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John Bacon
| USA TODAY
COVID-19: In some variants, current vaccines may be less effective
COVID-19 variants are on the rise in America and scientists are learning that the vaccine may not work as well against it.
USA TODAY
America will mark Ash Wednesday today in alternative ways, as the threat of spreading COVID-19 takes its toll on religious traditions on the first day of the fasting season.
Catholic priests were told by the Vatican to make the traditional sign of the cross with ashes on the forehead of the worship service. Some churches offer door-to-door and do-it-yourself ashes, in pocket. The Vatican asks priests to scatter the ashes on the heads of their congregations, a common practice in the Vatican and in Italy.
“You never see the pope with ashes on his forehead,” said Rev. Steven B. Giuliano. by Our Lady of Lourdes in Wilmington, Delaware. “They are always placed on top of his head.”
Ash Wednesday comes one day after “Fat Tuesday” – Mardi Gras – which also experienced major changes this year. Parades were canceled and the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans, usually full for parties, were relatively quiet. Bourbon Street was quiet. Instead, locals decorated their homes in festive colors.
“Thank you so much for embracing the carnival spirit through your creativity and innovation,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
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In the headings:
► Doctors across the country have seen a marked increase in cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C, an inflammatory syndrome that affects some young people, usually a few weeks after coronavirus infection, reports The New York Times. The boom follows the overall increase in Covid cases in the US
The British Foreign Secretary will call on the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to declare a ceasefire against vaccines in conflict zones to allow the COVID-19 vaccination of people in those areas, officials said in a news release.
►One year after the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of N95 masks are being dumped from US factories and being stored, but there are still not nearly enough hospitals, an Associated Press investigation has found.
► President Joe Biden extends the ban on home mortgages to federal aid by three months and expands the mortgage relief program to provide relief to families struggling financially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
►California unveiled mass vaccination centers in Los Angeles and Oakland on Tuesday that are meant to bring vaccinations to communities hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
📈 Today’s numbers: According to Johns Hopkins University data, the U.S. has more than 27.7 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and 487,900 deaths. The global total: More than 109.48 million cases and 2.41 million deaths. According to the CDC, more than 71 million doses of vaccines have been distributed and about 55 million have been administered.
📘 What we read: A next generation coronavirus vaccine is underway. But initial funding was denied. Read the full story.
U.S. scientists would gain greatly expanded capabilities to identify potentially deadly coronavirus mutations under proposed legislation. A bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee for floor debate last week would yield $ 1.75 billion for genomic sequencing. It calls on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to organize a national network to use the technology to detect the spread of mutations, such as the recent British and South African variants, and to promote public health measures. rig.
“We need that data. Otherwise, we fly blind in some ways, ”Esther Krofah, who runs the FasterCures initiative of the Milken Institute, told the Associated Press. “We do not understand the occurrence of mutations that we should be concerned about in the US”
President Joe Biden made it clear on Tuesday that his goal is for the majority of public schools K-8 to be open “five days a week” by the end of his first 100 days after the White House received criticism for scaling back the goal last week. has.
“I think we’ll be there by the end of the first 100 days,” Biden said during a CNN City Hall meeting in Milwaukee. “You will have a significant percentage to be able to be open.”
Press secretary Jen Psaki, who has frustrated many parents and launched a new attack on Republicans, said last week that Biden’s goal is for more than 50% of schools to teach a little “personally” at least one day a week – not necessarily in full. reopened – by Day 100 of his presidency.
But Biden said this statement is inaccurate, and is committed to fully opening up most K-8 schools. Asked how he would bring students back to classrooms, Biden said: ‘We need to vaccinate teachers.
He also said that “by next Christmas I think we will be in a very different situation [in terms of normalcy] than we are today. ‘
The SATs are going into pandemic or health this spring. The College Board, which owns and oversees the exams used by many colleges for admission, has instructed school hosts to ‘make their own decisions about testing and safety standards based on local restrictions’, according to its website. Hosts may close sites until the day of testing, but no closure has been posted on the College Board closure page. SAT websites, often hosted by high schools, are working to update exam security and COVID-19 security protocols for thousands of students. Hundreds of test sites across the country were closed this past spring and this fall due to the pandemic.
“Although the College Board cannot directly control the capacity and availability of the testing center, we are working to ensure that as many students as possible can test safely,” the nonprofit group said.
– Carly Q. Romalino, Cherry Hill Courier-Post
The White House has announced that the number of doses sent directly to pharmacies will be doubled, and that the dose of coronavirus vaccine doses will increase by 23% last week, administrative officials told governors on Tuesday.
The number of doses that states will receive will increase from the 8.6 million per week they received during the first week in Biden, to the 13.5 million that Zients told governors on Tuesday that they would receive.
“It’s a minimum,” Jeff Zients, Biden’s COVID-19 coordinator, told the USA in an exclusive interview TODAY before making his weekly call to governors. ‘The supply will continue to increase.
Cities are scrambling to vaccinate residents, not only necessary to speed up the country’s health and economic recovery, but also to slow down the mutation of the virus. Although the distribution of vaccines has increased, vaccination sites across the country are being shut down while hundreds of thousands of people are on waiting lists.
– Maureen Groppe
Contributing: Ryan Cormier, Delaware News Journal; The Associated Press