January 13, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Ovidiu Dugulan/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ERIN SCHUMAKER and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 91.4 million people worldwide and killed over 1.95 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 Wednesday. All times Eastern:

Jan 13, 6:24 am
Japan declares state of emergency in seven more prefectures

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared a state of emergency in seven additional areas on Wednesday, as COVID-19 cases continued to climb.

The latest state of emergency was declared for the prefectures of Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, Aichi, Gifu, Fukuoka, and Tochigi.

The move comes one week after Suga declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures due to rising infections and a growing death toll.

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.

Under the state of emergency, which takes immediate effect and is expected to end Feb. 7 for all 11 prefectures, 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.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare registered 4,521 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 as well as 51 additional deaths from the disease on Tuesday, bringing the country’s cumulative total to 295,257 cases with at least 4,144 deaths.

Jan 13, 4:42 am
US sees deadliest day yet from COVID-19

There were a record 4,327 new deaths from COVID-19 registered in the United States on Tuesday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Tuesday’s tally overtakes the country’s previous all-time high of 4,194 fatalities from the disease, which were registered on Jan. 7, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 215,805 new cases of COVID-19 were also confirmed nationwide on Tuesday, down from a peak of 302,506 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2. It’s the eighth consecutive day that the country has reported more than 200,000 new cases, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.

A total of 22,846,808 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 380,796 of them 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.

Jan 13, 3:57 am
Texas surpasses two million total cases

Texas has become the second U.S. state to have a total of more than two million diagnosed cases of COVID-19.

The Lone Star state surpassed the grim milestone late Tuesday, with a cumulative tally of 2,014,645 confirmed cases. California currently has 2,795,978, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

January 12, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Andrew SuggsBy BECKY PERLOW and KENNETH MOTON, ABC News

(BALTIMORE) — A teenage boy with electric-blue glasses reached toward the handle of the barbershop entrance, trying to grab the door before it closed.

Before he could catch it, shop manager Kennard Perry swung the door open again with his left hand, extending a thermometer out with his right.

In the age of COVID-19, it’s become commonplace for Perry at Nile Style Barbershop in Baltimore to start every hair cut appointment with a temperature safety check, reminding clients to wear a mask and social distance.

But the safety speech doesn’t stop there.

Perry and his team are part of a network of more than 50 barbershops across the East Coast that are working to minimize health disparities among people of color. The program, called Live Chair Health, enters these barbershops, trains the barbers on chronic issues that disproportionally affect Black communities and teaches those same hairdressers how to have conversations with their clients about the diseases. Since the pandemic hit, it also provides its shops with thermometers and personal protective equipment (PPE).

“The [Black] population is overrepresented in almost every chronic disease category, ranging from hypertension, diabetes and lung cancer,” Live Chair Health Founder and CEO Andrew Suggs told ABC News.

Even though the death rate for African Americans has decreased by 25% from 1999 to 2015, Black Americans ages 18-49 are still two times as likely to die from heart disease than white Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We need to go to where people are, which happens to be hair salons and barbershops in these communities,” added Suggs.

Live Chair Health is capitalizing on the trusted relationship between barber and client — something Perry knows a lot about, having worked in the industry for 26 years.

“Traditionally and historically with an African American community, the barbershop has been the epicenter of everything from politics to sports,” said Perry.

“To certain people, we are a father figure, to certain people we’re a big brother, a therapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist. We take our position very seriously,” he said.

Since COVID-19, that means having frank discussions about how the pandemic is disproportionately affecting the Black population and helping clients connect with doctors should they experience symptoms that might be related to the coronavirus.

It also means having a conversation about the vaccine.

“We try to use our ability and our connection with our clients to instill some confidence or some truth to a lot of the things that they may come in (with), that they’ve heard off the street or (in the) media,” explained Perry.

“Regardless of how I personally feel, you always want to make sure your clients are informed. You have to give them all the angles and let them make an educated decision,” he said.

That educated decision is something Live Chair Health is helping with by connecting clients — sometimes for the first time in their lives — to primary care providers, who can then look over a patient’s personal health history and make knowledgeable decisions about his or her health care.

“(But) there (is) a strong hesitance and reluctance in the African American community to take this vaccine, and it’s not for an answer for political reasons. There is a historical foundation within the Black community,” added Perry.

That historical foundation includes the notorious Tuskegee experiments, a U.S. government-funded study that recruited over 600 Black men in 1932 to record the natural progression of syphilis. During the study, the men were not told they had syphilis — they were only told they had “bad blood” and were being treated for it. During the 40-year experiment, the American government attempted to hide the true intentions of the researchers, even going so far as to keep the drug penicillin away from the men when it was discovered in 1945 as a successful way to treat the disease.

William English, a client of Millennium Salon in Silver Spring, Maryland, whose daughter is also a doctor, said he’ll be getting the vaccine regardless of the past.

“I understand that people may have mistrust based on historical circumstances,” he said, “But I think it’s extremely important that those of us who understand the science communicate effectively with other people, given that we’re at great risk from COVID,” English said. “We have to have the vaccine.”

Millennium Salon, which is 50 miles southwest of Baltimore, is also a barbershop affiliated with Live Chair Health. Owner Dexter Fields, who hosts staff meetings with Live Chair Health to educate his barbers, said the clients in his chair regularly discuss the vaccine, but they too have reservations.

“I would say that 75% of the people who come into my chair are people who understand the value of the vaccine,” said Fields, who added that everything he is learning — both about the disease and the vaccine — he is sharing with his clients.

“People are starting to realize that this is not something that just came about in March. It’s been on the horizon for a while. … The (scientists have) been working toward something like this already.”

The COVID-19 vaccine was developed quicker than any other vaccine in medical history. According to Phillip Ball in the science journal Nature, “The world was able to develop COVID-19 vaccines so quickly because of years of previous research on related viruses and faster ways to manufacture vaccines, enormous funding that allowed firms to run multiple trials in parallel, and regulators moving more quickly than normal.”

Prior to COVID-19, mumps held the record for the quickest vaccine rollout — taking four years from development to its ultimate approval in 1967. On average, though, vaccines take 10-15 years to develop, according to The History of Vaccines, an educational resource from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

When Live Chair Health launched three years ago, it was originally a mobile booking app for barbershops. But when Suggs’ father’s health started to decline, Suggs started researching health disparities in Black communities and learned his father’s condition — congestive heart failure — wasn’t an anomaly.

“One of the things that (my co-founder and I) uncovered is the lack of trust and lack of access,” for African Americans in the medical community, “and not having a relationship with the primary-care physician. And a light bulb went off when we were looking at our data and we said, ‘Hey, you’re engaging African American men every single day with your schedule booking tool.’ And then that was the epiphany that we had to pivot the business into health care,” Suggs said.

To show his business model would work, Suggs pointed to a 2018 New England Journal of Medicine study that proved “among black male barbershop patrons with uncontrolled hypertension, health promotion by barbers resulted in larger blood-pressure reduction,” although this was when it was “coupled with medication management in barbershops by specialty-trained pharmacists.”

Prior to COVID-19, Live Chair Health equipped barbers with blood pressure cuffs and taught them not only how to take a client’s blood pressure, but also to discuss with them why having high blood pressure — or being “hypertensive” — was something a client should be concerned about.

In one instance, Perry took the temperature of one of the clients and discovered a BPI (blood pressure indicator) that was too high.

“We told him he had to go seek professional help immediately. The next day, he went to the emergency room, came back and said, ‘I didn’t even know I was that close. The doctor told me I could have stroked out,'” recalled Perry.

According to the CDC, African Americans ages 35-64 years are 50% more likely to have high-blood pressure than whites.

It’s more than just setting up appointments with doctors though. According to Dr. Athol Morgan, LifeBridge Health cardiologist and Live Chair Health brain trust advisor, it’s about building an ongoing relationship between the patient and the doctor.

“You have high blood pressure. Well, what does that mean? Why is that important? What can we do about it? What can you do about it? And how can I help you with it? Those are fundamental questions that are addressed in an interaction between primary care providers and patients,” Morgan said.

“And to the extent that that communication may be compromised when the patient is an African American, that is what we’re trying to address,” he continued.

“Most African Americans go to an African American barber, but most African Americans do not go to an African American provider. We don’t have enough of them, and it will be a long time for us to get to a place where we ever have enough of them. Ultimately what we would like to do is get to a place where it really doesn’t matter what the race of the provider and the patient is,” he said, adding that all that matters is “that we still have effective communication between the two.”

In another instance of potentially saving a life, one of Perry’s own barbers benefitted from the blood pressure cuffs. When Suggs showed barber Greg Pratt how to use the device, Pratt was surprised to learn he had a BPI of 170/90. Comparatively, a healthy blood pressure is anything less than 120/80, according to the CDC.

At 34-years-old, 5’7″ and 215 pounds, Pratt quickly changed his lifestyle, eating healthier and working out at the gym. Today, he weighs in at 175 pounds.

“I just found out I’m athletic,” laughed Pratt. The father of five kids between the ages of 7 and 16 explained he plans to keep the lifestyle change going.

“I’m trying to stay around for my babies,” he said, smiling.

Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

January 12, 2021 • No Comments • National News

Samara Heisz/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR and ERIN SCHUMAKER, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 90.9 million people worldwide and killed over 1.9 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:

Jan 12, 9:45 am
US will not hold back second vaccine doses, HHS secretary says

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the federal government will no longer hold back COVID-19 vaccine doses and is now recommending states inoculate anyone 65 and older as well as those under the age of 65 who have two or more conditions or illnesses.

“This is just a staging and moving to the next phase on the vaccine program. We’ve had so much success with quality and predictable manufacturing and almost flawless distribution of the vaccine, but we have seen now that the administration in the states has been too narrowly focused,” Azar told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Tuesday on Good Morning America.

“So, what are we doing? Three things. First, We have already made available every dose of vaccine,” he said. “So we had been holding back second doses as a safety stock. We now believe that our manufacturing is predictable enough that we can ensure second doses are available for people from ongoing production. So everything is now available to our states and our health care providers.”

“Second, we are calling on our governors to now vaccinate people age 65 and over and under age 65 with a comorbidity, because we have got to expand the group,” he continued. “We’ve already distributed more vaccine than we have health care workers and people in nursing homes.”

“Third, we’ve got to get more channels of administration,” he added. “We’ve got to get it to pharmacies, get it to community health centers, and we are here and we will deploy teams to support states doing mass vaccination efforts if they wish to do so. It has been overly hospitalized so far in too many states.”

As of 9 a.m. ET on Monday, more than 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been distributed nationwide but fewer than nine million people have received their first dose, according to data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jan 12, 6:46 am
European Medicines Agency receives Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine application

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Tuesday that it has received an application for conditional marketing authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by England’s University of Oxford and British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

Conditional marketing authorization is the process used to speed up the approval of treatments and vaccines amid public health emergencies. The EMA said the assessment of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine “will proceed under an accelerated timeline,” and that an opinion on whether to issue an authorization could be announced by Jan. 29.

“If EMA concludes that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh its risks in protecting against COVID‑19, it will recommend granting a conditional marketing authorisation,” the agency said in a statement Tuesday. “The European Commission will then fast-track its decision-making process with a view to granting a conditional marketing authorisation valid in all EU and EEA Member States within days.”

Jan 12, 5:19 am
Russia extends UK flight ban through Feb. 1

Russia has extended its suspension of air travel with the United Kingdom through Feb. 1 amid growing concerns over a new, more contagious variant of the novel coronavirus.

“For the purpose of protecting public health, the restrictions have been extended through 11:59 p.m. on February 1, 2021,” Russia’s coronavirus response headquarters said in a statement Tuesday.

The ban was first imposed in late December.

The move comes after Russia confirmed its first cases of a new, highly infectious strain that is thought to have emerged in England late last year. The variant, called B117, is currently prevalent in London and other parts of southeastern England, and has since spread to more than a dozen other countries.

With more than 3.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, Russia has the fourth-highest tally of diagnosed infections in the world, followed by the U.K., according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Russia’s coronavirus response headquarters confirmed 22,934 new cases and 531 additional deaths from the disease on Monday, bringing the cumulative total to 3,448,203 cases with 62,804 deaths.

Jan 12, 4:26 am
182 arrested during underground ‘super-spreader’ parties in Los Angeles County, authorities say

Authorities arrested 182 people in Southern California’s Los Angeles County on Saturday during a crackdown on underground “super-spreader” parties in the area.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the arrests, which were cited out, occurred at two commercial buildings.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva “has made it clear he will seek out & take law enforcement action against ALL underground party events occurring anywhere within Los Angeles County, who fall under the Health Orders of the County’s Department of Public Health,” the department tweeted.

“The goal of these enforcement actions is to reduce the spread of #COVID19 and the risk to our vulnerable populations,” the department tweeted.

Jan 12, 4:12 am
US reports over 204,000 new cases

There were 204,652 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It’s the seventh straight day that the country has reported more than 200,000 newly confirmed infections. Monday’s tally is less than the all-time high of 302,506 new cases, which the country logged on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 1,731 new deaths from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide Monday, down from the country’s peak of 4,194 fatalities on Jan. 7, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.

A total of 22,429,685 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 376,280 of them 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 and reaching 200,000 for the first time on Nov. 27.

Jan 12, 1:49 am
Rep. Pramila Jayapal tests positive following US Capitol siege

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who was inside the U.S. Capitol last week as a pro-President Donald Trump mob temporarily took over the building, has tested positive for COVID-19, the Washington state congresswoman announced on Twitter.

“I just received a positive COVID-19 test result after being locked down in a secured room at the Capitol where several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one,” Jayapal tweeted.

Jayapal and her colleagues were in the middle of certifying the electoral votes when the rioters breached the Capitol. Congress was forced to evacuate and shelter in place while authorities worked to secure the building.

“Only hours after Trump incited a deadly assault on our Capitol, many Republicans still refused to take the bare minimum COVID-19 precaution and simply wear a damn mask in a crowded room during a pandemic—creating a superspreader event ON TOP of a domestic terrorist attack,” she tweeted Monday night.

“Any Member who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy. I’m calling for every single Member who refuses to wear a mask in the Capitol to be fined and removed from the floor by the Sergeant at Arms,” she continued.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of the Congress, advised representatives and congressional staff on Sunday that those in the secured room could have, “been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection,” according to a statement from Jayapal.

Prior to her positive test, fearing she was exposed during the potential “superspreader event,” Jayapal has been quarantining since last Thursday.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

January 11, 2021 • No Comments • National News

iStock/Tero VesalainenBy: IVAN PEREIRA and BENJAMIN STEIN, ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — The Capitol riot suspect accused of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s lectern was released from jail Monday afternoon on a $25,000 bond.

Adam Johnson, 36, of Parrish, Florida, did not answer reporters’ questions following his federal court appearance in Tampa. Federal investigators arrested Johnson on Friday and say he was the man seen in a viral photo taken during Wednesday’s siege smiling as he carried the lectern through the halls of the building.

He has been charged with “one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; one count of theft of government property; and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

David Bigney, one of Johnson’s attorneys, said his client would not be making any statements.

“Obviously if he could turn back the clock, I would suspect he would,” Bigney told reporters.

Federal investigators said the lectern, which has a value of more than $1,000, was found by a Senate staff member a day after the riots in the Red corridor of the Senate wing off the rotunda in the Capitol building.

Johnson was ordered to appear in federal court in Washington D.C. on Jan. 19, and his attorney told reporters he will make the appearance. He is barred from traveling anywhere but D.C. for his court appearance, according to prosecutors.

Johnson was also ordered to surrender any weapons and his passport and must comply with a home curfew between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Johnson will have a monitoring system, but not an ankle monitor, according to prosecutors.

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January 11, 2021 • No Comments • National News

narvikk/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR, ABC News

(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 90.2 million people worldwide and killed over 1.9 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:

Jan 11, 9:29 am
Moderna vaccine doses arrive in France

More than 50,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. biotechnology company Moderna are expected to arrive in France on Monday, according to a statement from the country’s health ministry.

France should have nearly eight million doses of the Moderna vaccine by the end of June, the health ministry said.

Last week, the European Medicines Agency authorized the Moderna vaccine for use across the European Union. Another COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech was approved two weeks earlier. Both vaccines are administered in two doses.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran told Europe 1 radio that the Moderna doses will then be sent to towns and cities with the highest virus circulation. The doses should reach vaccination centers by Wednesday, he said.

By the end of the weekend, Veran said, more than 100,000 people should have received a first dose of the vaccine.

France has faced criticism for a slow vaccine rollout compared to its EU neighbors.

Jan 11, 7:24 am
Mexico detects first case of UK variant

A new, more infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that was first detected in the United Kingdom has now been discovered in Mexico.

The strain, called B117, was confirmed in a 56-year-old foreign citizen who had traveled from Amsterdam to Mexico City on Dec. 28, and then to the northeastern city of Matamoros the following day. The individual was asymptomatic when he arrived in the country, according to Mexico’s director general of epidemiology, Jose Luis Alomia Zegarra.

After testing positive for COVID-19, the man was admitted to a Mexican hospital last week where he remains intubated, Zegarra said.

Genomic sequencing of the patient’s sample that tested positive for COVID-19 revealed its B117 lineage. More than 500 suspected cases of the U.K. variant have been tested in Mexico, but this is the country’s first verified case, according to Zegarra.

Mexican health authorities are tracking contacts of the patient, including people who traveled on the same flight. Two individuals who showed symptoms have since tested negative for COVID-19, while another 31 are asymptomatic and remain in isolation. Officials have been unable to locate 12 others, Zegarra said.

The highly contagious strain has become prevalent in London and other parts of southeast England, after first being identified in the English county of Kent in September. The B117 variant has since been detected in over a dozen other countries.

Jan 11, 6:40 am
Seychelles becomes first African nation to roll out COVID-19 vaccine

Seychelles, an island nation of just under 100,000 people, has begun immunizing its population against COVID-19 with a vaccine developed by China’s state-owned pharmaceutical company, Sinopharm.

Seychelles President Wavel Ramkalawan became the first African head of state to receive the Sinopharm vaccine on Sunday, as the country officially launched a national COVID-19 immunization campaign — the first in Africa to do so. The Seychelles Ministry of Health began administering the shot to priority groups on Monday, starting with health care professionals and other front-line workers, according to a press release from the president’s office.

Last month, China authorized Sinopharm’s vaccine for general use after the company announced that preliminary data from late-stage trials had shown it to be 79.3% effective. The shot is administered in two doses.

The United Arab Emirates donated 50,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to Seychelles. India offered 100,000 doses of another COVID-19 vaccine developed by England’s University of Oxford and British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, which are due to arrive in Seychelles at the end of the month, according to the president’s office.

“With such a robust vaccination campaign, Seychelles aims to be the first country in the world to vaccinate at least 70% of its over 18 population,” Ramkalawan said in a statement Sunday. “From there, we will be able to declare Seychelles as being COVID safe. This will allow us to reopen our economy.”

Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago located off the coast of East Africa, has reported 508 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including at least one death, according to the latest data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jan 11, 5:44 am
US reports over 213,000 new cases

There were 213,905 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Sunday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It’s the sixth straight day that the country has reported more than 200,000 newly confirmed infections. Sunday’s tally is less than the all-time high of 302,506 new cases, which the country logged on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 1,814 new deaths from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide Sunday, down from the country’s peak of 4,194 fatalities on Jan. 7, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holidays followed by a potentially very large backlog.

A total of 22,409,131 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 374,329 of them 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 and reaching 200,000 for the first time on Nov. 27.

Jan 11, 5:16 am
WHO experts probing virus origins travel to China, as country marks one year since 1st COVID-19 death

A group of experts from the World Health Organization are set to arrive in China on Thursday for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

China’s National Health Commission confirmed the upcoming visit in a brief statement Monday, saying the WHO team would be meeting with Chinese scientists to conduct joint scientific research on the virus’ origin. It’s unclear exactly where they will be carrying out their research and whether they will travel to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the novel coronavirus was first detected in December 2019.

The visit follows negotiations between both sides, with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressing disappointment last week over delays with the probe.

Meanwhile, China marked one year on Monday since confirming its first death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. China’s National Health Commission has since reported more than 87,000 cases of COVID-19 on the Chinese mainland, including at least 4,634 deaths, though those figures are believed to be much higher.

Jan 11, 4:30 am
Russia detects first cases of UK variant

A new, more contagious variant of the novel coronavirus that was first detected in the United Kingdom has now been discovered in Russia.

The strain, called B117, was confirmed among four Russian citizens who had tested positive for COVID-19 upon returning from the U.K., Russia’s chief sanitary doctor, Anna Popova, told reporters Sunday evening.

After being identified in England in late December, B117 has become prevalent in London and other parts of southeast England.

Last month, Russia joined the growing list of countries to suspend flights from the U.K. amid rising COVID-19 infections and concerns about the highly infectious variant there.

With more than 3.3 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, Russia has the fourth-highest tally of diagnosed infections in the world, followed by the U.K., according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Russia confirmed 23,315 new cases and 436 additional deaths from the disease on Sunday, according to the country’s coronavirus headquarters.

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