January 11 coronavirus news

With Covid-19 hospitalizations surpassing 100,000 for 40 days in a row, officials are trying to ramp up the pace of vaccinations across the United States.

On Sunday, 129,229 people were in US hospitals with coronavirus, but the day marked only the sixth highest in pandemic history, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Experts have long said the best defenses against surging cases are preventative measures like masks and social distancing, as well as widespread vaccination. So far, at least 22.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed and nearly 6.7 million have made their way into patients' arms.

Health officials had hoped to get 20 million people vaccinated at the start of the new year, but the administration of vaccines has undergone delays and roadblocks.

Gottlieb's warning comes just days after the US crossed a grim threshold for the first time -- reporting more than 4,000 new Covid-19 deaths in a single day on Thursday. Since the pandemic began, more than 374,000 people have died in the US and more than 22.4 million people have been infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Read the full story:

RELATED

The US has reported more than 100,000 coronavirus hospitalizations 40 days in a row

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told radio station Europe 1 that “at this stage we aren’t planning a lockdown,” adding that authorities are following the coronavirus pandemic closely.

“We are looking at what’s happening around us, at other countries that are in lockdown where the virus is circulating twice, sometimes three times faster than here because the French have made a lot of efforts and we took decisions early on,” Attal said on Monday. 

Arnaud Fontanet, a government health advisor, told BFM TV Monday that to limit the spread of the virus France needs to vaccinate 10 to 15 million people by the end of March. Fontanet also said the country should consider closing its borders with the UK because the new variant of the virus first discovered in England is a “big threat.” 

France has been under fire for the sluggish pace of its vaccination campaign since it started on December 27. Only 516 people were given the jab in the first week, according to data from the French health authority on January 1. 

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said last Thursday more than 50,000 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine would be ready for use this week. 

In his New Year's Eve address, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not tolerate any "unjustified slowness" in the country's vaccination campaign.

France has been one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, with almost 68,000 deaths from the virus as of January 11, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Read more:

RELATED

Traveling to France during Covid-19: What you need to know before you go

CNN Staff

Political leaders are promising that mass vaccination campaigns will see life return to normal, as a more contagious variant of the coronavirus spreads across dozens of countries, adding urgency to the race to end the pandemic.

But vaccination efforts are rolling out slower than promised, raising doubts about an imminent way out of the crisis.

In nations where vaccines have been authorized, criticism is mounting over shortages and delays to getting shots into people's arms. And solutions devised to stretch supplies -- from administering half doses to spreading out the time between two doses -- have raised concerns from some experts.

Some governments are pointing the finger at manufacturers for bottlenecks, while vaccine developers say it's an issue of supply. Others cite complications with distribution plans and a lack of trained staff to administer shots. But most public health experts say the slow pace is the inevitable consequence of creating a new vaccine rollout in real time.

Read the full story:

RELATED

As the world begins its vaccination push, delayed rollouts draw criticism and concern

North Korea claims to have tested 13,257 people and found no positive cases of Covid-19, according to a report issued on January 8 by the World Health Organization.

The report is based on data from 15 laboratories in North Korea, which the country's Ministry of Public Health provided to WHO.

The report also said that travel restrictions in North Korea have been imposed and all points of entry are closed for an undefined period of time. 

The North Korean government has maintained that there have not been any positive cases of Covid-19 detected in the country, a claim widely questioned by experts.

The UK government will publish its Covid-19 UK Vaccines Delivery Plan on Monday, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock scheduled to hold a news conference at Downing Street in the afternoon to provide details on the program.

The plan will lay out the strategies behind the development, manufacturing and deployment of the vaccines, according to a government statement.

The Health Secretary will visit one of the seven new regional vaccination centers to see an element of the plan in action.

More than 1,000 vaccination sites have already been established across the United Kingdom, helping those who are most at risk from Covid-19 to access vaccines for free, regardless of where they live.

Mexico on Sunday reported its first case of the Covid-19 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, a Mexican Health Ministry official said.

Mexico's Director General of Epidemiology José Luis Alomía said the patient is a 56-year-old British citizen who traveled from Amsterdam to Mexico City on December 28, and then to the northeast city of Matamoros.

On Sunday, the patient was intubated in hospital. 

It's the first confirmed case of the UK variant in Mexico. Health officials have tested more than 500 suspected cases of the variant but this is the first verified case. 

Mexican health authorities are tracking cases from people who traveled on the same plane as the patient from Mexico City to Matamoros. On Sunday, two people who showed symptoms tested negative to Covid-19. Another 31 are asymptomatic and there are still 12 people who haven't been found, Alomía said.

According to the Health Ministry, at least 1,534,039 total Covid-19 cases have been recorded in Mexico, including 133,706 deaths.

The United States reported 213,905 new Covid-19 cases and 1,814 additional virus-related deaths on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The latest figures bring the nationwide total to 22,406,747 cases with at least 374,322 people dying from the virus in the US.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

Vaccine rollout: So far, 22,137,350 Covid-19 vaccine doses have been distributed, with at least 6,688,231 shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Track the US cases: 

RELATED

Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

China's northern Hebei province Sunday completed a mass testing program in an effort to contain the country's worst coronavirus flare-up in months, according to the provincial deputy mayor, Xu Jianpei.

About 17 million people were tested in the drive -- more than 10.2 million of them in the provincial capital Shijiazhuang and 6.7 million in Xingtai city, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

The mass testing began last Wednesday as both cities reported the biggest local outbreak in mainland China for months.

On Sunday, Hebei province reported 82 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, according to the country's National Health Commission. Among the new local cases, 77 were reported in Shijiazhuang, while five were confirmed in Xingtai.

Last week, China put Shijiazhuang into lockdown, imposing some of the strictest measures since the country largely contained the spread of the coronavirus in March.

Residents were barred from leaving the city and are required to self-quarantine at home for seven days after taking the compulsory Covid-19 test. All public transport has been suspended, major highways were blocked, and train and bus stations closed and flights canceled.

As part of the hunt for new coronavirus variants, an international database shows the United States ranks 61st in how quickly virus samples are collected from patients, analyzed and then posted online.

Countries with far fewer resources, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Suriname, process samples more quickly than the US does.

The median number of days from the time a sample is collected from a patient's nose until the time its genetic sequence is posted on GISAID, an independent data sharing initiative, is 85 days, according an analysis of GISAID data by the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"By the time you wait (85) days, a sequence can go from being a rare variant to being half of the circulating virus in a population," Hotez said.

Read the full story:

RELATED

Much of US data to catch newest coronavirus variants is several months old