December 17 coronavirus news

People flying to Hawaii without proof of a negative Covid-19 test will have their quarantine time cut starting Thursday.

Gov. David Ige ordered that the mandatory quarantine be reduced from 14 days to 10 days.

Travelers from the US mainland and a few foreign countries can avoid the quarantine if they obtain a negative coronavirus test from an approved health care provider within 72 hours before travel.

One of the biggest tournaments in the tennis calendar -- the Australian Open -- will begin on February 8, three weeks later than planned, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) confirmed today.

The delay of the grand slam comes after weeks of intense negotiations between the state government of Victoria and tournament organizers, Tennis Australia, over Covid-19 safety and quarantine requirements.

On Thursday, the ATP announced that players would have to quarantine for 14 days on arrival in Melbourne, in compliance with Australian travel rules.

However a “controlled environment” will allow players to prepare for their matches while quarantining, the ATP said.

Players will travel to Melbourne between January 15 and 31 after the Australian Open qualifying rounds are played in Doha, Qatar. 

The Australian Open was originally scheduled to start on January 18.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, becoming the latest prominent member of President Donald Trump's administration to contract the coronavirus.

Bernhardt's positive test was first reported by The Washington Post.

Bernhardt is the latest member of the President's Cabinet to test positive for the virus, joining Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who was hospitalized last month. The interior secretary was not present at a Cabinet meeting with Trump on Wednesday.

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Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine trials can resume in Peru, the country's Health Minister Pilar Mazzetti announced Wednesday.

On Saturday, Peru’s clinical trials of the Sinopharm vaccine were temporarily suspended by the Peruvian National Institute of Health after a 64-year-old patient, with a history of diabetes, reported a decrease in muscle strength in his legs.

German Malaga, the head of clinical trials at Sinopharm laboratories in Peru, said at the time that the reason for the symptoms had not yet been determined.

Mazzetti gave no further details on Wednesday as to whether or not the patient’s symptoms were linked to the vaccine candidate.  

Health authorities in Sydney, Australia have issued a Covid-19 public health alert after diagnosing the first cases of community transmission since December 3.

Five community cases of Covid-19 have been discovered in Sydney since Wednesday, according to New South Wales' health department.

Just one of the five cases can be traced -- a 40-year-old bus driver who ferried airline crews to and from their hotels. 

The four mystery cases are all located in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area. Two were diagnosed on Wednesday and a further two on Thursday.

Residents in the area responded to a call for increased testing with long queues at clinics on Thursday morning.

The Berejiklian government took the added step on Thursday of canceling visits for elderly care homes on the Northern Beaches.

"We're recommending no visitors until we identify the source of infection and feel more confident that we have it under control," she said.

New South Wales has recorded a total of 4,477 cases of Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the local health department.

South Korea reported 22 deaths related to Covid-19 on Wednesday, the highest single-day total of the pandemic, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

For the second consecutive day, the country also reported more than 1,000 new Covid-19 infections, with 1,014 cases, the KDCA said in a news release.

Of those, 993 were local cases and 21 were imported.

The vast majority of the new infections -- 784 -- were in the Seoul metropolitan area. 

The latest tally brings total cases in the country to 46,453 and 634 deaths.

Vaccine advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the second coronavirus vaccine aimed at the US market, this one made by biotechnology company Moderna.

The FDA has already telegraphed that a quick emergency use authorization can be expected and this one could go through even faster than the EUA for Pfizer last week -- itself a speedy process.

The Moderna vaccine is very similar to Pfizer's and BioNTech's vaccine. Both use a new approach involving genetic material known as messenger RNA or mRNA.

The technology does not require the actual virus to make the vaccine -- simply the genetic code, which is used to trick the body into making little bits that look like the outside "spike" protein of the virus, prompting an immune response.

Both have shown about 95% efficacy in preventing disease, both appear very safe and both have been tested in tens of thousands of volunteers across the US and the world.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday he hopes the FDA will issue an EUA Thursday.

"Tomorrow, the FDA will hopefully make a decision regarding whether or not the Moderna messenger RNA vaccine will get an emergency use authorization," Fauci said on CNBC.

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The United States reported 113,069 Covid-19 hospitalizations on Wednesday, setting a new record high since the pandemic began, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP).

This is the 15th consecutive day that the US has remained above 100,000 hospitalizations.

According to CTP data, these days recorded the highest hospitalization numbers:

The White House coronavirus task force is warning this week that while there has been some progress in slowing the spread of the pandemic in the northern and central United States, cases are still surging in more populated states.

The reports offered another week of bleak assessments, saying, "The fall surge is merging with the post-Thanksgiving surge to create a winter surge with the most rapid increase in cases; the widest spread, with more than 2,000 counties in COVID red zones; and the longest duration, now entering the 9th week, we have experienced."

Despite that surge and a "threat to the hospital systems," the task force warned that "many state and local governments are not implementing the same mitigation policies that stemmed the tide of the summer surge," citing indoor gatherings at home and calling for a "significant reduction in capacity or closure in public and private indoor spaces, including restaurants and bars."

Americans, the reports said, should "(understand) the clear risks of ANY family or friend interactions outside of their immediate household indoors without masks." That behavior has not been modeled by the White House, however, amid dozens of indoor holiday parties over the past two weeks.

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