February 2, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Myriam Borzee/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ERIN SCHUMAKER and IVAN PEREIRA, ABC News

(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 Tuesday. All times Eastern:

Feb 02, 9:29 am
Russia’s vaccine found to be over 91% effective in peer-reviewed study

Feb 02, 8:27 am
Japan extends state of emergency in greater Tokyo area

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has extended a state of emergency in Tokyo and nine surrounding prefectures for another month to further stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The declaration, however, was lifted in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, where the COVID-19 infection rate has eased.

“I regret that the declaration cannot be lifted across the nation at this time,” Suga said Tuesday night in a televised address from his office in Tokyo.

The prime minister used a chart to show that Japan’s daily number of newly diagnosed infections has declined from 7,721 on Jan. 7 to 1,783 on Feb. In Tokyo, that number has dropped from 2,447 on Jan. 7 to 393 on Feb. 1. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, there were 556 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the capital city on Tuesday.

Suga said the state of emergency could be lifted earlier than March 7 if the situation continues to improve. He noted that his government is hoping to begin a mass COVID-19 vaccination program as early as mid-February.

“Thanks to the cooperation of the people of Japan, we have seen a marked outcome,” he said. “At this point in time, I need to ask the people to endure another round of the state of emergency so that positive outcomes can be solidified.”

The move comes less than six months before the pandemic-delayed 2020 Summer Olympics are scheduled to open in Tokyo.

A state of emergency declaration gives the governors of those respective regions the authority to ask residents for cooperation in efforts to curb the spread of the virus. There are currently no legal ramifications for non-compliance.

Suga first declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures on Jan. 7, before expanding the order to include more virus-hit areas.

Under the state of emergency, Suga said governors will ask residents to refrain from dining out and to stay home after 8 p.m. unless for essential reasons. They will also ask companies to decrease the number of employees commuting to work by 70%.

Suga said bars and restaurants will be asked to stop serving alcohol by 7 p.m. and to close by 8 p.m. Governors may disclose the name of the businesses that don’t comply, while those that do will be given 1.8 million Japanese yen ($17,000) per month.

Spectator events will be limited to an audience of 5,000 people. Schools will not be asked to close, according to Suga.

Suga’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe, declared a nationwide state of emergency relatively early in the pandemic in April, which lasted for a month. At that time, residents were asked to reduce person-to-person contact by 80% and to practice “jishuku,” or “self-restraint,” by staying at home and closing non-essential businesses.

Feb 02, 7:15 am
Tokyo Olympics will take place ‘no matter how the COVID situation will be’

The Tokyo Olympics will take place this year “no matter how the COVID situation will be,” organizers said Tuesday.

“We will make sure the Games will be held no matter how the COVID situation will be,” Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, said during remarks at a meeting on preparations for the event. “We go beyond the discussion of whether we hold (the Games) or not hold. We are to come up with ‘new’ Olympics.”

The 2020 Summer Olympics were supposed to kick off in the Japanese capital last year on July 24. But in late March, amid mounting calls to delay or cancel the upcoming Games, the International Olympic Committee and Japan’s prime minister announced that the event would be held a year later due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Games are now scheduled to open in Tokyo this summer on July 23, but doubt has surfaced as Japan — and much of the world — grapples with a resurgence of COVID-19 infections. Moreover, Japan is not expected to begin administering its first round of COVID-19 vaccinations until the end of February.

Last week, organizers said COVID-19 vaccines will not be a requirement to compete in the Tokyo Olympics and that they are still considering holding the Games without spectators.

Feb 02, 6:49 am
US reports over 134,000 new cases

There were 134,339 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday’s case count is far less than the country’s all-time high of 300,282 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 2,031 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Monday, 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 26,321,457 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 443,365 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 32 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

February 1, 2021 • No Comments • National News

narvikk/iStockBy: BILL HUTCHINSON, ABC News

(MINNEAPOLIS) — A judge has granted public school teachers and staff in Minneapolis a temporary restraining order halting the school district’s plan to resume in-person classes this week.

Hennepin County District Court Judge Susan Robiner ruled that the Minneapolis School District cannot force teachers and staff back to classrooms if they previously applied for or are in the process of seeking an accommodation to work remotely due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The risk of contracting a serious illness which has killed almost a half-million people in the United States is axiomatically a profound harm,” Robiner wrote in her 11-page ruling.

School district officials had planned to resume in-person classes on Monday.

“For me, it was huge,” Lindsey West, a fifth-grade teacher at the Barton Open School, told ABC affiliate station KSTP-TV in Minneapolis.

West said she is among those teachers who have applied for accommodation to work from home. She said she lives with her two children and her parents, who are both seniors.

“The idea of exposing them to COVID and something terrible happening to them was the heartbreaking reality that I was dealing with this past week,” West said.

The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers filed the request for an injunction against the school district last Thursday, saying in court papers that the district was making unilateral changes to contracts by refusing to grant accommodations for teachers to work remotely.

Lawyers for the union argued that schools should remain closed until COVID-19 vaccinations are administered to teachers and staff and more safety measures are in place.

“If somebody has a high-risk family member, they should have the option to fill out a form — and other districts have done this — to seek an accommodation. That doesn’t mean MPS has to grant it. But it does mean they have to go through this process,” Greta Callahan, president of the teachers union, told KSTP-TV.

In her ruling issued on Saturday, Robiner noted that 40% of district parents said they would not send their children to in-person classes, while 48% said they would. The remaining parents said they were undecided, according to Robiner’s ruling.

School district officials said in a statement that despite the ruling, they are moving forward with a new plan to resume in-person classes on Feb. 8, one day before another court hearing is scheduled to further discuss the temporary restraining order on accommodations filed by teachers and staff.

“We have said all along that it is our responsibility to continue planning for in-person learning so that when the time is right, we are able to act. Returning a large district to in-person learning is a complex, multifaceted effort and we will continue with our plans until and unless we are directed to do otherwise,” the school district said in a statement.

Other school districts across the country are grappling with similar situations, trying to weigh the concerns of teachers over the pandemic against the demands of parents wanting to send children back to the classroom.

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has threatened to take action against teachers who fail to show up for the first day of in-class scheduled for Tuesday if they do not have an approved accommodation to work remotely. But the Chicago Teachers Union has called the district’s safety plan inadequate.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing on Monday that President Joe Biden is hopeful that the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago School District can work out a plan that is safe for both children and educators.

“Let me first say the president has enormous respect for Mayor Lightfoot, and he has also been a strong ally to teachers through his entire career,” Psaki said. “They’re both prioritizing the right things, which is ensuring the health and safety of the kids and teachers and working to make sure that children in Chicago are getting the education they deserve. He is hopeful they can reach common ground as soon as possible.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

February 1, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Ovidiu Dugulan/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ABC News

(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.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

January 31, 2021 • No Comments • National News

David Tran/iStockBY: BILL HUTCHINSON, ABC NEWS

(CHICAGO) — A man alleged to have lived in plain sight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for three months was wearing a bright-yellow safety vest and striped sweatpants when he was arrested, according to newly released video of his capture.

Security footage showing the Jan. 16 arrest of 36-year-old Aditya Singh, released by the Chicago Department of Aviation, has raised new questions about how Singh managed to go undetected for so long at the nation’s busiest airport.

The soundless video shows uniformed airport police officers questioning Singh outside a men’s restroom at the airport before apparently instructing him to hold out his arms to be searched.

Singh was allegedly posing as an airport worker when he was taken into custody. He was found in possession of an airport operations manager’s security credential that was reported misplaced around the time Singh began living at the airport, authorities said.

Singh reportedly told authorities he became so frightened to fly back to his home in Orange County, California, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that he decided to hunker down in the airport. It remains unclear how long Singh intended to stay at the facility, where he lived off food provided by strangers, authorities said.

The man’s airport-squatting stint ended when two United Airlines employees became suspicious and confronted Singh, who allegedly showed them the misplaced airport identification badge, according to the Chicago Tribune. Singh told officials that he had been living at the airport since Oct. 19.

“While this incident remains under investigation, we have been able to determine that this gentleman did not pose a security risk to the airport or to the traveling public,” the Chicago Department of Aviation said in a statement. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners on a thorough investigation of this matter.”

Singh was charged with impersonating an airport employee in a restricted area of the airport and theft of less than $500, according to police.

He remained locked up at the Cook County Jail on Sunday without bond, according to online jail records.

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January 31, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Police bodycam via WTVMBY: SAMARA LYNN, ABC NEWS

(NEW YORK) — A police chief and an officer in Hamilton, Georgia, are out from their positions after video surfaced of comments both are seen making at a Black Lives Matter protest, ABC News affiliate WTVM-TV reported.

Hamilton Police Department Chief Gene Allmond is reported to have resigned and Patrolman John Brooks was terminated according to the assistant to the Hamilton mayor, Julie Brown, WTVM-TV reported.

Both officers were wearing bodycams at a BLM protest in Hamilton in June 2020. The video has since been made public.

In the video, a man speaking off-camera and a man on-camera make several comments with racial slurs and explicit language.

The off-camera speaker presumably makes reference to the June 2020 fatal police shooting of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks, who was shot after allegedly grabbing a police officer’s Taser, following a struggle during a field sobriety test. The incident led to BLM protests, the resignation of Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields and the firing of Officer Garrett Rolfe.

Brown told WTVM that “the mayor and city council acted quickly to remove the Chief and patrolman after viewing the video for the first time,” on Monday.

“It was disgusting,” Hamilton Mayor Pro-Tem Ransom Farley told ABC News. “The fact they were on duty … when we found out they were terminated in an hour-and-a-half time,” he said.

“I thank God, we caught it,” Farley said. “When you’re a police officer and you have that type of frame of mind …. how can you protect and serve?”

Attempts to reach the Hamilton Police Department, Allmond and Brooks were unsuccessful.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.