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A sign reads “Very High Covid-19 Cases in London. Stay Home” near a motorway in London on Monday.
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
The new Covid-19 strain that emerged in the United Kingdom may already be found in the United States, Germany, France and Switzerland, officials from those countries said.
BioNTech SE, a partner at Pfizer Inc., is exploring options to boost vaccine production, and its CEO He said his injection will likely work against the new strain of the virus.
A broader swath of the UK would be ordered to a more severe shutdown under a plan government officials are considering with the intention of halting the spread of the pandemic.
Why the UKis Mutated Coronavirus Are you stoking worries? QuickTake
Key developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases exceed 77.8 million; deaths exceed 1.7 million
- US Hot Spots: Hospital Floods Because Vaccine Still Months To Go
- A bitter history of vaccines means Obstacles to Japan’s Covid Fight
- Jokowi Replaces Indonesia’s Minister of Health as Covid Deaths Rise
- France Reopens the border with the United Kingdom after paralyzing the busiest port
- Biden calls for more aid spending and warns of ‘darkest days’ to come
Subscribe to a daily update on virus Bloomberg Forecast Team here. Click CVID in the terminal for global data on coronavirus cases and deaths.
Houston ICUs Record 11% Increase in Virus Patients (7:28 a.m. HK)
Houston-area intensive care wards saw an 11% increase in virus patients over the past 24 hours, raising the count of more acutely ill Covid-19 cases to a four-month high of 505 The number of ICU beds occupied by virus patients in the fourth-largest US city and surrounding counties has more than doubled since early November, according to the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council.
Japan to suspend foreign arrivals from UK: Nikkei (7:16 a.m. HK)
The Japanese government will suspend all foreign arrivals from the UK due to the coronavirus variant, the Nikkei newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information from.
Biden wants more help, sees ‘darkest days’ (6:30 am HK)
US President-elect Joe Biden has warned that the “darkest days” of the coronavirus pandemic were yet to come and called on Congress to be ready early next year to produce another stimulus package, albeit the most recent. took months to complete.
“Our darkest days in the battle against Covid are ahead, not behind us,” he said at an end-of-the-year press conference in Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden said the country needs to support state and local governments, which have seen resources fall during the pandemic, and also offer other economic stimulus. When pressed for what he wanted in the next round of stimulus, Biden refused to specify a dollar amount or predict the outcome.
NOTE: Biden says the $ 900 billion aid package is “far from perfect” and is only the first step in addressing the crises posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. (
More allergic reactions to the vaccine appear (6:10 am HK)
Idaho has received reports of two healthcare workers experiencing severe allergic reactions after receiving the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, the state’s public health division said in a news release Tuesday.
One person made a full recovery. The other was hospitalized and is stable with the expectation of being discharged on Tuesday.
“We are concerned about the risk to people with such a history and recommend that anyone with a history of severe reaction or anaphylaxis to any vaccine or injectable therapy postpone taking this vaccine until more is known,” said Christine Hahn, Medical Director. of the Idaho Division of Public Health, said in the statement.
UK’s Johnson seeks a tighter lockdown (5:45 a.m. HK)
Boris Johnson’s government is examining the possibility of relocating more areas of England on lockdown to counter a more rapidly spreading variant of coronavirus.
Ministers are considering applying the higher Level 4 restrictions, forcing nonessential shops and entertainment facilities to close, in more regions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A sign reads “Covid-19 cases very high in London. Stay at Home ”near a motorway in London on Monday.
Photographer: Jason Alden / Bloomberg
Ministers and scientific experts met on Tuesday evening after cases of the new Covid-19 strain were identified outside London and south-east England, which were placed at Level 4 last weekend.
France to reopen transport links to the UK (4:35 am HK)
France said it will It will begin to reopen critical transport and trade links with the UK at midnight Tuesday, two days after a temporary suspension triggered chaos at Britain’s busiest port.
Travel from the UK will resume for European Union citizens and residents who can demonstrate negative evidence for Covid-19, according to a statement from Prime Minister Jean Castex. Other citizens will be allowed to resume essential travel.
Trucks parked near the Port of Dover Ltd. in Dover, UK, on Tuesday.
Photographer: Luke MacGregor / Bloomberg
France closed cargo traffic from Dover on Sunday due to concerns that the faster-spreading variant of Covid-19 could trigger an increase in cases, just as it did in London and surrounding areas, where the UK government Kingdom has imposed a strict blockade.
Meatpacking Counties Hit Hardest, USDA Says (3 a.m. HK)
The rate of Covid-19 infection in US counties that rely on meat packing jobs was as high as 10 times the average level for rural counties last spring, according to a US Department of Agriculture. USA report.
The report examined the spread of Covid in the 57 mostly rural US counties where meat packaging accounts for at least 20% of employment. As of mid-April, confirmed Covid cases in those counties outnumbered the rest of the country and remained “much higher” than other US counties. Until mid-July, the USDA’s Economic Research Service found. .
Meat processing plants quickly became epicenters of the virus in the US in the spring as most immigrant employees continued to work, sometimes shoulder to shoulder, in cramped, cold and damp facilities, often without protective equipment.
New Covid-19 Strain May Be In US (1:40 AM HK)
The new variant of Covid-19 found in the UK may already be in the US undetected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
No cases of this disease have yet been identified, the CDC reported, but viruses have been sequenced from only about 51,000 of the 17 million cases in the United States. Travel between the two countries and the prevalence of the new strain in the UK increase the chances that it is already in the US, the CDC reported.
Moncef Slaoui, chief science advisor for Operation Warp Speed, said on Monday that it would take weeks to scientifically determine if the strain is more transmissible, but that it did not appear to be more dangerous. He also said he hopes existing vaccines still offer protection against it.
WATCH: Dr Amesh Adalja, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, discusses how the new strain of virus detected in the UK impacts the global Coronavirus pandemic and his personal experience receiving the Covid-19 vaccine .
Fauci vaccinated with Moderna’s injection (11:55 pm HK)
Anthony Fauci was one of the first National Institutes of Health employees to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, administered in the same auditorium where he first came to NIH as a fellow 52 years ago.
Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease physician, received the vaccine from Moderna Inc. along with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and NIH Director Francis Collins and six workers frontline healthcare provider at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. .
The public ritual of vaccinating senior health leaders is part of an effort to build trust in vaccines that were developed in record time and amid political disputes over the timing of the vaccines’ authorization.
Fauci, who turns 80 on Thursday, famous that he’s getting the vaccine partly because he still sees patients as a treating physician at the NIH Clinical Center, but also to send a message “to the rest of the country that sensation extreme confidence in the safety and efficacy of this vaccine ”.
He flicked his thumb up after receiving the injection in his left arm.
WATCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s top infectious disease physician, talks about the new Modern Covid-19 vaccine.
New York Deaths Increase 31% (11:35 pm HK)
New York City lost 188 residents to Covid-19 in the week ending December 21, 31% more than the average for the previous four weeks.
While cases fell last week, hospitalizations and deaths increased. The seven-day average of confirmed and probable deaths has more than doubled this month, to 34 on December 18. Mayor Bill de Blasio has urged residents to stay home for the holidays.
The deaths are nowhere near the more than 700 deaths a day that New York City saw in April. The most populous city in the United States has reported 387,361 confirmed and probable cases since the outbreak began, and 24,735 deaths.
Denmark says another variant was detected (10:20 pm HK)
Danish health authorities said that around 10% of the country’s positive test results are now from N439K mutation of the virus, qualifying the rate as “worrying”. The mutation, which was first discovered in Romania in May, is different from the one that spread in the UK and also the one that infected Danish mink farms earlier this year, authorities said.
Danes and Dutch Pause to Address Virus (10:14 p.m. HK)
Intensive care units in Denmark’s capital region are approaching full capacity, prompting health officials to postpone planned operations and seek help from hospitals outside the Copenhagen area. The development comes amid a surge in Covid-19 cases, although daily counts have lately been below the December 18 peak of more than 4,500.
Hospitals in the Netherlands have also put all non-emergency medical care on hold in order to cater for a large influx of Covid patients, according to the national news agency ANP. More patients are being transferred to neighboring Germany.
– With the assistance of Tom Redmond
