Covid-19 Live Updates: First Case of Brazil-Based Virus Variant Found in U.S. – The New York Times

Heres what you need to know:The Brazil P.1 variant is thought to be more contagious but it is unclear if it causes more severe illness.Credit...Jim Mone/Associated Press

A case of a more contagious coronavirus variant first found in Brazil has been confirmed in Minnesota, the states department of health said in a statement on Monday. It is the first confirmed case of the variant in the United States.

The case was identified in a Minnesota resident who had recently traveled to Brazil, the department said, which could suggest that the variant may not yet be widely circulating.

It was only a matter of time before the variant was detected in the United States, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a Covid adviser to President Biden. With the world travel that you have, and the degree of transmissibility efficiency, its not surprising, he said.

The variant, known as B.1.1.28.1 or P.1, shares many mutations with one first identified in South Africa. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines still protect from the variant circulating in South Africa, the companies have said, but they are slightly less effective. They are expected to perform similarly against the variant identified in Brazil.

The variant identified in Britain is more transmissible, but just as susceptible to vaccines as the original form of the virus. But the variants in Brazil and South Africa have additional mutations that may help elude the vaccines. The amount of concern that I have between the U.K. variant, and the South African/Brazilian is much, much different, Dr. Fauci said.

The variant identified in Britain has been confirmed in 22 states, and the variant found in South Africa has not yet been confirmed in the United States.

The P.1 variant is also thought to be more contagious but it is unclear if it causes more severe illness. The Minnesota Department of Health identified it through its variant surveillance program, which collects 50 random samples from laboratories in the state each week. Minnesota has one of the lowest daily caseloads relative to its population in the country, following a surge in the fall.

The person with the confirmed case is a resident of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, the department said. The patient became ill during the first week of January and the specimen was collected Jan. 9, it said.

Investigators from the health department had spoken with the person after the test was positive for Covid-19, and the person had traveled to Brazil before becoming ill. The person was told to isolate and have household members quarantine. Health officials are conducting additional interviews with the person to learn more about the illness, travel and close contacts.

The United States is flying blind, scientists have warned, as the country navigates the spread of the new variants without a large-scale, nationwide system for checking virus genomes for new mutations. Instead, the work of discovering the variants has fallen to a patchwork of academic, state and commercial laboratories.

Scientists say that a national surveillance program would be able to determine just how widespread the new variant is and help contain emerging hot spots, extending the crucial window of time in which vulnerable people across the country could get vaccinated.

The daily U.S. coronavirus caseload and number of hospitalized patients have fallen recent days, but the introduction of the variants into the country threatens to undermine that progress. The weekly average of new cases per day in the United States was down 33 percent on Sunday since two weeks prior, as states like California start to get a hold on their outbreaks.

California officials on Monday announced that they were lifting severe coronavirus restrictions on large portions of the state, allowing outdoor dining and personal care businesses to resume limited operations.

But the virus has for weeks been raging in Arizona, as well as South Carolina and Rhode Island. New York now has the fifth-worst outbreak in the country, though daily deaths from the virus are far from the levels seen there in the spring.

President Bidens press secretary said on Monday that he would extend the Trump administrations ban on travel by noncitizens into the United States from Brazil, along with similar restrictions on Britain and 27 other European countries, where other variants have been identified. It also added South Africa to the list.

Concern over the variants spread led to discussions in Europe of restricting nonessential travel. Proposing the new restrictions, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, tweeted that the new variants had led us to take difficult but necessary decisions.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to announce an extension and tightening of lockdown rules in England this week amid growing concern.

Experts point to Britain as a model for what the U.S. could do to monitor the variants. British researchers sequence the genome that is, the complete genetic material in a coronavirus from up to 10 percent of new positive samples.

Even if the U.S. sequenced just 1 percent of genomes from across the country, or about 2,000 new samples a day, that would shine a bright light on the new variant, as well as other variants that may emerge.

Hours after California public health officials abruptly lifted a strict order to stay at home that had been in place for weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom defended the decision, saying that the states models showed pressure on intensive care units easing significantly in the next month.

By Feb. 21, the state reported, intensive care unit capacity is projected to reach 30.3 percent across California, with 33.3 percent of intensive care unit space available in Southern California, 22.3 percent in the San Joaquin Valley and 25 percent in the Bay Area.

State officials, Mr. Newsom said, rushed to lift restrictions as quickly as possible once the numbers indicated it would be safe.

We did a lot of comprehensive outreach, and were pleased to move in this direction, he said in a news conference on Monday.

He described accusations that he was making pandemic response decisions based on political considerations as complete, utter nonsense.

The governor has faced mounting political pressure from a recall effort, and experts have said that the regional reopenings and the vaccination effort are crucial tests for his administration.

Mr. Newsom highlighted that Californias overall positivity rate recently compared favorably to those of Texas and Arizona. And he emphasized that reporting delays had contributed to what he described as misconceptions about the speed of Californias vaccine rollout.

Were just getting going, Mr. Newsom said. California, he said, is like a massive ship: It takes a little time to shift course, but when it shifts course, it builds tremendous momentum.

The governor also clarified the states vaccine prioritization: Along with health care workers and anyone 65 and older, the state will prioritize emergency medical workers, food and agricultural workers, and teachers and other school staff.

After that, he said, the state will transition to age-based eligibility, and will focus on getting vaccines to communities suffering disproportionately.

But the problem, experts have said in recent weeks, is that the implementation of such detailed plans rests on county public health departments, and the details have differed community by community.

On Monday morning, California officials announced that they were lifting severe coronavirus restrictions on huge swaths of the state. The decision would allow restaurants in those areas to reopen for outdoor dining, and would let hair salons and other personal care businesses resume limited operations.

However, local officials can still opt to keep restrictions in place, based on conditions in individual communities.

Effective immediately, state officials said, they were ending regional stay-at-home orders, which banned gatherings of any size and required residents to stay home except for essential work. The orders came into force when intensive-care units in the region were projected to become dangerously full.

Such orders had been in effect for Southern California, a huge region encompassing Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, as well as for the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area. Counties in those regions will now return to a tiered system of rules tied to the prevalence of the virus in each county.

The news came on the heels of a weekend of mixed signals from the state about its strategy to curb the rampant spread of the virus.

While Californias overall case numbers have been declining, hospitals in Southern California are still overwhelmed, and experts worry that new variants of the virus including one that researchers recently found in more than half of test samples in Los Angeles could threaten progress.

In the Bay Area, available intensive care capacity had risen to 23.4 percent as of Sunday, according to the state. The stay-at-home order for the region was triggered when the figure fell below 15 percent.

The Sacramento region has just 11.9 percent of its intensive care capacity free, but it was allowed to exit its strict regional order more than a week ago.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Saturday that officials in the region were hopeful that the Bay Area order would be lifted soon, but the states department of public health said on Sunday that, based on its projections, the region was not eligible.

Mr. Newsom has repeatedly said that the states reopening would be guided by transparent data. But The Associated Press reported that Mr. Newsoms administration has refused to disclose key figures.

Even after President Biden announced a national strategy for controlling the pandemic, which experts have said was desperately needed, there are still hurdles in the national vaccination program. In California, those hurdles have contributed to continuing chaos, with eligibility rules differing county by county.

The state set up a promised website to help people find vaccination appointments. But its still described as a pilot site.

President Biden, under pressure from an anxious public to speed up the pace of Covid-19 vaccinations, said Monday that he is now aiming for the United States to administer 1.5 million doses a day a goal that the nation already appears on track to meet.

The president made his comments just hours after he banned travel by noncitizens into the United States from South Africa because of concern about a coronavirus variant spreading in that country, and moved to extend similar bans imposed by his predecessor on travel from Brazil, Britain and 27 European countries. Those bans had been set to expire on Tuesday.

Mr. Biden has vowed to get 100 million Covid-19 shots in the arms of the American people by his 100th day in office. Because two doses are required, and some Americans have already been vaccinated, his promise would cover about 67 million Americans. To realize it, the United States would have to administer one million shots a day.

The pace of vaccinations is already picking up, and the United States already seems to be vaccinating well over a million people per day, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The current average is about 1.2 million over the past six days.

With frustration rising across the country over vaccine supply shortages and canceled appointments, Mr. Biden has drawn criticism for not setting his sights higher. Last week, he expressed exasperation Cmon, man! at a reporter who suggested his 100 million shot promise was not ambitious enough. On Monday, he appeared to revise it.

I think that with the grace of God and good will of a neighbor and creek not rising, we may get it to 1.5 million a day rather than one million a day, the president said. But we have to meet that goal of one million a day.

Mr. Bidens comments came as the United States has recorded 25 million coronavirus cases a staggering tally that the nation reached Saturday afternoon, according to a New York Times database. That works out to about one in every 13 people in the country, or about 7.6 percent of the population a number that experts say is almost surely lower than the true number of infections.

The move comes as officials in the new Biden administration are trying to get their hands around a fast-changing pandemic, with public health officials racing to vaccinate the public and to expand the supply of vaccine as more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the governments leading infectious disease specialist, said at the White House last week that were following very carefully the variant of the virus in South Africa because it appears to be more highly contagious.

The variant first discovered in South Africa has not yet reached the United States, but it has been reported in more than two dozen countries.

The first U.S. case of the variant found in Brazil was confirmed in Minnesota, health officials there said on Monday. The variant, known as B.1.1.28.1 or P.1, shares many mutations with the one first identified in South Africa.

On Monday, Moderna said its vaccine was effective against new variants of the coronavirus that have emerged in Britain and South Africa. But the immune response is slightly weaker against the variant discovered in South Africa, and so the company is developing a new form of the vaccine that could be used as a booster shot against it.

And Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, offered a blunt assessment of the vaccination campaign on Sunday, predicting that supply would not increase until late March.

Federal health officials and corporate executives agree that it will be impossible to increase the immediate supply of vaccines before April because of a lack of manufacturing capacity. A third vaccine maker, Johnson & Johnson, is expected to report the results of its clinical trial soon; if approved, that vaccine would also help shore up production.

As the coronavirus assumes contagious new forms around the world, two drug makers reported on Monday that their vaccines, while still effective, offer less protection against one variant. That new information is causing the drug makers to begin revising plans to turn back an evolving pathogen that has killed more than two million people.

The news from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech underscored a realization by scientists that the virus is changing more quickly than once thought, and may well continue to develop in ways that help it elude the vaccines being deployed worldwide.

The announcements arrived even as President Biden is banning travel to the United States from South Africa, in hopes of stanching the spread of one variant. And Merck, a leading drug company, on Monday abandoned two experimental coronavirus vaccines altogether, saying they did not produce a strong enough immune response against the original version of the virus.

Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech both said their vaccines were effective against new variants of the coronavirus discovered in Britain and South Africa. But they are slightly less protective against the variant in South Africa, which may be more adept at dodging antibodies in the bloodstream.

The vaccines are the only ones authorized for emergency use in the United States.

As a precaution, Moderna has begun developing a new form of its vaccine that could be used as a booster shot against the variant in South Africa. Were doing it today to be ahead of the curve, should we need to, Dr. Tal Zaks, Modernas chief medical officer, said in an interview. I think of it as an insurance policy.

Moderna said it also planned to begin testing whether giving patients a third shot of its original vaccine as a booster could help fend off newly emerging forms of the virus.

Dr. Ugur Sahin, the chief executive of BioNTech, said in an interview on Monday that his company was talking to regulators around the world about what types of clinical trials and safety reviews would be required to authorize a new version of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that would be better able to head off the variant in South Africa.

Studies showing decreased levels of antibodies against a new variant do not mean a vaccine is proportionately less effective, Dr. Sahin said.

BioNTech could develop an adjusted vaccine against the variants in about six weeks, he said. The Food and Drug Administration has not commented on what its policy will be for authorizing vaccines that have been updated to work better against new variants.

But some scientists said that the adjusted vaccines should not have to go through the same level of scrutiny, including extensive clinical trials, that the original versions did. The influenza vaccine is updated each year to account for new strains without an extensive approval process.

The whole point of this is a rapid response to an emerging situation, said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.

Dr. Sahin said a similar booster shot eventually might be necessary to stop Covid-19. The vaccines reduced efficacy may also mean that more people would need to get the shots before the population achieves herd immunity.

Scientists had predicted that the coronavirus would evolve and might acquire new mutations that would thwart vaccines, but few researchers expected it to happen so soon. Part of the problem is the sheer ubiquity of the pathogen.

Merck announced on Monday that it was abandoning a pair of Covid-19 vaccines in clinical trials.

The news came as a disappointment at a time when the United States and other countries are struggling to accelerate their sluggish vaccination campaigns and new coronavirus variants threaten to bring surges over the next few months.

The two projects are the second and third vaccines to be abandoned in clinical trials. The University of Queensland in Australia abandoned its own effort in December. Sanofi and other vaccine makers have paused some projects after getting disappointing initial results but are now regrouping to move forward.

Merck was slower than other companies to get into the Covid-19 vaccine race. In June, it acquired the Austrian firm Themis Bioscience to develop a vaccine originally designed at Institut Pasteur, based on a weakened measles virus. Researchers began a Phase 1 trial in August. In a second effort, Merck partnered with IAVI, a nonprofit scientific organization that develops vaccines and treatments, on another vaccine. For that one, they used the same design that they successfully employed to make a vaccine for Ebola.

Merck and IAVI were awarded $38 million for their vaccine research, but neither of Mercks projects earned the lavish support that Operation Warp Speed showered on other efforts from companies such as Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. In its announcement, Merck said that both vaccines looked safe in early clinical trials. But neither produced a strong response from the immune system. They decided that it was not worth going forward with large-scale trials that would demonstrate whether the vaccines protected people from Covid-19.

We are grateful to our collaborators who worked with us on these vaccine candidates and to the volunteers in the trials, Dr. Dean Y. Li, the president of Merck Research Laboratories, said in a statement.

Merck will instead focus its Covid-19 efforts on an experimental antiviral drug known as molnupiravir, in partnership with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Originally designed for influenza, it has shown promising effects in studies on animals and in early clinical trials. The trial is set to finish by May, although preliminary results could come out as early as March.

IAVI said it would continue searching for Covid-19 vaccines. Our scientists will continue to evaluate other candidates to see if other routes of administration or changes to the construct could lead to improved immune response, said Karie Youngdahl, senior director and head of global communications at IAVI.

President Biden will ban travel by noncitizens into the United States from South Africa because of concern about a coronavirus variant spreading in that country, and will extend similar bans imposed by his predecessor on travel from Brazil, 27 European countries and Britain, his press secretary said on Monday.

The move comes as officials in the new Biden administration are trying to get their hands around a fast-changing pandemic, with public health officials racing to vaccinate the public and to expand the supply of vaccine as more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread.

Mr. Bidens travel ban is a presidential proclamation, not an executive order; typically, proclamations govern the acts of individuals, while executive orders are directives to federal agencies. It will go into effect Saturday and apply to non-U.S. citizens who have spent time in South Africa in the last 14 days. The new policy, which was earlier reported by Reuters, will not affect U.S. citizens or permanent residents, officials said.

On his last full day in office, President Donald Trump tried to eliminate the Covid-19-related ban on travel from Brazil, Britain and much of Europe, saying it was no longer necessary. Jen Psaki, now the White House press secretary, said at the time that ending the ban was the wrong thing to do; on Monday, she announced during her regular briefing that it would remain intact.

With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variants spreading, this isnt the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel, she said.

Ms. Psaki also said the Biden administration intended to hold regular public health briefings three times a week, beginning on Wednesday. She said Mr. Biden would be briefed regularly on the pandemic, adding, I suspect far more regularly than the past president.

The first confirmed case of the Brazilian variant in the United States has been identified in Minnesota, the states health department said on Monday. It was found in a Minnesota resident who had recently traveled to Brazil.

The variant now spreading in South Africa has not yet reached the United States, but it has been reported in more than two dozen countries.

In addition to the travel bans, Mr. Biden issued an executive order last week requiring that all international travelers present negative coronavirus tests before leaving for the United States. The move extended a requirement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was issued by the Trump administration but set to expire on Tuesday.

A White House official said Sunday that the C.D.C. would not issue waivers from that policy as some airlines had requested.

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced on Monday that the openings of planned mass coronavirus vaccination sites at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field would be postponed because of the low supply of doses available.

We want to get those to be full-blown, 24-hour operations, Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference, but we dont have the vaccine.

The site at Citi Field had been set to open this week, while plans for the one in the Bronx were still being developed. Another site at the Empire Outlets on Staten Island was initially scheduled to open last week, but will also be postponed, the mayor said.

The city had a total of 19,032 first doses in inventory on Monday morning, Mr. de Blasio said, and expected to receive just under 108,000 doses this week. But he continued to warn that figure was not nearly enough to keep up with the pace at which New Yorkers were being inoculated: If the supply was greater, the mayor said, New York City would be on pace to administer roughly 500,000 doses per week.

Instead, he said many inoculation appointments would continue to be canceled or rescheduled as they were last week.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the Biden administration was reviewing state and local officials capacity to administer vaccines as it considered how to bolster the vaccination effort. She noted that mass vaccination sites, like football fields, could be quite efficient.

Infrastructure is pivotal, she said. Its not just about the science.

Some public health experts have worried that the limited supply could undermine goals of state and city officials to prioritize communities hard hit by the virus Black and Latino people and low-income New Yorkers in the vaccine rollout.

The state has not released demographic information on the distribution, but Mr. de Blasio said on Monday that data would come this week, adding that its part of making sure that we act to address the disparities that have pervaded the Covid experience.

The crunch in supply came as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that a statewide spike in cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks, fueled by holiday gatherings, appeared to be ebbing.

While 46 ZIP codes in New York City have seven-day average positive test rates of over 10 percent, according to city data on Monday, and other areas like Long Island are still struggling with higher hospitalization rates, Mr. Cuomo said there was a downward trend in cases statewide. He said on Monday there were 8,730 hospitalizations in New York, down from more than 9,000 more than a week ago.

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Covid-19 Live Updates: First Case of Brazil-Based Virus Variant Found in U.S. - The New York Times