Cases plateau, 2.5 million vaccines a day, variants rise

America’s lengthy stretch of dwindling coronavirus instances has stalled, and fast will increase in some states might depend for greater than ongoing declines in others. U.S. well being officers expressed concern Wednesday concerning the plateau and refused to say the nation has turned the nook on the coronavirus pandemic.

“I continue to be worried about the latest data and the apparent stall we’re seeing in the trajectory of the pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mentioned throughout a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing.

The U.S. is reporting a seven-day common of about 55,000 new instances per day, up 3% from the earlier week. The nation can also be reporting about 4,600 new hospitalizations and almost 1,000 deaths per day, Walensky mentioned. And the U.S. surpassed 30 million coronavirus instances Wednesday afternoon, as soon as once more reaching a doubtful milestone a lot quicker than some other nation. 

“When you’re at that level, I don’t think you can declare victory,” Dr. Anthony Fauci mentioned in the course of the briefing. “We are at the corner. Whether or not we’re going to be turning that corner remains to be seen.”

On one hand, about 2.5 million Americans are being vaccinated every day, in line with Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response. And knowledge on frontline healthcare employees in Texas, California and Israel counsel COVID-19 vaccines are efficient in stopping coronavirus infections in real-world settings, in line with three new research revealed within the New England Journal of Medicine Tuesday.

But spring breakers are shirking COVID restrictions and states are lifting masking restrictions. Utah’s masks mandate will finish April 10 after Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a invoice that lays out a new timeline for lifting a number of the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Also within the information: 

►AstraZeneca launched up to date information on its COVID-19 scientific trial Wednesday night, displaying an effectiveness rate of 76% instead of the 79% rate it claimed earlier within the week.

►Moncef Slaoui, former scientific head of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine growth effort, has been fired by GlaxoSmithKline after an inside investigation discovered he sexually harassed a fellow worker a number of years in the past.

►Kansas says it is going to be receiving solely a fraction of the 100,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine for COVID-19 that it had anticipated subsequent week, because of manufacturing points.

►A hospital on Maui needed to throw out almost 1,400 vaccine doses after a fridge thawing the vials didn’t correctly seal.

►Louisiana will finish its limits Monday on which adults can obtain the coronavirus vaccine, giving entry to anybody 16 and older who needs to schedule an appointment. Idaho Gov. Brad Little additionally introduced Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccine eligibility will probably be open to all state residents 16 and up beginning April 5.

📈 Today’s numbers: The U.S. has over 30 million confirmed coronavirus instances and greater than 545,200 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The international totals: 124.6 million instances and 2.74 million deaths. More than 169.2 million vaccine doses have been distributed within the U.S. and 130 million have been administered, according to the CDC.

📘 What we’re studying: A rising share of Americans would really feel secure resuming actions like eating out or flying inside a few weeks of their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, however 25% to 30% would wait till the nation reaches herd immunity, in line with a Harris Poll survey for USA TODAY. Read the full story.

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34% of individuals hesitant to get vaccinated prepared to get Johnson & Johnson shot

34.1% of adults within the U.S. report having obtained not less than one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and those that aren’t vaccinated and would get the shot say they’re comparatively model agnostic, in line with a new survey by Survey Monkey on vaccine hesitancy.

66% of individuals prepared to get the shot could be up for the Moderna vaccine, whereas 70% are prepared to get the Pfizer vaccine and 67% are prepared to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But simply 51% of individuals nonetheless unvaccinated say they’d get it if provided to them.

However, 34% of “people who are hesitant to get vaccinated are willing to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine than the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines,” the corporate mentioned of their weekly e-newsletter. 

Reports: Andrew Cuomo’s household obtained precedence to COVID assessments early in pandemic

 In the early months of the pandemic, when COVID-19 assessments have been scarce, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to make the testing out there to these most in want.

Turns out that included his members of the family and different well-connected folks near his administration, in line with stories Wednesday night time.

Both The Washington Post and the Times Union in Albany reported that Cuomo’s office arranged coronavirus testing for his family, together with his CNN anchor brother, Chris Cuomo, and different influential folks with shut Cuomo ties.

The testing was performed at instances at folks’s properties and partly by Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who was a particular advisor to the state Health Department, the stories mentioned, citing unnamed sources.

The Times Union, which first reported the small print, mentioned Adams’ journeys together with going to the Long Island house of Chris Cuomo, who introduced in late March 2020 that he was constructive for COVID and detailed his battle with the virus nightly on his present — on which the governor usually appeared final 12 months.

Cuomo’s workplace didn’t deny the stories, however mentioned the state was making an attempt to check as many individuals as potential to develop a contact tracing program, citing the door-to-door efforts to check residents in New Rochelle, the Westchester County group that was the primary COVID sizzling spot within the nation.

— Joseph Spector, New York State Team

Facebook and Twitter should crackdown on COVID-19 vaccine hoaxes and lies, 12 state attorneys common say

A dozen state attorneys common on Wednesday called on Facebook and Twitter to take more aggressive action in opposition to conspiracy theories, hoaxes and lies which can be undermining public confidence within the COVID-19 vaccines.

“The people and groups spreading falsehoods and misleading Americans about the safety of coronavirus vaccines are threatening the health of our communities, slowing progress in getting our residents protected from the virus, and undermining economic recovery in our states,” the letter from Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and 11 different Democratic state attorneys common mentioned. “We call on you to take immediate steps to fully enforce your companies’ guidelines against vaccine misinformation.”

The letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey additionally cited analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Vax Watch displaying that a small variety of anti-vaccine accounts are chargeable for falsehoods concerning the security of the vaccines which have reached greater than 59 million on Facebook, Instagram, Google’s YouTube and Twitter.

— Jessica Guynn

Data from three new research present real-world vaccine effectiveness

Data on frontline healthcare employees in Texas, California and Israel counsel COVID-19 vaccines are efficient in stopping coronavirus infections in real-world settings, in line with three new research revealed within the New England Journal of Medicine Tuesday.

“For those who were fully vaccinated, the infection rate was extremely low,” Fauci mentioned throughout a briefing Wednesday, calling the research “a real proof positive of the importance of vaccination.”

• At the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, solely 4 of greater than 8,000 totally vaccinated staff examined constructive for COVID-19 as of late January, in line with well being system officers. “The effect of vaccination on the preservation of our workforce has been dramatic,” hospital officers wrote. “Real-world experience with SARS-CoV-2 vaccination at UTSW has shown a marked reduction in the incidence of infections among employees.”
• Among healthcare employees on the University of California-San Diego and the University of California-Los Angeles, the chance of testing constructive for COVID-19 after vaccination was about 1%, in line with well being system officers. “The rarity of positive test results 14 days after administration of the second dose of vaccine is encouraging and suggests that the efficacy of these vaccines is maintained outside the trial setting.”
• At Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, officers discovered vaccinations amongst healthcare employees “resulted in a major reduction of new cases of COVID-19 among those who received two doses of the vaccine, even when a surge of the B.1.1.7 variant was noted in up to 80% of cases.” The officers mentioned the findings “suggest that widespread and effective vaccination among health care workers provides a safe environment, even in the presence of a high rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the community.”

Contributing: The Associated Press

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