January 6 coronavirus news

Upwards of 8,000 people are in Los Angeles County hospitals being treated for Covid-19, authorities said.

County officials say the situation is now "a health crisis of epic proportions.”

Another 11,841 Covid-19 infections and 258 virus-related deaths were reported in Los Angeles County on Wednesday. To date, the county has reported a total of 852,165 coronavirus cases and 11,328 fatalities.

Of the 8,023 people being treated in the hospital with the virus, 20% are in the ICU, according to the statement. While the three-day average number of coronavirus hospitalizations on November 1 was 791, that figure had increased to 7,873 on January 4.  

Health crisis: The test positivity rate in the county has also increased to 21.8% from 3.8% in November. One in five people who are tested are testing positive, according to the public health department.

"This is a health crisis of epic proportions. I am more troubled than ever before, and in part, my concern is rooted in the reality that it will take so much more for us to slow the spread given the high rate of community spread,” Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said in a statement. 

According to Dr. Ferrer, the number of people dying from the virus each day has doubled.

People’s immunity to Covid-19 lasts at least eight months after they have recovered from an infection, researchers reported Wednesday.

A study of 188 people who recovered from Covid-19 infections showed they had broad immune protection months later -- not just antibodies, but also several types of immune cells that the body musters after an infection.

While there have been worries that the antibody response fades, Dr. Jennifer Dan of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and the University of California, San Diego worked with her team to see how the immune responses held up for Covid-19 survivors. She said they found just the opposite.

Dan and her team found that peoples' bodies were producing antibodies, memory B cells, CD8 T cells, and CD4 T cells that were trained to home in on Covid-19 for as long as eight months after they became ill.

There have been reports of people getting infected twice by coronavirus, but the researchers noted that large studies showed if it happens, it’s rare.

The United States reported 132,476 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Wednesday, setting a new record high since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP).

This is the 36th consecutive day the US has remained above 100,000 current hospitalizations.

The highest hospitalization numbers according to CTP data are:

The US Food and Drug Administration has made clear that it does not plan to make any changes to Covid-19 vaccine dosing schedules in the United States -- but if any changes were made, the vaccine manufacturer would have to specifically ask the agency to adjust authorization.

CNN confirmed with the FDA on Wednesday that before any change could be made to the emergency use authorization for a vaccine, the manufacturer would need to submit data to the FDA supporting the requested change.

If changes are proposed to the Covid-19 vaccine dosing schedules in the future, "it won't be FDA that moves it," said David Benkeser, a biostatistician at Emory University whose research includes work on preventive vaccines. "They're bound by legal operations that dictate how drugs are approved in the country, and so it's not surprising to hear them say that their strong preference is to stick with what we know works."

Health officials have been speculating about the possibility of stretching vaccine supply by giving people a single dose instead of two doses, or by cutting doses in half. British officials created an uproar by saying they would consider such changes.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn and Dr. Peter Marks, who heads FDA’s vaccine division issued a statement Monday, saying that “suggesting changes to the FDA-authorized dosing or schedules of these vaccines is premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence.”

An ensemble forecast published Wednesday by the CDC projects there will be 405,000 - 438,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by January 30.

Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections a few weeks into the future. The previous ensemble forecast, published December 30, projected up to 424,000 coronavirus deaths by January 23.

At least 359,977 people have already died from Covid-19 in the US, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

At least 52 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom have been identified in the United States, according to the CDC on Wednesday.

This includes 26 cases in California, 22 cases in Florida, two cases in Colorado, and one case in Georgia and New York.

CDC says this does not represent the total number of cases circulating in the US, but rather those that have been found by analyzing positive samples. The agency cautions that its numbers, which are expected to update on Tuesdays and Thursdays, may not immediately match those of state and local health departments.

While the variant appears to spread more easily than Covid-19, there's no evidence that it's more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to CDC. 

Experts suspect there could be many more cases in the US and have criticized the country for not doing more genetic sequencing of virus samples to surveil for mutations. On Sunday, a CDC official told CNN the agency plans to more than double the number of samples it sequences over the following two weeks -- with a target of 6,500 per week.

The earliest known US sample that carried the current version of the variant was taken on December 19 in Florida, according to the genomic database GISAID. However, collection dates are not available for all samples.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday that the Covid-19 vaccine Moderna “is due to arrive in Israel” on Thursday.

Netanyahu tweeted the announcement saying, “We will give these vaccines to people who cannot go to their HMO, whether they are isolated at home or cannot go to the inoculation sites for any other reason.”

He also said he spoke to Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel several days ago.

The country is in the midst of a mass vaccination campaign, which has now seen over 1.3 million Israelis receive their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, out of a total population of about 9 million, according to Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.

Israel currently has over 60,000 Covid-19 cases according to the country’s health ministry.

Ireland has further tightened its Covid-19 lockdown measures, closing construction sites and schools across the country, Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Micheál Martin announced Wednesday, adding that such measures would be necessary "to suppress the surge and flatten the curve once again." 

Under the new restrictions all schools will close and move online until the end of January. An exception has been made for final year students, who will be allowed to attend school three days a week from January 11.

Other childcare services will also close, with exceptions made for vulnerable children and the children of frontline workers.

Non-essential construction projects will be ordered to close from 6pm on Friday, Martin added, acknowledging "how severe a measure this is on the construction sector."

On Wednesday, 7,836 new cases were recorded by Ireland’s Department of Health, and national hospitalization figures surpassed those from the first wave of the pandemic, Ireland’s Health Executive boss Paul Reid said on Twitter.

This surging case rate prompted the Irish government to re-impose Level 5 lockdown measures on December 30.

Taoiseach Martin said Wednesday that the situation in Ireland "is not dissimilar to what is happening in the UK in terms of the rapid growth in community transmission and rapid hospitalizations." 

The world — especially countries like the United States — is playing a “very dangerous game” with the novel coronavirus, giving it more chances to mutate as the virus spreads, a World Health Organization official said.

"We're playing a very dangerous game with this virus right now," Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for the coronavirus response, told CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. "What worries us is that the longer this spreads the more opportunities it has to change."

Van Kerkhove pointed out that many mutations won’t have much of an impact on the virus, but if a virus changes its genetics in just the right way, tests might not be able to detect it as easily, and vaccines might not work as well against it.

She pointed out that some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, have done a better job controlling the virus. “It’s completely up to us to be able to bring the virus under control,” she said. “The virus is controllable, including these variants.”