(NEW YORK) — With Super Bowl LV just six days away, both the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs are getting ready for the big game.
The quarterbacks of both teams spoke to ESPN recently about their upcoming matchup this Sunday.
Patrick Mahomes, 25, is hoping to lead the Chiefs to their second championship in a row, while Brady, 43, appears in his 10th Super Bowl game in the hopes of bringing the title home to Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers were last crowned NFL champions in 2002.
(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 103 million people worldwide and killed over 2.2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.
Here’s how the news is developing Monday. All times Eastern:
Feb 01, 9:12 am Moderna president hopeful that US can achieve herd immunity by mid-year
Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of American biotechnolgy company Moderna, said he’s hopeful that vaccines can help the U.S. population achieve herd immunity against the novel coronavirus by mid-year.
“It really depends what you think herd immunity needs to be. But if you assume 50 to 70% of the population, then we’re working hard ourselves and the other manufacturers to make sure that’s a possibility really in the late spring, early summer,” Hoge told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Monday on Good Morning America.
“It’s ultimately going to depend upon the delivery of those vaccines, and so that’s something that the states and the health care providers in this country are ultimately leading the way on as well as Americans deciding they want to receive that vaccine,” he added. But we’re optimistic that by the middle of the year, we’ll be able to achieve those sorts of numbers.”
Moderna is ramping up production of its COVID-19 vaccine and is working to clear any “bottlenecks” in the supply chain, according to Hoge.
“At this point, a lot of the logistical bottlenecks that we’re running into are problems we can solve on our own,” he noted. “We’re in good shape.”
Hoge, who was a resident physician in New York City, said data currently shows that existing vaccines are still effective against all emerging strains of the virus. But the variant first identified in South Africa “is of some concern because it looks like it could hide from the vaccine a little better than others,” he said.
“So our approach in Moderna is going to be to develop a booster vaccine so that if the South African variant or any other variant becomes a concern, we’ll be able to offer a way to identify that, prevent it from hiding from the vaccine,” he said.
Feb 01, 7:29 am Variants detected at refugee accommodation center in Germany, officials say
An accommodation facility for refugees in the German city of Cologne has been hit by new, more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus, city officials said.
At least 41 residents of the Herkulesstrasse facility have tested positive for COVID-19. Variants first identified in South Africa or Brazil have been detected in 31 of them so far, according to a statement from the city government on Sunday.
At least 16 staff members at the facility have also tested positive for COVID-19, with the South Africa variant detected in 11 of them so far. Variant analysis is still pending on the other five, according to the statement.
All residents of the facility have been under quarantine since Friday, while the site has been under surveillance since Sunday. Entry into the refugee accommodation center, which can house up to 600 people, is currently banned, according to the statement.
The first known COVID-19 cases were confirmed among two employees at the facility about 10 days ago, while the first case of a variant was confirmed last week, according to the statement.
Dr. Harald Rau, head of Cologne’s public health department, said the detection of variants at the refugee accommodation center “is a clear alarm signal for all of us.”
“I ask all people in Cologne to avoid contact even more consistently than before and to follow the distance and hygiene rules of infection protection,” Rau said in a statement Sunday.
Feb 01, 6:54 am Zanzibar’s first vice president, wife, close aides test positive
Zanzibar’s First Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad, his wife and a number of his close aides have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a statement from his party.
Hamad, 77, was admitted to a hospital in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago on Friday evening for precautionary measures, after doctors advised him to remain under close medical supervision while he receives treatment, according to the statement.
Hamad’s party noted in the statement that the medical conditions of him and his wife are improving.
Feb 01, 6:42 am Capt. Sir Tom Moore hospitalized with COVID-19
Capt. Sir Thomas Moore, the 100-year-old British World War II veteran who garnered global attention for his fundraising efforts amid the pandemic, has been hospitalized with COVID-19, according to his daughter.
“Over the last few weeks he was being treated for pneumonia and last week tested positive for COVID-19,” his daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, said in a statement posted on Twitter Sunday. “He was at home with us until today when he needed additional help with his breathing. He is being treated in a ward, although he is not in ICU.”
Ingram-Moore thanked health workers for the “remarkable” care her father has received in recent weeks.
“We know that the wonderful staff at Bedford Hospital will do all they can to make him comfortable and hopefully return home as soon as possible,” she added.
Last spring, Moore raised over 37 million pounds ($50.7 million) for the United Kingdom’s National Health Service by walking laps in his garden in England amid a nationwide lockdown. Queen Elizabeth II honored Moore’s charity and service to the country with a promotion to honorary colonel, a social flyover and knighthood.
Feb 01, 6:11 am US reports over 111,000 new cases
There were 111,896 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Sunday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Sunday’s case count is the lowest the country has recorded since Dec. 25 and is also far less than the all-time high of 300,282 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.
An additional 1,794 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Sunday, down from a peak of 4,466 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.
COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.
A total of 26,187,424 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 441,331 have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of the pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.
The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.
So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use — one developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and another developed by American biotechnology company Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. More than 24 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ABC/Craig Sjodin(LOS ANGELES) — Jane Fonda has finally received the COVID-19 vaccine and was delighted to share the good news with fans on Sunday.
The Grace & Frankie star shared a photo of her flashing the thumbs up after she got the jab and wrote, “Got vaccinated today! Yay!”
Fonda, 83, also had some additional good news to share, telling fans that “It doesn’t hurt” to get the vaccine.
The two-time Academy Award-winning actress was also sporting a stylish pair of shares and two masks for her appointment.
Fonda joins a growing list of older celebrities who have publicly revealed they received the vaccine, among them Sir Ian McKellen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford and Martha Stewart.
It was previously announced that the Book Club star will be honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2021 Golden Globes, which air on Sunday, February 28 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Inc.(LOS ANGELES) — The Denzel Washington and Rami Malek-led crime thriller The Little Things topped the pandemic-weakened box office over the weekend, Deadline confirmed. The film, which also stars a third Oscar winner, Jared Leto, and which premiered in theaters and on HBO Max, brought in a $4.8 million from over 2,000 theaters and $7.6 million worldwide.
The animated flick The Croods: A New Age came in second place, raking in $1.84 million over the weekend in its 10th week of release while Wonder Woman 1984 landed in third, earning $1.3 million.
Meanwhile, the Liam Neeson-led The Marksman plunged into fourth place, earning a disappointing $1.25 million in its third week while Monster Hunter rounded out the top five — making $740,000 in its seventh week of release.
Randy Holmes/ABC via Getty ImagesThird times a charm! Morgan Wallen‘s album, Dangerous: The Double Album has snagged its third consecutive week at number one on the Billboard 200.
Not only did the record top the chart, but it’s the first country album to do so in the last eight years, earning 130,000 equivalent album units, according to Billboard. The accomplishment puts Wallen in good company, as Taylor Swift‘s Folklore is the only other album to achieve at least 125,000 units earned within the last 12 months.
Additionally, Dangerous’ stronghold on the number one spot marks the third week that a country album reigned supreme on the Billboard 200. The last artist to do so was, again, Swift, with her 2012 album Red.
Wallen’s three weeks on the charts also have him tied with the King of Rock, Elvis Presley. Billboard states that “the last album by a male artist to log three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and its first three weeks at No. 1 — and also appear on Top Country Albums — was Elvis Presley’s Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits, which clocked a total of three weeks in the lead on the Billboard 200.”
Dangerous: The Double Album is the second studio album from the 27-year-old country artist. The album, which was released on January 8, includes his two previously released singles, “More Than My Hometown” and “7 Summers.”
33ft/iStockBy JEANETTE TORRES-PEREZ, ABC News
