German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Cabinet approved legislation Wednesday that ensures basic protective measures against the coronavirus pandemic are continued during the fall and winter when more virus cases are expected.
The presentation of the rules — which also include the new obligation to wear N95-type face masks during all long-distance travel by train and bus as well as on planes — coincided with the publication of photos showing the chancellor and German Economy Minister Robert Habeck flying to Canada earlier this week without wearing masks.
The pictures triggered strong public criticism of an alleged double standard for politicians and regular people. Currently, medical face masks are mandatory on planes and public transport though N95-style masks are recommended.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told reporters that the specific pandemic rules that apply to the German air force, which operates government flights, were met and that everyone on the flight, which also included German business leaders and reporters, took a PCR test before boarding the plane.
Still, the justice minister conceded that “politically, I would recommend to us as a federal government that we apply the same rules everywhere that apply elsewhere.”
“Because otherwise, of course, the feeling arises that you’re willing to impose something on the citizens that you don’t want to impose on yourself,” Buschmann added. “And that’s why I can also understand to some extent that there’s so much talk about it.”
In addition to the mandatory use of N95-type masks during long-distance travel, the new measures, which will apply from Oct. 1 to April 7, will also include a nationwide obligation to wear masks in and test before accessing hospitals, nursing homes and similar institutions with vulnerable people.
Beyond that, Germany’s 16 states will have the authority to adopt their own rules depending on how severely the virus affects their areas. State governments could decide to require masks on local public transportation, in schools for students in the fifth grade and up, and at public indoor events. If the virus spreads widely again, the number of people at public events can be limited and testing can be demanded.
The justice minister stressed that there would be no more lockdowns or school closures no matter how the pandemic develops during cold-weather seasons.
“Students were certainly the group that suffered the most in the pandemic … especially in terms of exercising their right to education, especially in terms of school closures,” Buschmann said. “And that’s why I’m also glad that we were able to quickly agree that the instrument of school closures is therefore completely disproportionate.”
The new regulations still need to go to Germany’s lower and upper house of parliament for approval, but they are expected to pass.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was 73% effective in protecting children younger than 5 as omicron spread in the spring, the company announced Tuesday.
Vaccinations for babies, toddlers and preschoolers opened in the U.S. in June after months of delay. Only about 6% of youngsters ages 6 months through 4 years had gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by mid-August, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Health authorities authorized tot-sized vaccine doses made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech based on a study showing they were safe and produced high levels of virus-fighting antibodies. But there was only preliminary data on how that translated into effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19.
The new update analyzed COVID-19 diagnoses between March and June in Pfizer’s ongoing study of the three-dose vaccine. There were 21 COVID-19 cases among the 351 tots who got dummy shots — compared to just 13 among the 794 youngsters given three vaccine doses.
The child cases primarily were caused by the BA.2 omicron version that was circulating at the time. Today, another omicron relative, BA.5, is causing most COVID-19 cases in the U.S. and much of the world.
In older children and adults, the COVID-19 vaccines have been used long enough to prove that they remain strongly protective against severe disease and death even as the coronavirus mutates — while early protection against infection wanes. Still, scientists track that initial effectiveness rate as extra evidence of vaccine performance — and to look for signs of how they initially hold up against new mutants.
Pfizer this week asked U.S. regulators to authorize modified vaccine doses that better match the newest omicron variants for people 12 and older as boosters this fall. The company said it also is developing updated shots for kids under 12.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Monday to authorize its combination COVID-19 vaccine that adds protection against the newest omicron relatives — a key step toward opening a fall booster campaign.
If the FDA quickly clears the combo shots made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, boosters could be offered within weeks. The U.S. has a contract to buy 105 million of the updated Pfizer doses as soon as health authorities greenlight them, and the company said doses are ready to ship.
Moderna is expected to file a similar application soon, and the U.S. has a contract to buy 66 million doses of its updated vaccine.
“It’s going to be really important that people this fall and winter get the new shots. It’s designed for the virus that’s out there,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said last week.
For now at least. BA.5 currently is causing nearly all COVID-19 infections in the U.S., and much of the world. There’s no way to know if it still will be a threat this winter — or if another mutant will have replaced it.
The news comes after Britain a week ago became the first in the world to authorize a different update to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines — shots that add protection against the original omicron that struck last winter.
The U.S. opted not to use that earlier tweak to the vaccine — setting up a fall where different countries will be using different versions of booster shots to rev up protection against another possible winter surge.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who became a household name — and the subject of partisan attacks — during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Monday he will depart the federal government in December after more than five decades of service.
Fauci, who serves as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He was a leader in the federal response to HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases even before the coronavirus hit.
“I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said in a statement, calling those roles “the honor of a lifetime.”
Fauci became the face of the government response to COVID-19 as it hit in early 2020, with frequent appearances on television news and at daily press conferences with White House officials, including then-President Donald Trump. But as the pandemic deepened, Fauci fell out of favor with Trump and his officials when his urgings of continued public caution clashed with the former president’s desire to return to normalcy and to promote unproven therapies for the virus.
Fauci found himself marginalized by the Trump administration, increasingly kept out of major decisions about the federal response, but he continued to speak out publicly in media interviews, advocating social distancing and face coverings in public settings before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
He was also the subject of political attacks and death threats and was granted a security detail for his protection.
When Biden won the White House, he asked Fauci to stay on in his administration in an elevated capacity. The president praised Fauci in a statement, saying, “Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.”
Fauci said despite retiring from federal service he planned to continue working. “I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats,” he said.
Millions of students wearing face masks streamed back to primary and secondary schools across the Philippines Monday in their first in-person classes after two years of coronavirus lockdowns that are feared to have worsened one of the world’s most alarming illiteracy rates among children.
Officials grappled with daunting problems, including classroom shortages, lingering COVID-19 fears, an approaching storm and quake-damaged school buildings in the country’s north, to welcome back many of more than 27 million students who enrolled for the school year.
Only more than 24,000 of the nation’s public schools, or about 46%, would be able to open in-person classes five times a week starting Monday, while the rest would still resort to a mix of in-person and online classes until Nov. 2, when all public and private schools are required to bring all students back to classrooms, education officials said.
About 1,000 schools will be unable to shift to face-to-face classes entirely during the transition period ending on Nov. 2 for various reasons, including damages to school building wrought by a powerful earthquake last month in the north, officials said.
The Department of Education said some schools would have to split classes up to three shifts a day due to classroom shortages, a longstanding problem, and to avoid overcrowding that could turn schools into new epicenters of coronavirus outbreaks.
“We always say that our goal is maximum of two shifts only but there will be areas that would have to resort to three shifts because they’re really overcrowded,” Education Department spokesperson Michael Poa said Friday at a news conference. Despite many concerns, education officials gave assurances that it’s “all-systems go” for Monday’s resumption of classes, he said.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, however, said such assurances have to be matched by real improvements on the ground.
“The era of missing classrooms, sharing tables and chairs and holding classes under the shade of trees must no longer happen,” said Villanueva, who filed two bills calling for additional grocery, transportation and medical allowances for public school teachers.
Among the worst-hit by the pandemic in Southeast Asia, the Philippines under then-President Rodrigo Duterte enforced one of the world’s longest coronavirus lockdowns and school closures. Duterte, whose six-year term ended June 30, had turned down calls for reopening in-person classes due to fears it might ignite new outbreaks.
The prolonged school closures sparked fears that literacy rates among Filipino children — which were already at alarming levels before the pandemic — could worsen.
A World Bank study last year showed that about nine of 10 children in the Philippines were suffering from “ learning poverty,” or the inability of children by age 10 to read and understand a simple story.
“Prolonged school closures, poor health risk mitigation, and household-income shocks had the biggest impact on learning poverty, resulting in many children in the Philippines failing to read and understand a simple text by age 10,” UNICEF Philippines said in a statement.
“Vulnerable children such as children with disabilities, children living in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas, and children living in disaster and conflict zones fare far worse,” the United Nations agency for children said.
Poa said 325 temporary “learning spaces” were being constructed in northern Abra province and outlying regions to replace school buildings battered by a powerful July 27 quake.
Education officials also scrambled to help more than 28,000 students look for new schools after at least 425 private schools closed permanently since the pandemic’s arrival in 2020, mainly due to financial losses. About 10,000 of the students have been enrolled in public schools, according to Poa.
Poverty has also been a key hindrance to education. Crowds mobbed the Department of Social Welfare and Development offices Saturday to claim cash aid for indigent students, injuring at least 26 people who were pinned in entrance gates and prompting its top official to go on TV to appeal for order.
First lady Jill Biden has tested negative for COVID-19 and will leave South Carolina, where she had isolated since vacationing with President Joe Biden, and rejoin him at their Delaware beach home, her office said Sunday.
The White House announced on Tuesday that the 71-year-old first lady, who like her husband has been twice-vaccinated and twice-boosted with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, had tested positive for the coronavirus. She first had symptoms on Monday.
Jill Biden was prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and isolated at the Kiawah Island vacation home for five days before receiving negative results from two consecutive COVID-19 tests, spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said. Jill Biden planned to travel to Delaware later Sunday.
