New Coronavirus News from 19 Nov 2021

COVID in Germany: Bavaria and Saxony cancel Christmas markets [Deutsche Welle, 19 Nov 2021]

The southern German state has also imposed a lockdown on all districts that have a seven-day COVID incidence rate of over 1,000 per 100,000 people. In Saxony, a curfew for unvaccinated in hotspots is being imposed.

The state government has also imposed a lockdown on all districts that have a seven-day COVID incidence rate of over 1,000 per 100,000 people.

In those places, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as cultural and sport venues will be closed, said state Premier Markus Söder after a meeting of his Cabinet in Munich.

"The situation is very, very serious and difficult," he said, adding: "We have a clear goal: fighting corona, protecting people and protecting the health care system."

Schools and kindergartens, however, will remain open.

At present, eight districts in Bavaria have incidence rates of over 1,000.

Bavaria had a weekly incidence rate of 625.3 recorded infections per 100,000 people on Friday, according to the Robert Koch Institute infectious disease center, well above the nationwide figure of 340.7 — an all-time high for the country.

State premier calls for mandatory vaccination
Söder said there will be a "de facto lockdown" for unvaccinated people by implementing the "2G" rule across the state — referring to the shorthand in Germany for a rule that allows freedoms like access to restaurants and hotels only to those who are either vaccinated or have recovered from COVID.

About 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, Söder pointed out. "Being unvaccinated is a real risk," he emphasized, noting that unfortunately the vaccination rate in the south of the country is historically lower than in the north.

As per the new rules, the unvaccinated will lose access to even places like hairdressers, universities or adult education centers.

There will also be contact restrictions for the unvaccinated, the premier said, noting that they will be allowed to meet with a maximum of five people from two households.

Söder also called for mandatory COVID vaccination starting from next year, arguing that it will become an "endless cycle" otherwise.

What additional restrictions will come into effect?
Even in areas with incidence rates lower than 1,000, there will be restrictions.

For sports and cultural events, the number of spectators will be limited to 25% of the venue's total capacity. In addition, the "2G+" rule will apply — meaning even the vaccinated and recovered people will be required to produce an additional negative COVID test result.

Even though retail stores will not be closed, there will be a limit on the number of customers allowed inside: one customer per 10 square meters (108 square feet).

All retail outlets and restaurants will also have to be closed by 10 p.m. (2100 UTC).

The state legislature is expected to approve the new measures on Tuesday and they will likely be in effect until December 15.

Saxony applies new restrictions
To the north of Bavaria, the eastern state of Saxony on Friday announced widespread public restrictions to start Monday and remain in place at least until December 12 to combat a surge in COVID cases.

Christmas markets throughout the state, including one of Germany's largest in Dresden, are canceled.

Bars, nightclubs, gyms, museums and many other public venues must close. Retail stores and restaurants may remain open until 8 p.m. under the "2G" rule. Schools and daycares will remain open. Sporting events can continue, but without an audience.

"The measures are tough but necessary," said Saxony State Premier Michael Kretschmer on Friday, adding the state needs to "break the wave" of infections.

There will also be a night curfew in place starting Monday from 10:00 p.m. to 6 a.m. in districts with seven-day incidence rates of 1,000 cases per 100,000 people, said Saxony's social affairs minister, Petra Köpping. There are currently two districts in Saxony with seven-day incidence rates topping 1,000/100,000.

Health officials say the COVID surge in Saxony can be attributed to the state's lagging vaccination rate, which with less than 58% of the population fully vaccinated, is the lowest in Germany.

Is Germany on the brink of lockdown?
Talking to DW, German Green Party lawmaker and doctor Paula Piechotta warned Germany is "very close" to needing a general lockdown.

"If a lot of legislators and deciders don't act, a general lockdown will be necessary," she said.
Piechotta also warned that this step would have "huge side effects" both for society at large and for certain vulnerable groups such as children and elderly people suffering from dementia.
In contrast, making vaccination mandatory will have less of an impact, she said.

New Coronavirus News from 21 Nov 2021

COVID-19: Mandatory coronavirus vaccines in Germany 'unavoidable', says country's tourism commissioner [Sky News, 21 Nov 2021]

Following a rise in cases across Europe, politicians in Germany are indicating that a coronavirus vaccine mandate is necessary in order to move through the pandemic. Neighbours Austria will introduce such a mandate in February next year.

Germany's tourism commissioner says he expects COVID-19 vaccines will become mandatory in the country, as cases surge there and elsewhere in Europe.

Thomas Bareiss said the increasingly worsening situation in his nation makes it clear that sooner or later coronavirus inoculations will be compulsory and will be "unavoidable".

He said it was wrong not to make COVID jabs mandatory from the start - but the decision not to at the time was "understandable".

Neighbour Austria has said that vaccines will be mandatory from 1 February.

More restrictions are being introduced across the continent as infections soar and winter sets in.

Austria and the Netherlands have gone back into forms of lockdown, sparking unrest in the past few days.

Germany's states are introducing restrictions as well, with some regions cancelling their Christmas markets or banning the sale of alcohol.

The nationwide seven-day rate of infections currently stands at 362.2 per 100,000 population - with the peak during last year's lockdown being 197.6. A number of states have a much higher figure than the national average, including Saxony at 793.7.

Mr Bariess, who is a member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, advises the federal government on their tourism policy.

He told the German news agency DPA: "In retrospect, it was wrong not to see that (compulsory vaccinations) right from the start. The hope at that time is understandable, but it was not realistic.

"For me it is politically no longer justifiable that entire industries, retailers, restaurants, clubs, bars and the entire cinema, cultural and event scene live in a state of crisis prescribed by the state for 20 months and are faced with great existential fears, while others...take the freedom not to vaccinate."

And Daniel Gunther, the CDU minister president of the Schleswig-Holstein state, told Die Welt that he would be prepared to introduce a mandate - and that blanket lockdowns are no longer "appropriate" as they were in times before vaccines.

Tilman Kuban, head of the youth wing of the CDU, said: "We need de facto compulsory vaccination and a lockdown for the unvaccinated."

The CDU are not expected to be a part of the ruling coalition come December, as the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens all negotiate to form a government - with the SPD's Olaf Scholz expected to take over as chancellor.

He wants to debate compulsory jabs for health workers - similar to the situation in the UK - although the FDP oppose this as they are more ideologically supportive of individual freedom.

Earlier on Sunday, the UK's health secretary, Sajid Javid, ruled out broad compulsory vaccines in the UK.

"We are fortunate that in this country, although we have vaccine hesitancy, it is a lot lower than we are seeing in other places," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"I just think on a practical level, taking a vaccine should be a positive choice. It should be something, if people are a bit reluctant, we should work with them and encourage them.

"In terms of mandatory vaccines for the general population I don't think that is something we would ever look at."

According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, 69% of the UK population is fully vaccinated, while 68% of Germans are double jabbed.

Mr Javid told Sky News that England is still well within the government's Plan A - and the country is "not at the point to take further measures" like the increased mask wearing and working from home requirements set out in Plan B.

He added that England decided to open up more than other countries in the summer - which Mr Javid said was the "best" and "safer" time to do it.

COVID highlights a geographic split in Germany [Deutsche Welle, 21 Nov 2021]

By Jens Thurau

Infections are skyrocketing in Germany's south and east. What is the reason for the geographic split?

Analysis of Germany's latest COVID figures shows that infections are soaring where the vaccination rate is lower than the national average. Many of the districts with the highest infection rates are in the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia, and more recently Brandenburg.

But even in Bavaria — where the vaccination rate is only slightly lower than the national average — there are hot spots. Bordering Austria, which was affected by the pandemic earlier than Germany, Bavaria dealt with higher than average numbers at the beginning of the pandemic, and that is still the case.

Vaccination roll-out has been most successful in the northern city-state of Bremen, where nearly 80% of the population has been vaccinated thanks to coordinated efforts to reach out to citizens.

Limited education, right-wing inclination
Can a lack of willingness to be vaccinated be put down to a lack of education or to a certain political ideology? Heike Klüver, of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Humboldt University in Berlin, published a study into Germans' willingness of Germans to be vaccinated, based on a representative group of 20,500 people surveyed in March 2021. Some 67% of those asked were already vaccinated or willing to be, 17% were undecided and 16% rejected being vaccinated altogether.

"We see a significant correlation between education and rejection of vaccination. The lower the level of education, the higher the rejection," Klüver told DW. "The people who reject vaccination are more likely to be voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and more likely to have held right-wing positions. In addition, these are people who have low trust in politics, the government, the media, and the health-care system as a whole."

Previously against immigration, now against vaccination
Many people who oppose vaccination against the coronavirus appear to share political views on other matters too. "We see relatively clear skepticism when it comes to migration," says Klüver. "As early as March, we could see that these anti-vaxxers did not adhere to mask or social distancing rules." The lack of social distancing also contributed to driving up infections in the AfD's strongholds in the eastern states.

The group opposing vaccination has long had a common spirit, according to Josef Holnburger of the CeMAS research group. CeMAS, short for Center for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy, conducts research primarily on radical right-wing issues and conspiracy narratives online and is funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation, among others.

"If it becomes known that someone in this scene has been vaccinated, then that leads to indignation from others," Holnburger said. "Because it means someone is seen to have given in." He added that vaccine skepticism was being deliberately instrumentalized by right-wing groups, especially in the east. "That's surprising insofar as these are states that traditionally had a particularly high vaccination rate, for example against measles or tetanus." This was a kind of late legacy of the communist German Democratic Republic, where numerous vaccinations were mandatory, unlike in West Germany.

Holnburger, like Klüver, sees a direct connection between state-rejecting, right-wing slogans and vaccination refusal. "There are people who have a closed ideological worldview, who have a different view on reality and cannot be convinced with arguments," he said. "We see that with other issues, too, with measures against climate change, for example."

In Saxony and Thuringia, there is a growing number of reports that people who want to be vaccinated and doctors who administer vaccinations have become targets of verbal attacks and threats of violence. Critics of anti-coronavirus measures are also strong in Germany's south, in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Most scientists and physicians agree that politicians should not let the radical opponents of vaccination stop them from taking drastic measures against the pandemic.

"There could be further polarization, but trust in existing institutions was already very low," says Klüver. On the other hand, a clear majority of Germans are still willing to be vaccinated and stand by most of the coronavirus measures, even the painful ones.

This article was translated from German.

New Coronavirus News from 2 Nov 2021

China slams ‘irresponsible’ UN comments on jailed journalist [Aljazeera.com, 20 Nov 2021]

UN, rights groups have urged Beijing to release Zhang Zhan, who was jailed for her coverage of China’s COVID-19 response.

China has strongly criticised the United Nations over comments demanding the release of a citizen journalist jailed for her coverage of the country’s COVID-19 response.

The Chinese mission in Geneva voiced outrage on Saturday at what it said were the “irresponsible” and “erroneous” comments made by the UN rights office OHCHR on Friday in the case of Zhang Zhan.

OHCHR spokeswoman Marta Hurtado on Friday had expressed alarm at reports that the 38-year-old’s health was deteriorating rapidly and that her life was at serious risk from the hunger strike in detention.

“We call on the Chinese authorities to consider Zhang’s immediate and unconditional release, at the very least, on humanitarian grounds, and to make urgent life-saving medical care available, respecting both her will and her dignity,” Hurtado said in a statement.

Zhang, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to report on the chaos at the pandemic’s epicentre, questioning the authorities’ handling of the outbreak in her smartphone videos.

She was detained in May 2020 and sentenced in December to four years in jail for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge routinely used to suppress dissent.

She has conducted several hunger strikes to protest against her conviction, sentencing and imprisonment, and her family recently warned that she had become severely underweight and “may not live for much longer”.

Hurtado said the UN rights office had repeatedly raised concerns over Zhang’s case with the Chinese authorities since her arrest last year.

It had sought “clarification on the criminal proceedings taken against her as a consequence of what appear to have been her legitimate journalistic activities”, she said.

‘Hearsay’

China has revelled in its success in keeping domestic COVID-19 infections down to a trickle of sporadic outbreaks.

But there has been little patience with those who threaten the official version by raising questions about the government’s early handling of the Wuhan outbreak.

Zhang is among a group of four citizen journalists – along with Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua – detained after reporting from Wuhan.

In Saturday’s statement, Chinese mission spokesman Liu Yuyin insisted that “China is a country under the rule of law, and everyone is equal before the law”.

He decried that the UN rights office in Zhang’s case had turned “a blind eye to information provided by China through normal channels,” and instead, “based on hearsay, chose to interfere in China’s judicial sovereignty”.

He also highlighted China’s response to COVID-19, insisting that what the country “has achieved in combating the pandemic is there for everyone to see”.

It “is not something that anyone can distort or write off, still less something that the OHCHR can throw its weight around”.

Zhang was awarded the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2021 Press Freedom award for courage on Thursday.

“Her reporting from the heart of the pandemic’s initial epicentre was one of the main sources of independent information about the health situation in Wuhan at the time,” RSF said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of human rights lawyers have put their names on an open letter calling for her immediate release due to her ailing health. At least 40 human rights organisations have urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to release Zhang “before it is too late”.

New Coronavirus News from 18 Nov 2021

How Scientists Drew Weissman (MED'87, GRS'87) and Katalin Karikó Developed the Revolutionary mRNA Technology Inside COVID Vaccines [Boston University, 18 Nov 2021]

by TING YU

It started with a chance encounter, and led to worldwide acclaim for the two researchers
n astonishing number of world-changing medical breakthroughs have come to humanity by way of serendipity. Mishaps and lucky breaks gave us X-rays, insulin, and, most famously, penicillin, discovered in 1928, when a Scottish biologist returned from a summer holiday to find the bacteria cultures in his lab destroyed by a peculiar mold. Modern medicine was transformed in an instant.

But the story of how scientist Drew Weissman (MED’87, GRS’87) and his research partner Katalin Karikó developed the revolutionary mRNA technology that powers the world’s most effective COVID-19 vaccines was a much slower burn—one that easily could have flickered out.
Their decades-long crusade has been marked by rejection, crushing setbacks, and dogged perseverance. Chance had nothing to do with it. Except, perhaps, for how they met.

It was 1998. Weissman, an immunologist with a PhD in microbiology, had recently accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania and was trying to figure out how to make a better vaccine. Most traditional vaccines work by injecting an inactive, weakened, or small fragment of a pathogen—called an antigen—to trigger an immune response that the body remembers and can jump-start if the invader returns. But developing such vaccines can take years, and live pathogens pose health risks to those with compromised immune systems.

Weissman was especially intrigued by a single-stranded molecule called messenger RNA, or mRNA, which brings our cells the DNA blueprint for making proteins so that the body can function. If we could manipulate those instructions, could mRNA be harnessed to create an entirely new kind of vaccine—one that could generate immunity without ever bringing a pathogen into the body?

One day, while waiting at the office to photocopy articles from a research journal, Weissman struck up a conversation with Penn biochemist Karikó. The two scientists realized they shared a particular interest. “I had always wanted to try mRNA,” Weissman says, “and here was somebody at the Xerox machine telling me that’s what she does.”

efficacy of mRNA vaccines in preventing COVID-19 infection.

What followed was a partnership that has lasted for more than two decades. During that time, they pioneered the mRNA technology that is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of vaccine development and the future of gene therapies. Not only have the new mRNA vaccines proven to be more effective and safer than traditional vaccines, they can be developed and reengineered to take on emerging pathogens and new variants with breathtaking speed. Using mRNA technology, Pfizer-BioNTech designed its coronavirus vaccine in a matter of hours.

Now, Weissman and Karikó are being hailed for their work. Earlier this year, Brandeis University and the Rosenstiel Foundation honored the scientists with the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research. In September, they won a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. And Columbia University awarded them the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, bestowed annually for groundbreaking work in medical science.
Of the 106 previous Horwitz Prize winners, nearly half have gone on to receive Nobel Prizes.

Cracking mRNA’s Code
From the start, Weissman and Karikó believed mRNA was the key to unlocking a new generation of vaccines and therapeutics. Theoretically, it could instruct any cell in the body to make any desired set of proteins. But practically, there were many obstacles. Synthetic mRNA was notoriously unstable and tended to break down before it could do its job. The closest attempt came in 1990 when researchers from the University of Wisconsin showed that injected mRNA could generate proteins in mice. Many scientists, however, were skeptical that this process could be replicated in humans.

For her part, Karikó had been captivated by mRNA since the earliest days of her career. She left her native Hungary in 1985, when funding dried up for her lab, taking a low-level postdoctoral position at Temple University. Four years later, Karikó moved to Penn, where she would spend the next decade making sporadic discoveries with mRNA but consistently failing to win grants. She was forced to move from lab to lab, going wherever she could find someone willing to fund her research.

By the time she met Weissman, at the copy machine, Karikó had been demoted and was adrift without funding or a lab. But Weissman didn’t care about her lack of grants or credentials. “I never say no to anything,” he says. “RNA had been tried by others and didn’t work very well, but I wanted to try it.”

Karikó brought her synthetic mRNA to his lab. Weissman injected it into mice. Then he waited to see what would happen. The results were unexpected and discouraging. The mRNA set off a harmful inflammatory immune response in the mice. They grew sick, and some died. “Kati got depressed because it meant that mRNA couldn’t be used as a therapeutic,” Weissman recalls. “You can’t give something that makes people sick.”

But neither scientist was ready to give up on the promise of mRNA. They spent years investigating the cause of the inflammation and years more experimenting with how to prevent it.

In 2005, they had a breakthrough.

How Do mRNA Vaccines Work?
Understanding the virus that causes COVID-19. Coronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19, are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface, called spike proteins. These spike proteins are ideal targets for vaccines.

What is mRNA? Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is genetic material that tells your body how to make proteins.

What is in the vaccine? The vaccine is made of mRNA wrapped in a coating that makes delivery easy and keeps the body from damaging it. The vaccine does not contain any virus, so it cannot give you COVID-19. It cannot change your DNA in any way.

How does the vaccine work? The mRNA in the vaccine teaches your cells how to make copies of the spike protein. If you are exposed to the real virus later, your body will recognize it and know how to fight it off. After the mRNA delivers the instruct-ions, your cells break it down and get rid of it.

By altering one of mRNA’s four building blocks, known as nucleosides, Weissman and Karikó found that their modified mRNA could fly under the radar of the body’s immune system, no longer causing inflammation. It was a game changer, and they both knew it.

With this hurdle cleared, the clinical applications for synthetic mRNA seemed infinite. Custom-tailored mRNA, once injected into the body, could order cells to produce any desired sequence of proteins.

There were “enormous possibilities,” Weissman says. The scientists believed their technology had the potential to transform medicine, opening the door to countless new vaccines, therapeutic proteins, and gene therapies.

The idea may have been too radical to grasp. Several leading medical journals turned down their report of their findings before it was published, in 2005, by the journal Immunity. The researchers braced for the shock waves their study would generate in the scientific community.

“I told Kati our phones are going to ring off the hook,” Weissman recalls. “But nothing happened. We didn’t get a single call.”

The researchers were deeply frustrated at the lack of interest. Still, they secured patents, and in 2006 launched a company called RNARx that focused on developing mRNA therapeutics for a wide range of diseases. But eventually funding ran out and the company shut down.

The pair forged ahead, and five years after they published their groundbreaking findings, their discovery caught the attention of two biotech newcomers, Moderna of Cambridge, Mass., and Germany’s BioNTech. Both companies eventually licensed Weissman and Karikó’s patents.
(Karikó was hired by BioNTech in 2013, and the company would later partner with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on vaccine development. The two companies also now support Weissman’s lab.)

By the time ominous reports of a mysterious virus began emerging from Wuhan, China, in late 2019, Moderna and BioNTech had been working on developing mRNA influenza vaccines and other therapies for years. As soon as China released the genome sequence for the new coronavirus, both companies began racing toward a vaccine.

Would mRNA Vaccines Work in People?
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines deployed the same clever mechanism. A shot of specially coded mRNA would instruct certain cells to manufacture the notorious COVID-19 spike protein, enabling the cells to briefly masquerade as the virus and teach the immune system to recognize it. Within weeks of injection, the mRNA would break down naturally without a trace, leaving in its wake a powerful immunity against the coronavirus.

Although Weissman was confident in the science—he had worked on 20 different vaccines in animal models with great success—he was anxious to see the results of the human trials. “In science, we know that what works in mice rarely works in humans, and what works in [monkeys] sometimes works in humans,” Weissman says. “So I was very nervous [about] whether it would work in people.”

Results from the human clinical trials showed the vaccines to be remarkably safe, with 95 percent efficacy in preventing COVID-19 infection. Weissman was elated. In December 2020, he and Karikó received their first vaccine shots together at the University of Pennsylvania.

“It was an emotional moment,” he says, reflecting on their long struggle to show the world the promise of this extraordinary molecule. “There were a lot of down times, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of figuring out why things weren’t working. But we never lost hope because we both saw the incredible potential that mRNA had.”

Since COVID vaccines were first granted emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, nearly 219 million Americans have been immunized, with the vast majority receiving either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
________________________________________
"There were a lot of down times, a lot of soul-searching, a lot of figuring out why things weren’t working. But we never lost hope.” Drew Weissman
________________________________________
Columbia’s David Ho, one of the country’s leading virologists, calls their research “an essential precursor” to the COVID vaccines “that have made a huge impact on the pandemic.” Others in the scientific community believe Weissman and Karikó deserve the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking discoveries with mRNA.

Weissman takes it all in stride. “We knew from the beginning that what we were doing had huge potential,” he says, “but every scientist’s work isn’t like that. If RNA had not worked, no one would have heard of Kati and me, and we would’ve retired and gone off to our nursing homes.”

The Future of mRNA Technology
These days, Weissman seems a bit wistful for a time when he could work in relative anonymity.

“I was and still am quiet and shy and not very outgoing,” he says. “I’ve always enjoyed working in my lab alone without much attention. The reporters, awards committees, everybody imaginable wanting to talk to me—it’s been the hardest thing.”

With what little leisure time he has, Weissman likes to unwind by engineering more domestic innovations. “When he’s having trouble finding a solution to something, he builds rooms onto our house,” says his wife, Mary Ellen, a child psychologist. The couple has two daughters, Rachel and Allison.

“I build screen porches, kitchens, bathrooms, playrooms,” Weissman says. “I enjoy building. I’m sure I got that from my dad.” His father was an engineer who owned a company that designed optical mirrors for satellites. His mother was a dental hygienist.

Weissman describes a carefree childhood growing up in Lexington, Mass., “playing kickball in the streets and roaming around the neighborhood causing trouble.” In high school, his talent for science came into focus. “I was always interested in biology and took the top science classes,” he says.

He studied biochemistry and enzymology at Brandeis University and earned an MD/PhD in immunology and microbiology from Boston University in 1987. After a residency in Boston, he pursued a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked closely with Anthony Fauci (Hon.’18), now director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whom he describes as “one of the great drivers of my research interest.”

Weissman has been dismayed by the partisan vitriol directed at his former mentor. “I see it as very sad. I never imagined that people would attack Tony for trying to save lives and do the right thing,” he says. “The United States is absolutely ridiculous in how they’ve handled this vaccine and the pandemic itself. And the continued politicization of it is terrible.”

Weissman is working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine—one that will protect against every variant that will likely appear—as well as about 20 other vaccines for diseases from malaria to HIV. Photo courtesy of Penn Medicine

His frustration with how the United States is managing the pandemic has led him to focus on vaccine access for the rest of the world. Weissman is currently working with the governments of Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, and Rwanda, among others, to develop and test lower-cost COVID vaccines.

To Weissman, the new COVID variants present a compelling challenge. The beauty of mRNA vaccines, he says, is that tweaking the code to work against Delta or other new strains “is a simple thing. It takes a few weeks to make a brand-new vaccine.”

He has set his sights on a more ambitious target: a pan-coronavirus vaccine. “There have been three coronavirus epidemics in the past 20 years,” he explains. “You have to assume there are going to be more. We’re now working on a vaccine that will protect against every variant that will likely appear. Our thinking is that we’ll use it as a way to immunize the world—and prevent the next pandemic from happening in the future.”

So far, the results in mice, which were published in the journal Nature in August, have been promising. But Weissman is hardly stopping with coronaviruses. He’s working on about 20 other vaccines for diseases from malaria to HIV, with several moving into clinical trials. His lab is also exploring new gene therapies to treat immune deficiencies like cystic fibrosis and genetic liver diseases.

One of the most promising projects focuses on curing sickle cell anemia, a chronic genetic disorder that disproportionately affects people of African descent. The existing treatment is a labor-intensive procedure that involves removing bone marrow from the patient, treating it with an altered virus designed to deliver a healthy version of the sickle cell gene, and then putting the marrow back into the patient. “The problem with that is 200,000 people are born with sickle cell in sub-Saharan Africa every year,” Weissman says, “and it’s half a million dollars per treatment.”

Using mRNA technology, Weissman has developed a gene therapy that can treat sickle cell anemia with a single shot. “We’ve taught [the mRNA] how to target bone marrow stem cells, so they fix the gene and cure the disease,” he says. The therapy has been successful in mice and will move into monkey trials soon.

“Once we get the sickle cell therapy working, there are a couple of hundred other bone marrow genetic diseases it can be applied to,” he says, along with liver and lung genetic disorders. In time, he believes mRNA gene therapies can bring hope to research on devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that have seen disappointingly few advances.

Meanwhile, biotech companies like Moderna and BioNTech are charging forward on a mind-bending spectrum of mRNA applications, including personalized cancer vaccines and autoimmune therapies.

Weissman generally comes across as pragmatic and self-effacing, but as he looks to the future, he sounds genuinely awed by the staggering potential of the technology he and Karikó invented: “It really is exciting. It’s limitless.”

Germany's Covid cases hit record high with Merkel warning of 'dramatic' situation [CNN, 18 Nov 2021]

By Nadine Schmidt and Tara John

Berlin (CNN)Germany reported its highest single day surge of Covid-19 infections as Chancellor Angela Merkel said the "dramatic" situation was the result of the fourth wave "hitting our country with full force."

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany's disease and control center, has reported 65,371 new cases within the last 24 hours -- it is an increase of 12,545 new infections compared to the previous 24-hour period.

But these figures are likely to be under reported, and true scale of infections could be "twice or three times as many," RKI chief Lothar Wieler told an online discussion with Saxony's state premier Michael Kretschmer on Wednesday evening.

The country reported 264 Covid-19 related deaths from Wednesday to Thursday, pushing the total number of deaths since the pandemic began to 98,000 people in Germany, according to RKI data.

Germany's seven-day incidence rate also hit record levels of 336.9 cases per 100,000 people, up from 249.1 cases reported a week ago, RKI reported.

Germany has one of the lowest vaccination rates in western Europe, with just over 67% of the population fully vaccinated. Around 33% have no protection against the virus, according to the RKI.

This is one of the reasons why infections have soared to record levels, say experts, aided by waning immunity of the Covid-19 vaccines and the more infectious Delta variant.

"As the vaccination campaign started in Germany at the beginning of this year, we now see some age groups and some people lose their immunity against Covid-19 quickly,'' Tobias Kurth, a professor of public health and epidemiology at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, told CNN.

''The current pandemic situation in Germany is dramatic, I can't say it any other way," outgoing Chancellor Merkel told mayors from across Germany on Wednesday.

Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country's vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.

''It would be a disaster to act only when the intensive care units are full, because then it would be too late,'' she added.

'Lockdown for the unvaccinated'

The situation means Germany is on track to become the next country to impose stricter rules on those who haven't been fully inoculated. Three parties making up the country's prospective new coalition government approved a draft law on Thursday that would see stricter rules come into effect.

The measures -- which will be debated in the upper house of parliament on Friday -- would require Germans to wear face masks and provide proof of vaccination, a certificate of recovery, or a negative Covid-19 test in order to ride a bus or board a train, in an expansion of the country's "3G" system that required a negative Covid-19 test to enter certain venues and settings. Free Covid-19 tests would be reintroduced as well as permission to work from home whenever possible.

The new legislation is designed to provide a nationwide framework in which the country's regions can choose from a toolbox of other measures, depending on the severity of the outbreak. To that end, regions have room to tighten curbs in Covid-19 hotspots as needed.
Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that the rules in effect amount to a "lockdown for the unvaccinated."

Merkel will also debate the implementation of stricter Covid-19 curbs with Germany's leaders of the 16 federal states.

A country-wide lockdown might be the only option at this stage in Germany's fourth wave, Kurth told CNN, as "we simply have too many Covid-19 infections every day."

"Even if people are vaccinated, they can transmit the virus to others and we will continue to see a surge in cases. Unfortunately, we may need to think about going a step further and put in curbs for potentially the entire population,'' he added.

Berlin has already imposed restrictions on unvaccinated people, where as of Monday proof of full vaccination or recovery from Covid-19 in the past six months is required for entry to bars, restaurants, cinemas and other entertainment venues.

But the current wave of infections is mainly affecting the southern and eastern parts of the nation, where vaccine uptake is lower.

The pace of vaccinations have been picking up as officials call on the public to get immunized. "For the first time since August, over 500,000 citizens in Germany were vaccinated in one day yesterday," Germany's acting Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted Thursday.

He said this included 381,560 booster vaccinations, "which are so important to break this 4th wave."

Germany's vaccine advisory committee recommended boosters for everyone over the age of 18 on Thursday as it attempts to address waning immunity from a two-dose regimen.

Despite the widescale availability of vaccines this winter compared to the last, Europe's Delta-variant fueled fourth wave has made it the only region last week to see an increase in Covid-19 related deaths, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

If the measures proposed by the coalition are agreed, they would move Germany closer in line with its southern neighbor Austria, where a lockdown specifically targeted at unvaccinated people came into force Monday. It bans unvaccinated people -- more than a third of the country's population -- from leaving their homes except for a few specific reasons.

On Thursday, it was announced that the lockdown would be extended to the entire population living in the provinces of Salzburg and Upper Austria as ''new coronavirus infections continue to rise sharply," Salzburg's local government wrote on its website.

Austria, where vaccine uptake is lower than Germany, is suffering an intense wave of infections and reported a record 15,145 new daily on Thursday.

The country's seven-day incidence rate also hit a record of 989 cases per 100,000 people.
By contrast, Spain and Portugal have avoided the brunt of the winter wave after posting the highest vaccination rates in Europe.

France, which has almost 75% of its total population vaccinated, is weathering the new infection spike better than its neighbors.

Nearly 5 million French have received their Covid booster vaccine shot, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said in an interview with French media LCI on Thursday.

"This is a lot. It puts us above most of our European neighbors, but it's still too little," Attal said.
"We must continue."

Leading scientist argues first coronavirus cases point to Wuhan market origin [The Washington Post, 18 Nov 2021]

By Joel Achenbach

Controversy continues amid sketchy data and lack of transparency from Chinese authorities
The location of early coronavirus infections in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, suggests the virus probably spread to humans from a market where wild and domestically farmed animals were sold and butchered, according to a peer-reviewed article published Thursday in the journal Science that is the latest salvo in the debate over how the pandemic began.

The article, by University of Arizona evolutionary virologist Michael Worobey — a specialist in the origins of viral epidemics — does not purport to answer all questions about the pandemic’s origins, nor is it likely to quell speculation that the virus might have emerged somehow from risky laboratory research.

Worobey has been open to the theory of a lab leak. He was one of the 18 scientists who wrote a much-publicized letter to Science in May calling for an investigation of all possible sources of the virus, including a laboratory accident. But he now contends that the geographic pattern of early cases strongly supports the hypothesis that the virus came from an infected animal at the Huanan Seafood Market — an argument that will probably revive the broader debate about the virus’s origins.

Worobey notes that more than half of the earliest documented illnesses from the virus were among people with a direct connection to the market, and he argues this was not merely the result of the early focus on the market as a potential source of the outbreak. He concludes that the first patient known to fall ill with the virus was a female seafood vendor at the market who became symptomatic on Dec. 11, 2019.

That contradicts a report earlier this year from investigators for the World Health Organization and China, who concluded that the first patient was a 41-year-old accountant with no connection to the market who became sick on Dec. 8. But Worobey said the accountant’s medical records reveal he visited the dentist that day to deal with retained baby teeth that needed to be pulled, but did not show symptoms from the coronavirus until Dec. 16, and was hospitalized six days after that.

The stealthy nature of the virus, which can spread asymptomatically, makes it highly likely that the pathogen began to spread many weeks before any of the cases that were identified. But Worobey said the locations and occupations of the first known patients point to a market origin, with the virus radiating outward into the city of 11 million.

“It becomes almost impossible to explain that pattern if that epidemic didn’t start there,” Worobey said in an interview.

Geography has been central to theories about the origin of the virus. Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study and conduct experiments upon coronaviruses that circulate abundantly in bats in central and southern China. The institute has been a focus of those who argue that an accidental leak from one of its research labs is the most likely explanation for the spillover of the virus into humans.

The Huanan Seafood Market is many miles, and across the Yangtze River, from the virology institute. Few of the early documented cases were anywhere near the laboratory. A second laboratory studying coronaviruses at the Wuhan CDC, which oversaw the city’s coronavirus response, relocated in late 2019 to a spot close to the market.

Worobey’s article immediately drew skeptical responses from two prominent scientists who, like Worobey, have been deeply engaged in the debate over the most likely scenario for the start of the pandemic.

“It is based on fragmentary information and to a large degree, hearsay,” David A. Relman, a professor of microbiology at Stanford University, said in an email after reading an embargoed copy. “In general, there is no way of verifying much of what he describes, and then concludes.”

Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said the quality of the data from China on early coronavirus infections is too poor to support any conclusion.

“I don’t feel like anything can be concluded with high or even really modest confidence about the exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, simply because the underlying data are so limited,” Bloom said. He contends that genetic evidence from early virus samples points to the market as a superspreader event, but not as the location of the first set of infections.

Bloom has been among those sounding alarms about what he feels is overly risky research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That research has generated tremendous controversy, with some Republican lawmakers and conservative media figures focusing on funding for some of the experiments, funneled via a nonprofit group, EcoHealth Alliance, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is led by President Biden’s chief pandemic medical adviser, Anthony S. Fauci.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci clashed over Wuhan lab funding during a Senate hearing on July 20. (The Washington Post)

Worobey’s paper drew strong praise from those favoring the natural zoonosis theory.
“Mike’s piece shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that in fact the Huanan market was the epicenter of the outbreak,” said Robert F. Garry Jr., a virologist at Tulane University and one of the most vocal proponents of the zoonosis hypothesis.

Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University who was one of the coronavirus experts to give SARS-CoV-2 its name in early 2020, called the report “detailed and compelling, in a way that the most detailed conspiracy timelines have not been. … When the evidence is laid out like this, the association with the market is strong long before anyone realized it — right from the start.”

Worobey and critics Relman and Bloom have one thing in common: They signed the letter to the journal Science in May that called for continued investigation into the virus’s origins, including the possibility of a lab leak.

Soon, public opinion polls showed more people favored the lab-leak theory than the market origin. And Biden ordered his intelligence agencies to look into the matter and report back within 90 days.

In the months since he signed the Science letter, Worobey has become more convinced that the pandemic began as a spillover in the market, where animals known to be capable of harboring the virus — such as raccoon dogs — were sold.

The Science letter was influential in taking conjecture that had once been derided as a conspiracy theory and propelling it into the mainstream of virus-origin debates, even making it, as Worobey puts it, “the leading contender” in the public mind for the origin of the pandemic.
“The pendulum has swung way too far to the other side,” he said.

It has been known since the start of the pandemic that the Huanan market was linked to many early cases, and the first news reports invariably cited it as the likely source of viral spillover. But the joint report from the WHO and China this year presented a murkier picture, noting that some cases in December 2019 had no link to the market: “No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn.”

The market was quickly closed, the animals culled before any were screened for SARS-CoV-2, and everything cleaned and sanitized soon after the outbreak began. Still, a subsequent investigation showed that traces of the virus were found on surfaces in the market, including drains, particularly in the area where vendors sold animals.

Worobey acknowledged that the clustering of infections could be misleading, saying the early focus on the market might have skewed data because epidemiologists might have looked for market-linked infections and missed infections occurring in areas getting less attention — a common tendency in research known as “ascertainment bias.” But he concluded that the timeline and geography of early cases rule out such an error.

Chinese officials have said the Huanan market was not the source of the pandemic. China’s government has pushed the idea that the coronavirus could have been brought to China from overseas, including from Fort Detrick in Maryland and through frozen food imports.

Worobey does not contend that he has proved definitively how the pandemic began. And his article is not a research study presenting all-new data, but rather is labeled a “Perspective” piece. Such articles typically aggregate and interpret information that for the most part has already been in the public domain.

Although the lab-leak idea was at first derided by many scientists and in the mainstream media as a conspiracy theory — one embraced by President Donald Trump and his allies as part of their rhetorical attacks on China and the “China virus” — the failure to find an animal host of the immediate precursor to SARS-CoV-2 has kept all hypotheses on the table.

The 90-day investigation conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies at the behest of Biden was inconclusive. Most agencies favored the natural zoonosis theory. One favored the lab leak. The only firm conclusion was that the virus was not a bioweapon.

Worobey said he was open to the possibility of a lab leak, simply because of the proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to the first outbreak. But he examined the geography question more closely. If the virus came out of the lab, why did the first cases cluster in and around the market many miles away? And that market, he notes, had sold animals that were implicated in the first SARS epidemic of 2002-2003.

“It becomes almost absurd, in my mind, to imagine that this virus started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and almost immediately that person went to one of the few places that sold raccoon dogs and other animals that were implicated in SARS-1,” he said.

His paper does not mention the Wuhan CDC laboratory. Chinese officials have insisted that SARS-CoV-2 was never in one of the country’s laboratories, nor has it been found through tests in wild or domesticated animals.

Proponents of the lab-leak theory point to the lack of transparency of Chinese officials and the removal of experimental data from a database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology several months before the pandemic. Worobey’s market-origin theory suggests an alternative scenario, one in which authorities were not eager to find proof that the spillover happened in a market with live animals that may have been illegally captured and sold.

Worobey also suggests that Chinese officials may have been embarrassed that the country’s system for identifying and rapidly responding to novel pneumonia-like illnesses — a system put in place after the original SARS epidemic — was slow to detect the outbreak of illnesses caused by the novel coronavirus.

New Coronavirus News from 20 Nov 2021

Austria to go into full lockdown as Covid surges [BBC News, 20 Nov 2021]

Days after Austria imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated, it has announced a full national Covid-19 lockdown starting on Monday.

Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said it would last a maximum of 20 days and there would be a legal requirement to get vaccinated from 1 February 2022.

He was responding to record case numbers and one of the lowest vaccination levels in Western Europe.

Many other European countries are imposing restrictions as cases rise.

"We don't want a fifth wave," said Mr Schallenberg after meeting the governors of Austria's nine provinces at a resort in the west of the country.

For a long time, there had been a consensus over avoiding mandatory vaccinations, the chancellor said.

However, too many people had been incited not to get the jab, because of "too many political forces, flimsy vaccination opponents and fake news", he added. The measures are yet to be finalised.

Latest figures show the incidence rate has risen to 1,049.9 cases per 100,000 people in the past week, and Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein said imposing a lockdown was a "last resort". A record 15,809 cases were reported in the past 24 hours, in a population of under nine million.

Under the measures, Austrians will be asked to work from home, non-essential shops will close, and schools will remain open for children who require face-to-face learning. They will continue until 12 December, but will be reassessed after 10 days.

Neighbouring Germany has seen several days of record infections this week, and Health Minister Jens Spahn has spoken of "a national emergency that requires a combined national effort".

German leaders have already agreed to introduce restrictions for unvaccinated people in areas with high hospital admissions. And parliament has backed requirements for people to show Covid passes on buses and trains, and in workplaces.

But now in Bavaria, which borders Austria, state premier Markus Söder has gone further, declaring a "de facto lockdown for the unvaccinated". Bars and clubs will close for three weeks and all Christmas markets have been cancelled. Where weekly incidence rates top 1,000 per 100,000 people - restaurants, hotels, sport and culture will also close.

Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger has already announced that a "lockdown for the unvaccinated" will start on Monday, and the Czech government is also limiting access to a variety of services. The Netherlands introduced a partial lockdown last weekend.

In the UK - where there is currently no lockdown, although masks have to be worn in some parts of the country - the incidence rate per 100,000 is 395.4 cases, officials figures show.

Austria's is the first full lockdown imposed by an EU country this winter.

The Europe regional director of the World Health Organization, Hans Kluge, has warned of a hard winter ahead. He blamed insufficient vaccination coverage along with "the easing of preventive measures and the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant".

Russia on Friday declared a record number of 1,254 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours, for the third day in a row.

Hungary reported its highest level of infections - with 11,289 new cases in a population of 10 million. A third booster jab will be made mandatory for health workers from Saturday, along with masks in most enclosed spaces.

Tighter restrictions also come into force in Belgium on Saturday, requiring working from home for four days a week.

There are only two ways for countries to slow the spread of Covid - build up enough immunity or limit contact between other people.

That wall of immunity - from a year of vaccination - is facing its first real test as winter rolls in across Europe.

It is already clear some countries - Austria being the most notable - have not vaccinated enough and feel the "need" to go back to restrictions that nobody "wants".

But it does not mean that every country is doomed to a winter lockdown.

Those that have vaccinated more, given boosters to more and protected more of the vulnerable and elderly (who are the most likely to need hospital care) have the best shot at a manageable winter.

The impact of the UK having high levels of Covid through autumn, which will have topped up immunity levels, will be closely watched too.

However, it is still only November. There are many dark months to get through before the weather improves and makes it harder for Covid to spread.

New Coronavirus News from 17 Nov 2021

On This Day: COVID-19 patient zero reportedly diagnosed in China in 2019 [The Jerusalem Post, 17 Nov 2021]

By AARON REICH

According to this report, which was widely cited by other media outlets though never independently confirmed, the first COVID-19 patient was an unidentified 55-year-old from China's Hubei province.

November 17, 2021, marks two years since the first human case of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was detected, essentially kicking off the pandemic that has spread worldwide and claimed millions of lives, according to local media reports.

Local newspaper The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported back in March 2020 that the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed on this day by Chinese authorities, weeks before the existence of COVID-19 was announced to the world. According to this report, which was widely cited by other media outlets though never independently confirmed, the first COVID-19 patient was an unidentified 55-year-old from China's Hubei province.

Hubei province is home to the city of Wuhan, which most experts agree was where the pandemic started.

The origin of the pandemic is still hotly contested around the world by researchers and politicians. Indeed, the November 17 diagnosis has yet to be independently confirmed.

However, a November-October origin seems likely, according to academic articles studying the SARS-CoV-2's sequenced cases.

Exactly how the virus spread and where it originated remains unclear, though it is widely accepted that it is a zoonotic disease originally found in bats, as are many coronaviruses.

A common belief of how the virus began spreading into humans was that it was the result of the Wuhan wet market, which sells live, exotic animals. Others have accused the Wuhan Institute of Virology of having been involved, though any concrete evidence supporting this claim has yet to be conclusively found.

Much of the uncertainty regarding the origin of COVID-19 and the early cases is due to the difficulty of getting reports from China. Many have accused Beijing of intentionally covering up the virus at first, as well as censoring information and silencing attempted whistleblowers.

What is clear is that by late December 2019, COVID-19 began spreading rapidly throughout China. Soon, it spread worldwide and was declared a global pandemic.

Two years later, the pandemic continues to circulate throughout the world, and has even mutated into several variants. A number of treatments and vaccines have been proposed, with some, like the Pfizer vaccine, seeing widespread use worldwide.

Over 254 million people have reportedly been infected with COVID-19, and the disease has also claimed over five million lives.

Key points: Italy's new plans to contain the Covid fourth wave [The Local Italy, 17 Nov 2021]

By Clare Speak

From extending the state of emergency to cutting the validity of health certificates, the Italian government is working on new measures aimed at stemming the Covid infection rate before Christmas - without resorting to business closures or lockdowns.

This week, Health Minister Roberto Speranza is putting two new proposed measures before the Council of Ministers, Italy’s government cabinet, for approval.

If they get the go-ahead as expected, this means a tightening of the rules around Italy’s ‘green pass’ Covid health certificate.

Ministers have repeatedly indicated that the government is unlikely to bring back new lockdowns or restrictions on travel and business openings like those seen last Christmas as all of Italy was placed under ‘red zone’ rules.

Instead, authorities are relying heavily on the green pass system and increased vaccination coverage to keep the spread of the virus in check.

Though infection and hospitalisation numbers have been steadily rising in Italy for weeks, the figures remain smaller in Italy than in many other parts of Europe and ministers continue to insist the fourth wave remains “under control” in the country.

Here’s a look at the measures the Italian government is – and isn’t – considering in order to keep the numbers down ahead of the Christmas holidays.

Mandatory vaccine boosters for health workers
The first of Speranza’s proposals would make third doses of an anti-Covid vaccine mandatory for healthcare workers.

The move comes after soaring infection rates were reported among doctors and nurses in particular over the past two months.

The uptick is thought to be partly explained by the fact medical staff were among the first to be vaccinated in early 2021 and may now have waning immunity.

Vaccination has been mandatory for all health workers in Italy since a law was passed in April, with those who refuse being reassigned to roles away from the public where possible or suspended without pay.

A new obligation to get a booster shot is expected to cover the same healthcare staff as Italy’s initial vaccine mandate, including those working in pharmacies and care homes.

The change is likely to come in from December, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica, and health workers will have thirty days to comply.

Italian health authorities also aim to speed up the rollout of third doses to the general public, with Speranza announcing last week that boosters would be available to all over-40s from December.

On Monday, Health Undersecretary Andrea Costa reiterated that the ministry was still looking at making Covid vaccines obligatory for more groups, under plans the government has been considering since late summer.

Green pass validity cut
Speranza’s other proposal will cut the validity of Italy’s Covid-19 health certificate – the so-called green pass – from 12 to nine months for people who are vaccinated, including with a third dose.

This change is also expected to come in from December.

The pass is a requirement at all Italian workplaces as well as care homes, sports facilities, indoor leisure venues and some forms of public transport.

It is not yet known how the expiry date of passes will be changed, with La Repubblica suggesting that new QR codes may need to be sent out.

There was no word on whether the health ministry is also planning to cut the validity of passes issued following a negative test result, as reported in recent days by Italian media.

Reports speculate that the validity of PCR test results may also be cut from 72 to 48 hours, and those from the results of rapid testing will be reduced from 48 to 24 hours.

The issue of the validiity of green passes based on testing is partiuclarly contentious after the pass became a requirement at all workplaces in October.
Those who refuse to be vaccinated must now pay for a rapid test every 48 hours or face suspension from work.

There have also been calls from health experts to stop issuing the passes based on rapid test results, as these are less reliable than the results of a (more expensive) PCR test. So far however there is no indication that the government is planning to do this.

The health ministry has already made some adjustments to the green pass system this week in light of the rising infection rate: a new ordinance signed on Monday tightened the requirements for train and taxi passengers.

From this week, green passes must be checked before passengers board interregional trains rather than on board as was previously the case, and railway police have new powers to stop trains in order to remove passengers who don’t comply with the rules, as well as those who “exhibit symptoms associated with Covid-19”.

Other measures
For now, Speranza has only proposed two new additional measures. But, La Repubblica writes, “if the regions continue to push for further tightening, the ever more cautious minister certainly won’t be the one to block the strengthening of certain measures.”

However, while some further changes and extensions look likely in the coming weeks, other proposals have been ruled out.

State of emergency extension
Though Costa stated this week that the extension will be decided on nearer to the expiry date, it looks all but guaranteed that Italy’s state of emergency will be extended beyond the current deadline of December 31st, 2021.

Known as the stato di emergenza in Italian, the declaration of emergency status gives more power to the national government and regional authorities to bring in new laws rapidly in response to the changing health situation.

Without it, the conditions that allow authorities to enforce the green pass rules and other health measures decreed during the emergency will not exist past December 31st .

Italian media reports that the next extension would likely be for three or six months, though nothing has been confirmed by the government.

Christmas quarantine for arrivals from high-risk countries?
There are reports in Italian media on Wednesday that quarantine requirements in some form may be brought back over the Christmas holidays for people arriving in Italy from countries with high contagion rates.

La Repubblica says “quarantine for those arriving from Eastern [European] countries” is likely, or that “at least” current rules requiring a health pass proving testing, recovery or vaccination could be tightened

However, this change has not been announced or confirmed by any official source.

New lockdowns for the unvaccinated?
There is widespread speculation in Italian and international media this week that Italy could follow Austria’s example by bringing back partial lockdown measures like those seen last winter – but applying them only to those who are not vaccinated.

The speculation is based on statements made by some of Italy’s regional governors as well as some prominent politicians within the coalition government, including Italia Viva leader Matteo Renzi.

However, for now at least, this remains a political discussion rather than a government proposal.

Health undersecretary Costa confirmed on Tuesday that the “hypothesis of targeted lockdowns for unvaccinated people is very remote”, La Repubblica reported.

He added that this was not being considered “in the transition phase between white and yellow zones”.

News agency Ansa meanwhile reported on Wednesday that the Italian government has no intention of introducing restrictions that would only apply to unvaccinated people, citing unnamed sources within the government.

“No clampdown along the lines of the Austrian model is being studied,” the sources reportedly said.

Walter Ricciardi, an advisor to the health minister, said last week that Italy “doesn’t need” to follow Austria’s lead by implementing a lockdown for the unvaccinated “because the measures taken serve to keep the epidemic under control, as is happening.”

Now Italy goes into Covid panic mode - 7M unvaccinated face lockdown like Austria, Germany [Daily Express, 24 Aug 2021]

By MICHAEL CURZON

ITALY is considering following Austria and Germany in imposing what has been branded a "medical apartheid" by locking down its unvaccinated citizens.

The governors of five Italian sates, with a combined population of roughly 12.6 million, are backing restrictions which prevent unvaccinated citizens from living normal lives while allowing those who are fully vaccinated to live more freely. More than 8,500 Covid cases were reported across Italy on November 12, according to the Reuters Covid tracker – the highest figure recorded since early May 2021.

While the number of reported deaths remain relatively low, a number of state officials have argued that firm action should be taken now.

Governor Massimiliano Fedriga of Friuli-Venezia Giulia said: “Eventual new lockdowns should not have to be suffered by those who are vaccinated.

“Restrictions should only apply to those who are not immunised.”

The governors of Tuscany, Calabria, Liguria and Piedmont reportedly hold the same opinion.
Their demands come after the incoming German Social Democratic government announced that it is planning to lock down 14 million unvaccinated German citizens.

Their proposals will be put to parliament for approval on Thursday.

Around 7 million Italian citizens over the age of 12 have not been vaccinated against Covid.
Italians who have chosen not to receive a vaccine already face numerous restrictions not faced by their vaccinated counterparts.

In September, the Italian Government announced that all workers in both the private and public sectors would, from October 15, have to show a ‘Green Pass’ proving they had been vaccinated, tested or recently recovered from Covid or face having their pay stopped.

Italians must also show a "Green Pass" in order to enter restaurants, gyms and theatres.
Italy was the first country in Europe to introduce a partial lockdown in response to Covid in February 2020.

In an interview with the Times in December 2020, Professor Neil Ferguson admitted that Sage, the Government advisory group of which he is a member, initially believed lockdowns would only work in China and not in the west.

He told the paper: “[China is] a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with [lockdown] in Europe, we thought.

“And then,” he added, “Italy did it. And we realised we could.”

If Italy chooses to enforce a lockdown on the unvaccinated, it won’t have been the first country to have done so in Europe but it could still influence powerful minds in the UK.

The UK pressure group Independent Sage recently urged the Government to impose its winter ‘Plan B’ immediately.

This would see the introduction of vaccine passports, as well as the re-introduction of work from home guidelines and face mask mandates.

New Coronavirus News from 15 Nov 2021

Katalin Kariko: Scientist who helped bring about mRNA vaccines [CTV News, 15 Nov 2021]

by Avis Favaro, Elizabeth St. Philip & Alexandra Mae Jones

'To be a scientist is a joy': How a Hungarian biochemist helped revolutionize mRNA
TORONTO -- Scientists generally don't seek the limelight, but Dr. Katalin Kariko has been thrust right into it. The once obscure biochemist is now on the covers of magazines and newspapers because of her role in developing mRNA vaccine technology.

An idea she started working on in the 1990s when no one thought it would work.

“They said: ‘Oh, poor Kati,’” Kariko told CTV News. “Because people just knew about [how] the RNA degrades, but I could make RNA and it didn't degrade.”

She grew up daughter to a butcher, in a poor town near Budapest, where she lived in one room with her family for the first 10 years of her life. During this time, she also learned the skills for success there: determination, hard work and a positive attitude.

“We learned from our parents that hard work is part of life,” she said.

Now, she is a senior vice president at BioNtech, the German company that worked with Pfizer to develop one of the vaccines credited with saving lives across the world during this pandemic.

But it took many years of toiling on research others put little stock into before her work bore fruition.

“I was working in the shadow of the gene therapy and people who work with DNA,” she said.
Even though progress on her work was incremental at times, she knew that that progress was still happening.

“That kept me going and I could see that it would be good for something,” she said. “That's what was driving me.”

After earning a PhD in biology, she put in long hours, not for fame or fortune, but because the science was fun for her.

“To be a scientist is a joy,” Kariko said. “I didn't care that my salary was less. That was enough. I didn't starve and so it was good.

“If somebody wants to have a lot of money, [they] shouldn’t be scientists, but if somebody wants to have the joy and fun, everyday life, [they] should be a scientist.”

She worked in Europe and then the U.S. as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, but was denied funding for her own research. Several times, she was demoted or fired.

However, she holds no grudges.

“You will see, every picture I'm smiling, I was happy,” she said, adding that she learned to see every setback or lost job as a new opportunity.

That optimistic outlook kept her going.

“I listened to the constructive criticism because I like to get the advice, but when it was just not that constructive, that I ignored,” she said.

Stress she saw as a motivator, citing the work of Hans Selye, who coined the term.

“He said that you need stress,” Kariko said. “Believe it or not, you need stress because you were not getting up in the morning. The positive stress which encouraged you, that you are [going to] look forward to the day, because you will learn today the result of that experiment, […] so that kind of stimulation you need.”

Then, in 2013, she moved to Germany to work with a little known company -- BioNtech -- to work on an mRNA flu shot technology that quickly pivoted to produce a COVID-19 vaccine when the pandemic struck.

“If I wouldn't have been fired three, four times for my job, I wouldn't be here,” she said. “I had to even thank people, everybody who made my life miserable, because [without them] I wouldn't be here actually.”

Kariko says she is thankful to have been part of the large number of scientists who contributed to create these vaccines, which have shown clear signs of protecting against severe COVID-19.

“I always felt so much respect for all of these people who did work before us,” she said. “I respect all of those people, and I thank them today.”

The work of other scientists in the field and related fields allowed Kariko and a close collaborator, Dr. Drew Weissman, to take their mRNA technology beyond the petri dish and make it start to work in living models. The big step forward was when they swapped a key molecule in their mRNA, which protected it from a body’s immune system.

The concept of being in the spotlight is new to Kariko, who had always been happiest at a lab bench, working away.

“But getting in the spotlight, I also realized that we as scientists did not talk to the public,” she said. “We like to talk to each other because we understand each other easy and we use terms that the average person would not understand.”

She said scientists had to “learn that language,” to try and explain the work to the average person. That barrier of communication is one of the reasons that Kariko is angered by anti-vaxxers who seek to scare people away from getting the vaccine.

She pointed out that unlike scientists, they do not have to worry about communicating accurately and truthfully.

“I watched those anti vaxxers […] they are so calm and they are so confident and they are saying [such] stupid things with [such] conviction,” she said. “And what they say is so trivial. And then everybody will say: ‘Yeah, he is right. Yeah.’ So that's not good.”

She pointed out that big voices in the anti-vaccine world are often motivated by money.

“People always want to make money on other people who believe things, and listen, that's what happened here, in the United States, those doctors who are saying that, do not take the vaccine, they offer you something they sell.

“And so that's horrible because there are innocent people [who] listen, and then they pay the price. So I learned that as a scientist, we have to educate the public.”

The scientist now rarely turns down interview requests.

She’s won more than three dozen awards this year alone, all while becoming a new grandmother and helping to chase treatments for cancer, MS, Lupus and malaria, using the same mRNA technology that might have never come to fruition were it not for an incredibly determined scientist.

Coronavirus latest: Hong Kong Disneyland closed on Wednesday [Nikkei Asia, 15 Nov 2021]

New Zealand to open Auckland to domestic travel; South Korea hits biggest caseload in 2 months

Nikkei Asia is tracking the spread of the coronavirus that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Cumulative global cases have reached 253,882,518 according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The worldwide death toll has hit 5,107,258.

For more information about the spread of COVID-19 and vaccination progress around the world, please see our interactive charts and maps.

Wednesday, Nov. 17 (Tokyo time)
11:54 a.m. Hong Kong Disneyland will close for a day on Nov. 17 to allow staff to take compulsory COVID-19 tests after authorities found one person who visited the theme park over the weekend who was infected with the coronavirus. Disneyland, which is majority-owned by the city government, said in a note the closure was out of "an abundance of caution" and advised visitors to reschedule. Any person who visited the park on Nov. 14 between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. will also have to get tested by Nov. 18, the government said in a notice.

10:56 a.m. Internal borders around New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, will reopen on Dec. 15 for fully vaccinated people and those with negative COVID-19 test results, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Wednesday. Auckland is the epicenter of an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19 and the city has been sealed off from the rest of the country for over 90 days. But with more than 80% of Auckland and the rest of country fully vaccinated, it was time to open up the ability to travel again, Ardern said at a news conference.
9:54 a.m. South Korea reports 3,187 new COVID-19 cases, up from 2,125 a day ago, the biggest jump in two months. Total infections in the country have reached 402,775, with 3,158 deaths. South Korea faces a rising number of cases after it loosened social distancing rules on Nov. 1, lifting restrictions on restaurants, cafes, bars and other public facilities.

6:46 a.m. Pfizer says it is seeking U.S. authorization of its experimental antiviral COVID-19 pill that cut the chance of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of severe disease by 89% in a clinical trial. It completed submission of its application for emergency use authorization of the drug, Paxlovid, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

5:18 a.m. Top U.S. infectious disease official Anthony Fauci says it is possible for COVID-19 to be reduced to an endemic illness from the current major health crisis next year if the country ramps up vaccination rates, reports Reuters. Booster doses of the COVID-19 vaccines are vital for reaching that point, he says.

Tuesday, Nov. 16
8:01 p.m. Japan intends to expand its list of international business travelers eligible for relaxed quarantine rules to those inoculated with Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

6:22 p.m. Hong Kong's biggest sport event, the Rugby Sevens, will be postponed again from April 2022 to November of that year due to ongoing uncertainty around travel restrictions. The rugby tournament last held in 2019 was canceled two years in a row over COVID-19 concerns.

The Hong Kong Rugby Union said it was a long postponement, but emphasized the games can only be delivered with "confidence that all participating teams can be allowed to travel and the ability to host the event to our own high standard, which we cannot guarantee."

6:20 p.m. Myanmar will reopen its land borders with China and Thailand, starting next month, due to improvements in its COVID-19 vaccination rate, its information ministry says. The reopening, for which no date was set, is to be followed by a resumption of air travel in the first quarter of next year.

4:30 p.m. Over 75% of Japan's entire population has been fully vaccinated as of Monday, the government says, with new infections easing. The country reported just 79 new cases on Monday, the lowest daily count so far this year. Authorities are preparing to administer booster shots from December to prevent a possible resurgence.

1:38 p.m. India logs 8,865 new cases in the last 24 hours, the lowest daily count in over nine months, bringing the country's total to 34.46 million. Fatalities rose by 197 to 463,852.

11:00 a.m. South Korea reports 2,125 new cases, up from 2,006 a day earlier, with the number of patients in serious condition hitting a record high of 495. Deaths from COVID rose by 22 to a cumulative total of 3,137.

10:20 a.m. China reports 22 new cases for Monday, down from 52 a day earlier. Of the new infections, 11 were locally transmitted cases, compared with 32 the previous day. China also reports 13 new asymptomatic patients, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, compared with 14 the day before. The country has recorded over 1,300 local cases in the latest outbreak since mid-October, forcing authorities to place affected areas under strict curbs as China maintains its zero-COVID policy.

9:30 a.m. Two billion doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine have been supplied worldwide, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker and its partner say, in just under a year since its first approval. The shot, which is the biggest contributor to the COVAX vaccine sharing scheme backed by the World Health Organization, is being made in 15 countries for supply to more than 170 nations.

5:10 a.m. Japan, India and Pakistan have moved down to the lowest level of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 travel advisory scale. The three countries are now considered "low" risk destinations for the disease. The CDC told Americans to make sure they are fully vaccinated before traveling to these countries. Liberia, Gambia and Mozambique have also been lowered to the Level 1 designation.

1:40 a.m. New York City clears the way for all adults to receive a booster shot of COVID-19 vaccine as the city braces for a wave of new infections amid cold weather. City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi says he is issuing an official advisory instructing all health care providers in the five boroughs to offer the extra booster dose to any adult who wants one. "There should be no barriers to accessing a booster shot, provided that someone is an adult, meaning 18 or older," Chokshi says.

Monday, Nov. 15
8:00 p.m. Singapore announces the inclusion of Indonesia and several other countries under its Vaccinated Travel Lane program that lets passengers enter the city-state without quarantine.

India is also expected to be included. Fully inoculated travelers from Indonesia can enter Singapore from Nov. 29, subject to COVID-19 tests. Transport Minister S. Iswaran says the goal is to allow travelers from India on the same day. Those from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can enter starting Dec. 6.

The city-state has already included countries such as Malaysia, Brunei, Germany, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.K. and U.S. under the arrangement, as it moves to revive air travel and rebuild its status as a regional hub.

5:00 p.m. The Japanese government plans to allow booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines to be administered as soon as six months after a second dose has been received. The health ministry has set an eight-month interval between second and third shots, but local governments will be able to shorten the period by two months if they deem it necessary. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has vowed to begin administering them within the year, starting with medical personnel. Individuals aged 18 and older will be eligible.

1:56 p.m. India reports 10,229 new infections for the past 24 hours, down from 11,271 the previous day, pushing the country's total caseload to 34.45 million. Fatalities rose by 125 to 463,655. Active cases account for 0.39% of the total confirmed cases so far, the lowest figure since March 2020, according to a health ministry statement. The daily positivity rate, the number of people testing positive out of every 100 samples per day, currently stands at 1.12%; the rate has remained below 2% for the past 42 days. The country has administered 3 million vaccine doses since Sunday morning and more than 1.12 billion doses overall.

12:22 p.m. Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda says the country's economy is likely to recover to pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2022. Kuroda said, "The economy's recovery has been somewhat slower than initially expected," as COVID-19 curbs and parts shortages hit consumption and output. "But the mechanism for an economic recovery remains intact," he said in a speech at a meeting with business leaders in Nagoya.

11:40 a.m. Thailand's economy returned to year-on-year contraction in the three months ending September due to the country's delta outbreaks that led to business lockdowns in heavily affected provinces, including Bangkok. Gross domestic product shrank 0.3% in the third quarter year on year, according to data released by the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council.

10:45 a.m. China's new home prices fell 0.2% in October from the previous month -- the biggest decline since February 2015 -- amid weakening demand, as authorities maintain purchase restrictions to deter speculators. New home prices rose 3.4% year on year in October, slower than the 3.8% in September, according to Reuters calculations released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

10:00 a.m. China reports 52 cases for Sunday compared with 89 a day earlier. Of the new infections, 32 were locally transmitted, down from 70 the previous day. The city of Dalian in the northeastern province of Liaoning accounted for 25 of the local cases. The country also reports 14 new asymptomatic patients, which it classifies separately from confirmed cases, compared with 25 a day earlier.

9:30 a.m. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's approval rating has fallen to its lowest level in 18 months, a poll conducted for The Australian newspaper shows. Satisfaction with Morrison's performance dropped to 44%, the lowest level since March 2020 when he faced criticism over his response to devastating bush fires. The findings are a blow to Morrison's hopes that easing COVID curbs and signs of a stronger economy will aid his reelection prospects in May 2022.

8:56 a.m. Japan's economy shrank 0.8% in the July-September quarter from the previous quarter, equal to an annualized pace of 3.0%. The economy struggled as exports fell and consumer spending remained sluggish amid the pandemic. The result compares with an average forecast of an annualized 0.56% decline, according to a survey of 37 economists by the Japan Center for Economic Research.

5:00 a.m. Israel says children aged 5 to 11 will be eligible for vaccination and that a starting date for the inoculation campaign would be announced within days. The decision followed approval by an expert panel on vaccinations last week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine for the age group at a 10-microgram dose. The jab given to those aged 12 and older is 30 micrograms. The two companies have said their vaccine showed 90.7% efficacy against the coronavirus in a clinical trial of children aged 5 to 11.
0:20 a.m. Singapore reports 1,723 cases compared with 2,304 the previous day, with 10 new deaths.

Sunday, Nov. 14
5:56 p.m. Cambodia will stop requiring quarantine for vaccinated travelers from Monday, Prime Minister Hun Sen says. The announcement was made via social media in a voice message. The country had previously required a lengthy quarantine of more than 18 months. Travelers will have to show a negative test 72 hours prior to travel and have had two jabs. Unvaccinated travelers will have to quarantine for 14 days.

1:29 p.m. The city of Beijing says people who recently visited China's ports of entry should avoid coming to the capital, as the country remains concerned about infections from abroad amid a monthlong outbreak. The small northern administrative divisions of Heihe, Erenhot and Ejina, along China's borders with Russia and Mongolia, were among the hardest-hit areas in an outbreak since mid-October that has seen more than 1,200 domestically transmitted cases.

1:25 p.m. Australia could start administering jabs for children under age 12 in January. Health Minister Greg Hunt said medical regulators are reviewing the health and safety data for vaccines targeting children between the ages of 5 and 11 and are unlikely to decide this year.
"The expectation that they have set is the first part of January, hopefully early January," Hunt told the Australian Broadcast Corporation. "But they're going as quickly as possible."

2:35 a.m. Young children in Vienna can start getting coronavirus vaccinations next week as part of a pilot project, Austria media reports. Broadcaster ORF reported that about 200 children between the ages of 5 and 11 can get jabs of the Pfizer vaccine each day in the Austrian capital starting Monday. The pilot project is limited to Vienna only and doesn't apply to the rest of the country.

1:57 a.m. Morocco will conduct rapid COVID-19 tests to passengers arriving in its airports and ports, and will deny access to any visitor with a positive result, the government says. The measure, which strengthens an existing requirement of a negative PCR test 48 hours before departure, aims to protect the country amid a surge of cases in Europe. Travelers with positive tests must be returned at the cost of the airline that brought them into the country, unless they have a permanent residency document, the government says.

Saturday, Nov. 13
11:51 p.m. Singapore's Health Ministry reports 2,304 new cases compared with 3,099 the previous day, along with 14 deaths. Of the new cases, 2,179 are reported in the community, 120 in the migrant worker dormitories and five are imported cases. The weekly infection growth rate is 0.98.

10:15 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls on all unvaccinated Germans to get their shots as quickly as possible as the country's infection rate hit the latest in a string of new highs and death numbers were growing, the Associated Press reports. "If we stand together, if we think about protecting ourselves and caring for others, we can save our country a lot this winter," Merkel says in her weekly podcast.

6 p.m. Thailand will delay the reopening of nightlife entertainment venues to Jan. 15 despite pleas from the industry to open sooner. A spokesman for the government's COVID-19 administration cited concerns about ventilation and inefficient prevention measures in pubs, bars and karaoke joints, the Associated Press reports. The Thailand Nightlife and Entertainment Business Association had hoped that nightlife businesses, shut since April, would reopen next month.

5:43 p.m. According to Reuters, Russia reports a record one-day death toll of 1,241 from COVID-19 as well as 39,256 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.

Florida Gov. DeSantis: 'We Chose Freedom Over Fauci-ism, and We're Better Off for It' [Daily Signal, 15 Nov 2021]

By Rob Bluey

ORLANDO, Fla.—Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered a blistering critique of President Joe Biden and his authoritarian policies, warning Americans they need to fight against the radical left to preserve our freedom.

Speaking to roughly 800 supporters of The Heritage Foundation and its grassroots partner, Heritage Action for America, DeSantis took aim at Biden’s recently announced COVID-19 vaccine mandate. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

The emergency rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires employers with 100 or more employees to make sure that those workers get the COVID-19 vaccine or submit to weekly testing.

“If the federal government can get away with this, they’re going to be able to get away with a lot more,” DeSantis, a Republican, warned in his Thursday speech. “Next year, maybe it’s something you care about, or two years from now. It’s important that we take a stand, and it’s important that we say, ‘No, no mandates, no restrictions. We’re not going to let you take away our freedom.’”

From the early days of the pandemic, DeSantis has attracted headlines for what admirers call his balanced approach—a contrast to other states that embraced lockdowns, school closures, and restrictive policies.

“While other states kept locking people down, Florida lifted people up. We did not subcontract out leadership to Dr. Fauci,” DeSantis said. “I saw governor after governor just hide behind the bureaucrats and do all these destructive things.”

DeSantis, who is in his third year as governor, said he wanted Americans to associate Florida with freedom—a state that wouldn’t impulsively follow orders from Washington. He singled out Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“We chose freedom over Fauci-ism, and we’re better off for it. In fact, you will never see this on the media: For the last many weeks, Florida has had the lowest COVID rate in the entire nation. They don’t want to tell you that. They don’t want to talk about it.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Florida is the only state with a “moderate” level of community transmission. The CDC determines the level of such transmission “based on the number of cases in the last seven days per 100,000 population and the number of tests in the last seven days that have a positive result,” according to the CDC’s website.

As of Monday, the other 49 states, plus the District of Columbia, have either a “high” or “substantial” level of community transmission. (The map below is from the CDC’s website.)

“The left learned a valuable lesson from COVID, and the lesson is if you can whip up enough fear in the population, you can really push the envelope,” DeSantis said. “In times like these, there’s no substitute for courage. Courage to stand up against hostile political forces, courage to stand in the face of things like cancel culture, courage to stand up against a dishonest and corrupt corporate media, and courage to be a voice for those who are voiceless in this society.”

DeSantis cited Biden’s vaccine mandate as an example of the left’s overreach. OSHA announced its emergency rule Nov. 4 and set a deadline of Jan. 4 for companies and other organizations to comply. At least 27 states and numerous private employers are challenging the OSHA rule, arguing it is unlawful and the federal government lacks the authority to impose a vaccine mandate.

In a ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—covering Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas—blocked OSHA from implementing its rule. Other cases are pending in other circuit courts.

DeSantis said Biden’s mandate would have far-reaching consequences at a time when many employers are already struggling to find workers and navigate the supply chain crisis.

“When you look at how this would impact key sectors—health care with these nurses, truckers, all these other areas—if just 1% of them fall off and lose their jobs, you’re going to see huge problems,” he said. “That’s going to have a ripple effect all throughout the American economy.”
There’s also a disregard for science, DeSantis said. He pointed to medical research on natural immunity from Israel and the Cleveland Clinic, showing it is as effective or more effective than a COVID-19 vaccine.

“They literally want to fire somebody who’s immune already for not getting the jab, even though that person has better protection than the people that have something like the Pfizer,” DeSantis said. “It makes no sense.”

Dr. Martin Makary, a surgeon who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Carey Business School and editor of Medpage Today, recently spoke at The Heritage Foundation about natural immunity. He noted in a Wall Street Journal commentary that natural immunity “is effective and durable, and public-health leaders should pay it heed.”

Yet despite the scientific evidence and large number of vaccinated Americans—nearly 60% are fully vaccinated—DeSantis also predicted Americans would be asked to make more sacrifices in the future. (The vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna require two doses; the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson requires one dose.)

“I said this the other day and the media got mad, but it’s true. Six months from now, if you have two shots, you are going to be considered unvaccinated. They will deny that now. I understand that,” DeSantis said. “But just remember they said it was only going to be 15 days to slow the spread, and look where we are.”

Coronavirus CT: Latest Advice From Fauci For Holiday Gatherings [Patch.com, 15 Nov 2021]

By Rich Kirby

Speaking to the Bipartisan Policy Center, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that cases of COVID-19 are rising again in certain parts of the country.

DANBURY, CT — We are hitting a patch of turbulence following a coronavirus calm, according to the Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and the White House chief medical advisor.

Speaking to the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday, Fauci warned that cases of COVID-19 are rising again in certain parts of the country, after peaking during the summer's delta surge.

The COVID-19 pandemic has eased its grip somewhat on the South, where cases and hospitalizations have fallen off sharply from their Summer of Delta highs. But the Northeast and Midwest are suffering a surge in coronavirus cases that is chewing away at the gains made in the South.

This past weekend, cases were down 57 percent last week from the summer's high, but the number of Americans hospitalized with the coronavirus grew last week for the first time in nearly 10 weeks. The 7-day average of 82,000 cases is up 11 percent from the week before.
Still, the pandemic remains a crisis mostly for the unvaccinated, according to Fauci:
"If you get vaccinated and your family's vaccinated, you can feel good about enjoying a typical Thanksgiving, Christmas with your family and close friends."

With 2,179 cases confirmed over the weekend, out of 75,526 tests taken, Connecticut's daily coronavirus positivity rate reported Monday afternoon was 2.89 percent, a rise of 0.28 percent from Friday.

Hospitalizations climbed 13 beds over the weekend. As of Monday, there are 238 people being treated for the virus inside Connecticut hospitals.

Most of those hospitalized (70) are in New Haven County.

Fauci: Vaccinated families can 'feel good' about Thanksgiving gatherings | TheHill [The Hill, 15 Nov 2021]

BY JUSTINE COLEMAN

Anthony Fauci said on Monday that families who are vaccinated against COVID-19 can “feel good about enjoying a typical” Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

President Biden’s chief medical adviser warned that the U.S. is still counting tens of thousands of new cases per day and recommended masks in indoor congregate settings. But he said the fully vaccinated should feel comfortable gathering with other vaccinated family and friends in private settings this holiday season.

"If you get vaccinated and your family's vaccinated, you can feel good about enjoying a typical Thanksgiving, Christmas with your family and close friends,” he said at a Bipartisan Policy Center event.

“When you go to indoor congregate settings, go the extra mile, be safe, wear a mask,” he added. “But when you are with your family at home, goodness, enjoy it with your parents, your children, your grandparents. There's no reason not to do that.”

Almost 200 million Americans are considered fully vaccinated, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, including 70 percent of adults and 86 percent of those aged 65 and older.

The vaccine also became available to about 28 million children aged 5-11 years old earlier this month after the CDC recommended the Pfizer vaccine for that age group.

Still, almost 60 million Americans aged 12 and older remain unvaccinated, leaving some worried about their holiday plans.

The U.S. has seen a very slight uptick in cases in early November, according to data from The New York Times, reaching a seven-day average of about 80,000 new cases per day. Almost 30 states have seen an increase in their average case count in the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, deaths have continued their decline since the delta variant surge, although the country still sees more than 1,000 COVID-19 fatalities per day.

Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, emphasized that the pandemic is not permanent.
"This will end, we are not going to be going through this indefinitely," Fauci said. "How quickly we get to the end depends on us, how well we vaccinate, how well we get boosted and how well we do the kinds of things to protect ourselves.”

Health officials have been keeping an eye on COVID-19 data as the country heads into the winter, warning that the colder weather could bring more cases.

“As winter approaches again and as people get prepared for the holidays ... we should be prepared for the fact that there may be an uptick in cases that we see in various parts of the country with cold weather,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told "Fox News Sunday" this week.

Dr. Fauci says Covid cases are starting to climb in some areas of the U.S. [CNBC, 15 Nov 2021]

By Robert Towey & Nate Rattner

Covid-19 cases are starting to climb again in select regions across the U.S. after stabilizing at a high level following this summer's delta surge, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

Fauci's comments came just a day after the country reported a seven-day average of more than 82,000 new cases, up 11% from the week before, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Nationwide cases were down 57% last week from the delta wave's peak this summer, but a jump in Covid patients in the Midwest and Northeast is fueling the sudden increase.

"The only thing that's a little bit disconcerting is that we're beginning to plateau," Fauci said during an interview hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center. "In other words, the deceleration of cases is now plateaued, and in some areas of the country, we're starting to see a bit of an uptick."

Infections had been on the decline for weeks after hitting a delta wave peak of 172,500 new cases per day on Sept. 13. They flattened out at a high level, bouncing between 70,000 and 75,000 new cases a day for nearly three weeks through most of last week, and are now once again increasing.

Average daily cases have jumped by 19% and 37% in the Midwest and Northeast over the last week, respectively, according to Johns Hopkins data. Hospitalizations, which lag an increase in infections, are up 11% over that same period in the Midwest, while the number of currently hospitalized patients with Covid is flat in the Northeast.

Cases and hospitalizations have fallen sharply in the South, where the delta wave hit earliest and hardest over the summer.

About 47,000 patients with the virus are currently hospitalized nationwide, according to a seven-day average of data from the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. is reporting an average of roughly 1,150 Covid fatalities per day, according to Johns Hopkins data. Both figures are flat over the past week.

Besides the plateauing cases, Fauci, also director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the U.S. must focus on vaccinating the roughly 60 million people nationwide who have not yet been immunized. That excludes 28 million children ages 5 to 11 who became eligible to receive Pfizer's two-dose Covid vaccine earlier this month, he noted.
"There's a lot of good news, but some challenging news that we really need to address as we go into the winter months," Fauci said.

Fauci added that those who've been fully vaccinated for Covid can gather for the holiday season without concern. But he recommended wearing a mask in indoor congregate settings with cases still hovering at a high level nationwide.

"When you're with your family at home, goodness, enjoy it with your parents, your children, your grandparents," he said. "There's no reason not to do that."

Dr. Fauci says he won’t step down until COVID is in ‘rearview mirror’ [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 15 Nov 2021]

By Shant Shahrigian

He’s not going anywhere.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert who has provided reassurance to many Americans during the pandemic, says he won’t quit until the country gets past COVID-19.

“I’m the head of an institute that actually played the major role in the development of the vaccines that have saved now millions of lives from COVID-19,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. “I’m the director of the institute that has now been very important in the basic research in leading to the drugs that will now have an important impact in the treatment of COVID-19. That’s what I do.

Explore Complete coverage: Coronavirus in Georgia
“So, I’m going to keep doing that until this COVID-19 outbreak is in the rearview mirror, regardless of what anybody says about me, or wants to lie and create crazy fabrications because of political motivations,” concluded Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The comments came as Fauci is approaching his 81st birthday.

Asked whether passing the baton to someone else could lessen the divisiveness around the government’s pandemic response, he answered in the negative.

“I didn’t create political divisiveness,” Fauci said. “And that’s the thing we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with the uncomfortable but real element of political divisiveness at a time when we are in the middle of a war against a virus.”

Throughout the pandemic, Fauci has led efforts to get Americans to wear masks, practice social distancing and, for nearly a year now, get vaccinated.

“So, I'm going to keep doing that until this COVID-19 outbreak is in the rearview mirror, regardless of what anybody says about me, or wants to lie and create crazy fabrications because of political motivations."

- Dr. Anthony Fauci
In the process, he became a lightning rod for right-wing criticism of public safety measures. More than half of respondents to a small Hill-HarrisX poll recently said he should step down.

Fauci on Sunday lamented former President Donald Trump’s handling of the outbreak, in which Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the threat and resisted safety steps.

“When you have leadership ... denying that something is as serious as it is, then you have a real problem. So, in that respect, it could have gone differently,” he said.

Outcry in China after Covid health workers kill dog while owner was in quarantine [The Guardian, 15 Nov 2021]

By Helen Davidson

Authorities say health worker has been dismissed from role, amid accusations they are overreacting as China pursues zero-Covid strategy

The killing of a pet dog whose owners were in quarantine has sparked outrage on Chinese social media and raised questions about extreme measures health authorities are taking to battle a continuing Delta outbreak.

On Friday a resident of Shangrao, in Jiangxi province, posted allegations on Weibo that her pet dog was beaten to death by health workers inside her apartment while she was quarantining in a hotel that didn’t allow animals. In video purportedly from her apartment’s security camera posted online, one of two PPE-wearing individuals is shown hitting the dog with what looks like a crowbar.

Shangrao city authorities apologised on Saturday night for not communicating with the dog’s owner and said the worker in question had been dismissed from the role. It claimed the dog had been dealt with through “harmless treatment”.

The notice said people in quarantine were supposed to leave their apartment doors open for quarantining but hers had been locked. With the assistance of police the workers accessed her apartment and discovered the dog.

A hashtag related to the response was viewed about 210m times. Commenters questioned the suggestion the worker had acted without authority and also criticised the censoring of online posts about the incident.

“Without the instructions of the leaders above, who would dare to pry the door and kill the dog?” said one.

It follows a similar case earlier this month when cats belonging to a Chengdu resident quarantining as a close contact were euthanised. The animals had not been tested for the virus.

After the cat case, An Xiang, director of a Beijing law firm, said on Weibo the science around pet infection was not conclusive. “Emergency measures such as hunting and killing should not be taken … The relevant unit has no evidence to prove that these pets have been infected.”

In September, Harbin officials were accused of overreacting when they euthanised three cats that had returned positive readings for the virus while their owner was in hospital.

The cases have prompted waves of fear among pet owners and confusion among local authorities about laws and official processes, the South China Morning Post reported. Local media noted previous measures to care for the animals while owners were quarantined. As China pursues a zero-Covid strategy and battles a stubborn outbreak of the Delta variant, the criteria for people to be quarantined have widened.

There is no conclusive research on the risk of Covid-19 transmissions from pets to their owners. Advice from various national disease control centres is that a Covid patient should be isolated from both people and animals.

In July the BBC reported that a study by researchers at Utrecht University found rates up to 18% of Covid in animals belonging to patients, but that the most likely transmission path was from humans to animals. No case of a pet infecting an owner has been recorded.

The killing of a corgi shows how government power has grown unchecked in China in the name of Covid prevention [CNN, 15 Nov 2021]

by Nectar Gan and Steve George

Hong Kong (CNN)A series of loud bangs startle the sleeping corgi, driving it out of its bed. The door opens and two people dressed in full hazmat suits enter the living room, one carrying a crowbar and another a yellow plastic bag.

"Did the leader say we need to settle it right here on the spot?" one of them can be heard asking. "Yes," the other replies, as he proceeds to move a table the corgi was hiding under, and strike the animal on the head with the crowbar. The dog whimpers and runs off camera to another room.

The unsettling scene, captured by a security camera and shared online by the dog's owner, shows the last moments before the pet was killed in its home by Covid prevention workers in the Chinese city of Shangrao, in southeastern Jiangxi province, on Friday, while the corgi's owner was undergoing compulsory quarantine in a nearby hotel.

The killing of the dog, which triggered a massive outcry on Chinese social media over the weekend, is the latest example of the extreme measures taken by local authorities in China in pursuit of zero-Covid.

Local authorities in China are under tremendous pressure to curb infections, as a renewed Delta variant outbreak continues to spread across the country. So far, more than 1,300 cases have been reported in about two-thirds of provinces in the country.

Amid the outpouring of shock and anger, the dog's death has sparked heated debate about animal rights, as well as no shortage of reflection on just how far unchecked government power can be expanded during the pandemic at the expense of individual rights.

The residential community where the dog lived is under lockdown due to a handful of confirmed Covid-19 cases. All residents were required to enter into government quarantine on Friday, and were not allowed to bring their pets with them, the owner said on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform.

The owner, whose surname is Fu and has so far tested negative for the virus, said community workers had repeatedly reassured her before she left for quarantine on Friday morning that they would not take away or kill the dog during the building's disinfection. But by the afternoon, Covid prevention workers had barged into her apartment to hit the dog, according to the owner.

"The dog tried to avoid the beating and fled into the bedroom, and therefore it wasn't recorded by surveillance camera, but (I) could hear faint wails. A few minutes later, they said they've dealt with it and would take it away, holding a yellow plastic bag in their hands," she wrote in a since-deleted post.

"Even now I don't know whether my dog is alive or dead, and where it has been taken," she added.

In a statement late on Saturday, the local government of Xinzhou district, where the complex is located, confirmed the dog was killed as part of the need to "thoroughly disinfect" homes in the community.

But it admitted Covid prevention workers had "safely disposed" of the dog without communicating fully with the owner. The workers involved had been criticized and removed from their positions, it said, adding they had apologized to the owner and gained her understanding.

On Weibo, however, the owner claimed she was pressured by local authorities and her employer to delete her posts. CNN has reached out to the owner, who was not named by the government, and the Jiangxi provincial government for comment.

It's not the first time Chinese authorities have killed pets as part of their stringent Covid response. In September, three cats in the northeastern city of Harbin were killed after testing positive for the virus without consent from their owner, who was in hospital quarantine after contracting the virus.

Not all local governments are as stringent when it comes to dealing with pets, however. In January, Shanghai authorities were widely praised for allowing residents to bring their pets into centralized quarantine with them.

Animals in different countries have contracted Covid-19, including domestic pets, zoo animals and livestock, with humans the primary source of these infections.

But although scientists say Covid-19 likely originated in animals before becoming widespread among humans, there is no evidence animals are playing a significant role in the spread of the virus to people, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And in the latest incident, the dog was killed before it was even tested for Covid, according to the owner.

"When they hadn't even confirmed whether the dog was negative or positive (for Covid), they barged into the owner's home and beat the dog to death. Is this the management level of the government?" a top comment on Weibo said.

In its statement, the district government said residents had been asked not to lock their doors before they left for quarantine, and Covid prevention workers opened the owner's door by force under the witness of police officers.

The move has sparked a fierce backlash from pet owners and sympathizers, while others see it as a necessary sacrifice for the "greater good" of society, arguing that human lives are more important than animals'.

But for some, there is another crucial question to be asked: just how much more power has the government amassed in the name of Covid prevention, at the cost of individual rights and liberties?

"From the earlier killing of the three cats to today's killing of the dog, it's getting worse and worse. The so-called debate around 'animal rights' is merely a camouflage -- the issue at heart here has always been the wanton infringement of individual (rights) by the endlessly expanding state power," a comment on Chinese social media site Douban said.

Xi's China is closing to the world. And it isn't just about borders [CNN, 15 Nov 2021]

by Nectar Gan

Hong Kong (CNN)It's been nearly two years since China shut its international borders as part of its efforts to keep Covid-19 out.

China tamed the initial outbreak in Wuhan by locking down the city of more than 10 million people, confining residents to their homes for weeks and suspending public transportation.

Since then, Beijing has adopted a zero-tolerance playbook to quell resurgences of the virus.
Harnessing the reach and force of the authoritarian state and its surveillance power, it has imposed snap lockdowns, tracked close contacts, placed thousands into quarantine and tested millions.

Before anywhere else in the world, China's economy roared back to growth and life returned to something approaching normal — all within a bubble created to shield its 1.4 billion people from a raging pandemic that has wreaked havoc and claimed millions of lives across the globe.

The ruling Communist Party has seized on that success, touting it as evidence of the supposed superiority of its one-party system over Western democracies, especially the United States.

But as the pandemic drags on, local outbreaks have continued to flare up, frustrating the government's mission to eliminate the virus within China's borders.

And now, as much of the world starts to reopen and learn to live with Covid, China is looking increasingly isolated by comparison — and determinedly inward-facing.

This apparent inward turn is evident in the itinerary of the country's supreme leader Xi Jinping, who hasn't left China for almost 22 months and counting.

It is manifest in the drastic reduction in people-to-people exchanges between China and the rest of the world, as the flow of tourist, academic and business trips slows to a trickle.

But it is also reflected in parts of the country's national psyche — a broader shift that has been years in the making since Xi took the helm of the Communist Party nearly a decade ago, yet accentuated and exacerbated by the pandemic and the politics around it.

While taking increasing pride in China's traditional culture and growing national strength, many Chinese people are turning progressively suspicious, critical or even outright hostile toward the West — along with any ideas, values or other forms of influence associated with it.

In a sense, the closed borders have almost become a physical extension of that insular-leaning mentality taking hold in parts of China, from top leaders to swathes of the general public.

For now, Beijing's zero-Covid policy still enjoys overwhelming public support, even as China shows no sign of reopening in the foreseeable future. But analysts question how sustainable it is for the country to remain shut off from the world — and whether there could be considerations other than public health at play.

Sealed behind China's borders
For nearly two years, most people in China have been unable to travel overseas, due to the country's stringent border restrictions: international flights are limited, quarantine upon reentry is harsh and lengthy, and Chinese authorities have ceased issuing or renewing passports for all but essential travel.

Foreign visitors, from tourists to students, are largely banned from China. Those few who are allowed to enter, as well as returning Chinese citizens, must undergo at least 14 days of strict centralized quarantine. And that can be extended to up to 28 days by local authorities, often followed by another lengthy period of home observation.

The Chinese government has ordered local authorities to build permanent quarantine facilities for overseas arrivals, following the example of the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, which erected a 5,000-room quarantine center spanning an area the size of 46 football fields.

With the borders virtually sealed, even China's top leaders are bunkering down in the country. Neither Xi nor Premier Li Keqiang, or the other five members on the party's top decision-making Politburo Standing Committee, are known to have made foreign visits during the pandemic.

Xi's last trip abroad was in January 2020, when he made a two-day visit to Myanmar to promote his signature Belt and Road Initiative — an ambitious program to boost infrastructure and trade across Asia, Europe and Africa, which has lost much of its steam since Covid-19 emerged.

The border closure has also come as China is turning inward on itself ideologically under Xi, said Carl Minzner, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Ideologically, China is slowly becoming more insular compared to the reform and opening up era of the '80s and '90s — this is a hallmark of Xi's new era," he said.

Over the past years, a revival of traditional culture has taken hold across Chinese society, particularly among the younger generation who are proud of their cultural roots.

The trend is encouraged and heavily promoted by the party, in what Minzner calls "a strategic effort to deploy Chinese tradition as an ideological shield against foreign values, particularly Western ones."

Since taking office in late 2012, Xi has repeatedly warned against the "infiltration" of Western values such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence. He has clamped down on foreign NGOs, churches, as well as Western textbooks — all seen as vehicles for undue foreign influence.

That has fueled a growing strand of narrow-minded nationalism, which casts suspicion on any foreign ties and views feminism, the LGBTQ movement, and even environmentalism as stooges of Western influence designed to undermine China.

Since the pandemic, that intolerance has only grown.

In June, nearly 200 Chinese intellectuals who participated in a Japanese government-sponsored exchange program were attacked on Chinese social media and branded "traitors" — for trips they took years ago.

In July, journalists from several foreign media outlets covering deadly floods in northern China were harassed online and at the scene by local residents, with staff from the BBC and Los Angeles Times receiving death threats, according to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.

And in August, a Chinese infectious disease expert was called a "traitor" who "blindly worshiped Western ideas" for suggesting China should eventually learn to coexist with Covid. Some even accused him of colluding with foreign forces to sabotage China's pandemic response.

While it is unclear to what extent these nationalist sentiments represent mainstream opinion, they've been given overriding prominence in China's government-managed public discourse, where most liberal-leaning voices have been silenced.

Victor Shih, a China expert at the University of California, San Diego, said while Xi's predecessors had "grudgingly tolerated" Western reporters, NGO workers and sometimes even welcomed academics to China, the current administration now views their presence as sources of undesirable influences.

And Covid measures have become a convenient way to keep them out. Since the pandemic, most academics and non-profit workers have stopped going to China due to the border restrictions and quarantine requirements, Shih said.

"This heavy filter that is applied today — and had been applied prior to the pandemic — will help filter out what (Chinese leaders) see as undesirable elements from coming into China and polluting the values of the Chinese people," Shih said.

But even after the border reopens, it remains to be seen how the Chinese government will allow foreign visitors to return — and whether some sort of additional screening might stay in place.

"The question is how quickly it'll want to relax restrictions on the flows of people into and out of China. Currently, that's primarily a health-related issue. But I do think the longer it takes, it also begins to get fused into political issues," said Minzer, from the Council on Foreign Relations.

"It totally seems possible to me that the relaxations happen for different groups at different times," he said, adding that foreign researchers who focus on topics the Chinese government deems politically sensitive could be among the last to be allowed in.

But Shih noted that attempts to eliminate "foreign influence" were unlikely to work, when China eventually resumes contact with the world.

Despite Beijing's deteriorating relations with the United States, Britain, Australia and other Western countries, large numbers of Chinese students are still likely to pursue their studies there.

When the US Embassy and consulates in China resumed issuing student visas to Chinese nationals in May, they were flooded with applications. In August, before the start of the new academic year, the Shanghai Pudong International Airport saw long lines of students and parents with big suitcases stretching hundreds of meters at check-in.

"China cannot do without its best and brightest. They will go back to China — having lived in the West, some of them will love China even more, others will gain this skepticism about the Chinese political system," he said.

Public support for zero Covid
For now, Chinese authorities are doubling down on their resolve to eliminate the virus, resorting to increasingly extreme measures to curb local flare-ups.

Public health experts have attributed China's reluctance to relax its zero-Covid policy partly to uncertainty about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, especially in face of the highly infectious Delta variant.

But political considerations have also played a role. Since containing the initial outbreak in Wuhan, the Chinese government has held up its effective containment efforts as proof of the supposed superiority of the country's authoritarian political system. The success of zero-Covid is thus hailed as an ideological and moral victory over the faltering response of the US and other Western democracies.

And there is plenty of public support for the hardline approach, too. In China, public tolerance toward infections is extremely low, and fear of the virus still runs high -- partly caused by scarring memories of the devastation in Wuhan, but also fed by unrelenting state media coverage on the horror of rampaging infections abroad.


Beijing has repeatedly blamed local flare-ups on the import of coronavirus from overseas, either through air passengers, frozen food or other goods. On social media, calls have been growing for authorities to extend the already lengthy quarantine for overseas arrivals, as many blamed Chinese travelers returning from abroad for bringing the virus to China.

"In mainstream opinion, Covid-19 is still regarded as an extremely deadly disease -- even if you don't die from it you'll suffer from some kinds of serious health problems for the rest of your life -- people are genuinely afraid," said Lucas Li, a software engineer from southern Guangdong province.

Li, who works in California, has had a tough time traveling between China and the US over the past two years. After returning home for Lunar New Year in 2020, he was trapped for eight months in China due to the US travel ban. Then in May, he had to rush home again for family reasons, but flights to China were hard to come by. He ended up paying $4,800 for a one-way ticket -- about seven times the price of a round trip in usual times -- and underwent two weeks of hotel quarantine.

Li said while he doesn't necessarily agree with zero-Covid, he understands why the government is sticking to it. The border closure has had limited impact on the Chinese economy, and the lack of international travel or exchanges is hardly a concern for most people, he said.

While overseas vacations had become a common part of life for China's growing middle class, the country's vast size and rich diversity provides plenty of options for domestic tourism as an alternative. And for people like Li, essential travel outside of China is still possible, albeit troublesome.

"I'm very sure the mainstream public opinion will choose to continue with the border closure -- this is without a doubt," Li said.

But experts say that could come at a political cost for China, which has seen its international image plummet since the start of the pandemic. Unfavorable views of China have reached record highs among much of the developed world, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Service.

"Other political parties, or even maybe Xi's predecessors, might have seen this dramatic reduction in contact between China and the rest of the world as a big problem. But for now, the Xi administration does not seem to recognize this as a problem," University of California's Shih said.

"(If) China wants to persuade the world that it is a benign power ... it needs to engage the world."

But right now, that seems a long way off.

New Coronavirus News from 14 Nov 2021

Dr. Fauci troubled by political divide over Covid science, says it's hampered pandemic response [CNBC, 14 Nov 2021]

By Dan Mangan

Chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a new interview that there is a "very disconcerting" politically partisan divide over science in the United States, which has hampered the nation's response to the Covid pandemic.

Fauci noted that "because I am representing science" in telling people to get coronavirus vaccinations and to continue to wear masks, "I get attacked" in the form of death threats which require him to have protection by federal agents.

"What we're seeing is a public health issue which requires synergy among all elements of our government, where we realize that the common enemy is the virus," he told Dr. Bill Frist, a former Senate majority leader who conducted the interview shown online Monday during a coronavirus outlook event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

"Sometimes, when you listen to people speak, it's almost that the enemy is each other," Fauci told Frist, a Republican who represented Tennessee in the Senate. "And we have public health decisions that are based on [ideological] considerations. You should never have that."

Fauci, without mentioning political party affiliations or the names of his two most recent bosses, then referred to markedly higher Covid-19 vaccination rates among people who live in counties that voted for President Joe Biden, a Democrat, than people who live in counties which former Republican President Donald Trump won in the 2020 election.

"You should never have, looking at a map, and seeing that people who are vaccinated fall heavily into one group and people who are unvaccinated fall heavily into another group," Fauci said. "That is so antithetical with what public health should be, which should be a concerted effort on the part of the entire population."

Frist noted that when he served in the Senate and Republicans held a majority, Congress doubled funding for the National Institutes of Health, whose allergy and infectious disease division Fauci has led since 1984.

Now, Frist said, "It seems like a lot of those same people are questioning science."

"It's become more of a partisan divide around science," said Frist, who, without naming names or parties, appeared to be referencing widespread opposition to vaccine and mask mandates by a number of leading Republican politicians.

Fauci quipped, "I think if you were back in the Senate right now, you would have heartburn."

Fauci later said, "You're right. There is an anti-science element right now that has a very strong political twinge to it, which is very disconcerting."

"I hope that when we get out of this, people will look back and realize we don't ever want to do that again because it really hindered our response to this pandemic," he said.

New coronavirus outbreak prompts China to lock down university campus [Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 14 Nov 2021]

BEIJING >> China has confined nearly 1,500 university students to their dormitories and hotels following an outbreak of COVID-19 in the northwestern city of Dalian.

The order was issued Sunday after several dozen cases were reported at Zhuanghe University City and hundreds of students were transferred to hotels for observation.

Students were attending class remotely and having their meals delivered to their rooms.

The lockdown is the latest example of China’s zero-tolerance approach to the outbreak, which has brought considerable disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods.

Quarantines, obligatory testing and travel restrictions have become the new normal for much of the population. The country’s vaccination rate is among the world’s highest and authorities are beginning to administer booster shots as winter descends.

While those measures have met little open resistance, the recent killing of a quarantined person’s pet dog by health workers brought a wave of complaints online. The incident in the central city of Shangrao prompted local authorities to issue a statement saying the pet owner and health workers had “reached an understanding.”

Following the incident, the China Small Animal Protection Association called for a quarantine system to care for pets caught in such situations.

“Pets are people’s spiritual partners and should not be harmed under the pretext of fighting the pandemic,” it said in a statement. “If you bring the hand of doom down on an innocent life without the slightest ability to defend itself, then how can you even talk about humanitarianism?”

Among other new measures, Beijing starting Wednesday will require all people arriving from other parts of the country by plane, train, bus or car to produce a negative virus test taken over the previous 48 hours.

Despite isolated cases in various parts of the country, China has been able to suppress major outbreaks over the past year, with its total number of reported cases standing at 98,315 with 4,636 deaths.

On Monday, the National Health Commission announced 32 new cases of local transmission over the previous 24 hours, 25 of them in Dalian.

Netherlands Looks to Partial Lockdown as Covid Cases Rise [The New York Times, 14 Nov 2021]

By Christopher F. Schuetze

The Netherlands’ government introduced a three-week partial lockdown to quell a fourth wave of coronavirus infections amid a spike in case numbers, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

It is the first recent lockdown affecting all people — whether vaccinated or not — in Western Europe, and it comes as the Netherlands registered 16,364 new cases on Thursday. That figure, a level not seen since early in the pandemic, was a 33 percent rise over the new cases registered a week earlier.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Hugo de Jonge, the health minister, announced the measures on Friday evening. They will go into effect on Saturday.

Netherlands Coronavirus Cases
Restaurants, bars and cafes in the Netherlands will have to close at 8 p.m., as will “essential shops” like supermarkets, a government website said. Sporting events will be held without spectators. Residents will not be allowed to invite more than four guests into their homes. Social distancing rules will be reinstated.

Art and cultural performances at cinemas, live theaters and concert venues will not have compulsory closing times.

A crowd of protesters against the lockdown gathered outside the Hague, where Mr. Rutte was speaking, and several of them were detained for setting off fireworks and throwing objects at police, Reuters reported.

De Telegraaf, a Dutch news outlet, published photos and social media video that showed police turning a water cannon on protesters. The outlet wrote that the protest had since broken up and the streets were calm.

Protests against coronavirus mitigation measures have become commonplace in many European countries. In Italy on Friday, police searched the homes of four people in Milan affiliated with a movement that protests coronavirus rules after they were accused of harassing journalists who are reporting on the demonstrations.

Global coronavirus cases by region
Cases and deaths have been rising sharply in Europe as a whole, and other countries have instituted or are considering new restrictions. This week, the World Health Organization reported that Europe accounted for about two-thirds of the world’s 3.1 million new reported cases in the first week of November.

Officials in hard-hit countries are urgently seeking to quell the outbreaks as winter approaches and the threat of flu rises. Austria has seen a burst of interest in vaccinations in the week since it barred unvaccinated people who could not prove that they had recovered from a previous infection from cafes, pubs, restaurants, theaters, gyms and hairdressers. And Germany announced that it will once again offer free tests to all adults in the country.

Mr. Rutte’s cabinet also discussed on Friday whether to introduce longer-term measures that would require people to provide proof of vaccination or past infection to get access to certain services or to participate in certain events.

About 73 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the Our World in Data project at Oxford University.

Northeast China's Dalian urged to ratchet up efforts to stifle Covid19 resurgence [Global Times, 14 Nov 2021]

Epidemic prevention and control in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has entered a critical stage, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said during her inspection in the city amid a COVID-19 surge that recorded 100 new confirmed cases in the past two days, characterized by clusters of companies, families and schools in the city.

Dalian, which shoulders nearly one-third of the storage of cold-chain goods in China and also the largest port of cold-chain aquatic product imports, reported another 60 new locally transmitted cases on Saturday, bringing the total to 235 in the city with 54 more silent carriers.

Of the newly infected cases on Saturday, most are from the city's Zhuanghe region where the first case of the fresh outbreak was identified to be an employee working at a local cold-chain storage warehouse. They are mainly employees from a local food company and students at local middle schools or colleges.

Dalian health authorities noted on Sunday that the latest caseload spike is characterized by clusters of companies, families and schools, with a high viral load, rapid transmissions.

Given the grave situation in Dalian, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan inspected the region from Friday to Saturday, during which she stressed that Dalian must take more scientific, precise measures to deal with the epidemic decisively to curb spreading.

She urged Dalian to improve the capacity of nucleic acid testing, while insisting on minimizing the scope of testing only to targeted groups, so that normal lives of residents will be less interrupted.

Meanwhile, the city should locate the source of the origin of the new round of the resurgence as soon as possible to more precisely identify close contacts and key groups, Sun said, adding that a thorough risk screening of both the personnel and the goods should be carried out at all ports in Dalian.

Local authorities updated the city's risk regions on Sunday, identifying two high-risk regions and 31 medium-risk regions in the city.

Campus courses in all middle and primary schools in the city's Zhuanghe region will be moved to online starting from Sunday, and 10 boarding schools have been put under closed-loop management.

Two high school students, who were found to be close contacts of confirmed cases, have been sent to designated spots for centralized quarantine, and the school they were attending has not found a trace of further spreading, health officials said Sunday.

As the first identified case in the latest resurgence in Dalian is said to be related to cold storage, it makes the resurgence potentially the third cold-chain related outbreak in the city since the pandemic broke out.

In July last year, the outbreak in Dalian was suspected to have originated in the processing workshop of Kaiyang Seafood Company. In December last year, the first infected people of the epidemic in Dalian Jinpu New Area were handlers of imported cold-chain food.

By Friday, China reported a total of 1,379 confirmed local cases, involving some 21 provincial-level regions in the latest epidemic flare-up, the National Health Commission said Saturday.

COVID surge fueled by kids in U.K. a warning for California [Los Angeles Times, 14 Nov 2021]

BY RONG-GONG LIN II, LUKE MONEY

Unvaccinated adolescents have been the driving force behind a stubbornly persistent Delta surge in Britain, a potential warning sign for California if inoculation rates don’t improve considerably among this age group, health experts warn.

Dr. George Rutherford, a UC San Francisco epidemiologist and infectious-disease expert, said unvaccinated 10- to 14-year-olds are driving the pandemic in the United Kingdom, with case rates among these ages significantly higher than any other group.

Rutherford was citing data from a New York Times analysis, which said that in mid-October, school-age children in England were 15 times as likely to be infected with the coronavirus as 80-year-olds. The analysis noted that England ended mandatory mask-wearing in mid-July, and officials did not recommend vaccinations for 12- to 15-year-olds until mid-September, four months after they were available for those ages in the U.S.

The U.K.’s surge in coronavirus cases has been uneven — climbing rapidly from mid-June to mid-July, then decreasing sharply before yo-yoing into a second peak in mid-October. There have been some signs of waning since the middle of last month, but cases remain well above the pre-Delta levels.

A lack of vaccinations among wide swaths of adolescents as COVID restrictions were lifted has resulted in the virus continuing to spread in the U.K., Rutherford said at a recent UC San Francisco campus forum.

“This is a consequence of failure to vaccinate. And the population that they failed to vaccinate are young adolescents,” Rutherford said. “This is being driven by younger adolescents largely, and they’ve just started a new campaign to vaccinate 12- to 15-year-olds. And only 21% of them are currently fully vaccinated.”

The urgency to vaccinate children comes as COVID-19 hospitalizations have started to increase in parts of California. Health officials have long expected that uptick as the weather cools and more people gather indoors.

“Unfortunately, what we were predicting, as people go indoors — that [hospitalization] rates may go up — was actually a reality,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer in Orange County. “And even though we do have good vaccination rates, we need more people who are not yet vaccinated to get vaccinated.”

The U.K.’s challenges demonstrate how its overall vaccination efforts — while better than California’s — are still not high enough for herd immunity, when sustained coronavirus transmission is interrupted.

In the U.K., 67% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to Our World in Data; California has 62% of its population fully vaccinated. Across the U.S., that rate is 59%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Children and teenagers have become major sources of coronavirus infection in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Among all pediatric groups, children 5 to 11 began suffering the highest rate of new weekly coronavirus cases, displacing youths 12 to 17 as having the worst case rate, according to data released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

The change “is likely a consequence of increasing vaccination levels among teens and [previously] having no vaccinations available for those children 5 to 11,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer told the Board of Supervisors last week, just before vaccines became available to children in that age group.

But unvaccinated teenagers also have been big drivers of coronavirus transmission, L.A. County data show.

“The role of children in transmitting infection is very real. And the waves of infection that can result if children are not protected are, tragically, also very real,” Ferrer said recently.

Unvaccinated 12- to 17-year-olds have a coronavirus case rate about one-third higher than unvaccinated younger adults, a group that previously had the most coronavirus infections, according to L.A. County health data.

“Unvaccinated teens now have the highest case rate among all groups of all ages” who have long been eligible for vaccination, Ferrer said last week.

Only 65% of L.A. County youths 12 to 17 have been fully vaccinated. By contrast, 73% of L.A. County residents 16 and older are fully vaccinated, as are 86% of seniors 65 and up.

Orange County, where only 62% of 12- to 17-year-olds are vaccinated, is seeing similar trends. In the summer, older teens had the highest coronavirus case rates among those 18 and younger. Recently, children 4 to 9 have had higher case rates than the oldest teens, and had comparable case rates to middle-aged adults.

The statistics, Chinsio-Kwong said, show that vaccinations work, as immunizations among teenagers have helped reduce case rates. But they also show how essential it will be to reduce coronavirus transmission among children in order to fully emerge from the pandemic, experts said.

Many health officials — including Rutherford — have said that a substantial number of children will need to be vaccinated if communities are to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19.

The relatively large percentage of unvaccinated youths in Los Angeles County “is enough to sustain transmission,” Rutherford said. “And I think statewide, a lot of the increases we’re seeing are being driven numerically by cases in Los Angeles, which seem to be disproportionately falling into this age category.”

A stubbornly high level of transmission also presents the risk of spawning dangerous new variants, such as Delta, which fueled the latest wave in California.

“There’s always the potential for there to be a more devastating variant that takes hold. And we all lived through a terrible November, December and January last year,” Ferrer said during a recent briefing.

California’s coronavirus case rate is now higher than it was in a month ago, when the state was averaging about 5,500 new cases a day. Most recently, an average of about 6,300 new cases have been reported daily.

Statewide, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has plateaued over the last month, largely hovering between 3,500 and 3,800. That’s significantly less than the Delta peak on Aug. 31 of nearly 8,400 people hospitalized but still substantially higher than the pre-Delta low of 915 hospitalizations on June 12.

There is still hope that some areas might avoid a terrible winter surge, and rates will remain stable or could possibly decline. “But it requires everybody in our community to really be cautious and careful,” Chinsio-Kwong said.

Health officials say that, contrary to earlier in the pandemic when adults were the major spreaders of the virus, it’s now known that children can be effective spreaders of the coronavirus, especially with the emergence of the Delta variant.

Chinsio-Kwong said children can be infected and show no symptoms yet still transmit the virus, which can be problematic to family and friends “because you can expose everyone in your household without knowing it.”

“So they do have the potential to transmit it to a grandparent who may be at higher risk or to an immunocompromised family member,” she said. Gathering safely “does require everyone to get vaccinated if they are eligible,” she added.

Unvaccinated people are particularly at high risk for becoming super-spreaders because when they are infected, they shed far higher amounts of virus than those who are vaccinated and suffer breakthrough infections, she said.

Unvaccinated Californians are roughly seven times more likely to contract COVID-19, 10 times likelier to end up in the hospital and 17 times more likely to die from the disease than their vaccinated counterparts, state data show.

Although children are at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19 compared with adults, the disease still has become a leading cause of death nationwide. For the 12-month period ending Oct. 2, 66 children ages 5 to 11 died from COVID-19, a number that — when compared to the leading causes of death in children in 2019 — makes the virus the eighth leading cause of death in children of this age group.

New Coronavirus News from 13 Nov 2021

Delta plus is escalating a COVID spike in the U.K. Could it spell trouble for N.J.? [NJ.com, 13 Nov 2021]

By Spencer Kent

The variant is spreading in parts of Europe, leaving few clues as to what it will do next.
Experts are watching and waiting. Could it gain a foothold in New Jersey and the rest of the country?

Delta plus is the descendant of the highly contagious delta strain, which emerged in India in late 2020 and arrived in the U.S. in March. It has since become the predominant variant in the Garden State and across the globe.

Experts emphasize that delta plus poses only a low risk to New Jersey, as the strain has been found in just eight states so far (the Garden State is not among them). But the variant has been gaining traction in the United Kingdom, as COVID-19 cases once again surge in Europe.

“Anything that happens in the U.K., we want to watch really closely,” said Dr. David Cennimo, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Europe, after all, has reliably been the canary in the coal mine for the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. What has happened there has typically followed here.

But much about delta plus remains a mystery, with limited data coming from the U.K. Experts are unsure what to expect in the coming months.

“Whether or not this is going to be one of the more common variants, whether it’s going to lead in transmission and in (the) number of cases — we really aren’t there yet to know,” said Stephanie Silvera, an infectious disease expert and professor at Montclair State University.
“But the health agencies, again, both the U.S. and internationally, are trying to look at what’s happening and how it behaves.”

Delta plus is causing a rise in cases in the U.K. It could be more transmissible than the original delta strain — which is already highly contagious — but there is still some debate. Experts say it doesn’t seem to be causing a higher rate of hospitalization or death, and that COVID-19 vaccines appear to be effective against it.

In New Jersey, daily COVID-19 case statistics continue to drop. People are gathering, shedding masks. Life is starting to return to normal, thanks to high vaccination rates. The fear among health officials is a variant will come along and render vaccines less effective. The impact would be severe, likely causing a spike in infections, breakthrough cases, and in a near-worst case scenario, another lockdown.

“What’s going to be really interesting coming out of England: Are they seeing more and more reinfections or breakthrough infections?” Cennimo said. “That is something that I would want to closely monitor. Because at that point, now we’re concerned.”

In the U.K., delta plus accounts for 11% of new COVID-19 infections, according to health officials. And again, coronavirus activity in the U.K. has proven to be an early warning system for the U.S. The alpha variant (B.1.1.7 aka the U.K. variant) emerged in Southeast England in September 2020 and quickly took the country by storm. It wasn’t long before it gained a foothold in the U.S., becoming the dominant strain by spring. That is, until the original delta variant emerged and supplanted it.

For the U.S. and New Jersey, delta plus remains only a concern, but with the potential to develop into a major threat. State health officials recently reassured the public that the Garden State is currently at little risk.

“We haven’t really seen (delta plus) at all in New Jersey, much less in the United States,” state epidemiologist Christina Tan said Monday at Gov. Phil Murphy’s weekly coronavirus briefing.
“Obviously, the CDC continues to monitor the variant activity,” she added. “But for now, (it) does not seem to be an issue quite yet, but it is being monitored.”

Just because the variant is spreading in the U.K. doesn’t guarantee that it’ll end up gaining traction here. But as society continues to open up — including America’s borders — it could present a vulnerability, especially as the nation heads into the winter and the holiday season.

“The other aspect that’s playing against us is the opening of the borders,” said Dr. Reynold Panettieri, vice chancellor for translational medicine and science at Rutgers University. “As Canada opens, and as we’re seeing more of an influx from Europe because international flights are going to be picking up, especially around the holidays, a vaccine card may not tell the whole tale.”

But it’s possible delta plus turns out to be a dud, like other variants. It happened with eta, iota and kappa — all strains of concern that never gained traction.

“We thought that they might have the potential to become the dominant strain,” Silvera said, “and then they never reached more than 3% of the population. And so they petered out.”

Will the same hold for delta plus? Experts will be watching England closely.

Is Europe’s Covid wave coming here – or is Britain ahead of the curve? [The Guardian, 13 Nov 2021]

By Robin McKie

Analysis: many experts believe that the continent is only now tackling a Delta variant surge that arrived in the UK some time ago

Once again the UK and Europe are heading in opposite directions. While Covid-19 cases in Britain have been declining, those in France, Germany, Austria and several other countries have risen dramatically in recent weeks. A fourth pandemic wave threatens to break over these nations, raising the prospect of renewed lockdowns there.

This raises a critically important question: is the UK likely to follow suit in a few weeks, or will Europe’s rising numbers peak and start to decline, as they have been doing in Britain? Will Europe follow us or will we follow Europe?

Prof Mark Woolhouse of Edinburgh University is clear on the issue. “I think the UK is ahead at present and Europe is following us,” he told the Observer. A major factor in this process was the arrival of the Delta variant of the Covid virus, he added. “It is substantially more serious than previous variants and it hit many European countries much later than it did in Britain. It has struck in these nations at a time when vaccine protection – typically in the most vulnerable, the ones who were vaccinated first – has begun to wane significantly. That is not an ideal situation at all.”

This point was backed by Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London, who told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he thought the UK was in “quite a different situation” from other European nations, where curbs on freedoms are being considered.

“We’ve had two or three weeks of declining cases and admission to hospitals – that may be petering out, it is too early to say. We’ve also had very high case numbers – between 30,000 and 50,000 a day – really for the last four months, since the beginning of July.

“That has obviously had some downsides. It has also, paradoxically, had an upside of boosting the immunity of the population compared with countries like Germany, the Netherlands and France, which have had much lower case numbers and are only now seeing an uptick.”

Michael Head of Southampton University also argues that European countries are now arriving at the point the UK found itself in a few months ago.

“The UK rolled out a vaccination programme earlier than most countries, and therefore has experienced the impact of waning immunity earlier. However, the booster vaccines here in the UK are clearly having an impact around hospital admissions and new cases in older populations.”

Prof Paul Hunter of the University of East Anglia is even more emphatic. “We are not behind Europe in this wave: they are behind us. We are not currently seeing a surge of the same magnitude as Europe at present largely because of the high case numbers over recent months, which most of Europe missed out on. The key exception is Romania, which has just had a large peak and which is now seeing a decline.”

This type of behaviour is typical of an epidemic infection as it becomes endemic, Hunter adds. “As a disease approaches its endemic equilibrium you get oscillations around the eventual equilibrium. So we can probably expect oscillations across Europe for a year or so yet.
Sometimes the UK will be worse than Europe: at other times Europe will be worse than us.”

COVID-19: UK records 38,351 new coronavirus cases and further 157 deaths, daily figures show [Sky News, 13 Nov 2021]

NHS England has revealed more than two million people have now received their COVID-19 booster in the past week.

The UK has recorded a further 157 COVID-related deaths and 38,351 new cases, according to the latest daily government figures.

It compares to 40,375 cases and 145 deaths recorded on Friday and 30,693 cases and 155 deaths this time last week.

On a seven-day measure, cases edged up 0.4% on the previous week while deaths of people who had tested positive for the disease within 28 days were down 7.9%.

NHS England has revealed more than two million people have now received their COVID-19 booster in the past week.

It said 2.1 million boosters were delivered between 6-12 November, an increase on the 1.7 million boosters given out during the previous seven days.

A total of 2.7 million appointments were made on the National Booking Service in the past week - with more than three quarters of a million bookings made on Monday.

More than 10 million people in England have now received their booster vaccine since the programme began - including people who are clinically vulnerable, aged 50 and above, or who work in health and social care.

Meanwhile, the expert whose modelling helped instigate the first coronavirus lockdown said he does not think restrictions will be needed this Christmas.

Professor Neil Ferguson, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said he feels it is "unlikely" Britain will see a "catastrophic winter wave" similar to that seen last year, which led to months of further lockdown across the country.

With high levels of COVID immunity and a strong booster vaccination programme, the epidemiologist said he "very much" hopes a clampdown of the sort being ordered in some parts of Europe can be avoided in the UK.

The Netherlands has returned to a partial lockdown amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, its government has announced.

Under the three-week lockdown, bars, restaurants and supermarkets will have to close at 8pm, while professional sports matches will be played in empty stadiums.

Stores selling non-essential items will have to close at 6pm, and people are being urged to work from home as much as possible.

Social distancing measures will be re-imposed, and the government is recommending that no more than four visitors be allowed in a home.

It follows Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announcing a lockdown for unvaccinated people in two hard-hit regions next week, with the possibility that similar measures could be brought in nationwide.

In Germany, people are being urged to avoid large events and to reduce their contacts as virus cases increase.

New Coronavirus News from 11 Nov 2021

Why can't Germany deal with the new COVID crisis? [DW (English), 11 Nov 2021]

Germany is deep into its fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but yet again its authorities and politicians seem ill-prepared. Has no one learned from the mistakes?

Roselieb has become a much sought-after expert in these times, as the Kiel Institute specializes in communication during a crisis. On Thursday, health authorities recorded a seven-day incidence rate of 249, and over 50,000 new infections — more than at any time since the pandemic began. Over the last 24 hours, 235 coronavirus-related deaths were reported.

All this has come despite numerous warnings from scientists over the summer that this would happen, and despite the fact that there is enough supply of the COVID-19 vaccine to protect everyone.

"Germany is not necessarily making the same mistakes again," said Roselieb. "It merely shows itself to be quite stubborn in not learning quickly enough and in not enforcing tough, unpopular decisions once in a while when necessary."

"Germany, after acting boldly in March 2020, has often been too hesitant and pedantic in the later stages of the pandemic," he added. "But a bit of controlled dictatorship is part of any good democracy in times of crisis. Other countries can do that much better."

In France, for example, President Emmanuel Macron has imposed mandatory vaccination for caregivers, enforced a uniform coronavirus passport and initiated a massive vaccination campaign for children between the ages of 12 and 17. Spain, which has achieved close to herd immunity, had people call their fellow citizens and urge them to get vaccinated. And in Italy, people face heavy fines if they enter their workplace without proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative COVID test.

In Germany, meanwhile, the map of local COVID cases is getting redder by the day. And with just over 67% fully vaccinated across the country and too few who have recovered from COVID, there isn't enough of a barrier to stop the spread of new infections.

"In the almost 25 years I've been doing this, I've never seen a case where a politician has been punished for acting too much or too quickly," said Roselieb, who suspects that many leaders are doing nothing over the fear that the stigma of the pandemic will stick to them if they bring bad news. "Punishment has come to those who have thrown up their hands and said, 'It'll be fine.' Therefore, every politician is actually quite well-advised to do too much rather than too little in times of crisis and disaster."

Distracted by floods, Afghanistan, election
It didn't help that Germany's mind was elsewhere during the summer: on the flood disaster in the western states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, on the debacle over the Afghanistan withdrawal and then the federal election in September. Tackling several crises at the same time appeared to be too much for politicians to handle.

Meanwhile, Germany's caretaker government under Chancellor Angela Merkel is limited in what it can do, and the next government is in the middle of coalition talks.

"This is an inopportune time for Germany to be able to make decisions on the coronavirus pandemic," said Karl-Rudolf Korte, professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. "The old government no longer feels properly in charge and the new one is not yet able to function and act. And the virus, of course, is not bothered by this interregnum."

Korte has been looking into the question of what part politics has played in the fourth wave in Germany. Often interviewed on TV as an election analyst, he has published a book titled "Coronacracy — Democratic Governance in Exceptional Times." The guiding question: What is the pandemic doing to our political system?

"In Germany, we are in love with roundtables; everyone involved is to be taken along in an inclusive democracy," said Korte. "This takes longer, but ensures a high degree of societal peace. Politics is concerned with maintaining this and therefore shies away from cracking down."

This means Germany is one of the countries most reluctant to take a tougher line against vaccination skeptics and those who refuse to get vaccinated. Health Minister Jens Spahn fears that introducing compulsory vaccination for nurses, for example, would result in even greater staff shortages in care homes and hospitals that are already hopelessly understaffed.

The Leopoldina Academy of Sciences also recently called for compulsory vaccination for teaching and nursing staff, but the notion was immediately rejected by government spokesman Steffen Seibert.

"The government must accept the criticism of not having increased the pressure on unvaccinated people months ago," said Korte. Since the government has always ruled out compulsory vaccination, it's now facing a real dilemma: The current pandemic situation actually makes it unavoidable for certain occupations, but then politicians would have to break their word. "This statement was wrong, because they burnt bridges at an early stage," said Korte.

Other political statements from recent weeks and months no longer make much sense in Germany's current situation: The debate about the "Freedom Day" fueled by some politicians and tabloid media, the discussion about ending the legal "epidemic situation," the decisions to close vaccination centers and abolish free testing.

For critics, that's quite a lot of miscalculation. Apart from the pandemic, the government has also made several other recent missteps, often by doing nothing: not taking enough precautions or heeding warnings during the flood disaster, or in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Another famous Gretzky saying comes to mind: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Berlin bans unvaccinated from entertainment venues, as Germany battles record-breaking Covid cases [CNN, 11 Nov 2021]

By Rob Picheta and Nadine Schmidt

(CNN)Germany's capital Berlin will ban unvaccinated people from restaurants, bars, cinemas and other entertainment venues from Monday, as the country grapples with its highest surge in Covid-19 cases to date.

Health officials reported 50,196 new cases on Thursday, the fourth day in a row in which Germany has broken its record for new infections.

From next week those who are not fully vaccinated will be excluded from a number of entertainment sites in Berlin, the city's Senate announced on Wednesday, as it expanded the so-called "2G" rules that bar people without two shots from entry.

Outdoor events with more than 2,000 visitors will also be off-limits to unvaccinated adults, officials said.

The move comes amid an escalation in rhetoric against unvaccinated people from national ministers in Germany, where the inoculation rollout has fallen behind several European neighbors to the west.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a video message posted on the country's government website late Wednesday, said that "in Germany, I must say unfortunately that our vaccination rate isn't high enough to prevent the fast spread of the virus," urging quick action at national level to boost the rollout.

Germany has fully vaccinated 66.7% of its population, leaving one in three people unprotected.
Infections have skyrocketed in recent days; the country's seven-day incidence rate rose to 249.1 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday, up from 154.5 cases a week ago.

Hospitalizations and deaths remain at a much lower level than in previous peaks, but there is growing concern about gaps in the country's vaccination coverage as it moves into the winter months.

Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country was experiencing a "massive" pandemic of the unvaccinated, an early signal that the government is directly targeting unprotected people to join the vaccine program.

Merkel also called Wednesday for a meeting between the country's 16 federal state premiers ''as quickly as possible'' to ensure ''harmonious'' measures at national level. Germany's federal state premiers are primarily responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, but the country's new parliament on Thursday is debating on whether to turn coronavirus measures from the national level to regional leaders.

In a hurdle to its attempts to expand rollout, Germany's vaccine committee recommended people under 30 are only inoculated with the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 shot, after it observed a higher number of cases of heart inflammation in younger people who received Moderna rather than Pfizer.

In a news release on Wednesday, STIKO said its recommendation applied to both initial vaccination and any possible booster jabs. "Even if another vaccine was previously used, further vaccinations should be given with Comirnaty [Pfizer/BioNTech]," it said.