January 14 coronavirus news

More than 1.3 million people in the United States have received two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to data posted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday.

In total, over 11 million doses have been administered to 9.7 million people. More than 30 million doses have been distributed in total.

Of those 11 million doses, about 6.5 million come from Pfizer/BioNTech, and 4.6 million come from Moderna. 

Pfizer’s vaccine, given in two doses 21 days apart, began rolling out on December 14. A week later came Moderna’s, with two doses administered 28 days apart.

US President-elect Joe Biden promised Thursday to help elementary and middle schools open to in-person learning within the first three months of his administration by helping schools stay clean and improve air circulation.

Researchers are increasingly finding that it’s shared, unfiltered air that is helping spread the coronavirus the most -- which is why people are advised to stay out of enclosed spaces with others, to open windows, and to meet outside if at all possible.

Biden noted this, too, as he laid out his $1.9 trillion pandemic recovery plan.

Roughly twice as many women as men are getting vaccinated for Covid-19, according to CNN’s analysis of data from a dozen states that publish demographic information online.

In at least three of these states -- Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Nebraska – records that include gender say women account for more than seven in 10 people vaccinated. The percentage of men did not break 39% in any of the states included in CNN’s analysis.

Experts say this may reflect who has been eligible early in the vaccine rollout: health care workers and older adults.

Women represent 76% of full-time health care workers, according to a 2019 report by experts from the US Census Bureau. Life expectancy in 2019 was 76.3 years for men and 81.4 years for women, according to figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last month.

However, national polls have repeatedly shown that women in the general population are slightly less willing to receive a vaccine than men. The reasons for this are “still a bit of a puzzle,” said Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew Research Center. 

Decades of research have shown that "men and women sometimes approach risk a little bit differently," she added.

States that publish Covid-19 vaccine demographics and included in CNN’s analysis are: Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.

US President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday evening outlined a $1.9 trillion emergency legislative package to fund a nationwide vaccination effort and provide economic relief to Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The two-step proposal will be called the American Rescue Plan. It includes direct cash payments, extended unemployment insurance, rent relief, food assistance, keeping essential front-line workers on the job, and aid to small businesses.

It allocates more than $400 billion toward addressing the pandemic, including $160 billion in funding for a national vaccination program and expanded testing, among other measures.

The proposal also includes $1,400 stimulus checks for Americans and extending and expanding unemployment benefits through September.

Read more about the package here.

Watch President-elect Biden discuss details of his relief plan:

A former Trump administration whistleblower said public trust has suffered over the vaccine rollout.

Bright, formerly the head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, resigned from his post at the National Institutes of Health last year after filing a whistleblower complaint alleging that his early warnings about the coronavirus were ignored and his caution about hydroxychloroquine led to his removal.

He said vaccine manufacturing doesn’t always go exactly as planned.

“Making vaccines is very difficult. It's biology, things will go wrong, regardless how much effort and attention and quality oversight you put on it, they will go wrong,” Bright, who is a member of President-elect Biden's Covid-19 task force, said.

“As we go forward, we want to make very sure that we lay out the challenges and the areas where things can go wrong and when they go wrong - that's normal,” he said.

“Setting those expectations, doing our best to not over promise and under deliver on those timelines and doses is going to be really critical messaging on the vaccines and vaccination schedules to maintain the trust of the population."

New York City will be reimbursed fully for the $5.9 billion dollars spent so far fighting the coronavirus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a presentation for the city’s 2022 fiscal budget.

De Blasio said that Senator Chuck Schumer told him a deal has been reached with the incoming Biden administration for FEMA to repay 100 percent of the money the city has spent fighting Covid. Previously NYC was responsible for 25 percent and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would pick up the remaining 75 percent of costs “at some point.”

The policy shift will be retroactive to the beginning of the pandemic and will bring in an additional $1 billion dollars to the city preventing further cuts to programs like fair student funding and delaying the expansion of 3K for all, according to de Blasio.

The city has lost a total of $10.5 billion dollars in tax revenue from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022. Lost revenue, primarily from a decline in property tax revenue, has created a $5.25 billion dollar budget deficit in the proposed 2022 budget. 

DeBlasio said that city avoided cutting 22,000 jobs this fall by asking federal agencies to find cuts, which led to $1.3 billion in savings. 

“I can say right now there is no plan to move forward with layoffs. They will only be an absolute last resort,” he said.  

The coronavirus pandemic is set to knock more than a year off the average US life expectancy, and will reduce life expectancy for Black and Latino populations by three to four times more than Whites, researchers reported Thursday.

In the US, the pandemic will have a larger impact on life expectancy than a recent drug overdose epidemic that caused a startling two-year drop in life expectancy after decades of constant improvements, the researchers said.

“Estimated reductions for the Black and Latino populations are three to four times that for Whites. Consequently, COVID-19 is expected to reverse over 10 years of progress made in closing the Black−White gap in life expectancy and reduce the previous Latino mortality advantage by over 70%,” they added.

And it may be a multi-year effect. “Some reduction in life expectancy may persist beyond 2020 because of continued COVID-19 mortality and long-term health, social, and economic impacts of the pandemic,” they wrote.

The researchers used Census Bureau data and data on actual and projected deaths from the pandemic of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and the National Center for Health Statistics. They used various models and estimates for mortality rates.

“Our medium estimate indicates a reduction in US life expectancy at birth of 1.13 years to 77.48 years lower than any year since 2003,” they wrote.

“The Black and Latino populations are estimated to experience declines in life expectancy at birth of 2.10 and 3.05 years, respectively, both of which are several times the 0.68-year reduction for Whites. These projections imply an increase of nearly 40% in the Black−White life expectancy gap, from 3.6 years to over 5 years, thereby eliminating progress made in reducing this differential since 2006,” they added.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said Thursday that about half of the commonwealth's residents will now be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.

Northam said people who are 65 and up will now be prioritized along with the "Phase 1B" group that also includes frontline essential worker groups like police, firefighters, hazmat workers, teachers, and staff at childcare services as well as pre-K through 12th grade, corrections workers, grocery store workers, mail carriers and more. 

The move follows new guidance issued by US Department of Heath and Human Services on Tuesday telling states to expand vaccinations to those 65 and up, as well as those under 64 with a comorbidity.

Northam also said Virginia has distributed 100% of the doses received so far. 

The health department's dashboard shows that 215,101 people have received at least one dose as of today, with a total of 27,429 full vaccinations. The commonwealth has distributed 943,400 doses. 

Pandemic lockdowns may have affected kids in a subtle way, Chinese and US researchers reported Thursday. They found a significant rise in nearsightedness among young children in China.

Among children ages 6, 7 and 8, the researchers found that the rate of nearsightedness, or myopia, was higher in 2020 than in any of the past four years.

Nearsightedness rates did not change significantly among children 9-13, even though older children spent more time online, the US and Chinese team reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association- Ophthalmology.

It’s possible home confinement hit at an important time in vision development, where children are more sensitive to environmental changes, the team said.

The researchers analyzed results compiled from in-school vision screenings in Feicheng, China. Due to Covid-19, these vision screenings were conducted in June, after schools were shut down nationwide from January to May 2020.

The greatest increase in nearsightedness was among 6-year-olds, where the prevalence jumped from 5.7% in 2019 to 21.5% in 2020. Nearsightedness doubled among 7-year-olds over previous years, and increased 1.4 times in 8-year-olds.

They connected the increases to home confinement during Covid-19, and the change in screen time and outdoor activities.