February 4 coronavirus news

Reversing an earlier decision to not hold an All-Star game in 2021, the National Basketball Association will host the mid-season showcase in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 7, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania. 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA’s previously announced All-Star Game weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana, scheduled for Feb. 12 to 14, 2021, was postponed to 2024.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at the time, "While we are disappointed that the NBA All-Star Game will not take place in Indianapolis in 2021, we are looking forward to the Pacers and the city hosting the game and surrounding events in 2024."

The schedule for this year's NBA 72-game season – 10 games fewer than usual – was released in two segments. Only the first segment, which is currently playing out through March 4, has been released. 

The NBA had originally slated March 5 to 10 as an All-Star break but without a game being played.  

The United States has identified hundreds of cases of a more contagious strain first linked to the UK — but two others, linked to South Africa and Brazil, are much harder to find, according to Dr. James Lu, president of a company called Helix, whose Covid-19 tests have helped identify many of these cases.

It’s the latter two strains that may be more concerning when it comes to vaccine efficacy and reinfection, experts say.

Part of the reason why we’ve found so many cases of B.1.1.7 — the strain first detected in the UK — is because of a testing glitch that picks up one if its mutations. 

Not all samples with this glitch are the B.1.1.7 strain, since this mutation can exist on its own. And not all brands of PCR tests show this glitch, called S gene dropout. But it has been used to screen for potential cases of the variant, which must then be confirmed through genetic sequencing.

The mutation that causes this glitch is not present in the strains first spotted in South Africa and Brazil. 

Beyond appearing more transmissible, these two strains also contain a different mutation that scientists worry could help the virus escape some of the antibody protection from vaccines or previous infection. Even so, experts say they expect vaccines will still work against the variants — especially when it comes to preventing severe disease and death. 

“They're not detectable with our level of sampling today,” Lu said of variants linked to South Africa and Brazil. “So, most of the time, if we're finding it, it’s serendipity right now. But that will change if they become more prevalent.”

Last week, the first US cases of the strain linked to South Africa were found in South Carolina. According to a state health official, these two cases were found during routine sequencing, but “the predominant strain that we are still seeing in our surveillance sequencing is the standard, or normal,” version of the virus. Maryland has also reported a handful of cases. 

At least two cases of the P.1 strain linked to Brazil have been found in the US, as well. Both cases live in the same household in Minnesota, and one had recently traveled to Brazil, according to the state’s health department.

In comparison, more than 540 cases of B.1.1.7 have been found in 33 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The US has been ramping up efforts to sequence at least 7,000 samples per week, according to the CDC. But experts have said we should be aiming much higher — somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 samples per week, given current case counts.

Italy will administer the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to people under 55 years old. They will start administering the vaccine to schoolteachers, army and police forces, prison staff and inmates.

The decision follows a Wednesday meeting between the government and regional governors to discuss the country’s vaccine campaign guidelines, the press office for the Ministry of Regional Affairs said Thursday.  

People over 55 years old, especially those over 80s and the most vulnerable, will receive shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, the press office added.

Vaccines need to be approved by the Italian Medicines Agency before they can be distributed in Italy.

On Tuesday, the Italian Medicines Agency, Aifa, said they needed more data on the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a news release they said:

The news comes as Italy’s total Covid-19 death toll surpassed 90,000 on Thursday, according to official data.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was approved by the agency on Jan. 30th. 

Cuba's capital city Havana will implement a nightly curfew starting Friday, according to the island's state-run media. 

People will not be able to leave their homes after 9 p.m. local time without special permission, according to Luis Torres, the president of Havana's defense council, as reported by the government Radio Rebelde station.

Officials did not say how long the curfew would last. 

Cuba is experiencing its highest spike in Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with the largest concentration of cases being in Havana. The island has a total of 30,345 confirmed cases and 225 Covid-19 related deaths according to John Hopkins University.

California’s infection and hospitalization rates are falling, but the state’s vaccine rollout has hit snags. CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles answering your questions on the pandemic. Leave your questions for her below.

With a federal transportation mask mandate now in effect to protect against the coronavirus, airlines are adjusting their announcements to remind passengers of the new changes to federal law.

The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mask order requires people to wear a mask while using any form of public transportation, including on board planes, trains, buses, boats, subways, taxis and ride-shares, as well as inside airports and other transportation hubs. The order went into effect Monday at 11:59 p.m ET.

Several airlines confirmed to CNN that they have changed their pre-boarding and pre-departure announcements to remind travelers that they are required to wear face masks.

Here's some of them:

Africa is to receive nearly 90 million Covid-19 vaccines in February in what will be the continent’s “largest ever mass vaccination campaign,” the World Health Organization announced in a statement on Thursday.

In the statement, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said: “Africa has watched other regions start COVID-19 vaccination campaigns from the side-lines for too long. This planned roll-out is a critical first step to ensuring the continent gets equitable access to vaccines.”

Most vaccines will be from the AstraZeneca/Oxford AZD1222 vaccine and subject to the vaccine being listed for emergency use by WHO. The WHO is currently reviewing the vaccine and the outcome of the review is expected soon.

The statement adds that around 320,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — which has received WHO Emergency Use Listing — have been allocated to four African countries —  Cabo Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia, which are able to store and distribute doses at minus 70 degrees Celsius.

The initial phase of 90 million doses will support countries to immunize 3% of the African population most in need of protection, including health workers and other vulnerable groups in the first half of 2021, the statement adds.

The WHO says it aims to vaccinate at least 20% of Africans by providing up to 600 million doses by the end of 2021, according to the press release.

During the pandemic, an increasing number of families are turning to government support and food banks to feed their families.  

“It was life or death. We were either going to starve or we were lucky enough to qualify for SNAP benefits,” Veronica Bedico, an unemployed mother of three, told CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich. 

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is Bedico’s lifeline, she said. The number of Americans on food stamps, or SNAP, has grown by more than 20% during the pandemic, Yurkevich reported. 

Stacy Dean, the deputy under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the US Department of Agriculture, said that the government is reviewing the program due to increased demands. 

At the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, those on SNAP tell Yurkevich they need more food. 

“I get like 200 bucks, and you know, I can make it stretch, but … once it's gone, it's gone,” SNAP recipient Kenya Edwards said.

Watch more:

Black residents are significantly more likely than White residents to live more than a mile from the closest vaccination facility, according to an analysis measuring barriers to vaccine access.

The analysis released Thursday by the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy and West Health Policy Center is an update to the open-access VaxMap, which was created in December to measure vaccination facility density and driving distance of all residents to locations where Covid-19 vaccines will be administered.

Researchers analyzed 69 counties across the US. These counties are especially concentrated in Georgia, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, Texas and Alabama. A third of them are in urban areas, including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Detroit, New Orleans and New York City.

Coming off the heels of the CDC's report this week that only 5% of Covid-19 vaccine recipients in the first month of the rollout have been Black, the study's authors hope the findings "will equip the new administration and state and county governments with information about where greater support is needed." 

Nearly three-quarters of the counties with these racial disparities in vaccine access also have a high rate of new Covid-19 infections with a daily average of more than 50 new cases per 100,000 during November 2020 to January 2021, the analysis found.

Black people are less likely than White people to live near a pharmacy, clinic, hospital or health center that can administer Covid-19 vaccines, the researchers said.