January 27 coronavirus news

South Africa is granting emergency use approval to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and will continue reviewing applications from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, the country’s health products regulatory authority (SAHPRA) said in a news conference Wednesday.

The approval was granted under Section 21 Authorisation, which grants emergency use of a health product that is unregistered in South Africa. 

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said that the government expects the first 1 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to arrive on February 1.

Upon arrival in South Africa, the vaccines will undergo a quarantine lasting a minimum of 10 days, in which they will be tested for quality assurance, Mkhize said.

The vaccines will be manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and 1.5 million doses in total will eventually be flown into South Africa to begin immunizing the country’s 1.25 million healthcare workers. 

South Africa has been battling an aggressive second wave of Covid-19 infections caused by a new variant of the virus, known as 501Y.V2, which was first discovered in November. With more than 1.4 million recorded cases and 41,000 fatalities to date, South Africa has recorded more infections and deaths than any other country in Africa.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the US must focus on minorities in order to efficiently distribute Covid-19 vaccines. 

The bigger picture: Black and Latino Americans are receiving the Covid-19 vaccine at significantly lower rates than White people, a disparity that health advocates blame on the federal government and hospitals not prioritizing equitable access.

A CNN analysis of data from 14 states found vaccine coverage is twice as high among White people on average than it is among Black and Latino people.

The analysis found that on average, more than 4% of the White population has received a Covid-19 vaccine, about 2.3 times higher than the Black population (1.9% covered) and 2.6 times higher than the Hispanic population (1.8% covered).

Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti announced that his government expects the first 1 million doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine to arrive in the next few days. 

In a televised address Tuesday evening, Sagasti announced the country will start its vaccination plan in February with frontline health workers as the priority group.  

The President also announced he will be among one the first people in the country to receive the vaccine. 

The Peruvian government has also finalized two other agreements with Sinopharm for half a million doses in February and 1.5 million doses in March, Sagasti added. 

Sagasti’s government has faced strong criticism for the delay in achieving vaccine agreements with different laboratories. Peru’s Foreign Minister Elizabeth Astete told Congress last week the country has negotiated 28 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

Peru has taken part in the Sinopharm vaccine’s clinical trials, however the vaccine has yet to be approved by Peruvian regulators. 

New restrictions: Peru announced new lockdowns for 10 of its 25 regions, including the capital Lima, as Covid-19 cases rise and hospitals reach a breaking point. The lockdowns will start on January 31.

The country is also racing to address a shortage of intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid-19 patients, Peru's President Francisco Sagasti, said during his address Tuesday.

"We expect to add another 350 (beds) in the next two weeks," he said.

An aggressive second wave has seen Peru pass 40,000 Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday, according to data released by the country's Health Ministry. Infections are also spiraling -- with about 100,000 new cases recorded in the past month alone -- as officials warn of burned out doctors and overwhelmed intensive care wards.

Read more about the crisis in Peru:

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Roughly one in 55 people in the United Kingdom has coronavirus, England’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said Wednesday.

He was speaking at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reiterated the announcement he made earlier in Parliament that schools would not reopen February 22 as planned, but could perhaps reopen starting March 8.

On Wednesday, Johnson also announced that the UK would be introducing government-provided accommodations, for example hotels, for 10 days for those who cannot be refused entry into the UK from high-risk countries. 

It comes as the UK surpassed 100,000 coronavirus deaths -- the first country in Europe to do so.

On Wednesday, the UK reported 25,308 new Covid-19 cases and 1,725 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the chair of President-elect Biden's Covid-19 equity task force, said there is much work to be done in making sure communities of color around the US accept and receive the Covid-19 vaccine.

More context: Black Americans remain among the groups that have the least confidence in the vaccine, according to a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The findings come as the nation's top health leaders urge Black people to trust the vaccine, by hosting live events where Black health professionals are among the first to receive and administer it.

The Kaiser study found that 35% of Black Americans would probably or definitely not get the vaccine if it was determined to be safe by scientists and widely available for free.

A question asked at CNN's town hall tonight was whether there are contingency plans in place for alteration and redistribution of the mRNA vaccines in case one of the current or future coronavirus variants renders them less effective.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that this is something that health experts are working on in collaboration with the pharmaceutical companies. 

"One of the beauties of the mRNA approach is that it's highly adaptable," Fauci said.

These vaccines work by using genetic material called messenger RNA, a kind of genetic software that instructs cells to make a piece of the coronavirus spike protein.

"So what you have is this bit of RNA and you stick in the part of the RNA that codes for the protein of the spike that is in the virus that is now circulating in our country," Fauci said.

He added that when you want to adapt the vaccine to protect against new variants, such as the one first identified in South Africa, "you take that same mRNA and instead of sticking in the coding component for the virus that's circulating in our own country, you quickly stick in the one that codes for the South African isolate." 

This approach means that you don't have to conduct large-scale trials, he said.

Whether it's the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, there is no evidence that shows one is better than the other when administered to a person of color, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, said during tonight's CNN coronavirus town hall.

The bigger picture: Black and Latino Americans are receiving the Covid-19 vaccine at significantly lower rates than White people, a disparity that health advocates blame on the federal government and hospitals not prioritizing equitable access.

A CNN analysis of data from 14 states found vaccine coverage is twice as high among White people on average than it is among Black and Latino people.

The analysis found that on average, more than 4% of the White population has received a Covid-19 vaccine, about 2.3 times higher than the Black population (1.9% covered) and 2.6 times higher than the Hispanic population (1.8% covered).

Answering a question from a teacher during CNN's town hall tonight, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control, addressed fears of sending kids and staff back to school with few protective measures in place.

Walensky said that while the Biden administration "has very much said and emphasized the importance of getting our children back to school," there needs to be resources in place to do so safely, especially in Covid hotspots.

Walensky said that there is a federal plan to get children back into schools but more resources are needed.

"The federal plan is linked to having resources for the school which is why we so badly need the American rescue plan to be funded so we have resources for mitigation for ventilation and PPE, and importantly, for testing," she said.

"A really key part of getting our children back to school is to do testing amongst teachers and among children and the funding for that testing is all on this American rescue plan."

Walensky also raised concerns of the other impacts on kids who are not in school.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the US, said work has already begun on developing a "booster" that would vaccinate people against the South African strain of Covid-19.

Fauci added: "So we're already trying to stay one or two steps ahead of the game so that if in fact, we have a situation where the South African strain is prevalent here, it's here but certainly not dominant, and you want to get ahead of it from a protection standpoint, you're going to want to have a vaccine that specifically addresses that strain and that's what we're working on."

More context: As researchers around the world race to see if new coronavirus variants will pose a problem for the vaccines, a second study in two days says the South African variant could possibly do just that.

The variant was first spotted in South Africa in October and has now been found in more than 30 countries, according to the World Health Organization.

In both studies, the work was done in the lab and not in people, so more research is needed to gauge the true threat of the new variant.

In the most recent study, which was small, researchers took antibodies from six people who were hospitalized with Covid-19 before the new variant was discovered. They found to varying degrees, that antibodies for all six of the survivors were unable to fully fight off the virus.

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