April 1 coronavirus news

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday new data on Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine is encouraging but doesn’t mean the company's vaccine is better than the other Covid-19 vaccines authorized for use in the US.

Earlier Thursday, Pfizer announced that ongoing Phase 3 clinical trials of its vaccine confirmed that protection against Covid-19 lasts at least six months after the second dose. 

The vaccine also appeared to be fully effective against the virus variant first identified in South Africa, B.1.351.

He said that Pfizer had done the study, and it looked really good. He noted he “would not be surprised at all” if Moderna and other vaccine companies got similar results if they did the same thing.

March was the busiest month for air travel since the coronavirus cratered the industry nearly a year ago, according to new data from the Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA recorded screening just more than 38 million people last month.  

In all, the agency saw more than a million travelers in 26 of 31 days in March.

The agency screened 1.28 million people on Wednesday, marking three full weeks of more than 1 million screenings.  

Despite the pandemic-era highs, March 2021 is about half, or 53%, of the volume TSA saw in March 2019. In March 2020, screening numbers dropped off as the coronavirus spread. 

It’s not a matter of if — but when — a surge of a more transmissible and potentially deadlier coronavirus variant occurs in the United States, according to epidemiologist Michael Osterholm.

The B.1.1.7 variant, first discovered in the UK, has been found in 49 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.  

Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said that the US should be focused on getting first vaccine doses to the most people possible right now. Once there is more vaccine in the stockpile in the summer, then the country should give out second doses, he said. 

“I’m telling you right now … we are just beginning to surge. Denying it is not going to help us. We are walking into the mouth of this virus monster as if somehow we don’t know it’s here. And it is here. Now’s the time to do all the things that we must do to slow down transmission, not open up, and we got to get more vaccine out to more people,” he said. 

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CBS This Morning on Thursday the loss of 15 million doses of Johnson and Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine due to human error is "really quit unfortunate."

The New York Times reported Wednesday that workers at Emergent, the Baltimore plant that has been making Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, accidentally mixed up some of the ingredients, ruining as many as 15 million potential doses of vaccine and delaying US Food and Drug Administration authorization of the plant. 

Johnson & Johnson Wednesday said that it had found a quality problem at the plant, which was identified.

“Obviously, you don’t like to see anything like this happening, but you’re right, Gayle, it was human error,” Fauci told CBS’s Gayle King.

The US Food and Drug Administration is investigating, Fauci said, adding that the plant has not yet been fully certified by the agency.

“People should realize that all the doses that have been distributed to us and have been administered did not come from that plant,” Fauci said. “So, this is not related in any way to any of the J&J doses that people have already gotten. And what’s going on there now, as I mentioned, is being thoroughly investigated by the FDA.”

Thousands of cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the UK, have now been reported across the US, and experts fear the strain may fuel another Covid-19 surge as states race to vaccinate more residents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 11,500 cases of the variant, but the agency has said the number is likely larger.

Florida has the highest case count of the UK variant. The Sunshine State has welcomed crowds of spring breakers looking for a carefree vacation, and an escape from the restrictions still in place in other parts of the country.

Michigan has the second highest number of cases in the country and officials say another surge there is well on its way.

New Jersey has also seen a rise in cases and hospitalizations, and experts have warned the numbers could stay high into the summer.

Pennsylvania is seeing the spread of the B.1.1.7 variant too. The University of Pittsburgh implemented a shelter-in-place period in response to a rise in cases among students on campus and in the surrounding area.

The vaccines that are being administered across the US appear to protect people well against the B.1.1.7 variant. But only 16.4% of Americans have been fully vaccinated and a big part of the population remains vulnerable to the virus.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Thursday that France could reach the peak of its current wave of the virus within the next 10 days.

He made his comments as the country woke up to tighter nationwide restrictions amid a surge that has stretched the country's hospitals. French President Emmanuel Macron announced a partial lockdown across France on Wednesday night, after ICU admission numbers broke past the 5,000 mark and doctors called on the government for more restrictive measures.

We “could reach the epidemic peak in about 7 to 10 days, if all goes well,” Veran told the France Inter public radio station.

“Then it takes another two weeks to reach the ICU peak, which could happen around the end of April.”

He added: “I believe the measures announced last night by the President of the Republic will have a strong impact on the dynamic of the epidemic,” he said.

The ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial of Pfizer/BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine confirms its protection lasts at least six months after the second dose, the companies said Thursday.

It also appears to be fully effective against the worrying B.1.351 variant of the virus, which is the dominant strain circulating in South Africa and which researchers feared had evolved to evade the protection of vaccines, the companies said.

The results are the first look at how long protection for a coronavirus vaccine lasts, and while six months is a modest target, it's longer than the 90 days of protection that had been the best estimate offered to date.

The vaccine remains more than 91% effective against disease with any symptoms for six months, the companies said.

"The vaccine was 100% effective against severe disease as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and 95.3% effective against severe COVID-19 as defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)," Pfizer and BioNTech said in a joint statement.

On Wednesday, the companies said a small trial of volunteers aged 12 to 15 showed 100% efficacy in that age group.

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Pfizer says Covid-19 vaccine protection lasts at least six months, protects against variants

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it had found a quality problem at a Baltimore plant helping manufacture its single-dose coronavirus vaccine.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that workers at Emergent BioSolutions, the Baltimore plant that has been making Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccine, accidentally mixed up some of the ingredients, ruining as many as 15 million potential doses of vaccine and delaying US Food and Drug Administration authorization of the plant.

Emergent is also making the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has yet to be authorized for use in this country.

Johnson & Johnson said in a statement to CNN that the quality control process at the plant identified "one batch" of drug substance that did not meet quality standards. The batch in question was part of a test run and quality check. The site is not yet authorized by the FDA to make the drug substance used in the vaccine.

"This batch was never advanced to the filling and finishing stages of our manufacturing process," the emailed statement from the company said.

None of the lost doses impact the company's goal of delivering 20 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in March. For that, the company said Wednesday, it is on track. Those doses come from J&J's Janssen vaccine plant in the Netherlands.

The coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 -- which was first identified in the UK -- has been found in nearly nine in 10 of all new Covid-19 infections in Germany, according to a report from the country’s public health authority the Robert Koch Institute, published on Wednesday night.

The RKI report shows that the UK variant accounted for 88% of new coronavirus infections for tests conducted between March 22 and 28.

It added that because of the high proportions of B.1.1.7, the overall increase is “not expected to slow down'' and hospitalizations are set to continue to rise.

On Thursday, Germany recorded 24,300 new coronavirus infections, a rise of 1,643 cases compared to the same day last week, according to RKI data.

Germany's coronavirus deaths stood at 201 within the last 24 hours, bringing the total tally of deaths to 76,543. The latest data from RKI indicates that the number of new infections per 100,000 residents has risen to 134, more than double in just four weeks.