Early vaccine for lucky few
THE surging coronavirus is taking an increasingly dire toll across the United States just as a vaccine appears close at hand, with the country now averaging over 1300 Covid-19 deaths a day – the highest level since the calamitous northern spring in and around New York City.
The overall US death toll has reached about 254,000, by far the most in the world. Confirmed infections have exceeded more than 11.8 million, and the number of people hospitalised has hit another all-time high, at more than 80,000.
With health experts deeply afraid that Thanksgiving travel and holiday gatherings next week will fuel the spread of the virus, many states and cities are imposing near-lockdowns or other restrictions. California has ordered a 10pm to 5am curfew starting today.
Covid-19 deaths in the US are at their highest level since late May, when the Northeast was emerging from the first wave of the crisis. They peaked at about 2200 a day in late April, when New York City was the epicentre.
Among the newly infected is President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, who a spokesman said yesterday had no symptoms and had been quarantining since learning of his diagnosis earlier this week.
Amid the bleak new statistics, Pfizer is asking US regulators to allow emergency use of its Covid19 vaccine – setting in motion a process that could make the first, limited shots available as early as next month, with healthcare workers and other high-risk groups likely to get priority.
But it could be months before
the vaccine becomeswidely available. Pfizer has said the vaccine appears to be 95 per cent effective at preventing the disease.
After Mexico passed 100,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, the fourth country to do so, its president and the mayor of its capital have struck dramatically different tones.
With 100,104 confirmed deaths, Mexico trails only the US, Brazil and India.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested
yesterday that criticism of the country’s pandemic polices were political attacks, and compared critics to ‘‘vultures’’. His administration has cast doubt on the usefulness of face masks, and has defended its low rate of testing.
Mexico City took a step in a different direction, opening kiosks in some of its most affected neighbourhoods to begin providing rapid tests. ‘‘[This] helps us a lot to isolate positive cases,’’ Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said.
Cases of Covid-19 are rising again in Brazil, the country with the world’s second-highest confirmed death toll, prompting Brazilian experts to express concern, and politicians to downplay its severity in the midst of an election season.
Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that new cases have reached a seven-day rolling average of 28,600 a day, up from about 13,700 two weeks earlier.
Yet key authorities claim that the increase is be either temporary or a statistical blip.
Many are brushing off calls for stricter measures aimed at containing the virus’s spread as Brazilians are heading into a second round of municipal elections nationwide.
President Jair Bolsonaro has routinely downplayed Covid-19 and undermined local authorities’ restrictions on public activities.
Toronto is going back into lockdown tomorrow because of a surge in Covid-19 cases.
Ontario reported 1418 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday. Canada flattened the epidemic curve after locking down when Covid-19 cases surged in North America in the spring. There have been more 318,000 confirmed cases in Canada since the pandemic began.
When nearly half amillion motorcycle enthusiasts gathered in South Dakota during the northern summer, health experts worried that the gathering would ignite new outbreaks of coronavirus cases. It did, according to a new report looking at cases in neighbouring Minnesota.
About one-third of counties ended up having at least one coronavirus case that was tied to August’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, investigators reported yesterday in a study mainly conducted by Minnesota health officials and published by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Minnesota officials counted 86 cases that they said were related to the rally.
Most did not suffer serious illnesses, but four were hospitalised, and one died.
‘‘These findings highlight the far-reaching effects that gatherings in one area might have on another area,’’ the study authors wrote.–