People traveling immediately after the holiday may face uncertainty: Many private testing clinics and labs are closed on Christmas Day, so testing within the 72-hour window may prove difficult, especially for the P.C.R. screening, which must be sent to a lab and can take several days to process.
Dec. 25, 2020, 7:16 p.m. ET
The rapid antigen test, a relatively new tool to detect the virus, gives a result in around 30 minutes, but it is not as widely available, although it is cheaper. Heathrow Airport, for example, charges passengers about $130 for P.C.R. results with 48 hours and about $60 for antigen tests with results within 45 minutes.
Both tests are offered at major British airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, Londons two major hubs, and Manchester Airport but passengers must register in advance. It was unclear how many would be able to procure a test and get a result in time for travel.
The introduction of new travel restrictions led to concerns that travelers to the United States would flock to the airport, as Londoners did at train stations last Saturday when tighter domestic rules were announced. But employees at Heathrow on Friday described a normal, if quieter, stream of passengers typical of Christmas Day, with most appearing to travel on long-haul flights.
Confused by the terms about coronavirus testing? Let us help:
Several airlines had already announced policies requiring proof of a negative test after a demand from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York that passengers arriving from London to John F. Kennedy International Airport would need to provide documentation of a negative test result.
We cant let history repeat itself with this new variant, Mr. Cuomo had written on Twitter.
Also on Thursday, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey said that passengers arriving at Newark Airport would need negative tests within 72 hours of departure to enter.
The American travel requirements are less draconian than those of other countries in Europe and Asia, which barred all travelers from Britain after the new coronavirus variant emerged. Experts are skeptical that travel bans can stop the spread of the variant. In fact, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said there was a good chance that the variant was already in the country.
A poster about the new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus warns some Britons to stay home. The sign is displayed near King's Cross railway station in London. Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption
A poster about the new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus warns some Britons to stay home. The sign is displayed near King's Cross railway station in London.
A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in England and raising international alarms. This new variant now accounts for more than 60% of the cases in London. And scientists say the variant is likely more contagious than previous versions of the virus.
Health officials have closed international travel to the United Kingdom. The British government has locked down much of the country. And scientists all over the world are rushing to figure out how the virus mutated and how big a threat the new variant poses.
Here's what we know so far:
Throughout this pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19 has been mutating. It has accumulated about one or two mutations each month. That's not surprising. Viruses always mutate.
But this new variant in the U.K., called B.1.1.7, has acquired mutations much quicker than scientists expect. The variant has 17 different mutations in its genetic code. And eight of those mutations occur in a critical part of the virus, called the spike protein, which reaches out and binds to human cells during the initial stages of infection.
Scientists have already studied several of the mutations occurring in B.1.1.7, and they are cause for concern. One mutation, called N501Y, makes the virus bind more tightly to human cells. This mutation has also appeared, independently, in a rapidly spreading variant in South Africa.
Another mutation, called D614G, makes the virus more transmissible. B.1.1.7 also contains a small deletion in the virus's genetic code, called 69-70del, and that deletion helps the new variant evade the body's immune system in some people.
These mutations, combined with the fact that B.1.1.7 acquired many changes simultaneously, suggest this new variant didn't arise by chance, but rather the mutations are giving it an advantage. They are helping it adapt to humans.
When scientists first detected B.1.1.7 in late September, it rapidly took over parts of England, pushing out other forms of virus. By early December, the new variant had pushed out other forms of the virus in London and become the dominant one.
This rapid rise suggests B.1.1.7 is more transmissible than other forms of the virus. "There's no hard evidence, but it seems most likely," says biochemist Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "So if a person sneezes on a bus, the new variant is more likely to infect other people than the previous form of the virus."
To figure out transmissibility for certain, scientists have to bring B.1.1.7 into the lab and see if it's better at infecting cells and spreading between animals.
SARS-CoV-2 is already spreading quickly around the world. So a small increase might not make a big difference. It depends on how much better B.1.1.7 spreads.
In the end, how quickly the virus spreads depends on many factors, including people's behavior in a community. That is, whether they wear masks, physically distance and avoid big gatherings. Those factors could be more important than whether B.1.1.7 arrives in a community, says virus expert Pei-Yong Shi at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "With all these human interventions, it's hard to predict the course of the pandemic."
Scientists don't know for sure because this variant has just emerged, but so far, people who catch B.1.1.7 don't seem to be getting sicker.
"There is absolutely no evidence that this [variant of the] virus is more deadly," Luban says. "There's nothing at all to suggest that, and I don't think anyone that I know is worried about that possibility."
Again, scientists don't know for sure if the vaccines will work as well with B.1.1.7. as they do with previous forms of the virus. They need to test out the new variant in laboratory experiments. But many scientists are optimistic.
Why? When we get a vaccine, our immune systems make many antibodies against a big chunk of the virus, not just one small section that could change when the virus mutates. So even if the variant contains 17 mutations, some antibodies targeting the vaccine will likely still bind and neutralize the virus.
"So if you're in line for the COVID-19 vaccine, stay in line. Don't give up your spot. Take it," says microbiologist Andrew Pekosz of Johns Hopkins University. "You know, everything is still looking good from the vaccine standpoint."
Researchers have already detected it in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia.
The U.K. has been vigilant about looking for new variants and following them. Other countries, including the U.S., haven't been tracking variants as closely. So new variants, such as B.1.1.7, have likely gone undetected.
An Oregon mink trapped in the wild tested positive for the coronavirus this month, the Oregon Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday.
The mink was captured Dec. 13 near an Oregon mink farm that is under quarantine after a November COVID-19 outbreak there. State and federal wildlife officials believe the trapped mink had recently escaped from the farm.
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is circulating or has been established in the wild, ODA state veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz said in a statement. Several [trapped] animals from different species were sampled, and all others were negative. Still, we are taking this situation very seriously and continuing to survey and trap near the farm.
Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, does not find the states response reassuring.
Its beyond outrageous that an infected mink can escape even from a quarantined fur farm, putting an untold range of wild animals at risk of contracting the virus, she said. As much as I hope this case of COVID-19 is just limited to the one mink they tested in the wild, we know this virus is highly contagious and that one case quickly grows to many.
Infected mink are an under-the-radar but growing problem in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 Americans this year. In November, Denmark announced it would kill all 17 million of the mink raised there after it was discovered that 12 people had been infected with a mutated strain of COVID-19 that had spread from mink to humans.
In a guest opinion column in The Oregonian/OregonLive earlier this month, Burd warned that infected mink at the quarantined Oregon farm could not only spread the virus among wild mink but give rise to a mutant viral strain that threatens to compromise our newly minted vaccines.
She said this week that Oregon regulators need to quit pretending they have everything under control when nothing could be further from the truth.
In November, 10 samples from mink at the quarantined Oregon farm tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 in humans. The mink are believed to have contracted the virus from humans. Some workers at the farm also tested positive for the coronavirus. State officials have not revealed where the farm is located.
Oregon has 11 permitted mink farms with a total of nearly 500,000 animals. Eight of Oregons mink farms are in Marion Country, two are in Clatsop County and one is in Linn County, reports the Salem-based agricultural newspaper Capital Press.
ODA reported this week that the mink at the quarantined Oregon farm are now clear of the virus. State officials said the animals will undergo another round of testing before the farms restrictions are lifted.
Open trapping season for mink began Nov. 15 in Oregon.
-- Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
For the second time this month, Gov. Charlie Baker is attempting to stem the surge of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Massachusetts with more stringent restrictions starting Saturday.
Bakerannounced a series of new rules Tuesday that crack down on gatherings and businesses and require hospitals to halt most elective surgeries.
Starting Saturday and running until at least noon on Jan. 10, restaurants, movie theaters, performance venues, casinos, offices, places of worship, retail businesses, fitness centers, health clubs, libraries, golf facilities, driving and flight schools, arcades, museums, and "sectors not otherwise addressed" must limit their customer capacity to a maximum of 25%.
All indoor gatherings and events will be limited to 10 people, while all outdoor gatherings and events will be limited to 25 people. Workers and staff are excluded from events' occupancy counts. The gatherings limit applies to private homes, event venues and public spaces.
Massachusetts hospitals must push back or cancel most elective inpatient invasive procedures that are nonessential starting Saturday as well, the state announced.
Gov. Charlie Baker announces new restrictions on Mass. residents to prevent another coronavirus surge, including reducing capacity for most industries to 25% and reducing indoor gatherings to a maximum of 10 people.
On Dec. 8, Baker announced that the state would move back a step in his phased reopening plan effective Dec. 13. That rollback meant capacity limits were lowered across an array of businesses, some indoor recreation venues were ordered to close again, and rules around mask-wearing and dining out were tightened.
State Rep. Jon Santiago, who is also an ER doctor at Boston Medical Center, has pressured leaders in Massachusetts to move more quickly and said that the latest restrictions do not go far enough.
"It's too little too late. I mean, we are in an emergency right now," Santiago said. "And so I would prefer we look forward to closing things like casinos and more indoor institutions - dining being one of them."
But Baker has said these steps are more favorable to a complete lockdown across the state, like the one that was imposed earlier this year. Business owners argue that the restrictions are making it near-impossible for them to operate.
However, a day after announcing the new business restrictions, Baker said Massachusetts restaurants, retailers and other small businesses hurt by the pandemic will be eligible for grants through a new $668 million small business relief fund operated by the state.
Baker and other health officials in New England have urged residents to celebrate the holidays safely this year by limiting gatherings to immediate household members.
A new slate of restrictions for Massachusetts gatherings, businesses and elective surgeries was announced Tuesday, the latest to come amid a spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, with fears of another one arriving after the holidays.
A new and potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus has been detected in Britain and elsewhere. With the Trump administration continuing to do little to address the pandemic, state and local leaders have, again, been left to deal with this problem on their own.
To that end, on Monday Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York persuaded major airlines to require people traveling from Britain to New York to first clear a coronavirus test. Mr. Cuomos willingness to act quickly and decisively here is commendable refreshing in a year rife with failures to do exactly that and the move seems reasonable in the face of federal inaction and many unknowns.
But its important to understand just how profound those unknowns are, and why they exist in the first place. Neither scientists nor policymakers have any idea how widespread the variant in question is. Did it originate in Britain or migrate there from somewhere else? How many other countries is it in? It could already be in the United States in New York for all anyone knows.
Thats because only a tiny sliver of the planets 70 million-plus coronavirus cases have been genetically sequenced. Thats a missed opportunity. The newly discovered variant was only detected in Britain because scientists there are doing the most sequencing in the world, by far. Since Dec. 1, Britain has sequenced more than 3,700 coronavirus cases, compared with fewer than 40 cases in the United States, according to Trevor Bedford, who leads a viral sequencing effort at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Routine genetic sequencing of virus samples, what scientists call genomic surveillance, can provide crucial information about how a virus is evolving: if mutations are common, if new variants are emerging, how the virus is spreading from one place to another and whether cases in a given cluster are linked to one another. The latter is especially useful to know in health care settings, where its not always clear if new cases have come in from the outside, or if staff members and patients are infecting one another.
Genomic surveillance is also one of the few ways officials can determine whether, where and how to put travel restrictions in place. Without this data, even the fastest-acting, best-intentioned leaders like Mr. Cuomo, in this case are flying blind. They have no way to know which countries such measures should focus on, or whether such an effort would be worth the political blowback. For instance, it may not be worth it if the variant in question is already circulating widely in the United States, or if only a tiny amount of spread is being driven by overseas cases.
Dr. Bedford and others like him have done heroic work gathering the sequencing data that exists in the United States. But so far that data is far more paltry than it needs to be. Its like a giant canvas where one corner has been painted in extraordinary detail but the rest is blank. No matter how vivid that one corner might be, it cant illuminate the whole picture.
The current situation is reminiscent of the pandemics early days, when the virus was first detected in Wuhan, and U.S. officials enacted a travel ban against visitors from China without realizing that the virus was already spreading through Europe and would soon make its way to the United States from there.
There are other limitations to Mr. Cuomos plan. For example, there are countless ways to get from Britain to New York, including by routing through other states and cities in the United States. Any passenger could easily sidestep the new stricture by first flying to, say, Chicagos OHare International Airport. It would help if federal leaders put similar measures in place across the country to avoid such loopholes.
But to truly solve this problem, federal officials need to increase the nations disease surveillance efforts, and in particular its genomic surveillance. Until they do that, Americans everywhere will be stuck in the same place weve been for the better part of this year: making often brutal sacrifices to try to slow the spread of the virus ourselves.
Its unfair that individuals and small businesses have borne so much of that pain. But right now, its the only way to squelch this mutant and any other that has yet to be detected.
For the past seven months, weve spoken with everyday Texans about the trials of navigating the pandemic.
In this special edition of our podcast, we checked back in with some of our guests to hear how theyre faring with COVID-19 cases again on the rise and the economy still suffering as a result.
Start your day with a quick take on the latest Texas politics and policy news. Subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon Echo or RSS.
NEW JERSEY Morganville resident Gloria Scarpati remembers her mother, Margaret M. Stella, one of more than 16,000 individuals in New Jersey lost this year to the virus.
Margaret had multiple sclerosis and was wheelchair-bound living in an assisted living facility, Scarpati recalled to Patch. Life had not always been kind to the New Jersey woman: Stella was badly injured in a fire several years ago and suffered life-threatening burns as a result.
"Despite all her hardships, at the age of 65, she finally started to enjoy life," Scarpati said. "She participated in every activity offered in her facility, made a lot of friends and was thrilled that she could see her grandkids so often."
Unfortunately, upon moving into the Morganville facility, Stella fell ill with COVID-19 shortly after the lockdown began.
Stella was just one of the more than 300,000 Americans who have lost their lives to the coronavirus. It's an impossible number, but those who died were more than a statistic. We lost mothers, brothers, children and friends.
We all lost some of our heroes.
In light of the devastating milestone, Patch is working to help you share the triumphs, trials, and accomplishments of those you lost. We want to help you share their stories.
We also hope this allows their neighbors to know them better. Below is a virtual memorial created by Patch and compiled through tributes submitted directly from loved ones. You can read them all, or search by town and state.
A Boston doctor reportedly suffered a severe allergic reaction to Moderna's coronavirus vaccine, after trials showed no such reactions.
Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh reported that he was dizzy and felt his heart racing just minutes after receiving the vaccine on Thursday.
The doctor had an EpiPen in the event of an allergic reaction, which he self-administered, according to a report in the New York Post.
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Hogan has released a plan with top priority to health care workers, first responders and those in nursing facilities. The next priority group includes those who are at high risk for severe COVID-19, which could include seniors and those with certain health conditions, rather than those in specific job categories. Essential workers would follow, before the general public.
Heres a look at false and misleading claims circulating online as news about COVID-19 vaccines and uncertainty around coronavirus relief in the U.S. dominate headlines. The bogus claims were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
CLAIM: Tiffany Dover, a nurse manager in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who fainted after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday, is now dead.
THE FACTS: Claims of Dovers death have no basis in reality.
She is alive and worked a shift at CHI Memorial Hospital on Monday, according to Lisa McCluskey, the hospitals vice president of marketing communications. The claim emerged on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube over the weekend following videos that showed the nurse fainting on Dec. 17 several minutes after receiving the vaccine.
It also appeared on Reddit, on a subreddit devoted to conspiracy theories, and on a website claiming to show obituaries of deceased people. Some posts used screenshots of Dovers Facebook and Instagram accounts to claim she must be dead because she hadnt posted in several days. Others shared screenshots from a public records website, suggesting the appearance of Dovers name in search results somehow indicated she had died.
These claims are bogus, McCluskey confirmed to The Associated Press. Dover told reporters after the fainting episode that she has a condition that can cause her to faint when she feels pain.
Its common for me, she told reporters. I feel fine now.
In the days since then, CHI Memorial Hospital has confirmed Dover is doing well, sharing multiple tweets and a video of the nurse posing with colleagues on Monday afternoon. The CDC offers guidance on fainting after vaccination, which can be common. It says that although fainting has a variety of possible causes, it is usually triggered by pain or anxiety.
