USA TODAY is keeping track of the news surrounding COVID-19 as a pair of vaccines join the U.S. fight against a virus that has killed nearly 375,000 Americans since the first reported fatality in February. Keep refreshing this page for the latest updates surrounding the coronavirus, including who is getting the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, as well as other top news from across the USA TODAY Network. Sign up for our Coronavirus Watch newsletter for updates directly to your inbox, join our Facebook group or scroll through our in-depth answers to reader questions for everything you need to know about the coronavirus.
In the headlines:
► The attending physician for Congress said Sunday all elected officials and their staff were potentially exposed to someone infected with COVID-19 while the U.S. Capitol was locked down during an armed incursion by pro-Trump rioters. Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann also tweeted Sunday that he had tested positive for the virus after coming into contact with another member of Congress.
► Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest public school system, will reopen its doors Monday to 6,000 prekindergarten and special education students for the first time since March 2020.
► More than 27,000 new COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. in the first 10 days of 2021, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
► About 2 million people have been vaccinated against coronavirus in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, anger and frustration are surging across the U.S. as the federal government leaves states to handle the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
► The incoming Biden administration announced a plan Friday to prioritize the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible.
? Today's numbers: The U.S. has more than 22.3 million confirmed coronavirus cases and 374,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: More than90.2 million cases and 1.9 million deaths.
'There's a lot of anger': Vaccine rollout leaves people scrambling to find shots
Through Friday, states had received 22.1 million doses of the vaccines. Of those, about 6.7 million – less than one-third – had been administered.
Federal officials point to a host of reasons for the lag in vaccine distributions, including vaccination systems still gearing up, federal funding that hasn't yet been disbursed to states and a requirement that states set aside vaccines for long-term-care facilities.
Add to that two holidays, bad weather in some areas and the need to train medical professionals to prepare and administer two vaccines that require special storage and handling.
A hodgepodge of rules and procedures across the country adds to the confusion. In Florida, for example, seniors 65 and older are in the first phase of vaccine distribution. In Texas, seniors and medically fragile people are in the second phase. In New York, they are in the third phase. Read more here.
– Andrea Ball
How to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation
Top scientists have created an online guide to arm people with scientific facts and practical tips to fight lies, hoaxes and conspiracy theories that are threatening public trust in the COVID-19 vaccines.
More than two dozen leading experts in vaccine psychology, education and virology say they volunteered contributions to The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook to take on misinformation and propaganda spread by anti-vaccination activists that could lower vaccination rates and cause needless deaths.
Even as coronavirus cases surge and hospitals overflow with critically ill patients, opposition to the vaccines is resonating, not just with fringe communities, but with swaths of mainstream America. Studies show that belief in COVID-19 falsehoods can dissuade people from getting the vaccine.
– Jessica Guynn
There are 2 major COVID-19 variants. Should you be worried?
Two major variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 have emerged in recent weeks, but neither is more dangerous than the virus that has circulated for the last year, experts say, and available vaccines should remain effective.
Viral mutations cause concerns because they can make tests, treatments and vaccines ineffective, and change the properties of a disease, making it more or less transmissible and dangerous.
The new variants appear to be pushing out older ones, raising worries about whether the changes will affect the course of disease or efforts to rein it in. So far, though, the new variants do not seem to be a cause for huge concern.
In more than a year of circulation, the virus has mutated many times, but only these most two recent variants – one that appeared first in the United Kingdom and the other in South Africa – seem to make a substantial difference in its function. Read more here.
– Karen Weintraub
ICU beds expanded, body bags in play as California hospitals face surge
When a code blue is sounded at St. John's Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, California, signaling a cardiac arrest, nurse Yesenia Avila says a little prayer.
“We’ve never seen this much death before,” Avila said Friday. “I’ve been in health care for 22 years, and I’ve never been scared. Right now, I am ... I fear for my children.”
Every bed in the ICU is full most of the time as the COVID-19 surge rages forward. If a bed is open, nurses said, it often means a patient died.
California health authorities reported Saturday a record one-day total of 695 coronavirus deaths as many hospitals strain under unprecedented caseloads.
California’s death toll since the start of the pandemic rose to 29,233, according to the state Department of Public Health’s website.
Because emergency departments are often backlogged with admitted patients waiting for beds to open, ambulance workers sometimes stand against the walls alongside incoming patients in gurneys.
– Tom Kisken, Ventura (Calif.) County Star
Contributing: The Associated Press
