The Latest: WHO: Vaccine program will get 2 billion doses
GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization says its program to help get COVID-19 vaccines to all countries in need, whether rich or poor, has gained access to nearly 2 billion doses of several vaccine candidates.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says the agreements mean that some 190 countries and economies participating in the COVAX program will have access to vaccines “during the first half of next year.”
The arrangements bring together pharmaceutical makers including AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and the Serum Institute of India.
He says the message is “vaccines will complement, not replace, the existing effective tools we have for suppressing transmission and saving lives.”
___
THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:
— VP Pence, surgeon general get COVID-19 vaccines at White House
— The FDA plans to approve second vaccine after panel endorsement
— WHO: International vaccine program will get 2 billion doses
— Snags on U.S. coronavirus relief package may force weekend sessions
— 1 in 5 prisoners in US has had cornavirus, 1,700 have died
___
Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
___
HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
BERLIN — The German government says the country faces difficult months ahead, despite the upcoming arrival of a coronavirus vaccine.
Official figures Friday show 33,777 newly confirmed cases of coronavirus and 813 additional deaths in the past day.
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert says the expected regulatory approval of a vaccine “naturally gives us hope, but obviously it won’t solve the problem.”
He says January and February will be the “hardest that we have in this pandemic.”
Germany had contained the coronavirus early in the pandemic before a recent surge. There have been 1.4 million confirmed cases (12th highest in the world) and more than 25,000 confirmed deaths (14th), according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
___
BERN — The Swiss government is ordering the closure of restaurants, bars, cultural venues and sports facilities next week because of increasing coronavirus cases.
The government says the closures, which start Tuesday, are necessary as “hospitals and health care workers have been under extreme pressure for weeks and the festive period increases the risk of an even more rapid rise in cases.”
The 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in Switzerland has risen over the past two weeks from 43 cases per 100,000 people on Dec. 3 to 50 on Thursday.
The government is restricting the number of people who can be in stores, which must close after 7 p.m. and on Sundays and public holidays.
The federal government left it to Switzerland’s 26 cantons (states) to decide whether to close ski facilities. Their operation has raised concerns in some of Switzerland’s neighboring countries.
___
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia’s Prime Minister Igor Matovic has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The announcement Friday came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron tested positive. Both leaders attended an EU summit in Brussels last week.
The prime minister’s office says Matovic was tested on Thursday and has cancelled all his events. Members of Matovic’s coalition government are in quarantine after he led the government’s last session on Wednesday.
Slovakia is imposing an around the clock curfew on Saturday to response to a recent surge of coronavirus infections, which reached a record 3,991 cases on Thursday.
The government has urged people to isolate at least seven days or get tested before they see relatives during Christmas holidays.
The country of 5.4 million had 146,124 confirmed cases with 1,440 confirmed deaths.
___
WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence is getting vaccinated for the coronavirus during a White House event aimed at convincing skeptical Americans the vaccines are safe.
Pence’s wife, Karen, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also got the vaccine on Friday. The pandemic enters it 10th month and has killed more than 310,000 people in the United States.
Pence rolled up his sleeve, received the shot and told the medical personnel “That’s great. Great job.”
He says with hospitalizations rising, the nation still has a way to go to get past the pandemic. He says the second vaccine, made by Moderna, is expected to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration later today.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also are going to be vaccinated in public. It’s unclear when President Donald Trump will be administered the shot.
Since losing the election, Trump has been relatively quiet about the rollout of the vaccines even though he has claimed credit for helping oversee the speedy development and deployment of the vaccine. Pence toured a vaccine production facility earlier this week.
___
WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says shipments of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine will begin this weekend if the FDA grants emergency use authorization as expected on Friday.
“Trucks will roll, planes will fly this weekend, 5.9 million doses of Moderna vaccine allocated for next week,” Azar told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday.
Azar says the Moderna vaccine is “shockingly effective” and he expected to get vaccinated next week, if the White House doctor cleared him to do so. Azar’s wife has tested positive for the coronavirus and he is in quarantine.
Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams are getting vaccinated on live TV Friday morning.
___
WASHINGTON — The congressional negotiators are working on a must-pass, almost $1 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package.
A weekend session appears necessary as it hits some snags, and a top lawmaker warned that a government shutdown this weekend can’t be ruled out. All sides appear hopeful the wrangling won’t derail the legislation.
The central elements of the hard-fought aid compromise appear in place: more than $300 billion in aid to businesses; a $300-per-week bonus federal jobless benefit and renewal of soon-to-expire state benefits; $600 direct payments to individuals; vaccine distribution funds; and money for renters, schools, the Postal Service and people needing food aid.
___
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times higher than the general population.
In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.
As the pandemic enters its 10th month — and as the first Americans begin to receive a long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine — at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected and more than 1,700 have died.
New cases in prisons this week reached their highest level since testing began in the spring, far outstripping previous peaks in April and August.
___
BERLIN — Germany’s health minister urged for patience as the country prepares to start vaccinating people against COVID-19, saying those most at risk should be immunized first.
Jens Spahn says people in nursing homes would be the first to receive shots on Dec. 27, when Germany expects to roll out the vaccine. About half of all Germany’s nearly 25,000 COVID-19 deaths were in people over 80 years of age, many in nursing homes.
Medical staff working in critical care are next in line. Others, including police officers and teachers, won’t receive the vaccine until later.
Spahn says Germany, a country of 83 million, expects to receive 11 to 13 million vaccine doses during the first quarter of 2021. That number may rise if more vaccines are approved by regulators.
___
MADRID — Spain’s health minster says the country will begin vaccinating for COVID-19 on Dec. 27.
Salvador Illa says the Pfizer vaccines are due to arrive in Spain on Dec. 26. He didn’t say how many doses Spain will receive initially. The country has said it will receive 140 million doses overall.
Spain says it hopes to vaccinate 2.5 million people in the first three months of 2021, starting with elderly people and health workers.
After declining substantially in recent weeks, Spain’s infections numbers are starting to rise again although they are still among the lowest in the European Union.
Illa says the “situation is worrying” and reiterated the need to abide by restrictions over Christmas.
____
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norway says it will receive around 50,000 coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech between Christmas and New Year.
The Norwegian government says it will receive a first batch of 10,000 vaccines on Dec. 26 and not Dec. 24 as first announced.
The European Medicines Agency has moved up the assessment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Dec. 21 and non-European Union member Norway is synchronizing the rollout with the rest of the bloc.
___
BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia’s state television says health authorities have given the go-ahead to import the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
It says the Medicines and Medical Devices Agency of Serbia has approved the vaccine’s importation after reviewing the documentation from the U.S. and German companies.
Health Minister Zlatibor Loncar says an initial 5,000 doses will start arriving early next week and that vaccination will begin in nursing homes.
President Aleksandar Vucic has said Serbia ordered 340,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The Balkan country has also received 20 doses of the Russian vaccine for testing. Officials have said citizens can chose which vaccine to receive.
Serbia has faced soaring infections with thousands of new cases daily placing a huge burden on the country’s health system.
___
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says the country plans to begin vaccinating 35,000 health care workers on Dec. 27 or 28, under an expected European Union plan to begin delivering vaccines to its member states.
Orban says vaccinations will begin with health workers in the capital Budapest, followed by medics in regional hospitals. He says the vaccination will be free and voluntary and urged health care workers to be vaccinated.
The country’s mass vaccination program is expected to begin early next year.
Hungary recorded 4,428 coronavirus infections in the past day and 187 deaths. That brings the total number of infections in the nation of nearly 10 million people to nearly 296,000 confirmed deaths and 7,725 confirmed deaths.
___
ZAGREB, Croatia — Croatia has banned travel between various parts of the country ahead of Christmas and New Years in a bid to curb down soaring coronavirus infections.
Authorities say from Dec. 23 to Jan. 8 only essential services employees, such as health workers and road maintenance crews, will be allowed to move from one region to another. Special permits will be issued in exceptional cases.
Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic says the virus situation doesn’t allow for any easing of measures for the upcoming holidays. Croatia has reported thousands of new coronavirus infections daily for weeks, which has overwhelmed the country’s health system.
____
BRUSSELS — More than 10,000 elderly people living in Belgian rest homes have died from COVID-19 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Yves Van Laethem, a spokesman at Belgium’s coronavirus crisis center, says the death of 10,270 rest home residents accounts for 56 percent of all the victims.
In a report published last month, Amnesty International said Belgian authorities “abandoned” thousands of elderly people who died in nursing homes and did not seek hospital treatment for many who were infected, violating their human rights.
One of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, Belgium has reported more than 618,000 confirmed virus cases and 18,371 confirmed deaths linked to the coronavirus.
During the first wave of the epidemic last spring, the European nation of 11.5 million people recorded a majority of its COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes. Van Laethem says the situation has improved, but remains “precarious and difficult.”
___
LONDON — Paul McCartney says he’s keen to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
In an interview Friday with the BBC, the ex-Beatle also downplayed the likelihood he’d go on tour next year to support his latest album released this week, “McCartney III,” saying it depends on the successful of virus countermeasures.
When asked if he would get a coronavirus vaccine, the 78-year-old McCartney said, “Yeah, I will yeah. And I’d like to encourage people to get it too, because with this it’s much more serious, and yeah, if I’m allowed to get it, I will.”
He says he’d love to play at Britain’s Glastonbury music festival in 2021, though he was skeptical organizers could stage it, noting it would likely involve 100,000 people closely packed together, with no masks. “You know, talk about a super spreader,” he says.
___
WASHINGTON — The justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are being provided with doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
That is according to a letter by Capitol doctor Brian Monahan. It says the court, along with Congress and executive branch agencies, are being given a limited supply of doses “for continuity of government operations.”
The doses are being provided under a directive by President Donald Trump that established continuity of government as a reason for vaccine prioritization. The Supreme Court and the other branches of government are supposed to be treated “in parallel.”
____
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has reported 1,062 new cases of coronavirus infections, its third straight day above 1,000 as the virus continues to increase in Seoul where hospital beds are in short supply.
The cases reported Friday brought the national confirmed caseload to 47,515. There have been 645 confirmed deaths from COVID-19.
More than 760 of the new cases were in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, where health workers are struggling to stem transmissions.
Health officials have raised alarm about a looming shortage in hospital beds and intensive care units.
The viral resurgence has put pressure on the government to raise social distancing restrictions to maximum levels, something policymakers have resisted for weeks out of economic concerns.
___
