Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that it will develop and deliver 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine for the U.S. in a deal totaling more than $1 billion. 

The company’s experimental vaccine is currently in early stage human trials and is expected to begin late-stage human trials in September, executives have previously said. The deal gives the U.S. the option to order an additional 200 million doses, according to the announcement. 

“We are scaling up production in the U.S. and worldwide to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for emergency use,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief science officer at Johnson & Johnson, in a statement. 

The U.S. earlier this year awarded J&J $456 million to develop its vaccine. The company said its goal is to supply more than 1 billion doses globally through 2021. 

The doses will be provided to Americans at no cost if they’re used in a Covid-19 vaccination campaign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human services said in a separate press release.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/jj-reaches-deal-with-us-for-100-million-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine-at-more-than-1-billion.html

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New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that New York City had no COVID-19 deaths for three straight days. There were only three COVID-19 deaths in the entire state on Monday. Despite the progress, the governor issued a stark warning for residents to continue to take the virus seriously — and the city announced it's setting up checkpoints to inform visitors of quarantine rules.

"Our progress in New York is even better than we expected, thanks to the hard work of New Yorkers," Cuomo said in a statement. "But we must protect that progress, which is why today we are adding another state to our travel advisory. We cannot go back to the hell we experienced just a few months ago — and surging infection rates across the country threaten to bring us back there — so we must all remain vigilant."

The governor has ordered a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people traveling to New York from other states with high rates of infections. Visitors coming from 35 states are currently affected. While Delaware and Washington, D.C. were removed from the list, Rhode Island was added on Tuesday. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-new-york-city-zero-covid-deaths-three-days

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The United States saw a dramatic decline in new COVID-19 cases on Sunday -- 47,500, the lowest single-day figure in about a month.

The new cases raised the total U.S. caseload to 4.668 million since the start of the pandemic, according to updated data Monday by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. There have been 154,800 deaths.

The Sunday figure is the lowest since the 45,000 new cases were reported July 6. In between, the United States averaged about 60,000 new cases each day. More than 1.9 million new cases were reported in July alone.

Deaths were also down Sunday, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which listed about 500 -- down from an average of 1,100 the week prior.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/08/03/New-US-COVID-19-cases-fall-to-47500-lowest-one-day-total-in-a-month/5411596460501/

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The rates of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions were all trending downward in California in the latest counts, the governor said on Monday.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said that despite that good news, the state’s Central Valley agricultural region was still being hit hard by the coronavirus. He said the data had yet to reach a point for lifting pandemic restrictions.

“This virus is not going away,” Newsom said at a daily coronavirus briefing. “It’s not going to take Labor Day weekend off or Halloween off or the holidays off. Until we have a vaccine we are going to be living with this virus.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-california/california-governor-says-covid-19-cases-hospitalizations-trending-down-idUSKCN24Z2IG

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On Sunday, the U.S. reported the fewest new Covid-19 cases in weeks.

Nearly 48,850 new Covid-19 cases were reported on August 2, according to New York Times data; the last day new cases were below 49,000 was almost a month, earlier on July 5.

Florida, one of the hardest-hit states, experienced its fewest number of new reported cases on Sunday, with 7,104 diagnoses and 62 deaths, the smallest daily increase in three weeks, according to NBC 6.

The spread of Covid-19 is reportedly slowing in hard-hit Texas as well—a partial result of Gov. Greg Abbott’s public mask mandate, reports the Texas Tribune.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/08/03/us-sees-smallest-number-of-daily-new-covid-19-cases-in-weeks/#492d8a1e6a95

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Gov. Phil Murphy said on Friday that no one died in a New Jersey hospital from the coronavirus on Thursday.

That’s the first time that’s happened since March.

“It is a big day, not withstanding the increase in cases,” Murphy said, “That for the first time in 142 days, we had no deaths in our hospitals and that cannot be understated or underestimated.”

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/07/no-one-died-from-coronavirus-in-nj-hospitals-yesterday-that-hasnt-happened-since-march.html?outputType=amp

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Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, has told the US Congress he is “cautiously optimistic” that a “safe and effective” coronavirus vaccine will be available to the public by the end of 2020 during a hearing in Washington marked by testy exchanges between Fauci and senior Republicans loyal to Donald Trump.

Fauci told US lawmakers on a House of Representatives subcommittee examining the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic that he was skeptical of fast-track vaccine efforts in Russia and China, suggesting the US would not need to depend on other countries for its own vaccine.

“We hope that by the time we get into late fall and early winter, we will have in fact a vaccine that we can say that would be safe and effective. One can never guarantee the safety or effectiveness unless you do the trial, but we are cautiously optimistic this will be successful,” Fauci said in prepared remarks.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/31/fauci-coronavirus-vaccine-washington-hearing

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Drug giant Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have begun an advanced trial of one of their experimental coronavirus vaccines in volunteers in the United States.

The first four participants were dosed Monday at the University of Rochester Medical Center, a spokesman there said. The combined Phase 2/3 trial, which looks for safety, efficacy and optimal dosing of a vaccine or drug, will include up to 30,000 participants.

It was the second advanced trial of a coronavirus vaccine to get under way in the United States Monday. Earlier Monday, Moderna started a Phase 3 trial in the United States of its experimental vaccine. Pfizer's vaccine is different, but also uses an experimental approach that employs genetic material to stimulate an immune response against a key part of the coronavirus.

Earlier this month, Pfizer and BioNTech released preliminary data showing that one of their vaccines, known only by its experimental name BNT162b1, appeared safe and elicited antibody and T-cell immune responses in a Phase 1/2 trial.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/28/health/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-begins-biontech/index.html

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Coronavirus outbreaks in Arizona, Florida and Texas appear to be slowing down as more people practice social distancing and states halt reopening plans. 

On Sunday, Arizona reported a 13% drop in the seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases, logging 2,627 newly diagnosed cases over the previous 24 hours, down from 3,022 the previous week, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

Cases in Texas have fallen almost 19% over the previous week, hitting roughly 8,404 daily new cases based on a seven-day moving average on Sunday, according to the CNBC analysis. Its peak in average daily new cases was 10,572 on July 20. CNBC uses a seven-day average to calculate Covid-19 trends because it smooths out inconsistencies and gaps in state data. 

Florida has just begun seeing its curve start to flatten since reaching a record-high average of daily new cases of 11,870 on July 17, according to data from Johns Hopkins. On Sunday, the state had 10,544 average new cases, which is an 8% decrease compared with a week ago. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/27/coronavirus-outbreak-show-signs-of-slowing-in-arizona-texas-and-florida.html

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The world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government — one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race.

There’s still no guarantee that the experimental vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will really protect.

The needed proof: Volunteers won’t know if they’re getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked.

​“Unfortunately for the United States of America, we have plenty of infections right now” to get that answer, NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told The Associated Press.

Moderna said the vaccination was done in Savannah, Georgia, the first site to get underway among more than seven dozen trial sites scattered around the country.

Several other vaccines made by China and by Britain’s Oxford University earlier this month began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries.

But the U.S. requires its own tests of any vaccine that might be used in the country and has set a high bar: Every month through fall, the government-funded COVID-19 Prevention Network will roll out a new study of a leading candidate — each one with 30,000 newly recruited volunteers.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/major-covid-19-vaccine-trial-gets-underway-with-30000-volunteers

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