The French drugmaker Sanofi said it would help produce more than 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to meet strong demand in Europe.
Britain will require citizens flying home from 22 countries to quarantine at hotels.
A survey found that the number of Americans who want to be vaccinated as soon as possible has risen to 47 percent, from 34 percent last month.
Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and vaccines in development.
White House briefing is back
It began with a few glitches and interrupted audio, but eventually President Biden’s top coronavirus advisers — including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — held their first public briefing today. The virtual meeting was a clear effort to make good on Mr. Biden’s pledge to let “science speak again.”
A central concern among the officials is the spread of the new variants. Jeffrey Zients, Mr. Biden’s Covid response coordinator, said the U.S. was “43rd in the world” in its ability to track potentially dangerous new mutations of the coronavirus, calling it “totally unacceptable.”
Federal health officials have warned that the more contagious variant first discovered in Britain could become the dominant source of infection in the U.S. by March. During the briefing, Dr. Fauci said the National Institutes of Health was working on research aimed at adapting vaccines so that they have “the ability to neutralize these mutants.”
The advisers also used the meeting to call on Congress to do its part. Mr. Zients warned that the federal government still faced a shortage of personal protective gear, and said it would not be able to buy more if Congress didn’t pass Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion virus rescue plan. Dr. Walensky also pleaded with Congress for additional money, saying scientists “really need to have access to those resources to do the amount of sequencing and surveillance that we need in order to detect things when they first start to emerge.”
The briefing arrives as Mr. Biden is under intense pressure to speed up the vaccine rollout. The president announced yesterday that his administration was nearing a deal for enough shots to vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of summer.
Mr. Biden said it would “allow millions more Americans to get vaccinated sooner than previously anticipated,” but that’s unlikely to be the case. And with new and more infectious variants spreading, some experts say that will not be fast enough to curb the pandemic.
The third deadliest day
Even as the numbers of new cases and hospitalizations are showing signs of decline, death rates are at their highest levels of the pandemic.
California added 3,760 deaths in the last week — a record — while Alabama and Virginia set single-day death records yesterday. Nationally, the country recorded 4,205 deaths on Tuesday, making it the third deadliest day of the pandemic.
What explains the disconnect between falling case numbers and record-high deaths? My colleague Richard Fausset, a correspondent based in Atlanta, dug into this question.
One factor, he wrote, was that people whose deaths are being reported now were probably infected weeks or even months ago. So the current high levels of deaths probably reflect the huge surges of infections in November and December. Another possibility is that there may have been a shift in how many especially vulnerable people were becoming infected, although experts don’t think that’s the case.
The C.D.C. predicts that deaths will most likely come down over the next four weeks, but will nevertheless reach 514,000 in the U.S. by Feb. 20. Of course, the more contagious variants remain a wild card, and experts are worried that they could cause significant damage before much of the country is vaccinated.
Resurgences
In South Korea, health authorities said they were conducting mandatory testing of dozens of religious schools, as the country struggled to tackle a wave of cases linked to a Christian missionary society.
In Spain, Madrid will suspend its vaccination program for two weeks because of a supply shortage.
The Wisconsin State Senate has voted to end a statewide mask mandate issued by the governor, a resolution that would put Wisconsin among a minority of states without such a requirement if Assembly lawmakers approve it.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
Researchers found more evidence that the variant from South Africa can evade antibodies.
The mayor of Moscow said the pandemic was easing in the city and abruptly lifted most of its remaining virus restrictions.
Oklahoma is still trying to unload a $2 million stockpile of hydroxychloroquine — an antimalarial drug promoted by former President Trump as a “miracle” cure for Covid-19 despite a lack of evidence — that it purchased last spring.
New York City’s school enrollment fell sharply this year, the latest sign that students across the country have left public school systems temporarily or even perhaps permanently during the pandemic.
Scientists are exploring the physics of the virus and asking questions like: If you squeeze the coronavirus, does it shatter?
With the crowds gone, officials at the Louvre — the world’s most visited museum — are seizing the opportunity to undertake a grand restoration and cleanup.
The New York Times