April 23 coronavirus news

By Sophie Jeong, Aditi Sangal and Kara Fox, Nicholas Pearce and Philip Wang

Updated 0702 GMT (1502 HKT) April 26, 2021
31 Posts
Sort byDropdown arrow
12:25 p.m. ET, April 23, 2021

AstraZeneca vaccine benefits outweigh risks, European Medicines Agency officials say

From CNN's Samantha Tapfumaneyi and Lauren Kent

A vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is seen at a medical center on March 20 in Bridport, England.
A vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is seen at a medical center on March 20 in Bridport, England. Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

European Medicines Agency officials said at a news conference on Friday that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the risks, and that they will continue to review "very rare cases" of blood clots.

"Importantly, the data show that the benefits of vaccination increased with age and increasing levels of infection in the community,” said Dr. Peter Arlett, head of Pharmacovigilance and Epidemiology Department at the European Medicines Agency.

"Every day, thousands of people in Europe are dying from Covid-19. The AstraZeneca vaccine is highly effective at preventing infection and therefore hospitalization and death," Arlett added. "Very rare cases of blood clots with low platelets have been reported, and these are listed as very rare side effects of the vaccine."

Arlett also said the European Medicines Agency is stepping back from reporting the numbers on blood clots, as the agency wants to contextualize the numbers and the risk.

Earlier this month, the EMA said a particular combination of unusual blood clots with low blood platelet counts should be listed as a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but stopped short of recommending its use be limited. The agency previously said the positive benefits of AstraZeneca's vaccine outweigh the risks. 

12:29 p.m. ET, April 23, 2021

CDC recommends that pregnant people get the Covid-19 vaccine, director says

From CNN's Jen Christensen

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control Prevention, speaks during a White House Covid-19 briefing on April 23.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control Prevention, speaks during a White House Covid-19 briefing on April 23. White House

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control Prevention, said Friday that the CDC recommends that pregnant people get the Covid-19 vaccine.

Her comment follows a new study that found no safety concerns among a large group of pregnant people who received the vaccine in their third trimester, and no safety concerns for their babies.

“As such, CDC recommends that pregnant people receive the Covid-19 vaccine,” Walensky said during the White House Covid-19 briefing. “We know that this is a deeply personal decision, and I encourage people to talk to their doctors or primary care providers to determine what is best for them and for their baby.”

The CDC vaccine guidelines online have not been updated. They currently say that pregnant women may receive a Covid-19 vaccine when one is available, and getting vaccinated is a personal choice, but do not say the vaccine is recommended. CNN reached out to the CDC for further clarification. 

On Wednesday, the New England Journal of Medicine published preliminary findings from CDC scientists that determined that the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna do not appear to pose any serious risk during pregnancy. Last month, another study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found mRNA Covid-19 vaccines are effective in pregnant and lactating women, and they can pass protective antibodies to newborns. 

Clinical trials of the vaccines did not include pregnant people so there was limited data on the safety of vaccination in pregnant people and babies. Scientists intend to follow up with the pregnant people in the study to assess the long-term safety of the vaccine during pregnancy.

12:18 p.m. ET, April 23, 2021

Expert to CDC advisers: Rare clotting events set off by both J&J and AstraZeneca vaccine

From CNN’s Maggie Fox

A dose of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine is prepared on April 7 in New York City.
A dose of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine is prepared on April 7 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Both the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines appear to be setting off rare blood clotting events in a few people who get them, a top expert told vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization practices is meeting to discuss whether to change guidance for J&J’s Janssen vaccine. The CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration recommended pausing its use after six reported cases of women who developed a rare blood clotting syndrome after receiving J&J’s vaccine in the United States.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is not yet authorized for use in the United States, but use of the vaccine resumed in many countries in Europe after UK and European health authorities said the benefits outweighed the risks. Both vaccines use a common cold virus called an adenovirus to deliver genetic material to stimulate an immune response.

“So far, it appears to be a thrombotic response to receiving an adenoviral vector vaccine against SARS COV-2,” Dr. Michael Streiff, a clotting expert at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told ACIP’s emergency meeting.

“It’s unclear what causes this to develop,” he added.

“The incidence — and this is based on the European experience, and the United Kingdom experience — is anywhere from one case per 100,000 to one in 250,000 of vaccine recipients,” Streiff said.

“Median onset of the symptoms after vaccination is about nine to 10 days,” he said, although in Europe some cases appeared 24 days after vaccination.

Most cases have been among women and people as old as 77 have been affected.

Streiff said he did not think it was possible to screen patients for risk factors for the blood clotting syndrome. “I don’t think we can just focus on oral contraceptive users and obese patients,” he said.

But he said awareness has helped patients get quick treatment. “Recognition that this syndrome exists is helping to improve outcomes,” Streiff said.

ACIP is expected to vote on any changes later Friday. If ACIP recommends changes to the vaccine label – such as a warning, or changes to who it recommends should get the vaccine — CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky will sign off and then the FDA will have to make any label changes.

12:14 p.m. ET, April 23, 2021

Pennsylvania fully vaccinates more than 3 million people

From CNN's Kristina Sgueglia

Members of the military inoculate people with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at the Esperanza Community Vaccination Center in Philadelphia on April 9.
Members of the military inoculate people with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at the Esperanza Community Vaccination Center in Philadelphia on April 9. Matt Rourke/AP

Pennsylvania has fully vaccinated more than 3 million of its residents, with first doses having been administered to over 45% of the population, its health department said.

That said, the state's current 14-day average of new cases continues to increase, but is still below what it was at the height of the spring peak in May 2020.

Pennsylvania began receiving Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccine shipments in December. The state also got a shipment of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on March 1, but "shipments to Pennsylvania providers are currently paused out of an abundance of caution," according to a news release from the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

12:01 p.m. ET, April 23, 2021

India's scientific adviser: "We saw signs of a next surge but the scale and the intensity of it was not clear"

From CNN's Aditi Sangal

A worker places fans by beds in a stadium, which has been converted into a quarantine centre for Covid-19 coronavirus patients with mild symptoms, in Kolkata on April 21.
A worker places fans by beds in a stadium, which has been converted into a quarantine centre for Covid-19 coronavirus patients with mild symptoms, in Kolkata on April 21. Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images

As India grapples with a devastating second wave of Covid-19 cases, the government's top scientific adviser says while they saw the signs of a next surge, "the scale and the intensity of it was not clear."

"As the previous wave came down, there was, in all of us, a feeling that this was, you know, something which had been dealt with substantially," said K. VijayRaghavan, the Principal Scientific Adviser for the Indian government. "We saw signs of a next surge but the scale and the intensity of it was not clear."

He added that India loosened restrictions "before we should have."

As soaring demand overwhelms the health care infrastructure, VijayRaghavan, who is also a co-chair of India's Covid-19 vaccine task force, admitted that PPE, ventilators, vaccines and hospital set ups need to be "scaled up enormously."

Families and hospitals are raising the alarm on acute shortage of oxygen supply for days and VijayRaghavan emphasized that the government is making all the effort to address it.

"Oxygen availability has been pushed over the last few days, both in terms of diverting manufacturing, importing, distribution and looking at local availability. This hopefully will start seeing results soon," he said Friday.

However, he admitted that the intensity of the second wave has rendered any amount of ramping up of health care capacity since the first wave "not yet sufficient."

In the face of this massive public health crisis, escalating vaccine production and rollout remains important not just for India but for the world, he told CNN. However, it's not just India's responsibility to manufacture but also other countries' responsibility to supply ingredients, such as the United States.

"India followed the principle that no one is safe until everyone is safe. We are one of the few countries which reached out to other countries early on last year as soon as vaccines made here became available," he said. "When you manufacture vaccines here, you do so with components which are imported from elsewhere. So it's equally important, if India is to serve the world, that countries such as America also don't restrict the imports of components needed vitally to manufacture vaccines."

Once that happens, India can build up its capacity to fulfill its own needs as well as the world's, he said.

India reported 332,730 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, the highest number of daily cases globally for the second day in a row. This brings India's total to more than 16 million cases, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian Ministry of Health. The country has added more than 1 million cases in four days.

Watch:

11:38 a.m. ET, April 23, 2021

White House expects daily Covid-19 vaccination rates to "moderate and fluctuate"

From CNN's Maegan Vazquez

Source: White House
Source: White House

White House Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said during Friday’s coronavirus briefing that the federal government expects daily vaccination rates to "moderate and fluctuate" during the next stage of the US vaccination program.

Speaking about the areas of focus during the next phase of the vaccination program, Zients said the US “will continue to vaccinate millions of Americans each day.” But he added that vaccinating remaining populations of Americans will “take time and focus.”

“As you can see in our vaccination report, our current seven-day average is 2.9 million shots – nearly 3 million shots per day. Going forward, we expect daily vaccination rates will moderate and fluctuate. We’ve gotten vaccinations to the most at-risk and those most eager to get vaccinated as quickly as possible. And we will continue those efforts, but we know reaching other populations will take time and focus,” Zients said.

CNN previously reported that the seven-day average of new Covid-19 doses reported administered has dropped below 3 million shots per day for the first time in more than two weeks, according to data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The average pace of new doses reported administered has been greater than 3 million shots per day for most of April, reaching a peak of nearly 3.4 million shots per day on April 13.

11:31 a.m. ET, April 23, 2021

Nearly 70% of people with mild Covid-19 had lingering health problems up to 6 months later, CDC finds

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

A new study published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found people with mild or asymptomatic forms of Covid-19 can have long-term medical problems.

According to the study, nearly 70% of patients who hadn’t been hospitalized for Covid-19 needed to go back to the doctor 28 to 180 days after their initial diagnosis, according to medical records of adults enrolled in an integrated health system in Georgia.

Scientists analyzed the records of more than 3,000 patients and found that the people who were most likely to need to go back to the doctor were those who were ages 65 or older, women, Black adults and people who had three or more underlying health conditions — although, 60% of those who had some ongoing medical problem were people who had no underlying health conditions.

The most common new diagnoses were a cough, shortness of breath, chest or throat pain and fatigue which may suggest these patients had lingering Covid-19 symptoms, while more than one in three of these patients also sought out new specialists for problems with their skin, mental health issues, stomach and heart problems, the study said.

More about this study: A limitation of the study was that it could not pinpoint if this need for new care was related to a long Covid-19 issue, or if the patient had missed an appointment during the stay-at-home orders.

It was unclear if the number of patient visits was higher for recovering Covid-19 patients than it was for patients who did not have Covid-19. A large study published Thursday in the journal Nature did find that people who had Covid-19 seem to face a much greater risk of needing medical care in the six months after their diagnosis.

“Clinicians and health care systems should be aware of the possibility of medical encounters related to a previous diagnosis of COVID-19 beyond the acute illness,” the study said.

11:16 a.m. ET, April 23, 2021

Go There: CNN is in Osaka reporting on Japan's targeted state of emergency as Covid-19 cases surge

Japan has declared a targeted state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures in an attempt to halt a surge in coronavirus cases, just three months before the Tokyo Olympics.

CNN international correspondent Selina Wang has the latest from Osaka and answers' questions about the measure.

Watch:

11:03 a.m. ET, April 23, 2021

NOW: CDC advisers meet to discuss how to move forward with J&J vaccine in the US

From CNN's Maggie Fox

Vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are meeting now to discuss how to move forward with Johnson & Johnson's Janssen coronavirus vaccine.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to meet until to 5 p.m. ET Friday and to vote on updated recommendations for use of the vaccine and whether it's likely to be linked to a rare blood clotting syndrome they are calling thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).

Other groups have called it vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia or VITT, but ACIP is sticking with more neutral language that doesn't presume vaccines are causing the condition.

It's characterized by a rare type of blood clot in the brain — and possibly other large blood clots — along with a low number of blood clotting cells called platelets. Some blood specialists have said they believe it's caused by an unusual immune reaction that targets platelets, causing them to glob together into clots.

ACIP will hear about any additional cases reported since their last meeting earlier in the month. The cases of six women who suffered TTS, including one who died, prompted CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration to recommend a pause in giving the vaccine. ACIP members said they needed more time and more information before deciding on whether and how to change recommendations for giving the vaccine.

The CDC and US Food and Drug Administration recommended a pause on use of the J&J coronavirus vaccine last week following the six reported US cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot. The cases were among more than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered in the United States.

Read more about today's meeting here.