December 30 coronavirus news

China has drastically scaled up its emergency use program in recent weeks, officials revealed Thursday as they announced the approval of the country's first homegrown coronavirus vaccine, developed by Sinopharm.

Since December 15, the country has administered more than 3 million doses of coronavirus vaccines on "key groups" in the population, Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of China's National Health Commission, said at a news conference Thursday. He did not identify who those groups were.

That's on top of the more than 1.5 million doses of coronavirus vaccines administered to "high-risk groups" as of the end of November, Zeng added.

Among those who have been inoculated, fewer than 0.1% developed a light fever, and about two people per million developed "relative serious adverse reactions" such as allergies, according to Zeng.

China rolled out its controversial emergency use program in July, inoculating hundreds of thousands of people with experimental vaccines that did not have their safety and efficacy proven in clinical trials. People who received the vaccines include healthcare workers, border control personnel and state-owned company employees who needed to travel overseas.

This post has been updated to accurately reflect the number of adverse reactions.

Chinese regulators have approved a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm, officials announced Thursday.

Sinopharm said yesterday its coronavirus vaccine is 79.34% effective, citing interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trials.

Though few details were provided, the company said the vaccine met the standards of the World Health Organization and China's own regulator, the National Medical Products Administration.

Read more about the Sinopharm vaccine:

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China's Sinopharm says its coronavirus vaccine is 79% effective

A total of 2,794,588 coronavirus vaccine shots have been administered in the United States, according to the latest numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meanwhile, 12,409,050 doses have been distributed across the country, according to the CDC.

Through the federal partnership with long-term care facilities, 167,149 shots have been administered and 2,166,200 doses have been distributed, the CDC reported.

Numbers of vaccine doses distributed and administered among each state are also displayed on the CDC website.

Reporting delay: Federal officials have acknowledged a delay in the reporting of numbers of vaccines distributed and administered.

More than 14 million vaccine doses have been distributed to date, but the CDC tracker hasn’t yet reported the additional doses, Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer Gen. Gustave Perna said Wednesday in a news briefing.

Several shipments of Moderna Covid-19 vaccines were delayed before the Christmas holiday due to "temperature excursions," meaning they had been refrigerated inappropriately while in transit, according to the Texas Hospital Association.

Leadership reported the issue immediately, Carrie Williams of the Texas Hospital Association said. The federal government shipped replacement vaccines.  

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Moderna vaccine should arrive onsite frozen between -25°C (-13°F) and -15°C (5°F) and stored at the same temperatures. Once vaccines are thawed, they must be kept between 2°C (36°F) and 8°C (46°F) and only for up to 30 days. 

The CDC also provides strict and specific handling guidance for Moderna vaccines.

CNN is still learning about the incident from the CDC, the Texas state health authorities and the shipping company.

The United States reported 125,220 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Wednesday, setting a new record high since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP).

This is the 29th consecutive day that the US has remained above 100,000 current hospitalizations. 

According to CTP data, the highest hospitalization numbers are:

Texas has reported a record number of hospitalizations for the third day in a row. 

The Texas Department of State Health Services shows that 11,992 patients are currently hospitalized with Covid-19, up from Tuesday's record of 11,775.

The state has also reported 17,458 new positive cases and 326 deaths related to the virus on Wednesday. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Texas Department of Health Services and may not line up exactly in real-time with CNN's database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Los Angeles County reported 274 new fatalities related to coronavirus, surpassing a total of 10,000 deaths, health officials confirmed in a news conference on Wednesday.

The county broke its previous record of 227 deaths on Tuesday. 

Ferrer also noted that the high number is due to a backlog associated with an outage.

According to Ferrer, the number of people dying from the virus is as high as the average number of people dying each day from every other cause, which is about 170 people.

Mortuaries across the county are filling up and they are struggling to find space for Covid victims, Department of Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly said.

More data: The daily positivity rate in the county is about 20% and over 7,000 people are hospitalized, Ferrer said.

While the new Covid-19 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, has not been reported in Los Angeles County, she said, “this doesn’t mean the variant is not circulating in L.A. County.”

She explained that the variant was not found in the first set of samples that were tested.

To date, the county has a total of 756,116 coronavirus cases and 10,056 deaths.

If the US is able to “diligently vaccinate” people in 2021, the nation could return to normal life by early fall, Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday.

Although Covid-19 vaccine rollout is off to a slower start than expected, if the US is able to “catch up” in 2021, widespread vaccination could be possible beginning in April, Fauci said.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that herd immunity against coronavirus could likely be achieved if about 70% to 85% of the population gets vaccinated. 

“By the time we get to the early fall, we will have enough good herd immunity to be able to really get back to some strong semblance of normality – schools, theaters, sports events, restaurants,” he said. “I believe if we do it correctly, we will be there by the early fall.”

Fauci urged people to get vaccinated.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced a one-week extension of the state's Covid-19 restrictions, according to a news release by the governor's office. 

The release added: "An updated reopening plan is currently being developed to provide a pathway for businesses and workers impacted by this order to reopen safely. The updated plan will be released next week."