December 22 coronavirus news

As more people in the United States receive a Covid-19 vaccine, the US is still seeing a surge of new Covid-19 cases, causing a strain on hospital systems.

Pfizer and Moderna meanwhile are testing their coronavirus vaccines to see if they work against the mutated version of the virus found in the United Kingdom and other countries, the companies said.

Here's a look at where things stand in the US:

Vaccinations

New cases

Deaths

Hospitalizations

California hospital workers are sounding the alarm as a coronavirus surge in the state is pushing hospitals to breaking point.

Blake said her staff is mentally and physically exhausted. 

"At the very beginning…people were, you know, saying ‘nurses are heroes’ and ‘great job,’ and now they're not listening to us," she told CNN’s Sara Sidner. 

"I’ve been a nurse for 40 years, and it's the worst I’ve ever seen," she added. 

There are no more intensive care unit beds in the hospital, and vast portions of the state are seeing zero ICU bed capacity.

"It really is like a never-ending struggle," nurse Cliff Resurreccion said.

CNN goes inside a California hospital running out of beds:

It was a mixed bag for Wall Street Tuesday after Congress passed a long-awaited second pandemic stimulus bill.

However, economists worry that the effort has come too late. Meanwhile, investors are also worried about the new coronavirus variant that shut down UK travel over the past days.

Here's where things stood at opening:

It is a shortened trading week ahead of Christmas, ending at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday.

Nepal has become the latest country to ban airline passengers originating from or transiting through the UK from entering into the country, its aviation authority announced Tuesday. 

The restriction will go into effect from midnight Wednesday local time and will stay until further notice, according to a statement from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).

CAAN said that it has issued a circular to all international airlines to ensure that aircraft inbound to Nepal "shall not board the passengers originating from or transit through" the UK "due to the severe contagion of new strain of Covid-19" in the country. 

#UK Variant##

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine could be adjusted to better combat the new variant of the Coronavirus, BioNTech’s CEO Ugur Sahin told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen in an interview on Tuesday.  

"We should not forget that we have still the opportunity, if required, to adjust the vaccine exactly to this new virus variant, if this is needed," Sahin said.

Sahin told CNN that BioNTech is currently evaluating how effective the vaccine is against the recently discovered variant of the virus, which has caused dozens of countries to shut down travel to the United Kingdom. Sahin said he has "scientific confidence" that the vaccine will still work.  

"What we already did is we evaluated the sites where we have observed T cell responses against spike protein, and we see that almost all sites that we have seen T cell responses are still conserved. And so that is a good message. That means at least one component of the immune system will not be affected by this mutation," Sahin added. 

On Monday Pfizer/BioNTech received approval for their vaccine from the EU’s regulatory body, the European Medicines Agency. Sahin told CNN the vaccine would be rolled out ASAP and that the companies are already working on ways to speed up production.  

"We are evaluating if we could intensify the production at the Pfizer sites and intensify the production at the Mainz sites. So there are multiple things, which are ongoing."

Watch CNN's interview with BioNTech CEO:

It's "certainly possible" that the new variant of coronavirus in the UK is already in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci said during an interview on ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday.

Furthermore, Fauci said that he doesn't think a travel ban is something that we could see happening. 

A travel ban "is really a rather dramatic step so, that's not that's not really in the cards right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the requirement of testing is something that is being actively considered right now," Fauci said, referring to testing travelers before they arrive in the United States.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a scientific brief posted on its website Tuesday the UK coronavirus variant has not been identified through sequencing efforts in the United States, but only about 51,000 of 17 million US cases it has tallied have been sequenced — less than half a percent.

Here's what we know about the UK coronavirus variant.

Watch Dr. Fauci discuss new variant:

Congress voted Monday evening to approve a far-reaching $900 billion Covid relief package that promises to accelerate vaccine distribution and deliver much-needed aid to small businesses hit hard by the pandemic, Americans who have lost their jobs during the economic upheaval and health care workers on the front lines of the crisis.

The White House has said that President Donald Trump will sign the legislation once it reaches his desk.

Here are key provisions that will be included as part of the agreement, according to summaries of the legislation released by Democratic and GOP leadership:

The United Kingdom has identified a new, potentially more contagious coronavirus variant linked to a recent surge in cases in England.

The new mutation is being called VUI-202012/01 – the first "Variant Under Investigation" in the UK in December 2020. While scientists hunt for more information about the variant, its impact is already being felt, with dozens of countries imposing restrictions on travelers from the UK.

Here's what you need to know:

What is a variant and why are officials concerned about this one? A variant occurs when the genetic structure of a virus changes. All viruses mutate over time and new variants are common, including for the novel coronavirus.

Like other variants, this one carries a genetic fingerprint that makes it easy to track, and it happens to be one that is now widespread in southeast England. That alone does not necessarily mean a variant is more contagious or dangerous.

But scientists advising the UK government have estimated that this variant could be up to 70% more effective at spreading than others. Peter Horby, chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), said Monday that experts "now have high confidence that this variant does have a transmission advantage" over other variants.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the changes to the variant include 14 key mutations, and that some of them "may influence the transmissibility of the virus in humans," though it added that further laboratory investigations were needed.

Where did the variant originate and how has it taken hold? The new variant is believed to have originated in southeast England, according to the WHO. Public Health England (PHE) says backwards tracing, using genetic evidence, suggests the variant first emerged in England in September. It then circulated in very low levels until mid-November.

Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said Saturday the variant was responsible for 60% of new infections in London, which have nearly doubled in the last week alone.

Multiple experts have also suggested that this new variant could have been amplified because of a superspreader event, meaning the current spike in cases could also have been caused by human behavior.

Which countries are affected? The variant has already spread globally. As well as the UK, the variant has also been detected in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, according to the WHO.

Australia has identified two cases of the variant in a quarantined area in Sydney and Italy has also identified one patient infected with the variant.

A similar but separate variant has also been identified in South Africa, where scientists say it is spreading quickly along coastal areas of the country.

Learn more about the UK coronavirus variant here.

The UK coronavirus variant has not been identified through sequencing efforts in the United States, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a scientific brief posted on its website Tuesday. 

However, it says, only about 51,000 of 17 million US cases it has tallied have been sequenced — less than half a percent.

The agency says: "CDC is monitoring the situation in the UK and communicating with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. CDC and state and local health departments are continually monitoring and studying the virus spreading in the United States to quickly detect any changes." 

Last month, the agency launched a "strain surveillance program”" that it expects to be "fully implemented" in January; it will include states sending at least 10 samples biweekly for analysis. 

Infectious disease expert discusses new variant: