Covid-19 live updates: Global coronavirus numbers edging back up after weeks of decline, says WHO
Here are some significant developments:
- Seven GOP physicians in Congress urged the Health and Human Services department to review its long-held two-dose vaccination strategy, asserting that shifting to a one-shot plan could save tens of thousands of lives by ensuring partial protection.
- President Biden is set to announce Tuesday that pharmaceutical giant Merck will help make Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine in an unusual pact between competitors that could boost the supply of the newly authorized single-shot vaccine. The administration brokered the arrangement.
- The government’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, on Monday reiterated that the United States will stick to a plan to inoculate tens of millions of Americans with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines.
- After a study from England showing that the first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine sharply reduced the risk of serious illness and death among older people, France has reversed its position and authorized the vaccine for older people.
- A multilateral effort to distribute coronavirus vaccines equitably is set to deliver 237 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to 142 countries in the spring, according to an updated estimate, in an important step toward making vaccines available where they are needed most — but far short of global demand.
- More than 513,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States with the rolling weekly average of new cases and deaths both rising by 4 percent.
Source: WP
