December 21 coronavirus news

British Airways and Delta Airlines have agreed to test all passengers before they enter New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday afternoon.

Cuomo also asked Virgin Atlantic to join those airlines in voluntary testing passengers before boarding flights to New York.

The news comes after a new Covid-19 variant was reported in England, prompting some countries to ban travel from the United Kingdom.

Remember: There is no evidence the new coronavirus variants are any more virulent, meaning they do not cause more severe disease. They do not appear to impact the effects of treatments or the protection offered by vaccines.

President-elect Joe Biden received the first dose of his Covid-19 vaccine in Newark, Delaware, Monday afternoon during a live televised event.

Biden's wife, Jill, was by his side.

The President-elect received the vaccine at ChristianaCare’s Christiana Hospital and it was administered by Tabe Mase, nurse practitioner and head of Employee Health Services.

When Biden was asked by Mase if she wanted him to count to three before administering the shot, he said, "No, you just go ahead any time you're ready."

Watch here:

Correction: The name of the facility where Biden received the vaccine was ChristianaCare’s Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware. The shot was administered by Tabe Mase.

CVS Health is launching its vaccination program for residents and staff of long-term care facilities across 12 states this week, expecting to eventually vaccinate four million people in 40,000 facilities through the program, according to a company press release.

“CVS Health expects to complete its long-term care facility vaccination effort in approximately 12 weeks,” the company said in the Monday release. 

CVS Health will administer Covid-19 vaccinations starting this week in the following states: 

Vaccinations will begin in 36 more states, as well as the District of Columbia, on Dec. 28. Puerto Rico will activate on Jan. 4, said the company. 

CVS noted its long-term care facility vaccination effort is a precursor to the Covid-19 vaccines being available at “all CVS Pharmacy locations throughout the country subject to product availability and prioritization of populations, which will be determined by states,” said CVS in the statement. 

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker says if a new stimulus deal is passed into law, the carrier will recall the thousands of employees it furloughed because of the pandemic’s impact on air travel.

In a new video posted on his verified Instagram account, Parker says furloughed employees will be re-hired with benefits and pay retroactive to Dec. 1.

American Airlines furloughed roughly 19,000 flight attendants, pilots, gate agents, mechanics, and other workers when initial CARES Act payroll support for airlines ended on Oct. 1.  

Ecuador's President Lenín Moreno declared the start of a 30-day state of emergency and 15-day nationwide curfew during a video address to the nation on Monday. 

Bars and clubs will shut down in Ecuador during the holiday season, while hotels and restaurants will only be allowed to operate at 30% capacity, Moreno said. 

Following the discovery of a new variant of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom, Moreno announced that visitors coming from the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and the European Union need to show negative PCR test results taken 10 days prior to arriving in the country, they must also take an antibody test that will be provided at international airports.

More details: Travelers who test negative for antibodies must quarantine in a hotel for five days, and travelers who test positive must quarantine for 10 days. 

During an interview with Fox News, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said the new coronavirus variant found in the United Kingdom "doesn't change what we need to do" in regards to staying protected. 

Additionally, Adams said that this new variant in the UK could be one "that was at a super spreader event" but they will have further discussion about this at a taskforce meeting later today. 

New York City will make social, emotional and academic behavior health screenings available for K-12 public school students in communities hit hardest by Covid-19, city officials announced Monday.

The initiative will begin in 27 communities that have been identified as suffering the highest case and death rates since the pandemic began. The city will also hire 150 additional social workers, and add a community school in each of the 27 neighborhoods. This first phase will serve approximately 380,000 students across approximately 830 schools, a press release from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office stated.

Chirlane McCray, de Blasio's wife, spearheaded the initiative, calling the additional screenings an “expanded health checkup for students.”

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that the initiative will allow officials to assess the general wellbeing of students and craft personalized care for them, with their guardians’ consent.

The effort will also involve expanding the school system’s partnership with the city’s healthcare providers to provide direct mental health resources to students, Carranza said.

More areas in England could be moved into the Tier 4 level of restrictions, akin to a lockdown, the UK government’s Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance has suggested.

When asked why the whole country is not in lockdown already, if the new variant is more transmissible, Vallance told a Downing Street press conference on Monday: “It is likely that this will grow in numbers of the variant across the country and I think it's likely, therefore, that measures will need to be increased in some places in due course, and not reduced.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he hopes children will still return to school in a “staggered way at the beginning of January” but the common sense thing to do is “follow the path of the epidemic keep things under constant review”.

Johnson said that with a vaccine now being administered, the UK can “look forward to a very different world from Easter onwards."

Operation Warp Speed officials still feel “strongly” they will allocate 20 million vaccine doses to states by the end of the year, Gen. Gustave F. Perna, chief operating officer of OWS, said during a briefing on Monday, and they’ll be distributing “the end part of that vaccine no later than” the first week in January.

Perna said they’re aiming for a regular cadence: Allocations will go out every Tuesday and they’ll be “unlocked and releasable for ordering” on Thursday, allowing for “micro-planning” on the state level. Following the release, Perna said the doses will be delivered Monday through Friday of the next week. 

The plan “really allows the states and the governors to execute their plans in a good rhythmic, consistent basis to ensure that we get the right vaccine quantities to the right places, so that it is most effectively used inside of the governors’ strategies and plans,” Perna said.