February 11 coronavirus news

Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews speaks at a news conference on February 12, in Melbourne, Australia.

The entire state of Victoria will undergo a hard five-day lockdown to prevent a cluster of 13 Covid-19 cases from spreading further, Premier Daniel Andrews said.

The cluster is tied to a worker at a quarantine hotel in the capital Melbourne, the state’s Health Department said. All 13 cases are the UK variant.

Andrews said the variant “is moving at a velocity that has not been seen anywhere in our country over the course of these last 12 months.”

Spectators at sporting events will not be permitted during the lockdown, Andrews said, meaning the Australian Open – which began Monday – will continue play without fans.

Tennis Australia, which organizes the Open, said it would continue to?“work with the government to ensure the health and safety of everyone” and offer fans refunds for their tickets.

Restrictions on gatherings in Nevada will be relaxed starting next week under a new plan that aims to end most of those statewide rules by summer.

Starting February 15, most businesses and houses of worship will be allowed to have as many as 100 people, or 35% of normal capacity. If coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to decrease, capacity would go up to 50% on March 15.

Statewide capacity restrictions would go away on May 1 under the plan, but local governments will be allowed to continue to enforce their own rules.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] said Thursday that 1,154 staff members have been deployed across the country to assist with the vaccination campaign.

The agency also noted the U.S. National Guard is providing 1,171 vaccinators to 348 vaccination centers in 42 states and territories with an additional 302 interagency vaccinators deployed to?Arizona, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Texas.

It also finalized a contract for 30 mobile vaccination units that would be ready for inspection and delivery beginning next week, February 15.

FEMA initially anticipated using?as many as 10,000 troops,?but just a fraction of that has been authorized for deployment.

Hundreds of people march to City Hall in San Francisco, California, on February 6, to protest against remote learning and demand schools reopen in-person education.

The city of San Francisco filed an emergency court order Thursday in an effort to force its public schools to open for in-person instruction, calling the school district’s decision to remain closed during the coronavirus pandemic “unconscionable and unlawful” and alleging it had violated children’s constitutional rights.

The action comes on the heels of the city’s lawsuit last week against its own school district, and as others around the country are under pressure to resume classroom instruction amid the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.

In the city’s filing Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, attorneys argued that a preliminary injunction should be granted on multiple grounds, stating that the San Francisco Unified School District’s “failure to reopen schools violates the constitutional right to attend school.”

While public schools in San Francisco have remain shuttered for nearly a year, more than 100 private, parochial and charter schools have reopened, with about 15,000 students and 2,400 staff participating in in-person instruction, city attorneys said in the filing. And despite the return to classrooms, “there have been fewer than five cases of suspected in-school transmission,” it said.

Earlier this week, the district reached an agreement with the teacher’s union that in person teaching could resume once all staff is vaccinated. Mayor London Breed said if that agreement stands, it’s likely that schools would not resume this school year. City attorneys also took issue with the suggestion that all teachers must be vaccinated before in-class instruction could resume.

The city argued remote learning is “having horrific mental health consequences for children,” with the University of California, San Francisco Children’s hospital reporting “the highest number of suicidal children seen and treated in the emergency department on record.”

A court date has been scheduled for March 22.

A closed public school is seen in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 5.

Students in the US could see their lifelong earnings cut by an average of 6 to 9 %, unless schools are able to make up for learning losses incurred during the pandemic, a Stanford University professor warned on Thursday.

Hanushek’s remarks came during?Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Covid-19 Challenges and Opportunities in K-12 Education summit.

“But we do know is that there is a growing cost over time of remote learning, and the hybrid systems we have and the lack of actual in-class teaching as we knew it in 2019,” Hanushek said.

Back in August 2020, Eric Hanushek?estimated?that students from first grade through 12th grade would, on average, lose about 3 percent of their previously predicted lifelong earnings. That was if all schools returned to normal in September.

Of course, they didn’t. Now, he estimates that it will average to be between 6 to 9 percent– though that average doesn’t reflect how poorer and kids with fewer resources will likely suffer more.

Hanushek compared the pandemic to other historical moments where students were out of normal schooling for long periods of time.

Students during Argentina’s school strikes or post-war Germany suffered economic losses that marked them decades later, he said.

That spells serious problems for the United States’ GDP.?Back in August 2020, Hanushek predicted that the U.S. GDP would be 1.5 percent lower on average every year for the rest of the 21st century.

Now, he estimates that it will be 3 to 4 percent lower for the rest of the century.

That can’t be remedied by returning to 2019 education methods whenever the pandemic ends, he warned. Instead, the United States’ education system has to make up for the learning loss.

President Joe Biden speaks at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11.

The US is on track to have a vaccine supply for 300 million Americans “by the end of July,” President Joe Biden said during remarks at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, stressing the progress that he’s made since taking office three weeks ago.

Biden also announced Thursday that the US has purchased additional Moderna and Pfizer vaccine.

“Just this afternoon, we signed the final contracts for 100 million more Moderna and 100 million more Pfizer vaccines,” he said.

Biden said that the US is moving up the delivery date for an additional 200 million vaccines to the end of July, “faster than we expected.”

Both Pfizer and Moderna agreed via contract to “expedite delivery of 100 million doses that were promised by the end of June, deliver them by the end of May. That’s a month faster – that means lives will be saved.”

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President Joe Biden speaks to Dr. Barney S. Graham, left), as Dr. Anthony Fauci listens during a tour of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11.

Current coronavirus vaccines should work against variants of the virus, a top National Institutes of Health scientist told President Joe Biden Thursday.

Biden visited the NIH Viral Pathogenesis Lab to see where some of the Covid-19 vaccines were designed. Dr. Barney Graham, chief of the lab and Deputy Director of the Vaccine Research Center at NIH, showed the president several models of the virus to demonstrate how mutations affect its shape.

The genetic mutations that characterize the virus can alter parts of its surface, Graham explained. All viruses mutate, or change, as they live inside people’s bodies.

He showed Biden a computer program that represented the mutations as red spots on the surface of the virus.

“When we give the vaccine, it makes antibodies to the entire surface. So one red spot or two red spots or even nine red spots are not going to lose efficacy,” Graham said.

“Antibodies have a lot of places to bind. It may eventually lose efficacy, but I think we are okay for now until additional mutations are accumulated.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci listens as President Joe Biden speaks during a tour of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11.

Covid-19 vaccines could be authorized for young children by September, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,?told ProPublica.

Pfizer and Moderna, the two companies currently with authorized Covid-19 vaccines in the US, have both begun trials for children, but started with older age groups.

Pfizer’s trial in children ages 12-15 is fully enrolled with 2,259 participants, and the company says it hopes to have results “in the early part of 2021 and from there, we will plan to finalize our study in 5-11 year olds.”

Moderna is still enrolling participants in its trial in children ages 12-18, though the company says it has seen an increase in enrollment and interest in its trial, adding that “we are on track to provide updated data around mid-year 2021.”

Moderna also has plans to start studying its vaccine on even younger children – 6 months to 11 years old – though the company says it will take longer to get that data.

“We’re going to start soon a young children’s study, but this will take much longer because we have to age deescalate and start at a lower dose. So we should not anticipate clinical data in 2021, but more in 2022,” said?Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of?Moderna, during an investor presentation last month.

Rite Aid pharmacies will begin on Friday administering Covid-19 vaccines in seven US states and jurisdictions as part of the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, the drug store chain said in a press release Thursday.?

Chris Savarese, Rite Aid director of public relations, said at launch the store expects to receive 116,300 doses for about 1,200 Rite Aid locations, which is about 100 doses per participating store.??

The states where Rite Aid will begin vaccinations are?California, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and?Pennsylvania. The cities of Philadelphia?and New York City, which are designated as separate jurisdictions by the federal government,?are also included,

Vaccine eligibility is based on state guidelines.?

The?Biden?administration announced last week the federal government will begin direct shipments of coronavirus vaccines to retail pharmacies starting on February 11, with a total of 1 million doses going to about 6,500 stores before eventually expanding.

Nursing homes with more Black residents report a significantly higher share of coronavirus deaths, researchers reported this week.

The average number of coronavirus deaths was more than three times higher in nursing homes with the highest proportion of Black residents compared to?those with the highest proportion of White residents, the researchers reported in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The team looked at Covid-19 cases and deaths among residents in 13,312 US nursing homes, using 2020 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

Nursing homes with the lowest proportion of White residents reported an average of 5.6 deaths, while those with the highest proportion of White residents reported an average of 1.7 deaths. In total, the data showed 51,606 deaths related to coronavirus, with an average of 3.9 deaths per facility.?

The team says that in part, the differences in those numbers are related to higher infection levels in counties home to facilities with more non-White residents. They note that nursing homes with more White residents had better resident health, higher star ratings, more nursing hours, and were located in counties with fewer coronavirus cases per capita.

To help stem future outbreaks, the researchers suggest that limited resources should be focused on supporting nursing homes with more non-White residents.

President Joe Biden’s?pledge to reopen most American schools within his first 100 days in office is in danger of going off the rails as teachers’ unions hold firm on their demands for new safety measures amid conflicting messages from the administration and public health leaders.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday?said Biden was committed “to ensuring schools are open five days a week”?– once the proper safety measures are in place. New guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expected on Friday, she added.

It was Psaki’s third swing in 72 hours at questions over the President’s definition of a successful return. Her initial suggestion, on Tuesday, that “teaching at least one day a week in the majority of schools by day 100” might be enough to clear the bar was met with a torrent of criticism from parents, teachers and administrators.

Nearly a year into the unprecedented national experiment in remote learning in the face of a growing pandemic,?millions of children are still at home, with no expected return date. Studies show them falling behind, with low-income or Black and Latino children hurting the worst – but the science is unclear on how, or when, they can safely return to classes, even as some teachers get vaccinated and schools districts work to fit classrooms for reopening.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing on February 8, 2021, in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

Related article Biden's 100-day plan to reopen schools meets with a messy reality

Between 20% and 25% of Covid-19 infections in France are caused by the UK variant, Health Minister Olivier Véran said Thursday.?

“The British variant is currently responsible for one in five to one in four infections,” Véran told reporters during a weekly coronavirus briefing.?

The French?Health Minister?said the British variant was “circulating fast” and infections of the variant have “increased by 50% every week.” The prevalence of the Brazilian and South African variants has also risen in France, making up 4% to 5% of infections, Veran said.

Véran told reporters France’s epidemic trajectory was “not ascending” but on a “slightly descending plateau.” Pressure on hospitals?remains high but isn’t worsening,?Véran added.

On Thursday,?the French Public Health Agency?recorded 21,063 new coronavirus cases and a further 371 deaths in hospitals, bringing the death to?80,803. The country also reported 26,963 coronavirus patients in the hospital – a decrease of 454 patients in the last 24 hours. The agency also reported 3,327 patients in intensive care on Thursday.

France has administered 2,113,533 first injections and 535,775 second injections of coronavirus vaccines, according to the Health Ministry.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced he has officially let Ohio’s curfew expire at noon today, due to a sustained decrease in Covid-19 hospitalizations.?

The governor had indicated in the past two weeks that if Ohio’s hospitalization numbers dropped below 2,500 for seven days, the curfew would be lifted.

“Now we may, in the future, we don’t know, have to put a curfew back on. We certainly hope we do not,” Governor DeWine said, noting that if hospitalizations start to rise again, the Ohio Department of Health may reinstate the curfew.?

The Governor said it is crucial that Ohioans continue safety protocols to slow the spread of Covid-19 and prevent hospitalizations from going up.

Ireland’s Prime Minister expressed regret on Thursday over the decision to ease lockdown rules in the country around Christmas.

In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson,?Micheal Martin said:?“If we knew then what we knew now, now we certainly wouldn’t have made that decision.”?

Ireland is in lockdown again after loosening restrictions in December, which resulted in the country having one of the highest infection rates in the world by January.

Martin added that Ireland would remain in a lockdown “for quite some time” to reduce hospital numbers.?

The UK variant is now responsible for 70% of the Covid-19 cases in Ireland, Martin said.

“I think globally, we have to intensify vaccination efforts, because it’s important that the entire globe gets vaccinated, not just countries who are wealthier and in a position to do it earlier,” he said.??

In addition to this, he also said the “new variants could undermine the vaccine effort” and reiterated that Ireland’s goal remains to vaccinate 80% of people by September.

“It’s been disrupted somewhat by issues with the AstraZeneca vaccine and its supply, and we’re not getting the same level of supply that we had thought we would get at the commencement of the year and that’s part of the wider EU procurement issue with AstraZeneca,” Martin conceded, but he said the country was getting higher volumes of other vaccines in the second quarter of the year.

People receive the COVID-19 vaccine, at Belgrade Fair makeshift vaccination center in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021.?

Serbia currently has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe, despite not being a member of the European Union – and the country’s Prime Minister has said directly negotiating with manufacturers has helped his country.?

Rapid vaccine procurement and a government shift to digitization is behind the nation’s early success in rolling out the jabs, Prime Minister Ana Brnabi? told CNN.

The Prime Minister also praised Serbia’s decision to make its government more digital around four years ago, saying it “makes the whole process very easy for citizens, very transparent and for us easy to manage.”

Brnabi? referenced the European Union’s struggle to secure vaccine supplies but declined to offer up any criticism. The Western Balkans nation is currently seeking to join the EU.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on large gatherings to include celebrating Mardi Gras, underscoring that the safest way to celebrate is virtual or with those you live with.?

“Attending large gatherings like Mardi Gras increases your risk of getting and spreading Covid-19,” the CDC said. “The safest way to celebrate Mardi Gras this year is to gather virtually, with people who live with you, or outside and at least 6 feet apart from others.”

For those who celebrate with others, the agency reiterated that outdoors is safer than indoors.

CDC suggested that those who host either an indoor or outdoor Mardi Gras party make sure that people have enough space to stay six feet apart from each other, and wear appropriate masks.?

“A costume mask is not a replacement for cloth and other masks that prevent the spread of Covid-19,” CDC said.

Mardi Gras falls on Tuesday 16 February this year.

CNN’s Go There is in New York as minorities face hurdles to vaccination.

For example, last month, a Covid-19 vaccination site in a Latino neighborhood in New York City hard hit by the pandemic saw an overwhelming number of White people from outside the community show up to get the shot this month, laying bare a?national disparity that shows people of color?are being vaccinated at dramatically lower rates.

Laura Jarrett is answering your questions.

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Thomas Müller reacts during the DFB Cup second round match between Holstein Kiel and FC Bayern Munich at Wunderino Arena on January 13, 2021 in Kiel, Germany.

FC Bayern Munich and Germany star Thomas Müller has been ruled out of Thursday’s FIFA Club World Cup Final after Bayern confirmed Müller had tested positive for Covid-19.

The Bavarian club said in a statement that Müller was promptly isolated following his positive test.

The club added that the entire team was tested again on Thursday and no further positive cases were recorded.

Bayern face Mexico’s Tigres in Doha, Qatar, with the game kicking off at 1pm ET on Thursday.

The German champions are looking to become just the second team since FC Barcelona in 2009 to win all six domestic and international titles in a calendar year.

They already hold the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, German Super Cup, Bundesliga and German Cup titles.

Tocilizumab, an intravenous anti-inflammatory drug used for rheumatoid arthritis, has been shown to reduce the risk of death for patients hospitalized with severe Covid-19, as well as reducing the risk of ventilation and?the amount of time until discharged from hospital.

The preliminary results came from the RECOVERY trial, which has been testing potential Covid-19 treatments since March 2020.?

Tocilizumab?was added to the trial in April 2020.?The results have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, but are expected to be made available in a preprint.?

For the trial, 2,022 patients were randomly allocated?tocilizumab?and compared with 2,094 patients who received standard care.?

“There were 596 deaths amongst the people in the?tocilizumab?group, 29%, and there were 694 deaths, 33%, in the usual care group. So that is a reduction in the risk of deaths of around about a sixth or a seventh,” Martin Landray, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, and deputy chief investigator of the RECOVERY trial, said during a briefing on Thursday.?

Landray said that the benefits were consistent in every group of patients studied.?

The drug was also shown to have a benefit for people who were not on mechanical ventilation at the start of the trial, with the risk of progressing to mechanical ventilation or death reducing from 38% to 33%.?

On February 3, the US National Institutes of Health released treatment guidelines saying that for patients in the intensive care unit, “there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of?tocilizumab?or sarilumab for the treatment of Covid-19.” Sarilumab is a similar treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. For those not requiring ICU-level care, they recommended against the use of the drugs except for a clinical trial.?

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This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically.

Related article Rheumatoid arthritis drug reduces risk of death for severely ill hospitalized Covid-19 patients, researchers say

A board with hygiene instructions is pictured at the valley station of the Hochzillertal cable car in Kaltenbach in Tyrol, Austria on February 4, 2021

The Austrian Alpine province of Tyrol – which has seen one of Europe’s worst outbreaks of the South African coronavirus variant – is deploying 1,200 police officers and soldiers to try and contain the spread of the virus, local authorities told CNN Thursday.?

Starting Friday at midnight and lasting for 10 days, the reinforcements will be deployed to Tyrol’s border checkpoints to ensure that anyone trying to leave the province can prove they have a negative coronavirus test no more than 48 hours old, Tyrol police spokesman Stefan Eder told CNN.

Eder added that children, freight traffic and travellers transiting?through Tyrol are exempt from this regulation.

The province has currently detected 438 cases of the?South African coronavirus variant, according to Tyrol’s local government on?Thursday.

The South African variant has a mutation, called E484K, which could help the virus partly escape the effects of vaccines.

People should definitely wear one mask, but double masking improves fit, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on the Today show on Thursday.

The CDC on Wednesday released new data that showed layering a cloth mask over a medical procedural mask could block 92.5% of potentially infectious particles by creating a tighter fit and eliminating leakage.?

He demonstrated how this works by putting two masks on himself and showing the places where two masks help better prevent leakage, and he told Guthrie that he, on occasion, has double masked. ?

Cuban government scientists say they have produced 150,000 doses of their most promising vaccine candidate, the communist party newspaper Granma reported Thursday.

Cuba has been working with Iran to develop the Soberana 2 vaccine.

Phase 3 trials will begin in March and the vaccine could be ready for widespread use in April, according to Granma, quoting Cuban scientists.?

While Cuba has not begun vaccinating people outside of the clinical trials, officials say they expect to give the vaccine to the island’s total population of 11 million by the end of 2021.

In recent weeks, the country has experienced its highest spike in Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with the largest concentration of cases being in Havana. The island has a total of 34,922 confirmed cases and 249 Covid-19 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The cancelation of Germany’s popular annual carnival celebrations, which involve stage events, stalls and parades, will lead to a nationwide loss of 1.5 billion euro ($1.8 billion), according to the Cologne-based German Economic Institute (IW).

Retailers and hotels will suffer the greatest economic losses, according to IW. It estimates about 330 million euro ($400 million) will be lost in the retail sector, the bulk of it from lost revenue in costume sales.

The hotel industry, which would typically take high numbers of bookings at this time of year for the celebrations, will lose an estimated 160 million euro, IW said in a press release on Monday.

Germany remains under a strict lockdown which Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday would extend until March 7 at the earliest.

Germany’s carnival season – known as Fasching – is particularly popular in the country’s western region, and festivities are often centred in the city of Cologne.

Due to pandemic restrictions, Cologne’s events will be broadcast this year and feature no dance groups, while musicians will be made to social distance as they perform.?

Blood is drawn from a clinical trials patient for the AstraZeneca test vaccine at the University of Witwatersrand' Soweto's Chris Sani Baragwanath Hospital facility outside Johannesburg on Nov. 30, 2020.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Africa has backed the use of the? Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 even in countries reporting variants of the disease.

“While a vaccine that protects against all forms of Covid-19 illness is our biggest hope, preventing severe cases and hospitalizations which overwhelm hospitals and health systems is crucial,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, said at a press briefing Thursday.

The second wave of Covid-19 in Africa, which peaked in January, was more deadly than the first wave, according to Dr. Moeti. “Deaths have increased by 40% in the last 28 days compared to the previous 28 days,” she noted.

The spike in deaths on the continent has left health workers and healthcare systems “dangerously overstretched,” she said.?

With the rollout of vaccines, “if cases remain mostly mild and moderate and don’t require critical care then we can save many lives,” Dr. Moeti added.?

In addition to increased deaths, variants of Covid-19 are spreading across the continent,?with?seven?other countries now reporting the B.1.351 variant that was first detected in South Africa,?including Ghana, Kenya, Comoros, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia.?

Two people who traveled from Tanzania to the UK were found to be carrying the variant linked to South Africa, although Tanzania has not updated Covid-19 data since late April and denies the virus exists in the country.?

Vaccines are not yet being extensively administered in Africa but WHO expects substantive rollouts to begin in March.

Separately, WHO acknowledged two fatal cases in a new Ebola outbreak in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 200 contacts are being traced.?

Health workers wait for travelers at a Covid-19 testing center in the immigration area of Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle international airport, on February 1, 2021 after new Covid-19 border restrictions came into effect.?

Most European countries remain “vulnerable” despite a decline in Covid-19 cases, WHO Europe regional director Hans Kluge said Thursday.

This decline in cases “conceals increasing numbers of outbreaks and community spread involving variants of concern, meaning that we need to watch overall trends in transmission carefully and avoid rash decisions,” Kluge told a news conference, stressing that the numbers registered in the European region are “still too high.”??

The coronavirus variant B.1.351 first identified in South Africa has been reported in 19 European countries, he said, adding that “although community transmission in Europe is not yet widespread, the variant has increasingly been linked to outbreaks in communities.”

Seniors wait to be vaccinated with China's Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Santiago, Chile, on February 3.

More than?one million vaccine doses have been administered?in Chile, the country’s president said Wednesday, a week after?its mass coronavirus vaccination program?started.?

Chile kicked off its mass vaccination campaign last Wednesday, and the government set a?target to vaccinate 15 million?by mid-year.?Some people had already received a vaccine before the?mass rollout?began;?the first doses of the vaccine arrived in the country in December and were given to medical workers from December 24.?

In January,?Chile?issued an emergency-use authorization for China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine. The country has also been using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for health officials and the elderly.?

Chile’s total population is close to 19 million, according to the World Bank. The country has reported at least 760,576 Covid-19 cases and 19,105 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.?

This post has been?corrected to reflect?that Chile has administered more than one million vaccine doses – not?vaccinated one million people – and that some people were vaccinated in December before the mass rollout began.

Educational staff at Kettering City Schools receive the Covid-19 vaccine as a part of Ohio's Phase 1B vaccine distribution in Dayton, Ohio, on February 10.

The top US infectious diseases expert said Thursday that “open season” for Covid-19 vaccination could begin in April, and that the country may be able to vaccinate the majority of Americans by the middle or end of summer.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on the Today show that he thought the pace of vaccination was going to pick up going into March and April.

Fauci also said that he was “fairly certain” that toward the end of April, things like pharmacies, community vaccine centers and mobile units will really help pick up the pace – and not just for those in higher priority groups.

From there, it will take several more months actually to get everyone vaccinated, he said.?

“Hopefully, as we get into the middle and end of the summer, we could have accomplished the goal of what we’re talking about, namely the overwhelming majority of people in this country having gotten vaccinated,” he said.

A researcher at Aalborg University analyzes positive Danish coronavirus samples to screen for the UK variant in Aalborg, Denmark on January 15.

The UK coronavirus variant could “impact the epidemic curve” and lead to “a more restrictive approach to the public health and social measures” in Europe, if it becomes the continent’s dominant strain, the World Health Organization’s senior emergency officer for Europe warned on Thursday.?

Speaking at a WHO Europe press briefing, Catherine Smallwood said that the B.1.1.7 variant, commonly referred to as the “UK strain” or “Kent strain,” is now circulating in over half of all European countries.?

Smallwood warned that the restrictions currently in place across Europe may not be sufficient to suppress the B.1.1.7 variant once it becomes the dominant strain in the region.?

Smallwood’s comments followed a stark warning from the director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, Sharon Peacock, who told the BBC on Wednesday that the B.1.1.7 strain is “going to sweep the world in all probability.”?

People shop in Vienna's Kaerntner Street as Austria reduces its lockdown restrictions on February 8.

The European Commission has said it expects economic growth in the European Union to reach pre-pandemic levels in 2022.

As vaccination campaigns are rolled out across Europe, the European Commission now predicts growth of 3.9% in 2022, 0.9% higher than previously estimated.

However, in the short term, growth to the EU economy has been revised down by 0.4 percentage points to 3.7% for 2021. The change from the Commission’s Autumn 2020 economic forecast reflects the risks of the pandemic which are proving more persistent or severe in the near-term.

This “could leave deeper scars in the EU’s economic and social fabric, notably through widespread bankruptcies and job losses,” said the Commission.

Vials of Covishield, the local name for the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, move along a conveyor on the production line at the Serum Institute of India Ltd. Hadaspar plant in Pune, India, on Jan.22, 2021. Serum, which is the world's largest vaccine maker by volume, has an agreement with AstraZeneca to produce at least a billion doses. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca expects to increase global vaccine capacity to more than 200 million doses per month by April as the company works hard to improve productivity, it said during a media call on Thursday.

In the call, which followed its 2020 corporate results release, AstraZeneca said that along with its partners it currently produces more than 100 million doses per month.

Its supply chain partners are getting ready to supply more through the COVAX facility, the company added, with an estimated 336 million doses available to 145 countries in the first half of the year, almost two-thirds of which are going to low- and middle-income countries.

Responding to a question about the timeframe for the newly developed vaccines against new coronavirus variants, Mene Pangalos, AstraZeneca’s executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals research and development, reiterated that they expect these to be ready in time for next autumn or winter.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said that the development of new vaccines was much faster because the approval will be based on immunogenicity data.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday recommended the use of the current Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in countries where variants of the coronavirus are circulating. Preliminary analysis showed a slightly reduced efficacy against the variant first spotted in the UK, and another early analysis showed “a marked reduction” in effectiveness against mild or moderate disease from the variant first spotted in South Africa, it said.

However, that study was small and WHO officials noted there’s indirect evidence the vaccine still protects against severe disease.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to release highly anticipated new guidance this week for getting children physically back to school during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Biden administration is pushing to reopen schools, an issue some view as being tied to the reopening of the economy and a return to normal life in America.

An administration official told CNN the CDC’s five key strategies to reopening schools include hand washing, masking, social distancing, cleaning and ventilation, as well as contact tracing, isolation and quarantine.?

The guidance will not suggest requiring staffers to be vaccinated, instead describing vaccination as another strategy to “layer,” since many schools were able to safely reopen before vaccines were available, the official noted.?

But some teachers and unions are pushing back against plans to reopen, many with demands for vaccination and more supplies.

The National Education Association (NEA) surveyed 3,305 of its members and said Tuesday that 82% have yet to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. As of Monday, at least 26 states and Washington DC said they would allow some or all teachers and school staff to get a Covid-19 vaccine.

Some have also raised concerns about equity, noting that current access to the funding and supplies needed to meet safe reopening standards is often skewed towards wealthier jurisdictions.

President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 relief proposal would include $170 billion for K-12 schools, colleges and universities that could be directed toward mitigation measures.

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REDONDO BEACH, CA - FEBRUARY 02: Alta Vista Elementary School kindergarten teacher Bridget Vorland prepares the classroom before students arrive as Redondo Beach Unified School district has welcomed back some of its K-2 students this week through a waiver. Alta Vista Elementary School on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021 in Redondo Beach, CA. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images).

Related article CDC expected to release new guidelines for reopening schools

With coronavirus variants posing a serious threat to US President Joe Biden’s efforts to contain the pandemic, a Biden official has told CNN that the administration is still simply “not where we want to be” on surveillance of mutations in the US – and simultaneously worried that Americans will grow increasingly complacent about the virus.?

“We are not where we want to be in terms of genetic sequencing, although we are ramping up,” the administration official said. “We are starting way behind on genetic sequencing.”

In order to find new strains of the virus, scientists must genetically sequence samples – spelling out the letters in its genetic code and looking for changes. Coronaviruses are known to mutate, generally in ways that are harmless to humans. But every now and then, a mutation pops up that could change how the virus works.

In the US, scientists fear that variants first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil may be either more contagious, more likely to cause reinfection, or somewhat resistant to existing Covid-19 vaccines.

The fear is that these variants could erase recent progress in lowering Covid-19 case numbers. They could also raise the bar for how many Americans need to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity.

An additional concern for the administration that goes hand-in-hand with the spread of variants, the administration official said, is coronavirus fatigue – and convincing Americans to continue practicing responsible public health behavior like mask-wearing and social distancing a year into the pandemic.

In a White House briefing Wednesday, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the variant first spotted in the UK is now responsible for an estimated 1 to 4% of cases in the country.

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Related article Biden administration is 'not where we want to be' on genetic sequencing of Covid-19 variants

Iran reported 7,474 new daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 1,496,455.

The country also reported 65 new deaths from Covid-19, bringing the total death toll to?58,751, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadaat Lari said in a news conference aired on state TV.

Meanwhile, 3,735 patients remain hospitalized in intensive care units around the country, she said.

Earlier in the week, the country started its rollout of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, according to a live broadcast on state TV.

Iran is the Middle Eastern country hardest hit by the pandemic in terms of total cases and deaths, and it continues to keep restrictions in place to try to avoid a larger outbreak.

A variant suspected of helping fuel a surge of coronavirus in Brazil’s Amazon region shows up in Minnesota. Another that’s been worrying officials in South Africa pops up in two places in South Carolina and, just days later, in Maryland.

Scientists are not surprised to see the coronavirus changing and evolving – it’s what viruses do, after all. And with so much unchecked spread across the US and other parts of the world, the virus is getting plenty of opportunity to do just that.

Four of the new variants are especially worrisome.

“The variants that have been identified recently seem to spread more easily. They’re more transmissible, which can lead to increased number of cases, and increased stress on our already overtaxed system,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a briefing Wednesday.

At the top of the list for researchers in the US is the B.1.1.7 variant first seen in Britain. The CDC has warned it could worsen the spread of the pandemic. It reports more than 300 cases in 28 states – but those are only the cases caught by genomic sequencing, which is hit and miss in the US.

Next on the list is the B.1.351 or 501Y.V2 variant first seen in South Africa. It was reported for the first time in the US in South Carolina. On Saturday, Maryland’s governor announced a sample from someone in the Baltimore area had also shown the characteristic mutation pattern of B.1.351.

None of the three people had any contact with one another and none had traveled recently. This suggests the variant has been spreading undetected in the communities.

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Critical Care staff carry out a tracheostomy procedure on a Covid-19 patient on the Christine Brown ward at King's College Hospital in London on January 27, 2021.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the Bundestag on the government's measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, on February 11, in Berlin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her coronavirus strategy after Wednesday’s announcement that the country’s lockdown will be extended until March 7 at the earliest.

Germany is?“now dealing with?three aggressive?mutations” Merkel said Thursday, adding that the country needs to “prepare for new variants to become dominant” and that?“mutations could destroy the vaccine’s success.”?

Merkel said she was aware how difficult this lockdown has?been for people and that she understood people’s loneliness and frustration?at having their freedoms curtailed. However, she reiterated that curbs were still needed due to the risk posed by new variants.

On Wednesday, Merkel?and the state prime ministers of Germany’s 16 federal states agreed to extend lockdown until at least March 7, although some restrictions will be lifted.?Schools and kindergartens?will start to reopen from February 22 and hairdressers from March 1.?

Merkel told?lawmakers Thursday that while Germany handled the first coronavirus wave well, “we were too slow to curb the second wave.” She added that Germany would continue with its efforts to “try to keep the mutations to a small scale and hope that the seven-day incident rate can be pushed to below 50.”?

The German Chancellor concluded by saying:?“I will fulfil this until the last day of my time in office – at the end we will jointly manage to vanquish?this?pandemic and see better days.”?

Travelers arrive at Heathrow Airport on January 30, in London, England.

Stricter measures at the UK border “will inevitably delay the country’s recovery and hurt the UK’s supply chains,” the chief executive of London Heathrow warned Thursday.

CEO John Holland-Kaye called on the UK government to publish how it plans to open the UK’s borders when it sets out its “roadmap” to recovery on February 22.

London Heathrow reported a 89% fall in passenger numbers in January compared with the same time a year ago. It says the latest national lockdown, travel bans, blanket quarantine and compulsory testing have deterred people from travelling, adding that the latest border rules mean “that the UK’s borders are effectively closed.”

The drop in passenger numbers has also hurt cargo traffic at the UK’s largest airport. Fewer long-haul flights led to a drop of 21% in cargo volumes.

People wait outside a coronavirus surge testing center at a library in Bristol, England, on February 9, following the identification of a mutated variant in the region.

A new coronavirus mutation known as the?Bristol variant might?“infect people who were previously infected, or have been previously vaccinated,” Professor John Edmunds, a member of the UK?government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) said Thursday.

“I don’t know whether the Bristol variant is any more transmissible than the Kent variant. I suspect it isn’t,” Edmunds told ITV News.

New variants of coronavirus have now been identified?in the English cities of Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester,?UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in a statement Wednesday.

Hancock?reiterated the government’s commitment to using enhanced contact tracing, surge testing and genomic sequencing to monitor community spread of the new strains.

Some context: Public Health England has said that cases found in?Bristol?are the new UK variant?with the E484K mutation, which has already been identified in the South African and Brazilian?variants of the virus. The mutation could allow Covid-19 to escape antibody protection.

A person waits at the Heathrow Airport international arrival hall in London, on January 29.

The British government is doing all it can to make summer holidays possible this year, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News on Thursday.

The minister told the BBC that he himself had “months ago” booked a summer holiday in Cornwall in southwest England.

Hancock also said the government wants to “bring an end to that uncertainty,” adding that “it’s the vaccine program that is our route out of this, and is the way through and thankfully that has been going really incredibly well.”

As of Tuesday,?13,058,298 people in the United Kingdom have received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to the government’s dashboard.

Some context: Booking any kind of summer?travel escape became an even bigger gamble for millions of British people on Wednesday as the the government warned that even staycations could be under threat until vaccinations are completed.

After officials previously signaled that a foreign trip may not be possible during 2021, UK transport minister Grant Shapps said that even a break on home soil could be out of the question amid the pandemic.

The UK's National Heath Service track and trace staff carry out coronavirus testing at a church in Manchester, England, on February 9, after a mutation of the Kent variant was detected there.

The UK coronavirus variant that has “swept the country” is “going to sweep the world in all probability” Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, told the BBC on Wednesday.?

The highly transmissible UK strain of coronavirus was first identified in September 2020, in the English county of Kent. It has already been detected in at least 86 countries and was the catalyst for the UK’s current lockdown.?

Peacock predicted that her sequencing work, which tracks mutations of the coronavirus, will likely be required for another decade as the virus continues to circulate throughout the world.?

Where did it come from? Speaking on the origins of the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7, Peacock said there was growing scientific literature suggesting it had evolved in an immunosuppressed patient.?

“Jury out” on whether variant is more deadly: Addressing a Downing Street news conference in late January, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had warned that the new UK variant could be 30% more lethal than previous strains.?

Peacock told the BBC on Wednesday that no concrete evidence had emerged to support that theory.??“The jury is still out on that, I don’t think the evidence is really firm … I think it’s still under investigation,” she said.

Former US President Donald Trump listens to a question during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on August 5, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Former President Donald Trump’s four years in office worsened a decades-long decline in US health and set up the country for its disastrous handing of the coronavirus pandemic, a team of experts concluded in a new report released Thursday.

The group of 33 experts from the United States, Britain and Canada made a scathing assessment of Trump policies, but said much of the damage dated back to former President Ronald Reagan’s policies in the 1980s.

“Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic— compounded by his efforts to dismantle the USA’s already weakened public health infrastructure and the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) coverage expansions—has caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths,” the report, published by the Lancet, reads.

“His elimination of the National Security Council’s global health security team, and a 2017 hiring freeze that left almost 700 positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unfilled, compromised preparedness.”

Funding cuts for public health agencies dating back to 2008 led to the loss of 50,000 frontline staff, the report noted. “The fragmented and profit-oriented health-care system was ill-prepared to prioritize and coordinate pandemic response,” it said.

Changes at the Environmental Protection Agency may be especially harmful, the report predicted. “Many of President Trump’s policies have yet to extract their full toll of ill-health. Some of the damage, as in the case of climate change, will last generations,” it said.

A health worker shows the Sinovac vaccine at a community health centre in Lambaro, Indonesia on January 18.

Mexico has issued emergency use approval for China’s CanSino and Sinovac coronavirus vaccines, the country’s deputy?health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell announced Wednesday.

He said the approval was granted by Mexico’s?Federal Committee for Protection from Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) after it reviewed?the vaccines’ quality, safety and efficacy, according to a statement posted on the Health Ministry’s website.

The first bulk shipment of the CanSino vaccine will arrive in Mexico from China on Thursday, where it will be packed at a plant in the central city of Queretaro, the statement said.

Mexico has also issued?an emergency use authorization for Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and ordered millions of doses.

At least?1,957,889 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 169,760 deaths have been reported in Mexico, according to Johns Hopkins University.

A sign requiring masks is seen outside a store in downtown Billings, Montana on November 11, 2020.

More state leaders have announced they’re loosening Covid-19 restrictions, even as experts warn the US?is still not in the clear?– especially?as variants spread across the country.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill on Wednesday shielding businesses and houses of worship from legal liability for Covid-19 transmission as long as they take measures to follow public health guidelines, and announced he would not extend the statewide mask mandate.

Chicago officials?said Wednesday?indoor service at bars, restaurants and events can expand to the lesser of 25% capacity or 50 people per room or floor. The measure, which will be effective Thursday, comes as part of a broader plan to slowly ease Covid-19 restrictions in the city.

New York Gov.?Andrew Cuomo announced?major stadiums and arenas can reopen starting February 23, with approval from the state’s health department. The venues will also have to follow health guidelines including capacity limits, social distancing and face-covering requirements and both staff and attendees will need to receive a negative Covid-19 PCR test within 72 hours of any event.

“While we continue to fight COVID on multiple fronts, we must also get this economy re-opened intelligently and in a balanced way,” Cuomo said in?a statement.

In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the state will drop its mandatory-quarantine rule for people coming from “high-risk” states, attributing the policy change to a “cautiously brighter pandemic outlook after several months of unsustainable strain on the state’s health care system.”

Variants pose risk: But health experts have warned Covid-19 variants complicate the country’s outlook. Easing restrictions now is “incredibly risky,” Dr. Richard Besser, former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,?warned earlier this week.

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Patrons enjoy lunch indoors Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021, at Gibsons Italia restaurant in Chicago. Several states are loosening their coronavirus restrictions on restaurants and other businesses because of improved infection and hospitalization numbers but are moving cautiously. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Related article More state leaders are loosening Covid-19 restrictions. Experts have warned it may be too soon

The United States reported?93,166?new cases of Covid-19 and?3,219?additional virus-related deaths on Wednesday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

That raises the national total to at least?27,285,621?infections and 471,422?fatalities since the pandemic began.

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

Vaccines:?At least?65,972,575??vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 44,769,970?shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN is tracking?US cases.

In late December, Su became sick with Covid-19.

The single mother-of-two had a persistent fever and trouble breathing. She knew that her asthma and chronic bronchitis had left her vulnerable to the worst effects of the?illness.

“I wondered if I would wake up tomorrow,” said the 32-year-old, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma?Covid-19?carries in Japan.

When her condition worsened, she called the public health center in Hyogo prefecture for assistance, but?she said?no one answered her calls.

Instead, she had to isolate in her tiny bedroom, while her children, age 3 and 6, slept alone in the living room for nearly two weeks. Her mother would drop off food for the family but could not stay because the children had been exposed to the virus, and they couldn’t get tested for nearly a week. Su said she communicated with her children via a tablet – and could often hear them fighting.

A representative at the Hyogo Prefecture Health Center could not speak directly to Su’s case but said that while they try to contact isolating patients daily, the holiday period was incredibly busy.

The pandemic has stretched Japan’s national health care system to the brink, as the country deals with its worst wave since the outbreak began. Cases have more than doubled in the past two months to over 406,000 cases.

As of February 4, more than 8,700 people across 10 prefectures, who tested positive for Covid-19, were waiting for a hospital bed or space at an isolation center. The week before, more than 18,000 people across 11 prefectures were waiting, according to the prefectures’ health ministries.

That means people are?dying?at home from Covid-19, fighting deteriorating conditions alone, and spreading the virus to family members.

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Su with her two children

Related article Japan has the most beds per capita in the developed world. So why is its health system crashing?

Relatives of Covid-19 victims queue to refill oxygen tanks, in Lima, Peru on February 9, 2021.?

Peru’s hospitals are facing an oxygen shortage and the consumption of oxygen supplies has tripled due to new coronavirus variants that spread easier and faster, the country’s Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti warned on Wednesday.

She added that before Christmas, the national positivity rate was 7% – but “in these four weeks of January, the positivity rate has very quickly increased to 21%.”

“The initial calculation for the amount of oxygen needed, which we thought was going to double, has tripled. Meaning, we have a 300% increment (in the need for oxygen),” Mazzetti said.

Peru is in need of 510 tons of oxygen a day, but currently can only access 400 tons, leaving the county in “a deficit of 110 tons daily,” she said.

Also on Wednesday, Peruvian Prime Minister Violeta Bermudez announced that quarantine measures will be extended from February 15 to February 28 in 32 high-risk provinces.

Funeral service workers load the casket of a person who died after contracting Covid-19 into a hearse at East County Mortuary on January 15, in El Cajon, California.?

California has surpassed New York as the US state with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

As of Wednesday, California has reported a total of 45,351 Covid-19 fatalities – eclipsing New York’s total of 45,312 deaths.

The grim designation comes after a catastrophic surge of new infections over the holidays in California led to a record wave of deaths that has lingered into February, even as new Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations have fallen in recent weeks. On Wednesday, state data showed a rolling daily average of nearly 500 deaths.

Though California has the highest number of total deaths, many other states have a higher rate of deaths per capita. New Jersey has the highest rate, followed by New York, which was hit hard early in the pandemic.

California saw a surge in new cases in the fall, soaring from a total of 1 million just before Thanksgiving to more than 3 million by mid-January.

The mounting death toll in California comes despite the state’s accelerated vaccine rollout. “Deaths continue to be devastating,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday at the opening of the state’s largest mass vaccination center at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, which will administer up to 15,000 doses each day.

Hundreds line up to get Covid-19 vaccine shots at Dodger Stadium on Monday, February 8, in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles will temporarily close five Covid-19 vaccination sites, including one of the nation’s largest at Dodger Stadium, due to a lack of vaccine doses, Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Wednesday.

“We don’t have enough vaccines,” Garcetti said at a news conference, as he explained that the vaccine doses aren’t arriving soon enough.

The sites will shut on Friday and Saturday, and Garcetti says he hopes to reopen them by Tuesday or Wednesday.

“These closures, unfortunately, are inevitable,” he said, adding that the city will have exhausted its supply of the Moderna vaccine for first dose appointments.

While the city has been administering about 13,000 doses a day, only 16,000 new doses arrived this week. So far, the city has administered more than 293,000 doses across the five sites.

Double masking can significantly improve protection, new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

Researchers found that layering a cloth mask over a medical procedural mask, such as a disposable blue surgical mask, can block 92.5% of potentially infectious particles from escaping by creating a tighter fit and eliminating leakage.

Medical procedure masks like the commonly seen blue surgical masks typically don’t fit securely to faces and create gaps, allowing unfiltered air to escape. A fitted cloth mask can act as a cinch and secures the loose medical mask in place. This improves protection by preventing leakage of unfiltered air and particles, better protecting the wearer and those around them.

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NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 06: A man wears a double mask as he walks in Times Square on April 6, 2020 in New York City. The COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. is approaching 10,000. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)

Related article Double masking can block 92% of infectious particles, CDC says

People who have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus – right now that means with two doses of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine – can skip quarantine if they are exposed to someone infected with the virus, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean they should stop taking precautions, the CDC noted in updated guidance. It’s just not necessary for them to quarantine.

The criteria: They must be fully vaccinated – having had both shots with at least two weeks having passed since the second shot. That’s because it takes two weeks to build full immunity after the second dose of vaccine.

But the CDC says protection may wear off after three months, so people who had their last shot three months ago or more should still quarantine if they are exposed. They also should quarantine if they show symptoms, the CDC said.

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The front page of the Evening Standard newspaper leads with the story that the government is contemplating making it compulsory that all visitors to the UK will have to quarantine in a hotel, after arriving here, outside Victoria train station in central London on January 25, 2021, as Londoners continue to live under Tier 4 lockdown restrictions. - The UK government faced growing pressure on Monday to detail a strategy to reopen schools in England, following a backlash from lawmakers about reports they could remain closed for months. (Photo by Hollie Adams / AFP) (Photo by HOLLIE ADAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article Fully vaccinated people can skip Covid quarantines, CDC says

More Americans say they are confident about getting a Covid-19 vaccine, but supplies are limited and new variants are raising concerns across the country.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found 71% of those surveyed are willing to get vaccinated, up from 65% in late December and the highest number since July. So far, about 10% – almost 33.8 million Americans – have?received at least one dose?of the two-part vaccines, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 10.5 million people have been fully vaccinated.

And while US and state leaders are optimistic vaccinations will ramp up in coming months, challenges remain, including supply shortages and equal access.?Public health experts also say the US is in a race against time?as Covid-19?variants?spread across the country.

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Related article About 1 in 10 Americans have gotten at least their first Covid-19 shot. But supply challenges remain

The World Health Organization’s recommendations for the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, AZD1222, include all people ages 18 and older, including older adults.

In a briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Joachim Hombach, executive secretary of WHO’s?Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization said:

The new recommendations were published on Wednesday and note?that there are some populations for which data are limited or do not exist – including?children, pregnant women, lactating women and other groups. “Until such data are available, vaccination of individuals below 18 years of age is not recommended,” the guidance says.

For women who are breastfeeding, the guidance says that “a lactating woman who is part of a group recommended for vaccination, e.g., health workers, should be offered vaccination on an equivalent basis.” It also said that it does not recommend discontinuing breastfeeding after vaccination

At the same briefing, WHO also recommended the Oxford/AstraZeneca?vaccine in countries where variants of the coronavirus are circulating.

The group of expert advisers looked at two aspects of the circulation of the variants in relation to the?AstraZeneca?vaccine, said Dr. Alejandro Cravioto, chair of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization.

In the United Kingdom, Cravioto said preliminary analysis showed a slightly reduced efficacy against the variant first spotted there. The analysis also showed?a limited reduction in titers of neutralization, which means the vaccine is still having a good effect protecting people infected with that variant.

In South Africa,?Cravioto said preliminary analysis showed?“a marked reduction” in vaccine effectiveness against mild or moderate disease in a variant first spotted there.?The analysis also showed?a reduction in neutralizing antibody levels. However, he said the study was small and didn’t allow assessment of the vaccine against severe infection. He noted there is indirect evidence that there is still protection against severe disease.