Nation & World: Virus numbers drop, but race against new strains heats up

photo by: Associated Press

In this Jan. 23, 2021, file photo, registered Nurse Shyun Lin, left, gives Roberto Fisher, 72, the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a pop-up vaccination site in the William Reid Apartments in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool, File)

Coronavirus deaths and cases per day in the U.S. dropped markedly over the past couple of weeks but are still running at alarmingly high levels, and the effort to snuff out COVID-19 is becoming an ever more urgent race between the vaccine and the mutating virus.

The government’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the improvement in numbers around the country appears to reflect a “natural peaking and then plateauing” after a holiday surge, rather than the arrival of the vaccine in mid-December.

The U.S. is recording just under 3,100 deaths a day on average, down from more than 3,350 less than two weeks ago. New cases are averaging about 170,000 a day after peaking at almost 250,000 on Jan. 11. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on Jan. 7.

States that have been hot spots in recent weeks such as California and Arizona have shown similar improvements during the same period.

On Monday, California lifted regional stay-at-home orders in favor of county-by-county restrictions and ended a 10 p.m. curfew. The shift will allow restaurants and churches to resume outdoor operations and hair and nail salons to reopen in many places, though local officials could maintain stricter rules.

Elsewhere, Minnesota school districts have begun bringing elementary students back for in-person learning. Chicago’s school system, the nation’s third-largest district, had hoped to bring teachers back Monday to prepare for students to return next month, but the teachers union has refused. Illinois announced that more counties will be able to offer limited indoor dining.

“I don’t think the dynamics of what we’re seeing now with the plateauing is significantly influenced yet — it will be soon — but yet by the vaccine. I just think it’s the natural course of plateauing,” Fauci told NBC’s “Today.”

Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, said that a predicted holiday surge was reduced by people traveling less than expected, and an increase in mask-wearing in response to spikes in infections has since helped bring the numbers down.

Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said too few people have been vaccinated so far for that to have had a significant impact on virus trends. She said she can’t predict how long it will take for the vaccines’ effects to be reflected in the numbers.

Rivers said she is concerned that the more contagious variants of the virus could lead to a deadly resurgence later this year.

“I think we were on track to have a good — or a better, at least — spring and summer, and I’m worried that the variants might be throwing us a curveball,” she said.

Nationwide, about 19.3 million people, or less than 6% of the U.S. population, have received at least one dose of the vaccine, including about 3 million who have gotten the second shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 55% of the 41 million doses distributed to the states by the federal government have been injected into arms, by the CDC’s count.

The virus has killed over 419,000 Americans and infected more than 25 million, with a widely cited University of Washington model projecting the death toll will reach about 569,000 by May 1.

And health experts have warned that the more contagious and possibly more deadly variant sweeping through Britain will probably become the dominant source of infection in the U.S. by March. It has been reported in over 20 states so far. Other mutant versions are circulating in South Africa and Brazil. The variant from Brazil was detected for the first time in the U.S. in a Minnesota resident who recently traveled to the South American country, state health officials said Monday.

The more the virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to mutate. The fear is that it will ultimately render the vaccines ineffective.

To guard against the new variants, President Joe Biden on Monday added South Africa to the list of more than two dozen countries whose residents are subject to coronavirus-related limits on entering the U.S.

Most non-U.S. citizens who have been to Brazil, Ireland, Britain and other European nations will be barred from entering the U.S. under the rules re-imposed by Biden after President Donald Trump had moved to relax them.

Fauci said scientists are already preparing to adjust COVID-19 vaccines to fight the mutated versions.

He said there is “a very slight, modest diminution” of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against those variants, but “there’s enough cushion with the vaccines that we have that we still consider them to be effective” against both.

Moderna, the maker of one of the two vaccines being used in the U.S., announced on Monday that it is beginning to test a possible booster dose against the South African variant. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the move was out of “an abundance of caution” after preliminary lab tests suggested its shot produced a weaker immune response to that variant.

The vaccine rollout in the U.S. has been marked by disarray and confusion, with states complaining in recent days about shortages and inadequate deliveries that have forced them to cancel mass vaccination events and tens of thousands of appointments.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said shortages are preventing the city from opening more large-scale vaccination sites.

“Here you have New York City ready to vaccinate at the rate of a half-million New Yorkers a week, but we don’t have the vaccine to go with it,” de Blasio said. “A lot of other places in the country are ready to do so much more.”

BRIEFLY

Kerry: America will make up for 4 years of lost action on climate

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS (AP) — The world must take decisive action to build resilience to the devastating effects of climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told a global virtual summit Monday, pledging that President Joe Biden’s new administration would play its role.

In a video message to the Climate Adaptation Summit hosted by the Dutch government, Kerry said, “We’re proud to be back (in the Paris climate accord). We come back, I want you to know, with humility, for the absence of the last four years, and we’ll do everything in our power to make up for it.”

Biden, in his first hours in office last week, signed an executive order returning the United States to the historic 2015 Paris climate accord, reversing its withdrawal by Donald Trump, who ridiculed the science of human-caused climate change.

Dominion Voting Systems sues Giuliani over election claims

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump’s loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated. Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped control of the U.S. Senate.

Italian premier to offer resignation

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte intends to offer his resignation today, his office said Monday, a move seen as gamble that the embattled leader will get a fresh mandate from the president to try to forge a more viable coalition.

Conte survived two confidence votes in Parliament last week but crucially lost his absolute majority in the Senate with the defection of a centrist ally, ex-Premier Matteo Renzi. That hobbled his government’s effectiveness in the middle of the pandemic, which has devastated Italy’s long-stagnant economy.

Mexican president tests positive for virus

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador worked from isolation Monday, a day after announcing that he had tested positive for COVID-19, and was absent from his daily news conference for the first time in his two years in office.

The president, who has rarely been seen wearing a mask, stayed out of sight as his country registered its highest levels of infections and deaths yet. He has been criticized for his handling of Mexico’s pandemic and for not setting an example of prevention in public.

Yellen wins Senate approval as treasury secretary

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Monday approved President Joe Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen to be the nation’s 78th treasury secretary, making her the first woman to hold the job in the department’s 232-year history.

Yellen, a former chair of the Federal Reserve, was approved by the Senate on a 84-15 vote, becoming the third member of Biden’s Cabinet to win confirmation. The 15 votes against her all came from Republicans.

Impeachment goes to Senate, testing Trump’s sway over GOP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats marched the impeachment case against Donald Trump to the Senate Monday night for the start of his historic trial, but Republican senators were easing off their criticism of the former president and shunning calls to convict him over the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.

It’s an early sign of Trump’s enduring sway over the party.

The House prosecutors delivered the sole impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection,” making the ceremonial walk across the Capitol to the Senate. But Republican denunciations of Trump have cooled since the Jan. 6 riot. Instead Republicans are presenting a tangle of legal arguments against the legitimacy of the trial and questions of whether Trump’s repeated demands to overturn Joe Biden’s election really amounted to incitement.

Goade becomes first Native American to win Caldecott Medal

NEW YORK (AP) — Illustrator Michaela Goade became the first Native American to win the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal for best children’s picture story, cited for “We Are Water Protectors,” a celebration of nature and condemnation of the “black snake” Dakota Access Pipeline.

“I am really honored and proud,” the 30-year-old Goade told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “I think it’s really important for young people and aspiring book makers and other creative people to see this.”

Biden suspends some sanctions on Yemen rebels

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Monday suspended some of the terrorism sanctions that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo imposed on Yemen’s Houthi rebels in his waning days in office.

The Treasury Department said it would exempt certain transactions involving the Houthis from sanctions resulting from Pompeo’s designation of the group as a “foreign terrorist organization” on Jan. 10. The exemption will expire Feb. 26, according to a statement from Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announcing a general license for transactions that involve entities owned by the Iran-backed Houthis.

The sanctions Pompeo imposed had taken effect Jan. 19, just a day before President Joe Biden was inaugurated, and had been roundly criticized by the United Nations and relief organizations. Critics said the sanctions would exacerbate what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises by barring aid deliveries to civilians in the war-torn nation.

Watchdog probes whether DOJ officials tried to overturn election

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department’s inspector general is launching an investigation to examine whether any former or current department officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Monday that the investigation will investigate allegations concerning the conduct of former and current Justice Department officials but will not extend to other government officials.

The Justice Department watchdog investigation follows a report in The New York Times that a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, had been discussing a plan with then-President Donald Trump to oust the acting attorney general and try to challenge the results of the 2020 race by falsely saying there had been widespread election fraud.

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