September 13 coronavirus news

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said there is “quite good chance” the team testing his company’s vaccine candidate for Covid-19 will know whether it works by the end of October. 

When asked whether people would have to wait until 2021 to actually get the vaccine, Bourla said that he didn’t know how long it would take for regulators to approve it.

“We have a good chance that we will know if the product works by the end of October. Then, of course, it is (the) regulator’s job to issue (a) license or not," he said.

Pfizer has already started manufacturing vaccine and he said hundreds of thousands of doses have already been made. 

More details: Bourla said vaccine distribution will be a problem. Shipping medicines is complex, particularly when they need special storage conditions. But he said Pfizer already knows how to do it very well. 

As for who gets the vaccine, Bourla said that is something the authorities should decide, for example, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Major League Baseball and the players association announced Sunday that the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres will play in a doubleheader on Sunday after the team’s games were cancelled Friday and Saturday due to a Giants player testing positive for Covid-19. 

MLB and the union's committee reviewed the case and determined the initial positive test “did not represent an actual infection or present a risk to other personnel.” 

The United Kingdom reported 3,330 new coronavirus cases as of Sunday morning as England prepares for new restrictions to go into effect Monday after a recent rise in the infection rate.

Five more people have died, bringing the total death toll from Covid-19 to 41,628, the UK said.

In an interview with CNN today, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that he "unquestionably" would have acted sooner against the coronavirus if he had known what President Trump knew in early February, as detailed in Bob Woodward's upcoming book.

Here's the exchange:

India's parliament will resume its work on Monday amid increasing coronavirus numbers in the country.

As per the notification released by authorities, Lok Sabha (the lower house) and Rajya Sabha (the upper house) will begin the monsoon session on Monday with various Covid-19 protocols. The session will end on Oct. 1.

Every member of the Parliament along with his or her immediate family members and support staff will have to undergo testing for Covid-19 within 72 hours before the commencement of the session on Monday, the notification said. Only those members who will have a negative report for all tested in family and staff members will be allowed to attend the session.

The timings for the sitting of both houses have also been changed, the notification added.

To minimize Covid-19 transmission risks due to multiple handling of papers, all parliamentary papers will be available electronically for the members and instead of biometric, attendance will be marked using a mobile application developed by India's National Information Centre, the notification added.

As per the official data, India has recorded a total of 4,754,356 coronavirus cases including 78,586 deaths since the pandemic began.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro defended President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic amid revelations from journalist Bob Woodward's upcoming book detailing the President's efforts to downplay the virus in its early stages.

When asked about the audio tape of Trump's comment in early February to Woodward about the virus being more deadly than the flu, yet denying this two weeks later in a White House briefing, Navarro hailed the President for halting travel to the US from China in what he called "a signal" from Trump that "this is a serious, serious matter." 

Navarro had privately warned White House officials early about the seriousness of the virus. He pointed to a memo he said he wrote on Feb. 9 saying, among other things, that the US could have a vaccine by the end of the year "if we start right now." He said he wrote this "under the advice of the President in terms of getting on this situation because it might be serious." 

Navarro claimed that in the early days of the pandemic, the US was in the "fog of war" and alleged there were "competing views as to whether this is simply the flue or whether this is very serious" at the time, despite the President's own comments, which were recorded on tape by Woodward.

Ohio State University plans to cancel spring break next year to reduce the exposure of its students, faculty and staff to coronavirus. 

Instead of the traditional spring break, there will be two days without classes on Feb. 9 and March 31, according to an email from executive vice president and provost Bruce A. McPheron to students and faculty. 

The university said this will "keep our community together throughout the semester and reduce travel-related exposures."

The first week of classes of the second semester, beginning Jan. 11, will also entirely be online to give students time to quarantine before any in-person classes. Ohio State classes currently operate through a mix of in-person and online sessions, the university said.

What the numbers look like: Between Aug. 14 and Sept. 10, there were 2,097 students and 28 employees who tested positive for coronavirus, according to the university.

With talk of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate heating up, you might have heard the term emergency use authorization — or EUA — all over the news lately. But what is it exactly, and how does it apply to vaccines?

Emergency use authorization is what its name suggests: a medical product that gets special authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration to be used during an emergency. Sometimes it's a product that has already been FDA-approved, but for another condition, and sometimes it's a new product that hasn't yet received the agency's green light.

There is a lot of ongoing concern and debate about whether any vaccine candidate should be granted an EUA — or outright approval — without first completing phase 3 clinical trials.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the FDA has granted EUAs many times to a wide range of medical products, such as ventilators; personal protective equipment, including masks; molecular and antigen tests to diagnose Covid-19, and serologic tests to look for antibodies; and even treatments, such as remdesivir and convalescent plasma.

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Iran registered 2,089 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of infections across the country to 402,029, according to data from the Health Ministry registered.

The ministry also reported 128 new Covid-19 deaths, bringing death toll to 23,157.

Iran was one of the first countries to be badly hit by the virus. At one point it was among the countries with the highest case counts globally.