March 19 coronavirus news

French Prime Minister Jean Castex will receive a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday, his office said. 

The Prime Minister is 55 years old and is not in any priority group, but said he wanted to “show we can have full trust in the vaccine” during a press conference on Thursday, when he announced France would resume using AstraZeneca in its vaccine rollout. 

The vaccination will take place at 2.35 p.m. (9.35 a.m. ET) at the Begin Military hospital near Paris, according to his office.

Earlier on Friday, French junior budget minister Olivier Dussopt said in an interview on Europe 1 that the vaccine program will cost between 3 and 4 billion euros ($3.6-$4.8 billion).

“If there’s one spending that we really should not restrict, it is spending on vaccination,” Dussopt said. “It’s the best investment for our health, for our economy, and for France.”

Leaders in the country, where vaccine hesitancy is high, are working to regain trust in the AstraZeneca Covid-19 shot. An Elabe poll this week found that just 22% of French people have faith in the AstraZeneca vaccine.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also said he will receive the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday. The UK has stood by the shot while European countries paused their rollouts.

In interviews with CNN, several vaccine advisers to the US government said that a lot of questions should be expected when and if AstraZeneca applies to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine. 

The advisers did not cast doubt as to whether AstraZeneca's vaccine would ultimately gain emergency use authorization from the FDA. They did, however, say the company's application will likely bring up issues that didn't arise when the three Covid-19 vaccines currently used in the United States -- made by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson -- applied for their own emergency use authorizations.

"It's clear more questions have been raised about the AstraZeneca vaccine than about any of the other vaccines which are now authorized in the US," said Dr. Arnold Monto, acting chair of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. 

More than a dozen European countries have suspended their AstraZeneca vaccine rollouts over worries about blood clots, though many are now restarting the programs after the EU's medicines regulator said it is safe to use on Thursday.

There have also been concerns about a mistake made in their clinical trial last year and efficacy data that raised questions. Also, South Africa has suspended use the vaccine because health authorities said it wasn’t effective enough against the variant identified there. 

“This is the vaccine that’s had one glitch after another,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a liaison member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

As more and more European countries have suspended their AstraZeneca vaccine rollouts, the company, as well as international health agencies, have defended it.

"The safety of all is our first priority," an AstraZeneca statement said Wednesday. "Around 17 million people in the EU and UK have now received our vaccine, and the number of cases of blood clots reported in this group is lower than the hundreds of cases that would be expected among the general population.

The World Health Organization, UK health authorities and the European Medicines Agency have all voiced support for the AstraZeneca vaccine, saying its benefits outweigh any risks.

AstraZeneca expects to ask the FDA to authorize its Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in March or early April, sources with knowledge of the company's ongoing clinical trial told Reuters last week.

Transplant surgeons at Northwestern Medicine say they have successfully performed one of the first known double-lung transplants on a Covid-19 patient using lungs from a donor who had previously tested positive for Covid-19.  

“This is a milestone for lung transplantation,” Dr. Ankit Bharat, the transplant surgeon who performed the procedure, said in a news release.

“To date, 30 million Americans have had Covid-19 and many of them are registered organ donors. If we say ‘no’ to them just because they had Covid-19 in the past, we will drastically reduce the donor pool and there’s already a big supply and demand gap."

The donor recovered from the virus after experiencing only moderate symptoms but later died from a cause unrelated to Covid-19. The donor’s lungs were not damaged by the virus, making them viable for transplantation, according to the transplant team. 

The team tested the donor’s lung fluid for Covid-19 and performed a lung biopsy to check for lung damage before performing the transplant.

The patient who received the lungs, an Illinois man in his 60s, was diagnosed with Covid-19 in May 2020. The patient became so sick that he was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a machine that does the work of both the heart and lungs. The patient received the transplant at the end of February after spending one week on the transplant list.

“Currently, many transplant centers are worried about the risk of transmission of Covid-19 from donors, particularly for lung transplants, and are unnecessarily discarding these organs,” Dr. Michael Ison, an infectious disease and organ transplant specialist at Northwestern Medicine, said. “This donor clarifies the safety of the use of these donors.”

Denmark and Sweden announced on Thursday they will not restart their rollouts of the AstraZeneca vaccine yet, according to statements from their respective health authorities.

The decisions come after Norway also said it wouldn’t restart the use of AstraZeneca for “some time,” while it continues to investigate six cases of severe disease that occurred in the country after vaccination, Steinar Madsen, the Medical Director at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told CNN’s Richard Quest.

Despite the results of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) investigation on Thursday, which stated that the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh the risks, the Danish Medicines Agency said in a statement “it cannot be ruled out that there may be an association between the vaccine and the rare cases of blood clots, a low level of blood platelets and bleeding."

Denmark is expected to hold a press conference on Friday to address the ongoing issue. 

Similarly, Sweden will refrain from taking a firm position on the vaccine while it gathers more information, the Public Health Agency said. 

“Until then, a continued break is recommended for the use of this vaccine in Sweden," the health authority added.

The UK is considering the use of "Covid certificates" to allow people to attend live events such as sports fixtures, its Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said on Friday. 

Dowden told Sky News the UK government will "be testing whether we can use Covid certification to help facilitate the return of sports." 

The plan bears some resemblance to rumoured vaccine passports, a concept that has been ruled out by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but would also allow unvaccinated people to attend venues after receiving a negative test result.

According to Dowden, the certificates could be used "to prove, for example, that you've had a vaccine or that you've had a successful negative test," adding "that may be one of the things that could help ensure that we can get more people back into the stadium."

The UK will be using several high-profile sporting and cultural events as "pilot events" to test a return of crowds, including the FA Cup final on May 15.

During these pilot events the UK will be "looking at how we can ensure an indoor and outdoor setting, how we can get as many people back as we possibly can and get back to the things we really love as a nation," Dowden said.

The government will also analyze the impact of "one-way systems, things like masks, things like hand hygiene," with Cabinet minister Michael Gove tasked with overseeing the Covid certification work program.

“(We’re) working with many, many people to see how we can get people back safely in large numbers, because if we don’t manage to do it this summer... I’m really worried about the future of those industries that are so vital not just to our sense of national wellbeing, but to the whole national economy."

Under the UK's government roadmap out of lockdown, large scale live events are slated for return on June 21 at the earliest, with Dowden saying it is his "number one mission" for that plan to go ahead.

There is not enough Covid-19 vaccine in Europe to stop the third wave of coronavirus infections, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Friday.

Speaking at a weekly news conference, Sphan warned his country may have to reimpose some restrictions to slow the spread of the virus.

Infections in Germany are rising, as they are across much of Europe.

The country reported 17,482 new cases earlier on Friday. It has resumed its rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, after pausing its use earlier in the week.

Seoul City is backing off a mandate that all foreign workers get tested for Covid-19 following a request from the country’s Health Ministry.

In a news release from the city government, Seoul City says it is now only recommending foreign workers employed at high-risk businesses with dense and unventilated working environments get tested for Covid-19 by March 31. 

The city also recommends South Korean people working at the same businesses get tested, the release added.

The change in policy comes after widespread pushback from foreign diplomats and international businesses.

The South Korean Health Ministry has officially requested Seoul City’s administration to withdraw mandatory Covid-19 testing for all foreign workers, according to a statement released on Friday. 

The statement calls for improvements to prevent discrimination or the violation of human rights of South Korean or foreign nationals in its efforts to prevent Covid-19 from spreading further. 

Prior to the ministry’s request, Seoul City had rejected accusations of discrimination against foreign workers. 

A number of foreign embassies, including the United States and United Kingdom, earlier said they had raised concerns about the measures with South Korean authorities.

Germany reported 17,482 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the country's disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), said Friday.

The single-day infections are 5,000 more than what was reported one week ago. The country's total caseload now stands at 2,629,750.

On Friday, 226 virus-related fatalities were reported, bringing the total death toll to 74,358.

A study by the RKI found that over 70% of new Covid-19 cases in Germany involve coronavirus variants.

On Thursday evening, Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn announced the country would resume the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday. 

This post has been updated to more accurately reflect the results of the RKI study.