February 24 coronavirus news

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said he will sign a new executive order that starts on Friday that will ease some of the Covid-19 restrictions that have been in place in the state since the beginning of the pandemic. 

The new executive order lifts the modified stay-at-home order that requires people to stay in their residences and businesses to close to the public between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time.

Cooper and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen said the statewide mask mandate remains in effect.

Indoor gathering limits increase from 10 to 25, with the limit of 50 for outdoor gatherings remaining the same, the order said.

The curfew for alcohol sales for onsite consumption will now be from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. under the new order.

The order also lightened capacity limits for event venues. Indoor venues that have a capacity over 5,000 can now allow 15% capacity as long as they follow additional safety measures.

Previously, this limit was at 250 people, regardless of venue size. Outdoor venues can now have a capacity of 30%.

By the numbers: According to the state dashboard, 849,630 cases have been reported since the start of the pandemic. There have also been 11,074 deaths reported in North Carolina.

The dashboard showed that 2,180,655 doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the state.

To note: These numbers were released by the state’s public health agency and may not line up exactly in real-time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University, The Covid Tracking Project and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Honduras authorized the emergency use of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, according to a report from the Honduran Health Regulatory Agency (ARSA) on Wednesday. 

ARSA detailed in a statement that the authorization was dated Feb. 19 and was based on the consideration of the "regulatory authorities of regional reference," as a measure to control the pandemic.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia's sovereign wealth fund, announced that Honduras is the 36th country to approve the use of the Sputnik V vaccine.

Further delays in the delivery of AstraZeneca vaccines are "extremely frustrating," said Belgian regional Health Minister Wouter Beke during a meeting of the Flemish Parliament Wednesday afternoon.

Beke said Belgium only got 88,800 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week instead of the expected 114,716 doses.

“Next week: 21,600 instead of 19,167; and the week after we should get – but I’ll see before we believe it – 127,200 instead of 33,984 deliveries," Beke said.

The lack of supply this week will be made up for in future deliveries, Beke said but there remains a structural shortage of 31,714 doses across Belgium. He added that the delay in vaccine deliveries is no reason to doubt the efficacy of the vaccine. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was "surprised" when Johnson & Johnson told them they were behind on manufacturing.

CNN has reported the initial number of doses was expected to be closer to 10 million, and Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday it would be between 3 and 4 million.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed Psaki on the amount of Johnson & Johnson vaccine that will be deployed next week, pending emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. 

She continued, “We’re going to continue to work with them on ensuring that that can be expedited.”

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São Paulo, Brazil, will begin a statewide curfew this Friday, the state's governor, João Doria, announced today.

The curfew — which will run from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. local time and will remain in place until March 14 — requires bars and restaurants to close and prohibits people from being out in the streets. 

The decision is part of a bid to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has led to record hospitalizations.

As of Monday more than 6,400 patients were hospitalized in ICUs across the state, up from the previous record of 6,250 recorded last July.

“It's a historic record since February last year when we had our first case of Covid in Brazil, here in the state of Sao Paulo," Doria said.

The governor also said large gatherings will be prohibited at any time of day, and regulations will be enforced with fines.

The increase in hospitalizations is likely due to large gatherings and parties organized 10 days prior during Carnival, the state’s emergency Covid-19 center coordinator, Paulo Menezes, said in a press conference. Menezes said a more contagious variant of the coronavirus might also have played a part.

Correction: An earlier version of this post included the wrong end date for São Paulo's curfew. The curfew will remain in place until March 14.

France's health minister announced that the city of Dunkirk in northern France and its surrounding region, an area of 250,000 people, will be put under a new weekend lockdown starting this Friday night.

The minister said the measure was taken as Dunkirk is facing a surge of Covid-19 cases, due to the spread of the British variant.

French Health Minister Olivier Véran said that one in 100 of the population of Dunkirk is infected by the virus every week.

Under the lockdown, only essential shopping and travel will be allowed. The lockdown will be in effect every weekend until further notice.

The government took a similar decision on Monday for the southern region of the Alpes-Maritimes where a partial lockdown is going to be put in place between the coastal towns of Menton and Theoule over the next two weekends in an effort to curb a surge in Covid-19 cases and the spread of new variants.

The biotechnology company Novavax expects to apply for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine sometime in the second quarter of 2021, Dr. Gregory Glenn, president of research and development for Novavax, said during a live Q&A with The Washington Post on Wednesday.

"Last week we finished recruiting 30,000 people in the US and Mexico and we're expecting that result right at the beginning maybe of quarter two – so pretty soon – and shortly thereafter we would be filing for what we call EUA or emergency use authorization in the US," Glenn said. 

The company announced Monday that it has completed enrollment of its PREVENT-19 trial, a Phase 3 study of its Covid-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico. The trial enrolled 30,000 volunteers across 118 locations.

Johnson & Johnson initially was behind on manufacturing its Covid-19 vaccine when the Biden administration took office last month, but it’s getting better, a White House official said Wednesday.

"We've helped them with equipment and raw materials, which I think is helping to increase greater capacity," he said, adding that the initial production ramp was "slower than we'd like."

"It was disappointing when we arrived," Zients said. "I think the progress is real and we look forward to continuing to work with the company to accelerate their delivery and their capacity."

What happens next: Pending an emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration, Zients said the Biden administration is preparing rollout plans for 3-4 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine next week. Zients said states will receive around 2 million doses of the vaccine, and the remaining doses will be allocated to pharmacies and community health centers.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he hopes that therapeutic approaches to treating long Covid could come from medications already available, but the newly announced initiative to study on long Covid may provide answers.

The aim is to learn more about how the virus may lead to widespread and long-lasting symptoms and to develop ways to treat or prevent them. Initially, the initiative will look at areas including the spectrum of recovery across the population and what the underlying biological cause of prolonged symptoms. 

“Once we get that, an important part of this is, as I mentioned, would be to design therapeutic approaches, hopefully by medications that we already have, we just need to know how to use them," Fauci added.

Long Covid: A study published Friday found that 30% of people with Covid-19 continue to have symptoms up to nine months after initial infection. The most commons symptoms were fatigue and loss of taste or smell, although some reported cough, trouble breathing, muscle aches and brain fog.

Nearly a third reported worse quality of life compared to before getting sick, and some said they had trouble performing at least one usual activity, such as daily chores.

Dr. Fauci discusses 'long Covid':