U.S. Deaths Fall; AstraZeneca Says Vaccine Is Safe: Virus Update

(Bloomberg) — The weekly U.S. Covid-19 death toll fell to a four-month low and new infections declined further. Reluctance to get vaccinated, particularly among Republican men, is one of the biggest risks to virus control efforts, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser said.

AstraZeneca Plc said a “careful” review of data from more than 17 million people vaccinated shows no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or blood clotting. The Netherlands said it would suspend giving the vaccine for two weeks, as a growing number of countries halts or limits use of AstraZeneca shots over safety fears.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed Governor Andrew Cuomo for the city’s shortage of vaccines, saying people from “the suburbs, surrounding states” are permitted to get inoculated there. He said it was another reason the embattled governor should resign.

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A quarter of U.S. House lawmakers aren’t confirmed as vaccinated against Covid-19 even though Congress has its own supply, Axios reported. The members have either refused, have not reported getting the shot elsewhere or won’t because of medical conditions, Axios said.

The Office of Attending Physician can’t decide whether to relax social distancing rules until the members’ status is clear.

The Dutch government suspended vaccinations with AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot for two weeks, citing reports that it caused blood clots in some people, the ANP newswire reported.

The Health Ministry based its decision to halt the vaccinations through March 28 on a recommendation by the country’s Medicines Evaluation Board, ANP reported.

California’s seven-day positive test rate fell to a record low 2%, according to the health department’s website. The state reported 2,772 new cases yesterday, along with 140 more deaths. California has administered more than 11.8 million vaccines in total.

The positive test rate of Los Angeles County declined to 1.6%, one of the lowest levels since the outbreak began a year ago.

The data came a day before the county, which was the epicenter of the post-holiday surge, eases its restrictions on indoor dining and allows restaurants, gyms, museums and movie theaters to reopen. California theme parks such as Disneyland, as well as stadiums, will also be allowed to reopen in April with capacity limits.

New York City, the U.S.’s early epicenter for Covid-19, is holding a virtual memorial Sunday night a year after the city announced its first fatality.

The city set up a web portal for people to join in the ceremony, in which names and photographs of the victims will be streamed. The first death was an 82-year-old woman who suffered from emphysema. More than 30,000 have died in the city since then.

Brazil may be getting a new health minister just as the coronavirus outbreak reaches a new peak in the country.

President Jair Bolsonaro is being pressured to replace Eduardo Pazuello and find solutions to the explosion of the pandemic and the slow vaccination campaign, the sources said. Pazuello has asked to step down due to personal health issues, O Globo newspaper reported.

In the six months he’s been in charge, the pandemic has unrelentingly worsened in Latin America’s largest economy. His exit would come less than a week after Brazil surpassed the milestone of 2,000 Covid-19 deaths in a single day.

There’s reason to be “concerned” about the virus trends in New York City, more so than many other parts of the country, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said.

The New York variant, along with the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the U.K., is pushing cases back up in one of the original Covid-19 epicenters in the U.S., Gottlieb said on CBS.

On a positive note, Europe — where infections are rising once more in several countries — is no longer a bellwether of Covid spread in the U.S., he said, because of the level of prior infections in the US “and the fact that we’re vaccinating aggressively.”

“We’re in a different situation than Europe because of the vaccine induced immunity that we’re getting into the population,” he said.

AstraZeneca Plc said a “careful” review of all available data of the more than 17 million people in the European Union and the U.K. it has vaccinated against so far against Covid-19 shows no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or thrombocytopenia.

The company says it is continually monitoring the safety of its vaccine.

Ireland’s top official says it’s “too early to say” if the U.S. ban on most travel from Europe will be lifted this summer. Europe has a “significant journey still to go” on its coronavirus vaccines and on tamping down the more transmissible U.K. variant, Prime Minister Michael Martin said on CBS.

“As the vaccination program rolls out, I believe opportunities will arise, but it’s just far too early to say yet,” he said.

France won’t halt AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccines’ use, Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Twitch, Amazon’s social media, saying health authorities don’t have evidence of the drugs potential risks. Austria, Denmark, Italy and Norway suspended the use of the vaccines amid concerns of side effect while The World Health Organization called for immunizations with it.

About 2,000 people protested against the Netherlands’ virus restrictions as the nation heads into general elections, the Associated Press reported. Police encircled a park in The Hague where the large demonstration gathered. One protester carried a set of stocks with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s head inside with a sign saying: “If you love the Netherlands, vote them out.”

Protesters have gathered in recent weeks in Amsterdam as patience wears thin with the restrictions, which have shuttered bars, restaurants and other businesses since October.

Support for the Czech Republic’s billionaire prime minister plunged to a record low as his minority government struggles to contain one of the world’s worst coronavirus crisis before October elections.

Andrej Babis’s ANO party would get 20.5% if the ballot was held now, finishing second behind the opposition Pirate Party with 22%, according to an opinion poll conducted by Kantar CZ for the public television and released Sunday.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed Governor Andrew Cuomo for the city’s shortage of vaccines, saying people from “the suburbs, surrounding states” are permitted to get inoculated there.

The mayor said the city and New York’s other municipalities need more local control over vaccine distribution, another reason he said Cuomo should resign. De Blasio, long an adversary of the governor, has already called for Cuomo to step down over allegations of sexual misconduct and covering up the number of people who died in nursing homes.

“He should resign right now,” the mayor said on “Face the Nation.”

A teacher in the Piedmont region of Italy died after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, causing the region to halt giving further doses as a precaution. The region resumed Astra inoculations after isolating the batch given to the teacher. Italy is among roughly a dozen countries that have curbed the use of the vaccine over concerns about possible side effects.

Reluctance among certain parts of the U.S. population to receiving a vaccine is one of the biggest risks to coronavirus control efforts, said Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. His comments came when he was asked about polling showing many Republicans, especially men, don’t want a vaccine.

He continued to warn against becoming complacent in the U.S. even as cases and hospitalizations drop sharply and the pace of vaccinations accelerates

Duke University put its undergraduates on a one-week lockdown early Sunday after the worst outbreak “by far” since the start of the pandemic. It said that 180 students at the university in Durham, North Carolina, tested positive and another 200 were in quarantine.

The university said the spread was driven largely by “recruitment parties” by fraternities and sororities. All classes for the school’s more than 6,000 undergraduates will be remote. Students living on campus will not be allowed to leave their residences except for essential activities, and off-campus students will largely be barred from university grounds.

New U.S. Covid-19 cases declined by almost 100,000 last week to the fewest since early October, while an average of 1,326 people died of the disease each day, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg show. The week’s death toll of 9,284 was the lowest since mid-November.

U.S. immunization has expanded amid a growing supply of vaccines and a drive by President Joe Biden’s administration to help roll them out. The U.S. vaccination rate over the last week was about 2.5 million doses per day, enough to cover 75% of the population with a two-dose shot in an estimated five months, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.