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A New Jersey restaurant that hosted a political gala put on by a New York Republican club was ordered temporarily closed Friday over potential violations of coronavirus guidelines.
Photos and video posted on Twitter showed dozens of maskless partiers at the New York Young Republican Club event Thursday night in Jersey City, some of whom tweeted taunting messages to Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Associated Press reports that among the attendees was US Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, and conservative political activist James O’Keefe.
Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement that the event at the Maritime Parc restaurant in Liberty State Park was “an egregious violation” of state coronavirus guidelines and that he was ordering the restaurant temporarily closed.
“In Jersey City we take Covid enforcement very seriously, and this event appears to be an egregious violation of the governor’s executive orders, including capacity limitations and mandatory mask wearing,” Fulop wrote. “This event blatantly disregards the protections put in place to safeguard the community from further contagion and has put Jersey City and countless others at serious risk.”
No one answered the phone at the restaurant when Associated Press tried to ring, and Gaetz didn’t respond to a text message Friday.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, has tightened restrictions on indoor gatherings recently in response to a surge in Covid-19 cases. Indoor dining is restricted to 25% of a restaurant’s capacity, and no indoor dining is allowed between 10pm and 5am. Indoor gatherings are limited to 10 people, with exceptions for events such as religious ceremonies.
Journalist Angela Giuffrida reports from Rome that the Italian government’s move to ban people travelling around the country during the Christmas period has been described as a “slap in the face” to families and their deeply rooted traditions. She reports;
Italy has imposed some of the harshest Christmas rules in Europe amid calls from some scientists for more sober festivities as it overcomes a severe second coronavirus wave and tries to avoid a third one.
The rules were signed on the day Italy registered its highest daily death toll – 993 – of the pandemic. At more than 58,000, the country has the most Covid-related deaths in mainland Europe and health officials say the tightening of restrictions is essential to prevent the sort of catastrophe the nation faced during the first wave in the spring.
People will be barred from travelling between regions from 20 December until 6 January except for work, health or emergency reasons. Furthermore, they will not be able to leave their towns on Christmas Day, St Stephen’s Day or New Year’s Day. This will prevent relatives who live in different areas from congregating on what is considered the most important occasion for family get togethers.
“Christmas is very important for Italians,” Riccardo Ciogli said outside Gatsby Cafe in Rome’s Esquilino district. “This is what we do – we get together with family, with friends, and we eat.” His friend Erica Salvatore, who works at the nearby federation of architects, is from the southern region of Molise, where she usually spends Christmas with her parents. “I will go and see them for a few days this weekend but I don’t know if I’ll be able to travel before 20 December,” she said. “In Italy our traditions are very important, you can’t just take them away.”
Giulia Della Fratte, who also lives in Rome, said: “I kind of understand the ban on inter-regional travel but not the one between towns. Rome, for example, is made up of lots of different municipalities that are maybe only 1km apart – so how will that work? It’s nonsense.”
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The mayor of San Francisco has said she and political leaders across the Bay Area are imposing new lockdown orders and business restrictions in the face of a surge in Covid-19 infections.
“What we’re seeing now is a spike unlike anything we’ve seen so far in the pandemic,” mayor London Breed, a first-term Democrat, said in announcing the lockdown at a live-streamed news conference.
The restrictions will start on Sunday.
“Today is a really tough day,” Breed said. “Our hospitalisation rates are rising locally, especially in our ICU right now. And just as importantly, hospitalisations are rising everywhere, so if we run out of beds, there won’t be another county that can help us.”
Still in the US, it’s worth noting that the states have a deadline of today to place orders for the Pfizer vaccine that is awaiting emergency federal authorisation. The orders are meant to pave the way for the distribution of the vaccine to specific locations across the country in the coming weeks.
The US has gone above 200,000 new cases the past two days. The US has grappled with more than 14m cases overall, and is now averaging more than 1,800 deaths a day over the past week.
More on US president elect Joe Biden’s address, from AP:
President-elect Joe Biden says the Trump administration’s plan for distributing an approved coronavirus vaccine to the public lacks important detail.
Biden said Friday that “there’s no detailed plan that we’ve seen” for how to get vaccines out of a container, into syringes and into people’s arms. He says more equitable distribution is also needed to get the vaccine into underserved communities, not just to drugstores and large retailers. Biden noted that Black people and Latinos are more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people are.
Biden says the “equity side” is an important part of the process, too.
He says he’s working on an “overall plan” and adds that’s why he asked government infectious-disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci to be part of Biden’s Covid-19 team and to serve as his chief medical adviser.
Fauci, the nation’s chief infectious disease expert, says there was never a question that he would accept Biden’s offer to serve. Fauci told NBC’s Today show “I said yes right on the spot” after Biden asked him to serve during a conversation on Thursday.
As the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci has served several presidents, Republican and Democratic. But during President Donald Trump’s administration, he has been largely sidelined as Trump gave rosy assessments of the virus and insisted it would fade away.
Fauci has urged rigorous mask-wearing and social distancing, practices that have not often been followed at the White House.
On Thursday, Biden said he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president.
“I told him I thought that was a good idea,” Fauci told NBC.
Thanks to Nadeem Badshah for bringing us all the latest Covid-19 news. Melissa Davey here with you now from Melbourne, taking over for Nadeem for the rest of our coverage.
Just a quick update from the US, where president-elect Joe Biden has urged Congress to act on the economy, warning of a “grim” winter ahead.
The latest jobs report “shows an economy that is stalling,” Biden said, adding, “It doesn’t have to stay that way”. Biden also called out the long-term unemployment rate – now including 2.3 million people.
“This is a dire jobs report,” he said, “We head into a very dark winter ahead.”
He described Americans as being “in trouble through no fault of their own … What they need, they need us to understand, we’re in a crisis … We need the Congress to act, and act now.”
Biden also said 12 million Americans stand to lose their unemployment benefits if Congress and President Donald Trump do not act – “Merry Christmas,” he said.
GP surgeries and primary care networks in England have been told to be ready to start running Covid-19 vaccination centres by 14 December.
A letter sent to all surgeries and primary care leads from NHS England and NHS Improvement said the “scale and complexity” of the vaccination programme would make it “one of the greatest challenges the NHS has ever faced”.
It is crucial we start to activate local vaccination services to allow priority patient cohorts to start accessing the vaccine.”
Each designated vaccination site must be ready to deliver 975 doses of the vaccine in the week beginning 14 December – the number of doses in each of the Pfizer vaccine’s packs.
In Australia, the state of Victoria, which successfully managed to suppress a second wave of the virus, has recorded its 36th day in a row of no new cases of the virus.
There are also no active cases. The state peaked at more than 700 new cases in one day in August, and more than 800 Covid deaths have been recorded in the state since the pandemic began.
The state will also reopen to international arrivals from Monday, though they will first have to spend 14 days in mandatory hotel quarantine.
The state government says it has significantly overhauled and improved the programme, since it was behind the state’s second wave.
Meanwhile in New South Wales, the health department will examine the self-isolation process of international airline crews after it was revealed they were the probable source of a local coronavirus infection.
After the state recorded more than 20 consecutive days of no community cases, last week a new case was identified. On Thursday health authorities revealed that a woman had become sick after working at a quarantine hotel in Darling Harbour.
Genomic testing on the new case showed it was a strain from the United States, likely acquired from airline crew staying at the Novotel. It prompted the NSW health minister, Brad Hazzard, to say that the allowance for airline staff to self-isolate may be a weakness in the system. Testing of the woman’s close contacts and other staff at the hotel is continuing.
Mexico is seeing “the beginning of the end” of the coronavirus pandemic with the first doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, which should start arriving in the next few weeks and could continue coming for a year, the foreign ministry said.
French health authorities reported 11,221 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, down from 12,696 on Thursday. The total number of infections rose to 2.29 million. France also reported 627 new deaths from coronavirus, including 282 in hospitals, compared with 324 in hospitals on Thursday.
The World Health Organisation has warned that progress on Covid-19 vaccines had led to an increasing perception the pandemic has come to an end. Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic still had a long way to run and that decisions made by citizens and governments would ultimately determine when the pandemic would ultimately end.
Brazil reported 46,884 additional cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 694 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said.
The South American country has now registered 6,533,968 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 175,964, according to ministry data.
Bahrain has become the second country to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The Gulf Arab state had also approved Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine in November for use by frontline workers.
Greek officials have been accused of releasing misleading Covid-19 data. Figures released by the government nightly have been slammed for not reflecting the truth after reports of mismanagement by the national public health organisation, EODY.
Sweden is to prioritise around 600,000 elderly nursing home residents, as well as staff and relatives for Covid vaccines. Head of the country’s public health agency, Johan Carlson, said she expected vaccinations to begin in the first quarter of 2021.
Moderna Inc will be able to produce 500m doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, according to the biotechnology company’s chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel.
Brazil reported 46,884 additional cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, and 694 deaths from Covid-19, the country’s health ministry said.
The South American country has now registered 6,533,968 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 175,964, according to ministry data.
High blood sugar increases the risk of dying for Covid-19 patients even if they do not have diabetes, according to a study.
Out of 11,000 coronavirus patients in Spain, none were critically ill when they got to the hospital.
But researchers found those who arrived with above-normal blood sugar levels had higher odds of dying there regardless of whether they were diabetic.
Overall, 20% of the patients died while hospitalised, including 16% of individuals with blood sugar below 140 milligrams per deciliter at admission, 34% of those with levels of 140 to 180 mg/dL, and 41% of patients with levels above 180 mg/dL.
After taking age and medical conditions into account, patients with the highest levels were 50% more likely to die in the hospital than patients with the lowest levels.
People with elevated blood sugar were also at higher risk for needing intensive care and mechanical breathing assistance.
In a report published in Annals of Medicine, the researchers say prompt control of blood sugar should be mandatory in the management of patients hospitalised with Covid-19, regardless of whether they have diabetes.
The World Health Organization hopes to have half a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines available for distribution by the global COVAX initiative in the first quarter of 2021, its chief scientist said.
To date 189 countries have joined the COVAX programme, which is backed by the WHO and seeks to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines. The United States is not among them, having secured bilateral deals.
The initial COVAX plan is to vaccinate the 20% of populations at highest risk, including health workers and people aged over 65.
The goal is to get at least 2 billion doses by end of 2021 which will be enough to vaccinate 20% of the populations of countries that are part of COVAX,” chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told a Geneva news conference.
This would be enough to “bring to an end the acute phase of the pandemic” by reducing mortality and the impact on health systems, she said.
“Our goal, our hope is that in the first quarter of 2021 that we would have about half a billion of doses available to be distributed across the countries, in a fair manner,” Swaminathan said.
So countries can start expecting doses toward the end of the first quarter of 2021. A few countries may start earlier, it’s likely, possible, that we may have some learnings by going early into a few countries,” she said.
“But then the majority, the bulk of the tranches would probably start moving out in the second quarter of 2021.”
World Health Organization leaders have warned vaccines do not mean the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
‘Vaccines do not equal zero Covid’ warns WHO – video
A person dressed as Samichlaus (Swiss Santa) interacts with children via video at a studio of the St. Nikolausgesellschaft Zurich, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Zurich, Switzerland. Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
US President-elect Joe Biden said Friday’s “grim” jobs report showed the economic recovery was stalling and warned the “dark winter” ahead would exacerbate the pain unless the US Congress passed a coronavirus relief bill immediately.
Biden said in a statement:
The situation requires urgent action. Americans need help and they need it now.”
A government report earlier in the day showed the labour market slowing in November amid a surge of Covid-19 cases.
Biden, the Democratic former vice-president, offered support for an emerging bipartisan package of around $908bn that has drawn tentative support from members of both parties in Congress.
But he said the bill would be “just the start” and vowed to press for additional relief once he takes office in January.
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