The latest:
The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says officials have “scaled up” their surveillance of new coronavirus variants in the United States.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky told ABC’s Good Morning America that previously “there has not been a public health infrastructure” to track such variants. Also, there weren’t resources to do “mass sequencing” of the virus across the country. She noted the coronavirus aid plan pushed by the Biden administration includes funds to improve such tracing.
However, Walensky said it was “concerning” the two South Carolina individuals who were diagnosed with the more virulent strain first identified in South Africa didn’t know each other or travel there, so the “presumption” is there’s “community spread of this strain.”
At a White House coronavirus briefing on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the emergence and increasing spread of coronavirus mutations means that vaccine makers must be ready to make new shots to stay ahead of the public health crisis.
“This is a wake-up call to all of us,” said the government’s top infectious disease expert, noting government scientists will be working to keep pace with virus mutations.
The nature of viruses is to change in ways that promote their spread, Fauci says. The evolution of mutant versions means scientists need to be “nimble” and ready to make tweaks to vaccines. So far, the mutations haven’t overwhelmed the protective power of vaccines.
Fauci said it’s important to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible to keep new mutations from developing.
-From The Associated Press, last updated at 11:45 a.m. ET
What’s happening in Canada
WATCH | Ottawa offers assurance of Pfizer delivery amid confusion over doses:
As Health Canada considers a Pfizer request to officially recognize its COVID-19 vaccine vials contain six, not five, doses, there’s confusion as some provincial leaders worry fewer doses than originally expected will arrive this quarter. 2:42
As of 2:15 p.m. ET on Friday, Canada had reported 769,408 cases of COVID-19, with 55,429 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 19,775.
Ontario reported 1,837 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday and 58 additional deaths. Hospitalizations stood at 1,291, a provincial dashboard said, with 360 patients listed as being in Ontario’s intensive care units.
The province’s health advisers warned Thursday that a highly contagious variant of COVID-19 first identified in the U.K. could become the dominant strain of the virus in the province by March.
Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the province’s pandemic science advisory table, said the new strain could cause cases to spike again if precautions aren’t taken.
On Friday, public health officials in Waterloo region said a woman in her 30s is the region’s first case of this variant.
In Quebec, health officials reported 1,295 new cases on Friday and 50 more deaths, nine of which occurred in the last 24 hours.
Premier François Legault said on Thursday that while the situation is improving in the hard-hit province, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations is “too high.” According to Friday’s provincial data, there are 1,217 people in hospital, including 209 in intensive care.
The province had previously suggested it hoped to lift some restrictions by Feb. 8, but the premier on Thursday suggested that was unlikely. “We have to be realistic — most of the measures will continue,” Legault said.
Manitoba reported 157 new cases and three new deaths on Friday, with more than half of the new cases in the province’s Northern Health Region.
A new public health order took effect in the province at 12:01 a.m. Friday, requiring most people travelling to Manitoba for non-essential reasons to self-isolate for two weeks.
WATCH | Increased pressure on B.C. premier to impose travel restrictions:
B.C. Premier John Horgan is facing increasing pressure to introduce travel restrictions for people who don’t live in the province, as COVID-19 cases spike in popular tourist destinations. 2:04
In Atlantic Canada, New Brunswick reported 16 new cases and one additional death on Friday, as the chief medical officer of health warned of an impending third wave of the pandemic that will be “much worse” than the first or second because of new variants.
Dr. Jennifer Russell said that because of the variant threat, no region will move past the orange level of restrictions for “many weeks.”
Newfoundland and Labrador reported four new cases, while Nova Scotia reported one new case.
Here’s a look at what’s happening across the country:
-From The Canadian Press and CBC News, last updated at 2:15 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
As of early Friday morning, more than 101.5 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with 56.1 million of those considered recovered or resolved, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll was approaching 2.2 million.
Europe’s medicines regulator on Friday recommended approving AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s COVID-19 vaccine for people over the age of 18.
Europe urgently needs more shots to speed up its inoculation program with suppliers such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer facing difficulties in delivering the quantities promised for the early months of the year.
The shot is the third COVID-19 vaccine given the green light by the European Medicines Agency, after ones made by Pfizer and Moderna. Both were authorized for all adults. The decision requires final approval from the European Commission, a process that occurred swiftly with the other vaccines.
WATCH | EMA executive director Emer Cooke on AstraZeneca vaccine approval:
The European Medicines Agency has approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine amid a row over AstraZeneca’s decision to send the European Union less vaccine in the first batch than promised. 2:24
“There are not yet enough results in older participants (over 55 years old) to provide a figure for how well the vaccine will work in this group,” the regulator said, but noted that “protection is expected, given that an immune response is seen in this age group and based on experience with other vaccines.
“EMA’s scientific experts considered that the vaccine can be used in older adults.”
Denmark will extend its current coronavirus restrictions by three weeks in order to curb the spread of a more contagious coronavirus variant first registered in Britain.
Portugal, which is facing serious strain on its health-care system, extended a nationwide lockdown until mid-February and announced curbs on international travel.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam’s health minister said on Friday a new COVID-19 outbreak was “basically under control” in the areas most affected, as cases spread to Hanoi, the capital.
Vietnam reported 53 new cases on Friday, including one in Hanoi and eight in nearby Haiphong city and Hai Duong, Quang Ninh and Bac Ninh provinces. That brought the total number of cases in the outbreak that began on Thursday to 149, the government said in a statement.
Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told reporters on the sidelines of the Communist Party congress, which is being held in Hanoi, that 3,674 tests had been conducted. Testing capacity was 50,000 a day, and the outbreak was under control in areas where the most cases had been found, Long said.
Sri Lanka on Friday began inoculating front-line health workers, military troops and police officers against COVID-19 amid warnings that the medical sector faces a collapse because of health personnel being infected with the coronavirus.
Sri Lanka on Thursday received 500,000 vaccine doses as a donation from neighbouring India. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, also known as the Covishield, is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
In the Americas, Mexico’s death toll from COVID-19 surpassed India to be the third highest in the world. The country has seen more than 1.8 million cases and more than 155,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
Power outages in Rio de Janeiro may have spoiled hundreds of doses of COVID-19 vaccines, city health officials told Reuters on Friday, in a fresh setback for Brazil’s hamstrung immunization efforts.
Up to 720 doses of the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech may need to be thrown out after a power outage at the federal hospital in the city’s Bonsucesso neighbourhood left them stored at an inappropriate temperature.
In the Middle East, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister and its president on Friday condemned overnight violence in the city of Tripoli, where protesters angry over a strict lockdown clashed with security forces and set the municipality building on fire.
Thursday was the fourth straight night of unrest in one of Lebanon’s poorest cities, after the Beirut government imposed a 24-hour curfew to curb a surge in the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 2,500 people and compounded an economic crisis.
In Africa, the African Union secured another 400 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in a push to immunize 60 per cent of the continent’s population over a three-year period.
-From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 2:15 p.m. ET
