The latest on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines

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.

The World Health Organization will launch a new declaration focused on vaccine equity on Friday, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced during a news briefing.

The declaration, which Tedros said has already received support from hundreds of organizations and thousands of people, calls for action from several groups who have already signed on.

The actions include asking political leaders to increase contributions to the COVAX facility – a program designed to guarantee fair and equitable access to vaccines for every country in the world – and share doses in parallel with their national rollout, regulatory bodies to accelerate approval processes in a safe and effective way and for all governments to ensure that vaccines are distributed free at the point of care, starting with health workers.

“Everywhere means everywhere. Nowhere should be left behind,” he added.

As US schools weigh reopening for full-time in-person learning, Democratic California Rep. Katie Porter says part of the discussion is “that we failed again and again to think ahead about what kids and families need.” 

“All of this discussion today about school reopening is a little bit exasperating to me because I started worrying about school reopening…the day that schools closed,” she said to CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “Because I really, as a single parent, depend on high quality public schools to help me take care of my kids and make sure they're learning.”

 Porter is a single mother of three children. She said that she is glad President Biden is “pushing” and “asking the right questions and setting deadlines” on school plans.

But she said there is not enough guidance about what should happen after all students go back to school, and she has sent a letter to the Department of Education about it. 

While the Biden administration says teachers should be prioritized for vaccinations, it is not required to reopen schools.

“I think if we push and make a real effort, it is very possible to offer at least the first vaccine to all teachers here in the next couple of weeks,” Porter said. “I think teachers need to be in the next group and that is really important for them to be able to stay in the workforce. It doesn't do any good to open schools only if teachers get sick and go out.”

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Vaccine makers are looking into whether booster doses could provide better protection against coronavirus variants, Andy Slavitt, the White House’s senior adviser for Covid response, said during an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday.

The White House official said Johnson & Johnson is already studying a second dose of its Covid-19 vaccine, and he noted that Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, which currently have vaccines authorized in the United States, "have plans to continue to update their vaccines and if need be, create boosters down the road if there continue to be additional mutants, as there likely will be."

Johnson & Johnson has said it’s exploring whether to retool its Covid-19 vaccine to address the potential impact of new strains. In November, the company announced that it had started a large-scale Phase 3 trial for a two-dose regimen of its coronavirus vaccine.

“More broadly, can you mix and match? If you have one can you later take another? And the answer is, try to remember which one you had because that’s what’s been tested … but if you forgot, don’t panic. You can take another one and the CDC says that that’s fine in that case," he continued.

A US Food and Drug Administration’s independent advisory committee will meet Feb. 26 to consider whether to recommend a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for emergency use authorization.

The Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 single-shot vaccine was shown to be 66% effective in preventing moderate and severe disease in a global Phase 3 trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, the company previously announced.

“While a potentially safe and effective single-dose preventive COVID-19 vaccine would have significant benefits, particularly in a pandemic setting, Janssen’s COVID-19 vaccine program has been designed to be extremely thorough and driven by science. As such, we are investigating multiple doses and dosing regimens to evaluate their long-term efficacy,” a November statement from J&J said. 

Slavitt also said that the administration is working to ensure that the vaccines will work against variants. 

“We are testing right now in vitro. … The good news to start with is the most prominent strain that’s come here, the B.1.1.7, the vaccines work well for — the Pfizer and the Moderna. The South African, which is close to the Brazilian … they are … less effective, but above a threshold,” Slavitt said. 

There is “strong and compelling evidence” the vaccination program is starting to reduce the number of people dying with Covid-19 in Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said on Thursday. 

Speaking at the daily Scottish coronavirus briefing, Sturgeon praised figures released by the National Records of Scotland on Wednesday that showed a 62% reduction in the number of Covid-related deaths in care homes over the past three weeks.

She said the data shows death rates in care homes have dropped from 34% at the start of the year to just 13%, which according to the first minister is a larger decline than seen for the deaths happening in hospitals or in people’s own homes.

"We're already seeing some early similar signs in the older age group living in the community. The over-85 age group saw the biggest reduction in deaths in the figures which were published yesterday,” Sturgeon added.

"We hope to see that strengthen in the weeks ahead and we obviously very much hope to see that deaths will start to fall significantly amongst the other groups that are being vaccinated as well."

Scotland's latest figures: A total of 1,354,966 people in Scotland have now received the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, with first doses offered to everybody over 70, all care home residents, all frontline care workers and all people with a serious clinical vulnerability.

A further 685 positive cases have been reported in Scotland and 1,261 coronavirus patients are currently being treated in hospital. Sturgeon explained this is “quite a bit below the peak of last spring, although our hospitals continue to be under very severe pressure."

A total of 57 coronavirus-related deaths were registered in the past 24 hours.

The Kremlin on Thursday said it’s happy with the pace of its domestic vaccination campaign as it prepares to launch production of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine across “a number of foreign countries” in order to meet global demand.

The Kremlin has previously outlined its plans to outsource production of Sputnik V, with potential hubs in South Korea, India and Brazil. According to Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which bankrolled the development of Sputnik V and markets it internationally, the country secured contracts to supply millions of dozes abroad.

While Russia is working to supply its vaccine to foreign countries, the Kremlin spokesperson reiterated that supply for the Russian population across all regions remains a priority for the government. 

“Production in a number of foreign countries will cover the needs abroad,” he added.

On Wednesday, The European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen called on Russia to explain why it’s sending “millions and millions” of vaccines to countries around the globe, but continues to struggle to vaccinate its own people.

“Overall I must say, we still wonder why Russia is still offering, theoretically millions and millions of doses while not sufficiently progressing in vaccinating their own people,” Von der Leyen said Wednesday. “This is also a question, I think, should be answered.”

RDIF responded via Twitter saying that the doses of the Russian vaccine have been offered to Europeans after Russia completes mass vaccination domestically, which according to RDIF would be done by June 2021.

Remember: Russian Health Ministry has yet to release comprehensive data on the total number of inoculated people. Denis Logunov with the Gamaleya Institute, which developed the vaccine, said last week that so far about 2.2 million people received the first dose of the vaccine, out of which 1.7 million received both shots, according to TASS state news agency.

In late January, Russian officials said the preliminary plan is to administer at least one dose to 20 million people out of Russia’s 145 million population in Q1 of 2021.