COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, said Tuesday she plans to retire, but is willing to first help President-elect Joe Biden’s team with its coronavirus response as needed. Birx, in an interview with the news site Newsy, did not give a specific timetable on her plans. “I will be helpful in any role that people think I can be helpful in, and then I will retire,” Birx told the news outlet.

Coronavirus has reached the Antarctic continent, which had so far been free of Covid-19. The Chilean army has reported 36 cases at its Bernardo O'Higgins research station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The 36, 26 of whom are military personnel and 10 maintenance workers, have been evacuated to Chile. … The news means that Covid cases have now been recorded on all seven continents.

Congress passed a $900 billion pandemic relief package Monday night that would finally deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and resources to vaccinate a nation confronting a frightening surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Lawmakers tacked on a $1.4 trillion catchall spending bill and thousands of pages of other end-of-session business in a massive bundle of bipartisan legislation as Capitol Hill prepared to close the books on the year ... The bill combines coronavirus-fighting funds with financial relief for individuals and businesses. It would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefit and a $600 direct stimulus payment to most Americans, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants, and theaters and money for schools, health care providers and renters facing eviction. The 5,593-page legislation …

Does it spread more easily? Make people sicker? Mean that treatments and vaccines won’t work? Questions are multiplying as fast as new strains of the coronavirus, especially the one now moving through England. Scientists say there is reason for concern but that the new strains should not cause alarm. “There’s zero evidence that there’s any increase in severity” of COVID-19 from the latest strain, the WHO’s emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan said Monday. “We don’t want to overreact,” the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN.

The U.S. government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains on Monday began inoculating nursing home residents against COVID-19, among the first Americans besides healthcare workers to get the vaccine. The vaccinations, carried out under a program led by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and CVS Health Corp is the latest effort to reign in a pandemic that has killed more than 317,000 Americans and strained healthcare systems.

There are no intensive care beds available in densely populated Southern California or the state’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, together home to nearly 30 million people, amid a deadly surge of COVID-19, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday. The pandemic is crushing hospitals in the most-populous U.S. state …

An analysis of data from 33 states obtained by Chalkbeat and The AP shows that public K-12 enrollment this fall has dropped across those states by more than 500,000 students, or 2%, since the same time last year. That is a significant shift considering that enrollment overall in those states has typically gone up by around half a percent in recent years. And the decline is only likely to become more pronounced, as several large states have yet to release information.

President-elect Joe Biden on Monday received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on live television as part of a growing effort to convince the American public the inoculations are safe. … “I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it’s available to take the vaccine,” he added. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

The European Union's medicines regulator has recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for use in the bloc's 27 states. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) authorised the drug for the EU's nearly 448 million inhabitants after it went into circulation in the UK and the US. Hours after the EMA's decision, the European Commission gave its own formal approval for the use of the jab. Distribution could begin in some EU states as early as Sunday.

The Vatican says that it's "morally acceptable" to receive a vaccination for the coronavirus, even if the vaccine's research or production involved using cell lines derived from aborted fetuses, given the "grave danger" of the pandemic. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office charged with promoting and defending church morals and traditions, said in a document released Monday that "when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available ... it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process."

Federal officials are disappointed to find that the monoclonal antibody drugs they've shipped across the country aren't being used rapidly. These drugs are designed to prevent people recently diagnosed with COVID-19 from ending up in the hospital. But hospitals are finding it cumbersome to use these medicines, which must be given by IV infusion. And some patients and doctors are lukewarm about drugs that have an uncertain benefit.