Moderna kicks off vaccine testing

Moderna has begun the world’s largest study of a COVID-19 vaccine and remains on track to provide as many as 1 billion doses per year beginning in 2021, the Massachusetts-based biotech firm announced Monday.

The Phase 3 study is expected to involve 30,000 volunteers in collaboration with Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s scheme to end the crisis by encouraging vaccine candidates from multiple companies.

Moderna is one of several companies around the world in the final stages of producing a vaccine, although none have yet proven effective among a large population. Several vaccines made by China and by Britain’s Oxford University this month began smaller, final-stage tests.

Moderna said the vaccination was done in Savannah, Georgia, the first site to get underway among more than seven dozen trial sites around the country.

The U.S. has more than 4.2 million confirmed cases and over 145,000 deaths. Worldwide, there have been more than 16.2 million cases and almost 650,900 deaths, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins.

‘Most severe’ emergency

Six months after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic, the impact of the outbreak is being felt far beyond the suffering caused by the virus itself, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Economies are struggling, wide swaths of people are going hungry and essential health services have been disrupted. The pandemic is “easily the most severe” emergency ever declared by the agency, he said, as global cases doubled in the last six weeks.

“As we mark six months,” Tedros said, “the COVID-19 pandemic is illustrating that health is not a reward for development, it’s the foundation of social, economic and political stability.”

States hit records

A USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data through Sunday shows 13 states set weekly records for new cases while seven had a weekly record for deaths.

New case records were set in Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Record deaths were reported in Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas.

In Louisiana, new cases per week leaped to 15,868, up almost 45% from the state’s worst week in the spring.

More than 9,300 new cases were reported in Florida on Sunday, bringing the state’s total to 424,000, second only to California’s 450,000.

Ala. worshipers infected

More than 40 people became infected after a week-long revival at a north Alabama Baptist church last week, pastor Daryl Ross said.

Two male members of Warrior Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Strawberry suffered relatively serious cases. The services were shut down by Friday after an attendee tested positive with no symptoms.

“The whole church has got it, just about,” Ross said. “We shut down revival and, by Friday night, I’ve got church members sick everywhere.”

Google workers to stay home

Technology giant Google on Monday told most of its 200,000 employees and contractors to work from home until at least next July, extending by six months the company’s plan to keep the majority of its offices closed for the rest of 2020.

The remote-work order issued by Google CEO Sundar Pichai also affects other companies owned by its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., and represents the most extensive such decision by a major corporation in response to the pandemic. Other companies are likely to follow suit.