COVID-19 News from Around the Web

US Covid-19 hospitalizations hit a record high for the seventh day in a row Saturday with 108,487 patients in hospitals around the country, according to the Covid Tracking Project. And the number of Covid-19 cases reported in the US reached more than 16 million after the country added 1 million cases in just four days, according to Johns Hopkins University data. It took the nation more than eight months to reach 8 million cases but less than two months to double that, as the number of new cases continues to soar.

“We would have immunized 100 million people by the first quarter of 2021,” U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui said in an interview with Fox News Sunday. He said the US hopes to have about 40 million doses of vaccine distributed by the end of December, which would include the just authorized vaccine from Pfizer Inc and one from Moderna Inc expected to get a similar emergency use nod later this week. Another 50 million to 80 million doses will be distributed in January, and the same number in February, Slaoui said. The vaccine requires two shots per person.

A vaccine kit sent to the wrong state. A hospital system in California expecting to get powdered vaccines instead of frozen vials. And tens of thousands of people expect to get vaccinated in the coming weeks, when in reality they are going to have to wait for months. The rollout of the first coronavirus vaccine is already messy, and it has only been authorized since late Friday night. … Here are some of the problems the US public can expect to see with any mass vaccination effort: People will have to wait … Distribution may seem unfair … There will be side effects … There will be vaccine scares … There will be mistakes.

Frontline health care workers across the U.S. are days away from being offered the shots. They couldn’t be arriving at a more crucial moment, with Covid-19 cases at their highest level since the pandemic began a year ago and many hospitals overwhelmed. … While there is vaccine hesitancy among health care workers as well as the general public — in one study, 36% of nurses said they would not take the vaccine — many other frontline medical workers, exhausted by the pandemic and the many risks they’ve taken to provide care these long months, say the shots can’t come soon enough.

The CDC on Sunday said people who have experienced severe reactions to prior vaccines or injectable drugs can still get the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19, but should discuss the risks with their doctors and be monitored for 30 minutes afterward. The guidance is a shift from a prior proposal laid out Saturday that would have recommended against vaccination for that group of people.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he was reversing an administration directive to vaccinate top government officials against COVID-19, while public distribution of the shot is limited to front-line health workers and people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Trump made the announcement hours after his administration confirmed that senior U.S. officials, including some White House aides who work in close proximity to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, would be offered coronavirus vaccines as soon as this week under federal continuity of government plans.

The results of several ambitious studies testing wearables as early predictors of for Covid-19 are in — and they suggest that data from devices including Apple Watches, Fitbits, and Oura smart rings may be useful for flagging some infections in people before they even feel ill. Recently published research from ongoing efforts at three high-profile institutions … indicate that wearables can detect a bump in heart rate or temperature, the most consistent signs that the body is mounting a response to an external threat before symptoms appear.

With Covid-19 linked to heart muscle inflammation known as myocarditis, doctors are concerned about patients returning to physical activity safely. Exercising with myocarditis can lead to irregular heartbeats and sudden cardiac death, a well-documented worry with athletes. But which people who’ve had Covid-19 are at risk? And who should be screened with a battery of heart tests before being cleared for exercise?

With lawmakers facing a mounting year-end to-do list, a deal on a new coronavirus relief package continues to be elusive for Congress. But a key House Democrat on Sunday seemed to indicate some flexibility on one of his party's priorities. … Several existing federal programs, including some unemployment benefits, are set to expire at the end of the month.

A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. FDA on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to endorse emergency use of Pfizer Inc’s coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for the agency to authorize the shot for a nation that has lost more than 285,000 lives to COVID-19. The FDA is widely expected to authorize the vaccine, developed with German partner BioNTech SE, for emergency use in the United States within days. Distribution and inoculations are expected to begin almost immediately thereafter. The committee voted 17-4 that the known benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks of taking the shot for individuals 16 and older, with 1 member of the panel abstaining. Pfizer had asked that the two-dose vaccine be approved for use in people aged 16 to 85. Several advisory panel members discussed whether 16 and 17 year olds should be included in the recommendation because the risk to these individuals is low, and the evidence in the trial was scant. In the end, they voted on the question as put them by the FDA, which included 16 to 17 year olds.

By nearly all measures it has been a horrible week, a horrible month (nine days in), and a horrible year. The US set pandemic records in all three metrics that measure the pandemic’s severity this week, recording a total of 1.4 million new cases and 15,966 deaths. Yesterday, states and territories reported 3,088 deaths from COVID-19—a record no one wanted to see—and the average number of deaths per day this week exceeded 2,000, surpassing the highest average we saw in the spring’s deadly first surge. More than 106,000 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. If the patterns we’ve traced here since spring hold true, the worst is yet to come.

More Americans who don't even have coronavirus are suffering from soaring Covid-19 hospitalizations. Newly released data from HHS show at least 200 hospitals were at full capacity last week. And in one third of all hospitals, more than 90% of all ICU beds were occupied. Coronavirus patients occupied 46% of all staffed ICU beds -- up from 37% in the first week of November. Hospitalizations in the US reached a record high of 107,248 on Thursday, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

Many more Americans filed new unemployment claims last week than during the previous week, as a resurgence in COVID-19 cases heading into the winter led to more business-constraining social distancing restrictions and pushed more people out of work. … Thursday’s report ended a seven-week streak during which new jobless claims held below 800,000. New weekly claims are now about four times greater than they were before the pandemic, when they were averaging about 200,000 per week.

The US FDA has granted an emergency use authorization for the first non-prescription, over-the-counter Covid-19 test kit for at-home use. The LabCorp Pixel COVID-19 Test Home Collection Kit allows anyone 18 and older to buy the kit and collect nasal swab samples at home, the FDA said in a news release Wednesday. The samples are then sent to a LabCorp facility for testing. Positive or invalid results are delivered back to the consumer by phone or through a healthcare provider. Users will be notified by email or through an online portal if results are negative.

Recently diagnosed cancer patients are more vulnerable to Covid-19 infection and face more severe illness than people without cancer, a risk that is significantly higher for Black people than for white people with both diseases, a large new analysis concludes. … Black people were more likely than white people to be hospitalized for cancer alone, Covid-19 alone, or both diseases. The difference in death rates did not reach statistical significance — 18.5% for Black patients vs. 13.5% for white patients — but the analysis was limited by small numbers …

Visits to the emergency room for cases of child abuse and neglect of children under 18 years of age dropped by 53% in mid-March compared to the same time frame in 2019, according to a new analysis by the CDC. The sharp decline began just days after the federal government declared a national emergency due to Covid-19 and many communities locked down to contain the spread of the virus. … Despite the drop, the study found the number of abused children who required hospitalization remained the same as last year, "suggesting that injury severity did not decrease during the pandemic," the CDC researchers said.