February 19 coronavirus news

FedEx will make deliveries tomorrow to sites that are open and able to receive vaccine shipments, the company said in a statement.

The company said it will deliver vaccines to areas not impacted by the winter storm.

“We continue to work closely with our healthcare customers and the federal government to safely and swiftly deliver COVID-19 vaccines throughout the U.S.,” FedEx said in a statement.

Some background: The?frigid temperatures, snow and ice?that?have devastated parts of the country?are having an impact on Covid-19 vaccinations, delaying deliveries and appointments for shots.

To get back on track, Andy Slavitt, the White House senior adviser for Covid response, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo officials are going to to have to extend appointment and shipping hours.

CNN’s?Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.

The Biden administration will work to communicate and build trust with many Americans who have legitimate questions about the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine, said Andy Slavitt, the senior adviser to the White House Covid-19 response team, today.

“Of course people also have legitimate questions, and it’s important that if they have a legitimate question about the vaccine, they not be ostracized as being anti-vax or anything like that,” said Slavitt, speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.??

“They may just want to have their questions answered,” he continued. “So, our job, and you’ll see us doing this in a much bigger way, particularly over the course of March when we have many more vaccines, is to have real communications, structured dialogue with people that they trust, straight answers, and make sure that the misinformation, the disinformation, and the rumors don’t play in.”

People line up for the first day of Covid-19 vaccinations at a site opened by the Los Angeles Unified School District for employees on February 17 in Los Angeles.

More than 59 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been?administered?in the United States, according to data published Friday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.??

The CDC reported that 59,585,043 total doses have been?administered?—?about 76% of the 78,152,495 doses distributed.?

That’s 1.8 million more?administered?doses reported since yesterday.

More than 41.9?million people have now received at least one dose of the vaccine and more than 17 million people have been fully vaccinated, CDC data shows.?

Note: Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.?

Pulse oximeters, which have increased in use during the coronavirus pandemic, may yield inaccurate results, the US Food and Drug Administration warned Friday. The agency cited a recent report suggesting the devices may not work as well for people with dark skin pigmentation.?

Pulse oximeters, available through a prescription and over the counter, are devices that measure blood oxygen levels. The readings can be useful for assessing lung function when people have pneumonia or other respiratory symptoms.

“While pulse oximeters may be useful for estimating blood oxygen levels, these devices have limitations that can result in inaccurate readings,” Dr.?William Maisel, director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement.

And they are not precise.

“For example,?if an FDA-cleared pulse oximeter reads 90%, then the true oxygen saturation in the blood is generally between 86-94%,” the FDA said.

The FDA urged patients to consult with a provider if they are concerned about their symptoms?or pulse oximetry readings.

In a recent update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also warned of the potential limitations of pulse?oximeters, noting that providers using pulse oximetry on suspected or confirmed coronavirus patients should also assess other factors, like high-risk conditions and Covid-19 symptoms.

The state of Washington earmarked $2.2 billion for new Covid-19?relief Friday, as Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation passed earlier this month.

The new law sets aside $240 million for business assistance grants, but most of the money will go to additional help for public schools. Additionally, $618 million in additional funding will go toward public health programs, including testing, contact tracing and vaccinations. All of the money comes from federal Covid-19 relief to Washington. Inslee signed a separate bill making Covid-19 grants exempt from state sales tax.

The new funding comes as the head of the health department in Seattle and King County, Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, said they are seeing case counts continue to fall, but he still has concern about variants of Covid-19 that are spreading.

“I have even more respect for the new variant with respect to the threat that it poses,” Duchin said. “If we become complacent, we will regret it.”

Vaccine maker Pfizer is adding a facility in Kansas to its Covid-19 fill-finish vaccine production process and expanding its vaccine production capabilities at locations in Michigan and Connecticut, the company’s CEO, Albert Bourla, said during a news conference Friday.

“As part of this expansion, we are adding a new formulation suite here in Kalamazoo…lipid production capabilities in both Kalamazoo and at our site in Groton Connecticut, and fill-finish lines at our site in McPherson, Kansas,” Bourla said.

The news conference was held jointly with President Biden after he had toured the Kalamazoo site.

Bourla added the company is also increasing the supply of raw materials from existing suppliers and bringing on new suppliers.

He added that improvements have allowed the company to increase production.?

“We have improved our processes to double the batch size and increase yield, and we have deployed more efficient lab test methods to reduce release times,” Bourla said.

Bourla said that these improvements have allowed the company to reduce their timelines ”from approximately 110 days from start to vial ready” and are now closer to “an average of 60 days, which is an almost 50% improvement.”

Over the next few weeks, Bourla expects to increase the number of doses produced for the US, “from an average of 5 million doses per week, which is the average until now, to more than double of that number, starting from the next couple of weeks.”

CNN previously reported at the beginning of February that upgrades to Pfizer’s production process helped the vaccine maker double its output of coronavirus vaccine in the last month. At the time, Pfizer spokesperson Amy Rose told CNN that Pfizer expected production time to be cut nearly in half, from 110 days to an average of 60 days for one batch of Covid-19 vaccine. Pfizer said one batch is equal to between 1 to 3 million doses.

Because coronaviruses like Covid-19 have pandemic potential, the world needs a universal coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.

“I believe that we have the capability scientifically to develop what we call the universal coronavirus vaccine,” Fauci said in an interview hosted by Georgetown University. “In other words, one that really covers at least all of the SARS-CoV-2 mutations, but also the entire spectrum of the family of coronaviruses.”

A relative of the virus causing Covid-19, called SARS, broke out in 2003-2004, killing close to 800 people before it was stopped. A related virus called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS also occasionally kills people, and several other coronaviruses cause common cold symptoms.

“Fifteen to 30% of all the common colds that you and I experience every winter, repetitively, are coronaviruses – usually four of them,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained.

Fauci said it’s likely that these coronaviruses hit human civilization as a big pandemic hundreds of years ago, eventually becoming the common cold viruses we are familiar with today.

Irish health authorities have reported three cases of the Covid-19 variant first identified in Brazil, the Irish National Public Health Emergency Team said in a statement on Friday.

“All of the cases identified are directly associated with recent travel from Brazil,” the statement read. “All cases are being followed up by public health teams and enhanced public health measures have been put in place, in line with guidance.”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called for investments in pandemic response and preparedness Friday.

He added that the investments would allow experts to work towards ambitious goals, like creating universal coronavirus and flu vaccines, drugs that block virus transmission and diagnostics that could cover?20% of the population per week at a low cost.

“We can create mRNA vaccine factories that have a lot of capacity globally, and those factories can be used for standard vaccines when there’s not a pandemic,” Gates said.

“If we have a team of 3,000 global experts, they can be working on things like measles and malaria, and then move over to work on a pandemic,” he added.

He also called for cooperative action to help shrink the disparities in Covid-19 vaccine access between rich and less wealthy nations.

“As the rich countries get on high levels of vaccination, their factories can contribute,” Gates said. “If we do this well, we’ll have about a six to eight-month delta of the vaccination levels of the rich to the developing countries – still longer than we’d like.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Canadians that public health measures, including restrictions on indoor social gatherings, would have to continue for weeks to comes as new Covid-19 variants, and a slow vaccine rollout, risk causing a dangerous third wave of the virus.?

“We have to keep taking strong public health measures,” said Trudeau during a news conference Friday adding, “otherwise we could see a third wave that is even worse than the second or the first, and I know that’s not the news you want to hear.”

Canadian public health officials released alarming new modeling Friday indicating that even current public health measures will not be enough to contain a third wave if fueled by faster spreading variants of Covid-19.?

“We need to make sure that, even as provinces look at loosening up certain restrictions, that other restrictions are kept in, and there is an ability to…respond quickly when variants appear,” said Trudeau.?

The new modeling underscores the fact that “variants of concern” have now been detected in all provinces and continue to spread. Based on the projections released by public health officials, current public health measures would not be enough to contain the spread of the virus by spring if the new, more contagious variants take hold.?

“A resurgence is very likely if people let go of the public health measures right now. What you want to do is to keep avoiding this yo-yoing effect of up and down. You need to avoid complete lockdowns and curfews and all those things by trying to maintain a strong level of public health measures,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer at a modeling presentation Friday.?

The province of Ontario announced Friday that the city of Toronto and one of its neighboring regions will remain in a lockdown, with a stay-at-home order, until at least March 8?as the threat of new variants spreading continues to concern health officials.?

Canada remains quite vulnerable to a third wave as new Covid-19 variants continue to spread and the vaccine rollout remains painfully slow right across the country.

“We need more vaccines, more vaccines will solve massive issues,” said Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier at a news conference in Toronto Friday.?

Like other provinces and territories throughout Canada, Ontario has managed to vaccinate the vast majority of residents and staff in long-term care homes. Those residents continue to represent those most vulnerable to Covid-19 in Canada.?

But there has been no significant vaccine rollout in other vulnerable groups, except indigenous communities. The commander leading the vaccine rollout in Ontario characterized the situation as a “vaccine drought.”?

“We have not wasted our time while we’ve been in that drought, with a minimal amount of vaccines to use, what we have been doing in preparing for the day when more arrive,” retired Gen. Rick Hillier said at a news conference in Toronto Friday.?

Hillier said his vaccine task force would now prioritize “patient-facing” health care workers, among other at-risk groups and said he expected the scarcity of vaccine doses to improve over the next few weeks.?

President?Biden?sought to explain Friday why he can’t be more specific on when every American who wants a vaccine can get one, or when the country will be able to return to normal.

He said issues like weather, mutating strains and manufacturing delays could all cause unforeseen problems in inoculating the American public.

He said he wanted to be “straight” with the public on his expectations for the virus instead of offering unknowable timelines.

“I’ll always be straight with you. I said in my inaugural I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder, as Roosevelt said, because the American people can take the truth. They can handle anything. I can’t give you a date when this crisis will end, but I can tell you we’re doing everything possible to have that day come sooner rather than later,” he said.

Later, he repeated his previously-stated goal of normalcy by Christmas. But noted, that even that was not a firm commitment.

“I believe we’ll be approaching normalcy by the end of this year and God willing this Christmas will be different than last, but I can’t make that commitment to you,” he said. “There are other strains of the virus. We don’t know what could happen in terms of production rates, things can change, but we’re doing everything the science has indicated we should do, and people are stepping up to get everything done that has to be done.”

Watch:

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01:58 - Source: cnn

First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford speaks during a coronavirus press conference at the Welsh Government Building in Cathays Park on February 19, in Cardiff, Wales.

Wales will extend its coronavirus lockdown by a further three weeks, First Minister Mark Drakeford announced on Friday. The country has been under lockdown restrictions since the end of December.

“The overarching stay at home measures will need to stay in place for another three weeks,” Drakeford said.

He did announce some “very modest changes” to ease some of the country’s strictest regulations.

Under the new guidance that starts Saturday, four people from a maximum of two households will be able to meet outdoors for exercise, but “this does not mean that it is permissible to drive somewhere to exercise, and it does mean exercising, not socialising,” Drakeford emphasized.

From next week, licensed wedding venues such as visitor attractions and hotels, can reopen but only for the purpose of performing weddings and civil partnerships.

He said that returning children to the classroom was the Welsh government’s “top priority,” with children age three to seven returning to face-to-face learning from Monday.?Drakeford expressed hopes that all primary school children in?Wales can return to face-to-face learning starting March 15, if the coronavirus situation in the country continues to improve.

As of Friday, almost 840,000 people in Wales have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, equivalent to a third of the adult population of Wales, Drakeford said.

The next review of restrictions will be during the week of March 8.

California will set aside 10% of Covid-19 vaccine doses to be used for teachers and child care workers in an effort to resume in-person education, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in a news conference Friday.

The focused allocations will begin with a baseline of 75,000 doses and that number will be maintained as a minimum number to be set aside for educators each week.

Newsom credits the visibility of a three-week supply expectation set by the government for giving the state the confidence to zero in on a specific subset of those eligible. Over the next two weeks, the state expects to receive nearly three million vaccine doses, which will be administered at 1,100 sites throughout California’s 58 counties.

As for vaccines expected this week, some 702,000 doses were delayed by extreme weather elsewhere in the country. “A lot were going to arrive today didn’t,”?Newsom said. Most of those doses were from Moderna, but some Pfizer doses have also been delayed.

“It’s not unique by any stretch my gosh, quite the contrary to California, some ways will fare probably a little better than many other parts of the country but 702,000 doses have been impacted,” Newsom added.

In response to the governor’s proposal for resuming in-person learning, California legislators released their own version of a plan to get kids back into classrooms, which includes reaching a case rate of just seven cases per 100,000 residents, a threshold Newsom thinks is too low.

His proposal suggests a return to school buildings once the case rate is below 25 cases per 100,000 residents. Both proposals include more than $6 billion in funding and plan to provide personal protective equipment and intend to get the youngest students in grades K through second grade back to class first, followed by those in third through sixth grades.

In the meantime, California released new guidelines that allow for kids to resume outdoor competitive sports, including contact sports, like football, rugby, and water polo.

Testing will be required for those engaging in contact sports and will be limited to children ages 13 and older and living in counties with a case rate lower than 14 per 100,000. They can resume next Friday, Feb. 26, Newsom said.

House Democrats took another step Friday in their effort to advance a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, releasing the full bill text.

As expected, the bill includes:

The House’s bill also closely resembles President Biden’s rescue plan and includes more money for schools, vaccine distribution and funding for state and local governments

What comes next: The legislation, which had already been passed in pieces out of individual committees, was packaged together by the House Budget Committee. The Committee will hold a mark-up on the legislation on Monday, it is then expected to go to the House floor for a vote later next week.?

House Democrats have a narrow margin to pass the bill, and House Republican leaders have already begun whipping their members against the bill arguing it spends too much money.

Read more about the House Democrats’ bill here.

President Biden is in Portage, Michigan,?where he is visiting one of the three manufacturing plants where Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is produced, according the White House.

The President is touring the facility and meeting with workers who are helping manufacture the vaccine. Biden will then deliver remarks.

Pfizer’s vaccine won the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization in December, and is being delivered to millions of people in the US and UK.

Both vaccines on the US market — developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna — require two doses to reach about 95% efficacy, and the second doses were intended to be administered 21 days and 28 days after the first, respectively.

Biden addressed his administration’s vaccine goals?on Tuesday during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, announcing that 600 million doses of vaccine will be available by the end of July.

CNN’s Maggie Fox and Dakin Andone contributed reporting to this post.

People dine at a restaurant at Hudson Yards on February 12, 2021 in New York City as restaurants were to reopen for indoor dining at 25 percent capacity.

New York City will increase its indoor dining capacity to 35% by next Friday, consistent with occupancy levels in New Jersey, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The governor noted residents near the border are traveling across state lines to eat. Connecticut and Long Island indoor capacities remain at 50% as of now, he noted.?

Cuomo said the decision follows “data” and “science” as he often says.

New York State reported 3.49% overall statewide positivity, and a 42 day decline according to its seven-day average, Cuomo said during a briefing Friday. The state added 116 deaths, he said.

Hospitalizations are down, day to day, but also on the overall trend statewide.?

The Mid-Hudson region has the highest positivity rate in the state.

The Bronx has a positivity rate double Manhattan, the highest of the boroughs, but not as bad as it was, he said.

Signs calling for schools to reopen are displayed by people in passing vehicles during an "Open Schools Now" rally in Los Angeles on February 15, 2021.

Schools may open no matter how much virus is spreading in a community, if they take the right precautions, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday.?

As of Tuesday, CNN analysis indicated about 90% of children live in so-called red zones under the CDC’s guidance – meaning there is a high level of community spread of virus. But even in those conditions, schools can safely reopen if they take precautions, Walensky told a White House briefing.

“The first thing I just want to convey is there are opportunities for in-person learning at all stages of – all states of community spread,” Walensky told the briefing.

“So our numbers are coming down. I would actually invite schools to lean in and to look at what is needed so that in the roadmap to try and get more and more children back to school.”

The CDC has said schools can reopen if they make sure they are mitigating the risk of spread with universal mask use, measures to keep children and staff six feet apart, frequent cleaning and disinfection and testing and contact tracing.

“So in, in the areas that remain red – and there are about two-thirds of districts now, although the numbers continue to decline – in the numbers that remain red, we say with universal masking and physical distancing and densification of classrooms, there are opportunities for in-person learning, as well as for middle and high school learning, and assuming you’re able to do the densification that we suggest,” Walensky said.

A pharmacy technician prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mass COVID-19 vaccination event on January 30, 2021 in Denver, Colorado.

The US should have vaccine safety data on high school age kids by the beginning of fall, but probably not on younger children until early next year, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday.

Companies are just starting tests of younger age groups but have been testing their vaccines on 12 to 17-year-olds, Fauci told a White House briefing.

“You know from Pfizer that they started off with the trial of 34,000 individuals down to 16-year-olds, and then progressed it down to 12-year-olds. So what they’re going to be doing in April, starting in April, they are going to be studying 12-year-olds down to 5-to 6-year-olds,” Fauci said.

“That will take likely one year to get the information on that – likely not until the first quarter,” added Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and also chief White House medical adviser.

“However, we anticipate data on high school age individuals, namely individuals 12 years old to 17 years old, by the beginning of the fall. Maybe not exactly coinciding with the first day of school, but sometime in the fall we will have that,” Fauci added.

Companies can tests their vaccines on fewer children because they have safety and efficacy data from adults, Fauci said. “So the bottom line of all of this is as follows. It is highly likely that sometime in the fall we will have data that will give us the capability of saying the safety and comparable efficacy in children 12 to 17, 18 years old,” he added.

“But then also, with the studies that I just mentioned, to getting the information to make the decision in elementary school children, almost certainly will not be firmed down until the first quarter of 2022.”

Hear more from Dr. Fauci:

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03:59 - Source: cnn

Embalmer and funeral director Kristy Oliver, right, and funeral attendant Sam Deras load into a hearse the casket of a person said to have died from Covid-19 at East County Mortuary in El Cajon, California, on January 15.

Cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus are all dropping in the United States, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday.

“The current seven day average of approximately 77,000 cases is the lowest reported since the end of October, but still higher than the height of last summer,” she added.

The seven-day average of new hospital admission as of Feb. 16 was 7,200, she said – a 56% decline since Jan. 9.

”The latest data indicates that deaths have declined modestly … to an average of approximately 2,700 per day,” Walensky added.

Hear more details about the numbers:

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04:02 - Source: cnn

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.

It’s too risky to go to giving a single dose of coronavirus vaccine to stretch out the supply, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday

Fauci said it takes two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines to get full immunity to coronavirus infection – and he has not changed his mind after reading an Israeli report published Thursday night that indicated a single dose could provide up to 85% protection three to four weeks later.

Fauci said he worried that if large numbers of people got a single shot and had less than optimal immune responses after that single shot, they could be exposed to the virus and start incubating viral mutations. In theory, new variants could arise, he said.

“You might theoretically be inducing new variants,” he said.

Senior White House Adviser Andy Slavitt announced five new Covid-19 community vaccination centers opening in Florida and Pennsylvania in the next two weeks.

In Florida, there will be four new centers based in?Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa. Each site will have the capacity to vaccinate a total of 12,000 individuals per day, Slavitt said during Friday’s White House Covid-19 briefing.?

There will be one new center based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which will have the capacity to deliver 6,000 doses of vaccine per day.?

Slavitt said federal teams will be deployed “immediately” to these areas to work with state and local officials.?

Delaware Gov. John Carney announced an easing of restrictions around indoor gatherings.

Limits for private indoor gatherings – including dinner parties, house parties, and birthday parties, remains at 10 people, the release explained.

Organizers can also submit plans to the department of health for larger events up to 150 people, according to the release.

Outdoor gatherings are limited to 50 people or up to 250 with an approved plan from the Division of Public Health.

The order signed by the governor also raises the number of people that can be included in group exercise to 15, excluding staff.

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

There have been at least?27,901,914?cases of coronavirus in the US and at least?493,501?people have died since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally of cases.

So far today, Johns Hopkins University has reported?5,874?new cases and?403?new deaths.

At least?73,377,450?vaccine doses have been distributed and at least?57,737,767?total doses of the vaccine have been administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

You can see the latest Johns Hopkins University US numbers here.

The tiny remote Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean could “become the first island to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19,” the British Military said Friday.

The island – a UK overseas territory – has a population of just over 800 inhabitants.

At least 1,950 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine arrived at Ascension earlier this week on a special support flight by the Royal Air Force.?

Staff at the island’s Georgetown Hospital have begun administering the vaccine and the first people to vaccinated were hospital employee Sylvia Isaac and her husband Mervyn.?

In a statement Ms. Isaac said: “I feel very privileged to be able to receive this vaccine,” and that the, “vaccination itself was quick and painless.”

“This vaccine will hopefully protect us against the worst effects of COVID-19, and also help to protect family, friends and the rest of the community,” she said.?

Given the number of inhabitants the Ascension Island Government anticipates, “that first doses will be administered to all those offered it by the end of next week.”

Gov. Philip Rushbrook of Ascension said: “I am pleased to be on Ascension at this time to see first-hand the arrival and distribution of the vaccines.”

“I would like to thank personally everyone involved in making this happen.” And said the delivery of the vaccines, “represents the culmination of a lot of hard work across several UK government departments, the RAF and within Ascension Island Government.”

Royal Air Force Flying Officer George Cox, Officer Commanding Cargo said: “Places like Ascension Island are notoriously difficult to get to.”

The vaccines arrived on an A400M Atlas cargo plane as the “RAF can get out to remote locations that commercial aircraft can not necessarily access,” said Flying Officer Cox.

Where is the Ascension? A volcanic island of 33 square miles, Ascension, is approximately 1,000 miles from the coast of Africa and 1,400 miles from Brazil. Their nearest neighbors are on the island of St. Helena 700 miles to the north.?

Ascension Island is part of the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha and has its own Constitution is self-governing and makes its own laws.

The leaders of the G7 countries have pledged an additional $4 billion to the ACT accelerator and COVAX vaccine initiatives, reiterating their resolve to work together to beat Covid-19 and “build back better,” they said in a statement following the virtual meeting on Friday.?

COVAX is a vaccine alliance trying to distribute vaccines to overcome inequality in access to vaccines and distribute shots to low- and middle-income countries. ACT-A is an accelerator that joins forces of various investors and organizations to develop tools to bring the pandemic closer to an end.

At the first G7 event?attended by US President Joe Biden, the leaders of some of the world’s strongest economies repeated their support for sustainable development across the globe. They promised to agree concrete action on these priorities at the G7 Summit in the United Kingdom in June.?

In addition to these commitments, the G7 leaders also supported the commitment by Japan to “hold the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 in a safe and secure manner this summer as a symbol of global unity in overcoming Covid-19,” they said.

New research published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open finds that 30% of people with Covid-19 continue to have symptoms up to nine months after initial infection.?

In the longest follow-up of Covid-19 patients to date, researchers followed 177 individuals with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 diagnoses for up to nine months, and found that about 30% continue to have persistent symptoms.

Of the 177 patients followed, 150 (84.7%) were never hospitalized and considered to have mild illness and 11(6.2%) were asymptomatic. 23 out of the 177 also had hypertension.?

Meanwhile, 49 (32.7%) of non-hospitalized patients and 5(31.3%) of patients with severe disease reported having at least 1 in the follow up.

A previous study of the same group found that 36% of non-hospitalized patients had lingering symptoms 2-3 weeks after initial diagnosis.

The most common symptoms were fatigue reported by 24 patients (13.6%)?and loss of taste or smell reported by another 24 patients (13.6%).

Overall, 23 patients (13%) reported other symptoms including cough, trouble breathing, and muscle aches. 4 patients (2.3%) said they continued having brain fog.?Among the 16 hospitalized patients, more than 80% reported to still have trouble breathing. More than 80% of the hospitalized group also reported still having a cough and more than 80% of the group also reported feeling feverish up to 9 months after diagnosis.

More than 30% of respondents reported worse quality of life compared to before getting sick. And 14 participants (8%) — including 9 people who had not been hospitalized — reported having trouble performing at least one usual activity, such as daily chores.

While the researchers noted the small sample size was a limitation, they wrote that with 57.8 million cases worldwide, “even a small incidence of long-term debility could have enormous health and economic consequences.” wrote the researchers.

A vial of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in Washington, DC, in December 2020.

When analyzing adverse effects after receiving either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, serious reactions accounted for less than 10% of those events according to a study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control.

Researchers evaluated safety data that was reported through the?Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) between Dec. 14, 2020 and Jan. 13 2021. During that time, 13,794,904 vaccine doses had been administered in the US and 1,602,065 had enrolled in the reporting system.

Out of that 1.6 million, 50.8% received the Pfizer-BioNTech and 49.2% received the Moderna vaccines.

The study found that during this time there were 6,994 reports of adverse reactions after receiving a vaccine. 6,354 (90.8%) of those events were considered non-serious and 640 (9.2%) were considered serious.

The most commonly reported symptoms were headache (22.4%), fatigue (16.5%) and dizziness (16.5%).

A total of 113 deaths were reported to VAERS with 78 (65%) of those occurring in long term care facility residents.

However the study noted, “available information from death certificates, autopsy reports, medical records, and clinical descriptions from VAERS reports and health care providers did not suggest any causal relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and death.”

Reports of anaphylaxis was also rare with just 62 reported incidents.

The study notes the there are limitations due to reporting biases and the fact that the reporting system is a voluntary self-enrollment program.?

It is also important to note that during the study’s time period, first and second doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine had been made available, but only first doses of Moderna’s vaccine.

“These data provide reassurance and helpful information regarding what health care providers and vaccine recipients might expect after vaccination,” wrote the researchers.

US Sen. Richard Blumenthal arrives at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 12.

US Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, called on Facebook and Twitter to stop the spread of antivax disinformation targeting pregnant women, according to a news release Friday.?

Blumenthal said accounts have singled out women who have had miscarriages, wrongly linking it to Covid vaccinations.?

“Health officials across the country are vigilantly working to reassure the public that vaccines are safe and to achieve widespread immunity to save lives. Each piece of misinformation, each person bullied for doing the right thing, is a setback in our effort to end this costly pandemic,” he added.

Major medical groups in the United States?say?that pregnant women should get the vaccine.

UN Secretary General António Guterres speaks via video during the Munich Security Conference on February 19.

UN Secretary General António Guterres has told leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Berlin that the G20 should create an emergency task force to put in place a global vaccination plan.

COVAX is a program co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and WHO. Its aim is to accelerate the development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.

“I believe the G20 is well placed to establish an emergency a task force to prepare such a global vaccination plan,” Guterres added.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick?Leahy on February 19.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick?Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, said he’s already begun meeting privately with Democratic and Republican members of his committee and urged them to work together on Covid relief legislation.

This comes as House Democrats plan to take a major step forward to push President Biden’s proposal through their chamber by the end of next week. After this, the legislation will be sent to the Senate, where Democrats have already laid the ground work to pass the $1.9 trillion bill without Republican support, through the budget reconciliation process.

“I know a lot of Republicans who say privately that they know we have to go forward but what about this or that?”?Leahy?said, adding, “almost all the reconciliation bills have been bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats coming together. We should do that.”

Leahy?acknowledged that if a relief bill can’t get GOP support, it will likely move forward through reconciliation, but he thinks “we’re a lot better off if we can work out bipartisan bills.”

He noted his and Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman Richard Shelby’s commitment to bipartisanship, saying he thinks they can bring together members of both parties on their committee, but “we can’t sit here and just keep talking back and forth and doing nothing. The fact is the American people need help right now.”

Watch:

Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine vials in Klerksdorp, South Africa, on February 18.

Johnson & Johnson announced it has asked the World Health Organization for emergency use listing for its single-dose Covid-19 vaccine.

The company said it had delivered the data from its late-stage trial to the WHO.

An emergency use listing would make the vaccine available in more than 190 countries, including multiple developing countries. If authorized, it would also allow J&J to supply the COVAX program – a global distribution and procurement agency that is helping manage Covid-19 vaccines for 190 participating countries.

In December, J&J came to an agreement with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, that is backing the COVAX program. If authorized, J&J expects to provide up to 500 million doses to COVAX through next year, the company said.

J&J filed for a conditional marketing authorization application in the European Union on Monday.

Next Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration will?consider the data the company submitted for an emergency use authorization of the vaccine in the United States. J&J has promised to deliver 100 million doses of its single-dose vaccine to the US by the end of June.

The Covid-19 vaccine’s efficacy against moderate and severe disease ranged from one country to another:

It was 66% effective globally. This was measured starting one month after the shot. The vaccine is 85% effective overall at preventing hospitalization and 100% at preventing death in all regions where it was tested.

Read more on the J&J vaccine:

AURORA, CO - DECEMBER 15: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center investigational pharmacy technician Sara Berech prepares a dose of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine for a clinical trial on December 15, 2020 in Aurora, Colorado. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be submitted for emergency use by late January and is the only vaccine among leading candidates given as a single dose. (Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

Related article Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is 66% effective in global trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, company says

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, on February 17.

The European Union has announced a further 500 million euros – approximately $606 million – in funding for the World Health Organization-led COVAX program, doubling its total contribution so far to 1 billion euros – approx. $1.2 billion – according a statement issued by the EU on Friday.

COVAX is a program co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO. Its aim is to accelerate the development and manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU remains “committed to ensuring universal access” to coronavirus vaccines.

“With this new financial boost we want to make sure vaccines are soon delivered to low and middle-income countries. Because we will only be safe if the whole world is safe,” she said Friday.?

European Commissioner for Health a Food Safety Stella Kyriakides added that the EU is “working to share doses” secured under its advanced purchase agreements, preferably through COVAX, with the Western Balkans, Africa and other neighboring states.

“Humanism and solidarity are essential values for Europe. These values have been our compass since the onset of the pandemic,” Kyriakides said.

Read more about the COVAX program here.

People of color have been vastly underrepresented in US-based vaccine trials for the last decade, according to a new study released Friday by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Harvard, Emory and other institutions.

The study, which examined data from 230 vaccine trials with nearly 220,00 participants, found that White people made up the majority, or 78%, of participants in trials conducted between June 2011 and June 2020.

Black people, however, accounted for 11% of participants, Hispanics made up 12%, and American Indians/Alaska Natives represented 0.4%.

The study, published in the JAMA Network Open, comes as the nation grapples with a Covid-19 pandemic that has disproportionately impacted people of color. Health care leaders are working to combat vaccine distrust among Black and brown people, saying the shot is the key to preventing further devastating in their communities.?

Black and Latino Americans are dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of White people and being hospitalized at a rate four times higher, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers are now advocating for increased diversity in vaccine trials saying it will help address vaccine hesitancy, counter safety concerns and educate communities of color. They also note that many vaccine trials failed to fully report demographic information on?participants.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN last year that he wanted to see people of color enrolled in Covid-19 vaccine trials at double their percentage of the population because their communities were hit hard by the pandemic. The US is 12% Black and 18% Latino.

But last summer, researchers said they were struggling to recruit people of color for Covid-19 vaccine trials. For example, in August, Black and Latino people made up only 10% of the 350,000 people who had signed up for a coronavirus clinical trial.

Moderna?made efforts to increase?the number of people of color in its vaccine trials, but the company didn’t meet the levels Fauci suggested.

Black leaders say many Black Americans refused to sign up for trials because they don’t want be “guinea pigs” for vaccine trials because of the nation’s history of racism in medical research. They cited the Tuskegee experiments from 1932-1972 that recruited 600 Black men — 399 who had syphilis and 201 who did not — and tracked the disease’s progression by not treating the men as they died or suffered severe health issues.

Members of the National Guard work at a Covid-19 vaccination site in Los Angeles on February 16.

In the first three months since the first Covid-19 vaccine shot was administered in December, the US government has delivered about 73.4 million doses to states and jurisdictions, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have each promised to deliver 200 million doses to the US by the end of May, for a total of 400 million doses. That’s enough to fully vaccinate 200 million people – or about 60% of the US population before summer.

The next three months will bring us into late May. If the US is able to distribute all of the doses they’ve received from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna by then, the pace will have picked up by about three times what it was in the first three months.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is expected to present trial data to the US Food and Drug Administration next week for emergency use authorization. The company has promised to deliver 100 million doses of its single-dose vaccine to the US by the end of June.

Along with another 100 million doses promised from Moderna for the end of July, an additional 150 million people could be fully vaccinated, enough to cover the full US population.

Walgreens pharmacist Jessica Sahni administers the Pfizer-BioNTech Coovid-19 vaccine at the New Jewish Home in New York, on December 21, 2020.

Walgreens will receive more than 480,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses per week from the US federal government starting on Feb. 25, the company announced Friday.

This more than doubles the pharmacy’s previous weekly allocation of 180,000 doses.

Walgreens says it will conduct vaccine administration in a total of 26 states and territories.

The company also said it had administered more than three million Covid-19 vaccines in long-term care facilities and “vulnerable populations.”

Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine doses are pictured at a vaccination center at the Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, on February 3.

Pfizer-BioNTech says it has submitted new data to the US Food and Drug Administration to show that its Covid-19 vaccine can be stored at warmer temperatures.

In a news release Friday, Pfizer said this new data demonstrates its vaccine can be stable when stored between -25 degrees Celsius to -15 degrees Celsius for two weeks – the temperature of more common refrigerators and freezers.

Currently, the label for Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine says it must be stored in ultra-cold freezers between -80 degrees Celsius to -60 degrees Celsius, lasting up to six months, or it can be stored at normal refrigeration temperatures (2 degrees Celsius to 8 degrees Celsius) for up to five days, before mixing with a saline diluent.

This submission is in hopes the company’s EUA would be updated to include these warmer two-week storage options.

Karl Lauterbach is pictured at the Bundestag in Berlin on January 29.

A prominent German health expert and politician said he is backtracking on his offer to volunteer at a Covid-19 vaccination center after receiving threats.

Lauterbach went on to say that he decided to take a step back in order not to endanger the employees of the center, but added he feels “it is a pity how much the influence of radical minorities on our actions is now growing.”

Lauterbach, who is also?a scientist, is a member of the Social Democratic?Party, which is part of?Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. He said last week he would be working as vaccinator in?Leverkusen, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and would himself take the AstraZeneca shot to “make a clear commitment” to using the “safe and good” vaccine in Germany.

Germans have been reluctant to take the AstraZeneca vaccine after a European Medical Agency analysis gave it about 60% efficacy – though AstraZeneca’s own findings, based on a larger number of clinical trials, put it at over 76% after the first dose. The country’s vaccine commission also said last month the shot should not be given to people aged over 65 years old due to lack of data on its effectiveness in that age group.

A man receives a dose of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine in Belgrade, Serbia, on February 12.

As the United Kingdom celebrates giving at least one dose of the?coronavirus vaccine to 15 million people?and the EU surpasses 23 million doses distributed, several other European countries have not yet managed to put a single shot in arms.

Kosovo, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are still waiting to receive their first vaccine shipments, while rollouts in Albania and Northern Macedonia have so far been limited to a few hundred people.

The Western Balkan countries are key allies and possible future members of the European Union, but they have been left out of the bloc’s immediate vaccine supply plans.?

The EU has secured more than 2.3 billion doses of various coronavirus vaccines and said it expects to share some of those with others. It also set aside €70 million ($85 million) for the Western Balkan region to purchase some of these doses in the future, but since its own rollout has been slow and delayed, those countries are still waiting.

And as relatively wealthy countries – at least in the global context – they are also not a top priority for programs designed to help the world’s poorest countries access vaccines, which is expected to be a key discussion point at Friday’s G7 virtual meeting.

Faced with the possibility of a long wait, some Balkan countries are taking matters into its own hands and looking for vaccines elsewhere. China and Russia are ready to step in.

Read the full report:

A man receives a dose of Chinese-made Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine in Belgrade Fair turned into a vaccination centre, on February 12, 2021. - Inside the dome of Belgrade's fairgrounds, dozens of nurses in protective suits inject Covid-19 jabs into young and old alike, working with an efficiency that has turned Serbia into continental Europe's fastest vaccinator. The small Balkan country has inoculated more than 500,000 of its seven million population in almost two weeks, a rate that exceeds all countries in Europe outside the United Kingdom, according to the scientific publication Our World in Data. (Photo by Andrej ISAKOVIC / AFP) (Photo by ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images)

Related article The European countries caught in a vaccine no man's land

French President Emmanuel Macron is pictured during a video conference meeting with African Union officials at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on February 17.

European countries should allocate 4-5% of their vaccine supply to developing countries,?French President Emmanuel Macron?has urged ahead of the G7 virtual meeting Friday where the issue is expected to be discussed.

In an interview with Financial Times, Macron said the battle for vaccine supply had caused “a new form of unsustainable inequality” to emerge between developed and developing nations.?

Macron stressed that inequality in vaccine distribution would also be “politically unsustainable” as it’s paving the way for “a war of influence” over vaccines, referring to China and Russia, which already began supplying their vaccines to countries in Latin America and Africa.

Macron said?it would be in the bloc’s “interest” to?allocate?a?“tiny sample” of 4-5% of European vaccine supply, and vowed to take on big pharma companies not willing to “play the game of cooperation.”

The French president has so far secured the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hopes to convince “our American friends” who have “greater production capacity” to contribute to the effort.?

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to pledge to donate most of the country’s surplus vaccine supply to poorer nations in the G7 meeting, the British public broadcaster, the BBC, reported earlier on Friday.

The UK, which has the population of about 66 million, has ordered more than 400 million doses of various vaccines, so a surplus of doses will be available after all adults are vaccinated.

Grave diggers carry the coffin of a Covid-19 victim at the Alto de Sao Joao cemetery in Lisbon, Portugal, on February 18.

20.5 million years of life have been lost to Covid-19 globally, according to a new study looking at the mortality impact of the virus.

Researchers analyzed 1.2 million deaths from Covid-19 across 81 countries, looking not only at the number of dead, but how premature those deaths were.?

They found that on average:

The?study, published in the scientific journal Nature, says that analyzing years of life lost is “crucial in that it assesses how much life has been cut short for populations affected by the disease.”

The researchers also note that the results “confirm the large mortality impact of COVID-19 among the elderly” and call for heightened awareness in devising policies that protect vulnerable demographics losing the largest number of life-years.

Workers unload containers of the Sinovac vaccine from an aircraft after it arrived from China at Hong Kong international airport on February 19.

Hong Kong received its first batch of Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine from Beijing on Friday, according to a government live feed showing a Cathay Pacific plane with one million doses on board arriving at Hong Kong International Airport.

Hong Kong authorities announced Thursday that?priority groups will start to be vaccinated on February 26.

In total, the city of more than seven million people has recorded 10,820 Covid infections and 197 deaths, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University.?

Hong Kong is relaxing social distancing restrictions after reporting its lowest daily number of new Covid-19 cases since late November earlier in the week.

Another one million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, manufactured in Germany, are also expected to arrive in Hong Kong by the end of February, authorities said.

In January, Sinovac was revealed to have an efficacy rate of just 50.38% in late-stage trials in Brazil – significantly lower than earlier results showed. That rate only barely crosses the 50% efficacy threshold as set by the World Health Organization, and far lower than the 78% previously announced to much fanfare in China earlier this month.

A nurse fills a syringe with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine at a vaccination site in Moscow on February 17.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has invited all diplomatic missions and representatives of international organizations accredited in the country to get inoculated with a Russian-made vaccine.?

Zakharova added that the ministry is also working on delivering the vaccine to Russian diplomats and their families residing abroad.

Several foreign diplomats already accepted the offer and were inoculated with Sputnik V vaccine. Among them were diplomats from Belarus, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Spain, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported Friday, citing diplomatic missions.

In late December, the Russian Foreign Ministry offered US Ambassador John Sullivan a shot of Sputnik V vaccine in a tongue-in-cheek tweet after he posted his Christmas wish-list that mentioned a Covid-19 vaccine.

The?spokesperson for the?US Embassy in Moscow,?Rebecca Ross, tweeted back saying that the Ambassador?thanked the Russian Foreign Ministry “for its offer of a vaccine, however would not want to take a Sputnik V dose meant for a Russian citizen.”

Employees process Covid-19 tests in Sindelfingen, Germany, on Wednesday, February 17.

Germany is experiencing “a rise of worrying coronavirus mutations”, despite an overall decrease in new cases and an increase in people getting vaccinated, the German health minister said Friday.??

The coronavirus variant first detected in the UK is now being found in every fifth person testing positive in Germany, the minister, Jens Spahn, said in a press conference.

Germany’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), warned that the country’s infection numbers appear to be stagnating at a level that is still too high, threatening a current downward trend in positive cases.

On Friday, Germany recorded 9,113 new cases, a drop of 747 cases compared to a week ago. Coronavirus deaths stood at 508 within the last 24 hours, 48 less than last Friday.?The latest data from RKI indicates that the number of new infections per 100,000 residents has fallen to 57.

Chancellor Angela?Merkel?previously said authorities would only lift the restrictions if the seven-day?incidence?rate fell to?35 cases per 100,000?infections.?

As of Friday, 5 million people in Germany have received the first shot of the coronavirus vaccine, while 3 million have received both doses, according to Spahn. By the end of next week 10 million coronavirus vaccines will have been distributed across Germany.

A healthcare worker prepares a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on February 18, in Bogota, Colombia.

A new study provides more evidence that a single dose of coronavirus vaccine might be enough to significantly reduce disease.

People who got a single dose of Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine were increasingly less likely to develop Covid-19 symptoms as time passed – and they were 85% less likely to get sick two to four weeks after getting their first shot, Israeli researchers report.

The findings,?released as a letter to the Lancet medical journal, are likely to bolster calls for governments to move to a single-dose regimen to stretch out vaccine supply until manufacturers can make more.?

How the study was conducted? The team at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center looked at the medical records of roughly 9,000 health care workers, more than 7,000 of whom were vaccinated starting in December.

More than 90% got their second dose on time, by 21 or 22 days after the first dose.

The team looked at the rate of infections during those crucial three weeks. They found a 47% reduction in symptomatic coronavirus infections among the health care workers during the first two weeks after the first shot and an 85% reduction over the following two weeks.

It’s possible that asymptomatic cases were missed. The team only counted people who had symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus.

Although the rise of?Covid-19?variants in the United States could spell trouble, pharmaceutical companies and scientists are confident vaccines will evolve with them, senior White House adviser Andy Slavitt told CNN.

The US has witnessed a 26% decline in new cases from this time last week, continuing the trend of the steepest decline in new cases since the start of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

But variants, many of which appear to be more transmissible, have been spreading, with more than 1,500 cases reported in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Vaccination delays caused by harsh winter weather gripping much of the US also mean many people will have to work “double time” to get back on track, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert

Many states hit early in the storms, particularly Texas, had to cancel vaccination appointments due to dangerous road conditions and power outages.

Read the full article here:

A nurse takes a Moderna Covid-19 vaccines ready to be administered at a vaccination site at Kedren Community Health Center, in South Central Los Angeles, California on February 16, 2021.

Related article A drop in Covid-19 cases can be deceptive, official warns. Here's how the US can stay ahead of a variant-driven surge

The United States reported 69,230?new cases of Covid-19 and?2,542?additional related deaths on Thursday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally.

This brings the national total in the US to 27,896,042?confirmed cases and 493,082?coronavirus related deaths. ?

At least?73,377,450?vaccine doses have been distributed and?57,737,767?doses have been administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A health worker collects a nasal swab for a Covid-19 test at a railway platform in Mumbai, on February 17.

India’s western state of Maharashtra has announced fresh restrictions to combat a surge in Covid-19 cases across the state, especially in Mumbai, the local administration said Thursday.

Local officials in Mumbai have begun stamping hands of those who are meant to be quarantining at home, and the government says they will be enforcing all Covid-19 restrictions for public gatherings and mask mandates.

Any violation of the fresh restrictions “will lead to action against organizers and concerned management,” the local government warned.

Among other measures announced, Mumbai will mandate a compulsory seven-day institutional quarantine for all passengers arriving from Brazil.

Three other districts have been directed by the state government to take immediate preventive measures as the number of cases have also surged in these areas.

The state of Maharashtra recorded more than 5,400 cases within 24-hours Thursday, including 38 deaths, according to the state government.

The Chinese government has denied it obstructed Taiwan’s coronavirus vaccine purchase from BioNTech after the island’s health minister revealed that its deal with the German drugmaker fell through at the last minute due to possible “political pressure.”

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said Thursday it was “purely fabrication” that Beijing had intervened in BioNTech’s vaccine sale to Taiwan, state news agency?Xinhua reported.

A day earlier, Taiwanese Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said in a radio?interview?that Taiwan and BioNTech were about to sign a deal for 5 million vaccine doses in December, when the company suddenly backed out.

Read the full article here:

MOLINETTE HOSPITAL, TURIN, ITALY - 2020/12/27: A Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose is seen during the Vaccine Day. The European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for a European Vaccine Day on December 27 among all EU countries. (Photo by Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Related article China denies blocking Taiwan's coronavirus vaccine deal with BioNTech

A batch of Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines is unloaded from a plane at Silvio Pettirossi International Airport in Luque, Paraguay, on February 18.

Paraguay received its first batch of Covid-19 vaccines Thursday through a government purchase of 4,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

The country will roll out its vaccination campaign Monday by immunizing front-line health workers in the ICU, according to health authorities.

Paraguay approved the emergency use of the Russian vaccine on January 15. The country also expects to receive 4.3 million doses of the AstraZenaca vaccine purchased via COVAX, an initiative to provide equitable global access to Covid-19 vaccines.

Paraguay has recorded 148,622 confirmed cases and 3,008 coronavirus related deaths, according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins University.

At least 1,549 cases of coronavirus strains first spotted in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the United States, according to data updated Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vast majority of these cases are the more contagious variant which was originally detected in the UK. This variant has been found in 41 states and Washington, DC. More than a quarter are in Florida.

In addition, there are 21 total cases of a strain initially seen in South Africa, in nine states and Washington, DC. Five total cases of the strain first linked to Brazil have been discovered among four states.

CDC says this does not represent the total number of such cases circulating in the US but rather just those that have been found by analyzing positive samples.

This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.?

Pregnant women appear to be at a higher risk of Covid-19 infection, researchers reported.

The study, which was published Tuesday, shows the Covid-19 infection rate among pregnant women in Washington state was 70% higher?than in similarly aged adults in the state. It also found that?rates of infection among pregnant women of color were?two to four times higher than expected.?

For the study, the research team gathered data from?240 pregnant Covid-19 patients in 35 hospitals and clinics, which account for?61% of the state’s annual births,?from March through June 2020.?

“Our data indicates that pregnant people did not avoid the pandemic as we hoped that they would, and communities of color bore the greatest burden,” said Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, an ob-gyn with the University of Washington School of Medicine and the report’s senior author.

According to the study, the Covid-19 infection rate in pregnant women in the state of Washington was 13.9 out of every 1,000 deliveries, compared to?an overall rate for 20- to 39-year-olds in the state of?7.3 out of 1,000.

The?researchers suggest that pregnant people should be broadly prioritized for Covid-19 vaccination.?

“Pregnant women are written out of the allocation prioritization in about half of U.S. States. Many states are not even linking their COVID-19 vaccine allocation plans with the high-risk medical conditions listed by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] —which include pregnancy,”?Waldorf said.?

A pharmacist administers a Covid-19 vaccine at a Walmart Pharmacy in Danvers, Massachusetts, on February 1.

Demand for coronavirus vaccines is outstripping supply in the federal retail pharmacy program for the United States. CNN finds?appointments are filling up quickly.

Many pharmacies told CNN this week that they can receive and administer far more vaccine doses than are arriving so far.?Albertsons Companies Inc., a US grocery company headquartered in Boise, Idaho, is using less than 10% of its capacity, according to Albertsons spokesperson Andrew Whelan.?

“We have the capabilities to administer 150,000 doses every single day and can take on about 90% more supply within our network,” Whelan told CNN.

Hy-Vee, a chain of supermarkets in the Midwest, told CNN that having more vaccine doses to administer to the public would be beneficial.?

Meanwhile, Meijer Inc. has administered 66,000 doses since mid-January with an anticipated additional 30,000 this week, company representative Frank J. Guglielmi told CNN. Most doses have been administered in Michigan, where Meijer is both a state and federal vaccine partner.

“As far as support, we just need more vaccines,”?Guglielmi said.

Walgreens, one of the first pharmacies to begin administering Covid-19 vaccines in December through a separate partnership with long-term care facilities, has administered more than 3 million vaccines as of Monday, with an allotment of 180,000 doses per week through the federal program, company spokesperson Kelli Teno told CNN.?

“As we roll out to broader populations, vaccine demand has continued to outweigh inventory,” Teno said. “We share the enthusiasm of the nation in vaccinating people as quickly as possible, but patience is needed as vaccine inventory continues to build in the coming weeks and months and we’re able to vaccinate more communities.”