December 8 coronavirus news

“We are comfortable we will be getting vaccines to the people who need them as soon as possible,” Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser of Operation Warp Speed, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos when asked whether there is anything that the government or operation could do to help supply chain issues.

Slaoui said this was because “there are vaccine doses from Moderna, there are vaccine doses from Pfizer,” adding that they will work with Pfizer to try to increase their capacity.

Slaoui's comments come after The New York Times on Monday first reported that the Trump administration turned down an offer from Pfizer to buy more doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in the late summer.

Slaoui today said that summer was not the time to buy more vaccine doses – and that the right time to do that is when it becomes clear how well the vaccines perform.  

Slaoui said that during the summer, “If somebody came to us and said, ‘Let’s buy more of this vaccine or that vaccine,’ no one reasonably would buy more from any one of those vaccines because we didn’t know which one would work and which one may be better than the other.”

He said that – given the strategy they have taken – once the vaccine’s performance was known would be the right time to order more doses, “which we may be doing.”

“And frankly, the constructive thing to do, if one of the suppliers has challenges producing enough vaccine doses, is to roll (up) our sleeves and help ensure that capacity can be increased and have more vaccine doses,” Slaoui said.

He also said that there were two more vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson completing Phase 3 trials in January, “and most likely, I hope,” be available for use in February. 

“We have tens of millions of doses of those vaccines, you know, participating, to the volume of vaccines we need to immunize the US population as we promised, all of it by the middle of the year 2021 – and that’s still on track,” Slaoui said.

The Serum Institute of India (SII) has sought emergency use approval from regulators for a domestically produced "Covishield" shot using the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

India's Health Ministry said on Tuesday that "some of the vaccine candidates may get licensed in the next few weeks."

"The Prime Minister has interacted with all vaccine manufacturers and scientists. There are vaccine candidates in the clinical trial stage in India,” Rajesh Bhushan, a senior health ministry official said.

The SII, based in the western city of Pune, applied for emergency authorization on Monday, and has a deal in place with AstraZeneca to produce and distribute its vaccine domestically.

“Once we get a green signal from our scientists, we'll launch a massive production of the vaccine. We've made all the preparations and drawn an outline to ramp up production of vaccine and to make it available to each and every person in shortest possible time,” Bhushan added.

On Monday, SII CEO Adar Poonawala tweeted: "As promised, before the end of 2020, @SerumInstIndia has applied for emergency use authorization for the first made-in-India vaccine, COVISHIELD. This will save countless lives."

As cases of Covid-19 continue to rise across the United States, a poll of firefighters in the Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) found that nearly 55% of respondents would not get a Covid-19 vaccine if offered by the department, their union president told CNN Monday.

Despite research that shows firefighters were 15 times more likely to be infected, a majority of those who took the poll declined the offer of a vaccine.

Over 2,000 firefighters, or about 25% of the department's approximately 8,200 members, responded to the poll, according to Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro.

The poll, which closed on December 5, asked firefighters, "Will you get the COVID-19 Vaccine from Pfizer when the Department makes it available?" with "Yes" or "No" answers, according to the results provided to CNN by Ansbro.

Read more here:

RELATED

55% of FDNY firefighters wouldn't get a Covid-19 vaccine if offered by the department, poll finds

The United Kingdom has begun administering the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outside clinical trials, launching a sprawling public health campaign to vaccinate tens of millions of people in just a matter of months. It marks a significant turning point in the fight against Covid-19, months into a pandemic that has left more than 1.5 million dead.

Margaret "Maggie" Keenan, who turns 91 next week, became the first person in the world to receive an authorized, fully-vetted coronavirus vaccine.

"It's the best early birthday present I could wish for," Keenan said after receiving the jab in Coventry, England, dressed in a festive "Merry Christmas" T-shirt. "It means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year."

The second patient to receive a shot was an 81-year-old man named William Shakespeare (yes, you read that right).

Keenan and Shakespeare were among a handful of people across Britain -- those aged over 80, nursing home staff and health care workers -- who were administered doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday morning, a week after the UK leapfrogged the rest of Europe and the United States to become the first Western nation to approve it.

Read the full story here.

A version of this story appeared in the December 8 edition of CNN's Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction newsletter. Sign up here to receive the need-to-know headlines every weekday.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of vaccine recipient William Shakespeare. This has been corrected.

Australia will extend restrictions on overseas travel until March next year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country's Health Minister Greg Hunt said Tuesday.

The restrictions limit cruise vessels' movement and outbound international travel. Retail stores at international airports in Australia are also subject to restrictions in their operations.

Hunt said the government has advised extending the restrictions on overseas travel until March 17, 2021, because the pandemic has posed "an unacceptable public health risk."

Australia's Governor General David Hurley will consider the proposed extension within this week, Hunt said.

"The Australian Government is working closely with state and territory agencies and the cruise industry, to develop a framework for the staged resumption of cruise ships in a manner that is proportionate to the public health risk," he added.

Michael Fox, a pediatric doctor at an Accidents and Emergency unit in Cardiff, Wales, was one of the first people in the world to get the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outside of clinical trials.

The 32-year-old doctor got his vaccine at a clinic on Tuesday morning. He told CNN the injection felt just like a flu shot, nothing more than a scratch.

On his way to the vaccination center in the Welsh capital earlier this morning, Fox said he was thinking about all the researchers, scientists and volunteers who helped make this day a reality.

The Welsh government is planning to administer 6,000 doses by the end of this week. For now, immunization is available by invitation only for those aged 80 and over, for care home staff, and health and social care workers.The demand for the vaccine is huge and to avoid people simply showing up to the center, the Welsh government has asked CNN not to release its exact location.

Most of those coming to the facility this morning were nurses, doctors and others who are working on the front lines of the pandemic.

As patients across the UK become some of the first in the world to receive a coronavirus vaccine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Tuesday that cases are still rising in some parts of the country, telling citizens that now is not the time to relax.

“It’s amazing to see the vaccine come out, it’s amazing to see this tremendous shot in the arm for the entire nation, but we can’t afford to relax now,” Johnson said during a visit to a newly-opened vaccination center in London. 

“It is important for people to understand that the virus is alas still rising in some parts of the country,” the Prime Minister continued, adding that the vaccine will “gradually make a huge difference” to the national infection rate. 

The UK is the first Western nation to begin vaccinating its citizens against Covid-19, less than a week after approving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

Asked whether he would be receiving the vaccine, the Prime Minister told reporters that he is “not in the priority group” outlined by the British government, but encouraged those who are eligible to take the vaccine. 

“I would just say to all those who are scared, don’t be…you see people take the vaccine this morning, in large numbers, people are going to be taking it in the next few days and and weeks and there is nothing to be nervous about,” Johnson said.

Hong Kong has announced new measures to suppress the flow of people amid a fourth wave of Covid-19 in the city.

Starting on Thursday, restaurants will only be allowed to provide takeaway services between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following day, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan announced during a press conference. 

Restaurants will be capped at 50% of total seating capacity, while gyms, swimming pools, and sports centers will have to close until at least December 23, Chan added. 

The new measures come as Hong Kong reported another 100 Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, of which 95 were locally transmitted.

Chan also announced that the government had approved a legal framework that will give it the power to order individuals to remain at a location when they wait to receive their Covid-19 test results. 

The government will also arrange coaches to transfer all international travelers arriving in Hong Kong from outside of mainland China, Macau, and Taiwan to designated quarantine hotels to minimize the risk of community transmission, Chan said. 

Travelers will also be required to conduct a test either on day 19 or 20 after their arrival to "ensure that even in the rare situation where the incubation period of the virus exceeds that of the quarantine period, nobody will be allowed to go undetected,” she added. 

More than half of British adults say they would trust a coronavirus vaccine that has been approved for use, a Savanta ComRes poll for CNN affiliate ITV News reported last week.

Some 57% of people said they trusted a vaccine after approval, compared to 16% who said they would not trust one. Other respondents said they did not know or neither trusted nor distrusted a vaccine.

About four out of 10 (39%) respondents said they would trust a vaccine before it had gained approval, while a quarter (26%) said they would not. About a third (36%) did not know or said they neither trusted nor distrusted a pre-approval vaccine.

Nearly half (47%) of British adults said they were comfortable with Covid vaccines being developed faster than normal. Almost a quarter (23%) said they were not, with the rest of the respondents saying they did not know or were neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.

The pollster surveyed 2,090 British adults from November 20-22, 2020 -- before Tuesday's Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine roll-out in the UK was approved.

The margin of error on the results is +/- 2 percentage points. Responses may not total 100% due to rounding.