The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines

Arizona joins the list of states reporting cases of the UK Covid-19 variant, known as B.1.1.7. 

The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS), the Maricopa County Department of Public Health (MCDPH), Pinal County Public Health Services District, and Arizona State University (ASU) announced the detection of the first three cases of the UK variant in the state in a press release Friday. 

The health agencies did not offer any additional information on the cases or patients involved in the release.

The UK variant was first identified in the fall of 2020 according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The variant appears to spread more easily and has been found in at least 70 countries, according to information from the World Health Organization. 

The CDC reports at least 434 cases of the UK variant in at least 30 US states, not including the state of Arizona, in data updated Friday on its website.

The new variant has wreaked havoc in the UK, fueling a surge in cases towards the end of 2020 despite a national lockdown being in place. Data showing an uptick in cases in younger people suggests this was largely because schools had stayed open, enabling the variant to spread rapidly.

The UK is a cautionary tale of what could happen elsewhere. American public health experts are warning about a possible new surge in Covid-19 cases caused by the strain first seen in southeast England. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that the B.1.1.7 strain could become the predominant variant seen in the United States by March.

The ugly vaccine nationalism that the World Health Organization and other public health advocates feared is here. And it's beginning in Europe, the region that usually boasts the world's greatest levels of equality by many measures.

Between the United Kingdom and the European Union, solidarity has disappeared entirely and given way to an all-out battle over who is more entitled to tens of millions of doses produced by British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, many countries in the global south have yet to administer a single vaccine.

The spat revolves around the EU's deal with AstraZeneca, which recently informed the bloc it would not be able to supply the number of vaccines the EU had hoped for by the end of March. EU leaders are furious that the company appears to be fulfilling its deliveries for the UK market and not theirs.

And while the EU's complaints are largely directed at AstraZeneca, the dispute has triggered animosity on both sides of the Channel, the two sides having only just emerged from four years of bickering over the terms of their Brexit divorce.

On Friday, Brussels imposed controls on vaccine exports to keep track of how many doses were leaving the continent and where they were going, in what leaders called a transparency measure but what looks like a targeted export ban.

The EU also said Friday it would invoke a clause in the Brexit deal to impose controls on exports to Northern Ireland to ensure doses wouldn't funnel through the region into the rest of the UK. Hours later it then backed down from the threat after UK and Irish leaders sought urgent clarification from Brussels over the highly controversial move.

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An in-depth look at two US schools supports the argument that children don’t spread coronavirus in school when proper precautions are taken.

Out of 3,500 students, just 234 coronavirus infections were documented during the fall semester, the researchers reported in a pre-print study posted online.

Just 9% of students who brought new infections to school infected others, the researchers found.

“There was no evidence of student-to-teacher or teacher-to-student transmission in either school,” they wrote.

The team studied two independent K-12 schools, not named. One was described as being in the Southeast and one in the Mid-Atlantic. Each school followed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for preventing the spread of the virus, including social distancing and mask use. They also implemented “aggressive” laboratory screening testing policies. 

“Seventy two percent of in-school transmission cases in School A were associated with noncompliance with school mask wearing rules. Of known off-campus sources, the major ones identified were family exposure, including siblings returning from college; off-campus activities, including parties and other gatherings,” they wrote.

The UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has hailed the efforts of parents during lockdown in an open letter published on Saturday.

"While the past 12 months have been tough for all of us, the demands of this pandemic have also brought out the very best in a great many people," he wrote. "And I'm particularly in awe of the way the parents, carers and guardians of children have risen to the unique challenges with which you have been faced."

Parents are doing "a great job" and by staying home are "saving lives", he added.

He attended a virtual classroom of 10 to 11-year-olds on Friday and was impressed by the work of parents during the session.

Some 876,000 laptops have been given to schools so that kids can learn online and "hundreds of millions of pounds" will be put into "nationwide catch-up programmes" when the pandemic is over, Johnson said.

For weeks leading up to the New Year, despite surging coronavirus cases and a new highly contagious variant, Johnson's government assured schools and parents that children would return to the classroom in January.

On the morning of January 4, as children streamed into schools and he toured a hospital, Johnson touted "the efforts that we're making as a government to try to keep primary schools open."

Just hours later, he executed an about-face of acrobatic proportions. In a somber prime-time address to the nation, the Prime Minister said he was ordering the closure, from the next day, of not just secondary schools -- which serve children 11 and above and are where spread is more likely -- but also primary, or elementary schools.

There were 162,601 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States on Friday, with 3,483 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.

To date, there have been at least 25,929,282 Covid-19 cases in the US. More than 436,678 people have died in the country from the virus. 

At least 49,216,500 vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 27,884,661 shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

For regular updates, follow CNN’s map, which uses Johns Hopkins data to refresh every 15 minutes. 

Sweden's Göteborg Film Festival has gone digital this year and chosen one lucky film enthusiast to experience its Isolated Cinema on a remote lighthouse island.

Emergency nurse Lisa Enroth will spend seven days in the cabin of Pater Noster Lighthouse on Hamneskär island, with only movies and the sea for company.

The festival reviewed more than 12,000 applicants from 45 countries before settling on the nurse who spent the last year on the front lines fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Through my work in healthcare I seem to have spent ages listening, testing and consoling. I feel like I’m drained of energy," said Enroth in a statement. "The wind, the sea, the possibility of being part of a totally different kind of reality for a week – all this is really attractive."

Enroth, from Skövde, Sweden, won't be allowed a cellphone, a laptop, a book, or any other distractions from January 30 to February 6. She will create a daily video diary that will allow the world to watch her experience.

Like many recent film festivals, Göteborg will be virtual in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, but organizers decided to offer one festival-goer a totally different experience.

"And in these troubled times it feels particularly right to be able to give this unique experience to one of the many heroes of the healthcare system who are all working so hard against COVID-19,” said the chief executive of the festival, Mirja Wester.

The lighthouse was deactivated in recent years, and the lighthouse cabin was recently renovated by design agency Stylt, so Enroth will be able to relax in comfort and style.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated the name of nurse Lisa Enroth.

Crowds of up to 30,000 people per day will be allowed for the opening week of the Australia Open, announced the minister for sport in Australia’s state of Victoria, Martin Pakula, and Tennis Australia CEO, Craig Tiley.

During a press conference on Saturday morning, Pakula said Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has signed off on the spectator numbers.

"We're really looking forward to welcoming fans to Melbourne Park for the @AustralianOpen @ATPCup and Melbourne Summer Series starting tomorrow," said Tiley in a tweet.

Thousands of cheering fans packed the stands on Friday to watch some of tennis' biggest stars warm up for the Australian Open -- with hardly a face mask to be seen.

In an unusual scene for the coronavirus pandemic, the 4,000-strong crowd sat cheek by jowl as big hitters including Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka emerged from their 14-day quarantine to play exhibition matches ahead of the first grand slam of the year in Melbourne next month.

Australia's tough approach to the coronavirus has been controversial ahead of the Open, with some players arriving from overseas frustrated to find themselves in quarantine.

Some took to social media to complain while others issued lists of demands to Australian authorities. But speaking to CNN from quarantine earlier this week, Nadal said his fellow stars should have a "wider perspective."

The Australian Open will begin on February 8 in Melbourne and run for two weeks. Friday's exhibition matches were the official curtain raiser for the international tennis competition and saw Williams and Novak Djokovic win hard-fought matches.

The World Health Organization team of international scientists investigating the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan spent Saturday visiting a hospital that treated some of the Chinese city's most severe coronavirus cases last year.

The team started its investigation Friday with a visit to the Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, which treated some of the first known coronavirus patients.

On Saturday, the group went to Jinyintan Hospital. One of the scientists, British-Americam Peter Daszak, tweeted: 

The Trump administration spent $200 million sending thousands of ventilators around the world, starting weeks after the former President touted America as the "king of ventilators," but without any established way to locate them, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released Thursday.

A total of 150 ventilators went to countries with zero new cases per day on the date the government committed to sending the life-saving machines overseas, as the US edged closer to a shortage of its own. Kiribati and Nauru, two of the countries that received a total of 20 ventilators, have never had a confirmed case, according to the World Health Organization.

From late May to late September, the previous administration committed to sending 8,722 ventilators to 43 countries, but with no clear criteria for determining which countries need ventilators or how many to send, the GAO found.

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