Here are some significant developments:
Biden said an additional 200 million doses of the two vaccines approved for use in the United States would be available by summer, bringing the total to 600 million doses — enough to vaccinate 300 million people.
With vaccines largely restricted to front line health-care workers and high risk groups, the hope is to give the general public access by the spring.
Though the vaccine rollout began in late December, states have complained that the promised numbers of doses did not arrive. As manufacturing has ramped up, however, the federal allocations will increase by about 16 percent in the coming week.
It is unclear, however, if the boost in U.S. vaccine numbers will help with Biden’s other priority, returning schools to in-person learning. A report from the Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday, however, did give some optimism by concluding that schools have not been a major center of transmission.
Data from the United States and abroad reviewed by the CDC team found that schools had nowhere near the transmission rates of sites like nursing homes or high density workplaces. Key to these efforts appeared to be prevention measures such mask-wearing.
“The conclusion here is with proper prevention efforts … we can keep transmission in schools and educational settings quite low,” said Margaret A. Honein, in a piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the study.
Biden has said that his goal is to have a majority of the schools through 8th grade open within 100 days and has asked Congress for $130 billion to offset the costs of making educational institutions safer — as well as providing guidance on how.
The battle over returning to in-person learning has been fierce, with teachers especially balking about returning. In Chicago, members of the teachers’ union have refused orders to return to classrooms.
In 22 states, as well as the District, teachers have been added to the priority lists for vaccines, in effort to speed up the reopening. But the chaotic rollout of vaccination programs in most states and limited supplies have hampered these efforts.
While Biden stresses that reopening schools is a priority, Europe appears to be headed in the opposite direction and is increasingly shutting them down. Many European countries originally kept schools open much longer than in the United States, but are now bowing under the pressure of a second wave.
Britain, Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands announced closures over fears that new variants of the virus, which are believed to be more contagious.
On morning news shows this week, British ministers have been peppered with questions about when schools will reopen, with officials unable to provide a timeline, especially amid revelations that one of the new variants may spread more effectively in children.
With one of the most rapid vaccine rollouts in the West, Britain is hoping to blunt the latest wave of infections. Still, scientists say that hopes of ending the current lockdown by April are overly optimistic.
In Moscow, by contrast, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin abruptly lifted many of the city’s covid-related restrictions Wednesday, saying that the pandemic was “in decline” and that he had a “duty to create conditions” for a swift economic recovery.
Russia recorded more than 18,000 new cases on Tuesday, the lowest daily increase since late October. About 2,300 of those new infections were in Moscow. The measures included an 11 p.m. curfew for bars and restaurants and an order that 30 percent of employees at local companies work from home. The city’s public mask mandate will remain in place.
But elsewhere, tightened restrictions have sparked unrest. In the Netherlands Wednesday, calm returned to the streets after three days of widespread riots over a new nighttime curfew — the first in the country since World War II.
The unrest saw rioters clash with police in more than a dozen Dutch cities, where they torched vehicles, looted shops and launched rocks and fireworks at officers. Bars, restaurants and shops have been closed as part of a months-long lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.
And while infections have fallen in recent weeks, authorities say they are worried about a rise in cases they attribute to new, more contagious variants that first emerged in Britain and South Africa.
Vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have said that their shots are effective against the new variants — but offer less protection against the South African strain. Moderna said this week that it is developing a booster shot designed to safeguard against the new variants.
Concerns over the vaccines’ effectiveness could complicate a wider battle over global vaccine supply, a struggle experts say will deepen the divide between poorer and wealthier nations.
In an interview with Reuters Wednesday, Bill Gates said that poorer countries will face a lag of at least six to eight months behind richer nations in getting access to coronavirus vaccines. He said that the first vaccine rollout was a “super hard allocation problem” that has put pressure on global institutions.
“Every politician is under pressure to go bid for their country to get further up in line,” said Gates, whose foundation has pledged $1.75 billion to help fight the pandemic.
On Wednesday, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi announced an agreement with Germany’s BioNTech to provide infrastructure for the production of more than 125 million vaccine doses allocated for the European Union.
E.U. leaders this week had stepped up pressure on pharmaceutical firms they say could face legal action and stricter export controls after announcing sudden cuts to supply. Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Britain’s AstraZeneca have faced production delays at European sites warned officials of a potential shortage.
“Although vaccination campaigns have started around the world, the ability to get shots into arms is being limited by lower than expected supplies and delayed approval timelines owing to production shortages,” Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson said in a statement. Production will begin at the company’s facilities in Frankfurt this summer.
Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow contributed to this report.