Month: December 2020

YouTube said on Wednesday it would start removing content that falsely allege widespread fraud changed the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, in a change to its more hands-off stance on videos making similar claims.
The update, which applies to content uploaded from Wednesday, comes a day after “safe harbor,” a deadline set by U.S. law for states to certify the results of the presidential election.
YouTube said it would start enforcing the policy in line with its approach towards historical U.S. presidential elections.
Online platforms have been under pressure to police misinformation about the election on their sites.
YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google, was widely seen as taking a more hands-off approach than Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, which started labeling content with election misinformation. YouTube labels all election-related videos.
After the November election, Reuters identified several YouTube channels making money from ads and memberships that were amplifying debunked accusations about voting fraud.
Last month, a group of Democratic senators asked YouTube to commit to removing content containing false or misleading information about the 2020 election outcome and the upcoming Senate run-off elections in Georgia.
Asked about how the policy would apply to Georgia elections, a YouTube spokeswoman said this policy only applied to the presidential election.
YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday that since September it had removed over 8,000 channels and thousands of misleading election-related videos for violating its existing policies.
The company said more than 70% of recommendations on election-related topics came from authoritative news sources.
YouTube also said that since Election Day, fact-check information panels had been triggered over 200,000 times on election-related search results
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British regulators warned Wednesday that people with a history of allergic reactions not to get inoculated with a coronavirus vaccine developed jointly by U.S. drug maker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued the warning after two people reported adverse reactions to the vaccine on Tuesday, the first day of the vaccine’s rollout in Britain.National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis said two employees reported severe allergic reactions linked with receiving the vaccination.  He said both are recovering.Experts: Vaccines Appear Safe, But Some Questions RemainWith the pandemic raging, regulators allow shorter safety testsPfizer and BioNTech did not immediately comment on the warning in Britain, the first country to administer a fully examined vaccine for emergency use.MHRA Chief Executive June Raine told a parliamentary committee in London Tuesday the reaction to the vaccine was not a side-effect seen in trials.Raine’s remarks were made during a broader discussion about how MHRA will continue to observe people who get the vaccine.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday called for tougher COVID-19 restrictions as the nation set daily record for deaths from the virus and infection numbers continue to rise.Speaking in the Bundestag – the lower house of the German parliament – a sometimes-emotional Merkel told lawmakers the nation was in a decisive period of fighting the pandemic, with the second wave far more demanding than the first.  Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases reported Wednesday 590 deaths related to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours – more than 100 higher than the week-old previous record – and 20,815 new daily infections, compared with 17,270 a week earlier.United Arab Emirates Says Chinese-made COVID-19 Vaccine is Nearly 90% Effective Gulf Arab state participated in late-stage clinical trial of vaccine developed by state-owned pharmaceutical company Sinopharm Germany is gradually moving toward a tighter lockdown, at least for a limited period after Christmas, as new coronavirus cases remain high and continue climbing.  
This despite a partial shutdown that started in early November, in hopes of allowing a more normal Christmas holiday.While families will be allowed to gather for Christmas, Merkel is calling for all but the most essential shops to close from Christmas Eve until at least January 10, and for people to work from home and schools to remain closed during that time as well.The idea is to use the festive period to keep people at home and break the chain of infections. Merkel emphatically urged people to limit their social contacts whenever possible.  She said, “If we have too many contacts before Christmas and it ends up being the last Christmas with the grandparents, then we’d really have failed.”Merkel has consistently advocated decisive action but has often had to move more slowly because, in highly decentralized Germany, the country’s 16 state governments are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions.Germany managed to avoid the high number of infections and grim death tolls seen in other large European nations early in the pandemic and continues to have a much lower overall fatality rate than countries such as Britain, France and Spain.
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Prominent U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye said Tuesday that foreign government hackers with “world-class capabilities” broke into its network and stole offensive tools it uses to probe the defenses of its thousands of customers, who include federal, state and local governments and top global corporations.The hackers “primarily sought information related to certain government customers,” FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia said in a statement, without naming them. He said there was no indication they got customer information from the company’s consulting or breach-response businesses or threat-intelligence data it collects.FireEye is a major cybersecurity player — it responded to the Sony and Equifax data breaches and helped Saudi Arabia thwart an oil industry cyberattack — and has played a key role in identifying Russia as the protagonist in numerous aggressions in the burgeoning netherworld of global digital conflict.Neither Mandia nor a FireEye spokeswoman said when the company detected the hack or who might be responsible. But many in the cybersecurity community suspect Russia.“I do think what we know of the operation is consistent with a Russian state actor,” said former NSA hacker Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec. “Whether or not customer data was accessed, it’s still a big win for Russia.”FireEye’s Mandia said he had concluded that “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities” was behind the attack.The stolen “red team” tools — which amount to real-world malware — could be dangerous in the wrong hands. FireEye said there’s no indication they have been used maliciously. But cybersecurity experts say sophisticated nation-state hackers could modify them and wield them in the future against government or industry targets.The hack was the biggest blow to the U.S. cybersecurity community since a mysterious group known as the “Shadow Brokers” in 2016 released a trove of high-level hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency. The U.S. believes North Korea and Russia capitalized on the stolen tools to unleash devastating global cyberattacks.The nation’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that “unauthorized third-party users” could similarly abuse FireEye’s stolen red-team tools.Milpitas, California-based FireEye, which is publicly traded, said in Tuesday’s statement that it had developed 300 countermeasures to protect customers and others from them and was making them immediately available.FireEye has been at the forefront of investigating state-backed hacking groups, including Russian groups trying to break into state and local governments in the U.S. that administer elections. It was credited with attributing to Russian military hackers mid-winter attacks in 2015 and 2016 on Ukraine’s energy grid. Its threat hunters also have helped social media companies including Facebook identify malicious actors.Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cyberconflict scholar, said that if the Kremlin were behind the hack it could have been seeking to learn what FireEye knows about Russia’s global state-backed operations — doing counterintelligence. Or it might have seeking to retaliate against the U.S. government for measures including indicting Russian military hackers for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other alleged crimes. FireEye is, after all, a close U.S. government partner that has “exposed many Russian operations,” he said.FireEye said it is investigating the attack in coordination with the FBI and partners including Microsoft, which has its own cybersecurity team. Mandia said the hackers used “a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past.”Matt Gorham, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, said the hackers’ “high level of sophistication (was) consistent with a nation state.”The U.S. government is “focused on imposing risk and consequences on malicious cyber actors, so they think twice before attempting an intrusion in the first place,” Gorham said. That has included what U.S. Cyber Command terms “defending forward” operations such as penetrated the networks of Russia and other adversaries.U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat on the Senate’s intelligence committee, applauded FireEye for quickly disclosing the intrusion, saying the case “shows the difficulty of stopping determined nation-state hackers.”Cybersecurity expert Dmitri Alperovitch said security companies like FireEye are top targets, with big names in the field including Kaspersky and Symantec breached in the past.“Every security company is being targeted by nation-state actors. This has been going on got over a decade now,” said Alperovitch, the co-founder and former chief technical officer of Crowdstrike, which investigated the 2016 Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.He said the release of the “red-team” tools, while a serious concern, was “not the end of the world because threat actors always create new tools.”“This could have been much worse if their customer data had been hacked and exfiltrated. So far there is no evidence of that,” Alperovitch said, citing hacks of other cybersecurity companies — RSA Security in 2011 and Bit9 two years later — that contributed to the compromise of customer data.Founded in 2004, FireEye went public in 2013 and months later acquired Virginia-based Mandiant Corp., the firm that linked years of cyberattacks against U.S. companies to a secret Chinese military unit. It had about 3,400 employees and $889.2 million in revenue last year, though with a net loss of $257.4 million.The company’s 8,800 customers last year included more than half of the Forbes Global 2000, companies in telecommunications, technology, financial services, healthcare, electric grid operators, pharmaceutical companies and the oil-and-gas industry.Its stock fell more than 7% in after-hours trading Tuesday following news of the hack.
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Deforestation has wiped out 8% of the Amazon rainforest in just 18 years, according to a study released Tuesday. The swath of land destroyed between 2000 and 2018 is the size of Spain, according to a study by Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG). “The Amazon is far more threatened than it was eight years ago,” RAISG said in a statement. The organization’s last map tracking deterioration of the forest was published in 2012. FILE – An employee uses heavy machinery to stack logs at the Serra Mansa logging and sawmill company, in Moraes Almeida district, Itaituba, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon rainforest, Sept. 12, 2019.The current map, a collaboration between 10 organizations, shows 513,016 square kilometers of the rainforest have been lost since 2000. According to the report, the latest data shows a turn for the worse. While rates of deforestation declined between 2003 and 2010, logging, farming, ranching, mining and infrastructure projects in the past decade have negatively affected the Amazon.Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has encouraged development in the Amazon rainforest and loosened enforcement of environmental laws. “In 2018 alone, 31,269 square kilometers of forest were destroyed across the Amazon region, the worst annual deforestation since 2003,” the RAISG study says. The destruction of mature tropical forests is a massive hit to biodiversity and is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Resources Institute, the research and advocacy group that oversees Global Forest Watch.  Because forests are massive sponges of carbon dioxide, reversing their loss would play an outsize role in fighting climate change.Forest Losses Increased in 2019 to Third-Largest This Century Indonesia, Columbia offer glimmers of hope in the bad news The RAISG study comes days before the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, in which 195 countries agreed to measures that would limit world production of CO2 emissions. In a controversial move, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2017. 
 
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Four lions have tested positive for COVID-19 at Barcelona Zoo in Spain, veterinary authorities announced Tuesday.Veterinarians are unsure how the lions were infected, although two zookeepers have also tested positive.The infection in three female cats and one male is only the second documented case of the coronavirus in big cats since four tigers and three lions tested positive in April at the Bronx Zoo in New York.The lions, Zala, Nima and Run Run, all 16 years old, and 4-year old Kiumbe, underwent a PCR test. This is the same type of test carried out on the staff members in November after they showed mild symptoms of the disease.In a statement, the zoo said the “lions were given veterinary care for their mild condition,” which they explained is “similar to a very mild flu condition.”All four responded well to anti-inflammatory treatment and are being observed closely.A statement from the zoo said the animals were no longer showing upper respiratory symptoms but still had mild coughing and sneezing.Veterinary authorities who are investigating are optimistic there will be no widespread infections as the lions have had no contact with other animals.
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Vaccines against COVID-19 may begin arriving within days in the United States, as the fastest-ever vaccine development reaches a conclusion. Experts say no corners have been cut. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering authorizing the vaccines after a shorter-than-normal safety testing period.  Nothing sinister has turned up in clinical trials so far, but there are still unknowns. With the COVID-19 pandemic killing more than 2,000 Americans every day on average, health officials must walk a fine line between urging people to get vaccinated and acknowledging what they do not know about the vaccines’ safety. “Communication is really critical here. We don’t want to scare people, but we also don’t want to lie to people,” said Rupali Limaye, a vaccine behavior expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The vaccine from drugmaker partners Pfizer and BioNTech will get a hearing at the FDA on Thursday. Emergency use authorization could follow within days if all goes well. The agency will consider biotech company Moderna’s vaccine next week.  The companies are ready to begin shipping the first doses as soon as they get the green light. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that front-line health care workers and nursing home residents and staff get top priority.  While confidence in the vaccines has improved since September, just 37% of respondents say they would be comfortable being in one of the first groups to get it, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey. About 4 in 10 say they probably or definitely will not get vaccinated. Side effects Vaccine makers usually collect safety data for several years before seeking FDA approval. But for COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA told drug companies it would make do with two months’ worth of data for at least half of study participants.  “The vast majority of side effects occur within 30, 40 days, and that’s why the FDA made those recommendations,” said William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Side effects that Pfizer and Moderna have reported so far include fatigue, muscle pain, headaches and fevers lasting up to a day or two.These reactions are not serious or unusual, but they are more severe than most vaccines cause and could generate pushback. “We need to be able to communicate that this is normal and remind people that the vaccine has undergone rigorous safety testing,” Limaye said. Health authorities maintain systems to keep track of side effects after the vaccines roll out to the public.  The CDC also is planning to use a text-messaging system to keep track of adverse reactions. But critics say the system is vulnerable to abuse by vaccine opponents filing false claims. Rare events Tens of thousands of people have received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in clinical trials without major safety problems. But as distribution reaches millions of people, scientists will be watching for rarer side effects that might crop up.  “The trade-off here is we are in the midst of a terrible pandemic in this country,” Moss said. “Unfortunately, because of that tragedy, we just do not have the time to look for these very rare side effects.” For example, some influenza vaccines have been linked to small upticks in a neurological condition known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, which ranges from temporary muscle weakness to, in unusual severe cases, paralysis and death. These increases are on the order of one or two cases per million people vaccinated, according to the CDC.  In a pandemic that has already killed nearly 300,000 people, experts say the public may have to weigh risks and benefits. Debunking Misinformation is a serious concern. Anti-vaccine groups have been spreading false conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the vaccines, especially on social media. Facebook said it is removing debunked claims from its platforms. Scientists worry that anything that happens after people get their shots will be blamed on the vaccine.  For example, in the two months after the first 10 million people get vaccinated, about 4,000 people will have heart attacks, said Robert Watcher, chair of the University of California, San Francisco Department of Medicine. Another 4,000 will have strokes. Sixty will be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And 14,000 people will die. “And the vaccines will have zero to do with any of them,” he wrote on Twitter. These are normal rates for these illnesses. They would happen with or without the vaccine.  But Watcher worries that people looking to undermine confidence in the shots will seize on these everyday misfortunes.  “(I)f somebody wants to turn every post-vaccine illness into a, ‘See, I warned you’ canard, there’ll be ample fodder,” he wrote. 
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Researchers at Britain’s Oxford University and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca published a study Tuesday showing their COVID-19 vaccine candidate to be “safe and effective” at fighting the virus.The peer-reviewed study was published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet. The data showed the drug had an overall efficacy rate of 70.4%, higher than the 50% minimum set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, Andrew Pollard speaks during a virtual press conference inside 10 Downing Street in London on Nov. 23, 2020.In an interview with reporters, Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said the difference in efficacy rates among the vaccines currently being reviewed will make little difference in the long term. He said what is important is getting vaccines to people and that they are protected.Pollard said the best way to do that is to have multiple vaccines available.“I think we have to not worry about these individual percentages. The important thing is who’s vaccinated, not people who are unvaccinated and waiting for a particular product. Personally, I’d be happy with any of these in my arm.”Pollard said that is why accessibility is a priority for Oxford/AstraZeneca. Unlike the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, their vaccine does not need to be kept at sub-freezing temperatures.He said even as regulators scrutinize the data concerning the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, it is already in production.“Manufacturing is happening in all corners of the world, and to make sure that if we do have products which can be used, that they can then be distributed where they’re needed using fridge temperatures to get them to the most vulnerable people in our societies.”
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As Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign began Tuesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament that “the start of the fight back against our common enemy, coronavirus,” had begun, adding there is still “much work to be done.”Oxford/AstraZeneca Vaccine Proves ‘Safe and Effective’ Potential vaccine would be cheaper and easier to handle; questions remain about efficacyA 90-year-old retired British shop clerk received the first shot in the country’s COVID-19 vaccination program in the unprecedented global immunization effort intended to offer a route out of a pandemic that currently has killed 1.5 million people.Hancock said the vaccine has been initially rolled out in 70 hospitals equipped to handle the complicated logistics that involve storage in sub-freezing temperatures. He said one of the biggest challenges will be getting the vaccine into homes that care for the elderly, a top clinical priority, and into primary care networks, so the general populace has access to it.In Photos: 1st COVID Vaccines Given in BritainVaccination campaign, dubbed ‘V-Day’ by Health Secretary Mark Hancock, began nearly a week after government’s medical regulatory agency granted emergency approvalHancock said that while “help is on its way and the end is in sight,” he also noted there are signs of the virus continuing to spread in parts of the country, including Essex, London and Kent. He said citizens were going to have to continue following restrictions to keep safe and the virus from spreading.  Britain is the first Western country to start a mass vaccination program after regulators last week authorized the use of a COVID-19 shot developed by U.S. Drug maker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Nears Approval for Emergency Use in USFDA publishes documents online confirming vaccine’s effectivenessThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine meets the standard for emergency use authorization. A group of FDA advisors is scheduled to meet Thursday to consider the authorization, and decision is expected within days of that meeting.  European Union regulators may also approve the vaccine in the coming days or weeks, fueling a global immunization effort.
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Anxious researchers with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Tuesday said they have received a capsule containing samples collected from an asteroid after traveling five billion kilometers back to Earth.The capsule, from Japan’s spacecraft Hayabusa2, blasted off for the asteroid Ryugu in December 2014, overcoming an unexpectedly rough landing surface to collect samples of asteroid dust in a capsule. That capsule plunged to Earth in Australia on Sunday and was flown to Japan where it was delivered to the agency’s scientists.At a news conference at JAXA in Sagamihara, about 51 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, space again scientists said the capsule is now secured safely in a curation facility at its research center.Project manager Yuichi Tsuda acknowledged he became a little emotional when the capsule was delivered to the facility, saying, “When I saw it, after returning from a flight of 5 billion kilometers, I was really moved. It was really touching.”The researchers cannot immediately pry open the capsule and start examining the sample. A series of steps must be taken to ensure the sample is not contaminated. They say initial gas samples were taken from the capsule shortly after it was recovered.  But the scientists will wait until the proper time to open it.JAXA researcher Tomoshiro Usui said, “If things go well, I believe we can open the lid in the vacuum chamber and confirm the contents after next week at the earliest.”The Hayabasa2 orbited above Ryugu for a few months before landing, then used small explosives to blast a crater and collected the resulting debris, with the expectation that some 100 milligrams may have been gathered. Asteroids are believed to have formed at the dawn of the solar system, and scientists say the sample may contain organic matter that could have contributed to life on Earth.Experts from NASA say the Japanese agency is planning to share samples of the material collected from Ryugu with six teams of scientists around the globe, including the U.S. space agency, by the end of next year.
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Legislation to make Facebook and Google pay media organizations for news content will be introduced in the Australian parliament on Wednesday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Tuesday.
 
Frydenberg said the measure would be reviewed by a parliamentary committee after its introduction and before legislators vote on it next year.
 
If the measure becomes law, Frydenberg said the internet giants must negotiate payments for content with local publishers and broadcasters. A government-appointed mediator would decide the payment terms if a deal is not reached.
 
Facebook has said it may block Australian news content instead of paying for it.
 
Google has warned the legislation would lead to “dramatically worse” search results on Google and YouTube and jeopardize free services.
 
Until recently, most countries watched companies shift advertising money to the world’s largest social media website and search engine, depriving news outlets of their primary revenue source. The dramatic decline in advertising revenue sparked a wave of closures and job losses.
 
Regulators, however, are beginning to rein in the two corporate giants, which Frydenberg said receive 80% of Australia’s online advertising spending.
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U.S. glassmaker Corning has become the dominant provider of glass covers for smartphones worldwide. Deana Mitchell has the story.
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Morocco is gearing up for an ambitious COVID-19 vaccination program, aiming to vaccinate 80% of its adults in an operation starting this month that’s relying initially on a Chinese vaccine that has not yet completed advanced trials to prove it is safe and effective.
The first injections could come within days, a Health Ministry official told The Associated Press. Facing a public skeptical about the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, medical experts and health officials have appeared on television in recent weeks to promote the COVID-19 vaccines and encourage Moroccans to get immunized.
While Britain began its vaccination program Tuesday with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the U.S. and European Union are racing to approve a series of Western-made vaccines, other governments are looking to use vaccines from China and Russia.
The World Health Organization has said new vaccines should first be tested in tens of thousands of people to prove they work and don’t cause worrisome side effects before being rolled out broadly. But the U.N. health agency also says it’s is up to individual countries to decide whether there is an urgent domestic need to use a vaccine shot, even without such data.Morocco is battling a resurgence in virus infections, with the number of recorded deaths from the virus surpassing 6,000. The North African kingdom is pinning its hopes on two vaccine candidates, one developed by China’s Sinopharm and the other by Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for emergency use in a few countries and the company is still conducting late-stage clinical trials in 10 countries. The AstraZeneca vaccine is still in advanced trials in countries including Britain and the U.S. and hasn’t been approved yet.
Morocco’s government seeks to vaccinate 80% of its adults, or 25 million people, as soon as the vaccines are approved by domestic regulators. Priority will go to medical staff and other front-line workers, as well as the elderly.
It will start with the Sinopharm vaccine, which was tested on 600 Moroccans as part of clinical trials this autumn. Morocco has ordered 10 million doses of the vaccine.
The initial deliveries will come from China, but Morocco also plans to produce the vaccine locally, Abdelhakim Yahyan, a senior official at the Ministry of Health, told the state-owned news agency MAP.
Health Minister Khalid Ait Taleb said Morocco is seeking vaccines from several sources because COVID vaccines are such a scarce commodity and a single manufacturer’s production capacity is too limited to meet the needs of the whole world.
In the Moroccan trial of the Sinopharm vaccine, carried out in Casablanca and the capital Rabat from August through November, healthy volunteers received two separate doses of the vaccine. In the advanced trial, volunteers either received the vaccine or a placebo. According to the health minister, early results have proven the vaccine to be “safe and effective” with no severe side effects reported.
However, some Moroccans have taken to social media to question the safety of the vaccine, with some noting that China was the original epicenter of the pandemic or questioning how effective it will be.
Sinopharm’s shot relies on a tested technology, using a killed virus to deliver the vaccine, similar to how polio immunizations are made. Leading Western competitors, like the vaccine made by Oxford and AstraZeneca, use newer, less-proven technology to target the coronavirus’ spike protein.
In China, the state-owned Sinopharm subsidiary CNBG has given the vaccine to 350,000 people outside its clinical trials, a top CNBG executive has said.
Critics in Morocco have also expressed concerns that citizens might be forced to take the vaccine, but the health minister insisted that COVID-19 vaccinations will not be mandatory but will be free.
Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani has sought to reassure the vaccine-hesitant about the robustness of the country’s regulatory process for vaccine approval, saying that no corners have been cut in making sure the drug is safe to administer.
Morocco’s mass immunization operation will include 2,888 vaccination stations and the deployment of mobile units to vaccinate people at factories, offices, campuses and prisons. The health ministry said it would mobilize over 12,000 health professionals as well as the military to ensure rapid distribution.
The vaccine will be available in a first phase to those at highest risk of contracting the virus: health professionals, security personnel, essential workers at vital sectors and people suffering from chronic diseases.
No exact date has been set for the rollout, but the health minister said “we are doing our best to get it started in mid-December.”
Separately, Morocco is expected to be among 92 low- and middle-income countries supported by Covax, an international effort to ensure that vaccine supplies reach developing countries, if the group meets its funding targets, according to the World Health Organization.
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The Trump administration opted last summer not to lock in a chance to buy millions of additional doses of one of the leading coronavirus vaccine contenders, a decision that could delay the delivery of a second batch of doses until manufacturer Pfizer fulfills other international contracts. The revelation, confirmed Monday by people familiar with the matter, came a day before President Donald Trump aimed to take credit for the speedy development of forthcoming coronavirus vaccines at a White House summit Tuesday. Pfizer’s vaccine is expected to be endorsed by a panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers as soon as this week, with delivery of 100 million doses — enough for 50 million Americans — expected in coming months.  Under its contract with Pfizer, the Trump administration committed to buy an initial 100 million doses, with an option to purchase as many as five times more.  This summer, the White House opted not to lock in an additional 100 million doses for delivery in the second quarter of 2021, according to people who spoke about the matter on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.  FILE – A customer wearing a mask walks out of a Walgreen’s pharmacy store and past a sign advising that COVID-19 vaccines are not available there yet during the coronavirus outbreak, December 2, 2020.Days ahead of the vaccine’s expected approval, the administration is reversing course, but it is not clear that Pfizer, which has since made commitments to other countries, will be able to meet the latest request on the same timeline. The Pfizer vaccine is one of two on track for emergency FDA authorization this month, the other coming from drugmaker Moderna. The Trump administration insisted late Monday that between those two vaccines and others in the pipeline, the U.S. will be able to accommodate any American who wants to be vaccinated by the end of the second quarter of 2021. The administration’s decision not to lock in additional Pfizer purchases last summer was first reported by The New York Times. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told NBC the administration is “continuing to work across manufacturers to expand the availability of releasable, of FDA-approved vaccine as quickly as possible. … We do still have that option for an additional 500 million doses.” Seeking to tamp down public skepticism over the vaccine and secure a key component of Trump’s legacy, Tuesday’s summit will highlight the administration’s plans to distribute and administer the vaccine.  But officials from President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, which will oversee the bulk of the largest vaccination program in the nation’s history once he takes office January 20, were not invited. Officials from the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines also were not expected to attend, despite receiving invitations, according to people familiar with the matter. Some expressed concerns about the event contributing to the politicization of the vaccine development process and potentially further inhibiting public confidence in the drugs. 
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The Trump administration is aiming to instill public confidence as well as claim major credit for the forthcoming coronavirus vaccines with a White House summit Tuesday featuring experts who will outline distribution plans in detail. Officials from President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team are not invited, even though they will oversee the continuation of the largest vaccination program in the nation’s history once he takes office January 20. President Donald Trump is trying to frame vaccine development as a key component of his legacy. The Operation Warp Speed summit will feature Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a host of government experts, state leaders and business executives, as the White House looks to explain that the vaccine is safe and lay out the administration’s plans to bring it to the American people. Senior administration officials provided details on the summit on Monday. An official with the Biden transition confirmed no invitation was extended.FILE – Vials with a sticker reading, “COVID-19 / Coronavirus vaccine / Injection only” and a medical syringe are seen in front of a displayed Pfizer logo, October 31, 2020.Officials from the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines also were not expected to attend, despite receiving invitations, according to people familiar with the matter. Some expressed concerns about the event contributing to the politicization of the vaccine development process and potentially further inhibiting public confidence in the drugs. Trump is set to kick off the event with remarks aiming to celebrate vaccine development, according to an official who previewed the event.  Trump also will sign an executive order to prioritize Americans for coronavirus vaccines procured by the federal government. A second official said the order would restrict the U.S. government from donating doses to other nations until there is excess supply to meet domestic demand. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans for the summit. It was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the order would have on other nations’ abilities to access the vaccines. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday he expects his country to receive about 250,000 doses of a vaccine from Pfizer by the end of the year.  The Food and Drug Administration is to meet Thursday to conduct a final review of the Pfizer drug, and it will meet later this month on a vaccine developed by Moderna. Both have been determined to be 95% effective against the virus that causes COVID-19.  FILE – A man receives a trial COVID-19 vaccine at the Research Centers of America, in Hollywood, Florida, August 13, 2020.Plans call for distributing and then administering about 40 million doses of the two companies’ vaccines by the end of the year — with the first doses shipping within hours of FDA clearance. But Biden said Friday that “there’s no detailed plan that we’ve seen” for how to get the vaccines out of containers, into syringes and then into people’s arms.  Trump administration officials insist that such plans have been developed, with the bulk of the work falling to states and municipal governments to ensure their most vulnerable populations are vaccinated first. The administration says it has leveraged partnerships with manufacturers, distributers and health care providers, so that outside of settings like veterans’ hospitals, “it is highly unlikely that a single federal employee will touch a dose of vaccine before it goes into your arm.” In all, about 50,000 vaccination sites are enrolled in the government’s distribution system, the officials said. Each of the forthcoming vaccines has unique logistical challenges related to distribution and administration.  The Pfizer vaccine must be transported at super-cooled temperatures and comes in batches of 975 doses. Each vial contains five doses, requiring careful planning. The administration has prepared detailed videos for providers on how to safely prepare and administer doses, to be posted after the FDA issues its emergency use authorization. One such plan is to be announced Tuesday: Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens have stood up a “mobile vaccination service” ready to vaccinate people in every nursing home and long-term care facility in the country. The roughly 3 million residents of those facilities are among the most vulnerable for COVID-19 and have been placed at the front of the line to access the vaccine. So far, 80%-85% of the facilities have signed on to the service, the officials said. 
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The top infectious disease expert in the U.S. warned Monday of a “surge upon a surge” of coronavirus cases as Americans travel for holidays.“If we don’t listen to the public health measures that we need to follow, then we could start to see things get really bad in the middle of January. Not only for New York state, but for any state or city that is facing similar problems,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a press conference in New York alongside state Governor Andrew Cuomo.Millions of Americans traveled across the country for the Thanksgiving holiday, despite warnings from health experts. As case numbers continue to rise, experts worry that surges will increase if Americans gather with family for Hannukah and Christmas.New York is no exception to an upward trend in coronavirus cases, though Cuomo said Monday that the state’s numbers are lower than many other parts of the country.Jayceon Melendez arrives at P.S. 134 Henrietta Szold Elementary School, Dec. 7, 2020, in New York.New York City students returned to schools on Monday, after they had been sent home in mid-November following an increase the rate of positive COVID-19 tests.“This is a good day for New York City, even against a tough backdrop,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday at a virtual news conference from City Hall.De Blasio said it was safe to reopen schools, as protocols had been beefed up.Since mid-September, when schools opened, more than 1,740 students and 2,240 staff in the public school system have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to city statistics.California: 30,000 new cases in a dayCalifornia began imposing restrictions throughout the state, beginning at midnight Sunday, as it tallies record numbers. The state confirmed 30,000 new cases Sunday — the highest recorded in a single day. Its previous high was nearly 22,000 set Friday.Fauci said Monday that the state’s restrictions would “rescue them from possibly getting their hospitals overrun,” Reuters reported.The California governor’s order bans all private gatherings in the affected areas, closes all but critical infrastructure and retail operations, and requires mask wearing and social distancing.However, the sheriffs of Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties — three of the state’s most populous counties — have said they would not enforce the order, which is to last three weeks.The U.S. has confirmed a total of more than 14,800,000 cases of the coronavirus this year, and 283,211 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.Last week, U.S. officials decided that health care workers and nursing home residents would be among the first Americans to be vaccinated against the disease, likely before the end of the year. 
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The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday the agency will maintain an air quality standard governing soot pollution for five years rather than tighten it as agency scientists had recommended, a move that will harm low-income communities that tend to be most exposed to the pollutant.The agency is required to review the National Ambient Air Quality Standards regulation, which sets limits on the concentrations of pollutants like soot from coal-fired power plants and vehicle tailpipes every five years and has tended to tighten them regularly after scientific review.At a news briefing alongside Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a coal-producing state, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the agency is preserving the current soot pollution standard of 12 millionths of a gram per cubic meter of air.He said on a press call Monday that particulate matter concentrations have decreased across the country over the last few years and said the agency conducted the review process “earlier than initially anticipated.”Since the EPA’s last review of particulate matter, new scientific research shows that even levels below the current standards cause serious health impacts.Wheeler said the new research that has emerged about the health impacts of particulate matter did not “come out in time for this five-year review process.”New research also shows a link between COVID-19 mortality and exposure to particulate matter, said several state attorneys general, including Xavier Becerra of California, now a nominee to be president-elect Joe Biden’s health secretary.”On its way out the door, the Trump administration has refused to strengthen standards regulating particulate matter pollution, despite a plethora of evidence showing its damaging effects on public health, particularly when coupled with a deadly respiratory pandemic,” Becerra said.EPA scientists had recommended cutting the standard to 8 millionths of a gram.The decision is one of several at the EPA that the outgoing Republican Trump administration is rushing to finalize ahead of Democratic Biden’s January 20 inauguration, including one setting new limits on ozone, another limiting the kinds of scientific data that can be used in policymaking and another making it harder to justify new pollution regulations.Environmental groups had wanted the EPA to toughen the soot standards to protect public health.Al Armendariz, director of federal campaigns at the Sierra Club and a former EPA regional administrator, said low-income, minority communities would “bear the brunt” of the decision. But he said he expects the incoming Biden administration to set the appropriate standard.West Virginia Senior Deputy Attorney General Douglas Buffington said the announcement “represents a big win for West Virginia coal” because if the standard had been tightened, “it could have been a huge blow to the coal industry.”
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