January 12 coronavirus news

Rigid following of guidance on who should get coronavirus vaccines first has slowed the rollout, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

Fauci echoed statements made by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who also blamed states for slowing the rollout of vaccines by sticking too closely to guidelines. He urged states to open vaccination eligibility to people aged 65 and older and people with chronic medical conditions.

Guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have been a bit too rigid, Fauci said during a webcast hosted by Schmidt Futures and Social Science Research Council. The CDC recommended giving the very first vaccines to frontline health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.

While the priorities won’t be abandoned, "when people are ready to get vaccinated, we’re going to move right on to the next level, so that there are not vaccine doses that are sitting in a freezer or refrigerator where they could be getting into people’s arms," Fauci said.

Fauci added that in the next few weeks he thinks "we’re going to be seeing much more efficient administration of the vaccine, namely getting it into people’s arms." 

Canada’s most populous province of Ontario issued a stay-at-home order for anyone not doing essential work or seeking or giving medical care, as cases of Covid-19 continue to rise.

The new order, which will take affect Thursday, will apply to two of every five Canadians including everyone in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, and the nation’s capital, Ottawa.

The federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program is hoping for emergency use authorization of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine by the end of March, a top official said Tuesday.

Britain authorized the vaccine last month and has been using it, but the US Food and Drug Administration will likely want to use US data for any emergency use authorization of the vaccine, said Operation Warp Speed's chief adviser Moncef Slaoui.

"In terms of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the assumption we are working on is that the emergency use authorization will be submitted on the basis of the ongoing Phase 3 trial in the US," Slaoui said during a briefing on Tuesday.

Reminder: The FDA paused US trials of AstraZeneca’s vaccine last year after questions about adverse reactions in volunteers. Those questions were cleared up and trials of the vaccine, often called the Oxford vaccine because it was developed with Britain’s Oxford University, have resumed.

Biotechnology company Moderna has been testing its Covid-19 vaccine in children as young as 12 – but those trials need more volunteers, Operation Warp Speed's Moncef Slaoui said on Tuesday.

"We are running a clinical trial, a Phase 3 trial, in adolescents 12 to 18 years of age with the Moderna vaccine. It's a real challenge. It's been four weeks ongoing. We only recruited about 800 subjects in the trial," Slaoui said in a news briefing.

The vaccine cannot be cleared for use in children unless it’s tested in children, Slaoui said. Moderna’s vaccine is authorized for adults aged 18 and up.

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has also been testing its vaccine in teenagers.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the soon to be majority leader of the United States Senate, sent his colleagues a letter on Tuesday outlining his caucus’s agenda with a promise to focus on Covid-19 relief and support for the incoming Biden Administration.

Schumer made it clear that quickly passing another round of relief related to the Coronavirus pandemic would be a high priority for the Senate Democrats.

He also promised to work to confirm the slate of cabinet officials appointed by President-Elect Biden as quickly as possible.

The entire letter from Schumer was against the backdrop of the violent insurrection at the Capitol last Wednesday. Schumer said the incident showed the need to install qualified Senate approved members of the cabinet and promised that incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin will closely examine the rise of violent extremist and white supremacist groups in America.

Schumer also made clear that his Caucus would make sure that the events of Jan. 6th are fully investigated and those responsible are brought to justice.

He also promised that every security measure necessary will be in place for the upcoming inauguration.

The lockdown in the Netherlands is being extended by three weeks, until Feb. 9, the prime minister said in a press conference on Tuesday.

Rutte first announced the lockdown on Dec. 14, and said it would be in effect until at least Jan. 18. The lockdown is more stringent than anything implemented during the first wave, in spring 2020, when non-essential shops were allowed to remain open – They are now closed.

The number of coronavirus infections in the Netherlands are falling but still significant. There were 49,398 positive reported cases is the past seven days, Jan. 5 to 12, according to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.

That was a decrease from the 56,440 reported between Dec, 29 and Jan. 5.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson could apply for emergency use authorization of its Janssen Covid-19 vaccine around the end of this month, Moncef Slaoui of Operation Warp Speed said during a briefing on Tuesday.

Slaoui said millions of doses should be available by the end of February.

"We are very clear – we, meaning Operation and Janssen Pharmaceuticals – that analysis will be completed before the end of the month, and EUA submission will take place at the end of this month," Slaoui said on Tuesday.

"In terms of vaccine dose availability, if submission is happening at the end of January, one could project that approval of the emergency use authorization may happen somewhere in the middle of the month of February," Slaoui added.

Nearly 45,000 fixed penalty notices have been issued across the United Kingdom due to coronavirus related breaches, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Tuesday.

During a daily press conference, Patel warned those who have not been complying with the safety protocols issued by the government that police are "moving more quickly to issuing the fines, where people are clearly breaching coronavirus regulations."

Her warning comes as the UK reported 1,243 new coronavirus related deaths on Tuesday, marking the second deadliest day since the start of the pandemic.

The latest figures released by the government have brought the total death toll to 83,203.

The UK also reported 45,533 new cases, bringing the total case number to 3,117,882.

On Monday, England's chief medical officer Chris Whitty told the BBC that the UK is entering its most challenging weeks since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as hospitals face being overrun and morgues fill up.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Tuesday the federal government will no longer hold back coronavirus vaccine doses it kept in reserve, and it is asking states to open vaccinations to people 65 and older and people with chronic conditions who are at higher risk of severe disease.

He said the federal government would no longer hold back doses of vaccine to ensure that people who got their first doses would get second doses, too.

Plus, states should vaccinate more people.

“We are telling states they should open vaccinations to all people … 65 and over and all people under age 65 with a comorbidity with some form of medical documentation,” Azar said, stumbling slightly over the wording.

Azar framed the change, which matches an approach announced by the incoming Biden administration, as something that had been part of the plan all along.

A senior administration official told CNN on Tuesday the shift follows two Operation Warp Speed meetings Azar held over the past 48 hours on how to speed up the lagging process.

Azar defended the slow and often chaotic rollout of vaccines.

“Several triggers have brought us to that point – nearly 38 million total doses of vaccine to date, including about 25 million first doses, have been made available for states to order against,” he told a news briefing. 

Azar blamed states for the slow rollout. “In some states, heavy handed micromanagement of this process has stood in the way of vaccines reaching a broader swathe of the vulnerable population more quickly,” Azar said.