January 11 coronavirus news

After receiving his second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, pool asked President-elect Joe Biden if he has confidence in his coronavirus task force given reports that he is disappointed in their progress. Biden said he was and outlined his priorities.

"I do," he said, reiterating that he will be unveiling his Covid-19 plan on Thursday. Biden said that 3-4,000 people dying per day is "beyond the pale." 

The President-elect added that he will be meeting virtually with his Covid-19 team today as well.

"I'm confident we can get done what we have to get done," Biden said.

Watch Biden receive his second Covid-19 vaccine dose here:

Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, the German company that partnered with Pfizer to make a Covid-19 vaccine, said on Monday that he has not yet received his Covid-19 vaccine.

But Sahin said he hopes to have his team members vaccinated in the coming weeks.

“We are not yet allowed to take our vaccine, but we found a way to make the vaccine available also to the manufacturing teams and we will hopefully get the team members — and maybe myself also — vaccinated in the coming weeks,” Sahin told CNBC’s Meg Tirrell on Squawk Box.

The spread of coronavirus is increasing, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday, likely due to indoor, maskless gatherings around the December holidays.

Murphy announced 5,042 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, and 51 additional deaths.

Hospitalizations in the state are holding steady, with 3,653 people hospitalized with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases. Of those hospitalized, 649 are in intensive care.

Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli reiterated on Monday that hospitalizations and deaths are so-called "lagging indicators," and may yet go up as a result of infections transmitted last month.

Persichilli added that the state has reported two new cases of Covid-related multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome in children.

According to the governor, there have been 214,443 doses of Covid-19 vaccine distributed statewide, and 14,984 of those were administered as a second dose. Nearly 15,000 people have received a full course of vaccine statewide.

Note: These numbers were released by the state’s health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project. 

Nearly 9 million people have received their first doses of vaccine against coronavirus in the United States and nearly 25.5 million doses of vaccine have now been distributed, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

As of Monday morning, 35.3% of doses distributed have been administered, compared with 30.2% on Friday.

The CDC said 25,480,725 doses of vaccine had been distributed as of 9 a.m. Monday and 8,987,322 people had received their first doses of vaccine.

The CDC also said Monday that 4,239,775 of the distributed doses had gone to the federal program for long-term care facilities, and 937,028 people in such facilities had received their first doses.

The US continues to struggle to catch up to the promised target of 20 million people vaccinated by the end of 2020. States have said they don’t have enough staff or money to administer coronavirus vaccines at the needed rate.

States are increasingly abandoning guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and taking their own approaches to giving people coronavirus vaccines, a new analysis finds.

“Overall, we find states are increasingly diverging from CDC guidance and from each other, suggesting that access to COVID-19 vaccines in these first months of the U.S. vaccine campaign may depend a great deal on where one lives,” the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health care policy, said in a report issued Monday.

The report finds 40 states are still in Phase 1a either fully or partly. Ten states and Washington, DC, are in Phase 1b. Only Michigan has moved to at least part of Phase 1c.

While all states and Washington, DC, are giving priority to health care workers and long-term care residents and staff in Phase 1a of their plans as recommended, they are increasingly taking their own tacks in Phase 1b and 1c of the rollout. Ten states and Washington, DC, have moved to Phase 1b.

The Kaiser analysis found that 10 states have added first responders, including law enforcement and firefighters, the Phase 1a. These states are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming. Utah added K-12 teachers and child care workers, while Louisiana limited health care workers to hospital staff only.

Four states added seniors to the 1a group: people 65 and older in Georgia and Florida, 75 and up in Tennessee, and 80-plus in West Virginia.

Fourteen states follow CDC advice precisely on who should be in Phase 1b, while 30 add extra age groups and others including educators, prisoners and the homeless.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was still unclear the extent to which being vaccinated reduces one’s risk of transmitting coronavirus.

"We know that the vaccine reduces your chances of getting Covid and then of being hospitalized or dying from Covid," Hancock said.

"We very much hope that it has a significant downward impact on that transmissibility after you are vaccinated," he added.

Hancock made the comments at a news briefing Monday where he announced that approximately 2.3 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered his annual State of the State address from the Capitol’s War Room, saying the setting was fitting because "we are at war, a war that continues today" with Covid-19.  

"This is a national challenge. It is a war," Cuomo said. "And like every war before, it must be financed by Washington."

He placed blame on the federal government for the state’s damage from Covid-19, calling the federal government’s response to the virus "an act of gross negligence."

Cuomo said the state’s main areas of focus for the coming year are "crushing Covid" and addressing "the short-term economic consequences for our state." He pressed the federal government to help fund recovery efforts. 

Cuomo will expand on his plans for the state in three more speeches in the coming days.

Around 2.3 million people have already been vaccinated across the UK, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Monday.

Hancock said the UK was on track to deliver a first dose of the vaccine to “everyone in the top four cohorts” – which account for 88% of Covid-19-related deaths – by Feb.15.

He said that two-fifths of people over 80 and almost quarter of older care home residents have now received first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Israel’s Health Minister has told CNN he does not believe Israel has an obligation or responsibility to supply Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with a vaccine for the coronavirus but stressed instead co-operation on treatment to avoid a surge in new cases of Covid-19 in the Palestinian territories. 

Yuli Edelstein’s comments come after the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had held informal discussions with Israel’s Health Ministry regarding the possible supply of vaccines for the Palestinian health workforce as an “immediate priority target group.” 

“We are cooperating with the Palestinians to make sure that they get proper treatment to coronavirus patients. At this stage we are not supplying vaccines, but we do understand that it is in Israel's interest to make sure we don't get into a situation where we are vaccinated and out of trouble, and on the Palestinian side there is another surge in numbers," Edelstein said on CNN’s New Day.  

Israel is leading the world in vaccinating its people, with almost 20% of the population having received at least one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. But it has come under criticism from some human rights groups which say it has obligations under international law to provide vaccines to Palestinians as well. 

Amnesty International, for instance, said last week: “The Israeli government must stop ignoring its international obligations as an occupying power and immediately act to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are equally and fairly provided to Palestinians living under its occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” 

Groups like Amnesty point to the Fourth Geneva Convention which, among other duties of an occupying power, speaks of ensuring “measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Israel argues that the Oslo Accords, signed with the Palestinians in the 1990s, hand responsibility for health care provision for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA). 

The Director General of the Public Health Directorate at the Palestinian Ministry of Health told CNN the PA had not sought Israel’s assistance with vaccines, something that was contradicted by the President of the Union of Medical Relief Committees, Mustafa Barghouti, himself a leading Palestinian politician. He told CNN reports the PA had sought about 10,000 doses for health care workers were correct. Barghouti said the request had been rejected by Israel. 

The WHO said it was told the Israeli Health Ministry was ready to “explore the option” of immediate vaccines for medical workers in the Palestinian territories but had been told it was “currently not in a position to supply vaccines because of a shortage of vaccines in Israel.”

Edelstein told CNN: "It is our interest; it doesn't mean in any way it is our obligation or our responsibility. The Palestinians are running the Palestinian Authority … but as has been happening for the last several months, we were always ready to help with equipment, with good advice, with products or with medicine, and this sort of cooperation will continue."  

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Monday it had registered the Russian Sputnik V vaccine for what it called emergency use, with an initial batch expected to arrive in the territories within a month, according to the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which sponsored the vaccine’s development. The Health Ministry says it has also signed contracts with three other Covid-19 vaccine suppliers.