Archives for February 2021

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials are moving to limit travel and gatherings during next week’s Lunar New Year’s holidays by allowing train operators to sell only window seats and passenger vessels to operate at half capacity.

The Health Ministry announced the steps Wednesday while repeating a plea for people to stay home amid a steady rise in coronavirus infections.

Officials also plan to strengthen sanitization and install more thermal cameras at train stations, bus terminals and airports. Travelers will be required to be masked at all times and will be prohibited from eating food at highway rest areas.

Officials have also extended a clampdown on private social gatherings of five or more people, which they enforce by fining restaurants and other businesses if they accept large groups.

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

UK tests house-to-house in hunt for new coronavirus variant. WHO experts visit animal disease center in Wuhan. Study: Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine appears safe, effective, Spain cancels San Fermin bull-running festival. Japan extends a state of emergency amid uncertainty over vaccine supplies and the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics this summer.

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Follow all of AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

CANBERRA, Australia — Australian regulators have decided to place no upper age limit on use of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine despite reports of dozens of deaths among the elderly in Norway.

Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration said in a statement Tuesday that it received reports on Jan. 14 of about 30 deaths in more than 40,000 elderly people vaccinated with Pfizer. But it added that “no causal link between vaccination and deaths could be established.”

The agency says that “elderly patients can receive this vaccine and there is no cap on the upper age limit.”

The regulaor last month gave provisional approval for the use of the Pfizer vaccine in Australia and the first doses are due to be administered to people aged 16 and older in late February.

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WELLINGTON, N.Z. — New Zealand’s medical regulator has approved its first coronavirus vaccine, and officials hope to begin giving shots to border workers by the end of March.

New Zealand has no community transmission of the virus, and border workers are considered the most vulnerable to catching and spreading the disease because they deal with arriving travelers, some of whom are infected.

Regulators on Wednesday gave provisional approval for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for people aged 16 and over.

However, New Zealand’s success in stamping out the virus also means it will need to wait longer than many other countries to get vaccine doses for the general population. Officials say they hope to begin general inoculations by midyear.

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RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s state Senate has passed a bill that would require every local school division to make both virtual and in-person learning available to students.

The chamber passed the bill Tuesday on a 26-13 bipartisan vote.

The measure’s chances in the state House are less certain. At least one similar but more narrow bill aimed at students without adequate internet access failed during last year’s special legislative session.

Virginia currently has a patchwork approach to schooling, with some public and private schools offering in-person learning while others offer only virtual school. Supporters of the bill say that is arming children whose parents don’t have the resources to pay for costly tuition.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Ralph Northam says he will review the measure if it reaches his desk.

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JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves says he’s skeptical about a new federal effort to reduce racial disparities in coronavirus vaccination rates.

Reeves said Tuesday that around 10% of Mississippi’s total weekly vaccine allocation will go to pharmacy chains like Walmart, CVS or Walgreen under the plan.

In the governor’s words, “While it’s probably true in Washington, D.C., or in New York City that you can walk a block in either direction and run into a Walgreens, or run into a CVS or a Walmart. … in Mississippi, there aren’t a lot of Walmarts in Issaquena County, and there aren’t a lot of Walmarts in very rural areas.”

As of Tuesday, 17% of vaccine doses in Mississippi had gone to Black residents, while 69% went to white residents.

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KENSINGTON, Md. — A new study finds that cleaner air from the pandemic lockdown warmed the planet a bit in 2020, especially in places such as the eastern United States, Russia and China.

Tuesday’s study found the pandemic lockdown reduced soot and sulfate air pollution, but those particles also reflect the sun’s heat and help cool areas briefly.

The end result is that some places warmed temporarily as much as two-thirds of a degree last year and the planet as a whole warmed by about .05 degrees. The study’s lead author said that loss of cooling outweighed any reduction in 2020 of heat-trapping carbon pollution.

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TOPEKA, Kan. — Republican lawmakers in Kansas are moving toward formally condemning Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s decision to give prison inmates COVID-19 vaccinations ahead of others.

The state Senate’s health committee agreed Tuesday to sponsor a resolution from its GOP chair, Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, that calls on Kelly to reverse her policy on inoculating inmates.

The full Senate could debate it later this week.

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LANSING, Mich. — An athletic advocacy group, hockey league and parents of athletes have sued Michigan’s health director, seeking a reversal of 2 1/2-month state ban on contact sports that was issued to curb the coronavirus.

Let Them Play Michigan, a group of student-athletes, parents, coaches and school administrators, is among plaintiffs that sued in the Court of Claims Tuesday.

The complaint contends that the order, which was recently extended through Feb. 21, arbitrarily and irrationally singles out and deprives athletes of their constitutional rights and freedoms.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she’s optimistic that the state can move toward reengagement in sports. Spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin said the department and governor acted decisively in November as a surge in cases threatened to overwhelm hospitals.

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MEXICO CITY — Mexico is on the verge of approving the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V following the publication of early results of an advanced study.

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the government’s pandemic spokesman, says the health ministry signed a contract Monday for 400,000 doses of Sputnik V that will arrive this month.

Once approved, the Russian vaccine would become the third to receive emergency approval in Mexico. The regulating agency approved the Pfizer vaccine in December and AstraZeneca’s in January. Mexico turned to the Russian vaccine following delays in obtaining others it was counting on.

Mexico has so far given about 675,000 doses, all Pfizer, to a population of 126 million. On Tuesday, a second batch of the active substance in the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Mexico, where it will be packed and distributed through the rest of Latin America.

The Mexican government also launched a new website Tuesday for people over age 60 to register for vaccination appointments. However, the Mexican Health Department’s website was quickly overwhelmed and not working.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital says he tested positive for the coronavirus after undergoing an antigen test.

Miguel Romero says on Twitter that he is in isolation and awaiting the results of a molecular test for confirmation. He added the rest of his family has tested negative. He had planned to travel with his daughter to her university.

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi also is in isolation after having been in recent contact with Romero.

Romero is one of the highest-ranking government officials in Puerto Rico to test positive. The U.S. territory of 3.2 million people has reported more than 157,000 cases and more than 1,800 deaths.

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BRUSSELS — The Belgian government says it won’t administer the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to people over 55, saying there’s still a lack of data about its effectiveness among the elderly.

Health authorities in France, Germany and other countries have raised concerns that the Anglo-Swedish company didn’t test the vaccine in enough older people to prove it works for them and indicated they wouldn’t recommend it for the elderly.

“We don’t have enough info to be sure to say that it is good for the elderly,” says Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke.

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BEIRUT — Lebanon has broken its single-day record of coronavirus deaths with 81 as the country continued its nationwide lockdown for the third week.

The health ministry has registered a total of 306,000 cases since the start of the pandemic.

Lebanese authorities are expected to hold a meeting later this week to decide whether to begin easing the lockdown.

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LAS VEGAS — Nevada has recorded its deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic in January after reporting eight additional coronavirus deaths over the weekend.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the additional deaths on Sunday boosted the statewide death toll for the month to 1,132. That’s more than a quarter of the 4,278 confirmed deaths since the start of the pandemic.

The state surpassed the previously monthly record of 982 deaths set in December. Health officials also reported 838 new cases.

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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will begin providing COVID-19 vaccines to U.S. pharmacies, part of its plan to ramp up vaccinations as new and potentially more serious virus strains are starting to appear. White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients says the government will initially ship about 1 million doses to some 6,500 pharmacies around the country, starting next week.

That’s expected to accelerate as drugmakers increase production. Drug stores have become a mainstay for flu shots and shingles vaccines. The pharmacy vaccine program will be administered by the CDC and include outlets such as CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Rite Aid and Costco, and supermarket pharmacies.

The government has distributed nearly 50 million doses, of which about 32 million have been administered, or more than 60%. That’s a marked improvement from just a few weeks ago. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots, taken 21 to 28 days after the first shot.

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PARIS — France’s top health advisory body is recommending the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine only be used on people under 65, citing lack of sufficient data about its effectiveness in older people.

The European Medicines Agency authorized AstraZeneca’s vaccine for use in adults throughout the European Union on Friday, amid criticism the bloc is not moving fast enough to vaccinate its population.

But health authorities in Germany, France and some other countries have raised concerns that not enough data exist to prove it works in older people.

France’s High Authority for Health issued its guidance Tuesday. It says it will review this guidance when AstraZeneca has more data on the vaccine’s effectiveness in older people.

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NEW YORK — Some vaccination sites in the northeast U.S. remained closed Tuesday, but others were up and running again as the region dug out from a major snowstorm.

In Massachusetts, mass vaccination sites at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium opened and closed early on Monday, but both facilities planned to operate as usual Tuesday. In New York City, vaccination sites run by the city’s public hospital network were running, while others had another day of cancelled appointments. There were scattered closures in Pennsylvania.

Snowfall in the northeast ranged from just a few inches in Boston to 16 inches in New York and more than 30 inches in parts of New Jersey.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday in a procedure streamed live.

The couple was eligible because both are older than 70, the age group that can receive vaccines in Ohio this week. DeWine, a Republican, had said previously he wouldn’t cut in line for the shot but would wait his turn.

The Pfizer dose was administered by Dr. Kevin Sharrett in his southwestern Ohio office. Sharrett said he’s frequently asked about the vaccine’s safety. He says the vaccine is not only safe, it’s a better choice than coming down with the coronavirus.

More than 850,000 people in Ohio have received at least the first dose of the vaccine as of Monday, or about 7% of the population, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden panned a Republican alternative to his $1.9 trillion COVID rescue plan as insufficient Tuesday as Senate Democrats pushed ahead, voting to launch a process that could approve his sweeping rescue package on their own, if Republicans refuse to support it.

Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined the Democratic senators for a private virtual meeting, both declaring the Republicans’ $618 billion offer was too small. They urged big fast action to stem the pandemic crisis and economic fallout.

As the White House reaches for a bipartisan bill, Democrats marshaled their ever-slim Senate majority, voting 50-49, to start a lengthy process for approving Biden’s bill with or without GOP support. The goal is passage by March.

“President Biden spoke about the need for Congress to respond boldly and quickly,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the lunch meeting.

“If we did a package that small, we’d be mired in the COVID crisis for years.”

The swift action from Democrats on Capitol Hill underscores the urgency of delivering Biden’s top legislative priority even as talks are progressing privately between Republicans and the White House, as well as with centrist Democrats, on potential changes to the package to win over broader bipartisan support.

Biden framed his views during the virtual lunch meeting with Democrats by talking about the need not to forget working and middle-class families — even those like nurses and pipefitters making $150,000 for a family of four — who are straining during the crisis, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private call.

The night before, Biden met with 10 Republican senators pitching their $618 billion alternative, and let them know it was insufficient to meet the country’s needs. The president made it clear that he won’t delay aid in hopes of winning GOP support.

While no compromise was reached during the late Monday session, White House talks with Republicans are privately underway.

The outcome will test the new president striving to unify the country but confronting a rising COVID death toll and stubbornly high jobless numbers, with political risks for all sides. Vaccine distributions, direct $1,400 payments to households, school reopenings and business aid are all on the line.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticized the Democrats for pressing ahead on their own. He said he had spoken to Biden ahead of his meeting with the 10 GOP senators.

“They’ve chosen a totally partisan path,” McConnell said. “That’s unfortunate.”

The two sides are far apart, with the Republican group of 10 senators focused primarily on the health care crisis and smaller $1,000 direct aid to Americans than the $1,400 payments Biden proposed, while the president is leading Democrats toward a more sweeping rescue plan to shore up households, local governments and a partly shuttered economy.

The goal is to have COVID-19 relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires.

At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated Biden’s view that the risk is not in crafting too large a package, but in providing too little aid. She said the president was hopeful GOP ideas will be brought forward, and said nothing precludes Republicans from participating in the process.

“We need to make sure people get the relief they need,” she said.

White House officials have previously cited the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as evidence of broad support for their plan, but the nation’s most prominent business group issued a letter Tuesday that urged a bipartisan compromise.

“There ought to be common ground for a bipartisan proposal that can become law,” Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer, said in an interview.

The cornerstone of the GOP plan is $160 billion for the health care response — vaccine distribution, a “massive expansion” of testing, protective gear and funds for rural hospitals, similar to what Biden has proposed.

But from there, the two plans drastically diverge. Biden proposes $170 billion for schools, compared to $20 billion in the Republican plan. Republicans also would give nothing to states, money that Democrats argue is just as important, with $350 billion in Biden’s plan to keep police, fire and other workers on the job.

The GOP’s $1,000 direct payments would go to fewer households, individuals earning up to $40,000 a year, or $80,000 for couples. That’s less than Biden’s proposal of $1,400 direct payments at higher income levels, up to $300,000 for some households..

The Republicans offer $40 billion for Paycheck Protection Program business aid. But gone are Democratic priorities such as a gradual lifting of the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

According to Schumer, Biden told Democratic senators he had let the Republicans know “he’s willing to make some modifications.”

But both Biden and Yellen recalled the lessons of the government response to the 2009 financial crisis, which some have since said was inadequate as conditions worsened. Biden said he told the Republicans their offer was “way too small,” Schumer said.

Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant, potentially giving Biden the votes needed in the 50-50 Senate to the 60-vote threshold typically required to advance legislation. Vice President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker.

Wary Democrats pushed ahead with Tuesday’s vote, unwilling to take too much time in courting GOP support that may not materialize or may lead to too meager a package.

The procedural steps are groundwork for eventual approval under the budget reconciliation process that would allow the bill to pass with a 51-vote majority in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes typically needed.

The vote Tuesday opens 50 hours of debate on a budget resolution, with amendment votes expected later this week. The House is poised to launch a similar process.

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Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Jonathan Lemire, Alexandra Jaffe, Darlene Superville and Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

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ROME (AP) — Former European bank chief Mario Draghi was positioned to lead what could quickly become Italy’s next government after the Italian president concluded Tuesday that squabbling political parties failed in a last-ditch effort to form a new coalition and that the nation could ill afford fresh elections while engulfed in the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Sergio Mattarella told the nation that only two options remained after the “negative outcome” from days of frantic political negotiations to re-compose the center-left coalition that had formed the recently collapsed government of Giuseppe Conte.

The first was “a new government, able to deal with the grave present emergencies: health, social, economic financial,” said Mattarella, who is head of state. The second, he said, was immediate, early elections, a possibility that deserved careful consideration “because elections represent an exercise in democracy.”

Mattarella decided Italy quickly needed a ‘’government of high profile, that must not identify with any political formula” and that would be backed by political forces in the current in Parliament. He stopped short of saying who he had in mind for the premiership.

But right after his speech, a presidential palace official announced that the 73-year-old Draghi, who has been credited with saving Europe’s single currency during his tenure as European Central Bank president in 2011-2019, had been summoned to meet with Mattarella at noon Wednesday. That would give Draghi the opportunity to formally accept such a mandate.

The fragile prospects for reviving Conte’s government through a revamped political coalition disintegrated after former Premier Matteo Renzi gave a thumbs-down following days of frantic negotiations. Conte resigned last week after Renzi yanked his ministers from his tiny centrist Italy Alive party to protest what he said was the premier’s bumbling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Conte is now acting in a caretaker capacity.

Mattarella noted that after elections in 2013, it took four months to get a government in place, and after 2018 elections, five months. Repeating that would leave Italy suffering without a government in the “fullness of its functions for months, crucial, decisive, for the fight against the pandemic to utilize European funding and to face the grave social problems,” he said.

“All these concerns are well in the mind of our fellow citizens, who are asking for concrete and rapid answers to their daily problems,” the president said.

Nicknamed “Super Mario” for his work as the European Central Bank’s president during the single currency crisis, Draghi was cited throughout these last weeks of Italy’s political crisis as a possible solution if politicians couldn’t overcome personality and policy clashes for the sake of the nation.

The pandemic has devastated Italy’s long-stagnant economy and left the country with Europe’s second-highest COVID-19 death toll. The government statistical agency ISTAT reported Monday that nearly 450,000 jobs were lost in the last year.

During the last-ditch discussions that failed Tuesday, the parties in what is now Conte’s caretaker government squabbled over European Union pandemic aid and other key policy issues that were blocking formation of a more solid coalition.

Mattarella had given the collapsed coalition parties a few days to see if they could re-combine in a new government with a dependable majority in Parliament.

His call for wide support for the next government, was swiftly taken up by a lawmaker from the Forza Italia opposition party of Silvio Berlusconi, the media mogul and former center-right premier. Mara Carfagna said Mattarella’s appeal “for responsibility should spark authentic, profound reflection in whoever loves Italy and Italians and who still keeps the true sense of the world patriotism.”

Earlier, Renzi put all the blame on the failed effort on the other parties, saying, “We take note of the ‘nyet’ of the colleagues of the ex-coalition,” using the Russian word for “no.”

In turn, the populist 5-Star Movement, which was the main partner in back-to-back Conte governments since he came to power in 2018, contended that all Renzi wanted was more power.

“It’s obvious that the aim was to obtain more (Cabinet) posts. This was his most pressing” goal in provoking the crisis, said Vito Crimi, a 5-Star leader.

Except for Renzi, all the other leaders of the former coalition parties had thrown their public weight behind Conte for a new mandate.

In yanking his support, Renzi contended that Conte was bumbling the challenge of managing how more than 200 billion euros (about $250 billion) in EU funds and loans would be spent to help Italy recover from the pandemic’s damage, especially to the Italian economy.

The 5-Star Movement, which is close to Conte, resisted accepting billions of euros in EU loans aimed at bolstering the health system, aid the populists fear could make Italy beholden to EU dictates such as austerity measures.

Renzi had insisted that Italy should take the health system aid from Brussels.

Largely caught in the cross-fire has been the center-left Democratic Party, which Renzi led during his 2014-2016 tenure as premier and he broke away from to start Italy Alive shortly after Conte formed his second coalition government in September 2019.

Conte’s first government, which took office in June 2018, partnered the 5-Stars with the right-wing League of Matteo Salvini. That coalition collapsed when Salvini withdrew his support in a failed maneuver to gain the premiership for himself. The Democrats, which then included Renzi, replaced Salvini’s forces in Conte’s second government.

Salvini had lobbied Mattarella in vain for early elections.

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Earth spiked a bit of a fever in 2020, partly because of cleaner air from the pandemic lockdown, a new study found.

For a short time, temperatures in some places in the eastern United States, Russia and China were as much as half to two-thirds of a degree (.3 to .37 degrees Celsius) warmer. That’s due to less soot and sulfate particles from car exhaust and burning coal, which normally cool the atmosphere temporarily by reflecting the sun’s heat, Tuesday’s study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reported.

Overall, the planet was about .05 degrees (.03 degrees Celsius) warmer for the year because the air had fewer cooling aerosols, which unlike carbon dioxide is pollution you can see, the study found.

“Cleaning up the air can actually warm the planet because that (soot and sulfate) pollution results in cooling” which climate scientists have long known, said study lead author Andrew Gettelman, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His calculations come from comparing 2020 weather to computer models that simulated a 2020 without the pollution reductions from pandemic lockdowns.

This temporary warming effect from fewer particles was stronger in 2020 than the effect of reduced heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, Gettelman said. That’s because carbon stays in the atmosphere for more than a century with long-term effects, while aerosols remain in the air about a week.

Even without the reduction in cooling aerosols, global temperatures in 2020 already were flirting with breaking yearly heat record because of the burning of coal, oil and natural gas — and the aerosol effect may have been enough to help make this the hottest year in NASA’s measuring system, said top NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, who wasn’t part of this study but said it confirms other research.

“Clean air warms the planet a tiny bit, but it kills a lot fewer people with air pollution,” Gettelman said.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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