February 23 coronavirus news

Based on new evidence, Italy has extended the age range it recommends receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from people ages 18-55 to those ages 18-65, according to the country’s health ministry.

A statement from the health ministry said Italy’s Superior Health Council declared today that the vaccine can be given in the age group between 18 and 65 years, “with the exception of extremely vulnerable subjects.” 

WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) recommend the AstraZeneca vaccine for all groups age 18 and above.

Italy’s decision follows early data on the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca shots in Scotland that said by the fourth week after the initial dose, the Pfizer vaccine reduced the risk of hospital admission from Covid-19 by up to 85%. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine reduced the risk of hospitalization by up to 94%. The study is the first to look at the two vaccines’ effect on preventing severe illness resulting in hospitalization across an entire country, with previous efficacy results coming from clinical trials.

Earlier this month, Italy said it would administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 55 years old, starting with school teachers, army and police forces, prison staff and inmates.

As all eyes are on whether the Senate parliamentarian will allow an increase in the minimum wage in the Senate’s Covid-19 relief package, Democrats are having discussions about alternative paths they could take to salvage their increase in the minimum wage.

Democrats are facing two potential hurdles. First, it’s possible the Senate parliamentarian could rule as soon as tonight against allowing the $15 minimum wage to be in the Senate Democrats’ bill. If that happens, Democrats’ options would likely be to try and pass the legislation as a standalone in the future with a 60-vote threshold, something that Republicans wouldn’t support.

If the $15 minimum wage is allowed to stay in the bill, however, it opens up other potential challenges for the party. While progressives have fought for months to include the provision in the package, it could cost Democrats the votes they need to pass it with just 51 votes. Already two members — Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin — have said they wouldn’t support that big of an increase in the minimum wage in the bill. Manchin, however, has expressed an openness to a smaller minimum wage. According to aides, Democrats are looking at whether it might be possible to lower the increase in the minimum wage to $11 or $12 an hour instead of $15. Another option being considered is to expand the phase in so that instead of getting to the $15 minimum wage in 5 years, nationally, it would take 10 years.

Again, the talks are just preliminary. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chair of the Budget Committee, is still committed to the full $15 amount.

The Senate Finance Committee is also eyeing a provision to give some of the smallest businesses tax credits to help curb the cost of the wage increase and incentivize businesses to increase their minimum wage, according to an aide familiar with the discussions.

Multiple aides warned that the discussions are still just ideas and all eyes are first on what the Senate’s parliamentarian would do. But, the minimum wage increase remains the key sticking point so Democrats are having some preliminary conversations about how the Covid-19 relief bill’s votes could be salvaged if necessary.

At least 98 countries and territories have administered more than 212 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, barely a year after the first Covid-19 case was reported in China.

Several different vaccines have been developed at record speed, in large part due to years of research on related viruses and billions of dollars in investment.

In December 2020, the first dose of a fully tested vaccine — manufactured by Pfizer/BioNTech — was administered in the United Kingdom. Now, multiple vaccines have been authorized for use around the world and dozens of countries and territories have joined the race to vaccinate their residents.

CNN is tracking Covid-19 vaccines worldwide: click on the link below to find out more.

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Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide

The United States can expect to see a total of 240 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine by the end of March, according to prepared remarks drug companies will deliver to a House subcommittee today. The vaccine makers are set to testify at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Pfizer and Moderna – the two companies with Covid-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States – have pledged to make a combined total of 220 million doses available for shipment by the end of March. 

Meanwhile, the company Johnson & Johnson, which has yet to receive an emergency use authorization for its Covid-19 vaccine, has pledged to make 20 million doses available in the same time frame.

Each of the vaccine makers, along with the companies AstraZeneca and Novavax, provided prepared remarks ahead of a hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on Tuesday. In the remarks, each company detailed the number of doses it plans to provide and when.

Pfizer noted in its remarks that it expects to increase the number of doses available for shipment from about 4 to 5 million doses per week at the beginning of February to more than 13 million doses per week by the middle of March. 

Moderna, the other company with an authorized Covid-19 vaccine, noted in its remarks that it is on track to meet a commitment to deliver 100 million doses by the end of March and it plans to double monthly deliveries by April to more than 40 million doses per month.

"Based on this progress scaling up manufacturing, we recently agreed to move up our delivery timeline: we now are aiming to deliver a second hundred million doses by the end of May and a third hundred million doses by the end of July," the company said in its remarks.

Johnson & Johnson, whose vaccine is administered as a single dose, pledged in its remarks to deliver enough single-doses by the end of March to enable the vaccination of more than 20 million Americans, should its vaccine be authorized for emergency use.

Novavax said that it is prepared to deliver 110 million doses, which is included in its current agreements with the US government, by the third quarter of this year. AstraZeneca has noted that it has two agreements with the US government for 300 million doses.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he expects US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance for fully vaccinated people will be coming soon.

Fauci said that the CDC wants “to make sure they sit down, talk about it, look at the data and then come out with a recommendation based on the science.” 

Common sense tells you that you don’t have to be as stringent with Covid-19 public health measures once fully vaccinated, he said, but he wants firm recommendations from the CDC, “which I believe will be coming soon.”

The CDC has said a fully vaccinated person does not have to do the recommended quarantine — 10 days without a test or seven days with a test — if they come into contact with someone who is known to be infected with the coronavirus, and he thinks more recommendations are coming. 

“I believe you’re going to be hearing more of the recommendations of how you can relax the stringency of some of the things, particularly when you’re dealing with something like your own personal family when people have been vaccinated,” Fauci told CNN.

When asked about a timeline, Fauci said that he speaks about this with the team every day — and as recently as last night. 

“I hope that we will be able to answer the logical questions that people are asking about that,” Fauci said Tuesday. “I agree, they’re questions that we need to answer pretty soon because more and more people are going to be vaccinated, every single day there’ll be more and more people and they’re going to be asking that question.” 

Watch:

Dunkirk may soon see extra measures implemented to curb the spread of coronavirus and the mayor of the Northern French city has asked for one last chance after a sharp rise in coronavirus incidence rates.

The local health authority, Agence Regionale de Santé Hauts-de-France, says that the incidence rate in Dunkirk has reached 901 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in the wider area, Hauts-de-France, it stands at 293 per 100,000. A spokesperson for the authority, Thomas Lhuillery, said there was no information on why the incidence rate in Dunkirk is so high.

Mayor Patrice Vergriete said Tuesday, “a very last chance” was needed for the town — to avoid all gatherings, at work, in the family, during the school holidays.

Vergriete said he was in contact with the French health minister, and that Olivier Veran, the minister, had asked for a “time of reflection.” 

The mayor and the minister will once again talk Tuesday afternoon, Vergriete said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Tuesday that if Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate is granted emergency use authorization the number of doses will likely be relatively few at first, but will ramp up to meet contractual agreements. 

Fauci said that he believes the totality of the doses is going to meet contractual agreements of having 100 million doses by late June or early July, saying “that will happen.” 

“What we’re seeing is that instead of being front-loaded with a number of doses that are coming out, it very likely will be backloaded,” he said. 

“It’s just a matter of what happened with their production capability and how they are now going to be revving up, and then soon after that, they’re going to have a lot of doses,” he said. “But, it’s not going to be front-loaded.”

Johnson & Johnson will testify Tuesday in front of the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations for the House Committee on Energy & Commerce that it can deliver enough doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of March to vaccinate more than 20 million Americans against Covid-19. 

The Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets on Friday to discuss the request for emergency use authorization from Johnson & Johnson for its vaccine candidate.

Top US infectious disease expert Dr. Antony Fauci reflected on 500,000 Americans dying of Covid-19 and said political divisions contributed to the death toll.

Fauci also described “several low points” for him over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It does intellectually pain me when I see things like pleading for people to do the kinds of things that you know work — the mask wearing, the physical separation,” he said.

He added that it was “painful” for him to see that while hospitals in many regions were overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, people were still calling the pandemic a hoax and fake news.

Watch the moment here:

Though Mexico has logged more than 180,000 Covid-19 deaths, it has some of the world's loosest entry requirements for foreigners. Visitors aren't required to submit negative test results, and there is no mandatory quarantine.

The pandemic's economic effect on the tourism industry has still been devastating.

The world's seventh most popular tourist destination, Mexico's economy has grown to depend on what amounted in 2019 to about $25 billion in income from 45 million international visitors, according to estimates from the National Tourism Business Council (CNET) and a center for tourism research at Universidad Anáhuac.

Across Mexico, tourist destinations are operating on limited capacity per Covid-19 regulations. The country is struggling to adapt to its slowest high season in memory, with limited government help for many workers and businesses struggling to make ends meet.

"I guess Mexico has been doing what it can do," said birdwatching guide Alex Martínez Rodríguez, but he said he doesn't feel that the populist government is acting in the best interest of the people.

Read the full story here:

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Risky business? Balancing Mexico's pandemic response with tourism

By Megan Frye, CNN. Top photo by Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images