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Now, some are hopeful that they could stem the flow of cases with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine now available to all members of Congress.

"will be provided with a specific number of COVID19 vaccine doses to meet long-standing requirements for continuity of government operations,"

more than 220 workers tested positive, or were presumed so, for the illness.

At 8 a.m. on Friday, Vice President Mike Pence will roll up his sleeve to receive the coronavirus vaccine, a televised symbol of reassurance for vaccine skeptics worried about its dangers.

Notably absent from any planned public proceedings is President Trump, who has said relatively little about the vaccine that may be seen as a singular achievement and has made it clear that he is not scheduled to take it himself.

coronavirus is regularly killing around 3,000 Americans a day

The field of biosecurity -- aimed at keeping nations safe from natural or human-made pathogens -- has long been eclipsed by cybersecurity and counterterrorism

Covid-19, which is often compared to the flu pandemic of 1918, has been called a once-in-a-generation event. But the outbreak of MERS and SARS in recent years shows just how frequent emerging diseases can occur.

A significant increase in biological containment facilities over the last 30 years also poses a grave risk. There are now more than 50 facilities around the world that are categorized as "Level 4" labs, which contain the deadliest pathogens and require the highest level of safety, and thousands more are designated "Level 3" facilities that contain infectious agents or toxins that may cause potentially lethal infection. While it is highly unlikely that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, the pandemic has raised the specter of a possible leak or act of bioterrorism. Containment facilities are an Achilles heel in biosecurity, and these labs, along with those who work there, should be subject to greater international scrutiny.

"It's unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President's Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President (Donald) Trump's actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics," White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement to CNN on Saturday evening.

Fauci told the Post that the Democratic nominee's campaign "is taking it seriously from a public health perspective." While Trump, Fauci said, is "looking at it from a different perspective." He said that perspective was "the economy and reopening the country," according to the Post.

Fauci, a leading member of the government's coronavirus response, said the United States needed to make an "abrupt change" in public health practices and behaviors, according to the Post. He said the country could surpass 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day and predicted rising deaths in the coming weeks

Several cities and provinces have shattered single day records for coronavirus infections, and Canada's top doctors say the holiday -- held on October 12 -- is partly to blame.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has for weeks warned that coronavirus precautions will result in a very different kind of Thanksgiving for many people this year, himself included.

"You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected. Either they've been very recently tested, or they're living a lifestyle in which they don't have any interaction with anybody except you and your family."

(CNN)As Americans head to the voting booths Tuesday, the devastating Covid-19 pandemic looms: surging across the US yet again, setting grim records and forecast to take tens of thousands more lives across the country in the coming months.

In just one month, the country's 7-day case average nearly doubled.

Last Friday, the US reported 99,321 new cases -- the highest single day number of infections recorded for any country. And at least 31 states set daily infection records in October.

Nearly half of US states are reporting a rise in cases of Covid-19 as the country nears 7 million cases nationwide -- yet another grim milestone.

About 16 states' case numbers are holding steady, while 11 -- Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia -- saw a decline.

California became the first state to surpass 800,000 infections, according to Johns Hopkins data. Texas is second, with about 747,500 cases, followed by Florida with some 695,000 cases.

It's still unknown when a COVID-19 vaccine might be available in the United States. But when one is first approved, there may only be 10 million to 15 million doses available, which may be enough to cover around 3% to 5% of the U.S. population.

policymakers must decide who gets the vaccine first

A vaccine advisory group to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is meeting Tuesday to consider how to prioritize distribution of a future COVID-19 vaccine. But a vote on who will get a vaccine first, originally planned for Tuesday, has been delayed

One of the most lethal leadership failures in modern times unfolded in South Africa in the early 2000s as AIDS spread there under President Thabo Mbeki.Mbeki scorned science, embraced conspiracy theories, dithered as the disease spread and rejected lifesaving treatments. His denialism cost about 330,000 lives, a Harvard study found

“We’re unfortunately in the same place,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. “Mbeki surrounded himself with sycophants and cost his country hundreds of thousands of lives by ignoring science, and we’re suffering the same fate.”

“I see it as a colossal failure of leadership,” said Larry Brilliant, a veteran epidemiologist who helped eliminate smallpox in the 1970s. “Of the more than 200,000 people who have died as of today, I don’t think that 50,000 would have died if it hadn’t been for the incompetence.”

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is apologizing for turning away two people eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations on Saturday because they could not prove they live in the United States.

Proof of residency and citizenship are not required to get the vaccine, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services — as stated in guidance on the agency's website. UT-RGV spokesperson Patrick Gonzalez confirmed the university did not follow state protocol.

"[Dad] said that [the health worker] told him in front of everybody, 'you don't have a social, so we can't help you at all. And it's only for U.S. citizens,' "

In my prior life as an insurance executive, it was my job to deceive Americans about their health care. I misled people to protect profits

That work contributed directly to a climate in which fewer people are insured, which has shaped our nation’s struggle against the coronavirus, a condition that we can fight only if everyone is willing and able to get medical treatment. Had spokesmen like me not been paid to obscure important truths about the differences between the U.S. and Canadian health-care systems, tens of thousands of Americans who have died during the pandemic might still be alive.

In 2007, I was working as vice president of corporate communications for Cigna.

As a COVID-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage.

To some American companies and Florida men, COVID-19 is apparently a war that will be won through antimicrobial blasting, to ensure that pathogens are banished from every square inch of America’s surface area.

COVID-19 has reawakened America’s spirit of misdirected anxiety, inspiring businesses and families to obsess over risk-reduction rituals that make us feel safer but don’t actually do much to reduce risk—even as more dangerous activities are still allowed. This is hygiene theater.

“It’s really a simple question: ‘Am I going to let a disease kill me or am I going to let the system — the police?” he said. “And if something is going to take me out when I don’t have a job, which one do I prefer? Folks who don’t have much else to lose — they understand that this system isn’t built for black people. And that’s why people are in the streets.”

this is an extraordinary moment of pain for the nation, especially for black Americans who are bearing the brunt of three crises — police violence, crushing unemployment and the deadliest infectious disease threat in a century — that have laid bare longstanding injustice

Public health experts, activists and lawmakers say the triple threat requires a coordinated response.

many American politicians, especially those on the right, have in recent years paradoxically doubled down on American exceptionalism (we have a president who ran on an “America first” platform, after all) even as American power has declined relative to other countries’.

This kind of insularity might have been “relatively harmless when America bestrode the world like a colossus, but it’s dangerous when the country faces a raft of global challenges from China, to climate, to COVID-19,” Dominic Tierney, a political-science professor at Swarthmore College

It has also failed to develop proper contact-tracing systems, as other nations have, and to meaningfully flatten the curve outside New York.

Though a majority of nations have opted to pull the lever and shift tracks to a lockdown strategy, thereby sacrificing economic growth, Sweden has continued on the same line.

the Swedish government’s decision not to pull the lever and pursue a low-death approach has taken them into a tunnel.

From inside this tunnel we do not know how many people are now tied to the track. We do not know how far the line runs. Or even what the final destination looks like. Sweden’s strategic inaction was predicated on the hope that they might save lives in future by taking risks now and avoiding a shutdown.

Sweden’s grim result — more death, and nearly equal economic damage — suggests that the supposed choice between lives and paychecks is a false one: A failure to impose social distancing can cost lives and jobs at the same time.

Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. The government allowed restaurants, gyms, shops, playgrounds and most schools to remain open. By contrast, Denmark and Norway opted for strict quarantines, banning large groups and locking down shops and restaurants.

More than three months later, the coronavirus is blamed for 5,420 deaths in Sweden, according to the World Health Organization. That might not sound especially horrendous compared with the more than 129,000 Americans who have died. But Sweden is a country of only 10 million people. Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more deaths than the United States, 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland and six times more than Denmark.

Britain has not been alone in its failure to prevent mass casualties—almost every country on the Continent suffered appalling losses—but one cannot avoid the grim reality spelled out in the numbers: If almost all countries failed, then Britain failed more than most.

The raw figures are grim. Britain has the worst overall COVID-19 death toll in Europe, with more than 46,000 dead according to official figures, while also suffering the Continent’s second-worst “excess death” tally per capita, more than double that in France and eight times higher than Germany’s

The British government as a whole made poorer decisions, based on poorer advice, founded on poorer evidence, supplied by poorer testing, with the inevitable consequence that it achieved poorer results than almost any of its peers. It failed in its preparation, its diagnosis, and its treatment.

The diminutive diva's $1 million donation to Covid-19 research was partly used to fund Moderna's promising Covid-19 vaccine -- something she didn't even know until her name appeared among other sponsors in a preliminary report on the vaccine.

Parton, who said she'd found out her donation contributed to the vaccine trial on Tuesday morning,

Parton first donated to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Covid-19 research efforts in early April, when there were around 200,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US.

the COVID-19 pandemic may have played a large role in exacerbating gender divisions in the electorate. This split wasn’t enough for Trump to win this time, of course, but his attitude toward the coronavirus crisis may actually have been a bonus for some men, which could present a real challenge for Biden moving forward.

Overall, most Americans consistently disapproved of the way Trump handled the pandemic, but the AEI poll found one notable exception — men who identify as “completely masculine.”1

a majority (52 percent) of men who identified as completely masculine on the survey agreed that the Trump administration has a strategy on COVID-19