Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen Pence, received a coronavirus vaccine on Friday.Doug Mills/The New York Times
Vice President Mike Pence received a coronavirus vaccine on live television Friday morning at the White House, a measure that the Trump administration said was intended to “promote the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and build confidence among the American people.”
“I didn’t feel a thing — well done,” Mr. Pence said minutes after the vaccine was administered to him by a technician from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Promoting the vaccine and hailing the work of the Coronavirus Task Force that he leads, Mr. Pence called it a “truly inspiring day.”
He said, however, that “vigilance” was still necessary, and encouraged Americans to practice social distancing and wear face masks.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the symbolic day should remind the rest of the country to “step to the plate.” He also tried to reassure people who are skeptical of a vaccine, noting that the decision to call the new vaccine safe and effective “was not in the hands of the company, nor was it in the hands of the administration,” but in the hands of independent scientists and vaccinologists.
Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, also received the vaccine on Friday morning, as did Mr. Pence’s wife, Karen Pence. As the three took their seats on high stools, a technician asked them whether any were “pregnant or breastfeeding” or immunocompromised. They laughed when they said they were not.
Dr. Adams flashed a thumbs-up to the cameras after receiving his vaccine dose. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also attended the event, which was held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is scheduled to receive an injection on camera next week.
On Friday morning, Mr. Trump was not promoting Mr. Pence’s event, which his aides had asked all television networks to carry live. “The Russia Hoax becomes an even bigger lie!” the president tweeted about a minute before Mr. Pence’s event began.
Although the vaccine may provide a ray of hope as the coronavirus now kills about 3,000 people in the United States a day, the message on the virus from the administration’s highest officials remains muddled and often contradictory.
Just days after he hosted a holiday party at his residence at which guests mingled in an outdoor tent and posed for pictures without masks, according to attendees, Mr. Pence received his first vaccine shot and encouraged other Americans to follow suit.
And Mr. Trump, who recovered from his own bout with the virus after being treated with experimental drugs at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, is described by aides and allies as preoccupied with the election results that he still refuses to accept.
Public health officials said they were pleased that the vice president was going to be vaccinated in public, along with Surgeon General Jerome Adams, despite the president’s own lack of interest in sending a similar public health message.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Dr. Vinay Gupta, an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Washington. “The question is why don’t they do it together, six feet apart? It would be really powerful for the president, who has gotten exceptional treatment, to say that even in spite of getting the best care, it’s important that I get this vaccine.”
Los AngelesDamian Dovarganes/Associated Press
La Mesa, Calif.Mario Tama/Getty Images
La Mesa, Calif.Mario Tama/Getty Images
La Mesa, Calif.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Apple Valley, Calif.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
Apple Valley, Calif.Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
SacramentoCalifornia Office of Emergency Services, via Associated Press
Just two weeks ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned Californians that the state’s intensive care beds might be full before Christmas.
Now, it appears that this dire projection is being borne out.
How bad is the coronavirus surge in California?
In Los Angeles County, officials say, an average of two people are dying every hour. And one in every 80 people there is thought to be infected.
“Our hospitals are under siege, and our models show no end in sight,” Dr. Christina Ghaly, the director of health services in Los Angeles County, said on Thursday.
But the problem is most severe in the southern part of the state. Within the month, Dr. Ghaly said, the number of patients requiring I.C.U. care in Los Angeles County “could easily exceed” the 2,500 licensed adult beds by 1,000 or more.
California continues to shatter records. On Thursday, the state reported more than 45,000 new cases and over 260 deaths. That made it the second-worst day in terms of daily reported cases and the third-worst for a single-day death toll.
And it is hardly alone. More than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running critically short of intensive care beds, federal data show. A recent New York Times analysis found that 10 percent of Americans — across a large swath of the Midwest, South and Southwest — live in areas where I.C.U.’s are either completely full or have under 5 percent of beds available.
The total number of confirmed infections in the United States since the pandemic began passed 17.2 million on Thursday, just five days after eclipsing the 16-million mark. There have been at least 310,900 deaths. On Thursday alone, there were at least 238,100 new cases and at least 3,290 new deaths reported.
In California, the authorities have ordered an extra 5,000 body bags, activated an aid network for morgues and coroner’s offices, and stationed 60 refrigerated storage units in counties around the state to handle remains. Health officials in Orange County said they would roll out three field hospitals.
Hospitals are particularly overwhelmed in San Joaquin Valley, where many low-wage essential workers live without good access to health care even in the best of times.
Even the Bay Area, which for a time managed to stave off the worst of the surge, has not been spared. I.C.U. capacity there has dropped below 15 percent, leading to a new regional stay-at-home order.
The ever-climbing numbers are all the more demoralizing for Californians, because they have endured some of the most stringent pandemic restrictions in the country. But health officials said that now more than ever, they need to keep hunkering down.
”It’s going to be a wild ride probably for another four, five or six weeks,” said Dr. Nancy Gin, Kaiser Permanente’s medical director for Southern California. She urged Californians to stay home and not give in to temptation to travel as the holidays near.
The arrival of vaccinations has buoyed people’s spirits, but many health care workers are exhausted.
“It’s really hard to put all of it into words,” said Helen Cordova, an I.C.U. nurse who was the first person in California to receive a vaccine shot. “This is a very real disease — those images of inside of hospitals, that’s very accurate.”
Medical workers prepare to administer coronavirus tests at a theater in Le Havre, France, on Monday. France is a member of Covax, an international group that has negotiated for vaccine doses, including for low- to middle-income countries.Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times
Leaders of an international body established to promote global access to coronavirus vaccines, known as Covax, announced Friday that the effort had reached additional deals with manufacturers that would allow it to access nearly two billion doses of candidate vaccines, more than half of them intended to be delivered to low- and middle-income countries.
The effort’s goal is to ensure vaccination for a fifth of the population of its 190 participating countries and economies before the end of next year.
The new deals involve vaccines that are still being studied for effectiveness and safety, one made by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and another by Johnson & Johnson. While discussions have been underway, no arrangements have yet been finalized to procure the FDA-approved BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine that is already being administered in countries including the U.S. and Britain.
The international effort has been led by the public-private health partnership known as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, as well as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization.
Friday’s announcement included the news that a mechanism had been developed so that countries with excess doses could share them.
Many high-income nations have made arrangements with multiple manufacturers that could result in significantly more doses than needed to vaccinate their entire populations. Officials from Canada and France announced that they intended to contribute their extra doses through Covax, although they did not specify a timeline, or say whether they would vaccinate their entire populations first.
France will “start sharing vaccines as early as possible,” Stephanie Seydoux, the country’s ambassador to global health, said at a news conference.
President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke to the press in Paris on Wednesday, a day before the announcement that he had tested positive for the virus.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Friday that he felt mostly fine but was working more slowly after being infected with the coronavirus, as he pleaded with the French to remain vigilant and warned that “no one is sheltered from this virus.”
“I am doing well,” Mr. Macron said in a video posted on Twitter that he appeared to have recorded on a hand-held smartphone. “I have the same symptoms as yesterday — that is to say fatigue, headaches, a dry cough.”
The video broke with France’s decades-old tradition of secrecy around the health of its presidents, whose medical histories and conditions are rarely aired in public.
Mr. Macron, who is isolating at an official presidential residence in Versailles, west of Paris, wore a black turtleneck and stood in an office with a desk and the French and European flags in the background.
He did not appear overtly sick, with no signs of difficult breathing, but he seemed less energetic and spoke more slowly than usual. He said he was continuing to handle important day-to-day affairs.
But he acknowledged that he was “a bit slowed down because of the virus.”
Mr. Macron said he would give daily updates on his condition, although he did not specify whether he would do so by video.
“There is normally no reason that things would take a turn for the worse, but I am closely monitored medically and I will update you in a totally transparent way,” he said.
He added a warning that the country had recorded more than 18,000 new infections on Thursday, saying, “We must remain vigilant.”
Mr. Macron did not say how he might have been infected. French officials have raised the possibility that he was exposed at a meeting of top European Union officials last week in Brussels.
“I am very protected, I am very careful, I follow distancing rules, I wear the mask, I use hydro-alcoholic gel regularly — and despite all that I caught the virus,” he noted. “Probably a moment of negligence, a moment of bad luck too.”
Prime Minister Igor Matovic of Slovakia, who also attended the meeting, has also tested positive for the coronavirus, the government said Friday, offering no further details.
A vaccination center in Frankfurt, Germany.Ralph Orlowski/Reuters
A Belgian government minister released, and then quickly deleted, a Twitter post late Thursday containing prices that the European Union has negotiated to pay pharmaceutical companies for coronavirus vaccines.
The prices had been kept secret by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive, which is negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states and ordering doses for the 410 million people living in the vast region.
The new information comes days before the bloc is expected to approve its first vaccine for use across the region, which will set off an ambitious and logistically challenging inoculation campaign, as cases surge across much of the European Union.
The price list, briefly released by Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, showed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which is set for approval on Monday in the bloc and is being administered in the United States and Britain, will cost 12 euros, or $14.7, per dose, bringing the cost per person to €24, as each person is supposed to receive two doses.
That is markedly lower than the company’s official price, which has been announced at $19.5 per dose.
A European Commission spokesman declined to comment on the price list, saying that the negotiated agreements were “covered by confidentiality,” but did not dispute the pricing.
A spokesman for Ms. De Bleeker said that she had tweeted the details to settle a political debate in Belgium, where opposition politicians are accusing the government of not setting aside enough money to buy the vaccines.
“We were trying to be transparent, but it seems we were a bit too transparent,” Bavo De Mol, the spokesman, said.
An emergency worker speaking with a 77-year-old woman with Covid-19 symptoms before she was taken to a hospital in Yonkers, N.Y., on Thursday.John Moore/Getty Images
After accelerating through the fall, the coronavirus is spreading in the United States at a consistently rapid rate, with each day bringing an average of more than 200,000 new reported cases. Progress in some regions is roughly counteracted by deterioration in others. And while the rate seems to have steadied, ominous milestones are flying by.
The total number of confirmed infections surpassed 17 million on Thursday, five days after eclipsing the 16-million mark.
The increased availability of testing and growing public awareness have undoubtedly contributed to the pace at which cases are being confirmed. But testing doesn’t cause Covid-19 cases — it merely detects them. And the velocity of the pandemic that tests are detecting now continues to be high.
After the country’s first case was confirmed on Jan. 21, it took more than three months to reach a million cases. Even at the previous peak in July, when testing had become more readily available, it took 16 days to go from three million confirmed cases to four million.
The progress that the nation as a whole made by late summer in slowing the virus’s spread has been wiped out, and then some. Three months ago, new cases were trending downward and death reports were flat. But now there are nearly six times as many cases being reported each day, and three times as many deaths.
The virus has spread so widely now that in some communities nearly one in five residents has tested positive.
One state that has been through the wringer, North Dakota, had the highest Covid-19 mortality rate in the world at one point. After resisting doing so for months, Gov. Doug Burgum announced a mask mandate and restrictions on businesses in mid-November, and new cases have started ticking downward, although deaths have yet to subside.
Eddy and Foster counties, neighbors in the rural east central part of the state, are among the places where the pandemic is highly pervasive. Choose six people in those counties, and the odds are that at least one has tested positive.
“It’s terrifying,” said Tanis Walch, an associate professor of public health education at the University of North Dakota.
Dr. Walch said her students tallied how many people wore masks into grocery stores in a study over the summer, when the state had no mask requirement. They found that 34 percent of people did so — but the proportion almost doubled when the grocery chain said it would start requiring masks, even before the rule took effect.
More recently, the students have been monitoring mask wearing at gas stations. Many more people are wearing them now, she said, but compliance remains spotty.
Dr. Walch said she still heard a sentiment among fellow North Dakotans that they do not want anything to impinge on their personal freedom. She said a friend of hers had ignored warnings and held a Thanksgiving gathering with 22 family members. Eighteen have since tested positive, she said.
Now Dr. Walch is worried about Christmas. “It’s not a good time in North Dakota right now,” she said.
Hampden County Deputy Sheriff Lt. Michael Goldberg spoke with residents in an apartment building while serving eviction notices in Springfield, Mass., on Wednesday.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
The coronavirus struck in a country already chronically short of affordable housing. In September, the Trump administration announced a four-month halt in eviction proceedings, put forward by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now, after a summer of catastrophic job loss, 6.7 million adults are likely to face eviction or foreclosure in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
But evictions are resuming under unprecedented scrutiny. If displacing households was considered unsafe in September, when contagion rates were lower, many ask why it would be acceptable at this point. Won’t the virus spread faster if evicted tenants end up in shelters?
One person grappling with these questions is Nicholas Cocchi, the sheriff of Hampden County in western Massachusetts.
Sheriff Cocchi presides over Springfield, a city where nearly 27 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. His predecessor was a former social worker, and Sheriff Cocchi has carried on that progressive tradition, branching out into services to reintegrate former inmates and treat addiction. Last year, his department carried out 724 evictions, two or three a day.
Sheriff Cocchi has worried for weeks about resuming evictions, searching for ways to make them “respectful and humane.”
“As a human, not a sheriff — not as an elected official but as a human being — if it is part of the ecosystem, I get it, but that doesn’t mean we let people decay and rot,” Sheriff Cocchi said.
His main idea is to work intensively with tenants his department is preparing to evict, offering a last big push to find them alternative housing. If worse comes to worst, he said, he would provide them with short-term shelter.
“You’re not going to sleep in your car tonight,” he said. “I can give you a place that night. So you’re not outside in the cold, in the rain, in your car or a park bench. I can do that. It’s my job. I believe I owe that to you.”
Global Roundup
In Berlin this week. Germany’s health authorities registered 33,777 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, a daily record.Lena Mucha for The New York Times
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany paid a virtual visit on Thursday to the headquarters of BioNTech, the German company behind the mRNA vaccine created in partnership with Pfizer. Their coronavirus vaccine is the first to be approved for emergency use in countries including the United States, Britain and Canada.
“We are incredibly proud to have such researchers in our country,” Ms. Merkel, herself a quantum chemist by training, said in opening remarksdelivered by video. She also congratulated Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, the husband-and-wife founders of BioNtech, and their team.
The event was a point of light on an otherwise somber day in Germany, as the health authorities registered 33,777 new coronavirus infections, a daily record. There were also 813 daily deaths recorded, the second worst daily toll since the pandemic began.
The European Union is expected to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week, officials said on Thursday.
Germany expects to receive 11 million to 13 million doses of the vaccine once it is approved and will begin administering doses on Dec. 27, the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Friday. The first to receive it will be people over 80 and residents of nursing homes, followed by the nurses and doctors who care for them, Mr. Spahn said.
Vaccinations will be voluntary, and Mr. Spahn said that officials would like to see as many people as possible accept the shots. He urged people to be patient, however, and to continue following regulations on wearing masks, washing hands and keeping a safe distance from others.
Other coronavirus news from around the world:
India was about 20,000 cases away on Friday from recording its 10 millionth coronavirus infection. The country’s total caseload is the world’s second-largest after the United States. Tens of millions of migrant workers were stranded after Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a national lockdown in March, and the emergency trains that carried them back to their villages spread the coronavirus across the country. India has reported 144,789 Covid-19 deaths, the third-largest toll after the United States and Brazil.
Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia on Friday announced a tightening of lockdown restrictions as infections skyrocket. The rules, which will be in effect from Monday through at least Jan. 11, limit the size of groups allowed to gather and tighten restrictions on restaurants and bars. Several other Spanish regions have also introduced new measures in recent days. On Thursday, Valencia limited family gatherings to six people, while the Balearic archipelago said it would require visitors from the Spanish mainland to produce a negative coronavirus test result before arrival.
Waiting for the subway at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Members of Congress and the Supreme Court will begin receiving coronavirus vaccinations in the coming days in an effort to safeguard the functioning of the government.
Among the first in line will be the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, their offices said.
It was not immediately clear how many doses will be sent to Capitol Hill, but all 535 members of Congress and the nine justices are eligible under plans circulated on Thursday by Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the Capitol’s attending physician, who indicated that vaccinations would take place in medical offices, out of the public eye.
Dr. Monahan urged lawmakers to take advantage of the opportunity.
“My recommendation to you is absolutely unequivocal: There is no reason why you should defer receiving this vaccine,” he wrote. “The benefit far exceeds any small risk.”
The drive to vaccinate the nation’s elected and unelected leaders is part of a presidential directive meant to ensure that officials across the government are able to continue their work with minimal interruption. A limited number of support staff workers deemed “continuity essential” may also be vaccinated.
President Trump, who has had the virus, is not scheduled to be vaccinated, but Vice President Mike Pence received a dose on Friday morning, along with Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, and Mr. Pence’s wife, Karen Pence. Select executive branch officials are also expected to receive doses in the coming weeks.
Congress has struggled to keep its members — many of whom are 65 or older — healthy, given that members fly in and out frequently and have congregated indoors. About 50 lawmakers have tested positive for the virus, at times forcing the House and Senate to adjust or curtail its operations.
Lawmakers said they hoped their vaccinations would persuade skeptical Americans of all political affiliations to get a shot.
“With confidence in the vaccine and at the direction of the attending physician, I plan to receive the vaccine in the next few days,” said Ms. Pelosi, 80, a California Democrat.
Mr. McConnell, a 78-year-old Kentucky Republican, has been one of the most outspoken members of his party in favor of following government health guidelines.
“As a polio survivor, I know both the fear of a disease and the extraordinary promise of hope that vaccines bring,” he said in a statement. “I truly hope all Kentuckians and Americans will heed this advice and accept this safe and effective vaccine.”
A subdued holiday spirit in Milan last week.Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times
With more than 500,000 people across Europe dead as a result of the coronavirus, and a growing mental health crisis on the continent, a World Health Organization official had a message for Europeans on Friday ahead of the Christmas holiday time: Stay at home.
Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, the agency’s regional director for Europe, reflected on the “far-reaching and relentless fallout from the pandemic” and said in a statement that now was not the time to loosen restrictions.
“While families debate how to spend their holidays, I have a final appeal to make. There remains a difference between what you are being permitted to do by your authorities and what you should do,” he said. “The safest thing right now is to remain at home.”
He also addressed concerns around mental health during the pandemic, emphasizing that the psychological impact of lockdowns and the knock-on effects of unemployment and financial worries would be “long-term and far-reaching.”
“The mental health toll of Covid-19 will be compounded by anxieties that often present during the winter and holiday season,” he said. “We cannot underestimate the impact this can have on our friends, our families and our own mental health.”
A patchwork of policies are in place across Europe in the lead-up to Christmas as nations struggle to cope with a surge of new coronavirus infections while also contending with a two-week period that is traditionally a time for large family gatherings, travel and celebrations. Germany has introduced a strict lockdown for Christmas week, and the Netherlands and Italy will have more stringent measures in place over the holiday.
France and Spain have some restrictions in place, but have resisted full new national lockdowns. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticized for lifting restrictions on Christmas gatherings even as new infections spike.
Looking ahead to 2021, Dr. Kluge said there was “much to look forward to” with the early stages of vaccine rollout on the horizon, although he said that there would be “a few more months of sacrifice ahead.”
“When we look back on these unprecedented times,” he said, “I hope we all feel that we acted with a spirit of shared humanity to protect those in need.”
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