January 7 coronavirus news

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he needs just twelve more weeks to vaccinate the entire country, after reaching an agreement with Pfizer that will speed up deliveries into Israel of the US company’s coronavirus vaccine.

Netanyahu, who is due in court Wednesday, where he is expected to enter a plea in his trial on corruption charges, is quickly making Israel’s vaccination program the key plank of his re-election campaign. He faces the voters on March 23 -- just four days before the Passover Seder, one of the most important nights in the Jewish calendar.

New tougher regulations come into effect across the country at midnight tonight (5pET) in an effort to bring down what have been rapidly rising numbers of new cases. Netanyahu called on Israelis to make “one last big effort” and stick to the stricter closure rules.

Two clusters of the coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK have been detected in France, the Health Ministry said on Thursday. The discovery comes as Prime Minister Jean Castex announced an extension of border closures between the UK and France. 

A total of 19 cases of the variant have been identified in the country, including one cluster in the central French region of Ile-de-France, and the other in Brittany, west of the country, the ministry said in a statement.

The border between Britain and France will remain closed “until further notice,” with only specific categories of people able to travel -- provided they meet a negative coronavirus test before entering the country -- Castex said in a press conference.

On December 20, France closed its border with Britain after a new Covid-19 variant was found in the UK. Two days later, Castex said French citizens, residents and those with a "legitimate reason" can enter as long as they can show proof of a negative Covid-19 test.

Coronavirus has claimed the lives of 66,841 people in France, according to the latest figures released by the Health Authority on Thursday. A total of 2,727,321 people have been infected by the virus since the start of the pandemic.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday that Mexico is willing to vaccinate its undocumented citizens in the US -- though he didn't elaborate on how it would be carried out. 

His comments come after Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts answered a reporter's question Monday about whether undocumented immigrants working in meat processing plants would be vaccinated: "You're supposed to be a legal resident of the country to be able to be working in those plants so I do not expect any illegal immigrants will be part of the vaccine with that program," Ricketts said.

A member of Ricketts' communications team added in a tweet Monday that "while the federal government is expected to eventually make enough vaccine available for everyone in the country, Nebraska is going to prioritize citizens and legal residents ahead of illegal immigrants.”

Robert Velasco, a senior Mexican diplomat for North America, tweeted a letter from the Mexican consul to the Governor of Nebraska Thursday. The letter stressed that many Mexican nationals were an "essential" part of Nebraska's meatpacking industry and that a high percentage were undocumented with limited access to healthcare, making them very vulnerable.

The letter also stated:

Officials in Texas and Connecticut have announced that the UK variant of Covid-19 has been identified in their states.

The variant appears to spread more easily, although there's no evidence that it's any more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Harris County Public Health in Texas said in a statement Thursday the first patient was a male between 30 and 40 with no travel history, which implies the variant has been transmitted locally. 

He is “stable, in isolation, and will remain there until cleared by public health officials.” The health department said it is finding close contacts, quarantining them, and conducting a “thorough investigation” with state health authorities.

Later, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said health officials in his state had identified two cases of the variant, which would bring the count for the US to at least 56 cases.

“The two individuals are between the ages of 15 and 25 and both reside in New Haven County. Both individuals recently traveled outside Connecticut – one to Ireland and the other to New York State – and both developed symptoms within 3 to 4 days of their return,” Lamont’s office said in a statement.

“Genetic sequencing of the virus has confirmed that the two cases are unrelated. The individuals’ specimens were collected earlier this month and subsequently tested positive.”

The new variant can only be identified with genomic sequencing, an extra step to the testing that diagnosis infection in people.

 But experts say there may be many more cases that have been circulating unidentified.

At least eight states have now confirmed a case of the variant. The others are California, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

One person is dying from Covid-19 in Los Angeles every eight minutes, according to a new tweet from the county.

Over 11,000 Los Angeles County residents have died of Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. More than 5,000 of those deaths have occurred in the past two months, data from the LA County Department of Public Health shows. 

“People who were otherwise leading healthy, productive lives are now passing away because of a chance encounter with the COVID-19 virus," LA County Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Wednesday, adding that the county is seeing more than 200 deaths each day.

Cases have increased 941% since November 1 and so far, the rate of new cases in January is double what it was in December, according to Ferrer. In the past two months, the positivity rate in LA County has jumped from 3.8% to 21.8%.

Hospitalizations are 10 times higher than they were on November 1, and Health Services Director Christina Ghaly warns that yet another surge is expected within the next two weeks. More than 8,000 people are currently hospitalized, with 20% in intensive care units and 19% on ventilators.

Los Angeles County hospitals are still operating in contingency care, but given the overwhelming demand, could venture into crisis care mode. Should that occur, patients could be transferred to other areas and all hospitals will be required to halt elective surgeries.

Patients in intensive care units in the United Kingdom could soon receive drugs typically used to treat rheumatoid arthritis after clinical trials found they can help save lives and reduce time in hospital by 10 days, the Department of Health said Thursday. 

Results from the government-funded clinical trial — published online on Thursday, but not yet peer-reviewed — showed the drugs, Tocilizumab and Sarilumab, reduced the relative risk of death by 24%, when either were administered to patients within 24 hours of entering intensive care, the Department of Health said in a press release. They also reduced time in hospital by an average of seven to 10 days.

"This is a significant step forward for increasing survival of patients in intensive care with Covid-19. The data shows that tocilizumab, and likely sarilumab, speed up and improve the odds of recovery in intensive care, which is crucial for helping to relieve pressure on intensive care and hospitals and saving lives,” England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam said.

The government will update its guidance on Friday to encourage the use of these drugs for Covid-19 patients in intensive care. The drugs are typically available in UK hospitals.

During the trial, the drugs were administered in addition to a corticosteroid, such as dexamethasone, which is already provided in the standard of care, the press release said.  

Patients receiving the current standard of care alone experienced a mortality rate of 35.8%. This was reduced to 27.3% using tocilizumab or sarilumab, a 24% relative reduction in risk of mortality.

The US Covid-19 vaccine rollout needs a couple of weeks to catch up, and if that doesn’t happen, it’s time to make changes, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said on Thursday. 

The rollout has been slow, with just 5.3 million doses administered of the 17.3 million doses distributed in the United States, as of Wednesday.

Speaking on NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday. Fauci noted that it’s early in the distribution process. and hiccups were always expected. 

 The other unfortunate thing, he said, was that the rollout began during the holiday season, “and that’s the reason why things start slow,” he added. 

“I think it would be fair to just observe what happens in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “If we don’t catch up on what the original goal was, then we really need to make some changes about what we’re doing.

“We just need to give a little bit (of) slack – not a lot – but enough to say, well, we’re past the holiday season, now let’s really turn the afterburners on.” 

The US has the highest number of Covid-19 cases worldwide, with a total of 21.3 million cases reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called on European countries to intensify coronavirus measures as the region deals with a new variant that was first detected in the UK.

WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said Thursday that further measures were needed to "flatten the steep vertical line" of rising cases in some countries.

While the variant appears to spread more easily than others, there's no evidence that it's any more deadly or causes more severe disease.

Health officials have also downplayed the possibility that coronavirus vaccines won't work against the variant.

But in the UK, health workers are struggling with a steep rise in cases and deaths. The country recorded a total of 1,041 further deaths on Wednesday, as well as 62,322 new cases.

"This is an alarming situation, which means that for a short period of time we need to do more than we have done and to intensify the public health and social measures to be certain we can flatten the steep vertical line in some countries," Kluge said.

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WHO calls for more intensified measures to fight UK coronavirus variant

London “may run out of [hospital] beds” in the “next few days” due to the surge in Covid-19 cases in the capital, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Thursday.

The UK is currently grappling with a devastating wave of the pandemic. On Wednesday, it recorded its highest daily increase in coronavirus-related deaths since April, with a total of 1,041 fatalities registered. The country is currently under lockdown, with restrictions imposed across all four nations.

According to data from the Greater London Authority, 14,892 people tested positive in the capital on Wednesday, compared to 62,322 that same day for the entire United Kingdom.