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Congressional leaders and the White House are nearing agreement on a roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief deal that will likely include a new round of direct payments.
It comes as the U.S. experienced the deadliest day of the pandemic yet, with nearly 3,300 deaths. The country also set a record for the highest number of recorded cases in one day with 232,086 Covid-19 cases recorded.
Early Thursday, the total number of cases reported in the U.S. topped 17 million, according to NBC News' count. More than 308,000 people have died.
- Map of U.S. hot spots and worldwide Covid-19 cases.
- Tracking surges in states across the country this winter.
- Map of travel restrictions and which states have a mask mandate.
- Click here for more of NBC News' Covid-19 coverage.
Washington state Covid-19 vaccine allocation will be cut by 40 percent next week, governor says
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday that the state's Covid-19 vaccine allocation will be cut by 40 percent next week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention informed Washington officials of the downsize in coronavirus vaccines without any explanation, according to Inslee who called it "disruptive and frustrating."
"Our state remains committed to getting all doses we are allocated out to healthcare providers and into the arms of Washingtonians. While we push for answers, that commitment will not change," Inslee said on Twitter.
Front-line workers in Phoenix receive Covid-19 vaccine at drive-thru location
Health care workers and first responders started to receive Covid-19 vaccines at a drive-thru location in Phoenix on Thursday. HonorHealth Medical, a nonprofit hospital system, is organizing the rollout and has the capacity to vaccinate 1,000 people a day. In 21 days, the front-line workers will return to the site to receive their second dose.
“This is quite a collaboration among healthcare organizations and state and local health agencies to identify the right health care workers and first responders, and get thousands of people signed up,” said Dr. Richard Gray, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
Empty stores in New Jersey to be used as vaccination centers
Empty Kmart and Sears stores in New Jersey will be converted into vaccination centers when the vaccine arrives in the state, according to the Essex County Executive office.
A vacant Sears store at the Livingston Mall and A Kmart store in West Orange are among five sites in Essex County that have been designated as vaccine distribution centers.
The Sears store at Livingston Mall, which is owned by Simon Property, closed earlier this year. The West Orange Kmart closed in February. Transformco, which owns both Sears and Kmart, did not respond to an NBC News request for comment.
Amazon asks CDC to prioritize vaccines for many of its workers
Amazon, the country’s second largest employer, is pushing for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to prioritize its workers for receiving the coronavirus vaccine.
The e-commerce giant requested its fulfillment center, data center and Whole Foods Markets workers receive the vaccine “at the earliest appropriate time,” according to a letter sent to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday.
Amazon is one of dozens of companies, including DoorDash and Uber, who are lobbying for their employee ranks to be among the first to receive the vaccine.
Lord Speaker of U.K. House of Lords gets vaccinated
Giants offensive coordinator sidelined by positive Covid-19 test
New York Giants offensive coordinator Jason Garrett tested positive for Covid-19 and will miss the team's next game, the football club announced on Thursday.
The team also said it is contract tracing and will not practice on Thursday: "At this point, there appear to be no high risk close contacts. We are awaiting confirmation from the league. Out of an abundance of caution, the Giants will meet remotely and will not practice today."
Tight ends coach Freddie Kitchens will call plays Sunday when the Giants host the Cleveland Browns in a prime time game televised by NBC.
Garrett is best known for working 10 years as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys before joining the Giants staff earlier this year.
The CDC banned evictions for those affected by Covid. Why are tenants being thrown out on the street?
The day before Thanksgiving, Steve Cowley, a beverage salesman, was at home in Pensacola, Florida, when someone started pounding on the front door. It was the county sheriff serving an eviction notice.
Cowley, 36, had nowhere to go. Out of work because of Covid-19 and behind on his rent, he was doing his best to survive on $275-a-week unemployment checks. His car had been repossessed, he said, so he could not live in it, a common refuge for evicted tenants.
The sheriff's visit surprised Cowley because he'd provided the county court with documentation required under the federal eviction moratorium issued in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ban aimed to let renters affected by Covid stay in their homes, even if they couldn’t pay their landlords.
But Patricia Kinsey, the only judge hearing eviction cases in Escambia County, where Pensacola sits, ordered Cowley out of his home, documents show. Kinsey sided with a lawyer for Cowley's landlord, a big Canadian company that owns 19,000 rental units in North America, who’d argued that the CDC order was unconstitutional. Agreeing with the landlord’s lawyer, Kinsey ruled that the CDC moratorium represented an "unlawful taking" by the U.S. government of landlords’ private property — rental income.
Covid job losses devastate domestic workers, who are largely unseen
Judith Bautista found out she was out of a job in June when a moving truck pulled into the home of the family she worked for during the past eight years.
“They tell me they buy a mansion in another state,” Bautista said, “and from one day to another one, they say ‘that's it, you don't have a job.'"
Bautista, 36, the family's nanny, has been a domestic worker in New York City ever since she immigrated from Puebla, Mexico, at the age of 17. She specializes in caring for children and teens with special needs.
Like many other domestic workers, her job came to an end when her employer decided to move out of the city due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Poland to enter national quarantine on Dec. 28
Poland will enter a nationwide quarantine at the end of the month to help halt the spread of the coronavirus, according to Polish officials. The lockdown be in place from Dec. 28 to Jan. 17, and all hotels, ski slopes, and shopping malls will be closed.
"I call on every Pole to be responsible for themselves and their loved ones. But I know that calls won't help," Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said at a news conference on Thursday.
Pfizer vaccine vials hold some extra doses — experts say that's normal
The small glass vials used to transport Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine hold more than the expected five doses — and that's OK.
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday night that it was aware of reports that vials were yielding six and sometimes seven doses, and that it was acceptable to use all full doses from each vial.
"At this time, given the public health emergency, FDA is advising that it is acceptable to use every full dose obtainable (the sixth, or possibly even a seventh) from each vial, pending resolution of the issue," the agency said in a tweet.
U.S. sets records in Covid cases, deaths; infection count surpasses 17 million
The U.S. set Covid-19 records for cases and reported deaths Wednesday, counting 3,293 dead and 232,086 cases.
According to NBC News' tally, six states registered more than 10,000 cases apiece Wednesday: California, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, New York and Pennsylvania.
The case count in the country surpassed 17 million Thursday morning.
These states set single-day records:
- California, 51,437 cases
- Kansas, 144 dead
- Maine, 551 cases
- Nevada, 57 dead
- New Hampshire, 21 dead
- Tennessee, 11,410 cases
- Vermont, 5 dead
Jobless claims rise to 885,000
Weekly initial jobless claims rose to 885,000, defying economists predictions they would fall to 790,000.
The number, a measure of how many workers are filing for unemployment benefits for the first time, reflects renewed business closures and lockdowns, a pullback in retail spending, and the impending cutoff for federal support for borrowers and unemployed.
The surprise bad news will likely add pressure to stimulus talks inching forward in Washington.
Wales fails to report 11,000 coronavirus infections after computer error
Wales in the United Kingdom failed to report 11,000 positive coronavirus cases in its public health figures, its public health body said Thursday.
According to Public Health Wales, the error happened between Friday and Saturday as the laboratory computer systems went through scheduled maintenance.
The missed cases in the reported numbers will be released from Thursday, and will send Wales’ coronavirus numbers up significantly. The public health body said the error did not affect people receiving positive test results.
Wales, one of the four countries that makes up the United Kingdom, has had a total of 103,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and nearly 3,000 deaths.
WHO investigators to go to China, unclear if Wuhan visit allowed
SINGAPORE — Beijing will welcome an international team of Covid-19 investigators due to travel to China in January, said the World Health Organization, which is leading the mission.
China has strongly opposed calls for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, saying such calls are anti-China, but has been open to a WHO-led investigation.
However, it was unclear whether the WHO investigators will travel to the city of Wuhan where the virus was first detected, with discussions on the itinerary ongoing.
"WHO continues to contact China and to discuss the international team and the places they visit," Babatunde Olowokure, the WHO's regional emergencies director in the Western Pacific, told a news conference on Thursday.
Italy to begin Covid vaccinations on Dec. 27, health officials say
ROME — Italy will begin Covid-19 vaccinations on Dec. 27, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, provided both European and national drug authorities give their approval to the Pfizer shot according to schedule.
Italy is set to receive an initial 1.83 million shots from Pfizer. The first inoculations will be administered to health workers, a statement said.
On Tuesday, Germany, France, Italy and five other European states announced they would coordinate the start of their vaccinations.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is expected to give its green light to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine at a meeting scheduled for Dec. 21.
Anti-vaccination groups target local media after social media crackdowns
With online platforms such as Facebook and YouTube cracking down on misinformation around Covid-19 vaccines, some anti-vaccination activists are pivoting to sparsely-attended real-world events and looking to local news outlets to amplify their message and give them a chance to raise money through donations. That tactic, known to experts as information laundering, appears to be gaining some traction.
From California to Maine, local news stations that had largely stopped covering childhood immunization opponents have been highlighting the anti-vaccination movement’s response to Covid-19 restrictions and solutions by covering their protests and giving activists a microphone to spread misinformation.
Experts have warned that credulous coverage of fringe and misleading anti-vaccine misinformation — coverage that doesn’t explicitly state that the information is false — can cause real-world harm, including a hesitancy among some people to get vaccinated that threatens to undermine the pandemic response. Local television news is a particularly important source of information about the pandemic, as it’s consistently the most popular source Americans turn to for news, according to the Pew Research Center.
Local media coverage is all part of the plan, said Joshua Coleman, a California anti-vaccine activist who has spent the last couple of years organizing and documenting anti-vaccine events. Coleman confirmed what social media data suggests — that the pandemic has led to a growth in anti-vaccine communities, and said that anti-lockdown protests offered a way to introduce the cause to a new audience. But he’s also felt the sting from efforts by online platforms to reduce the spread of misinformation about vaccines.
The United States tops 17 million Covid cases after setting two records
The United States surpassed 17 million Covid-19 cases early Thursday as the country set two records, the highest number of daily deaths and new infections since the pandemic began.
The U.S. recorded nearly 3,300 deaths related to coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the total death count to more than 308,000 people, according to NBC News' tally. The country logged nearly 232,086 new cases of Covid-19 on the same day.
Meanwhile, the country has recorded its highest number of current hospitalizations with more than 113,000 people, according to The Covid Tracking Project.
Will children be able to get Covid vaccines?
Not until there’s enough data from studies in different age groups, which will stretch well into next year.
The Pfizer vaccine authorized in the U.S. this month is for people 16 and older. Testing began in October in children as young as 12 and is expected to take several more months. The Food and Drug Administration will have to decide when there’s enough data to allow emergency use in this age group.
Depending on the results, younger children may be enrolled for study as well.
Moderna, which is expected to become the second Covid-19 vaccine greenlit in the U.S., began enrolling study participants ages 12 to 17 this month and will track them for a year. Testing in children younger than 12 is expected to start in early 2021.
It is uncertain if the results on younger children will come in time for vaccinations to begin before the next school year.
Positive outcomes in adult studies are reassuring and suggest it is safe to proceed in testing kids, said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University and director of its vaccine research program.
France's Macron tests positive for coronavirus
French President Emmanuel Macron became the latest world leader to contract coronavirus Thursday, as countries across Europe struggle to suppress a spike in infections in the run-up to Christmas.
The Élysée Palace, Macron's official residence, confirmed the news in a statement that said he was tested as soon as his symptoms appeared. All his planned trips have been cancelled, including a trip to Lebanon.
As coronavirus cases surge in Seoul, office workers wait in line for tests
