January 25 coronavirus news

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Good Morning America on Monday that it was a “prudent decision” for the new administration to reinstate travel restrictions.

He said that he thinks the travel ban will be important “in addition to having a situation where anybody coming into the country now is going to be required to have a negative test before they even get on the plane, when they land to have a degree of quarantine, as well as another test.” 

Some context: On Sunday, CNN reported that Biden would reinstate Covid travel restrictions on non-US citizens who have been in Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and much of Europe. The restrictions were also extended to travelers who have recently been in South Africa. The reinstating of the travel restrictions came one week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would have lifted them on Jan. 26.  

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the idea of quarantining people arriving into the country in hotels for 10 days as a Covid-19 measure is “definitely” being “looked at.”

The Prime Minister suggested that more must be done to protect people with the threat of new variants spreading from other countries saying we have "got to be able to keep that under control."

As coronavirus infections and death rates soar across the country, schools in England have been closed to most pupils since a third national lockdown began on January 5, as well as large sections of 2020. Now pressure is building on the British government to reopen them.

On Monday, Johnson said people “mustn’t assume” that schools will be closed until Easter, following recent media reports, warning decisions are dependent on Covid-19 infection rates.

He said parents and teachers will be told of any decisions “as soon as we can” but the government is not yet able to give a timeframe for when pupils will return to classrooms.

Europe continues to battle further waves of the coronavirus pandemic. Here are some of the key lines from the continent today:

A rural county in Washington state is lapping the field when it comes to distribution of the coronavirus vaccine.

Kittitas County says its experience in triaging and managing disasters, especially wildfires, is the secret to why it is outpacing the vaccine rates in the state.

"We're a fairly rural county, and we get significant weather events, mostly wildfires," said Rich Elliott, the deputy fire chief of Kittitas Valley Fire and Rescue.

"Our county has a 25-year history of just sort of everybody -- the hospital, the school districts, law enforcement, fire agencies, federal state partners -- we just cooperate."

When the pandemic started and there was a need for personal protective equipment and testing, groups working with the emergency management center banded together to respond.

Now the cross-functional team of essential workers and volunteers are working to distribute the vaccine and it's working, says Elliott, who is in charge of vaccine distribution for the county. In fact, he says a single dose hasn't been wasted.

Read more on this story here:

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A rural county in Washington state hasn't wasted a single Covid-19 vaccine dose. Here's its secret

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on NBC's "Today" show on Monday that he didn’t think that the vaccine was responsible for the plateau of Covid-19 cases yet. 

However, he said that people can’t get complacent, because the coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom is now circulating in the US and it transmits more easily from person to person. 

“The good news is what you just said, that we seem to be plateauing,” Fauci said. “The sobering news is that we cannot bring our guard up and lose the intensity of being able to use the public health measures to prevent the further spread, because if in fact the variant becomes dominant, if the variant that has greater degree of transmissibility becomes dominant, we’re going to be faced with another challenge of a virus that has a more efficient capability of spreading.”

Hong Kong has greenlit the Fosun-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine -- the first shot to be approved in the city -- according to a government statement released on Monday.

The statement said the initial batch of 1 million doses is expected to arrive in Hong Kong in late February, where on arrival the government would begin the rollout “as soon as possible.”

Some background: The approval of the Fosun-BioNTech shot comes after an advisory panel unanimously voted in favor of the vaccine for emergency use last week, where the 12-member panel were in agreement the vaccine met the safety and quality requirements in Hong Kong for emergency use.

Hong Kong’s airline Cathay Pacific said in a statement they would expect their passenger rates to reduce by nearly 60% and cargo capacity by 25% if the government does go ahead with plans.

Under the proposed plans by the government, pilots and cabin crew would be expected to face a mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine when they return from an overseas trip.

CVS, a partner in the US' federal program to vaccinate residents and staff of long-term care facilities, says it has completed the first round doses in all participating skilled nursing facilities as of Monday. The company has administered 1,039,365 doses in 7,822 skilled nursing facilities.

As part of the federal partnership program, CVS and Walgreens are contracted to administer Covid-19 vaccines to more than 40,000 long-term care facilities, including skilled nursing facilities, assisted living and other facilities. CVS anticipates completing administration of first round doses in all long-term care facilities by mid-February. 

“We’ve administered nearly two million shots to one of our most vulnerable populations through onsite and, in many cases, room-to-room visits,” Karen Lynch, executive vice president of CVS Health, said in a press release.

Walgreens and CVS have come under fire for a slow rollout, with some nursing homes saying it has taken too long to get the shots. The company says that doses administered out of doses allocated is not an accurate way to its track progress; dose allocations were based on long-term care facility bed counts and multiplied by two to account for staff, “but at most facilities occupancy is far less than bed count and staff uptake remains low.”

Walgreens said last week it expected to complete administering nearly all of its first Covid-19 vaccine doses to nursing home residents and staff on Monday.

In its news release on Monday, CVS said that a Covid-19 vaccine will eventually be available to the public at its pharmacies based on vaccine availability and prioritization recommendations, and it has the capacity to administer 20 to 25 million shots per month. Currently, CVS pharmacies in Indiana, Massachusetts and New York are offering vaccines to specific age groups.

New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi told CNN Monday that the city “does not have enough doses” of Covid-19 vaccine to “be able to meet the demand we know exists among New Yorkers.”

Speaking to CNN New Day’s Alisyn Camerota, Chokshi said the current supply, only a few thousand doses, will be used in the next 24 to 48 hours and that New York City had the ability to administer more vaccines if there was more supply.

During one week in January, every three seconds a New Yorker was being vaccinated equaling more than 220,000 doses being administered in one week, but Chokshi said the number of vaccinations could easily double or go even higher if they had the supply. 

More than 20,000 vaccine appointments scheduled for last week had to be rescheduled, Chokshi added.

He expects to get a re-supply Tuesday and Wednesday of 100,000 doses, but he says those doses will be gone by the end of the week.

California's Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to lift regional stay-at-home orders in the state Monday, allowing for gyms and restaurants to have limited outdoor activity according to a letter from the California Restaurant Association to its members and shared with CNN, which said it had been notified of the plan Sunday evening by the governor's office.

Currently, counties in Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley, and the Bay area are under regional stay-at-home orders which were instituted in early December as Covid-19 cases began to surge.

The Los Angeles Times reported that while hospitals in southern and central parts of the state remain under pressure from a high number of patients, the Newsom administration projects that intensive care unit capacity in those areas will exceed 15% over the next 4 weeks, which would allow for the lifting of regional shutdowns under the governor's December order. State officials have not shared how they make the "four-week ICU calculations," according to the LA Times.  

Once announced, the change is expected to take effect immediately with all counties reverting to a colored tier system that assigns risk based on the numbers of cases and rates of positive Covid-19 tests, the newspaper reported.

It is unclear whether stay-at-home orders in Los Angeles County — where hospitals continue to be overwhelmed — will be lifted when the order is canceled, the L.A. Times reported.