March 9 coronavirus news

About 93.7 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to data published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reported that 93,692,598 total doses have been administered – about 76% of the 123,232,775 doses delivered.

That’s about 1.6 million more administered doses reported since yesterday, for a seven-day average of nearly 2.2 million doses per day.

About 18% of US residents – more than 61 million people – have now received at least one dose of vaccine, and about 10% of US residents – about 32 million people – have been fully vaccinated, CDC data shows.

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

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated the percentage of US residents that have received at least one dose of the vaccine and those who have been fully vaccinated.

The US House is expected to vote tomorrow on a massive coronavirus relief package. While the bill includes up to $1,400 stimulus checks for some Americans, the Senate nixed plans to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. Still, that is not expected to jeopardize the bill.

CNN's Jessica Dean has the latest updates from Capitol Hill. Watch more:

A third round of stimulus payments is expected to be on the way later this month.

The payments are included in a sweeping $1.9 trillion Covid relief package that was approved by the Senate on Saturday and could be signed by President Biden soon after the House takes a final vote, now expected to be on Wednesday.

Roughly 90% of American households will be eligible, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

The payments are worth up to $1,400 per person, including dependents. So a couple with two children could receive up to $5,600. Unlike prior rounds, families will now receive the additional money for adult dependents over the age of 17. 

The full amount goes to individuals earning less than $75,000 of adjusted gross income, heads of households (like single parents) earning less than $112,500 and married couples earning less than $150,000. But then the payments gradually phase out as income goes up.

Individuals who earn at least $80,000 a year of adjusted gross income, heads of households who earn at least $120,000 and married couples who earn at least $160,000 will be completely cut off from the third round of stimulus payments — regardless of how many children they have.

Read more about the stimulus checks here

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee announced on Tuesday the state's plan to get all teachers, school staff and child care providers at least the first dose of their Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the month.

McKee said the plan supports the roadmap laid out by President Biden to prioritize teachers and to strive for a higher teacher vaccination rate.

The plan comes a week after CVS and Walgreens pharmacies in Rhode Island made teachers eligible for the vaccine. McKee said the effort will continue into April to ensure all teachers also get their second dose of the vaccine. 

"We're going to do everything that we possibly can to make sure that we salvage some of the school year in a real, strong way. We really need that time," he said.

State health officials said they estimate the plan will include 18,500 teachers and school staff, adding that a third of teachers have already been eligible for vaccinations under other cohorts such as age.

Education officials support the plan as a way to prioritize in-person learning to return in a more robust way.

"Our teachers have shown up, have been doing the work," said Rhode Island's Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green. "Our teachers deserve to have this added layer of mitigation, so we're excited about being part of this new plan for vaccination."

Signs first emerged early in the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in the United States that more women than men were reporting adverse side effects. 

Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration found that from mid-December through mid-January, among the more than 13 million vaccine doses that were administered, almost 6,994 adverse events were reported.

About 79% of those events were reported in women, even though only about 61% of Covid-19 vaccine doses at the time were given to women, according to the data published by the CDC in late February. Most of the symptoms reported were headache, fatigue and dizziness.

In general, these sex differences seen in adverse events among men and women are at least partly because women comprise a greater proportion of the total number of people vaccinated compared to men, and women comprise a greater proportion of people included in safety monitoring of the vaccine, Julianne Gee, a researcher in the CDC's Immunization Safety Office, told CNN in an email on Tuesday. But there might be some biological differences too.

"Regarding biological plausibility, studies conducted before COVID-19 vaccines were in use suggest that females have higher antibody responses than males to certain vaccines, including influenza vaccines. Conversely, males have higher antibody responses to other vaccines including tetanus vaccine," Gee said in her email.

"Women generally develop stronger immune responses, including high antibody levels and greater T-cell activation, which can lead to more rapid control of infection but may also lead to increased reactogenicity after vaccines," Gee said. "Females also have more reactions to a variety of vaccines including influenza."

Canada will honor people who died of Covid-19 on Thursday in what is being billed as a national day of observance.

“There are no words for the pain of losing someone you love. As a country we remember all those we lost and we mourn with families and friends,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a news conference Tuesday.

Canada has recorded nearly 900,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 22,000 deaths.

After a sluggish rollout, Trudeau promised that vaccine shipments would continue to pick up across the country.

Public health officials say more than 5% of Canadians have received at least one dose of a vaccine but new variants will continue to pose a significant risk to public health in the weeks to come.

Once the Covid-19 pandemic is over in the United States, the country will have a large number of people disabled from the virus who need help, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said Tuesday. 

Speaking to a Senate committee hearing on Covid-19 response, Jha said he found it frustrating that the focus on mortality rates and push for herd immunity did not take into account the chronic effects of Covid-19 in some who were infected. 

“When our President declares the public health emergency over, we are going to find a large number of Americans with substantial disability from this virus, from this infection,” Jha said. “The cost of that, human and financial, is going to be long-term. And we’re going to have to manage that as a country.”

Scotland will ease some lockdown restrictions and limits on outdoor meetings and activities on Friday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Tuesday.

Up to four adults from two households will be able to meet in any outdoor space, including private gardens, under the updated rules. 

Changes to outdoor meetings for 12- to 17-year-olds will mean four friends from four different families can meet outdoors, she said.

Outdoor non-contact sports and organized group exercise will be permitted for all adults in groups of up to 15 people as of Friday, Sturgeon said.

She said the changes will mean a return to communal worship for upcoming Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Hindu and Sikh holidays starting on March 26, when the limit on attendance will be increased from 20 to 50, with six feet of physical distancing. 

“This is in time for Passover, Easter, Ramadan and Vaisakhi,” Sturgeon said. "I know that the restrictions on communal worship have been really difficult for many people, despite the exceptional — quite exceptional — efforts made by faith groups to reach out to their communities.”

Current guidance in mainland Scotland is to stay at home, except for essential purposes. Scotland, like Wales and Northern Ireland, sets its coronavirus rules independently from the UK government.

Plans to set out a firm timeline for reopening the economy, including shops, hairdressers, gyms, and parts of the tourism sector, will be announced next week. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just announced that residents ages 60 and up can get vaccinated against coronavirus starting tomorrow morning.

Previously, only residents 65 and up, as well as some essential workers and some people with certain underlying conditions, were eligible for the vaccine.

Watch Gov. Cuomo: