December 2 coronavirus news

The US National Institutes of Health is still looking for volunteers to participate in vaccine trials, Director Dr. Francis Collins said in an interview Wednesday with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“We still do need people to take part in these trials,” Collins said.  

Even though two vaccines are close to receiving emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration, four more are still in the works, he said.

"And the more we have the better, because the sooner we can get those out to people," Collins said.

Collins said the NIH is counting on volunteers, whom he called “heroes,” to participate in the trials.

“So we just put up today a new way for people who are interested in both therapeutic trials, because we're looking for ways to treat the disease, so this would be for people who tested positive, but also people who are looking to serve in vaccine trials,” Collins said.

Collins said the NIH is also still looking for people to donate convalescent plasma. “We’re still interested in that,” he said.

The website for those interested is Combatcovid.hhs.gov.

British health regulators who authorized Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday did not scrutinize the trial data as carefully as the US Food and Drug Administration is doing in its review, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claimed.

“The way the FDA is, our FDA is doing it, is the correct way,” Fauci said in an interview on Fox News.
“We really scrutinize the data very carefully to guarantee to the American public that this is a safe and efficacious vaccine,” he said.
“I think if we did any less, we would add to the already existing hesitancy on the part of many people to take the vaccine because they're concerned about safety or they're concerned that we went too quickly."

Fauci said it’s important that Americans feel good about a potential Covid-19 vaccine.

“So, it's almost a damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, because if you go quickly and you do it superficially, people are not going to want to get vaccinated,” he said. 

“We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the FDA. The UK did not do it as carefully and they got a couple of days ahead,” he said. “I don't think that makes much difference. We'll be there. We'll be there very soon.”

People who have had Covid-19 can still get a coronavirus vaccine when one becomes available, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the US National Institutes of Health, said Wednesday.

“They will be in line based on other criteria in terms of risks of serious illness,” Collins told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. 
“We don't know for sure that having had this illness means that you're not susceptible to getting it again, so those folks are in fact going to line up for vaccines,” he said.
“We already know that in the trials that have been run, there's a fair number of people who had positive antibody tests and they've done fine. So, there's no reason not to, if you’ve previously had the infection.”

A new Covid-19 vaccine could be available before the end of the month, if the US Food and Drug Administration approves an emergency use authorization application submitted by Pfizer.

The first people in line to get the vaccine are healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities.

Former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing died on Wednesday at his family home in France's Loire region, according to the Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Foundation in a statement posted on Twitter.

D'Estaing's family confirmed the death in a statement to AFP, saying, "His state of health had worsened and he died as a consequence of Covid-19".

He was surrounded by his family when he died, the statement said. It added his funeral would be a strictly private affair in accordance with his wishes. 

D’Estaing was 94 years old.

The United States has reported a record-high number of new Covid-19 deaths on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 

So far on Wednesday, 2,658 Covid-19 deaths have been reported, according to JHU. The US is currently averaging 1,531 new deaths per day, the university's data shows.

According to JHU data, the days with the highest number of new deaths are: 

1. Dec. 2: 2,658
2. April 15: 2,603
3. Dec. 1: 2,597
4. April 7: 2,570 
5. April 21: 2,542 

Note: This is an ongoing tally and today's final numbers will not be available until overnight tonight.

Vaccine trials for children younger than 12 years old could start early next year, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the US National Institutes of Health, said Wednesday.

We “very definitely need to get there,” Collins told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, because only children 12 and older are being studied right now.

“We will want to, shortly after the first of the year, also find out does this work for younger children because we know they can be infected and they can pass this along,” he said.
“So that is a next sort of level of test that's going to need to be done in a … vaccine trial in order to be sure that the vaccine is safe and effective in that group."

Pfizer and Moderna are now testing their respective vaccines on children between 12 and 18 years old.

Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are expected to receive an emergency use authorization in the US for adults in the near future. Pfizer received emergency authorization for its vaccine in the United Kingdom on Wednesday. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has invited hundreds of guests to the State Department for holiday receptions in the coming weeks, according to two State Department officials familiar with the planning.

These events, which will offer refreshments and drinks for guests, come as State Department employees have been told not to host holiday gatherings, to maximize teleworking from Thanksgiving until January and continue to receive emails from the department about Covid-19 outbreaks inside the building, the sources said.

The invitations for one of the events in mid-December went out to 900 people and the invite for another went to the 180 foreign ambassadors in the US, the sources said.

In total, State Department officials are hosting a holiday reception at the State Department or the Blair House almost every day over the next few weeks, two sources familiar with the planned gatherings said. With President Trump also hosting events, they said that Pompeo felt enabled to do the same.

The planned events are leaving State Department career officials enraged, as they have concerns about the parties leading to a greater spread of the virus. Career and contracted staff feel like they cannot say no to working the event, one of the officials explained. There is concern about the potentially dangerous position this forces people into.

“What makes Secretary Pompeo and his chief of protocol, Cam Henderson, think they are above the roles and have the virus under control to throw numerous parties when there is literally a pandemic raging inside the building that they can't fix,” the second State Department official said.

“It is simply irresponsible,” the first official said, noting that some of the contractors who work in the kitchen may not have health insurance.

The Washington Post was first to report that more than 900 invites were sent.

A State Department spokesperson provided the following details about safety plans for holiday parties at the State Department:

We plan to follow all Diplomacy Strong guidelines in compliance with health officials' guidance.
All attendees will be required to wear masks, and social distancing guidelines will be implemented to ensure space between attendees. The Department will have temperature checks via forehead scanning machines at the entrance to all events, in addition to numerous hand-sanitizing towers throughout the spaces. Additionally, all proper food and beverage safety precautions will be taken by catering services and staff – all will wear gloves and masks and any food or beverage will be served individually. All attendees confirmed for the events will be e-mailed with health and safety precautions in advance of their arrival to any Department facility, asking individuals to stay home if they’re feeling any Covid symptoms or if they’ve come into close contact with a confirmed case in the last 14 days, per the CDC guidelines, and as is standard Department policy.
We’ve taken every precaution to thin out the number of individuals in all spaces at one time, and plan to keep outdoors space open and available to attendees, weather permitting. The Diplomatic Corps will be spread into three separate blocks of time for entrance into the White House and Blair House in an effort to keep them spaced and socially distant, and again that precaution was taken for the Department’s Diplomatic Corps Reception by splitting the event into two. We do not anticipate any problems in monitoring the number of individuals in these indoor spaces or exceeded the allotted numbers for indoor gatherings, per the Diplomacy Strong “Phase 2” guidelines.

Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who has refused to enforce restrictions aimed at curbing an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases, has tested positive for the coronavirus, the sheriff’s office announced.

“Sheriff Jones’ symptoms started last Friday and were mild, including a fever, congestion, light-headedness, and a headache,” a statement from the sheriff’s office said.

Jones took a test late last week following an exposure from another employee who had tested positive, and received his own positive result on Tuesday. His family is also in quarantine, the statement noted.

The sheriff is one of “dozens of Sacramento Sheriff's Office employees who … have contracted the virus,” the department said in a statement. It is unclear how and by whom these people were infected. 

“The sheriff is doing well and has almost no symptoms remaining,” Rodney Grassman, a spokesperson for the sheriff, told CNN. Grassman declined to offer additional details, saying “the sheriff is an elected public official so he wanted to share the diagnosis with the public but at the same time this is a medical condition and thus a private matter for the sheriff and his family.”

Some background: The positive test result follows weeks of Jones publicly expressing his opposition to new Covid-19 restrictions from state and county officials meant to curb the spread of the virus. 

Last month, Jones said he would not enforce a curfew issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom prohibiting nonessential gatherings from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for the vast majority of the state’s 40 million residents.

“The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office will not be determining … compliance with, or enforcing compliance of, any health or emergency orders related to curfews, staying at home, Thanksgiving or other social gatherings inside or outside the home,” Jones said in a Nov. 19 news release.

Jones also resisted earlier attempts by officials to halt the spread of the coronavirus, including the statewide mask mandate Newsom issued on June 18. The following day the sheriff’s department said, “it would be inappropriate for deputies to criminally enforce the Governor’s mandate.” Instead, the department would operate on an “educational capacity.”

 

The 911 emergency call system is struggling to stay together, said the American Ambulance Association, which represents all of the nation’s ambulance services.

“The 911 emergency medical system throughout the United States is at a breaking point,” Aarron Reinert, the president of the American Ambulance Association, wrote in a recent letter to the Department of Health and Human Services. “Without additional relief, it seems likely to break, even as we enter the third surge of the virus in the Mid-West and West.”

CNN obtained a copy of the letter, which was dated Nov. 25, on Wednesday. 

Reinert said in the letter that public and private ambulance services in all 50 states must have additional funding in order to continue providing the services they have supplied since the pandemic began last spring.

“Similar to hospitals and many skilled nursing facilities, ground ambulance service providers and suppliers since March have been serving their communities in a disproportionate manner to their traditional role in the Medicare program,” Reinert wrote in the letter.

“Given the substantially heavier burden that AAA members are carrying during the pandemic, we reiterate our request for HHS to provide additional funding from the Congressionally allocated dollars for the Provider Relief Fund specifically to ground ambulance service providers to ensure the stability of these essential providers and suppliers as the country continues to battle the pandemic,” he said.

The trade group is asking for $2.6 billion from HHS to prevent the emergency medical system from buckling under the weight of the pandemic.

The organization’s CEO Maria Bianchi told CNN the money would mean every single ambulance in the US, regardless of affiliation, would get $43,500 to help with supplies, such as personal protective equipment, and continued operations.

Bianchi described the current situation with ambulance services as a “rubber band stretched to the breaking point.”

“What is happening is you're seeing services stretched and stretched and stretched and stretched, like a rubber band, and we're still being pulled,” she said. “I think the concern is that rubber band breaking and that we're close to that point.”

The US has just under 60,000 ambulances, Bianchi said, and the American Ambulance Association represents all of them.

“It has never been this bad and we are we are looking for a tonic, something that can help us to alleviate this surge, so that that does not happen, so that someone doesn't call 911 and a unit doesn't arrive within the appropriate amount of time to help that person,” she said.