The United States has more than 19 million cases of COVID-19, and Fauci is concerned about an increase in cases after the holiday.

“We are really at a very critical juncture,” he said. “If you put more pressure on the system by what might be the post-season hike due to travel and the potential gathering of people, you know, for the good and warm purposes of being together on the holidays, that’s very difficult for people not to.”

The latest data from the Transportation Security Administration showed that 1.13 million passengers were screened at US airports on Saturday, the most on any day since mid-March. Of the past 10 days, five have seen more than a million passengers pass through US airports.

Fauci said he supports the decision to request negative tests for COVID-19 before allowing people from the UK to enter the US, which comes after a new strain of the virus was discovered there.

He said the variable is something that “has to be followed very carefully,” and “we are looking at it intensely now.”

Is it a virus that is more dangerous in the sense of virulence? The answer is, it does not seem to be the case.

UK officials say it looks like the vaccines that will be introduced will be strong enough to handle the new variant, but, Fauci said, “We will do the studies ourselves.”

Read now: How many people must be vaccinated against COVID-19 to reach herd immunity? “The faster we do this, the faster we will come back to life.”

The United States counted at least 152,102 new cases on Sunday, and at least 1,230 people died. According to a New York Times tracker. Last week, the average number of cases in the US was 184,951 cases per day, which is a 12% decrease from the previous two weeks.

There are currently 118,720 patients with COVID-19 in US hospitals, According to the COVID Tracking Project, Below the record of 119,463 set on December 23, but still worryingly high.

Fauci said the United States is in a critical phase of the pandemic, and it will likely be the worst in the future. He predicted that the general population would be vaccinated on a large scale by late March or early April – outside frontline workers, the elderly and some other segments of the public who are first.

The United States still leads the world in terms of the number of cases, with a rate of 19.1 million, and deaths at 333,140, ​​according to Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, Or about a fifth of the global number of each.

There was relief to many when President Donald Trump signed a $ 900 billion pandemic relief package late Sunday, after spending days refusing to do so. The package would provide much-needed cash for businesses and individuals and avoid a federal government shutdown, the Associated Press reported.

The massive legislation includes $ 1.4 trillion in funding for government agencies through September and contains other end-of-session priorities such as increasing food stamp benefits. The move sparked a massive rally in stocks sending the major indices, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average, sent in

DJIA

And the S&P 500

SPX

And the
To record altitudes.

In other news:

• Novavax Corporation

NVAX

The trial of the last phase of the candidate COVID-19 vaccine begins with plans to enroll up to 30,000 volunteers at about 115 sites in the United States and Mexico. The trial is supported by partners’ Operation Warp Speed, a federal government program aimed at rapidly developing vaccines and treatments, including the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, the Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority, or Barda, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response. Barda provided up to $ 1.6 billion in funding for the trial under the Defense Department deal. The trial will be randomized, controlled by placebo, and will evaluate the efficacy of a treatment, called NVX-CoV2373, in patients 18 years of age or older.

See also: AstraZeneca believes the coronavirus vaccine will be effective against the new strain

• The European Union began the vaccination program on Sunday by dosing doses of doctors, nurses and the elderly with a vaccine developed by Pfizer.

PFE

And German partner BioNTech SE

BNTX

And the
The Associated Press reported. The first strikes were coordinated across the commercial bloc as an expression of solidarity. The vaccine began arriving in ultra-cold containers to European Union hospitals on Friday from a factory in Belgium. Each country was receiving only a fraction of the required doses – fewer than 10,000 in the first batches for some countries – with a larger launch expected in January when more vaccines become available. All of those who get the shots on Sunday should be back for a second dose in three weeks. With additional vaccines in development, the European Union will have more shots than needed this year and could share its surplus with the Western Balkans and Africa, said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. And she insisted that “Europe is well positioned.”

China has imprisoned for four years a 37-year-old citizen journalist who reported the spread of the virus in Wuhan in late 2019, Reuters reported. Her lawyer said that the sentence was imposed on the charge of “inciting disputes and inciting trouble.” Zhang Chan is the first such person known to have been tried, and he was among a handful of people he’d spotted from crowded hospitals and empty streets that painted a more severe picture of the epidemic than official accounts.

Indonesia bans all foreign travelers for two weeks from January 1, The Guardian reported. The news was announced by Secretary of State Retino Marsudi, citing concerns about its transmission. The new rule will apply to all foreign visitors, except for high-ranking government officials.

Latest numbers

Johns Hopkins data shows there are now 80.9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, and at least 1.77 million people have died. Nearly 46 million people have recovered.

Brazil has the second-highest death toll at 191,139 and the third-highest number of cases, at 7.5 million.

India ranks second in the world with cases of 10.2 million, and third in terms of deaths, at 147901.

Mexico has the fourth highest death toll at 122,426 and the 13th highest death toll at 1.4 million.

Italy has 71,925 deaths, the highest in Europe, with 2 million cases. The UK has 2.3 million cases, the largest in Europe, and 70,860 deaths, the second highest in Europe and the sixth highest in the world.

China, where the virus was first detected late last year, has recorded 95,693 confirmed cases and 4,773 deaths, according to official figures.