The chief executive of BioNTech says the German pharmaceutical company is confident that its coronavirus vaccine works against the U.K. variant, but further studies are needed to be completely sure.
Ugur Sahin said Tuesday that “we don’t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new variant,” but because the proteins on the variant are 99 per cent the same as the prevailing strains, BioNTech has “scientific confidence” in the vaccine.
Sahin said BioNTech is conducting further studies and hopes to have certainty within the coming weeks. BioNTech’s vaccine, developed together with U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer, is authorized for use in more than 45 countries.
As of late Tuesday afternoon, more than 77.7 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 43.8 million cases considered recovered or resolved, according to a database maintained by U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 1.7 million.
What’s happening in Canada
As of 3:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Canada’s COVID-19 case count stood at 520,045, with 76,584 of those cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 14,402.
At a briefing on the COVID-19 situation in Canada on Tuesday, federal health officials said they had not yet seen a sign of the mutated COVID-19 variant that first emerged in Britain, which experts believe is more readily transmissible.
“What we can say is at this point in time, we have not detected this mutation,” Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said.
Experts will continue to monitor the situation, she said, “but we will of course inform people as this goes along.”
Tam said more testing and sequencing would be done in the days ahead.
Quebec reported 2,183 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, a single-day record, and 28 deaths. Hospitalizations increased to 1,055 in the hard-hit province, with 137 people in intensive care units.
The province also reported that a total of 437 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were administered on Monday, for a total of 5,273 doses administered since vaccinations began on Dec. 14.
In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford said that he knows a sweeping shutdown set to begin across the province on Dec. 26 will be difficult, but that it is necessary as COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations rise.
At a news conference Tuesday, Ford also called on the federal government to implement pre-departure testing for travellers to Canada in light of a rapidly spreading variant of the virus in the United Kingdom.
“It’s a massive threat that we can’t take lightly,” he said. “Everyday we delay it, thousands of people are landing.”
WATCH | Ontario premier wants Ottawa to test for COVID-19 at airports:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says residents of Ontario are at great risk because the federal government is not doing enough to protect them from threats that come from outside Canada’s borders. 1:03
Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott on Tuesday reported 2,202 cases of COVID-19 and said more than 45,300 tests were completed. Hospitalizations also increased, according to the province, rising to 1,005 with 273 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. Figures published by a Toronto critical care doctor and attributed to Critical Care Services Ontario (CCSO) put the ICU figure at 285.
The figures reported by the province daily can vary from the CCSO reports due to differences in how the numbers are compiled.
Warehouses, food processing plants, and manufacturing facilities are among the essential businesses exempt from the provincial shutdown — even though workplaces are a significant source of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> infections, <a href=”https://twitter.com/trevorjdunn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@trevorjdunn</a> reports, leaving workers at risk:<a href=”https://t.co/pbEeo6133a”>https://t.co/pbEeo6133a</a>
Manitoba reported 155 new cases on Tuesday, continuing a downward trend after reporting 167 new cases on Monday, which was the first time since Nov. 3 that the province’s daily count of new cases had been below 200.
However, the province also reported 18 new deaths, just one shy of Manitoba’s record of 19 in a single day. Seven of the new deaths are related to the outbreak at Oakview Place care home in Winnipeg.
Across Manitoba, there are 380 people hospitalized with COVID-19, including 44 in intensive care.
As of Monday night, 1,192 front-line health workers in the province have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
WATCH | Manitoba premier urges residents to stay vigilant despite vaccine rollout:
Despite the COVID-19 vaccine starting to be distributed, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister warns residents that they cannot get complacent when it comes to following public health guidelines 1:12
Saskatchewan reported 181 new COVID-19 cases and three new deaths related to COVID-19 on Tuesday.
The province is also reporting 124 hospitalizations due to COVID-19, including 21 in intensive care.
Saskatchewan reported that as of Dec. 21, 1,519 people have received their first dose of vaccine as part of the Regina pilot vaccination phase.
In Alberta, a Calgary judge on Monday rejected an emergency application seeking a stay of the province’s COVID-19 public health restrictions, including bans on gatherings and mandatory masks.
A Calgary law firm and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms appeared in court Monday morning to make an application for an emergency injunction staying the restrictions, alleging they violate constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Alberta reported 1,240 new COVID-19 cases and nine more COVID-19 deathson Monday.
Health officials in British Columbia said restrictions appear to be working to slow the spread of the virus, as they announced 1,667 new cases and 41 new deaths over a three-day period on Monday.
However, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the province’s curve is levelling at too high a plateau, with significant growth of new cases in the Interior and the north of B.C.
“With restrictions in place, the number of people that have had close contact has decreased, but it is still a substantial number,” she said.
In the North, no new cases were reported in any of the territories on Tuesday. Yukon, which reported two recoveries, now has no active cases of COVID-19.
In Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia reported seven cases on Tuesday, while Newfoundland and Labrador reported one new case and New Brunswick reported two new cases, both in the Moncton region.
Prince Edward Island reported no new cases on Tuesday. The province expects to have 1,500 people vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of the day.
What’s happening in the U.S.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar before receiving his first dose of the new Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday. (Patrick Semansky/Reuters)
The top infectious disease expert in the United States has received the initial dose of the newest COVID-19 vaccine alongside other federal health leaders who helped oversee its development. Dr. Anthony Fauci received his first shot of the two-dose regimen with National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Each received the vaccine co-developed by NIH and Massachusetts drugmaker Moderna.
The vaccinations on Tuesday at the NIH campus outside Washington, D.C., are part of a broader government effort to bolster public confidence in the safety of two COVID-19 vaccines recently cleared by U.S. regulators. Six health-care workers from the NIH’s research hospital also received vaccination shots at the event.
The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, has passed a $900 billion US pandemic relief package that would finally deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and resources to vaccinate a nation confronting a frightening surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Lawmakers tacked on a $1.4 trillion catch-all spending bill and thousands of pages of other end-of-session business in a massive bundle of bipartisan legislation as Capitol Hill prepared to close the books on the year. The bill approved Monday night went to President Donald Trump for his signature, which was expected in the coming days.
The bill combines coronavirus-fighting funds with financial relief for individuals and businesses. It would establish a temporary $300-a-week supplemental jobless benefit and a $600 direct stimulus payment to most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theatres, as well as money for schools, health-care providers and renters facing eviction.
The U.S. has seen more than 18 million COVID-19 cases and more than 319,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
Volunteers help build a mobile field hospital at UCI Medical Center on Monday in Orange, Calif. The state’s overwhelmed hospitals are setting up makeshift beds for coronavirus patients, and some facilities in hard-hit Los Angeles County are drawing up emergency plans in case they have to limit how many people receive life-saving care. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)
Californians, meanwhile, were being warned it is too risky to celebrate the winter holidays normally, and if they don’t change plans, a deadly explosion of coronavirus cases could follow. The state has recorded a half-million coronavirus cases in the last two weeks, and Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that a projection model shows California could be facing nearly 100,000 hospitalizations within a month.
“Another spike in cases in the winter holidays will be disastrous for our hospital system and ultimately will mean many more people simply won’t be with us in 2021,” Los Angeles County Public Health director Barbara Ferrer said bluntly during a briefing.
The current surge is overwhelming emergency rooms in both urban centres and rural areas, including along the Mexican border, where a small hospital system warns it is quickly running out of patient beds.
Conditions at El Centro Regional Medical Center in the southeast corner of the state are desperate — even worse than during a summer surge that caught the attention of the governor, hospital officials said.
“We don’t have space for anybody. We’ve been holding patients for days because we can’t get them transferred, can’t get beds for them,” said Dr. Alexis Lenz, an emergency room physician at the medical centre in Imperial County, home to 180,000 people.
What’s happening around the world
In the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan has reported a locally transmitted case of COVID-19 — the first in 253 days.
The country’s Central Epidemic Command Center said on Tuesday that the patient is a 30-year old female. She was found to be a close contact of a foreign pilot who was previously confirmed as having contracted the coronavirus.
Health officials are in touch with 167 contacts of both individuals and have asked 13 of them to quarantine at home. An official said the pilot, who did not mention the woman as a close contact, may be found in violation of Taiwan’s epidemic prevention laws and could be fined.
Taiwan has largely shielded itself during the pandemic, recording just seven deaths and 770 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
A medical staff member wearing protective gear takes a swab from a visitor to test for COVID-19 at a temporary testing station outside Seoul railway station in South Korea on Tuesday. (Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images)
South Korea will prohibit private social gatherings of five or more people and shut down ski resorts and major tourist spots nationwide starting on Christmas Eve as it contends with a surge in coronavirus infections.
The restrictions announced Tuesday extend to a national level similar rules set earlier by authorities in the Seoul metropolitan area. It is the most serious step the government has taken to reinstate physical distancing after months of easing.
India recorded 19,556 new cases of the coronavirus, according to Health Ministry data on Tuesday, its lowest daily increase since July 3.
In Europe, Ireland’s prime minister said coronavirus restrictions will be tightened in the country amid concerns that the new variant of the virus identified in southeast England has spread across the Irish Sea.
In an address to the country, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said the government was acting “quickly and aggressively” in response to rising infection rates and that it was proceeding on the assumption that the new variant, which is said to be more virulent than existing strains, was already in Ireland.
He said that in the last week, the country had seen “extraordinary growth in the spread of the virus.” Figures, he said, suggest the virus is growing by about 10 per cent a day.
Among the new restrictions to be imposed over the coming days and to last until Jan. 12, Martin said restaurants and pubs selling food will have to close at 3 p.m. on Dec. 24. “Wet pubs” — those that don’t sell food — are already closed. Shops and schools can stay open, he said.
Germany has expanded its ban on passenger flights from the U.K. to forbid passenger transport by rail, bus and ship. Health Minister Jens Spahn said the measure took effect at midnight, a day after flights were halted. A similar measure applies to South Africa, where a new variant of the coronavirus has also been detected.
Tessa Boulton, left, takes a swab test from triathlete Michael Kruse, dressed as Santa Claus, at a testing centre at the Helios Clinic in Schwerin, Germany on Monday. Kruse traditionally hands out Christmas presents at the clinic’s children’s ward at Christmas and therefore has to be tested in advance. (Jens Buettner/dpa/The Associated Press)
The measures apply through Jan. 6. There are exceptions for freight and mail transport, as well as for medical and humanitarian flights. A string of European and other countries halted air travel from Britain because of a new and seemingly more contagious strain of the coronavirus in England.
A leading German virologist who was initially skeptical about reports that the strain was much more contagious voiced concern after seeing more data. Christian Drosten, a professor of virology at Berlin’s Charite hospital, tweeted that “unfortunately it doesn’t look good.” But Drosten added that the mutation has so far increased only in areas where there was a high or rising rate of infection, meaning that reducing contacts works against its spread.
In Africa, Sudan will ban travellers from Britain, the Netherlands and South Africa beginning Dec. 23.
In the Middle East, Oman said on Monday it’s temporarily suspending all entry to the country by foreigners and halting international passenger flights over worries about a fast-spreading new strain of the coronavirus.
Oman said the one-week closure of all official ports of entry would begin on Tuesday “to protect community members from the severity of infection and the speed of spread.”
In the Americas, Brazil trailed only the U.S. in total coronavirus cases, with more than 7.2 million cases reported and more than 187,000 deaths. Brazilian health regulator Anvisa said it had certified the production standards of CoronaVac, China’s Sinovac-produced coronavirus vaccine candidate.
Colombia’s president said that Venezuelan migrants who are living in the country without residence permits won’t be given free COVID-19 vaccines when the doses arrive — possibly leaving hundreds of thousands unvaccinated.
Guatemala and Panama will restrict entry to travellers who have recently visited Britain or South Africa.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
