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Covid-19 live updates: Germany suspends AstraZeneca vaccinations, joining several other countries [washingtonpost.com]:

Germany became the world’s largest country to suspend the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine following reports of blood clots. The World Health Organization and European regulators have continued to express confidence [reuters.com] in its safety.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca said late Sunday that there is no scientific evidence of any link between its coronavirus vaccine and recent deaths in Europe from blood clots. The rate of blood clots in people who have been inoculated with the vaccine is “much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population,” the company said in a statement [astrazeneca.com].

Here are some significant developments:Link copiedGermany is largest country to suspend AstraZeneca vaccine By Loveday Morris [washingtonpost.com] and Luisa Beck [washingtonpost.com]

Germany became the world’s largest country to suspend the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine Monday, following reports of blood clots in people who were inoculated. Germany’s health ministry described the measure as “precautionary.”

The decision followed the detection of seven cases of blood clots in the brain, out of 1.6 million people who have received the vaccine in the country, Health Minister Jens Spahn said in a news conference.

French President Emmanuel Macron also announced that the country will suspend its use of the vaccine until at least Tuesday afternoon as a precautionary measure. Macron added that vaccinations may resume if the European Medicines Agency recommends the vaccine’s continued use. An EMA analysis is expected to be finalized this week.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca said late Sunday that there is no scientific evidence of any link between its coronavirus vaccine and recent deaths in Europe from blood clots. The rate of blood clots in people who have been inoculated with the vaccine is “much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population,” the company said in a statement [astrazeneca.com].

“We are all aware of the far-reaching consequences of this decision,” Spahn said of the halt. German health authorities recommended that anyone who has not felt well for more than four days after receiving the jab to seek medical advice.

The vaccine, developed alongside Britain’s Oxford University, has yet to be approved in the United States and has struggled to build confidence around its product in Europe. Its trial data was criticized, while several European countries did not initially approve it for use among people over 65.

The World Health Organization and European regulators have continued to express confidence in its safety. Spahn said that European regulators would now have to decide whether new information would impact the vaccine’s authorization.

ADADLink copiedOne year on, how the pandemic has changed education By Donna St. George [washingtonpost.com], Valerie Strauss [washingtonpost.com], Laura Meckler [washingtonpost.com], Joe Heim [washingtonpost.com] and Hannah Natanson [washingtonpost.com]

The coronavirus [washingtonpost.com] pandemic upended almost every aspect of school at once. It was not just the move from classrooms to computer screens. It tested basic ideas about instruction, attendance, testing, funding, the role of technology and the human connections that hold it all together.

A year later, a rethinking is underway, with a growing sense that some changes may last.

“There may be an opportunity to reimagine what schools will look like,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told The Washington Post. “It’s always important we continue to think about how to evolve schooling so the kids get the most out of it.”

Others in education see a similar opening. The pandemic pointed anew to glaring inequities of race, disability and income. Learning loss is getting new attention. Schools with poor ventilation systems are being slotted for upgrades. Teachers who made it through a crash course in teaching virtually are finding lessons that endure.

ADADLink copiedTravel stories from the one year anniversary when everything shut down By Hannah Sampson [washingtonpost.com] and Natalie Compton [washingtonpost.com]

David and Karen Howe got out just in time.

The Chicago retirees left Morocco on March 15, the day the country suspended international flights. Two days earlier, they had frantically searched for new tickets home after their flight to Spain was canceled.

After a long, tense, unpleasant wait at the airport in Casablanca, they finally boarded their flight. But the trouble wasn’t over yet. David Howe started to feel sick on the plane and passed out in the aisle.

Like the Howes, travelers all over the world were forced to abandon vacations, honeymoons, bachelor parties and study abroad programs the week the novel coronavirus [washingtonpost.com] shut the world down. Trips that started with whispers of a faraway threat came to a sudden end as countries went into lockdown, airlines canceled flights and borders closed.

The outbreak officially became a pandemic. Deaths started to mount.

And suddenly, it was past time to get home.

ADADLink copiedBritain’s infectious disease deaths in 2020 highest in a century due to covid-19 By Erin Cunningham [washingtonpost.com]

More people in Britain died of covid-19 in 2020 than from any other infectious-disease in more than a century, the country’s Office for National Statistics said Monday [ons.gov.uk], a reminder of the staggering toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

The agency said more than 140,000 people have now died in Britain with covid-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — as the underlying or contributing cause on their death certificates. The figure includes over 73,500 people whose deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2020.

“This means covid-19 was the underlying cause of more deaths in 2020 than any other infectious and parasitic diseases had caused in any year since 1918,” the office said in a statement.

That year, nearly 90,000 people died largely due to the influenza pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide [cdc.gov], according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More recently, Britain’s annual deaths from infectious diseases during the past decade have remained below 6,000. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, 5,113 people died of infectious diseases.

In Britain, more than 4.2 million people have contracted the virus and a new, more contagious variant first identified in southeast England has spread around the globe.

In recent months, the British government has stepped up an ambitious vaccination campaign [sky.com] with more than one-third of residents receiving at least the first dose. New cases have also fallen in recent weeks, according to official figures.

“From deaths and the pressure on hospitals, to the number of hours worked and people’s expectations of rising unemployment, we can see how the remarkable figures recorded over the past 12 months compare with others,” the Office for National Statistics said. “And made this a year like no other.”

ADADLink copiedAnalysis: How aid for the states is divided up in the coronavirus relief bill By Philip Bump [washingtonpost.com]

Among the provisions of the pandemic relief bill signed into law Thursday by President Biden is a large pool of money going to states to offset revenue shortfalls that accompanied the slowdown in economic activity last year. Some $350 billion will be divvied up between the 50 states, D.C. and the territories, funds meant to backstop state and local government programs and to pay for capital investments.

An article by the Hill [thehill.com], using data published by the House Oversight Committee [house.gov], broke down where that money was expected to go. Unsurprisingly, most will go to more populous states. Also unsurprisingly, residents of smaller states will get more per capita.

Before we dig into it, it’s worth pointing out that the funding is going to address a problem that ended up not being as bad as was projected. The New York Times looked at [nytimes.com] how state revenue from April to December of 2020 compared with the same period the prior year, finding that just under half of states ended up seeing increases in revenue for a variety of reasons.

ADADLink copiedICE and one border community tussle over how detainees with covid are released By Jon Gerberg [washingtonpost.com] and Maria Sacchetti [washingtonpost.com]

SAN DIEGO — The asylum seeker from Cameroon exited the van that had taken him from federal immigration detention to a bus station in the California border city of Calexico. Volunteers were waiting to pick him up, drive him to a hotel and help him book a plane ticket to join a sister living in Michigan. But the man held up his hands instead.

“Stand back,” he said, disclosing that he had been diagnosed with covid-19.

The next day, advocates for immigrants said, it happened again.

In a border area that has suffered from ongoing covid-19 outbreaks, advocates for immigrants and ICE are at odds over the agency’s treatment of infected detainees. Advocates and county officials say they had no idea ICE was dropping detainees with covid off at the bus stop, while ICE says it is the agency’s protocol to notify local authorities ahead of time.

ADADLink copiedCompanies in Italy, Spain, France and Germany ready to produce Sputnik vaccine, says Russian fund By Isabelle Khurshudyan [washingtonpost.com] and Luisa Beck [washingtonpost.com]

MOSCOW — Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said Monday that it has agreements with companies in Italy, Spain, France and Germany to produce its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine for the European Union, signaling Moscow’s confidence that the immunization will soon receive regulatory approval from the European Medicines Agency.

“We are now actively working with EMA as part of the rolling review procedure,” the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, said in a statement. “In addition, RDIF and partners are ready to start supplies to those EU countries that independently authorize Sputnik V.”

Though Sputnik V has been approved for use in 51 countries, according to the investment fund, E.U. approval would be seen as validation from the West in Russia’s efforts to expand its vaccine reach. Medical journal the Lancet in February published a peer-reviewed study that the vaccine was safe and had an efficacy rate of 91.6 percent.

European governments have been under pressure over their slow rollout of vaccines. The E.U. has registered three vaccines: the ones developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca and Oxford.

Countries could also choose to individually approve Sputnik V, as Hungary did.

Christa Wirthumer-Hoche, the chair of the European Medical Agency’s management board, recently said on Austrian television that E.U. members approving Russian and Chinese vaccines via emergency national procedures is “partly comparable with Russian roulette.” The vaccines were widely criticized for their hasty rollout, starting vaccination programs in their countries before completing Phase 3 trials.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund demanded a public apology from Wirthumer-Hoche, saying that her comments “raise serious questions about possible political interference in the ongoing EMA review.”

In an interview with Rhineland Post newspaper last week, Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s vaccine oversight committee described Sputnik as a “cleverly built” vaccine.

“It’s a good vaccine that will probably be approved in the E.U. at some point,” he said.

Expanding further in a news conference he said that data on Sputnik published in the Lancet looked “good.”

“But this data is not sufficient for the EMA for approval,” he said. “For this to happen, so to speak, other data must also be provided by the manufacturers, so that an EMA approval assessment can be made.”

The German Health Ministry declined to comment.

Following a similar announcement from the RDIF last week, a spokesman for France’s Industry Ministry [reuters.com] said he was unaware of any such deal with a French manufacturer.

ADADLink copiedSurprise concert by Yo-Yo Ma serenades post-vaccination waiting room in Massachusetts By Paulina Firozi [washingtonpost.com]

In an airy, sunny gymnasium on Saturday afternoon, under basketball hoops and banners, in front of people freshly pricked and waiting for minutes to pass, Yo-Yo Ma played a little Bach.

The world-renowned cellist, who is 65, had gone to the vaccination clinic at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Mass., for his second coronavirus [washingtonpost.com] vaccine dose, according to clinic organizers. After getting his shot, he took a seat along a padded blue wall of the gym, near others waiting out their 15-minute post-vaccination observation time, and surprised them with a performance.

Leslie Drager, the lead clinical manager for the vaccination site, said that when Ma started to play, the whole place went quiet.

“It was so weird how peaceful the whole building became, just having a little bit of music in the background,” said Drager, who is the lead public health nurse for Berkshire Public Health Alliance.

ADADLink copiedFacebook announces new labels for coronavirus vaccine posts By Erin Cunningham [washingtonpost.com]

Facebook on Monday announced what it said were new measures [fb.com] to limit the spread of “potentially harmful” information about coronavirus vaccines, after coming under fire for allowing false and misleading statements about the pandemic to proliferate on its platforms.

The social media giant, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, said in a statement that it was adding labels to general posts about vaccines to show additional information from the World Health Organization and that it planned to add “additional targeted labels about covid-19 vaccine subtopics.”

It said that the general label will be rolled out in multiple languages and will note that the vaccines go through tests for safety and effectiveness before they are approved. The company also announced several temporary measures such as “reducing the distribution” of content from users who have repeatedly violated its covid-19 policies.

With roughly 2.8 billion active users, Facebook is by far the largest social media network in the world. But critics have accused the company of turning a blind eye to the rampant spread of misinformation [washingtonpost.com] on its pages, a problem made worse by the pandemic and growth of online communities skeptical of vaccines.

In its statement, Facebook also said that it was expanding official WhatsApp chatbots to help authorities both in the United States and abroad to register people for vaccinations.

Link copiedPhilippine presidential spokesman tests positive for coronavirus amid nationwide surge By Regine Cabato [washingtonpost.com]

MANILA — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, announced Monday that he was the latest official to contract the coronavirus as cases in the country surge.

Roque made the announcement that he was positive for coronavirus while conducting a virtual press briefing from his office on Monday — drawing criticism from Filipinos online about why he was not in self-isolation.

Roque said he was tested on Sunday, and in the week before that he was spotted at various engagements. He advised those who came into close contact with him after Wednesday — when he last tested negative — to self-quarantine. The spokesman missed the initial rollout of vaccines for health and government workers earlier this month.

This also comes after the chief of Philippine police, Debold Sinas, also reported becoming infected. Before his appointment as the top official to oversee Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, Sinas faced public outrage for breaching pandemic protocol while celebrating his birthday with other police officers.

The Philippines has had one of the longest and harshest lockdowns in the world, but officials have since eased restrictions in a bid to help the economy recover. However, pockets of Metro Manila are back to a stricter quarantine since the increase in cases last week. Some local governments have reinforced curfews and liquor bans.

Exactly a year after lockdown was first declared, the country has recorded over 626,000 coronavirus cases and 12,000 deaths. On Monday, the Health Department recorded an additional 5,000 cases — and researchers warn that this could rise to 8,000 new cases daily [inquirer.net] by the end of the month.

The Philippines rolled out its immunization program on March 1, with vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech. It has also procured shots from AstraZeneca, which it will continue to distribute despite the suspensions abroad. The government says it is on track to vaccinate 70 percent of the population this year, but it faces challenges such as vaccine hesitancy, public distrust toward China and its vaccines, and a thriving vaccine black market.

Link copiedFacebook study on its users’ vaccine hesitancy shows a small group plays a big role in pushing the skepticism By Elizabeth Dwoskin [washingtonpost.com]

Facebook is conducting a vast, behind-the-scenes study of doubts expressed by U.S. users about vaccines, a major project that attempts to probe and teach software to identify the medical attitudes of millions of Americans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that contribute to vaccine hesitancy. It shows how the company is probing ever more nuanced realms of speech, and it illustrates how weighing free speech vs. potential for harm is more tenuous than ever for technology companies during a public health crisis.

While Facebook has banned outright false and misleading statements about coronavirus [washingtonpost.com] vaccines since December, a huge realm of expression about vaccines sits in a gray area.

Some of the early findings are notable: Just 10 out of the 638 population segments contained 50 percent of all vaccine hesitancy content on the platform.

Link copiedIt’s especially important for heart patients to get a coronavirus vaccine, say experts By Lindsey Bever [washingtonpost.com]

More than 30 million people in the United States have heart disease, which alone kills hundreds of thousands each year. It’s also a significant risk factor for developing serious complications [washingtonpost.com] from another major threat right now: covid-19.

That’s because the disease caused by the coronavirus often attacks the lungs, forcing the already injured heart [washingtonpost.com] to fight that much harder.

Both the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology are urging eligible individuals [heart.org] — including heart patients — to get vaccinated. The American College of Cardiology has even issued a health policy statement [jacc.org] to provide guidance on how to prioritize certain cardiac patients for vaccination.

So it makes sense that some heart patients might wonder how well a coronavirus [washingtonpost.com] vaccine will protect them. Will it shield them from severe illness, hospitalization or worse? Will it keep them from getting infected at all?

Link copiedDutch police disperse anti-lockdown protest in The Hague By Erin Cunningham [washingtonpost.com]

Dutch police Sunday dispersed anti-lockdown protesters gathered in The Hague in the latest pandemic-related unrest to hit the country and ahead of national elections this week.

Police officers used batons, dogs and a water cannon to break up a hundreds-strong demonstration after protesters calling for an end to coronavirus restrictions refused to leave.

Footage of the protest [rtlnieuws.nl] showed police forces arriving at the Malieveld field on horseback while others charged with riot shields and batons. At least 20 people were detained and two protesters injured by police dogs, local media reported. Authorities also stopped train services into the city to prevent more people from arriving, according to Reuters.

The Netherlands has seen a spate of recent protests related to the coronavirus and suffered violent riots in January [washingtonpost.com] over a nighttime curfew aimed at limiting the pathogen’s spread. It was the first curfew imposed in the Netherlands since World War II.

The country has been under some sort of lockdown since October and is experiencing a new surge in cases that officials attribute to circulating new variants. It has also seen attacks on coronavirus facilities, including a pipe bomb attack [theguardian.com] on a testing center in the northern town of Bovenkarspel.

On Monday, Dutch voters headed to the polls to cast ballots in a general election. The voting will be extended over three days to adhere to social distancing rules. The Netherlands has reported 1.1 million coronavirus cases and more than 16,000 deaths since the pandemic began.

Link copiedMaryland businesses proceed with caution as capacity limits are relaxed By Joe Heim [washingtonpost.com] and Rachel Weiner [washingtonpost.com]

The door leading back to normal opened a little wider in much of Maryland this weekend as gyms, restaurants, bars, houses of worship and retail businesses began operating under Gov. Larry Hogan’s order removing capacity limits.

Even though limits were lifted, however, many establishments were proceeding with caution. And because social distancing guidelines and mask requirements are still in place, the removal of the capacity limits won’t make much difference in some venues, particularly at smaller retail stores and restaurants.

At 9:30 a.m. Saturday, customers at Chick & Ruth’s Delly in Annapolis got out of their seats to join staffers in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The morning ritual has been going on for decades at the cozy Main Street mainstay which, before the pandemic, had a capacity of 85 patrons and often squeezed in a few more.

Comments are not available on this story.Have a question about our commenting policies? Review our community rules [washingtonpost.com] or contact the commenting team [washingtonpost.com].

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