November 17 coronavirus news

Vaccines do not work unless enough people get them, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday. 

Vaccine uptake will determine whether the country is free of the pandemic by next fall. 

“Whenever you talk about vaccines, there are two elements of it,” Fauci said during a New York Times DealBook virtual seminar.  

There is a challenge ahead, he said, due to hesitancy around getting vaccinated. Outreach needs to be done to make sure that the overwhelming majority of Americans get vaccinated, Fauci said, “because if we have an effective vaccine and 50% of the people don’t take it, you still have a considerable public health challenge.” 

It takes “a blanket of protection” to stop an outbreak, Fauci said. “So, you’re asking me what things are going to be like in the fall, I can tell you, that really depends on whether or not we get the majority of the people, the overwhelming majority of the people, vaccinated.” 

And a vaccine won’t mean an end to other measures, such as hand-washing, mask use and social distancing. 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doubled down on his remarks that the economy as we know it is over during a virtual appearance at the At the Bay Area Council Business Hall of Fame Awards Ceremony.

He also reiterated that people in lower-income jobs, and specific industries hadn’t recovered as much as others and that workers in the services industry might need more help going forward.

"The recovery is incomplete,” he said, warning of near-term risks surrounding the resurgence of Covid-19 infections. “We have a long way to go.”

Meanwhile, Powell said it wasn’t the right time to worry about the fiscal health of the United States. Rather, that should be an issue to address when unemployment is low and taxes are rolling in. “That’s the time to really focus,” he said.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Tuesday that hospitalizations have more than doubled since Nov. 1.

There are 1,510 people in the hospital with Covid-19, she said during a news conference. At the start of the month 14% of patients had Covid-19. Today, that number is 28%.  

Reynolds said hospitalizations have been climbing over the past two weeks "and in some cases have been significant." 

The Iowa Department of Public Health reported 2,003 new cases of Covid-19 and a 17.1% positivity rate Tuesday, according to the Covid-19 dashboard. At least 2,025 people have died from the virus since the state began its reporting.  

An aide to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley won’t say who the person is that exposed the senator to Covid-19.  

The aide also said people who have been in contact with the senator have been “appropriately notified” about the potential exposure. 

Here's a statement from Grassley aide Michael Zona:

Earlier today, the Iowa GOP senator announced in a statement that he had been exposed to Covid-19 and was quarantining.

The White House coronavirus task force has again ramped up its warnings to states in a weekly report as the pandemic continues to aggressively worsen, raising alarms on the potential impact of rising cases on hospitals. 

The language in the weekly reports, which offer the administration’s most unvarnished picture of the pandemic, has become progressively more dire in recent weeks, matching the severity of the current situation as the President himself remains silent on rising cases, focusing instead on positive vaccine developments in his only public event on the matter in a month last Friday. 

North Dakota remains the state with the most cases per 100,000 population, followed by South Dakota, then Iowa, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and Montana. Hawaii is the state with the fewest cases per 100,000 population. 

This week’s reports also included a comparison to Europe, which is experiencing, per the task force, “a fall surge similar to the USA.” Europe, however, is “showing early signs of improvement,” the reports said, citing mask requirements in public settings, with most European countries imposing fines for non-compliance, as well as “significant restrictions on gathering size.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR’s Rachel Martin on Morning Edition Tuesday that his Thanksgiving is going to change significantly this year.

His three adult daughters, who live in separate parts of the country, got together and said that they did not want to put him, as an elderly person, at risk. Fauci is 79 years old. 

He and his wife will have a meal and Zoom with his daughters to spend time with them.

“I don’t like it that way, but I think they’re making a prudent decision in trying to protect their father and I’m proud of them for that,” he said. 

US retail sales grew at a slower pace than economists had predicted last month — prompting worries about a "difficult winter" with lower consumer spending before a recovery next year.

Retail sales increased by 0.3% to $553.3 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis in October, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. That's below expectations of a 0.5% increase, and it's down from a revised 1.6% in September.

Boosting that figure significantly were sales of cars and car parts. They have been buoyant since the summer and continued to increase at a faster rate last month, pushing the overall sales numbers up. Stripping out cars, retail sales increased only 0.2% in October.

Meanwhile non-store sales, such as online purchases, jumped 3.1%. Economists said that was probably largely due to Amazon's Prime Day in mid-October. In-store sales declined further.

Sweden has recorded another 15,084 cases of Covid-19 since Friday, including 2,178 registered in the last 24 hours, according to official Health Agency data published on Tuesday.

This is a slight decrease in the number of cases recorded during the same period last week. 

There were 6,743 new cases recorded on Friday alone, the highest daily toll recorded since the start of the pandemic. 

A further 61 deaths have been recorded since then, taking the country’s total number of lives lost due to the pandemic to 6,225. 

In a reversal of its lax approach to the pandemic so far, the Swedish government on Monday announced plans to introduce a ban on public gatherings of more than eight people, including in bars and restaurants.

A German airlines Lufthana-owned cargo team is gearing up to push out the potential Pfizer coronavirus vaccine once it is approved. CNN went inside this pharmaceutical logistics hub in Germany, which is the biggest in Europe.

The timeline for transportation at this hub is quick.

“They come here, they want to spend as little time as possible in a place like this, and then get it out,” CNN's Fred Pleitgen reported.

Once the approval comes, things can move quickly. However, there are logistical challenges.

Currently, the vaccine needs to be stored at about minus 75 degrees Celsius, which is about 50 degrees colder than any vaccine currently used in the United States. So the coronavirus vaccines will be transported in special cooling containers that can be cooled down to minus 105 degrees Fahrenheit by using big amounts of dried ice.

Here's the challenge: The colder a vaccine needs to be stored, the more difficult it is to transport that vaccine. And the more dried ice you put in a container, the less space it will have for vaccines.

This cooling container setup also emits a lot of carbon dioxide, and too much of it in an airplane cabin can be dangerous for the crew. This puts another layer of limits on how much you can transport in a single round.

Take a look at the distribution facility and setup: