February 12 coronavirus news

Our ongoing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has moved here.

Flights to Victoria?have been?suspended as the Australian state begins a hard five-day lockdown, Premier Daniel Andrews?said?Saturday.?

No flights will be allowed into Victoria until next Thursday, other than?those carrying more than?100 passengers?who?have already commenced travel to the state.

Victoria recorded one additional Covid-19 case Saturday, connected to the recent Holiday Inn cluster.?A total of 14 confirmed cases of the?UK variant have been linked to the cluster.?

The state entered the five-day “circuit breaker” lockdown at 11:59 p.m. local time on February 12.??

A health care worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a mass vaccination site in Las Mesa, California, on February 11.

The US state of California is adding millions of people to its Covid-19 vaccination priority list, including residents “at high risk with developmental and other disabilities” and those with “serious underlying health conditions.”

The plan, outlined by state health officials in a briefing Friday, will begin March 15 and allow cancer patients, pregnant women, and other disabled individuals to join health care workers, seniors, teachers, and farm staff in line for a vaccine. The expansion could add as many as 6 million more Californians to the priority list.

It also broadens the ages from 65 and over to ages 16 to 64 in those categories.

California Health and Human Service Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly told reporters the March 15 start will give officials time to work out details on how to get vaccines to those with various disabilities and could include at-home visits.

Ghaly acknowledged the timing could be optimistic, cautioning “we are still dealing with the scarcity of vaccine. This week the drastic shortfall of vaccines in the state led to the closure of the mass vaccination centers in Los Angeles.”

The expanded list of those eligible includes people with cancer, chronic kidney disease, oxygen-dependent heart disease, Down Syndrome, immune-suppressed organ transplant recipients, pregnant women, people with sickle cell disease, severe obesity and certain type-2 diabetes.

Ghaly expressed concern about the inequity of distribution among communities of color and low-income areas. There are plans to reach out to community clinics, public health systems and what they’re calling “trusted messengers in communities that data shows are reluctant to get vaccinated.”

Senior state health officials acknowledged complaints from rural counties that they have not been given their fair share of vaccines. However, officials say these areas have historically been medically underserved and much of the early distribution was in areas with high numbers of medical workers.

Officials say the focus will now be shifting to rural areas in California’s agricultural community, which has been disproportionally impacted by the pandemic.

Officials also believe a focus on Californians with development disabilities and severe underlying conditions will allow more vaccinations in vulnerable settings, like jails, homeless shelters and areas where homeless reside.

The state estimates 13 million Californians are eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, including 3 million health care workers, 3.4 million food and agricultural workers, 1.4 million in the education sector, a million in emergency services and more than 6 million people over the age of 65.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine speaks during a press conference in Columbus, Ohio, on February 12.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) said during a press conference Friday that the state has learned there are a handful of schools that have indicated they will break the commitment they signed to reopen schools full-time or in a hybrid model by March 1, in return for receiving vaccines for their personnel.

DeWine warned if schools do not intend to return by March 1, Covid-19 vaccines will need to be reallocated away from their personnel and back to other eligible, vulnerable populations.?

The Governor said the issue came to a head today, because the state is in the midst of vaccinating personnel at Cleveland Public Schools, but heard they were not going to return by March 1.

“I expressed to the CEO, I said look, we’ll just have to cut off the vaccinations, because that’s the deal,” DeWine said.

After speaking with the Cleveland Public Schools CEO, the Governor said their CEO has made a commitment to do everything in his power to get children back in class by March 1.

DeWine emphasized that there is no requirement that any school in the state go back to in-person learning.

Children arrive for class on December 7, 2020, in New York City.

About 99% of children in the US live in a county considered a “red” zone with high levels of Covid-19 transmission under new guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a CNN analysis of federal data.

Nearly 73 million children – about 99% of the US population under the age of 18 – live in a “high transmission” community, defined by the CDC as a county where there were at least 100 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people or a test positivity rate of at least 10% during the past seven days.

In these zones, the new CDC guidelines recommend virtual learning for middle and high schools and hybrid learning or reduced attendance for elementary schools.

The CDC also stresses five key mitigation strategies: Requiring masks, physical distancing, hand-washing, maintaining clean facilities and contract tracing.

It also recommends different strategies based on how much transmission there is in the surrounding community, and has a color-coded guide with areas of high transmission colored red; substantial transmission colored orange; moderate transmission coded yellow and low transmission as blue.

The CDC says school districts should re-assess weekly.

If schools in “high transmission” communities cannot “strictly implement all mitigation strategies,” the CDC says all extracurricular activities should be virtual.

Fewer than 100,000 children in the US live in a county considered “low” or “moderate transmission” where the CDC recommends K-12 schools open for full in-person instruction. Most of those students live in Hawaii or Washington.

The CNN analysis used the latest federal data on new case rates and test positivity rates, published Thursday by the US Health and Human Services Department, to determine each county’s risk threshold according to CDC guidelines.

Population data is from the US Census Bureau’s 5-Year American Community Survey 2019 estimates.

The US Department of Education released a handbook with detailed strategies to help schools follow new guidance for reopening from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a top official said Friday.

The CDC issued school opening guidance that stresses mask use; social distancing; handwashing;?cleaning facilities and improving ventilation; and contact tracing, isolation and quarantine.

To help schools, the?Department of Education issued the first in a series of handbooks, Donna Harris-Aikens, senior adviser for policy and planning for the department, told a CDC news briefing.

One example: using signs to remind students to wear masks, she added.

There’s also guidance on how to keep students physically distanced, Harris-Aikens said.

“The handbook also discusses ways to get creative about laying out classrooms, and using auditoriums and cafeterias for instruction,” she added.

Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, speaks during a news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on February 12.

The spread of new variants and a sluggish vaccine rollout has Canadian officials urging caution even as new cases and hospitalizations from COVID-19 drop.?

“The new variants that are more communicable, more easily transmitted, are increasingly out there so we need to stay careful,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a press conference Friday.

Trudeau also announced details of stepped-up international border restrictions.?

International travelers arriving in Canada by air will have to pre-book a government-approved, quarantine hotel, at their own expense, starting February 22nd. There are exemptions for essential travel.?

Air passengers will also be tested at airports when they arrive. The quarantine is likely to last about 3 days or until the traveler’s COVID-19 test comes back negative. Those who test negative can continue with a 14-day quarantine at home or an appropriate quarantine location.?

In addition, before entering Canada either by land or air, travelers will have to show proof of a negative PCR COVID-19 test 72 hours before arriving.?

There have only been a few hundred cases of the variants identified in Canada so far, most of them the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK.?

However, public health officials have been warning that the incidence of variants could double every 10 to 14 days and that means there is a risk of a third wave of the pandemic hitting Canada.?

“These past weeks have been very challenging, but we’ve made great progress and are now almost two-thirds of the way down this curve. But we’ll need to keep putting the brakes on the spread of new virus variants of concern in Canada,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer during a COVID-19 update on Friday.

A medical technician fills a syringe from a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Bates Memorial Baptist Church on February 12 in Louisville, Kentucky.

When it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine, about 31% of adults say they plan to “wait and see” how it works for other people before deciding whether to get vaccinated themselves, according to a report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Friday.

Because?they are still undecided,?KFF says?that group?is a smart target for vaccine education. To do that, the foundation notes that it’s important to understand the group is not a monolith and concerns about getting vaccinated vary.?

About half of those in the?“wait and see”?group are White, 16% are Black and 19% are Hispanic. A majority say they are worried that they or a family member will get sick from coronavirus.?

Over half of the?“wait and see group” view getting vaccinated as a personal choice and?just 40% see vaccination as a responsibility to protect others.

The “wait and see group” are also politically diverse; 42% identify as Democrats or Democratic leaning and 36% identify as Republicans or Republican leaning.?

About 67% of?“wait and see” Republicans view the decision to get vaccinated as a personal choice, relative to 43% of Democrats.?52% of “wait and see” Democrats believe everyone has a responsibility to protect the health of others while just 29% of “wait and see” Republicans believe the same.

About half of Republicans?who want to “want and see”?believe the seriousness of the pandemic has been exaggerated?

Black and Hispanic adults who plan to “wait and see” are very concerned about the prospect of personally getting sick or having a family member getting sick from coronavirus. However, many are skeptical of the vaccine and the health care system at large.??

About 61% of Hispanic adults and 59% of Black adults?in the “wait and see” group said they were concerned that they might get coronavirus from the vaccine. About 57% of “wait and see” Black adults expressed distrust in the health care system and KFF noted that the lower levels of trust are associated with lower uptake of the vaccine.?

Many who say they plan to “wait and see” said that a close friend or family member getting vaccinated would be most likely to sway their decision.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seen in Atlanta on December 10, 2020.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released guidelines for reopening schools, including “five key mitigation strategies” for returning to in-person school safely.

Those five key strategies are: the universal and correct wearing of masks; physical distancing; washing hands; cleaning facilities and improving ventilation; and doing contact tracing, isolation and quarantining.

The CDC says vaccination and testing “provide additional layers of COVID-19 prevention in schools,” but don’t describe them as key strategies.

“With the release of this operational strategy, CDC is not mandating that schools reopen. These recommendations?simply?provide?schools?a?long-needed?roadmap for how to do so safely under different levels of disease in the community,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky?said in prepared remarks for the agency’s news briefing on Friday.?

“We also know that some schools are already providing in-person instruction and we want them to be able to continue to do this, but we know that some are not following the mitigation strategies we know work,” Walensky said. “For these schools, we are not mandating that they close; rather, we are providing these recommendations and highlighting the science behind them to help schools create an environment that is safe for students, teachers and staff.”

Walensky added that while each strategy is important, CDC recommends “prioritizing the first two” – wearing masks and physical distancing.

“These two strategies are incredibly important in areas that have high community spread of Covid-19, which right now is the vast majority of communities in the US,” Walensky said.

People wait in line to enter the coronavirus vaccination site at Yankee Stadium on February 5 in New York City.

New York has now administered 2 million vaccine doses – over 130,000 of which have been given in the last 24 hours – according to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo.?

The state’s vaccination sites have administered 90 percent of the first dose vaccinations they has received, and 82 percent of first and second doses, the Governor said.

While the federal government has increased weekly supply by over 20% over the course of the next three weeks, his office said “New York’s vast distribution network and large population of eligible individuals still far exceed the supply coming from the federal government.”

Approximately 7 million New Yorkers are eligible for vaccinations.?

A nurse fills a syringe with a vial of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris, on January 21.

France’s health authority?has become the first to?recommend that only one dose of the coronavirus vaccine be administered to?people?previously?infected?with?coronavirus.

In a press release published Friday,?the French National Authority for Health?argued that people infected with Covid-19?keep an “immunity memory”?and?should only require one dose of a vaccine. Health authorities?recommended that the vaccination be carried out after a 3-month delay from the person’s?infection date, but “preferably closer to a 6-month delay.”

The government has yet to adopt the health authority’s recommendation.

France began its vaccination campaign on December 27, and there are currently three vaccines authorized for use – Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna – which are all two-dose vaccines.

Italy is extending its travel ban between regions by another week to February 25, the government said. The travel ban does have some exceptions, including travel for health reasons or for emergencies.

Additionally, the regions of Tuscany, Abruzzo, and Liguria, as well as the province of Trento, will tighten coronavirus restrictions, according to an Italian Health Ministry statement.?These regions will be placed into Italy’s middle tier of restrictions – called?“orange zones” – meaning that museums will close and restaurants and bars can only open for takeout services.

Areas where clusters of the UK variant have been discovered, such as the city of Perugia, will also have increased restrictions, according to the Health Ministry.?Nearly one in five coronavirus infections in Italy are from the UK variant, according to a Health Ministry?study released Friday.?

The UK variant “is likely to become the prevalent one in the coming months,” said the Health Ministry press release, adding that an estimated 17.8% of cases nationwide are from the?UK variant of the virus.

On Friday, Italy recorded a further 13,908 new cases of coronavirus and 316 additional deaths, according to the latest government data.?

Vitamin C and zinc don’t do anything to help coronavirus patients, a Cleveland Clinic team reported Friday.

Their research is the first major randomized study looking at the popular supplements, given under medical supervision, and it found even high doses did nothing to help patients recover from Covid-19.

The team at the Cleveland Clinic health system randomly assigned 214 patients to get varying doses of ascorbic acid, commonly known as vitamin C, and zinc, between April and October of last year.?

“In this randomized clinical trial of ambulatory patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection, treatment with high-dose zinc gluconate, ascorbic acid, or a combination of the two supplements did not significantly decrease the duration of symptoms compared with standard of care,” the team wrote in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“Most consumers of ascorbic acid and zinc are taking significantly lower doses of these supplements, so demonstrating that even high-dose ascorbic acid and zinc had no benefit suggests clear lack of efficacy,” Dr. Milind Desai of the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues wrote.?

“In addition, administering supplements with unproven benefit can be detrimental due to adverse effects. Zinc has been shown to cause a metallic taste, dry mouth, and gastrointestinal intolerance in high doses. Ascorbic acid can cause gastrointestinal intolerance, and in the current study, a significantly higher proportion of patients in the ascorbic acid subgroups reported adverse effects, including nausea, diarrhea, and stomach cramps.”

Last week, the?Biden administration?announced it will begin direct shipments of?coronavirus vaccines?to retail pharmacies, expanding points of access for Americans to receive shots as concerns about variants of the virus expand.

Jason Carroll is outside one Walgreens pharmacy in New Britain, Connecticut, as they begin to administer Covid-19 vaccines to the public.

Watch more:

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The UK’s Covid-19 reproduction number (R) is now estimated at between 0.7 and 0.9, the country’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said on Friday.

This is the first time the full range of the R rate has fallen below 1 since July 2020, according to PA Media.

The R number falling to between 0.7 and 0.9 means that “on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 7 and 9 other people,” explained the DHSC on its website.

?Last week, the R number was between 0.7 and 1.0, with the DHSC saying it was “confident” the epidemic was shrinking.

Antibody tests designed to tell people whether they’ve had a previous coronavirus infection vary greatly in their results depending on when people take the tests and who the people are, researchers reported Friday.

People who had recently been infected were more likely to test negative on an antibody test, the team at the University of California, San Francisco found. They found 112 days after a person was diagnosed with coronavirus appeared to be the optimal time for an accurate antibody test result.

“The sensitivity of the antibody test varied by sex and age, with significantly higher sensitivity among males than among females,” the team wrote in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The team looked at 486 patients who were diagnosed using polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing – the gold standard for coronavirus testing – and who later came back for antibody tests.

“The sensitivity was highest at 126 days after positive RT-PCR results for males and 133 days after positive RT-PCR results for females. The sensitivity also varied significantly by age group, with the highest sensitivity among patients aged 50 to 59 years,” the researchers wrote.

Testing too soon, they said, might lead to a false negative result. Test types varied greatly in their accuracy, also, the team said.

Health care staff treat a Covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit at Firouzabadi Hospital in Tehran, Iran, in December 2020.

Iran reported 7,298 new daily coronavirus cases on Friday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 1,503,753, Iran’s health ministry spokesperson said.?

The new Covid-19 related case infection numbers were announced by the spokesperson, Sima Sadaat Lari, in a news conference on state TV.?

The country also reported 65 new related Covid-19 deaths, which took its death toll to 58,809 on Friday.

The health ministry said 3,729 patients remain hospitalized in ICU.?

Iran is the Middle East country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic in total cases and deaths.??

On Tuesday, Iran began its rollout of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, according to a live broadcast on state television.?

Health Minister Saeed Namaki said the top priority groups for vaccination are doctors and nurses working in intensive care units of hospitals.?1,000 vaccine shots are being given on a daily basis to medical staff and people over the age of 65, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Friday.?

The country has continued to keep restrictions in place to avoid a larger outbreak of cases.?

A medical worker holds a Covid-19 test sample in Petah Tikva, Israel, in October 2020.

Israel’s coronavirus data is moving in the right direction, with the number of people in serious condition from the disease dipping under 1,000 for the first time in several weeks, according to information from the country’s Health Ministry.

A total of 985 people are currently in a serious condition with Covid-19. And in another sign that Israel’s vaccine drive could be starting to have an effect, there are now fewer Covid-19 hospitalizations among the over-60s than there are among the under-60s, according to Professor Eran Segal from Israel’s respected Weizmann Institute.

Data on cases and hospitalizations in Israel is being closely watched around the world, as the country jumped into an early lead globally in administering shots to its citizens.

The over-60s were the first demographic in Israel to receive the coronavirus vaccination and more than 90% of that age group have now either been vaccinated or been infected with the virus already, Egal says.

Israel’s reproduction rate is also falling and currently stands at 0.88, comfortably below the important level of 1. The positivity rate on tests also continues to decline, currently at 6.7%

Speaking on the Kan broadcaster Friday, Israel’s coronavirus czar, Nachman Ash, says the country is on track for a significant easing of restrictions on economic activity on February 23, though he did not go into details of exactly which parts of the economy he foresaw opening up on that date.

He also indicated that possession of what is often termed a “green pass” – proof of vaccination or of having recovered from the disease – could be used to determine access to certain activities.?

Entry to essential services, like shops, would be available to everybody, he said, but for non-essential activity, like attending cultural events or eating out in restaurants, priority would likely be given to those with a green pass.

More than 3,750,000 people in Israel have now received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, of which nearly 2,400,000 have received their second dose as well.

Then US President Donald Trump leaves the White House for Walter Reed medical center on October 2, 2020, after his Covid-19 diagnosis.

Former US President Donald Trump’s condition with Covid-19 became so concerning last year that?there was talk of putting him on a ventilator, according to what Trump told one person at the time, raising questions over whether the White House downplayed the seriousness of his situation.

The new details of what happened while Trump was hospitalized at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in October were first reported by?The New York Times on Thursday.?CNN?reported at the time?that Trump had received supplemental oxygen, citing a source with knowledge of Trump’s treatment.

The details invite new scrutiny over waffling remarks by Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean Conley, who last year refused to directly answer reporters’ questions about whether Trump was on oxygen, repeatedly emphasizing that he was not “right now.” When he was asked if Trump had received it at all, Conley said: “He has not needed any this morning, today at all.” Asked if he had ever been on supplemental oxygen as part of his treatment, Conley said: “Right now he is not,” adding, “Yesterday and today, he was not on oxygen.”

Here’s what else you need to know on Friday…

Q: With coronavirus variants here, should I still get the vaccine?

A:?Absolutely, says CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen. The efficacy of vaccines against new variants will need to be continually studied, and it’s possible that as more mutations and variants emerge, we will need booster shots, or even an annual vaccine like the flu shot, which is updated every year.

But we simply don’t know when these booster shots might come out, Dr. Wen said. “It may be months, and the booster shots may require that you first have completed the vaccine series. If you have the opportunity to get the vaccine now, you should do so to protect yourself. Remember that the vaccines we have are still effective against the variants.”?Read here for more information from Dr. Wen.

Fans banned from Australian Open after state records 13 Covid-19 cases: The Australian state of Victoria will lock down for five days in a bid to curb the spread of a more contagious coronavirus variant, meaning the Australian Open in Melbourne?will go ahead without fans?during what is usually its busiest few days.

Pfizer shot triggers strong immune response to new variants: A study has found that people who have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine show?strong immune responses to the Covid-19 variants?first identified in the UK and South Africa.

WhatsApp and sermons: How some Britons are getting more Black people and other ethnic minority groups to take a vaccine: According to data from?OpenSAFELY,?Black people in the most vulnerable age group of over 80 were around half as likely to be vaccinated as their White counterparts in late January, even though Black people are disproportionately impacted by the virus,?Christopher Johnson writes.

A version of this story appeared in the February 12 edition of CNN’s Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction newsletter.?Sign up here to receive the need-to-know headlines every weekday.

CDC releases illustration of the Coronavirus.

Related article Trump's Covid-19 condition was worse than his team let on

A person is tested for Covid-19 in Randolph, Massachusetts, on January 5.

Over a year since the first Covid-19 test was conducted in the United States, the nation has conducted more Covid-19 tests than it has US residents, according to Covid Tracking Project data.?

There have been?330,086,893 total test results?as of Thursday?– both positive and negative – according to CTP data. CTP started tracking testing in the US on January 22, 2020.

Testing across the United States is not standardized and each state reports their totals differently.?Some states count tests by unique people, while others count specimens.?Some states count antigen tests, while others do not.?These fluctuations across the states often give an unclear picture of just how many tests are being conducted on a daily basis.??

Experts have maintained throughout the pandemic the importance of testing and contact tracing to help lower the spread of Covid-19.?

The US has seen a steady decline in testing since it peaked on January 21, 2021, CTP data shows.?“The testing?decline?we’re now seeing is almost certainly due to a combination of reduced demand as well as reduced availability or accessibility of testing.?Demand for testing may have dropped because fewer people are sick or have been exposed to infected individuals, but also perhaps because testing isn’t being promoted as heavily,” CTP said in a post on Thursday.??

A German Federal Police officer checks a driver arriving from Austria at the border between Kufstein, Austria, and Kiefersfelden, Germany, on February 9.

Central Europe has become the continent’s latest coronavirus hotspot, with Austria struggling to contain an outbreak of the new?variant?first identified in?South Africa?and neighboring Czech Republic facing hospital bed shortages on top of a political crisis over lockdowns.

”To protect the population from virus mutations – this is why the federal government decided yesterday to declare the Czech Republic, Tyrol and Slovakia as coronavirus variant areas,” Spahn said at a news conference Friday.

“This means there will be a ban on transportation – and without exceptions tests must be made before entering Germany – and there is an obligation to quarantine.’

The Tyrol government said Wednesday that as of Tuesday, it had identified 438 confirmed and suspected cases of the South African variant. Scientists are concerned about this strain because its?mutations appear to reduce the efficacy?of some of the coronavirus vaccines.

In an attempt to contain the spread of the variant, local authorities deployed 1,200 police officers and soldiers. Starting Friday at midnight and lasting for 10 days, they will be deployed to Tyrol’s border checkpoints to ensure that anyone trying to leave the province has a negative coronavirus test no older than 48 hours, Tyrol police spokesman Stefan Eder told CNN.

Read the full story:

Policemen stop a car to check documents of a driver near the city of Sokolov, Czech Republic, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021. Almost 600 police officers were deployed to enforce a complete lockdown of the three hardest-hit counties on the border with Germany and Poland to help contain a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus found in Britain. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Related article Germany, fearing new coronavirus variants, imposes border checks with Austria and Czech Republic

Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, on February 12.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the largest school district in the US to reopen fully in the fall.

As the debate around reopening schools in-person continues, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho explained on CNN’s “New Day” how his district was able to do it successfully. His schools mandated the wearing of masks, implemented one-way hallways, limited congregation of students, brought in mobile testing units and partnered with health systems to provide free Covid-19 testing for teachers, he said.?

They also developed a dashboard where employees and the community could see where cases were appearing.?

Carvalho said out of 400 schools, there have been two incidents where students and families having parties led to quarantines. He said officials are urging students to avoid parties and traveling during the upcoming spring break.?

Hear the full interview:

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Dr. Anthony Fauci listens to US President Joe Biden, out of frame, during a visit to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11.

The relaxation of Covid-19 mitigation measures has to be done gradually, and there will be a need to wear masks for several more months, the US’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Friday on Good Morning America.

“You want to do it gradually and safely as opposed to just turning it on and off right away,” Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said when asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about whether it was safe for states to relax mask mandates and allow indoor dining again.?

When asked by Stephanopoulos how long the need for masks would be, Fauci said that he didn’t think it was measured in years, but the level of virus in the community needs to be lower.

“I think we’re going to be wearing masks for several, several months into the future,” he said.?

His projection is that by the time 70 to 85% of people are vaccinated, “the level of virus in the community could be so low that you could start pulling back a bit on what are stringent public health measures” – but it shouldn’t be done all at once.

Reopening of schools

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to release guidelines Friday about reopening schools.?

When asked what parents should know about whether it’s safe to open schools and give them confidence that it’s ok, Fauci told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he thinks it’s going to be a combination of things, and that he didn’t want to get ahead of the guidelines coming from the CDC.

A health technician stands by oxygen tanks in the Covid-19 triage area at Garcia de Orta hospital in Almada, Portugal, on February 1.

Come next week, medical teams from France and Luxembourg will arrive in Portugal to help “support the treatment of Covid-19 patients” in the country as it continues to grapple with a new wave of infections, according to the Portuguese health ministry.

France is sending one doctor and three nurses, who will be stationed at Almada’s Garcia de Orta Hospital, on the outskirts of Lisbon. Luxembourg is sending two doctors and two nurses, who will be deployed to the Espírito Santo hospital in évora, in the southern part of the country, the statement added.

The teams will be in the country for 15 days, the ministry said. Their deployment comes after 26 medical personnel from the German armed forces arrived in Portugal last week.?

Portugal has reported 778,369 total infections and 14,885 Covid-19 related deaths since the pandemic began. The situation has escalated since the start of 2021: more than half of all its deaths occurred in the new year and the country has also seen a doubling in the number of total cases.

The UK government’s official website for booking approved hotel quarantine rooms crashed within hours of its launch on Thursday.?

The Department of Health and Social Care removed the booking link from its website on Thursday evening and posted an error message:

The site was still down as of Friday morning.??

The UK’s mandatory hotel quarantine policy begins on Monday and is part of a series of new border measures being brought in to stop new variants from overseas entering the country.?

The policy mandates that all passengers arriving into England from a list of 33 countries which have been identified as “high-risk” will be required to quarantine in a hotel for up to 10 days.

Some context: The?UK’s new policy of enforced hotel?quarantine?for travelers from the 33 banned countries was first announced on January 27.?

Since then, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and other government officials have been holding discussions with Australian and New Zealand counterparts to share expertise on policies for quarantining travelers, measures which have been in place since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

Read more here:

Related article UK warns all vacations could be canceled for 2021

Police in Moscow block a road during a July 2020 protest against the results of voting on constitutional amendments. Activists called for a protest against the constitutional reform that allows Russian President Vladimir Putin to stay in power until 2036.

At least 83 governments worldwide have used the pandemic to justify curbs on free speech and peaceful assembly, NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.

Authorities have “attacked, detained, prosecuted, and in some cases killed critics,” with victims including journalists, activists, health care workers, political opponents and others who have criticized those governments’ Covid-19 responses, HRW added.

In some countries, like China and Egypt, people remain in detention ”?simply for criticizing government responses to Covid-19 months earlier.” It points to the plight of independent Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan, who reported from Wuhan at the height of the initial?coronavirus outbreak.

She?was jailed for four years in December after being found guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” according to one of her defense lawyers Zhang Keke.

The group has called for the United Nations Human Rights Council to commission a new report looking into the “impact of restrictions on free speech and peaceful assembly,” it wrote.

“Excessive and sometimes violent crackdowns on critical speech by governments signify a perilous willingness to sideline a fundamental freedom in the name of countering Covid-19,” Simpson added. “The obligation of governments to protect the public from this deadly pandemic is not a carte blanche for placing a chokehold on information and suppressing dissent.”

German Health Minister Jens Spahn speaks at a press conference on February 12 in Berlin.

Border?controls – including limits on public transport and mandatory test and quarantine requirements for travelers – are unavoidable in the effort to prevent the import of other more contagious coronavirus variants, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Friday.

Spahn went on to say that – despite the new variants – overall infections rates in Germany were falling.

Some context: On Thursday, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that Germany was temporarily imposing border checks and limiting travel from the?Czech Republic?and?the Austrian province of Tyrol due to a spike in infections of the new, more contagious coronavirus variants. The restrictions come into force?Sunday.?

On Friday, Germany recorded 9,860 new coronavirus infections – a drop of 3,048 cases compared to the same day last week.?Germany coronavirus deaths stood at 556 within the last 24 hours - a drop of 299 compared to Friday last week.?

The latest data from the country’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), indicate that?the number of new infections per 100,000 residents could fall below 60 this weekend, Spahn said.?

As of Friday, 5.7 million coronavirus vaccines have been distributed across Germany’s 16 federal states, with some 3.6 million vaccinations carried out so far. 2,490,423 – 3% of Germany’s population have received the first shot, while 1,178,725 have received the second shot, according to RKI data. Spahn said that Germany will distribute 8 million coronavirus vaccines by the end of next week.?

Germany is currently administering the coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.?

A pharmacist prepares a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a mass vaccination site at Boston's Fenway Park on January 29.

Caregiver vaccine scams are popping up in Massachusetts after the state announced that companions who bring people over the age of 75 to an appointment can get vaccinated themselves.

Several online posts on Craigslist are offering free vaccine rides to those over 75. Some are upfront about it, stating clearly that they’re doing it so they can get vaccinated themselves. Others are offering seniors money along with a free ride to pose as their companion.

The governor said residents should report any solicitations of this nature to the authorities.

Under the policy, a caregiver will be allowed to receive a Covid-19 vaccine if accompanying a person 75 or older to a mass vaccination site. The policy includes a family member or friend in an effort to encourage the elderly to get vaccinated. The change went into effect Thursday and doesn’t apply to appointments that were already scheduled. The announcement came after some older residents said they were hesitant about going to a mass vaccination site alone, or had difficulties doing so.

“We want to make sure that we make it as easy as we possibly can for folks who fall into that over-75 category to get vaccinated, and to get vaccinated early in this process,” Baker said.

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Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker

Related article This state allows a companion for seniors to get the vaccine too. It has spurred online scams, governor says

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide apologized to Democratic lawmakers Wednesday for putting them in a tough spot over long-awaited data which revealed thousands more confirmed and presumed Covid-19 deaths of long-term care facility residents than previously disclosed, according to a source who participated in the call.

Secretary to Gov. Cuomo?Melissa DeRosa?told the lawmakers in a private virtual meeting that the state had been concerned about a Department of Justice preliminary inquiry into Covid-19 deaths in New York nursing homes, as well as attention from former President Donald Trump, who was tweeting about Cuomo and other Democratic governors’ handling of the nursing homes, the source who participated in the call told CNN.

Outstanding inquiries from state lawmakers were also addressed on the call, the source said, after an August 3 joint committee hearing on Covid-19 residential health care facilities. Lawmakers had demanded a full transparency on the Covid-19 death toll in nursing homes.

Read the full story:

Melissa DeRosa, secretary to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, conducts a news conference on May 27, 2020.

Related article New York governor's top aide apologizes and says administration 'froze' after inquiries on Covid-19 deaths at long-term care facilities

Right Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin believes better representation is one of the best ways to encourage vaccine uptake

Christine Lloyd-Jones was at work when the first call came: One of her friends, Annette, 62, had died of coronavirus. The following day, as she ate breakfast, her phone flashed again. This time it was news of another friend, Lloyd, dead at 58. The next day, another call. Her friend Haydon, 51, was in the hospital. He died the following day. In the space of just five days, Lloyd-Jones lost three loved ones to Covid-19.

One month on, the social care manager, who lives in London, has become a one-woman publicity machine for members of the Black community, encouraging everyone she knows to get vaccinated, so she won’t have to say goodbye to another friend or family member.

“I have decided to have the Covid-19 vaccine,” she wrote. “This was one of the hardest decisions I have made in my life.”

Lloyd-Jones’s uncle died from coronavirus four days after the UK locked down last March, and the twin sister of her friend Annette, called Paulette, also lost her life in 2020. The twins are buried together. Yet Lloyd-Jones is far from being the only member of Britain’s Black community or other ethnic minorities to feel unsure about taking a Covid-19 shot.

A report released by the?UK Household Longitudinal Study?earlier this year found that 72% of Black British respondents said they were unlikely or very unlikely to get a coronavirus vaccine.

But Black people and those from minority groups are still thought to be less willing to get vaccinated than their White counterparts – a factor which concerns health authorities and community leaders alike.

Read the full story:

Related article From sermons to WhatsApp messages, these Britons are trying to dispel Covid-19 myths in minority communities

A pedestrian passes closed shops on Carnaby Street in London on Tuesday, January 5.

The economy of the United Kingdom contracted 9.9% in 2020, wiping out the past seven years of growth in the country and returning the economy to the same level it was in 2013.

It is the largest annual drop in Gross Domestic Product on record.?

The UK economy did see some signs of improvement in the final months of the year. GDP grew 1% in the fourth quarter. It follows on from a record third quarter when GDP grew 16.1%.

There was growth in services, construction and manufacturing, although all of these industries remain below pre-pandemic levels.

The United States reported?103,306?new cases of Covid-19 and?3,724?additional virus-related deaths on Thursday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

That raises the national total to at least?27,390,465?infections and 475,291?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?68,285,575?vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 46,390,270?shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN is tracking?US cases.

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

The

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 from next week as part of a plan to end most 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 will be raised to 50% on March 15.

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

Hundreds of people march to City Hall in San Francisco, California, on February 6 to 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.

In the city’s filing Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, attorneys argued 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 the city 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 were vaccinated. Mayor London Breed said if that agreement stands, it’s likely schools would not resume this school year. City attorneys also took issue with the suggestion 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.

##Restrictions#

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

Students in the United States 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?the 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.

In August 2020, Eric Hanushek?estimated?that students from first grade through 12th grade would, on average, lose about 3% 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% and 9% – though that average doesn’t reflect how kids with less money and 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’ gross domestic product.?In August 2020, Hanushek predicted that GDP would be 1.5% 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, America’s 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 United States is on track to have a vaccine supply for 300 million Americans “by the end of July,” President Joe Biden said 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.

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.

Existing 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.”