December 27 coronavirus news

The World Health Organization designated Sunday as the first International Day of Epidemic Preparedness. 

It was called for by the United Nations General Assembly “to advocate the importance of the prevention of, preparedness for and partnership against epidemics,” WHO said, adding that they work closely with governments “to support efforts to build strong emergency and epidemic preparedness systems, as part of an overall approach to advance universal health coverage and strengthen primary health care systems.”  

In a video statement shared by WHO, director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that it is hard to believe that Covid-19 was completely unknown only a year ago, and that the impacts of the pandemic have gone far beyond the disease itself, with far reaching consequence for societies and economies.

“None of this should come as a surprise,” Tedros said, adding that there have been many reports, reviews and recommendations saying the same thing over the years: “the world is not prepared for a pandemic.” 

Tedros said that everyone must learn from the lessons being taught by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Whether there is a spike in new cases after people traveling for the holidays “really depends on what the travelers do when they get where they’re going,” Admiral Brett Giroir, US Health and Human Services assistant secretary, said on Fox News Sunday. 

Giroir said that the actual physical act of traveling in airplanes, for example, can be quite safe because of air purification systems, but “what we really worry about is the mingling of different bubbles once you get to your destination.” 

Over Thanksgiving, he said, there was a mixed picture. In the Midwest and Northern Plains cases continued to go down despite the travel, “which meant that people really did the kinds of things we talked to them about,” such as wearing a mask and limiting gatherings. 

Former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration Dr. Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that the idea of getting 20 million vaccinations administered by the end of the year is probably unrealistic at this point, when asked what he thought about the pace of Covid-19 vaccination by CBS’s Margaret Brennan.

On Saturday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 9,547,925 vaccine doses had been distributed and 1,944,585 had been administered. 

Gottlieb said that he suspected more than a million people have been vaccinated and that there is a lag in reporting, “but the idea that we’re going to get 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year, that’s probably unrealistic at this point.” 

Gottlieb said to remember that this was after only about 45% of vaccines were shipped to states. 

“I think they’ll get up and running and get better systems in place to distribute these vaccines more efficiently, I think they’re going to turn to CVS and Walgreens to start distributing them in the community and that’s a pretty big footprint,” he said. “But again, as you get out into the community and try to vaccinate a harder to reach population, it’s going to become significantly more difficult to get those vaccines out.”

The fact that there was a struggle to vaccinate health care workers and nursing home patients, “that shows we need to be investing more in these efforts,” Gottlieb said. 

There have been at least 19,000,572 cases of coronavirus in the United States and at least 332,145 people have died from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

Virginia is reporting 3,998 new cases of Covid-19 Sunday, according to its Covid-19 dashboard.

The state’s seven-day positivity rate increased slightly to 12.2%, the dashboard shows. 

The Virginia Hospital Covid-19 Dashboard reports 2,495 people in its hospitals with Covid-19, with 514 in the ICU and 318 on a ventilator. Thirty-three percent of the state’s ventilators are currently in use, the dashboard shows.

Note: These numbers were released by the Virginia Department of Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

“We’re very concerned and we always see a little bit of a bump after holidays, and sometimes a large bump,” US Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, when asked about concerns about a post-holiday surge of Covid-19 and the number of people who traveled. 

Adams noted the CDC recommendations that people get tested three to five days after travel or after being around people without masks being worn. 

“Getting that test now means that if you were exposed to asymptomatic spread from someone else, we can find out and we can limit your ability to spread to others,” Adams said. 

He also said that “you should definitely stay away from vulnerable people,” over the next fourteen days if you traveled, “so you don’t give them coronavirus from your holiday gathering.” 

The new Covid-19 variant — first identified in England — has been detected in two people in Norway, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) on Sunday.

In a press release, the Institute said the variant had been detected in two people who had traveled from the United Kingdom in December.

NIPH Department Director Line Vold said additional testing and closer follow-up of close contacts would be carried out to reduce the risk of possible further spread. She also said that while there is “reason to be cautious, it is still uncertain how important a role the variant plays in spreading the virus.”

Usual measures to fight the pandemic, such as staying home if sick, testing, social distancing, quarantine measures and limited gatherings, are important to control this variant as well, she added.

On Saturday, the Public Health Agency of neighboring Sweden announced the variant had been diagnosed in the region of Sörmland, on the outskirts of Stockholm.

Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, says President Trump will be remembered for “chaos and misery and erratic behavior” if he allows the relief bill to expire, Toomey told Mike Emanuel on Fox News Sunday.

Toomey explained his own opposition to more coronavirus relief being “because it’s terribly untargeted,” continuing on that the money “should be targeted to people that actually lost their job.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders called on President Trump to sign the Covid-19 relief bill passed by Congress “right now” and implored the President to push for additional $2,000 payments to individuals after signing the bill.  

Sanders had been among the loudest voices pushing for $2,000 payments to people to be included in the $900 billion bill that only included $600 payments, which Sanders called “simply not enough.” Sanders also criticized President Trump for being absent during negotiations for the bill that now sits on his desk. 

“Not a word,” Sanders said when asked if he’d heard from Trump during the negotiations of the bill. “Everybody assumed that Mnuchin was representing the White House.”

Sanders also commented that he suspects President-elect Joe Biden will make it a priority to provide further assistance to people once he takes office.