February 10 coronavirus news

About one in 10 Americans -- nearly 32.9 million people --- have so far received at least a first dose of the two-part Covid-19 vaccines, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows, and about 9.8 million people have been fully vaccinated.

And while US and state leaders are optimistic vaccinations will ramp up further in the coming months, several challenges remain, including supply shortages and equitable access -- which come as public health experts say the US is in a race against time as Covid-19 variants keep spreading across the country.

In Delaware, officials announced Tuesday the state was no longer expecting to open another phase of vaccine eligibility on March 1 as was planned due to an "extremely limited supply" of vaccines. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said the state will receive more doses from the federal government and added, "it's not enough, but it's great."

"I wish we had 200,000 doses a week right now. We could allocate all of them," Beshear said.

But there is good news on the vaccine front: The Biden administration said Tuesday it was boosting weekly vaccine supply going to states, tribes and territories to 11 million doses, adding it was continuing to work with manufacturers to increase vaccine supply.

Several thousand retail pharmacies will also begin administering vaccines this week as part of a federal program, with both CVS and Walgreens saying vaccinations will kick off Friday in the participating stores.

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About 1 in 10 Americans have gotten at least their first Covid-19 shot. But supply challenges remain

It's not clear if British tourists will be able to travel this year, as it depends on how the novel coronavirus and its variants respond to vaccines, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Wednesday.

Shapps said that fewer than 1,000 people per day were currently entering the United Kingdom from countries on the UK's "red list" and he anticipated those numbers to remain small after stricter new hotel quarantine measures come into force on February 15.

Visitors from more than 30 countries, including South Africa, Brazil and Portugal, are currently banned from traveling to the UK. Only British and Irish citizens and those with UK residency are permitted entry from red list countries.

Between 16,000 to 20,000 people currently arrive in the UK each day, including transport workers carrying goods, Shapps said.

South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has given conditional approval for the use of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 Vaccine.

The vaccine, manufactured locally by SK Bioscience, is the first to be approved in the country, health minister Kim Ganglip said on Wednesday.

The vaccine will be given as a series of two doses, four to 12 weeks apart, to people over the age of 18. However, Kim said physicians should weigh potential benefits considering patients’ conditions when administering the vaccine to those over the age of 65.

Pregnant and breast-feeding women can only receive the vaccine if the possible benefit is bigger than the possible risk, Kim added.

Korean authorities said earlier this week that rollout of the vaccine will begin with nursing hospital workers and patients on February 26.

The United States reported 92,666 new cases of Covid-19 and 3,031 additional virus-related deaths on Tuesday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

That raises the national total to at least 27,189,761 infections and 468,103 fatalities since the pandemic began.

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

Vaccines: At least 62,898,775 vaccine doses have been distributed and at least 43,206,190 shots administered, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN is tracking US cases.

A World Health Organization expert who was on the team of scientists investigating the origins of Covid-19 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan said people shouldn't "rely too much on US intel" around the coronavirus.

In a tweet Wednesday responding to an article about the United States wanting to "independently" verify WHO findings out of Wuhan, expert Peter Daszak said "don't forget, it's 'TRUST' then 'VERIFY'!"

Daszak added that US President Joe Biden "has to look tough on China" but urged him against relying on the US intelligence services, which he said were "increasingly disengaged under Trump (and) frankly wrong on many aspects."

"Happy to help the (White House with) their quest to verify," Daszak said.

No fast answers: On Tuesday, after the WHO team wrapped up their investigations in Wuhan, Daszak told CNN that while scientists will eventually "get a really clear picture" of how Covid-19 originated, it may take weeks, months or even a "couple of years." 

He added that a "patient zero" still has yet to be identified and may never be, as many cases were asymptomatic.

Reading Chinese state media coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking the World Health Organization's investigation into the origins of Covid-19 had ruled out Wuhan as the potential source of the pandemic.

Ahead of their four-week visit to the central Chinese city, which wrapped up this week, the WHO team had warned their research might not turn up anything particularly groundbreaking. They cited the length of time since infections first started spreading in Wuhan, and the degree to which the city has been disinfected and sterilized since, as residents endured a lengthy lockdown and subsequently returned to relative normality.

And so therefore -- while somewhat disappointing -- it was no shock that the team did not reveal any major surprises in presenting their findings Tuesday. The most definitive the investigators could be was in dismissing suggestions that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab dedicated to studying such infections. On most other issues, the WHO experts prevaricated or admitted there was no clear evidence.

State media's take: Chinese state media used comments from the fiercely apolitical scientists to vindicate various propaganda priorities, chief of which is the suggestion that the virus could have come from outside China.

China Daily, a state-run newspaper targeting international readers, ran the headline "WHO team: Probe of virus' origin should not be 'geographically bound'," while Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, took it a step further, saying WHO was ready to "scrutinize Southeast Asia" as a potential origin of the virus.

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Analysis: China seizes on lack of WHO breakthrough in Wuhan to claim coronavirus vindication

The coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, which was first identified in the United Kingdom on September 20, has now been reported in 86 countries, the World Health Organization says.

In its weekly epidemiological update, WHO says the variant B.1.1.7 has shown an increase in transmissibility, and some evidence of increase in disease severity based on preliminary findings. As of February 7, an additional six countries have reported cases of this variant. 

In the UK, for example, Covid-19 test samples of this strain increased from 63% in the week of December 14 to 90% in the week of January 18, WHO noted.

Other variants: Additionally, WHO has also been monitoring two additional coronavirus strains that are actively spreading: B.1.351, initially seen in South Africa, and the P.1 strain that was first identified in Brazil.

As of February 7, the B.1.351 strain has been reported in 44 countries , while the P.1 strain has been reported in 15 nations, WHO says. 

Some context: Scientists are not surprised to see the coronavirus changing and evolving but they fear that a variant could mutate to the point that it causes more severe disease, bypasses the ability of tests to detect it or evades the protection provided by vaccination. 

South Africa this week paused its rollout of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine after a study showed it offers less protection against the B.1.351 variant.

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency use authorization to a new version of Eli Lilly and Co’s antibody treatment for coronavirus that adds a second monoclonal antibody to one already authorized, the company said Tuesday.

The new treatment adds etesevimab or LY-CoV016 to the already authorized bamlanivimab or LY-CoV555 to make a double-antibody version -- one that might be more protective, the company says. Rival Regeneron has a dual antibody-cocktail on the market already.

Monoclonal antibodies are lab-engineered versions of highly targeted human antibodies chosen for their specific ability to neutralize, in this case, coronavirus.

Some experiments had indicated that variants of the coronavirus that have developed mutations could evade the effects of Lilly’s single antibody.

"The EUA is based on Phase 3 data from the BLAZE-1 trial, announced January 26, 2021, which demonstrated bamlanivimab and etesevimab together reduced the risk of COVID-19 hospitalizations and death by 70 percent. These data replicate earlier results, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, in a much larger group of patients,” Lilly said in a statement.

“Additionally, the outcomes seen with bamlanivimab and etesevimab together are consistent with the reduction in risk of hospitalization or ER visits seen with bamlanivimab alone. The most common adverse event more often reported for patients receiving bamlanivimab and etesevimab together versus placebo was nausea on the day of infusion.”

For the fourth week in a row, the number of new cases of Covid-19 reported across the globe have declined, according to data from the World Health Organization.

In its weekly epidemiological update, WHO says more than 3.1 million new cases of Covid-19 were reported last week, which is a 17% decline from the previous week.

This is the lowest number of cases worldwide since the last week of October, about 15 weeks ago.

The United States accounted for the highest number of new Covid-19 cases, with 871,365. However, this figure is a 19% decline in cases from the previous week. Brazil, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom were also among the nations reporting the highest number of new cases worldwide, WHO noted. 

Out of all the regions, Africa saw the greatest decline in cases (22%), compared to WHO's previous week update, while the Eastern Mediterranean saw the smallest (2%).

The number of new deaths reported globally went down for the second week in a row, with 88,000 new fatalities reported last week, a 10% drop compared to the previous week. 

Overall, new cases in the Americas accounted for more than half of all new cases worldwide, with more than 1.5 million new cases and over 45,000 new deaths.

Globally, there have been at least 105.4 million Covid-19 cases and 2.3 million deaths since the start of the pandemic.

CNN is tracking worldwide cases.