Category: COVID-19

Americans returning from Thanksgiving break faced strict new coronavirus measures around the country Monday as health officials brace for a disastrous worsening of the nationwide surge because of holiday gatherings over the long weekend.

Los Angeles County imposed a stay-at-home order for its 10 million residents, and Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, banned high school, college and professional sports and decreed a quarantine for those who have traveled more than 150 miles outside the county.

In Hawaii, the mayor of Hawaii County said trans-Pacific travelers arriving without a negative COVID-19 test must quarantine for 14 days, and even those who have tested virus-free may be randomly selected for another test upon arrival. New Jersey is suspending all youth sports.

“The red flags are flying in terms of the trajectory in our projections of growth,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “If these trends continue, we’re going to have to take much more dramatic, arguably drastic, action.”

Health experts had pleaded with Americans to stay home over Thanksgiving and not gather with anyone who didn’t live with them. Nevertheless, almost 1.2 million people passed through U.S. airports Sunday, the most since the pandemic gripped the country in March, and others took to the highways to be with family and friends.

Now they’re being urged to watch for any signs of illness and get tested right away if they experience symptoms.

Some families are already seeing the fallout from Thanksgiving gatherings.

Jonathan Eshnaur lugged his 32-inch TV to a Thanksgiving Day family gathering at his sister’s home in Olathe, Kansas, so he could watch football outside. He wore a mask and only went into her house for the prayer and to use the bathroom.

His father began feeling terrible that day and tested positive the next. His mother now is showing symptoms, and six others were exposed.

“I think we all have a tendency to think it won’t happen to me,” said Eshnaur, a 34-year-old special education teacher. “But that is kind of the issue with these kinds of viruses is it does happen, especially when we have widespread community spread that is going on.”

Priya Patel, 24, is isolating at her parents’ home in San Antonio after visiting friends over the weekend and coming down with a sore throat.

Patel, who works in public health in New York City, said she had been careful, wearing masks in public and staying out of restaurants and bars. But she spent time at a friend’s home in Texas over Thanksgiving.

“I’m an extremely extroverted person, and there is just so much time I can spend with my parents at home,” said Patel, who will stay away from her parents, both of whom have preexisting medical conditions, and wear a mask inside their home for the next 14 days.

Health officials are urging people to remain vigilant until a vaccine becomes widely available, which is not expected to happen for at least a few months.

On Monday, Moderna Inc. said it will ask U.S. and European regulators to allow emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine as new study results confirm the shots offer strong protection. Pfizer is also seeking approval for its vaccine and hopes to begin administering shots in the U.S. in December.

The virus is blamed for over 267,000 deaths and more than 13.4 million confirmed infections in the U.S. The country on average is seeing more than 160,000 new cases per day and over 1,400 deaths — a toll on par with what the nation witnessed in mid-May, when New York City was the epicenter.

A record 90,000 people were in the hospital with the virus in the U.S. as of Sunday, pushing many medical institutions to the limit.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said hospitals across the state will reduce elective surgeries to ensure there is room for coronavirus patients. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 jumped 29% in the past week. In Kansas City, Kansas, hospital and nursing officials said they fear there will not be enough nurses to staff new hospital beds in the metro area if COVID-19 cases continue unchecked. Health officials on Monday added 4,425 confirmed infections and 87 hospitalizations to the state’s pandemic tally since Friday.

Rhode Island’s hospitals reached their COVID-19 capacity on Monday, the same day the state’s two-week pause took effect. Under restrictions announced by Gov. Gina Raimondo, some businesses will be required to shut down, while others are restricted. Residents are also asked to limit their social circles to people in their household.

“This will not be easy, but I am pleading with you to take it seriously,” Raimondo said in a statement.

In suburban St. Louis, a hospital official warned that hospitalizations could double in two to three weeks if people don’t quarantine after Thanksgiving gatherings. SSM Health DePaul Hospital in Bridgeton, Missouri, last week brought in a morgue trailer to store the dead, canceled elective surgeries and doubled up patients in rooms.

“We will be absolutely overwhelmed,” said Shelly Cordum, vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer. “I can’t even imagine what we are going to be facing in three weeks if we stay on this path.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s foremost infectious-disease expert, warned on ABC over the weekend that the country could see a “surge upon surge” of infections tied to Thanksgiving. And White House corononavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told CBS that people who traveled should “assume that you were exposed and you became infected,” and get tested if they experience symptoms.

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Associated Press writers Daisy Nguyen in Oakland, California, Alan Clendenning in Phoenix; Jeff McMillan in New York City; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Michelle Monroe in Los Angeles; Lauran Neergaard in Washington; William J. Kole in Warwick, Rhode Island; and Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report.

BERLIN (AP) — European regulators may approve a coronavirus vaccine developed by drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech within four weeks, the EU’s drug agency said Tuesday, a time frame that could mean the shot is rolled out first in the United States and Britain.

The European Medicines Agency plans to convene a meeting by Dec. 29 to decide if there is enough safety and efficacy data about the vaccine for it to be approved, the regulator said. The agency also said it could decide as early as Jan. 12 whether to approve a rival vaccine shot by Moderna Inc.

German pharmaceutical company BioNTech and its U.S. partner Pfizer said earlier Tuesday that they had asked the European regulator for expedited approval of their vaccine. The companies have said that clinical trials showed the vaccine is 95% effective.

Multiple successful vaccines will be needed to end the pandemic, which has been on the upswing in Europe and the U.S. and so far left more than 1.4 million people worldwide dead. Pfizer and BioNTech have already sought approval to begin vaccinations in the U.S. in December. Rival Moderna said Monday it was asking U.S. and European regulators to allow the use of its vaccine.

British regulators also are assessing the Pfizer shot and another from AstraZeneca. There are several other vaccines in development, including in Russia and China.

Even after vaccines are approved, manufacturers and regulators will be monitoring how well they are received by patients to determine the frequency of rarer side effects that may only appear when millions are immunized. While the vaccines so far submitted for approval seem to prevent people from getting sick, it is still unclear whether they prevent people from picking up the virus entirely — and crucially — passing it to others.

And officials caution that while some people may receive a vaccine in the coming weeks, it will take many months to give billions of people around the world the shot, or two if a booster is necessary, meaning that people will be living with virus control measures well into next year.

If its vaccine is approved, BioNTech said its use in Europe could begin before the end of 2020 — tough but not impossible if approval comes Dec. 29. The regulator has also left open the possibility that the date of that meeting will be moved up if data comes in faster.

The Dec. 29 date would be later than some European countries had hoped for. Germany, which has given BioNTech 375 million euros ($450,000) in funding to develop the vaccine, has been preparing to start immunizing people from mid-December onward.

Since requests have already been made to U.S. and U.K. regulators, approval might come from them first — and authorities the world over are promising to work with drugmakers to roll out the first shots within days, if not hours, of approval.

“We have known since the beginning of this journey that patients are waiting, and we stand ready to ship COVID-19 vaccine doses as soon as potential authorizations will allow us,” Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla said in a statement.

BioNTech said it stands ready to ship stockpiles of vaccines where they are needed when the Amsterdam-based European agency or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve the vaccine.

“Depending on how the authorities decide we can start delivering within a few hours,” said BioNTech’s chief operating officer, Sierk Poetting.

The European Union’s top official said Tuesday around 2 billion doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines have been secured for the bloc’s 27 nations, with the first deliveries likely to start before the end of the year.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said member-states have started working on their vaccination plans and on the logistics for delivering tens of millions of doses across the bloc.

“It will be a huge step forward toward our normal life,” Von der Leyen said. “In other words, I just wanted to say there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Von der Leyen, however, urged EU citizens to remain “disciplined till we have reached finally a vaccination that is appropriate to eradicate this virus.” As infections and hospitalizations surged in Europe in recent weeks, many countries tightened their restrictions. Some of those measures are beginning to have an effect, but many remain worried that family gatherings at Christmas could lead to a new surge.

Amid concerns about the safety of the vaccines given the tremendous speed with which they have been developed, Germany’s science minister said Tuesday that the same safety standards are being applied in the approval process for coronavirus vaccines as for other drugs.

Anja Karliczek said that maintaining the highest standards is key to gaining the widest possible public acceptance for coronavirus immunization.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Karliczek stressed that the vaccine will be voluntary and that authorities will work hard to inform the public about possible side effects that a small percentage of recipients might experience after immunization, such as headaches, exhaustion and fever. The EMA plans to hold a public meeting on Dec. 11 to explain how COVID-19 vaccines are regulated to ensure they work and are safe.

Marylyn Addo, a doctor at Hamburg’s UKE hospital who is involved in the trials for a rival vaccine, said the speed of coronavirus vaccine development was the result of enormous efforts by scientists, early funding and experience from previous vaccines.

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Cheng reported from London and Petrequin from Brussels.

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Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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This story has been updated to correct that Pfizer and BioNTech asked for expedited approval of their vaccine, not an emergency use authorization.

COLCHESTER, Vt. (AP) — St. Michael’s College managed to keep coronavirus cases at bay for almost two months this fall with students tested upon arrival and once every three weeks.

But in mid-October, cases at the small Vermont school started to climb. The outbreak was linked to an ice rink more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) away. The liberal arts college shifted to all-remote learning and closed the campus to visitors. By November, a total of 76 of the roughly 1,400 students on campus had tested positive, the school said.

“It was very concerning to experience the spike in cases that we did after so many weeks of surveillance tests with no positives,” President Lorraine Sterritt said by email.

When students come back for the spring semester, St. Michael’s will begin testing them weekly. The college may also require students to move to a separate residence hall when they are told to quarantine.

The coronavirus presented huge challenges for the fall semester for U.S. colleges that opened the academic year with in-person learning, including some that took a battering from outbreaks. Those not joining the growing number that will offer only virtual learning are assessing how they would bring students back after the winter holidays while the country faces crushing rates of virus infections.

Schools that are bringing students back are adjusting testing protocols, introducing new screenings, and eliminating spring breaks to discourage students from traveling to help keep campuses open.

Other schools big and small think it’s still possible to keep a pandemic-era residential college experience.

California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo plans to add saliva testing in the winter quarter that will be processed on campus and will allow it “to test many more people much more quickly — our current estimate is 4,000 tests per day by mid-January,” President Jeffrey Armstrong said in a campus-wide message this month.

In the spring semester, Colby College in Maine wants to add some rapid antigen tests to twice-weekly tests for students, faculty and staff. It also did away with the one-week spring break replacing it with two mini-breaks in March and April.

“We’ll program stuff for the campus so people get a break,” Chief Financial Officer Douglas Terp said.

More schools are expected to require students get tested before they come to campus rather than when they arrive, as some institutions did before the fall semester, said Barbara Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Institutions like Syracuse University in New York abandoned in-person learning earlier than planned this fall but are planning on a resumption of campus life next semester.

But a growing number of schools will stick with virtual instruction through the spring.

“We are seeing a rapid rise in colleges and universities announcing they will move to remote learning for the remainder of this semester and for the spring,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for one, announced early last month it will continue most of its classes virtually.

Student cooperation with protocols helped to keep the number of coronavirus cases low at the University of Vermont’s campus in the small city of Burlington, President Suresh Garimella said.

On a recent day, students wearing masks streamed through a tent outside the student center where they are required to be tested weekly. They stayed apart, stopped at a station to sanitize their hands and blow their nose and then proceeded into the indoor testing center.

“It’s part of my routine,” said sophomore Brian Boyle of the testing.

The school received federal coronavirus relief funding for virus-related expenses like testing, but Garimella estimates it will spend an additional $10 million to $15 million.

There are also a lot of precautions in place, rules for social distancing and the maximum number of people in a group, Boyle said. It’s harder to get together with people socially, but he said students can find ways to go about it and still follow the rules and be safe.

“You know being outside in small groups and stuff,” he said.

As cases rose in Vermont and at UVM in November, though, he said he was becoming a bit concerned about whether the spring semester will be in-person.

“My biggest concern is probably that people will become more relaxed with their individual social distancing/quarantining measures over winter break,” he said by email. “I can only hope that people will remember how important these safety measures are, and will continue to practice them for the sake of their health and for the sake of our education.”

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AP writer Michael Casey contributed to this report from Boston.

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This story has been corrected to show the name of the university in San Luis Obispo is California Polytechnic State University, not California Polytechnical University.

Millions of Americans took to the skies and the highways for Thanksgiving at the risk of pouring gasoline on the coronavirus fire, disregarding increasingly dire warnings that they stay home and limit their holiday gatherings to members of their own household.

Those who are flying witnessed a distinctly 2020 landscape at the nation’s airports during what is traditionally one of the busiest travel periods of the year: plexiglass barriers in front of the ID stations, rapid virus testing sites inside terminals, and paperwork asking them to quarantine on arrival at their destination.

While the number of Americans traveling by air over the past several days was down dramatically from the same time last year, plenty of others pressed ahead with their holiday plans amid skyrocketing deaths, hospitalizations and confirmed infections across the U.S.

Many were tired of more than eight months of social distancing and determined to spend time with loved ones.

“I think with the holidays and everything, it’s so important right now, especially because people are so bummed out because of the whole pandemic,” said 25-year-old Cassidy Zerkle of Phoenix, who flew to Kansas City, Missouri, to visit family.

She brought snacks and her own hand sanitizer and said the flight was half full. She had a row of seats to herself.

“As long as you’re maintaining your distance, you’re not touching stuff and you’re sanitizing your hands, people should see their families right now,” she said.

The coronavirus is blamed for more than 12.6 million confirmed infections and over 269,000 deaths in the U.S.

More than 88,000 people in the U.S. — an all-time high — were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, pushing the health care system in many places to the breaking point, and new cases have soared to an average of over 174,000 per day, the highest level on record. Deaths have surged to more than 1,600 per day, a mark last seen in May, when the crisis in the New York area was easing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local authorities have begged people not to travel and urged them to keep their Thanksgiving celebrations small.

“That’ll make sure that your extended family are around to celebrate Christmas and to celebrate the holidays next year,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.

About 1 million people per day passed through U.S. airport checkpoints from Friday through Tuesday, a drop-off of around 60% from the same time a year ago. Still, those have been the biggest crowds since the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the U.S. in March.

Last year, a record 26 million passengers and crew passed through U.S. airport screening in the 11-day period around Thanksgiving.

More Americans drive than fly during the holiday, but AAA has projected those numbers are also likely to be lower this year. How much lower the auto club has not said.

Many states and cities have adopted precautions. Travelers to Los Angeles, either by plane or train, were required to fill out an online form acknowledging California’s request that people quarantine for two weeks after arrival in the state.

The resurgence of the virus and the refusal of many people to wear masks or keep their distance from others have caused despair among health care officials and front-line workers.

“I’ll just to confess to you guys, I’m exhausted trying to convince folks to do stuff. It’s just going nowhere,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer.

Anne Moore, a 60-year-old woman from Chicago, flew to Albany, New York, to be with her daughter for the holiday. Her daughter is a senior at Dartmouth University, and Moore and her husband were worried about her driving back to Illinois by herself.

Before the spike, the family had planned to hold a Thanksgiving gathering of fewer than 10 people. But instead it will be just Moore, her husband and her daughter.

“I have friends who are alone. And I’m not inviting them. And I feel badly about that,” she said. “We’ll take a walk or something instead. But yeah, the three of us are isolating.”