December 9 coronavirus news

With news that two United Kingdom health workers had allergic reactions to the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, White House vaccine chief Moncef Slaoui said Wednesday that the US Food and Drug Administration will likely consider this information as it makes its determination on emergency use authorization.

National Health Service England Wednesday said that people with a “significant history of allergic reaction” to vaccine, medicine or food or those who have been advised to carry an adrenaline autoinjector should not be given this vaccine in the UK. 

Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, said at a news briefing that people with a history of severe allergic reaction had been excluded from the clinical trials, so he said, the adverse reactions from the two health professionals was “new news.”

The FDA will ultimately determine if people with severe allergic reactions should be allowed to get the vaccine or not.

“The expectation will be that subjects with known severe allergic reactions should not take the vaccine, until we understand exactly what happened here,” Slaoui said. 

CNN's Phil Black reports. Watch below:

Over half – 53% – of Americans have said that they would likely get a first-generation Covid-19 vaccine as soon as it’s available, according to new poll results from Axios-Ipsos, released Wednesday. 

This number has increased from 51% before Thanksgiving and 38% in early October, Ipsos said.

Most people – 69% – said they were more likely to take the vaccine if it had been proven safe and effective by public health officials. And 67% and 65%, respectively, said they would likely take one if it had a 90% or more effectiveness rate, or it had been on the market for a few months.  

Sixty percent said that they would be likely to take it after being presented with a situation where Presidents Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton took the vaccine publicly. This was “an improvement over baseline but not as convincing as the safety arguments,” Ipsos said. 

The Axios-Ipsos poll is based on a nationally representative sample of 1,101 American adults and was conducted between December 4 and 7.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Wednesday that he has tested positive for coronavirus and has no symptoms.

Wolf’s wife Frances has been tested and the couple is awaiting her results, according to a statement. Wolf is currently isolating at home and received his results after a routine test.

Wolf will continue to govern remotely, the statement said.

More than 278,000 courses of the two antibody treatments that have received emergency use authorization to treat Covid-19 have gone out to medial facilities, according to US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The treatments, made by Eli Lilly & Co. and Regeneron, are for non-hospitalized patients.

Azar, who spoke at an Operation Warp Speed briefing Wednesday, said that the administration is working to send out more. 

Azar also encouraged people who have recovered from Covid-19 in the past three months to donate their plasma. As of the end of November, nearly 106,000 people with Covid-19 have been treated with plasma from recovered patients, according to UScovidplasma.org. 

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he’d gladly get the first Covid-19 vaccine after authorization, if for no other reason than to demonstrate to Americans that he has “supreme confidence” in the integrity of the vaccine approval process and the quality of the Covid-19 vaccines.

The Operation Warp Speed team said they were so focused on getting the vaccine out to Americans that they hadn’t thought about who would get the actual first shot.

“We’ve been so focused on speed, getting it out, and deferring to the governors,” Azar said.

“We probably do need to ah, make a plan for, who’s going to get it first visibly,” said Gen. Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed.

“We’re all going to be available, if it’s appropriate at the time to receive the shot,” Perna said. 

More on the vaccine: Perna said that 2.9 million doses of vaccine will be distributed in the first shipment from Pfizer if the emergency use authorization is granted by the US Food and Drug Administration. 

Perna said that there were initially 6.4 million doses the federal government expected to receive from Pfizer in the first shipment. He separated 500,000 doses for reserve supply, then separated that number in half because the Pfizer vaccine requires two doses to be effective, bringing the total in the first shipment to 2.9 million doses.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) will meet with member states this week to to discuss preparations for a vaccine as the Americas region experiences its highest levels of new Covid-19 cases, the group's director, Dr. Carissa Etienne, said Wednesday.

Etienne said "no vaccine has been approved across our region yet," but added that a "number of vaccine candidates are under consideration." 

Speaking during an information session, she warned that when the vaccine is first available to be distributed, there will not be enough for everyone immediately.

She urged "now is not the time to relax," as the region faces more than 28.5 million cases and at least 753,000 deaths due to Covid-19.

Among the South American countries, Etienne said Brazil is reporting the highest number of new Covid-19 cases with hospitals at capacity in some areas —putting the entire health system under strain. 

"These figures and trends make it clear that our region must re-double preventive measures, especially in preparation for the year-end holidays," Etienne said. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to "join the rest of the Senate" in bipartisan stimulus negotiations, while describing last night's proposal from the White House as "an encouraging sign that the Republican leadership is moving in the right direction by endorsing the size of the gang of eight’s bill."

Schumer praised the price tag proposed by the White House but criticized certain aspects of the proposal, including "an unacceptably low amount" of unemployment benefits in exchange for the $600 direct payments included.

In encouraging McConnell to sit down and negotiate, Schumer said, "That’s where the real action is and where bipartisan agreement on the basic concepts will ultimately be forged."

Schumer further praised Biden's picks, including Gen. Lloyd Austin for secretary of Defense and Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services secretary, and chastised his Republican colleagues for holding Biden's nominees to different standards than Trump's.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said there will be enough vaccine for any American who wants one by the end of the second quarter of 2021.

Twenty million Americans should be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of 2020, 50 million by the end of January and at least 100 million should be vaccinated by the end of the first quarter, Azar said at an Operation Warp Speed briefing Wednesday.

Characterizing the results from the US Food and Drug Administration’s assessment of the Pfizer vaccine trial as “more good news,” Azar said people still do need to wear a mask, wash hands, avoid crowds and keep physical distance to stop the spread of Covid-19.

“Even as we have such a bright future ahead, we face extremely concerning trends in the spread of the virus,” Azar said. “Hospitalization rates are now at the highest they have been during the pandemic. We are so close to being able to protect millions of Americans from this virus with the vaccine. For now, we need to double down on the steps that can keep us all safe.”

Operation Warp Speed, which is overseeing the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in the US, announced Wednesday that it has approved supply shipments in advance of the anticipated Pfizer vaccine. 

Items like syringes, needles, and alcohol wipes should begin going out today and through the end of the week, officials told reporters on a press call.

The news comes ahead of tomorrow's crucial meeting of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee that will consider authorizing emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine.