President Biden’s chief science officer for the pandemic response, David Kessler, told a House subcommittee hearing Thursday that the United States should plan for booster shots in the future. In remarks released Thursday from an event held earlier this month, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that a “likely scenario” included the need for a third vaccine dose six to 12 months after inoculation, after which “there will be an annual revaccination.”
Michigan GOP official blasts maskless colleagues for his covid-19
Last month, Michigan GOP official Jason A. Watts was one of the few wearing a mask at an indoor party meeting with about 70 others. He said he was ordered to attend and threatened with being ousted from his role after criticizing former president Donald Trump in an interview.
About two weeks later, he was in a hospital bed gasping for air.
“I wore two masks” at the event, said Watts, 44, who ended up spending five days in the hospital. “I found out later that four people at my table — not including me — came down with covid.”
The experience has left Watts, the Republican Party treasurer for the 6th Congressional District, blasting other party members for being careless about the pandemic and for not holding the meeting virtually.
German chancellor gets AstraZeneca vaccine amid worry over blood clots
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel got her first shot of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine Friday, despite ongoing concerns about its possible connection to blood clots.
“I am happy that I have received the first vaccination with AstraZeneca today,” Merkel said in a statement. “Vaccination is key to overcoming the pandemic.”
Merkel had said that she would wait her turn for a vaccine, and Berlin is now offering AstraZeneca vaccinations to people age 60 and older. Merkel is 66.
In Germany, the vaccine is not advised for people younger than 60 because of the blood clots, which regulators say are a possible rare side effect. Both Germany’s regulator and the European Medicines Agency put the chance of the occasional but dangerous clots at around 1 in every 100,000 immunizations.
Scientists are still trying to establish whether younger people face a higher risk, but they say the benefits of the vaccine clearly outweigh the risks of the coronavirus for the elderly. Fifty-five people have developed serious clots that block blood from draining from the brain, known as cerebral venous thrombosis, after vaccination with AstraZeneca, data from Germany’s regulator show.
The biggest group of those who developed the clots were women between 20 and 66 years old, accounting for 42 of the cases. Thirteen were men between ages 20 and 70. A total of 11 cases were fatal.
Around 4.2 million people in Germany have been vaccinated with the Swedish-British firm’s vaccine. The regulator says it has only seen complications following the first dose.
Germany’s stuttering vaccination program has sped up significantly in recent weeks, with shots now given out in doctors’ offices. Just over 658,000 people were vaccinated Thursday.
AstraZeneca is the ‘workhorse’ for vaccinating the world. Now, the world is uneasy over clot risks.
DAKAR, Senegal — She had seen the conspiracy theories on Facebook, the endless anti-vaccine videos. Aminata Gueye shrugged it all off as silly chatter and signed up for an AstraZeneca shot courtesy of a World Health Organization-backed vaccine push called Covax.
Then came some news on the radio in Dakar: Some European countries had suspended use of the vaccine after regulators found apparent links to rare, but potentially fatal, blood clots. Gueye never went to the clinic.
“I was impatient to get vaccinated,” said Gueye, 38. “Now I have doubts.”
Lingering hesitation about the two-dose AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine may shape the next phase of the effort to vaccinate the world.
Pandemic pushes mall department stores to the brink of extinction
Adrienne Whyte used to go twice a week to the mall, where she might meet up with her personal shoppers at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue or scour Macy’s for bedding and kitchenware.
But it’s been well over a year since she set foot in a department store — and she isn’t sure when, or whether, she will again.
“Now if I need something, I buy it online,” said the 72-year-old retiree from Falls Church, Va. “The department store is a one-stop shop, but so is the Internet.”
Department stores, once a middle-class mainstay of convenience and indulgence, had been spiraling downward long before the pandemic turbocharged online shopping and helped tip a number of big-name retailers into bankruptcy. Nearly 200 department stores have disappeared in the past year alone, and another 800 — or about half the country’s remaining mall-based locations — are expected to shutter by the end of 2025, according to commercial real estate firm Green Street Advisors.
New coronavirus cases reported at displacement camps in northeast Syria
A fresh coronavirus outbreak in northeast Syria has reached the area’s sprawling displacement camps and infected dozens of mostly foreign women, raising concerns over a potentially broader humanitarian crisis even as local authorities imposed a 10-day lockdown to curb the pathogen’s spread.
Most of the new cases are among mothers, Save the Children said, some of whom have been transferred to isolation facilities at the camps.
The new infections there come as the wider northeast region, home to about 5 million people, has recorded some 1,400 cases and 53 deaths just in the past week. Much of the region, including the camps, lacks basic testing capabilities.
The area is ruled by a Kurdish-led autonomous administration, whose fighters are backed by U.S. forces. Earlier this week, the administration announced a lockdown that coincided with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“These new figures are incredibly concerning. If this upsurge continues, it will only be a matter of time before hospitals and isolation facilities — which already have very limited capacity — are overwhelmed,” Save the Children’s Syria Response Director Sonia Khush said in a statement.
Calls to impeach Brazil’s Bolsonaro over virus response are rising
As Brazil plunged into the darkest hour of its coronavirus outbreak, Sílvia Rodrigues Farias opened her Facebook page and, beneath a picture of herself grinning alongside President Jair Bolsonaro, started posting.
Up went a video condemning the arrest of a retailer who flouted coronavirus restrictions. Then another saying people who opposed ineffective medications “were rooting for the virus.” A post calling Brazil a “health dictatorship.” And one more calling the media “dirty, rotten and corrupt.”
Rodrigues Farias, 53, a college administrator in the northern state of Pará, now gets all of her news from Brazil’s right-wing media ecosystem, where the ravages of the coronavirus are called exaggerations, governors who support restrictive measures are autocrats, unproven medications are miracle cures, lockdowns don’t work, masks inflict serious side effects, and Bolsonaro is a transcendent political figure fighting to save the country from Venezuela-style socialism.
Iran announces purchase of 60 million Russian vaccine doses as daily infections surge
ISTANBUL — Iran said it has signed a contract for 60 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, amid rising discontent over the slow pace of vaccinations during a vicious surge in coronavirus infections.
Iran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, said Thursday that the doses would arrive between June and December, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. Iran has struggled with one of the world’s most severe outbreaks while struggling to obtain vaccines — partly, it says, because of U.S. sanctions but also because of well-publicized missteps by Iran’s government.
In one setback, Iran’s supreme leader announced in January that he had banned the import of U.S. and British-made coronavirus vaccines, calling them “completely untrustworthy.”
Iran, with a population of 80 million, has received a few hundred thousand vaccine doses from China and India, and earlier this month received 700,000 doses as part of the global Covax initiative.
But as of April 11, the government had only administered about 400,000 vaccine doses, according to the World Health Organization. The government is developing several indigenous vaccines and collaborating with Cuba to develop vaccines as well.
Daily infection rates in Iran reached record highs over the past week, which officials have blamed on a surge of domestic travel during the Iranian new year last month as well as the spread of variants. As the vaccination effort has faltered, criticism and finger-pointing among government officials have surfaced in the Iranian press.
A report in the moderate Hamshahri newspaper March 7 quoted Hossein Ghanaati, the chairman of a pandemic-management think tank in Iran, as saying that the government did not have a “precise plan for providing vaccines.” Another report Friday in the semi-official Iran Students’ News Agency (ISNA) quoted Iranian President Hassan Rouhani calling vaccines “the key” to stemming the outbreak.
In an implicit criticism of the supreme leader’s vaccine ban, he added: “We cannot be waiting for the internally produced vaccines in the summer, and we need to use all kinds of foreign vaccines, and all companies are allowed."
New global coronavirus cases nearly double in two months, WHO says
The number of new global coronavirus cases has almost doubled over the past two months, an alarming increase that the World Health Organization said Friday was nearing the pandemic’s peak infection rate.
Around the world, “covid-19 cases and deaths are continuing to increase at worrying rates. Globally, the number of new cases per week has nearly doubled over the past two months,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a briefing Friday.
“This is approaching the highest rate of infection that we have seen so far during the pandemic,” he said. “Some countries that had previously avoided widespread covid-19 transmission are now seeing steep increases in infections."
Case numbers have spiked in nearly all regions, with larger outbreaks gripping places such as Brazil, India, Poland and Turkey. In the seven days ending April 11, global cases rose by 11 percent compared with the previous week, according to the WHO.
Some of those infections were due to the spread of new variants, while other surges came as pandemic fatigue set in and authorities moved to relax restrictions.
Annual vaccinations may be needed to fight virus variants
President Biden’s chief science officer for covid-19 response, David Kessler, told a House subcommittee hearing Thursday that the United States should plan for booster shots in the future.
In remarks from an event earlier this month, but that were also released Thursday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that a “likely scenario” included the need for a third vaccine dose six to 12 months after inoculation, after which “there will be an annual revaccination.”
“But all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. “It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus.”
Kessler, in remarks to the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, said that the Biden administration was “studying the durability of the antibody response” triggered by the vaccines.
“It seems strong but there is some waning of that, and no doubt the variants … they make these vaccines work harder,” he said. “So I think for planning purposes, planning purposes only, I think we should expect that we may have to boost.”
U.S. economic picture brightens, buoying recovery hopes
Blockbuster jobs and retail numbers, coupled with growing vaccinations, buoyed hopes Thursday for a robust recovery after more than a year of economic reversals. U.S. stocks soared, lifting the Dow and S&P 500 to record heights.
First-time unemployment claims fell sharply last week to a pandemic low of 576,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s down 193,000 from the preceding week’s surprise spike, an unexpectedly strong showing even as unemployment remains elevated.
Meanwhile, Commerce Department data showed retail sales soared 9.8 percent in March as stimulus checks hit bank accounts, business restrictions loosened and spring weather arrived.
“Stellar jobless claims plus off the charts retail sales packs a positive one two punch and sends strong signals that the economy is full steam ahead toward recovery,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy at E-Trade.
Japan expands pandemic restrictions but insists Olympics will still happen
As Japan battles a fourth wave of the virus, with daily cases topping 4,000, officials said Friday that the quasi state of emergency in place in Tokyo and five other prefectures will be expanded to four additional areas next week.
The new measures will take effect Tuesday and last for three weeks. Local municipalities can ask restaurants and bars in affected cities to close by 8 p.m., while attendance at large events would be capped at 5,000. The areas facing new restrictions include three prefectures near Tokyo and one centered on Nagoya, a manufacturing hub.
But many fear it is too little, too late. Osaka has been hit hard by the surge in cases, especially of more-infectious variants. Hospitals have faced a shortage of beds and medical staff.
With less than 100 days to go until the already-delayed Olympic Games are scheduled to open in Tokyo, the capital recorded 667 cases on Friday. Gov. Yuriko Koike has urged people, including commuters, “not to come to Tokyo.”
A senior ruling-party figure said this week that canceling the Games was still an option, depending on the pandemic situation. But Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto brushed away the idea Friday. “We are not thinking of canceling the Games. We are focusing on the method in which we can achieve and deliver a safe and secure Games,” she said at a news conference.
Race disparities for covid-19 vaccine narrow in Montgomery
Montgomery County has narrowed the coronavirus vaccination gap among racial groups, County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said Thursday.
In February, about 20 percent of Black and Latino county residents older than 65 had been vaccinated, compared with 30 percent of Asian residents and 40 percent of White residents in that age group.
As of early April, about 60 percent of Black and Latino residents over 65 had been vaccinated, compared with 70 percent of Asian residents and 65 percent of White residents in that age group.
China’s economy is roaring back, a year after coronavirus shutdown
China’s economy grew at a record pace in the first quarter, expanding by 18.3 percent as it blew past other major nations in its pandemic recovery.
The world’s second-largest economy has more than regained its pre-pandemic activity, despite challenges such as lower efficacy rates of its coronavirus vaccines, pandemic travel limitations, and U.S. sanctions on key Chinese industries.
Still, while China was able to control the domestic spread of covid-19 faster than Western nations, it faces a more drawn-out battle against the virus. With four times the number of people to vaccinate compared with the United States and less-effective vaccines than the West, China is unlikely to reach herd immunity at home this year.
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