December 7 coronavirus news

The coronavirus pandemic is as bad as it’s ever been across the country, but it’s going to get even worse, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo during a briefing on Monday. 

Holiday travel and gatherings have amplified the already expected effect of cooler weather driving people indoors more. 

“You’d expect that the effect of the Thanksgiving surge would be probably another week and week and a half from now, because it’s usually two and a half weeks from the time of the event,” Fauci said. “The problem is, that’s going to come right up to the beginning of the Christmas, Hannukah potential surge.”  

There’s a surge upon a surge, Fauci said. And before anyone can even try to cope with that, people will travel over the winter holiday period and there will be more of the gatherings of family and friends that have been fueling the pandemic.

“We could start to see things really get bad in the middle of January,” Fauci predicted.

Fauci also reminded Americans that they can mitigate the spread.

“It’s such a natural thing to think, when I have family and friends over for the holidays, Christmas and Hanukkah, you get indoors you take your mask off because you're eating and drinking. And you don't realize that there may be somebody that you know, that you love, that's a friend, that's a family member, who is perfectly well with no symptoms, and yet they got infected in the community, and brought it into that small gathering that you're now having in your home,” he said.

He urged people to take the same precautions at small family gatherings that they do when they are around strangers: wear a mask, wash your hands, watch your distance and meet either outdoors in well-ventilated spaces

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a statewide positivity rate of 4.79% and ordered hospitals in the state to increase capacity by 25%. 

The positivity rate in micro-cluster areas is 6.57%, and without that portion of testing, the statewide rate is 4.27%.

There are currently 4,620 people hospitalized due to Covid-19 in New York state.

As a part of the state’s new “Surge and Flex” strategy Cuomo announced that hospitals must increase bed capacity by 25%.

When laying out the surge portion of the strategy Cuomo said that the state currently has a capacity of 54,000 beds available and that the health commissioner has the ability to increase capacity up to 50% and close elective surgeries if needed. 

If those actions are taken the state would have an estimated 75,000 hospital beds available with roughly 58,000 of them for Covid-19 patients. 

Cuomo also said that the health commissioner can open field hospitals to add beds If needed. 

The flex portion of the plan relates to balancing patient loads within hospital systems both public and private. 

“Every night we get an inventory form hospital doctor. How many patients do you have, how many ICU beds do you have. What capacity do you have?”

New York state currently has 872 patients in the ICU, and increase of 22 people. At least 477 of those patients are on ventilators, an increase of 13 people. 

Cuomo announced that an additional 80 people died due to Covid-19. 

Note: These numbers were released by the New York Governor’s office public health agency and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Two Americans waiting for a possible second round of stimulus opened up about how their livelihoods have been impacted by the pandemic.

Sean Blair was furloughed from his job at a carpet cleaning business back in March and has been dependent on the previous relief benefits. If Congress doesn't pass a Covid-19 relief package, Blair could lose his unemployments benefits days after Christmas, CNN's Poppy Harlow said.

Two of Blair's family members were also diagnosed with Covid-19 and one died.

Blair's message to Congress: "Quit playing politics with people's lives."

Blair is currently relying on his girlfriend's income and said that the stimulus relief would help him pay bills. He said that the $600 unemployment relief benefit that expired was a big help.

"Some people thought that people were just lounging around and sitting at home because they were getting extra money. That helped me pay my bills, that helped me stay on track with my mortgage, pay my homeowner's associations bills, my utilities because they're really, really high. That extra money wasn't — people used that. It wasn't just to sit around," Blair said.

Jeff Good owns three restaurants in Mississippi and was forced to lay-off a majority of his employees during the first shutdown in the spring.

Good said the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) had a short-term effect and allowed the businesses to start-up again over the summer. He’s brought back 155 employees, but is concerned about the future of his business as Covid-19 cases across the country surge and states tighten restrictions

“Sean's and mine are two sides of the same coin. I'm in the position where I'm able to provide an incredible livelihood for a lot of folks, including myself. And to no fault of our own, to Sean's, to mine, to none of us, this has happened,” Good told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

“Now we're nine months into the pandemic and we're looking in, as Sean mentioned, a really dark time… More stimulus is needed for this economy. If we don’t pay it now, we’re going to pay it more later,” Good added.

Good said that the stimulus bill is the only way to “make up” for what he has. Good said groups who had booked his restaurant for the holiday season have cancelled and now he’s back to looking at tightening his businesses. Good is hoping that a bill designated to help restaurant owners is also passed soon to offer additional relief.  

“PPP is so needed for all businesses… but we need something on top of that or else, when you go to get your bagel or you go to try to get a lunch on the corner or the mom and pop diner, we're not making it,” Good said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers are hoping to unveil legislation that would provide Covid-19 relief to millions of Americans this week.

Watch the full interview:

The Canadian government doubled its order commitment of Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine candidate, from 20 million to 40 million doses, Moderna announced in a statement Monday.

The biotechnology company said shipments of its vaccine to Canada could begin as soon as this month if regulatory approval is granted in December.

"The Canadian vaccine supply will be sourced from Moderna’s European production capacity," the statement said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he wants to move middle schools back to in-person learning as quickly as possible, and as early as January.

Improving remote learning is a constant focus of the city's Department of Education, chancellor Richard Carranza said. He has been speaking with colleagues in other large urban school systems and “generally speaking” all are seeing that “not all children are doing well” in the virtual learning environment.

He said he is proud of staff who are intervening when they feel a student is not doing as well as they could be. 

Every phase of the pandemic has provided for “imperfect” learning solutions, and he said he looks forward to the time when in person learning can return 100%. He said there is “tremendous hope on the horizon,” and its important that individuals “push through.”

He earlier said well over 150 of those schools are in full 5 days of instructions, though noted clearer numbers were come Tuesday morning.

Last month, New York schools announced it would begin phasing out hybrid learning and move toward resuming in-person classes after citywide shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, de Blasio announced students in 3K, Pre-K and grades K-5 could resume in-person classes today, but the mayor noted that the city will address when middle and high schoolers can return to in-person classes in the future.

“We want to immunize for impact,” US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Monday, when asked who should be next to be vaccinated. “We want to make sure we’re giving it to the people who are most likely to die from this virus.”

Adams said that 40% to 50% of deaths are occurring in people who are in long-term care facilities or who are older, but “we also want out health care workers who are on the frontlines to be able to get it.”

Adams said the decision about who would get the vaccine would be left up to the states, but they will receive guidance.

Some states will have to immunize their health care workers first, he said. Others will find they get greater impact by vaccinating the older people and people wither underlying health conditions that put them at increased risk for serious illness.

“But about 20 million doses, or full doses, are going to be available by the end of this year – and we’ll keep pushing vaccines out to people as quickly as we can so that we can end this pandemic,” Adams said.

He asked people to follow the three W’s: wear a mask, wash hands and watch your distance; also to avoid people outside of their household as much as possible.

“And please be patient with your leaders around the country. They’re trying to preserve hospital capacity,” Adams said, adding that the leaders want everyone who needs a bed to have access to a bed.

“That’s not going to happen if we keep engaging in behaviors that lead to the spread of the virus,” he said.

On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration will meet to decide on authorization for Pfizer's vaccine candidate.

But health officials warn that while some Americans may receive a vaccine by the end of the year, the country likely won't see any meaningful impacts until late spring.

In the meantime, experts project an incredibly challenging next few months. The US is nearing 200,000 daily coronavirus cases — and with the recent spike in cases, record hospitalizations have followed. On Sunday, 101,487 patients were in the hospital with the virus, the fifth consecutive day the US surpassed 100,000 hospitalizations.

On Saturday, the US reported more than one million new cases of Covid-19 within the first five days of December.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Americans' behavior is behind the crippling surge — and health experts warn that it could get worse as the holidays approach.

"People are going indoors, they're not minding the three W's," Azar told Fox News's Chris Wallace Sunday. "Our advice is always the same. Wash your hands, watch your distance, wear face coverings."

Azar later told ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "We're worried about people and the behaviors coming up with Christmas ... We want to make sure everyone's loved ones are there next Christmas, especially when we have so much hope of vaccines."

This morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he, too, is worried about Christmas, saying the holiday could be even more of a challenge" than Thanksgiving, since the season runs for more than a week, from before Christmas Eve to New Year's Day.

“I hope that people realize that and understand that as difficult as this is, nobody wants to modify – if not essentially shut down – their holiday season, but we are in a very critical time in this country right now.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s John Berman Monday that he has the same concerns about Christmas that he did about Thanksgiving – “only this may be even more compounded because it’s a longer holiday.”

Thanksgiving was just the end of the week and then people went back to work, Fauci said. The Christmas holiday starts several days before, goes through Christmas Day into the week after, and into New Year’s and the New Year’s holiday.

“We’ve got to not walk away from the facts and the data,” he said. “This is tough going for all of us.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he spoke with California health authorities and told them the new restrictions in the state make sense to him.

He added that when hospitals become overwhelmed, that's when you could start seeing lockdowns.

"When you reach a certain critical point of the flexibility of hospital beds, and you see more cases of Covid coming in, you could have a real challenge – and maybe even a crisis – with regard to beds and personnel to take care of the people in those beds. And that's the reason why California has certain sections looking at the possibility of a lockdown," Fauci said.

Roughly 33 million of California's 39 million residents, about 85% of the nation's most populous state, are under new stay-at-home orders

The state reported more than 30,000 new cases on Sunday, a record high for California.