Archives for March 2021

Attending Elton John’s long-running Oscar-night party has always been one of the hardest tickets to get. Now you can go — if you have $20.

The Elton John AIDS Foundation is inviting everyone to an hourlong, virtual pre-show Oscar party special hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and with a performance by Dua Lipa.

Tickets for the April 25 event are $19.99 and are available via Ticketmaster. Proceeds will go to young people at risk and living with HIV all over the world.

The foundation is one of the leading independent AIDS organizations in the world. One of its fundraising highlights is the star-studded Oscar viewing show, with a dinner and an auction. This time, a pre-show will be available to ticket buyers.

The special will be hosted four times in four different time zones and each will accommodate 100,000 viewers, meaning a total of 400,000 ticket buyers are allowed access.

“Now more than ever, we need to ensure that one pandemic does not override another, and we cannot forget the 38 million people living with HIV globally who need our care, love and support so we hope everyone joins us for this special one of a kind Oscar Pre-Party,” John said in a statement.

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ORLANDO, Fla. — The number of Floridians eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine expanded on Monday as the state allowed anybody age 50 and up to get the shot, and the county that is home to the state’s biggest theme parks set the bar even lower by allowing anyone age 40 and up to get an injection.

With the loosening of the statewide qualifications, more than a third of Floridians were now eligible to get a vaccine solely based on age at all vaccination sites in the state.

Starting Monday, Orange County expanded the age eligibility a decade lower than the statewide requirement at its county-run facility at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Reservations were required for the drive-thru site at the convention center, and 7,000 appointments were filled within 13 minutes, officials said.

In expanding the eligibility, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said last week there has been decreasing demand at the convention center site. He said he had notified the state and felt he had the authority to expand eligibility in the county.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a mega-sized rest stop in Daytona Beach, DeSantis said he had concerns about Orange County “choosing to prioritize a healthy 40-year-old” over older residents. “It’s not authorized,” said DeSantis.

But Demings, a Democrat, said Monday that his goal was to get as many people in Orange County vaccinated, and he wasn’t intending to take a political or partisan position against the Republican governor.

“My goal here is not to make this a personal issue,” Demings said. “This is about the safety of the people in this community.”

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— AstraZeneca: US data shows vaccine effective for all ages

— Analysis finds faster is not necessarily better in US COVID-19 vaccine rollout

— Germany looks set to extend lockdown measures again

— Taiwan gives health workers island’s first AstraZeneca doses

— Teachers lament ‘chaotic’ virus rules in German schools

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Follow 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:

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas legislators have approved a measure that would give judges and prosecutors a little more than two years to clear a backlog of criminal cases that built up during the coronavirus pandemic.

The House voted 114-7 to pass a bill that would suspend until May 1, 2023, legal deadlines for criminal cases meant to protect defendants’ constitutional right to speedy trials. The bill goes next to Gov. Laura Kelly because the Senate approved it last week.

The law requires trials for jailed defendants to start within five months of them entering a plea, or six months if they are free on bond. Prosecutors fear that if the deadlines remain in effect with a backlog of some 5,000 cases, judges will be forced to release some defendants accused of violent crimes.

The House vote came just before the state health department reported that more than 1 million COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered within the state.

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DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Monday announced a statewide tour to hear from residents and gather ideas on how to spend the state’s portion of the federal government’s $1.9 trillion plan to support the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Polis and bipartisan leaders from the state Legislature will be part of the Democrat called a “Build Back Stronger Statewide Listening Tour.”

They will hold in-person and virtual sessions in seven different parts of the state to hear from small business owners, local elected officials and sectors that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Under the economic stimulus plan signed by President Joseph Biden this month, Colorado will receive about $3.9 billion in state funds, said Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Democrat who is a member of the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee.

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LANSING, Mich. — Starting Monday, hundreds of Michigan school districts had to offer at least 20 hours a week of in-person instruction to receive all of a minimum $450-per-student increase in emergency pandemic funding.

The provision affects 206, or 38%, of the state’s 537 traditional K-12 districts — those with higher numbers or percentages of children from middle-class and wealthy families.

Under federal law, the districts are due to receive a smaller share of nearly $1.5 billion in COVID-19 aid than are districts and charter schools with higher numbers or portions of poor students. The Republican-led Legislature allocated $136 million in state money to ensure hundreds of districts still get at least $450 more per pupil, but it added a string.

Those with five-day schedules must provide at least 20 hours of weekly face-to-face instruction to qualify for the supplemental dollars.

“It’s important for kids to be in school academically, socially and emotionally,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Thomas Albert, a Lowell Republican.

Districts that were not already providing 20 hours had less than two weeks to alter their schedules after the law was signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on March 9, frustrating school officials who had unsuccessfully asked GOP lawmakers for more time.

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MADRID — Spain’s health minister said the country will resume use of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 by extending it to adults up to 65 years of age and that authorities will consider vaccinating older people with the shot after new studies revealed Monday that it provides strong protection to all.

AstraZeneca said Monday in a long-anticipated study that its vaccine was 79% effective overall at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19, including in older people, and that none of the more than 30,000 volunteers in the study were hospitalized or developed severe disease.

Health Minister Carolina Darias said that officials needed time to analyze the study before broadening use of the vaccine, which several regions and doctors had for weeks demanded.

Spain, like many European countries, halted administration of the AstraZeneca shot last week, but European drug regulators later declared the vaccine safe and with no obvious links to a few dozen cases of rare blood clots.

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PHOENIX — Arizona is opening coronavirus vaccine appointments to everyone 16 and older.

Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday that appointments will be available at state-run mass vaccination sites in Phoenix, Tucson and Yuma starting 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Ducey said the decision was made based on an anticipated increase in vaccine supply.

Arizona is among the first states to allow anyone to sign up for vaccine appointments. President Joe Biden has said he wants states to take that step by May 1 and seek to vaccinate everyone who wants a shot by the end of May.

State officials say about 2.9 million vaccine doses have been given to about 1.1 million people so far in Arizona.

The change applies only to state-run vaccination sites, which have distributed the bulk of the vaccines.

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GENEVA — A top U.N. health expert says the weekly global count of COVID-19 deaths is rising again, calling it a “worrying sign” after about six weeks of declines.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead on COVID-19 at the World Health Organization, says cases are rising in four of the WHO’s five regions worldwide.

Cases in Europe have increased by 12 percent in the last week, Van Kerkhove told a press conference. The rise was driven by the spread of a variant that first emerged in Britain and has spread to many other places including eastern Europe.

Southeast Asia tallied a 49 percent jump over the last week, and WHO’s Western Pacific region tallied a 29 percent rise, she said.

Meantime, the Americas and Africa registered declines.

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NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that the state is expanding eligibility for the coronavirus vaccine to everyone ages 50 and above.

The governor said newly eligible people can start signing up for vaccines on 8 a.m. Tuesday.

Previously, everyone ages 60 and older could get vaccinated, as well as certain essential workers and people with select health conditions.

Cuomo said the state can expand eligibility because of promises from the federal government that vaccine supplies will continue increasing. It’s unclear how many people are now eligible for vaccines in New York.

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MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota health officials reported no new deaths due to COVID-19 for the first time in nearly a year.

The Minnesota Department of Health also reported 1,152 new cases, putting the state at 506,376 cases and 6,782 deaths since the start of the pandemic a year ago. The Star Tribune reported that while Mondays tend to feature fewer deaths reported than average, the figure is the first time the state has reported no new deaths in a daily situation update since April 13.

Despite the good news on deaths, health officials have said in recent weeks they’re worried about the spread of coronavirus mutations — called variants — in different parts of Minnesota, which they say could derail the state’s progress in fighting the pandemic.

Officials said the state is in a race against the spread of the variants and reaching Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s goal of 80% of the state’s population being fully vaccinated.

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GENEVA — The World Health Organization has a message for any countries that have stocks of AstraZeneca vaccines against COVID but are hesitant about using it: Give it to us, we have a lot of would-be takers.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a special adviser to the WHO director-general, acknowledged the U.N. health agency received “a lot of questions” from AstraZeneca’s vaccine amid early concerns whether it might be linked to cases of a severe, rare blood clotting in some patients who received it.

Aylward told reporters that countries pressing ahead with a rollout of the AstraZeneca are “very keen” to receive it, including participants in the U.N.-backed COVAX program that aims to get vaccines to countries where they are most needed, whether rich or poor.

“The problem is not a lack of demand. It’s quite the contrary,” he said. “If there are any countries that do have concerns or are not fully utilizing a vaccine … make it available to the COVAX facility because we have a long list of countries that are very, very keen to use the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

“We simply cannot get enough of it,” he said. Positive results from clinical trials of the vaccine in the United States, Chile and Peru have “really given a new confidence and demand for that vaccine.”

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MADISON, Wis. — The governor of Wisconsin has signed a bill that allows dentists to administer COVID-19 vaccinations. The bill was signed the same day more than 2 million more people became eligible for shots.

The Republican-authored bill allows dentists who complete eight hours of training on vaccine protocols and record keeping to administer shots. Dentists in neighboring Minnesota and Illinois are already permitted to give the vaccine. About 3,500 dentists in Wisconsin could be enlisted to help vaccinate.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration announced earlier this month that people age 16 and up with certain pre-existing conditions would be eligible on Monday, a week earlier than previously announced.

State Department of Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake urged people to be patient as they try to book vaccination appointments, warning some vaccinators may have waiting lists.

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PRAGUE — The Czech Republic is expanding its program of mandatory mass testing of employees to include the smallest companies.

Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlicek says the firms with less than 10 people have to start to test them on a weekly basis. The non-governmental organizations will also have to do so as well self-employed people who are in personal contacts with their customers.

The minister says that with the inclusion of the new categories, a total of 500,000 tests of employees will be conducted daily.

The government has also decided to ask the Parliament to approve its plan to extend a state of emergency by another 30 days. The current state of emergency will expire on March 28. It would enable the government to keep in place a strict lockdown till at least April 5, the last day of Easter.

The nation of 10.7 million has almost 1.5 million confirmed cases with 24,810 deaths.

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SKOPJE, North Macedonia — Authorities in North Macedonia are extending a nationwide curfew for another two weeks. The 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew was first imposed March 10.

The Balkan country of 2.1 million recorded last week a 50% increase in infections over the previous two weeks. Hospitals are filling and most new patients have the U.K. virus variant.

Inoculations started among medical workers in mid-February from a batch of 4,680 doses of Pfizer vaccines donated by neighboring Serbia.

So far North Macedonia has recorded nearly 120,000 confirmed infections and more than 3,400 deaths.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The governor of West Virginia announced the state will immediately open coronavirus vaccine eligibility to all residents aged 16 and older.

Republican Gov. Jim Justice said the state will continue prioritizing doses for residents 65 and over.

The state becomes one of the few in the nation to lift virtually all eligibility requirements way ahead of President Joe Biden’s goal of allowing all adults to get shots starting on May 1.

There are about 1.43 million people 18 and older in the state, according to census data.

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LISBON, Portugal — Portugal resumed administering AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, a week after temporarily halting its use.

Portugal was one of the European countries which last week suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after a few dozen people in other countries who had the jab developed blood clots. The European Union’s drug regulatory agency concluded after a review it couldn’t rule out a direct link in those cases but said the benefits of using the vaccine outweigh the possible risks.

Authorities say Portugal’s vaccination program is running late due to a shortage of supply, but officials hope to speed up jabs in coming weeks by opening vaccination centers in large buildings, such as stadiums.

Portugal, a country of 10.3 million people, had administered almost 1.35 million jabs by Sunday. The health ministry does not publish a breakdown of which vaccines it is administering.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo — Kosovo’s outgoing health minister sent a letter of complaint to the international community for delaying delivery of the vaccine to the tiny Western Balkan country.

Minister Armend Zemaj said that “Unfortunately, despite our maximum commitment, we are the only country in Europe that has not received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.”

Kosovo’s only shots were made last weekend for a group of 500 medical personnel in neighboring Albania. Kosovar doctors and nurses traveled to Albania’s northeastern city of Kukes to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Vaccination has yet to start in Kosovo, which is expecting the first batch of vaccines from the Covax facility later this month. The government has ordered an overnight curfew and banned public gatherings of over 50 people.

Kosovo has reported 83,012 total confirmed cases and 1,776 confirmed deaths as of Monday.

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s health minister is requisitioning the services of private sector doctors from certain specialties in the wider Athens region to help fight a renewed surge in coronavirus infections that is straining hospitals to their limits.

In an announcement released Monday, Vassilis Kikilias said that despite repeated appeals for private doctors to volunteer to help in the public sector, very few came forward. Therefore, the minister said, he was ordering specialists in pathology, pneumonology and general medicine to help.

Kikilias had said Friday he would requisition private sector doctors unless at least 200 volunteered within 48 hours. Government spokeswoman Aristotelia Peloni said Monday that only 61 doctors had stepped forward voluntarily.

“It was the last measure, if you will, in the context of the emergency plan prepared by the Health Ministry, and it was decided that it was now necessary to mobilize private doctors as part of this great struggle, this national effort, after all the opportunities for voluntary participation were exhausted,” Peloni said.

The requisition order is for one month for 206 doctors, health authorities said.

Greece has been experiencing a renewed surge of COVID-19 despite lockdown-related measures being in force since early November, with dozens of daily deaths recorded, as well as increasing numbers of patients hospitalized in intensive care units. About 500 people are hospitalized each day across the country with COVID-19, health authorities say, with 200 of them being in the wider Athens region.

On Monday, Greece reported 1,707 new coronavirus infections and 69 more deaths, bringing the total confirmed infections in the country of around 10.5 million people to just under 240,000 and the death toll to 7,531.

Despite the rising numbers, authorities have announced a slight relaxation of lockdown measures, with hairdressers, nail salons and open-air archaeological sites reopening as of Monday. Amateur fishing, which had also been banned, is also being allowed for those living in coastal areas, as access to the sea is allowed only on foot or bicycle.

Authorities said Monday that close to 1.5 million doses of the vaccine have been administered so far in the country, with nearly 1 million people receiving at least one jab.

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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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NEW YORK (AP) — To Fox News Channel’s Janice Dean, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a liar and a criminal. He blames others for his “disastrous decisions.” He needs to resign — no, that’s not enough.

“He needs to go to jail!” she thundered on “Fox & Friends.”

Dean isn’t a political commentator — she’s Fox’s senior meteorologist. In the past year, though, a searing personal loss has transformed her into a fighter for families who believe that a Cuomo-backed policy encouraging the transfer of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes was a deadly error.

“She really hates when people are being screwed with and … always has fought for the little guy,” said Meghan McCain of “The View,” who once worked with Dean at Fox News.

McCain knows politics, and suggests her friend may have a future there.

Cuomo has defended his directives, saying they followed scientific guidelines. His office did not return messages seeking comment about Dean.

Yet Dean has made some dubious public claims about the impact of Cuomo’s nursing home order and another news organization’s coverage. Her newfound role raises ethical questions for Fox.

“She is certainly a passionate and articulate spokesperson on this matter,” said Jeffrey McCall, a media ethics professor at DePauw University. “But it is also clear that Janice is using her profile as a Fox News Channel personality to engage in advocacy.”

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March and April 2020 was a nightmare in New York, with the new coronavirus spreading wildly. The timing was particularly cruel for Michael and Dolores Newman — the parents of Dean’s husband, Sean, known to family and friends as Mickey and Dee. Brooklyn through and through, they were married three days before Valentine’s Day 1961.

The 83-year-old Mickey, a former firefighter, was in the Grandell Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Brooklyn with dementia and other issues. Dee was in assisted living, at the Long Island Living Center, and hoped Mickey would join her when his health improved.

But he died March 29, a few hours after Sean got a call saying he wasn’t feeling well. Dee, 79, died on April 13.

Looking into the deaths, the family was flabbergasted to learn of the Cuomo administration’s March 25 directive that nursing homes could not deny admission to someone solely because they had COVID-19. The policy was expanded to cover assisted living facilities on April 7.

New York was desperately worried about running out of hospital space then. Cuomo insisted care was taken and that it was wrong to discriminate against people because they had COVID.

By May, the order was rescinded. Stories emerged about the lengths to which the governor and his staff went to conceal the number of virus deaths among New York nursing home residents. Dean couldn’t believe the vulnerable were put at such risk.

She didn’t talk about it publicly at first. That changed after watching CNN last May when Chris Cuomo brandished a giant cotton swab to joke about the big nose of his brother, the governor.

“It was so tone deaf,” she said. “It was disgusting.”

She shared her anger in a text exchange with her friend Tucker Carlson and, at his invitation, went on his show the next night to tell her story.

She hasn’t stopped.

Dean was swimming against a powerful tide. Cuomo was popular, his televised coronavirus briefings earning praise from people who found then-President Donald Trump’s performance wanting. He even wrote a book on leadership.

Now, with a sexual harassment scandal swirling around him, things have changed. Dean’s disgust with Cuomo was on display last month when she kept a running commentary on Twitter during one of his news conferences.

“His mouth is dry. He’s nervous. And he’s lying.”

“He is just a disgrace.”

“You are a criminal.”

Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for State Policy, said Dean was key to keeping the issue alive.

“Because she has a certain kind of celebrity, she attracts attention and she has access to the bullhorn of Fox News, and that’s a powerful force,” Hammond said.

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Dean has worked at Fox since 2004, and is the weather forecaster on “Fox & Friends.” She’s told her family’s story on the air to the show’s hosts, to Carlson, to Sean Hannity, to Martha MacCallum, to Harris Faulkner and others.

The story hit Fox’s sweet spot. For an audience dominated by conservatives tired of hearing Trump criticized for his pandemic response, here was an issue that raised serious questions about a politician lionized by many liberals.

Many news organizations have effectively used the personal experiences of employees to tell stories about the pandemic, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.

It becomes problematic when the personal turns political, she said. Journalists are generally forbidden from practicing politics.

Dean has spoken to young Republicans in Staten Island, on a virtual town hall sponsored by the state GOP chairman, at a rally hosted by Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, another Cuomo critic.

Fox wouldn’t make an executive available to talk about Dean. A spokeswoman notes that Dean is not a news reporter, and is talking about an issue that deeply affected her family.

Dean said her bosses at Fox have been fully supportive.

“Obviously, it’s a position that is probably a little uncomfortable for them because I’m the meteorologist and all of a sudden I’m into this role of being an advocate,” she said. “But at the end of the day, my family was affected. And I feel like that is an important role to play if there are not people that have a voice in this.”

Three days before Valentine’s Day last month, she wrote a story for Fox News’ website titled, “Cuomo’s COVID nursing home policies robbed my in-laws of their 60th wedding anniversary.”

Making the connection explicit, she wrote that “their death warrant was signed as an executive order by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to put infected patients into the places where our most vulnerable resided.”

Mickey Newman died at Grandell four days after Cuomo’s order was issued. The CDC says the average period between exposure to the virus and symptoms appearing is five days. While not impossible for a person to get sick enough to die within four days of exposure, it’s very unlikely, said Dr. David Boulware, a professor of infectious disease and international medicine at the University of Minnesota.

Similarly, Dee died six days after the state directive took effect for assisted living facilities.

No one knows for sure how Dean’s in-laws caught the virus, and their deaths are both tragedies. Yet there’s other evidence to suggest transmission came from someone other than patients transferred to their facilities at the state’s behest — like staff or visitors.

“We don’t know the story,” said Donna Johnson, Dean’s sister-in-law. “You try to ask. Nobody really answers you.”

The facilities wouldn’t talk about the Newmans to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the Cuomo administration’s efforts to keep data secret, deflect any blame over outbreaks at nursing home and brush off questions about whether the state’s policies worsened any outbreaks has made families suspicious.

Cuomo said recently the withheld data created a “void” that left angry and confused New Yorkers vulnerable to “conspiracy theories” and misinformation. “People get confused, and people who lost family members in nursing homes start to say, ‘I wonder if this is true. I wonder if my father died because somebody made a mistake,’” he said.

On. Jan. 30, Dean attacked NBC News and anchor Lester Holt on Twitter, saying they had “censored” a friend interviewed on the topic by making her say that New York had failed nursing home families, instead of Cuomo. But NBC provided to The Associated Press a tape of reporter Kristen Dahlgren’s interview that disproves the notion. Dean said the tape was doctored, but offers no evidence to back that up.

The story fails to back up the idea that NBC was trying to protect Cuomo. Dahlgren quotes Dean’s friend, Dawn Best, as saying a “third-grader” should know not to put COVID-19 patients into a nursing home, and it’s clear she was referring to Cuomo. Best is also seen holding a sign saying, “Cuomo killed my mother.”

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Dean waves off thoughts of a political future, but others don’t.

“The best people who go into politics come at it organically, like people that weren’t running for office their entire life,” McCain said. Dean “has this way of speaking for just average Americans that I find really compelling. I am one of the people behind the scenes that’s been encouraging her to run for office.”

Said Dean: “I do not enjoy being part of this political mess right now with the governor. But I do feel it is a bit of a calling. I do.”

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This story has been corrected to show the date Dean’s in-laws were married. They were married on Feb. 11, 1961, not on Valentine’s Day.

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