By Helen Regan, Adam Renton, Sebastian Shukla and Angela Dewan, CNN
From CNN's Priscilla Alvarez
The US is extending travel restrictions on the northern and southern borders until Dec. 21, according to soon-to-be-published notices in the Federal Register.
The Department of Homeland Security has extended the restrictions with the US shared borders every month since they were first implemented in late March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The restrictions apply to nonessential travel.
The notices are expected to be published in the Federal Register on Monday.
From CNN's Daniella Diaz
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said he learned this morning he has tested positive for Covid-19. Scott's test was administered on Tuesday, according to the news release from his office.
Scott's office said that he had already been quarantining at home after being exposed to someone last Friday, Nov. 13, who tested positive for Coronavirus. He will now self-isolate and work from home.
“After several negative tests, I learned I was positive this morning. I am feeling good and experiencing very mild symptoms. I will be working from home in Naples until it is safe for me to return to Washington, D.C.," Scott said in the statement. "I want to remind everyone to be careful and do the right things to protect yourselves and others. Wear a mask. Social distance. Quarantine if you come in contact with someone positive like I did."
From CNN's Jacqueline Howard
The race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine could leave a lasting impact on how vaccines are developed in the future — and one way is by showing how mRNA technologies can be used, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a Johns Hopkins University symposium on Friday morning.
Both Pfizer's and Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine candidates are mRNA vaccines.
"When we made the decision to make mRNA — one of our first priorities for this — there was a lot of concern and skepticism and maybe even criticism by people saying well this is an unproven platform," Fauci said. But the technology worked.
Now it appears mRNA technologies "are here to stay," Fauci said. "Certainly mRNA is because we had not only one but two — and that's really great."
From CNN's Aditi Sangal
White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said Americans should limit indoor gatherings to immediate households this Thanksgiving.
“I don't like it to be any number,” she said. “Because you know, if you say it can be 10, and it's eight people from four different families, then that probably is not the same degree of safe as 10 people from your immediate household.”
Birx said she understood why the lack of uniformity in open and close spaces across the country can make social distancing messaging confusing for Americans.
“I worry about that,” she told CNN. “[People] say, ‘Well, bars and restaurants are open, then I can have 20 people over for Thanksgiving.’”
She also said Americans need to look at their choices when all this is over.
“Europe was willing to sacrifice restaurants and bars to maintain their schools. We ask college students to sacrifice their college experience … to change their behaviors, to wear a mask, to physically distance. We have 18 to 22-year-olds doing the right thing, and we're not willing to tell people that they really can't gather in public spaces or even indoors with their mask off,” she said.
Birx said it’s on every American to protect each other.
“I’m making the personal sacrifices not to infect my parents and my pregnant daughter, and there's a lot of people out there who know how to protect one another, and we just need to make sure we're all doing that.”
Watch more:
From CNN's Ivana Kottasová, CNN
Covid-19 is spreading faster than ever before in the United States, with hospitals in some states running at capacity. The country is now in the same situation that France, Belgium and the Czech Republic were last month, when rapidly rising infections put their health care systems within weeks of failure.
But these countries have managed to avert, for now, the worst-case scenario, in which people die because hospitals are full and they can't access the care they need to survive. They slowed down the epidemics by imposing lockdowns and strict mask mandates.
Despite the clear evidence from Europe, the White House is still opposing new restrictions. "President Trump wanted me to make it clear that our task force, this administration and our President, does not support another national lockdown. And we do not support closing schools," Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday, at the first White House coronavirus task force briefing since July.
"They need to look at the European situation," said Mike Tildesley, an infectious disease modeling expert at the University Warwick and a UK government scientific adviser.
"And I mean, by no means what we have done in Europe is perfect, these governments are probably reacting a little bit slowly, but they are at least reacting, they are doing what they can to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed... and I think this is clearly what's needed in the US."
Read the full story here:
From CNN's Aditi Sangal
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance in late summer to focus on testing symptomatic people, which “put a pale on testing for a number of weeks,” White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx says
“I can't tell you how strongly I believe that symptomatic testing and contact tracing is less than half of the equation. And unless you get the other half of the equation, you're not going to stop community spread. And so that did put a pale on testing for a number of weeks,” she told CNN.
Some background: On Aug. 24, the CDC website said: "If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms, you do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one."
However, on in September, it updated its guidelines to stress that anyone who has been in contact with an infected person should be tested for coronavirus.
Birx has been a proponent of testing and says she believes “testing alone is a public health intervention.”
“If you constantly are testing people and isolating the positives, then you have a very different outcome. If you look at the universities that had mandatory testing, they ended up with less than 1% of their student body infected. Ones that did the testing the way we were doing it in America, primarily focused on symptomatics, contact tracing, isolating and quarantining, they had 8 to 10% of their student body infected,” she explained.
Her big worry is whether the messaging and communication went wrong. That is why, she says, she started to travel around the country to understand what people were “hearing when we were speaking” and improve dialogue and partnership to tackle the pandemic.
Watch more:
From CNN's Sarah Dean and Sebastian Shukla, in London
If you are just joining us, there's a lot going on in Europe. Here the latest:
"I must say that the news in recent days about a vaccine is very positive and we think that there will be vaccine approvals by December or at least at the very beginning of next year and then of course vaccinations can begin,” Merkel said.
But it's not all good news:
From CNN's Health’s Jamie Gumbrecht
Pfizer and BioNTech said they will request an emergency use authorization for their coronavirus vaccine from the US Food and Drug Administration today.
This is the first coronavirus vaccine to seek a regulatory OK in the United States. The companies said in a statement that their vaccine candidate, known as BNT162b2, will potentially be available for use in high-risk populations in the United States by the middle to end of December.
“Filing in the US represents a critical milestone in our journey to deliver a COVID-19 vaccine to the world and we now have a more complete picture of both the efficacy and safety profile of our vaccine, giving us confidence in its potential,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
The submission to the FDA is based on results from the Phase 3 clinical trial of Pfizer’s vaccine, which began in the United States on July 27 and enrolled more than 43,000 volunteers. The final analysis from the trial found the coronavirus vaccine was 95% effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns, Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, announced this week. The submission also includes safety data on about 100 children ages 12 to 15.
About 42% of global participants and 30% of US participants in the Phase 3 study have racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, the companies said in a news release, and 41% of global and 45% of U.S. participants are ages 56 to 85.
Dr. Paul Offit, who is on FDA's vaccine advisory committee, explains how the approval process works:
From CNN's Vasco Cotovio, in London
A "very substantial" part of the Spanish population could be vaccinated in the first half of 2021, according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
His comments follow German Chancellor Angela Merkel's announcement that she expects a coronavirus vaccine to be approved in Europe in December, or "very soon after the turn of the year."
"Spain will be the first European country, together with Germany, to have a vaccination plan. We’ve been working since the month of September. We are ready,” Sanchez said.
The Prime Minister added that a large majority of the vaccines would be acquired through the European Union. The bloc has been moving towards coordinating the purchase and delivery of vaccines, to be shared equally among its member states, based on population numbers.
"The EU has already signed three contracts with pharmaceuticals. Our country would be entitled to 10% of contracted doses. We have a hopeful horizon," he said, adding that "any euphoria must be compensated by caution.”
