â India hits another grim record, adding 400,000 new cases
â Support grows for intellectual property waiver on virus vaccines; snags remain
â Vatican health conference features Dr. Fauci, Pope Francis â and Aerosmith
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HEREâS WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
TOPEKA, Kan. â Kansas has requested less than 9% of its federal allocation of COVID-19 vaccine doses for this week, as Republican state lawmakers try to revive proposals to ban government vaccine passports and restore limits on tracing the close contacts of people exposed to the virus.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kellyâs office said Thursday that the state asked for fewer than 14,000 vaccine doses for the week, out of a federal allotment of almost 162,000. While the state sought its full allotment of 6,400 doses of a one-shot vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, it requested only 7,510 doses of its allocation of 155,540 doses of two-shot vaccines manufactured by Pfizer
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LOS ANGELES Los Angeles and San Francisco are reopening for more business under Californiaâs least restrictive coronavirus safety rules, even though these counties have more infections than many others.
State data shows nearby Orange and San Bernardino counties have similarly low coronavirus case and positivity rates to Los Angeles but canât reopen further because they arenât conducting as much testing.
It wasnât immediately clear why some counties were conducting so much more coronavirus testing and others, much less. But those that do are rewarded under the stateâs color-coded tier system by being allowed to expand business activity.
Coronavirus roundup
Associated Press
A new attempt to estimate the death toll of COVID-19 puts the number at 6.9 million deaths globally, or more than double official counts.
Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington s School of Medicine, announced the estimates Thursday.
Researchers at the university also suggest the U.S. death count is more than 905,000. The official government count is about 575,000 American deaths.
The University of Washington researchers believe the largest undercounts are in India, which may have close to three times more deaths than the 221,000 official government death count, and in the Russian Federation, which they calculate had more than five times the 109,000 official government count.
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Pfizer and BioNTech announced Friday they have submitted an application for full FDA approval of their COVID-19 vaccine for people ages 16 and older.
Like other COVID-19 vaccines available in the U.S., Pfizer-BioNTech is currently being administered under an emergency use authorization. In the midst of a pandemic, the FDA said it was more important to get vaccines to people quickly.
This would make Pfizer s vaccine the first in the U.S. to be assessed for full FDA approval.
It is unclear how long the review will take, but Pfizer s CEO Albert Bourla spoke of the goal of securing full regulatory approval of the vaccine in the coming months, according to a prepared statement.