandemic began, saying he never could have imagined reaching the number of cases and deaths the country has seen from the virus.

“If you had turned the clock back a year … even though I’ve been through multiple outbreaks of different diseases, the thought that you would have 525,000 people in America to have died and about, you know, 28 million infections in this country, would have really been unimaginable,” he told CNN’s New Day program on Wednesday.

Fauci also indicated that things are headed in the right direction — but warned that “we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Fauci also said people should keep their guard up a little longer, through the upcoming spring break.

“We want people to have a good time on spring break, but don’t put your guard down completely. Just be prudent a bit longer. We are going in the right direction, we are almost there.”

Watch the moment:

US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said the next round of guidance for vaccinated individuals will involve traveling and going out.

New guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this week say people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely visit with other vaccinated people and small groups of unvaccinated people in some circumstances, but there are still important safety precautions needed.

Fauci also said governors rolling back mask mandates is concerning. 

Fauci added that he is constantly and consistently meeting with the Biden administration’s team. While personal threats to him “come and go,” he told CNN’s John Berman that the situation right now is “really going well.” 

“It’s a completely different kind of atmosphere. It’s always looking ahead, about how we can do better with the main focus on the public health aspects of it, without distractions about the other things that we knew from before,” he said.  

Watch more from the interview:

An alert on the NHS Covid-19 Test and Trace app is seen on January 18, in London.

There is little evidence that Britain’s Covid-19 track and trace program has had any impact on containing the virus, despite a price tag of US $51.5b, according to the government’s public spending watchdog.

The NHS Test and Trace program was introduced in the UK during the first wave of the pandemic to stop its spread and avoid another lockdown. But two lockdowns later, it is “unclear” if its specific contribution to containment has justified its hefty price tag, according to a report, published on Wednesday by the UK Public Accounts Committee.

The program never met its target of turning around test results within 24 hours, nor was prepared for a surge in demand for tests, the report said.

Errant spending, being overly reliant on expensive contractors and a lack of coordination with local authorities are among some of the program’s key criticisms detailed in the report. 

Speaking on UK broadcaster Sky News on Wednesday, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said that although the cost of fighting coronavirus hasn’t been cheap, it has “absolutely been necessary.”

“Whatever the coronavirus experience we have had as a nation, good or bad, it would have been one heck of a lot worse if we didn’t have a Test and Trace system which has contacted so many people and prevented the disease spreading further,” Shapps said.

A nurse prepares to administer a dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at a health care center in Seoul, South Korea, on February 26.

South Korea will provide priority coronavirus vaccination for Olympic athletes before their travel to Japan for the Tokyo Olympics, the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee confirmed to CNN on Wednesday.

The country began its vaccination rollout in late February. For now, the coronavirus vaccines are available to frontline healthcare workers and those working and staying in nursing facilities. The general public will only receive the vaccine in July according to South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

KDCA is making an exception for Olympic athletes as they are due to travel to Japan for “public service”. 

It also confirmed that it will allow Covid-19 vaccination for short-term travellers on essential governmental or business travel abroad. 

However, details including administration date and number of recipients have not been decided yet. Though KDCA did announce that essential governmental and economic workers can start applying on March 17. 

The KDCA and relevant ministries will review the applications, according to Senior Health official Yoon Tae-ho.

The Tokyo Olympics, postponed by a year because of the pandemic, are scheduled for July 23 to August 8.

A medical worker fills a syringe with the Sputnik V vaccine at a vaccination site in Moscow on March 3.

Vaccine production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine will begin this summer in Europe, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) told CNN on Tuesday.

A spokesperson from the RDIF said they had brokered deals with production facilities in Italy, Spain, France and Germany to manufacture Sputnik V.

The Russian sovereign wealth fund had struck a deal with Swiss-Italian company Adienne to produce Sputnik V in Italy, the spokesperson said.

The Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce released a statement on Monday welcoming the deal, which would see Italy becoming the first EU country to produce the Russian vaccine.

They statement added that production could start as early as July 2021, and will create new jobs and allow Italy to control the entire production process. The partnership could see production of 10 million doses by the end of the year, the Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce said.

The news follows an announcement last week that the European Union’s vaccine regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), has begun a rolling review of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine.

The rolling review came after complaints about the European Commission’s slow vaccine deployment led member states to unilaterally approve the Russian vaccine.

Earlier on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized remarks by EMA Chairwoman Christa Wirthumer-Hoche, who compared the idea of emergency authorization of Sputnik V to “playing Russian roulette.”

Sputnik V developers also posted on Twitter, demanding an apology from Wirthumer-Hoche, saying that “her comments raise serious questions about possible political interference in the ongoing EMA review.”

“Sputnik V is approved by 46 nations,” the developers added.

The European Union has backed down from accusing the UK of vaccine nationalism in an ongoing dispute over supply of Covid-19 shots. 

On Tuesday, President of the European Council Charles Michel wrote in a newsletter that the UK had “imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components” produced in the country.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushed back on those claims, saying that the UK has not blocked export of any vaccines to the European Union. 

Speaking in British parliament on Wednesday, Johnson said:

The accusations had first prompted British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to reject the “false claims” in a letter of response to Michel on Tuesday, a source told CNN.

“I wanted to set the record straight. The UK government has not blocked the export of a single COVID-19 vaccine or vaccine components,” Raab wrote, according to the source, who has seen the letter.  

In a conciliatory tweet on Tuesday evening, Michel said that he is “glad if the UK reaction leads to more transparency and increased exports to EU and third countries.” 

However, he added that there are “different ways of imposing bans or restrictions on vaccines/medicines.”

A representative of the EU’s delegation to the UK has been summoned to the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to discuss the issue further because the “false claim has been repeated at various levels within the EU and the Commission,” the source also said.  

Read more on the UK’s vaccine strategy here:

Related article Boris Johnson's vaccine strategy gets another boost, while Europe's scramble for shots continues

Nashville Mayor John Cooper is planning on vaccinating 10,000 Nashville residents in a drive-thru mass vaccination event scheduled for March 20 at Nissan Stadium, according to tweet by the Mayor and the Metro Public Health Department in Nashville.

“Nashville Health plans on vaccinating 10,000 of our residents to move our city closer to herd immunity and a return to normal life,” Cooper said in the tweet. 

On Tuesday Nashville Health reported 90,984 confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Nashville/Davidson County, noting an increase of 53 in the past 24 hours. The health agency reports that to-date, 652 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19.

Tennessee is currently in Phase 1C of its Vaccine Distribution Plan, which means that Tennesseans 16 years old or older with high-risk health conditions have been eligible to be vaccinated as of Monday.

As of March 4, 14% of Nashville residents (97,416) had received a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine and 7.9% of residents (55,157) were fully vaccinated, according to Nashville Health. 

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

Medical laboratory scientist Anielia Sobel tests samples from the Novavax Phase 3 Covid-19 clinical vaccine trial at the UW Medicine Retrovirology Lab in Seattle, Washington, on February 12.

Biotechnology company Novavax still expects to see results from its PREVENT-19 trial, a Phase 3 study of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico, sometime in April. The trial has enrolled 30,000 volunteers across more than 100 locations.

“Everybody’s enrolled and now we’re watching for cases,” Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development for Novavax, told CNN on Tuesday.

“I think sometime in the April timeframe we’ll have finished that trial. So, we’ll have three pivotal trials testing our vaccine – that’s extremely important for evidence that your vaccine is safe and can work,” Glenn said.

Novavax is also developing a booster shot to its coronavirus vaccine, and company officials anticipate that vaccinated people might need boosters every six months or annually to stay protected against Covid-19. Similar to others, Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine is administered as two doses given three weeks apart.

After the second dose, “we’re seeing that at six months, there’s a pretty big decline in antibodies and I think all the vaccine makers are going to see that,” Glenn said.

“But it’s our view that somewhere between six months and one year, we’re going to need to boost everybody to protect them,” Glenn said. “I think governments are gearing up for that kind of thinking – but we’re still collecting the information that will guide that. This is a new virus, these are new vaccines, and we just don’t have enough information.”

Novavax has initiated a booster shot study to gather that information. 

“We have actually started a trial where some of the people who got our vaccine last summer, at six months later we’re giving them a boost,” Glenn said. “We’re going to see how good that looks in terms of immune responses – and it can either be one dose, given once, or maybe we kind of repeat the same thing we did before where we give them a three-week interval.”

The company is currently manufacturing its vaccine at 10 sites in eight countries – with two sites in the United States, in North Carolina and Texas, Glenn said.

Brazil reported its highest daily death toll since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic on Tuesday, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry, with 1,972 new fatalities.

The country’s total coronavirus death toll now stands at 268,370.

Workers wearing protective suits walk past the graves of COVID-19 victims at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, in Manaus, Brazil, on February 25.

On Tuesday, the ministry reported 70,764 new confirmed Covid-19 cases, raising the country’s total number of infections to 11,122,429 – the third highest in the world after the United States and India.

In the southeastern state of Sao Paulo on Tuesday, a record number of 517 Covid-19 related deaths were reported by health authorities in the past 24 hours.

Sao Paulo’s death toll now stands at 62,101, with 2,134,020 confirmed Covid-19 cases, according to official data.

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People queue in vehicles as they arrive for vaccinations at California State University of Los Angeles on March 4.

Rich countries are vaccinating one person every second against Covid-19 while the majority of their poorest counterparts have yet to administer a single dose, the People’s Vaccine Alliance said Tuesday. 

These same rich nations are blocking efforts by developing countries to waive intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines, the alliance said. The World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) committee meets Wednesday to discuss the TRIPS waiver.

The People’s Vaccine Alliance, a group of organizations including Oxfam International, Frontline AIDS, UNAIDS, and others, says this is yet another example of rich countries prioritizing the interests of big pharmaceutical monopolies over people’s lives. 

“By allowing a small group of pharmaceutical companies to decide who lives and who dies, rich nations are prolonging this unprecedented global health emergency and putting countless more lives on the line,” said Oxfam’s executive director Gabriela Bucher.

“At this crucial time, developing countries need support – not opposition.” 

The proposed TRIPS wavier would remove legal barriers and allow manufacturers across the world to start producing vaccines at scale within months, the alliance said. 

President Joe Biden plans to use the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill expected to pass Congress on Wednesday as a platform for a generational transformation of the economy to benefit the least well-off Americans and alleviate poverty.

The passage of a bill of this scale and ambition two months into any new president’s term would represent a power-affirming win. The political payoff for Biden of his first legacy achievement may be even greater. He had to navigate the measure through thin congressional majorities and a Democratic caucus riven by ideological divides – and amid the worst domestic crisis since World War II.

Biden ran for election pledging to send stimulus payments to millions of Americans and to secure money to fund the return of kids to school, while speeding up the pace of vaccinations. When he gives his first prime-time address to Americans on Thursday, he can make a case that he kept his word as he battles to end a pandemic that has killed more than 527,000 Americans.

Read the full analysis:

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 06: President Joe Biden speaks from the State Dining Room following the passage of the American Rescue Plan in the U.S. Senate at the White House on March 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. The Senate passed the latest COVID-19 relief bill by 50 to 49 on a party-line vote, after an all-night session. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

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