January 5 coronavirus news

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, chief operating officer of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said hospitals and staff are doing their best to keep up as coronavirus infections soar. 

Ambulance crews in Los Angeles County were given guidance not to transport patients with little chance of survival. The order is “very specific to patients who suffered from a cardiac arrest and are unable to be revived in the field,” Smith explained. “Those patients have a very low rate of survival even if they are transported to the hospital, so at this time, it is deemed to likely be futile.”

He said emergency medical services are working to divert ambulances to hospitals with capacity to receive patients. The length of time that patients are waiting in ambulances varies from “day-to-day and hour-to-hour,” Smith said.

Smith said that the medical center has converted recovery rooms into ICU beds to double their capacity, brought in additional staff from around the country and increased health care workers’ shifts to try to keep up with demand.

The 91-year-old British man who became an internet sensation after being interviewed on CNN just after taking his first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in December has now been given his second and final dose.

Martin Kenyon told CNN on Tuesday he had taken his booster shot of the vaccine on December 29, as previously arranged with Guy's Hospital in London.

The pensioner said he is in good health and still in awe of just how much attention he keeps receiving over his vaccination, which he calls "nonsense."

Kenyon's rise to fame stems from an interview with CNN's Cyril Vanier outside of Guy's Hospital moments after he received his first shot.

The grandfather had gone to the hospital to get vaccinated on December 8, the day that the UK became the first country to rollout the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine -- a landmark moment in the coronavirus pandemic.

When asked by Vanier about how he felt, given that he was one of the first people in the UK to receive the first dose of the vaccine in December, Kenyon responded:

WATCH:

Belgium will only receive half of its expected doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine because of a “logistical issue,” a government spokesperson said at a Covid-19 briefing on Tuesday.

“The company Pfizer has only provided us with half of the expected doses for the month of January,” Yves Van Laethem said, explaining that the logistical problems in the second half of December “disrupted the delivery of the vaccine.”

Van Laethem added that this meant the country had received a little over 3,000 doses rather than the expected 6,000 doses. 

Despite this setback the government still planned to prioritize "the most fragile people,” who have “been hit the hardest by the virus,” he said. The vaccine will continue to be administered primarily to nursing home residents in two doses, he added, reminding Belgians that 60% of the country's virus deaths had taken place in those settings.

Case numbers continue to decline “in all the provinces” of the country, Van Laethem also said. Belgium at present is recording an average of 1,582 daily cases, which marks a decrease of 40% compared to the previous week.

The situation in its nursing homes is also continuing to improve "slowly and systematically" the spokesperson added.

Pope Francis will not hold the traditional baptisms in the Sistine Chapel on January 6 due to the pandemic, the Vatican said Tuesday.

“As a precaution, due to the heath situation, the traditional baptism of children presided by the Holy Father in the Sistine Chapel this year will not be celebrated,” a statement from the Vatican press office said.

The Vatican added that baptisms will be "celebrated in the respective parishes to which they belong." 

Pope Francis has traditionally baptized children in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, an occasion marking the conclusion of Christmas’ liturgical season, on the Sunday after the Epiphany.

Brooklyn Nets star forward Kevin Durant is expected to be in quarantine for seven days per league regulations and is set to miss four games after he was exposed to someone who tested positive for Covid-19, according to multiple news and sports reports including from The Athletic and ESPN.

The team announced Monday that Durant will miss Tuesday's game against the Utah Jazz due to health and safety protocols but has not indicated why.

Brooklyn currently sits tied for 10th in the NBA Eastern Conference, with a record of 3-4.

Durant has not issued any statements. Last March he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and told the Washington Post he was asymptomatic.

“I’m alive,” Durant told The Post in a May interview. “That’s it. That’s all I can tell you. I’m good. The unknown is always scary, but I had a lot of support,” he said.

Durant, who missed all of last season recovering from a torn Achilles tendon, is averaging 28.2 points per game in his first six games with the Nets after signing with Brooklyn as a free agent in 2019. 

The Nets are scheduled to host Utah Tuesday and Philadelphia Thursday, then face Memphis on the road Friday before returning home for a tipoff with Oklahoma City on Sunday.

CNN has reached out to the NBA and the Nets for comment.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has canceled a January trip to India, “in light of the national lockdown announced last night, and the speed at which the new coronavirus variant is spreading," according to a Downing Street statement.

It added that Johnson spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the phone on Tuesday morning, saying that he "hopes to be able to visit India in the first half of 2021, and ahead of the UK’s G7 Summit that Prime Minister Modi is due to attend as a guest."

“The leaders underlined their shared commitment to the bilateral relationship, and to continuing to build on the close collaboration between our countries -- including in response to the pandemic," the statement went on.

On Tuesday, the UK government said that is currently reviewing measures to restrict international travel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held a phone call in which they discussed cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, with an “emphasis on possible prospects for joint production of vaccines," according to a statement from the Kremlin on Tuesday.

"It was agreed to continue contacts on this topic between the ministries of health and other specialized structures of the two countries,” the Kremlin said.

A German government press officer who confirmed the call said that the "focus was the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic." 

No further information was made available by the German government press office.

The economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic has put an end to five consecutive years of job recovery in Spain, data released by the country’s Employment Ministry on Tuesday showed.

Some 724,532 more people were unemployed at the end of December 2020 than were a year earlier, according to the data.

Spain ended 2020 with an unemployment rate of 15.8% -- an increase from last year’s figure of 14.1%.

The numbers put an end to a job recovery rate that started in 2014, following a soar in unemployment as a result of the 2008 financial crash.

“Unlike what happened with the previous crisis, the employment policies put in place throughout this year were able to soften the impact of Covid-19 over the jobs market,” said Joaquín Pérez Rey, Spain's Secretary of State for Jobs and the Social Economy, on Tuesday.

The Covaxin vaccine, which was developed by labs in India and given emergency approval on Sunday, will be tested on children as young as two, pending approval from India’s drug regulatory body, according to the developer and manufacturer Bharat Biotech.

Bharat Biotech's chairman Krishna Ella said at a news conference on Monday that the company was planning to submit a proposal to India's drug regulatory body soon on its plan to start a clinical trial that would include 2- to 15-year-olds.

Covaxin is currently still in Phase 3 trials and there are questions that remain about how it could have been approved without the release of those trials' efficacy data. 

In a news release Sunday, Bharat Biotech said Covaxin's Phase 3 trial started in mid-November, with a goal to include 26,000 volunteers.

India's health minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan tweeted late on Sunday that the emergency use authorization (EUA) for Covaxin is "differently conditional -- in clinical trial mode."

Children above the age of 12 are already a part of the Phase 3 trials but Bharat Biotech hopes to establish the vaccine’s effectiveness among children by testing lower age groups, according to Ella. 

Bharat Biotech said that it intends to sell their vaccine to the United States, and will specifically target it for the vaccination of children there, said Ella.

The company has 20 million doses of the vaccine currently in stock, with the capacity to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses across four manufacturing facilities.

Regarding the timeline of the vaccine's rollout, Ella said: “I would love to launch it the earliest possible time ... but it is not in our hands."