Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/us/coronavirus-today.html

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A global coalition of organizations and activists accused wealthy nations of hoarding vaccines, to the detriment of less developed countries.

The E.U. agency assessing coronavirus vaccines was hit by a cyberattack.

Ellen DeGeneres said she had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and vaccines in development.

A panel of experts at the Food and Drug Administration formally recommended today that the agency authorize the vaccine. The agency is likely to do so within days, clearing the way for health care workers and nursing home residents to begin receiving it early next week.

My colleagues Katie Thomas and Noah Weiland report that the F.D.A. is expected to grant an emergency use authorization for the vaccine on Saturday, though it could be pushed to Sunday or later. Although the F.D.A. doesn’t have to follow the advice of the panel — composed of scientific experts, infectious disease doctors, and industry and consumer representatives — it usually does.

Noah, who covers health care for The Times, told me the vote was the most important step yet for regulators and was “the kind of stamp of approval that federal health officials believe was needed to help convince the public that the vaccine is safe to receive.”

Pfizer submitted its application on Nov. 20. Since then more than 100 F.D.A. employees have worked nearly round the clock, including on Thanksgiving, to review the application. The F.D.A. also sent teams to visit Pfizer’s production facilities and clinical trial sites to verify the records that the company sent to federal regulators.

Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator at the F.D.A., said: “Among all global regulators, we are the ones that actually don’t just look at the company’s tables. We actually get down and dirty and we look at the actual adverse event reports, the bad spelling errors that are made by physicians sometimes, et cetera.”

If the F.D.A. authorizes the vaccine within the next few days, as expected, Noah told me, some health care workers and possibly nursing home residents could be getting it early next week.

“But the supply of the Pfizer vaccine is severely limited at first,” Noah said. “Only about three million people will receive it initially. It will take months before we eventually see the kind of wide distribution that could put a serious dent in Covid cases.”

Lillian Blancas was a spirited prosecutor and public defender in El Paso who was in a runoff election for a municipal judgeship. But when election results came in on Nov. 3, Ms. Blancas was at home asleep, too sick with the coronavirus to learn that she had finished in first place.

After a grueling battle with Covid-19, Ms. Blancas died alone in her hospital room this week, one of a record number of Americans who have lost their lives to the virus in the last seven days.

The U.S. recorded more than 3,000 deaths yesterday, a daily record, soaring past the spring peak of 2,752. Yesterday was one of the deadliest days for the U.S., with the virus killing more Americans than the Sept. 11 attacks, or the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The new deaths reflect infections that took place several weeks ago and come as the country continues to report record numbers of new cases and hospitalizations. Experts say that surging infection and death counts will not abate until more people follow mask and social-distancing rules.

“The worst is yet to come in the next week or two,” said Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston. “What happens after that,” she added, “is going to depend on our behavior today.”

South Korea is grappling with an elusive wave of infections.

Rhode Island, the smallest U.S. state by area, now has the fastest spread of the coronavirus, with more new cases per capita than any other state.

Hospitals in Tokyo were strained as the city reported a record 602 new cases today.

France will delay relaxing some Covid-19 lockdown restrictions because the number of new cases has not fallen as fast as expected.

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia announced a new executive order that imposes a nightly curfew from midnight to 5 a.m. in the state. Pennsylvania announced statewide restrictions that ban indoor dining and close gyms, theaters and casinos for three weeks.

Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

A C.D.C. official said she was ordered to destroy an email showing Trump appointees attempted to interfere with the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — known as the “holiest of the holy” of epidemiology reports.

President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, played a central role in the N.C.A.A.’s decision in March to cancel this year’s national basketball tournaments.

An 83-year-old passenger who initially tested positive for the coronavirus on a “cruise to nowhere” from Singapore this week, forcing thousands of passengers and crew members to return to port, did not have the virus after all.

First it was toilet paper. Now it’s antacids. Some people are dealing with “Pandemic Stomach,” acid-churning episodes that are increasing demand for over-the-counter and prescription antacids.

The Times’s Tara Parker-Pope and Katherine J. Wu put together a new user’s guide to coronavirus testing.

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