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US 'on track' to have enough vaccine for all by end of July; expanded testing planned for schools: Latest COVID-19 updates

Top U.S. health officials said Wednesday that the U.S. will have enough vaccine for every American by the "end of July," echoing an estimate from the president hours earlier but contradicting predictions from the nation's top infectious disease expert.

"We are on track to have enough vaccine supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July," Jeff Zients, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a task force briefing Wednesday.

President Joe Biden offered a similar timeline in a CNN town hall Tuesday night. "By the end of July, we’ll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American," Biden said.

The estimates contradict recent predictions from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Last week, Fauci said April would be "open season" for vaccinations and that any adult will be able to get vaccinated. On Tuesday, he walked back that timeline, telling CNN that vaccines may not be available to all the general public until mid-May or even June. Fauci attributed the change in his forecast to less initial production than expected of the upcoming Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

The U.S. is continuing to ramp up vaccinations. Last week, the U.S. administered a seven-day average of 1.7 million doses a day, up from less than a million doses a day in mid-January. On Tuesday, the White House said that number is increasing to more than 1.9 million this week.

But as winter weather continued to wreak havoc across the nation Wednesday, some vaccination sites canceled appointments, and vaccine shipments continued to be delayed, Zients said.

"The weather’s having an impact. It’s having an impact on distribution and deliveries," Zients said. "We want to make sure, as we’ve lost some time in some states for people to get needles in arms, that our partners do all they can to make up that lost ground."

Meanwhile, the Biden administration on Wednesday announced it would expand testing for schools and underserved populations, increase domestic manufacturing of testing supplies and increase virus genome sequencing.

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In the headlines:

In remarks to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on "all countries" to provide all data from the earliest days of their outbreaks. The comments come days after reports that China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to a World Health Organization team probing the origins of the pandemic.

North Korea tried to hack into the servers of U.S. drugmaker Pfizer to steal coronavirus vaccine information, South Korean intelligence officials reported Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.

►The European Union announced an agreement to buy a additional 300 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. Hours earlier, Pfizer and BioNTech said they had signed a deal to deliver 200 million more doses of their vaccine to the bloc.

►A genomic mutation associated with protection against severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals, researchers reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Neandertals evolved in western Eurasia 500,000 years ago and subsequently lived largely separated from the ancestors of modern humans in Africa.

►Doctors across the nation have been seeing a striking increase in cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C, a condition that sometimes strikes young people several weeks after infection by the coronavirus, The New York Times reports. The surge follows the overall spike of COVID cases in the U.S.

📈 Today's numbers: The U.S. has more than 27.8 million confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 490,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than 109.8 million cases and 2.42 million deaths. More than 72.4 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. and 56.2 million have been administered, according to the CDC.

📘 What we're reading: A next generation coronavirus vaccine is in the works. But initial funding was denied. Read the full story.

President Joe Biden participates in a televised town hall event at Pabst Theater, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, in Milwaukee.

Pfizer vaccine not as powerful vs. South Africa variant, but level of protection unclear 

Neutralizing antibody response from the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine diminished by two-thirds against the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa, but it's not known how that might impact the level of protection the inoculation offers, according to a new report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The South Africa variant, known as B.1.351, has been detected in only about 20 COVID cases in the U.S., but it has raised concerns because of the possibility it might resist vaccines. Pfizer and BioNTech said there has been "no clinical evidence to date” their  vaccine is not effective against that variant, but they are working on an update or booster shot anyway.

"It is unclear what effect a reduction in neutralization by approximately two thirds would have on (vaccine)-elicited protection from Covid-19 caused by the B.1.351 lineage of SARS-CoV-2,'' says the report, authored by researchers from Pfizer, BioNTech and the University of Texas Medical Branch.

However, presidential advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a CNN interview Wednesday night that even though "the efficacy of the vaccines induced by both the Moderna and the Pfizer are diminished multiple-fold, there's such a cushion of efficacy at the level of antibodies that are induced'' that they both protect against most disease and especially against severe disease from the variant.

As NHL deals with COVID-19 issues, is on-ice transmission among players to blame?

The signs that COVID-19 would wreak havoc on the 2021 NHL season were there before the first puck even dropped. Five days prior to opening night on Jan. 13, the league announced the defending Western Conference champion Dallas Stars would not open the season as scheduled because 17 players had contracted COVID-19 during training camp.

Since then, seven more teams have been sidelined because of COVID-19. The toll so far has been 35 games postponed and at least 124 players landing on the NHL's COVID-19 list. Players are put on the list for several reasons, from testing positive for COVD-19 to high-risk close contact to quarantining following a trade.

The NHL is now acknowledging that COVID-19 may be spreading around the league as a result of on-ice contact and because the more contagious strains have infiltrated the league. Read more.

– Chris Bumbaca

Biden administration to invest $1.6B to expand testing, genome sequencing

The Biden administration announced a series of measures Wednesday aimed at expanding COVID-19 testing and genome sequencing in the U.S. amid an influx of coronavirus variants. Here are the highlights:

  • A $650 million investment to expand testing opportunities for K-8 schools and underserved congregate settings, such as homeless shelters.
  • Establishment of regional coordinating centers to organize the distribution of testing supplies and partner with laboratories across the country, including universities and commercial labs, to collect specimens, perform tests and report results to the public health agencies.
  • An investment of $815 million to increase domestic manufacturing of testing supplies and materials that have created shortage issues.
  • A nearly $200 million plan by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify and track emerging strains, increasing the agency's sequencing capacity from about 7,000 samples per week to approximately 25,000.

The White House said in a press release that the investments are "only the beginning" of what is needed to expand testing nationwide. Biden's American Rescue Plan, which he wants Congress to pass in the coming weeks, would invest $50 billion to expand and support testing.

Research starting to show vaccines prevent transmission, Fauci says

Dr. Anthony Fauci cited early data Wednesday that suggests vaccines may be effective in diminishing or preventing transmission.

"Does vaccine prevent transmission?" Fauci said. "There have been some studies that are pointing into a very favorable direction, that will have to be verified and corroborated by other studies."

Citing data from Spain and Israel, Fauci said research is "starting to point to the fact" that vaccines not only protect people from disease – including that caused by the variants – but also from becoming contagious.

"When your turn to get vaccinated comes up, get vaccinated," Fauci said. "It's not only good for you and your family and your community, it will have a very important impact on the dynamics of the outbreak in our country."

Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras upended by pandemic

America marked Ash Wednesday in alternative ways as the threat of spreading COVID-19 takes its toll on religious traditions on the first day of the Lenten season. 

Catholic priests have been told by the Vatican to skip making the traditional sign of the cross with ashes on worshipper's foreheads. Some churches are offering drive-thru ashes and do-it-yourself, bagged ashes. The Vatican asks that priests sprinkle the ashes upon the heads of their congregants, a customary practice at the Vatican and in Italy.

"You never see the pope with ashes on his forehead," said the Rev. Steven B. Giuliano. at Our Lady of Lourdes in Wilmington, Delaware. "They are always placed atop his head."

Ash Wednesday comes one day after "Fat Tuesday" – Mardi Gras – which also saw big changes this year. Parades were canceled and the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans, usually packed for the parties, were relatively quiet. Instead, locals decorated their homes in festive colors.

"Thank you all for embracing the Carnival spirit through your creativity and innovation," Mayor LaToya Cantrell said.

Bill would fund hunt for coronavirus mutations

U.S. scientists would gain vastly expanded capabilities to identify potentially deadlier mutations of the coronavirus under proposed legislation.

A bill cleared for floor debate last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would provide $1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. It calls for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to organize a national network to use the technology to track the spread of mutations – such as the recently discovered U.K. and South African variants – and guide public health countermeasures.

"We need that data. Otherwise, in some ways, we’re flying blind," Esther Krofah, who directs the FasterCures initiative of Milken Institute, told the Associated Press. "We don’t understand the prevalence of mutations that we should be worried about in the U.S."

Biden promotes teacher vaccinations, in-class learning 5 days a week

President Joe Biden made clear Tuesday his goal is for the majority of K-8 public schools to be open "five days a week" by the end of his first 100 days after the White House received criticism for scaling back that goal last week.

"I think that we'll be close to that by the end of the first 100 days," Biden said during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee. "You'll have a significant percentage of them being able to be open."

Frustrating many parents and opening a new line of attack for Republicans, press secretary Jen Psaki said last week Biden's goal is for more than 50% of schools to have "some teaching" in person "at least one day a week" – not necessarily fully reopened – by Day 100 of his presidency.

But Biden said that statement was inaccurate, recommitting to a goal of having most K-8 schools fully open. Asked how he would return students to classrooms, Biden said, "We should be vaccinating teachers.

He also said that "by next Christmas I think we'll be in a very different circumstance [in terms of normalcy than we are today."

SAT testing for students ramping up for spring

The SATs will go on this spring in pandemic or in health. The College Board, which owns and oversees the exam many colleges use for admissions, has directed school hosts to "make their own decisions about the test and safety standards based on local restrictions," according to its website.

Hosts can close sites up to the day of testing, but no closures were posted to the College Board closures page. SAT sites, often hosted by high schools, are working to update exam security and COVID-19 safety protocols to accommodate thousands of students. Hundreds of test sites across the nation were shuttered last spring and fall due to the pandemic.

"While College Board can't directly control capacity and test center availability, we're working to ensure that as many students as possible are able to test safely," the not-for-profit group said in a statement.

Carly Q. Romalino, Cherry Hill Courier-Post

Contributing: Ryan Cormier, Delaware News Journal; The Associated Press

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