(Bloomberg) – The new Covid-19 strain that came out in the UK may already be in the US, Germany, France and Switzerland, officials in those countries said.
Pfizer Inc. partner BioNTech SE is exploring options to boost vaccine production, and its chief executive said his bullet may work against the new strain of the virus.
Wider oaths of the UK would be ordered into a tougher lock-in under a plan being considered by government officials who plan to halt the spread of the pandemic.
- Global Detector: Cases pass 77.8 million; deaths exceed 1.7 million
- US hot spots: Hospitals damaged as vaccine still months away
- Vaccine’s bitter history means obstacles to Japan’s Covid fight
- Jokowi replaces Indonesia’s health minister as Covid’s death spike
- France opens UK border after paralysis of busiest port
- Biden wants more spending help, warning of ‘darkest days’ ahead
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Houston ICUs Post 11% Leap in virus patients (7:28 am HK)
The Houston area intensive care wards saw a spike of 11% in virus patients in the past 24 hours which increased the count of critically ill Covid-19 cases to a four-month high of 505. The number of ICU beds in virus infections in the fourth largest city in the U.S. and surrounding counties have more than doubled since the beginning of November, according to the SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council.
Japan to block foreign arrivals from UK: Nikkei (7:16 am HK)
The Japanese government will block everyone who entered from the UK because of the coronavirus variant, the Nikkei newspaper said, without saying where it obtained the information.
Biden asks for more help, seeing ‘darkest days’ (6:30 am HK)
U.S. President Joe Biden warned that the “darkest days” of the pandemic coronavirus were yet to come and called on Congress to be ready early next year to implement another stimulus package, even if which the latest took months to complete.
“Our darkest days in the battle against Covid are ahead of us, not behind us,” he said at a year-end press conference in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden said the country needs to support state and local governments, which have seen resources fall through the pandemic, while also offering other economic stimulus. When pressed for what he wanted in the next round of stimulus, Biden refused to specify a dollar sum or predict the outcome.
More allergic reactions to vaccine appearance (6:10 m HK)
Idaho has received reports of two health care workers suffering severe allergic reactions following their Pfizer Inc. vaccination. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 acquisition, the state public health department said in a press release Tuesday.
One person completely recovered. The other was taken to hospital and is in stable condition with an expected release on Tuesday.
“We are concerned about the risk to people with such a history and recommend that anyone with a history of adverse reactions or anaphylaxis to any vaccine or injectable treatment delay taking this vaccine until will we know more, ”Christine Hahn, medical director for the Idaho Department of Public Health, said in the statement.
Johnson UK looks at tighter locking (5:45m HK)
Boris Johnson’s government is examining whether they should move more areas of England into lockdown to combat a faster conversion of coronavirus.
Ministers are considering whether to apply the upper Level 4 restrictions – forcing unnecessary shops and leisure facilities to close – to more departments, according to an expert.
Ministers and scientists met late on Tuesday after cases of the new Covid-19 snort were identified outside London and the south-east of England, which was finally put into Stage 4. last week.
France to reopen transport links to the UK (4:35 am HK)
France has said it will begin opening emergency trade and transport links with the UK by midnight on Tuesday, two days after a temporary ban sparked chaos at Britain’s busiest port.
Travel will begin from the UK for EU citizens and residents who are able to show negative Covid-19 tests, according to a statement from Prime Minister Jean Castex. Other nationals will be allowed to resume necessary travel.
France closed off freight traffic from Dover on Sunday over concerns that the faster roll-out of Covid-19 could lead to a rise in cases, just as it did in London and the surrounding areas, where the UK government has put a tight stop on him.
Meat packaging counties hit hardest, USDA says (3 am HK)
The infection rate of Covid-19 in U.S. counties that relied on meat packaging operations was as high as 10 times the average rate of rural counties last spring, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The report examined Covid’s distribution in the 57 predominantly rural counties in the U.S. where meat packaging accounts for at least 20% of earnings. Starting in mid-April, Covid’s cases in those counties confirmed the rest of the country and remained “significantly higher” than in other U.S. counties through mid-July, Service found USDA Economic Study.
Meat processing plants quickly became infected with the virus in the U.S. in the spring as the majority of immigrant workers continued to work, sometimes shoulder to shoulder, in cold facilities, wet, wet, often without protective gear.
New Covid-19 Strain May Be In The US (1:40 am HK)
The new variant of Covid-19 already detected in the UK in the US may not have been identified, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No cases of it have yet been identified, the CDC reported, but viruses have not been classified from just about 51,000 of the 17 million cases in the U.S. Travel between the two countries and the frequency of the new pressure in the UK are increasing the existing opportunity in the US, the CDC said.
Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said Monday that it would take weeks to scientifically find out if the strain is more mobile but did not appear to be more dangerous. He also said he expects the existing vaccines to continue to offer protection against it.
Fauci vaccinated with Moderna burn (11:55 pm HK)
Anthony Fauci was among the first employees of the National Institutes of Health to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, administered in the same auditorium where he first arrived at the NIH as another 52 years ago.
Fauci, the U.S. government’s chief infectious disease doctor, received the Moderna Inc. vaccine. along with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and NIH Director Francis Collins, and six frontline health care workers at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The public ceremony about vaccinating senior health leaders is part of an effort to build confidence in vaccines that have been developed at the highest level and amid political controversy over the timing of the vaccination of vaccines.
Fauci, who turns 80 on Thursday, fa-near that he is receiving the vaccine partly because he still sees patients as a physician attending the NIH Clinical Center, but also for sending a message “to the rest of the country that I feeling There is great confidence in the safety and effectiveness of this vaccine. “
He shook a sign with a hammer after receiving the bullet in his left arm.
NYC Death Surge 31% (11:35 pm HK)
New York City lost 188 residents to Covid-19 in the week ended Dec. 21, up 31% from the average for the previous four weeks.
Although things have declined in the past week, hospitals and deaths have increased. The seven-day average of confirmed deaths is more than double this month, to 34 on December 18. Mayor Bill de Blasio has urged residents to stay at home for the holidays .
The deaths are nowhere near the 700-plus daily deaths seen by New York City in April. The largest city in the U.S. has reported 387,361 confirmed and possible cases since the uprising began, and 24,735 deaths.
Denmark says another variant (10:20 pm HK) will be found
Danish health authorities said that about 10% of the country’s positive results are now from the N439K mutation of the virus, saying the rate is “worrying”. “The mutation, first detected in Romania in May, is different from the one that spread in the UK and also from the one that affected Denmark’s mink farms earlier this year, authorities said.
Danes, Dutch Pause Care for Virus Treatment (10:14 pm HK)
Intensive care units in the Danish capital region are now approaching full capacity, urging health officials to suspend planned operations and seek support from hospitals outside the Copenhagen region. The improvement comes amid an increase in Covid-19 cases, although daily highs have been below the Dec. 18 spike of more than 4,500.
Hospitals in the Netherlands have also suspended all non-emergency health care to be able to serve a large group of Covid patients, according to the national news agency ANP. More patients are being transferred to neighboring Germany.