April 5 coronavirus news

The Biden administration has tapped Gayle Smith, who helped lead the Obama administration’s Ebola response, to serve as the coordinator for Global Covid Response and Health Security, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced in remarks Monday that failed to offer concrete details about US plans to share vaccines with international partners.

The top US diplomat said that the United States would not “trade shots in arms for political favors,” but did not offer specific details on the administration’s plans to share vaccines more broadly beyond its immediate neighbors.

“This is about saving lives,” Blinken said during his remarks. “We’ll treat our partner countries with respect.”

Blinken also outlined other “core values” he said would guide the State Department’s plans, in what appeared to be a swipe at Russia and China.

Blinken said that as the Biden administration gets "more confident" about vaccine supply domestically, they are looking at options for sharing vaccines with other countries. He said that would happen "soon" but did not give details as to when that would begin.

Blinken spoke highly of the new global Covid envoy, saying, “she’s tested, she’s highly respected, she will hit the ground running.” 

“And I can say from having worked with Gayle and admired her for years that no one will work harder, faster or more effectively to get us to the finish line,” he said.

Smith, who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations and leads the ONE Campaign, a global anti-disease and anti-poverty organization, said she faces two challenges.

“First, to shorten the lifespan of a borderless pandemic that is destroying lives and livelihoods all over the world. And the second is to ensure that we can prevent, detect, and respond to those future global health threats we know are coming. American leadership is desperately needed, and I’m extremely confident we can rise to the occasion,” she said. 

The ONE Campaign said Smith is “on temporary assignment to the State Department."

In his remarks, Blinken also noted that the United States would “keep pushing for a complete and transparent investigation into the origins of this epidemic, to learn what happened, so it doesn't happen again.” 

Last week, the US and 13 other countries released a joint statement raising questions about a World Health Organization report on the deadly pandemic’s origins and calling for independent and fully transparent evaluations, and the European Union called for better access for researchers and further investigation.

More than 167 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the United States, according to data published Monday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC reported that 167,187,795 total doses have been administered – about 80% of the 207,891,395 doses delivered.

That’s about 2.1 million more doses reported administered since yesterday, for a seven-day average of about 3.1 million doses per day. This is the third day in a row that the seven-day average has topped 3 million doses per day.

Overall, about 32% of the US population – more than 107.5 million people – have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and nearly 19% of the population – more than 62 million people – are fully vaccinated, CDC data shows.

More than 40% of adults and more than 75% of seniors in the US have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about 23% of adults and 55% of seniors are fully vaccinated.

Note: Data published by the CDC may be delayed, and doses may not have been given on the day reported.

The White House says the US will still have enough vaccines for all Americans by the end of next month, despite problems with a single batch of “drug product” resulting in the loss of 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.

She continued, saying the US was “not betting on these doses,” and that Johnson & Johnson “has assured us that we will be getting the 24 million doses that they have promised in April.”  

Pressed by CNN's Kaitlan Collins on if the issues could add to vaccine hesitancy across the United States, Psaki responded, “we haven't seen that.” 

“This is why the FDA approval process is in place,” she said. “In many ways it was the process working, because the FDA had not approved the site. There were steps taken to address what some of the issues were, and we also have a range of contingency plans.” 

“When we all talk in here about, ‘why did we order so many doses, why are we at the point where we are sharing doses with every country around the world?’ Part of it is because we need to plan for things coming up. Things like this come up,” she said. 

Some background: As CNN previously reported, a source familiar with Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine manufacturing process told CNN Saturday the loss was not a major setback. 

Johnson & Johnson has said a single batch of “drug product” failed quality control inspection and had been discarded. The company’s vaccine currently being distributed in the US is made at a plant in the Netherlands, but Emergent BioSolutions, a contract manufacturer, was producing doses at a facility in Baltimore. The factory was awaiting authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration when the contamination problem was reported.

“Once the plant is back up and running, the way this particular vaccine is made in these large batches, making up for this batch should not be a major setback. It should be a setback of just a few weeks,” the source told CNN. 

Emergent was also making vaccine for AstraZeneca, whose vaccine is yet to be authorized in the US. Like Johnson & Johnson’s, AstraZeneca’s vaccine uses a virus to carry genetic material – a so-called viral vector.

Emergent and Johnson & Johnson have said quality control measures caught the problem. None of the vaccine being made at the plant had been shipped out to be put into vials or distributed and officials have stressed that no one had been put at risk because of the contamination.

CNN reported the company has been assisting in the production of Covid-19 vaccines for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca for months, according to a source familiar with the situation.

In addition to the batch of 15 million doses that had to be discarded, Emergent has successfully produced 115 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which are in various stages of the supply chain, the source said.

The source added that it’s “not that unusual” for the pharmaceutical industry to have to discard batches of vaccine, and the fact that Emergent and J&J detected the contamination before any of the impacted doses shipped “showed the system worked.”

Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the District will loosen many coronavirus restrictions beginning May 1, given the number of cases continues to decline later in the spring.  

At a news conference Monday, Bowser told reporters that although cases may rise soon in coming weeks because of the spring break and Easter gatherings, she expects cases will decrease by May.

Restrictions are expected to loosen in a number of areas, including:

According to the DC Department of Health, 9.7% of DC residents are fully vaccinated.

The United States is currently administering Covid-19 vaccine doses at a pace that’s nearly five times faster than the global average, and has fully vaccinated a larger share of its population than most countries that have been vaccinating for a similar amount of time, a CNN analysis suggests.

Over the past week, the US administered an average of more than three million doses per day, according to data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 900 shots per 100,000 people each day.

Globally, an average of 16 million shots have been administered daily over the past week, according to data published by Our World in Data. That’s about 200 shots per 100,000 people each day.

About 20 countries have been vaccinating their populations against Covid-19 for 100 days or more, including the US.

Since the first shot was administered in the US in mid-December, more than 18% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Vaccinations started about a week earlier in the UK, but only about 8% of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, data from Our World in Data shows. In Canada, which started vaccinations on the same date as the US, only about 2% of the population is fully inoculated.

Despite its successful vaccination campaign, other nations are outpacing the US in terms of vaccination coverage. Israel has fully vaccinated more than half of its population, and Chile has fully vaccinated about 20% of its population. Both countries started vaccinating about a week after the US.

You can find more specific country data at CNN’s global vaccine tracker here.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he’d be going to the pub himself next Monday as he confirmed that the UK would be easing anti-coronavirus restrictions from April 12, as previously announced by his government. 

“On Monday, the 12th I will be going to the pub myself and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips,” he added.

Johnson said the easing of restrictions was fully justified by the data, namely a reduction in the number of cases and the rising number of people which have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

“We set out our roadmap and we’re sticking with it and I want to stress that we see nothing in the present data that makes us think that we will have to deviate,” he said, while still asking people to remain vigilant in light of the epidemiological situation elsewhere in Europe and uncertainty over how effective the “vaccine shield” will be when cases start to rise once again. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is no “right or wrong” in advocating a vaccination strategy to delay a second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

“There really are different approaches and different opinions,” Fauci said in an answer to a question from CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen during Monday’s White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing.

Factoring in variants that may diminish the effectiveness of the vaccine – “you’re in a tenuous zone if you don’t have the full impact,” Fauci said.

“So there is some merit to the arguments that are made, and we certainly respect that, but right now, given the number of vaccines we’re able to give every day, literally every day that goes by, we get closer and closer to where we want to be,” Fauci said. “For that reason, although we always continue to keep an open mind, we consider the route that we’re on now is the best route.”

This is the fourth straight week of increasing Covid-19 cases, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She said the CDC is watching the case counts with “concern."

As more schools are reopening, the CDC director said it is even more important that people do whatever they can to reduce the spread of the virus. She added that people should get vaccinated as soon as they can, wear a mask that fits, and keep good physical distance from others.

Walensky said that a number of the clusters identified among young people are connected to participation in youth sports and extracurriculars. The CDC guidelines suggest those activities should be limited.

“I understand that people are tired and that they are ready for this pandemic to be over, as am I,” she said. “Please, continue to hang in there, and to continue to do things that we know prevent the spread of the virus.”

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidance for cleaning and disinfecting facilities and homes to prevent the spread of Covid-19, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Monday during the White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing.

The science has shown that people can get infected via contaminated surfaces, but the risk is low. Regular cleaning of these surfaces with soap or detergent works. Disinfection is not necessary, Walensky said.

In most cases, fogging, fumigation and electrostatic spraying is not recommended as a primary method of disinfection, and actually carries several safety risks.

Surface transmission can also be reduced by wearing masks consistently and correctly, Walensky said, in addition to proper handwashing.