As millions of people await their turn to get a COVID-19 vaccine that could be months away, scammers online, in emails and on messaging apps are luring victims with claims they can deliver shots within days for as little as $150.
COVID-19 vaccine scams are on the rise, according to European and U.S. government officials who are warning the public of fraudsters out for money and personal data.
A Reuters search online, in dark web forums and on messaging app Telegram found seven different offers for alleged COVID-19 vaccines.
Scams include emails promising entry to supposedly secret lists for early vaccine access and robocallers impersonating government agencies. Message boards on the so-called dark web have added COVID-19 vaccines to more traditional illicit goods for sale.
The U.S. FBI and Interpol, among others, have warned of emerging pandemic-related fraud schemes, saying false cures and vaccines advertised on fake websites could pose cyber threats and a significant risk to peoples’ health, or even lives.
Website domains containing the word vaccine in combination with COVID-19 or coronavirus more than doubled since October to roughly 2,500 in November, when the first legitimate vaccines were nearing regulatory approval, according to cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which is tracking COVID-19 fraud online.
“So far a lot of these domains just appear to be opportunistic registrations, but some are going to be used for phishing attempts to have people click on (malicious) links,” said Lindsay Kaye, director of operational outcomes at Recorded Future.
Kaye said her team, which also scours the dark web, so far has not come across any legitimate vaccine diverted from healthcare facilities or national stockpiles.
The scams are preying on concerns about the far slower-than-promised rollout of vaccines to protect against the virus that has claimed more than 1.8 million lives worldwide so far. Most people will likely have to wait well into the spring, or even summer, to get their shot.
In the United States, only about 4.5 million people had received their first shot as of Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. That is a fraction of the 20 million who were supposed to have been vaccinated by the end of 2020, according to earlier government forecasts.
Vaccines, Guns and Money
On dark web forum Agartha, fake COVID-19 vaccines were offered next to cocaine, opioid medication, “super high quality fake money,” hand guns and gift cards. Posts showed stock photos of vaccines and offered vials for $500 and $1,000, or the equivalent in Bitcoin.
On another dark web site, a seller claiming to be from the “Wuhan Institute of Science” offered COVID-19 vaccines in exchange for a donation, and asked buyers to provide their medical history.
On Telegram, several channels claimed to offer COVID-19 vaccines, accompanied by stock images. One user offered supposed Moderna Inc vaccines for $180, and claimed the vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE could be had for $150 and AstraZeneca’s for $110 per vial.
Asked how the vaccines would be shipped, the account creator said they were transported in “regulated temperature packs” and ice packs within a few days, or overnight for an additional charge.
Actual COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the Pfizer/BioNTech offering, must be temperature controlled to remain effective, with drugmakers equipping shipments with temperature trackers to ensure the cold chain. Vaccine shipments and distribution are also tightly controlled by officials and will be administered at no cost.
The United States has so far authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use – the ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. The European Union to date has authorized the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and is expected to clear the Moderna vaccine this week.
The UK has already authorized those two and just added the vaccine developed by Oxford University with AstraZeneca.
Asked about vaccine scams, Pfizer said it had taken meticulous steps to reduce the risk of counterfeiting and tracked trends very carefully.
“Patients should never try to secure a vaccine online – no legitimate vaccine is sold online – and only get vaccinated at certified vaccination centers or by certified healthcare providers,” a Pfizer spokesman said in a statement.
Moderna referred a request for comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which did not respond. AstraZeneca did not respond to a request for comment.
The HHS, FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have urged the public to report any COVID-19 vaccine scams, including people asking for out-of-pocket payments for the vaccine and online vaccine advertisements.
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Month: January 2021
In France, public frustration with the government is growing as the nation’s coronavirus immunization campaign gets off to a slow start. In response, officials say they will speed up and widen the vaccine rollout.As of Monday, only 2,500 people had received the vaccine against COVID-19 in France — most of them nursing home residents and their nurses. It is too small a number, critics say, for a rollout that began, as in other EU countries, on December 27. A doctor administers a dose of Pfizer-BioNtech coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine to an old woman on Jan. 4, 2020 at the Antonin Balmes gerontology center in Montpellier in the south of France.Critics describe the pace as ridiculously low compared with neighboring Germany, where at least 264,000 people have been vaccinated so far. French President Emmanuel Macron and his government are under pressure to do better, especially considering the relative success of other nations in Europe. One of the main critics is Jean Rottner, the president of France’s Grand Est region. Rottner says the immunization strategy in France is a scandal, and he says the government keeps failing like it did for the masks and the tests. He says he is devastated since his region is heavily hit by the pandemic. FILE – A woman is tested for COVID-19 at a mobile testing center in Marseille, France, Sept. 24, 2020.French officials claim they are still on track to reach their goal to have one million people vaccinated by the end of January. To make it, authorities say they will set up 600 immunization centers across the territory by the end of this month. Olivier Veran, France’s health minister, addressed concerns Tuesday, and he vowed to catch up with the other EU countries. Veran says the French government will now amplify, accelerate and simplify the immunization strategy. Firefighters and in-home care workers above 50 years of age, will now receive the vaccine. The minister, who oversees the fight against the virus, says it is a permanent race to save lives. Although the immunization response is coordinated at the European level, each of the 27 members is responsible for setting its own strategy. The Netherlands will only start its immunization campaign on January 8. FILE – Healthcare workers assist a COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at the Joseph Imbert Hospital Center in Arles, southern France, April 5, 2020.As of Monday, more than 65,000 people had died from COVID-19 in France according data from Johns Hopkins University.
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The amount of baked-in global warming, from carbon pollution already in the air, is enough to blow past internationally agreed upon goals to limit climate change, a new study finds. But it’s not game over because, while that amount of warming may be inevitable, it can be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops emitting extra greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, the study’s authors say. For decades, scientists have talked about so-called “committed warming,” or the increase in future temperature based on past carbon dioxide emissions that stay in the atmosphere for well over a century. It’s like the distance a speeding car travels after the brakes are applied. But Monday’s study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculates that a bit differently and now figures the carbon pollution already put in the air will push global temperatures to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times. Previous estimates, including those accepted by international science panels, were about a degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) less than that amount of committed warming. International climate agreements set goals of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with the more ambitious goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) added in Paris in 2015. The world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). “You’ve got some … global warming inertia that’s going to cause the climate system to keep warming, and that’s essentially what we’re calculating,” said study co-author Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Think about the climate system like the Titanic. It’s hard to turn the ship when you see the icebergs.” Factoring in cooler spotsDessler and colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Nanjing University in China calculated committed warming to take into account that the world has warmed at different rates in different places and that places that haven’t warmed as fast are destined to catch up. Places such as the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica are a bit cooler, and that difference creates low-lying clouds that reflect more sun away from Earth, keeping these places cooler. But this situation can’t keep going indefinitely because physics dictates that cooler locations will warm up and when they do, the clouds will dwindle and more heating will occur, Dessler said. Previous studies were based on the cooler spots staying that way, but Dessler and colleagues say that’s not likely. Outside experts said the work is based on compelling reasoning but want more research to show that it’s true. Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the new work fits better with climate models than observational data. Rate of warming Just because the world is bound to get more warming than international goals, that doesn’t mean all is lost in the fight against global warming, said Dessler, who cautioned against what he called “climate doomers.” If the world gets to net zero carbon emissions soon, 2 degrees of global warming could be delayed enough so that it won’t happen for centuries, giving society time to adapt or even come up with technological fixes, he said. “If we don’t, we’re going to blow through (climate goals) in a few decades,” Dessler said. “It’s really the rate of warming that makes climate change so terrible. If we got a few degrees over 100,000 years, that would not be that big a deal. We can deal with that. But a few degrees over 100 years is really bad.”
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The Midwestern state of Indiana this year will be host to the entire men’s college basketball tournament, also known as March Madness, the NCAA announced Monday.The college athletic group is attempting to create a “bubble,” or an isolation zone, in an attempt to protect the college athletes from contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.“If we’re going to be able to do it, it’s got to be done safely,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “The more you can limit travel the better. To do it in the middle of the country makes it easier for everybody. … You want to be there, you want to be part of it. It’s going to be an historic event.”The sporting event, which was canceled last year at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, is one of America’s most celebrated sporting competitions. The NCAA tournament spans 67 basketball games, culminating with the national championship.Organizers decided to move away from playing the games in 13 venues across the country to just a few sites in or near the city of Indianapolis as a way to control the environment for the games.FILE – In this Feb. 11, 2020, file photo, NCAA President Mark Emmert testifies during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on intercollegiate athlete compensation on Capitol Hill in Washington.In a video call, NCAA President Mark Emmert said, “Last year, we had to rip March Madness away from all the teams and all the fans at the very last minute.” He said it was a painful but necessary decision.Emmert said they “want to deliver this year on the promise of March Madness” because teams and fans “deserve it.”The tournament begins March 14 with Selection Sunday, when the teams will be placed into groups. The tournament culminates with the Final Four, with the championship games scheduled for April 3 and April 5.The NCAA has not yet released the full schedule for the games. It also said a limited number of family members of players and coaches will be able to attend the games.The NCAA said it will work with local authorities to provide COVID-19 testing for players, coaches and staff. It is also running a “Mask Madness” program that will provide thousands of masks to attendees and participants to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.“This is going to be complicated and difficult; there’s no question about that,” NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt said.Indianapolis has hosted seven men’s Final Fours since 1980 as well as early-round games and regional championships. 2021 March Madness makes the city the No.1 all-time host.The NCAA plans to host the corresponding women’s event in San Antonio, Texas.March Madness will be televised on U.S. television networks.
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Tanya Roberts, who captivated James Bond in “A View to a Kill” and later played Midge Pinciotti in the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” has been hospitalized after falling at her home. The actor had mistakenly been reported dead by her publicist earlier Monday. Later Monday afternoon, Roberts’ publicist, Mike Pingel, told The Associated Press that Roberts, 65, was alive as of 10 a.m. PST but was in a poor condition. He had said earlier Monday that she had collapsed in her home December 24 and was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was believed to have died Sunday. Pingel said Robert’s husband, Lance O’Brien, told him that he held his wife and she seemed to him to “slip away.” The publicist said he is awaiting further updates on Roberts’ condition. Multiple media outlets, including the AP, reported Roberts’ death. The AP removed its obituary and sent an advisory noting that the actor was still alive. One of Roberts highest-profile roles was playing geologist Stacey Sutton opposite Roger Moore in 1985’s “A View to a Kill.” Roberts also appeared in such fantasy adventure films as “The Beastmaster” and “Hearts and Armour.” She replaced Shelly Hack in “Charlie’s Angels,” joining Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd as third Angel Julie. She also played comic book heroine Sheena — a female version of the Tarzan story — in a 1984 film. A new generation of fans saw her on “That ’70s Show,” playing Midge, mother to Laura Prepon’s character, Donna.
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Britain’s prime minister announced a fresh round of lockdowns Monday, closing schools and nonessential shops, as the country begins vaccinating health care workers and the elderly.Prime Minister Boris Johnson said people must stay at home until at least mid-February, noting that British hospitals are under more strain now than they have been at any point during the pandemic.“If the rollout of the vaccine program continues to be successful. If deaths start to fall as the vaccine takes effect. And critically, if everyone plays their part by following the rules, then I hope we can steadily move out of lockdown,” Johnson said in a televised address Monday.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Chase Farm Hospital in north London, Jan. 4, 2021, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.The announcement comes days after British health officials confirmed a variant of the coronavirus that doctors say is far more contagious than the original.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Monday that a case of the same variant had been confirmed in an older New York state resident who had not traveled recently.NEW: The Wadsworth Lab has confirmed New York State’s first case of the U.K. variant (B.1.1.7) of the virus that causes COVID.An individual from Saratoga County, New York, tested positive for the strain. The individual had no known travel history.— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) Brian Pinker, 82, receives the Oxford University/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from nurse Sam Foster at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, England, Jan. 4, 2021.British officials say half a million doses of the vaccine are ready for use.The AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and more easily transported than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine because it does not need to be kept at extremely cold temperatures. The Pfizer shot has already been administered to many health care professionals in Britain and the United States.France, which is administering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, pledged Monday to increase the speed at which it is inoculating its health care workers after facing criticism from the public.FILE – A man applies finishing touches to graffiti representing a vaccine, amidst the spread of coronavirus disease, in Kolkata, India, Jan. 2, 2021.In Russia, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said that more than 800,000 people had received the domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine and that 1.5 million doses had been distributed throughout the country of 147 million.The Kremlin is pinning its hopes on mass vaccinations, not nationwide restrictions, to stop the spread of the virus and save its struggling economy from the hit of another lockdown.The coronavirus has killed more than 1.8 million people globally since emerging in China in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins.Experts fear the worst is yet to come, predicting a sharp rise in cases and deaths after weeks of holiday gatherings.VOA’s Fern Robinson contributed to this report.
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Online communication and collaboration service Slack reported a global outage Monday, as millions returned to work after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.”Our team is currently investigating, and we’re sorry for any troubles this may be causing,” Slack said in a statement.Slack has seen its popularity grow as many people work and study from home during the coronavirus pandemic. When it last reported, the company said it had 12 million daily users. Slack shares have surged by 80% over the past year.According to The Associated Press, the outage began around 10 a.m. Eastern time, with outages reported in the United States, Germany, India, Britain, Japan and other countries.The disruption in service was the latest in a string of tech outages, which have seen Google services, Zoom and some Microsoft products suffer breakdowns in recent months.According to Bloomberg, Salesforce.com agreed to buy Slack Technologies, Inc. last year for $27.7 billion.
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Tanya Roberts, who captivated James Bond in “A View to a Kill,” appeared in the final season of “Charlie’s Angels” and later played Midge Pinciotti in the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” has died in Los Angeles. She was 65.
Roberts’ death Sunday was announced by her publicist, Mike Pingel. She collapsed in her home and was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. No cause of death was given, but Pingel said it was not due to COVID-19.
One of her highest profile roles was playing geologist Stacey Sutton opposite Roger Moore in 1985’s “A View to a Kill,” where she held a gun on Bond after tricking him into thinking she was in a shower. The character later joined him to stop bad guys on an airship over San Francisco.
“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Tanya. She was a very lovely person,” Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli wrote in tribute. Britt Ekland, who starred opposite Moore in 1974’s “The Man with the Golden Gun,” tweeted: “Once a Bond Girl always a Bond Girl!”
“One of my favorite memories with Tanya was driving in the car and Duran Duran’s ‘A View to a Kill’ theme song came on the radio — we both sang along. Priceless,” Pingel said.
Roberts also appeared in such fantasy adventure films as “The Beastmaster” and “Hearts and Armour.” She replaced Shelly Hack in “Charlie’s Angels,” joining Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd as third Angel Julie. She also played comic book heroine Sheena — a female version of the Tarzan story — in a 1984 film.
A new generation of fans saw her on “That ’70s Show,” playing Midge, mother to Laura Prepon’s character Donna. On Twitter, Topher Grace, one of the the show’s stars, called Roberts “truly a delightful person to work with.” He added: “I had never acted before and, to be honest, a little nervous around her. But she couldn’t have been kinder. We’ll miss you Midge.”
Roberts, a huge animal rights activist, is survived by her husband, Lance O’Brien. “Tanya and I have never been apart. This is too much to handle. Her animals are lost without her and so am I,” he said in a statement.
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Drug maker Moderna says it plans to ramp up production of its COVID-19 vaccine by 100 million more doses than what it originally forecast.The Massachusetts-based company said Monday it would produce 600 million doses in 2021.So far, the company says it has supplied 18 million doses of a promised 200 million to the U.S. government.U.S. states have been administering both the Moderna vaccine and a vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech since late last month.Both vaccines are reportedly highly effective in preventing coronavirus infection.According to MarketWatch, Moderna’s stock is up 453.0% over the past year.
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More than 200 Google employees in the United States have formed a workers’ union, the elected leaders of the union wrote in a New York Times opinion piece on Monday.
The “Alphabet Workers Union” aims to ensure that employees work at a fair wage, without fear of abuse, retaliation or discrimination, the union heads wrote.
Google has been under fire from the U.S. labor regulator, which has accused the company of unlawfully questioning several workers who were then terminated for protesting against company policies and trying to organize a union. Google has said it was confident it acted legally.
“We’re building on years of organizing efforts at Google to create a formal structure for workers,” the union leaders wrote, adding that so far 226 employees had signed union cards with the Communications Workers of America.
“Our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees,” Kara Silverstein, director of people operations at Google, said on Monday.
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British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Monday the government is not ruling out new restrictions as the coronavirus continues to spread even in areas with the strictest constraints.In television interviews, Hancock said a new variant spreads more easily than the original strains of the virus and Britain’s three-tiered system of restrictions is proving less effective at controlling it.Hancock said that while new restrictions might be necessary, ultimately it is up to people’s behavior. He said people should act as if they already have the virus and take greater care around others.“Yes, it’s about the government rules, and absolutely we’re prepared to bring in, unfortunately, tougher rules if they are needed on the public health advice. But it’s on all of us,” Hancock said.The health secretary praised the National Health Service (NHS) for its vaccination program, saying it has successfully inoculated more than a million people at 700 sites around the country and that there would be more than a thousand sites by the end of the week.Hancock also praised the latest vaccine, produced in a joint effort between the University of Oxford and drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, saying British science is leading the world.Britain reported 55,157 new cases on Sunday, and 455 new deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The nation set a daily record for new cases Saturday with 57,853.
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Gerry Marsden, frontman of 1960s group Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died aged 78, the singer’s friend Pete Price announced Sunday. Liverpool-born Marsden, who died after a short illness, had a 1960s hit with his cover of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, which originally featured in their musical Carousel. Liverpool FC fans adopted the Gerry and the Pacemakers’ version of the song, which became one of the most famous football anthems in the world. It is still sung regularly by Liverpool supporters before and during matches. Marsden re-recorded the track in April 2020 in tribute to Britain’s National Health Service during the coronavirus pandemic. He also wrote the 1960s hit “Ferry Cross the Mersey” at a time when The Beatles had made Liverpool pop music’s most important city. It was Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein who signed up Gerry and the Pacemakers. As part of the “Merseybeat” groups, Gerry and the Pacemakers also broke into the American market.Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney tweeted that “Gerry was a mate from our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene.””His unforgettable performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Ferry Cross the Mersey remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music,” he added.Liverpool football club, on their Twitter account, said, “It is with such great sadness that we hear of Gerry Marsden’s passing.”Gerry’s words will live on forever with us. You’ll Never Walk Alone.”The famous song was also adopted by fans of other European football teams including Celtic in Scotland, Borussia Dortmund and Feyenoord.Marsden’s friend and broadcaster Price announced the death when he wrote on Instagram: “It’s with a very heavy heart after speaking to the family that I have to tell you the legendary Gerry Marsden MBE, after a short illness which was an infection in his heart, has sadly passed away.”I’m sending all the love in the world to Pauline and his family. You’ll Never Walk Alone.”Marsden received his MBE at Buckingham Palace in 2003 for services to charities in Liverpool and beyond.
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The ongoing controversy over the money left behind by Prince when he died without a will is heating up again after Internal Revenue Service calculations showed that executors of the rock star’s estate undervalued it by 50%, or about $80 million.The IRS determined that Prince’s estate is worth $163.2 million, overshadowing the $82.3 million valuation submitted by Comerica Bank & Trust, the estate’s administrator. The discrepancy primarily involves Prince’s music publishing and recording interests, according to court documents. Documents show the IRS believes that Prince’s estate owes another $32.4 million in federal taxes, roughly doubling the tax bill based on Comerica’s valuation, the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota, reported. The IRS also has ordered a $6.4 million “accuracy-related penalty” on Prince’s estate, citing a substantial undervaluation of assets, documents show. Prince’s death of a fentanyl overdose on April 21, 2016, created one of the largest and most complicated probate court proceedings ever in Minnesota, the state where he lived. Estimates of his net worth have varied from $100 million to $300 million. With Prince’s probate case dragging on, his six sibling heirs have grown increasingly unhappy, particularly as the estate has doled out tens of millions of dollars to lawyers and consultants. Comerica and its lawyers at Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis maintain their estate valuations are solid. Comerica sued the IRS this summer in U.S. Tax Court in Washington, saying the agency’s calculations are riddled with errors. “What we have here is a classic battle of the experts — the estate’s experts and the IRS’ experts,” said Dennis Patrick, an estate planning attorney at DeWitt LLP in Minneapolis who is not involved in the case. Valuing a large estate, Patrick added, “is way more of an art than a science.” Comerica, a Dallas-based financial services giant, has asked the tax court to hold a trial in St. Paul. A trial could dramatically lengthen the settlement of Prince’s estate and generate more legal fees at the expense of Prince’s heirs, Patrick said.
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Vaccinations against the coronavirus are off to a slow and chaotic start in the United States, but the country’s top infectious disease expert held out hope Sunday that the pace will soon pick up. “We are not where we want to be, no doubt about it,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ “This Week” show. “We need to catch up.” So far, the U.S. has distributed 13 million doses of two vaccines produced by drug makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna throughout the country but only 4.2 million shots have ended up in the arms of Americans. “The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the federal government far faster than they can be administered!” President Donald Trump said on Twitter. But Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, said that the pace of inoculating people – chiefly health care workers and elderly people in nursing homes in the initial stages of the vaccination campaign – is picking up. “There is a glimmer of hope,” Fauci said, with 1.5 million shots administered in the last three days. He added, “We’ve got to get interaction between the federal government and the (country’s 50) states, a real partnership.” Florida Department of Health medical workers prepare to administer a COVID-19 vaccine to seniors in the parking lot of the Gulf View Square Mall in New Port Richey near Tampa, Florida, Dec. 31, 2020.In some states, long lines of people waiting for shots have formed on sidewalks leading to health centers. In the city of Houston, Texas, officials had 750 shots available, but 250,000 people called a registration line in hopes of scheduling a vaccination. Biden has called for 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of his administration that starts with his inauguration January 20. Fauci said the stepped-up pace of inoculations can be met. “It’s realistic,” he said. “We can do a million a day.” Fauci said that if 70% to 85% of Americans are vaccinated in the coming months the United States can return to some sense of normality by next September or October. Fauci was for a while the face of the Trump’s administration’s response to the pandemic that has killed more than 350,000 Americans and left more than 20.4 million infected. Both figures surpass those of any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University. With the U.S. coronavirus caseload growing by tens of thousands a day and Trump preoccupied with a November reelection bid he lost, the White House mostly sidelined Fauci in favor of a more favorable commentary on the development of the vaccines. In a tweet Sunday, Trump indicated he was still upset about Fauci’s standing in the court of public opinion. “Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work,” Trump said. “Gee, could this just be more Fake News?” Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work. Gee, could this just be more Fake News?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Sunday of new lockdowns to be issued across the country as cases of the coronavirus surge, particularly with a new variant spreading.Britain has been seeing upwards of 50,000 new cases daily as health experts note that the variant is up to 70 percent more contagious.“We are entirely reconciled to do what it takes to get the virus under control that may involve tougher measures in the weeks ahead,” Johnson told the BBC.A health worker engages in a COVID-19 vaccine delivery system trial in New Delhi, India, Jan. 2, 2021.Also, on Sunday, Travellers walk with their luggage at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Jan. 2, 2021.Ban on US travelers, tighter lockdowns The Philippines said it would prohibit the entry of foreign travelers from the U.S. until at least January 15 after the new coronavirus variant was detected.In Bangkok, Thai officials shuttered the city’s nightlife with a ban on bar, nightclub and restaurant alcohol sales, among a raft of restrictions aimed at curbing the kingdom’s rising toll. Elsewhere, Tokyo’s governor on Saturday asked Japan’s government to declare a new state of emergency as the country battles a third wave of infections, with record numbers of new cases.France, which recently lengthened an overnight curfew by two hours in parts of the country, has the highest case count in western Europe with more than 2.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins.Spanish police broke up a gathering Saturday near Barcelona, where 300 people had been partying for more than 40 hours.Ireland on Saturday reported 3,394 cases of the outbreak nearly doubling its record for a single day. Irish officials Friday said they had underreported coronavirus cases in recent days by more than 9,000, as its reporting system came under strain. Italy, which has the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe at nearly 75,000, Saturday reported 364 more people had died from the virus, a drop compared with Friday’s total of 462. The Guardian reported that new cases had also decreased, from 22,211 to 11,831.Norway, with one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, Saturday began requiring COVID-19 tests upon arrival into the country, after finding five cases of the British variant. Denmark discovered 86 cases of that new, more contagious strain.Greece has extended until January 10 its strict two-month lockdown measures, ending an easing of the restrictions for the holidays.In Zimbabwe, where recorded cases have almost doubled since the beginning of November, government officials ordered a new containment Saturday evening. The country has recorded nearly 14,500 cases to date, including 377 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.Zimbabwe Reintroduces Dusk-to-Dawn Curfew to Contain Rising COVID-19 Cases Besides the curfew, other measures include limiting the number of mourners at funerals to 30 people, while all other gatherings at weddings, churches, bars, bottle stores, gyms and restaurants are bannedIn South Africa, government-backed security forces stepped up a “zero-tolerance approach” to enforcing a mask mandate, and President Cyril Ramaphosa banned alcohol sales, calling it a root cause of accidents and violence that strain hospital resources.
The coronavirus has killed more than 1.8 million people globally since emerging in China in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins.Experts fear the worst is yet to come, predicting a sharp rise in cases and deaths after weeks of holiday gatherings.
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Israel said Sunday two million people will have received a two-dose Covid-19 vaccination by the end of January, a pace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasts is the world’s fastest.Starting on December 19, when Netanyahu got his first jab, Israel launched an aggressive push to administer the vaccine made by U.S.-German pharma alliance Pfizer-BioNTech.Health Ministry Director General Hezi Levy said that because of the enthusiastic takeup, Israel would be easing the speed of vaccination to eke out stocks.The vaccine must be given in two separate jabs, administered three weeks apart.”We are slowing the pace of vaccinations of the first dose, so that we can keep reserved stock for a second dose for all those who got a first shot,” Levy told public broadcaster KAN.But he added that around a fifth of Israel’s people, starting with health workers and those over 60, would have had both shots by the end of this month. “By the end of January, we shall have inoculated two million residents, most of them elderly,” he said.As of Friday, one million people had received their first injection.”We are breaking all the records,” Netanyahu said Friday, during a visit to the Israeli Arab city of Umm Al-Fahm, where the millionth jab was reported administered.”We are ahead of the entire world,” the premier said.The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said in a year-end statement that Israel’s population stood at 9.29 million.The figure includes annexed east Jerusalem, where Israeli sovereignty is not recognized by most of the international community.The health ministry said on Sunday that 435,866 people in Israel had so far tested positive for the virus since the first confirmed case was reported in February. Almost 3,400 people have died, it said.The ministry said on Friday that it had confirmed 18 local cases of a new strain of coronavirus first detected in Britain.
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As richer countries race to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Somalia remains the rare place where much of the population hasn’t taken the coronavirus seriously. Some fear that’s proven to be deadlier than anyone knows.“Certainly, our people don’t use any form of protective measures, neither masks nor social distancing,” Abdirizak Yusuf Hirabeh, the government’s COVID-19 incident manager, said in an interview. “If you move around the city (of Mogadishu) or countrywide, nobody even talks about it.” And yet infections are rising, he said.It is places like Somalia, the Horn of Africa nation torn apart by three decades of conflict, that will be last to see COVID-19 vaccines in any significant quantity. With part of the country still held by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group, the risk of the virus becoming endemic in some hard-to-reach areas is strong — a fear for parts of Africa amid the slow arrival of vaccines.“There is no real or practical investigation into the matter,” said Hirabeh, who is also the director of the Martini hospital in Mogadishu, the largest treating COVID-19 patients, which saw seven new patients the day he spoke. He acknowledged that neither facilities nor equipment are adequate in Somalia to tackle the virus.Fewer than 27,000 tests for the virus have been conducted in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, one of the lowest rates in the world. Fewer than 4,800 cases have been confirmed, including at least 130 deaths.Some worry the virus will sink into the population as yet another poorly diagnosed but deadly fever.For 45-year-old street beggar Hassan Mohamed Yusuf, that fear has turned into near-certainty. “In the beginning we saw this virus as just another form of the flu,” he said.Then three of his young children died after having a cough and high fever. As residents of a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict or drought, they had no access to coronavirus testing or proper care.At the same time, Yusuf said, the virus hurt his efforts to find money to treat his family as “we can’t get close enough” to people to beg.Early in the pandemic, Somalia’s government did attempt some measures to limit the spread of the virus, closing all schools and shutting down all domestic and international flights. Mobile phones rang with messages about the virus. But social distancing has long disappeared in the country’s streets, markets or restaurants. On Thursday, some 30,000 people crammed into a stadium in Mogadishu for a regional football match with no face masks or other anti-virus measures in sight.Mosques in the Muslim nation never faced restrictions, for fear of the reactions.“Our religion taught us hundreds of years ago that we should wash our hands, faces and even legs five times every day and our women should take face veils as they’re often weaker. So that’s the whole prevention of the disease, if it really exists,” said Abdulkadir Sheikh Mohamud, an imam in Mogadishu.“I left the matter to Allah to protect us,” said Ahmed Abdulle Ali, a shop owner in the capital. He attributed the rise in coughing during prayers to the changing of seasons.A more important protective factor is the relative youth of Somalia’s people, said Dr. Abdurahman Abdullahi Abdi Bilaal, who works in a clinic in the capital. More than 80% of the country’s population is under age 30.“The virus is here, absolutely, but the resilience of people is owing to age,” he said.It’s the lack of post-mortem investigations in the country that are allowing the true extent of the virus to go undetected, he said.The next challenge in Somalia is not simply obtaining COVID-19 vaccines but also persuading the population to accept them.That will take time, “just the same as what it took for our people to believe in the polio or measles vaccines,” a concerned Bilaal said.Hirabeh, in charge of Somalia’s virus response, agreed that “our people have little confidence in the vaccines,” saying that many Somalis hate the needles. He called for serious awareness campaigns to change minds.The logistics of any COVID-19 vaccine rollout are another major concern. Hirabeh said Somalia is expecting the first vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, but he worries that the country has no way to handle a vaccine like the Pfizer one that requires being kept at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius.“One that could be kept between minus 10 and minus 20 might suit the Third World like our country,” he said.
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The U.S. continues its run at the top of the list as the country with the most COVID-19 infections, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Early Sunday, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported the U.S. has 20.4 million of the world’s 84.3 million COVID infections. India, the country with the second-largest number of cases has about half as many cases as the U.S. with 10.3 million. Public health officials warn, however, that India’s caseload may be undercounted. The U.S. has recorded more than 350,000 deaths related to the coronavirus. Funeral homes across the country are finding it difficult to keep up with the demand for their services. A surge of cases in the coming weeks is expected, following the holiday season, public health officials say. The CDC Data Tracker says more than 13 million coronavirus vaccines have been distributed in the U.S. but only 4.2 million people have been inoculated. States have been overwhelmed by the process and have received little, if any, direction from the federal government about how best to deliver the vaccines to the public. Twenty-five prisons in California have individually recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus infections, according to a New York Times report, and none of the prisons with the high infection rate is scheduled to participate in the state’s prison vaccination program. Avenal, the prison with the most infections, has reported more than 3,500 cases, according to The Times. A spokeswoman for the court-appointed official who oversees California’s prison health told the newspaper that California was instead focusing its prison vaccination program on locations where “people are at significant risk of becoming infected or severely ill from the coronavirus.” Former CNN talk show host Larry King is undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in a hospital in Los Angeles. CNN said Saturday King has been in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for more than a week.
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