The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines

Health officials in Nevada detected the state’s first known case of the B.1.351 coronavirus variant, first identified in South Africa, in a sample collected in Reno, according to a statement from the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine (UNR Med). 

The Nevada State Public Health Laboratory (NSPHL) located at UNR Med said it first sequenced the specimen on Saturday, and through further analysis of data detected the B.1.351 strain and confirmed it on Wednesday.

The sample came from a person who had traveled from South Africa and became symptomatic after arriving in Reno.

Some more context: The NSPHL has been analyzing positive Covid-19 virus samples for variants since mid-December 2020 through whole genome sequencing, the statement reads.

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 19 cases of the B.1.351 variant have been identified in 10 states. This doesn’t represent the total number of such cases circulating in the US, but just those that have been found by analyzing positive samples.

About 57.7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reported that 57,737,767 total doses have been administered, about 79% of the 73,377,450 doses distributed.

That’s nearly 1.5 million more administered doses reported since yesterday. The seven-day average of doses administered has been ticking down slightly since Tuesday, from about 1.7 million doses per day to about 1.6 million.

More than 41 million people have now received at least one dose of the vaccine and more than 16 million people have been fully vaccinated, CDC data shows. 

Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.

Pfizer-BioNTech announced Thursday that the first participants of its global Covid-19 vaccine trial for pregnant women have received their first doses.

The Phase 2/3 trial will enroll about 4,000 healthy pregnant women age 18 or older, according to a news release from the company. They will be vaccinated during 24 to 34 weeks of gestation and receive two doses of the vaccine or placebo 21 days apart.

The first doses were administered to US participants. The trial will be conducted in nine countries: the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique, South Africa, UK and Spain.

The company said the trial is designed to evaluate the vaccine in pregnant women, but also their infants, who will be monitored until they’re about six months old, for safety and for the transfer of potentially protective antibodies. Once an infant is born, Pfizer-BioNTech said trial participants will be unblinded and adults in the placebo group will receive the vaccine.

Currently, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says pregnant people are at increased risk for severe illness from Covid-19, and there’s limited data about the safety of the vaccines for pregnant people. It suggests pregnant patients talk with their doctor to make the decision about whether to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

Food and food packaging are highly unlikely to spread Covid-19, the US Food and Drug Administration, US Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a reminder Thursday.

The three agencies said they wanted to stress the lack of credible evidence to suggest that food or its packaging are associated with transmission of the virus.

Covid-19 is a respiratory illness spread from person to person, unlike foodborne viruses that can make people sick through contaminated food, the FDA said.

“Given that the number of virus particles that could be theoretically picked up by touching a surface would be very small and the amount needed for infection via oral inhalation would be very high, the chances of infection by touching the surface of food packaging or eating food is considered to be extremely low,” it added.

“Considering the more than 100 million cases of COVID-19, we have not seen epidemiological evidence of food or food packaging as the source of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to humans.”

Chinese officials have repeatedly raised the possibility the virus is spread by packaged frozen foods, but the CDC and World Health Organization have both said this is highly unlikely.

Even seemingly minor things can set back vaccine production by months, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said talking about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine supply mix up.                                                       

The US had been expecting between 20 to 30 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses by April, but now expects fewer than 20 million by that time. An administration official told CNN on Tuesday that the change was due to a miscommunication. The administration now expects single digit millions of doses to initially be available, if the vaccine is authorized for emergency use.

“The issue is, we would have hoped that we would have gotten more vaccines at the time that they get their emergency use authorization,” Fauci said in an MSNBC interview Thursday.

Johnson & Johnson is on track to meet its promise of producing 100 million vaccine doses for the US by July, Fauci said.

“We would have hoped that we would have had a lot of vaccines available, but we don't,” he said. “We're going to probably have single digits vaccine available right away, a bit more the next month, and then after that, it'll really scale up so that they will almost certainly meet their contractual arrangement.”

Johnson & Johnson has asked the Federal Drug Administration to authorize its vaccine for emergency use and an independent review of the vaccine is scheduled for Feb. 26. 

US workers will use personal protective equipment if their employers give it out, a new study finds.

Researchers from the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health looked at survey answers from 742 non-healthcare, non-remote workers last June who didn’t use PPE at work before the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Just 29% used PPE if it was left entirely up to them, the team reported Thursday in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly. More than half of those who used PPE were required to do so by employers. And use doubled if the PPE was provided, they found.

About 30% of workers who were not required to use PPE were provided the equipment by employers, the NIOSH team found, and 45% of those workers used the PPE. That compared to 22% of workers who didn’t use PPE if it wasn’t provided.

The team also found 8% of workers were forbidden to use PPE by their employers. “Overall, lower-income workers were more likely than were higher-income workers to be prohibited from using hazard controls or to be unable to obtain them,” the team wrote.

The team also noted why wearing PPE matters.

Among those who did not use PPE and other hazard controls in the workplace, 15% were unable to obtain them and 77%  said they thought that they weren’t necessary.

Lower-income workers were more likely to be prohibited from use or unable to obtain them, compared with higher-income workers.

“Employers can help protect workers against Covid-19 by requiring and encouraging occupational hazard control use and providing recommended hazard controls, along with other Covid-19 workplace precautions,” said the report.

The European Commission has a “lot to learn” from its Covid-19 vaccine rollout, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told CNN’s Becky Anderson in an interview on Thursday.

“I think there's a lot to learn from the process that also the European Union has to learn, the Commission that has been responsible for negotiating contracts on behalf of member states and the whole setup around the pandemic,” Kofod said.

Asked about the criticism the EU has faced on its vaccine rollout, Kofod said:

Kofod agreed that the rollout “has not been a full success.”

The foreign minister pointed out that it’s not a shortage of vaccines that has been a problem but the delay in arrivals.

“We are all desperate to get our population vaccinated sooner than later,” Kofod said.

Pennsylvania has administered more than 1.8 million vaccine doses so far, and expects 326,850 doses to have been allocated through Feb. 20.

According to the state's health department, 85% of those, or 1,365,523 doses that were administered, were first doses, and 40% or 467,115 doses were second doses.

Vaccination numbers do not include Philadelphia, which is its own jurisdiction, or federal facilities, which are working directly with the federal government, the department said.

The state reports 3,345 additional cases and 84 deaths.

Note: These numbers were released by the state health department and may not line up with Johns Hopkins University's Covid-19 numbers.

Lockdown restrictions currently in place in Northern Ireland will be extended until April 1, First Minister Arlene Foster announced on Thursday.

The current restrictions were due to expire on March 5.

The Northern Ireland Executive has agreed that the current measures to curb the spread of coronavirus must remain, but there will be a further review of restrictions on March 18, she added.

Foster said that although Northern Ireland has achieved "significant" results in its pushback against Covid-19 in recent weeks, there is still great concern over the new variants. "We must proceed with great care and caution," she urged.

The first step of restrictions easing will be a gradual return to schools.

Preschool children and primary classes up to year three will return from March 8. Secondary school students in exam years – including GCSE and A-Level students – will return to face-to-face teaching on March 22, Foster said.

England and Scotland have been under lockdown since early January, and Wales and Northern Ireland have been under lockdown since late December. 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to set out a road map for England’s exit from lockdown next week.