• Globally, over 42.2 million coronavirus vaccines have been administered. Source
• The global coronavirus death toll reaches a record of 93,000 people. Source
• Brazil grants emergency use authorization for coronavirus vaccines from AstraZeneca and Sinovac (pending more information from Butantan, who oversaw the clinical trial – and must provide it before 28 February São Paulo immediately began vaccinations, with a national campaign beginning on Wednesday. Currently, the country only has Coronavac ; it is waiting for delivery of the Astra/Zeneca vaccine from India’s Serum Institute (which was delayed so that urgently-needed oxygen would reach Manaus). Source
• Although Nigeria has yet to purchase coronavirus vaccines, the chief executive officer of its National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, said 100,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from the Covax initiative, are arriving in March. Source
• The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health estimates that that up to three million county residents have been infected with coronavirus, a total that outnumbers infections in all countries except the US, India, Brazil, Russia and the UK- – and reports its first known case of the B.1.1.7 variant. Sources 1,2
• California’s Department of Public Health reported that another coronavirus variant, L452R (first found in Denmark during March 2020), has been spreading across the state since December, when it was present in 3.8 percent of samples; by January, it was present in 25.2 percent of samples. Although it has not been confirmed, virologists suspect that the variant may be another more transmissible. Source
• As the US coronavirus death toll nears 400,000, incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain predicts that half a million Americans will die from coronavirus by the end of February. Source