Here are some significant developments:
- The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention again urged Americans not to let their guard down, noting a 12 percent increase in the seven-day average for new coronavirus cases and rising hospitalizations.
- Johnson & Johnson acknowledged that a Baltimore plant run by Emergent BioSolutions mixed up two vaccines’ ingredients for about 15 million doses and had to be discarded.
- Peter Navarro urged President Donald Trump to acquire critical medical supplies in the early days of the outbreak and after the warning was ignored, pursued his own ad hoc billion dollar strategy that has since prompted multiple probes.
- France announced a new national lockdown, the most severe since last spring, for the next four weeks, amid spiking cases and a slow vaccine rollout.
- The average number of new cases over the past week rose 12 percent, while the total number of fatalities in the United States reached 552,000.