10 December 2020

• The US reports a record-breaking daily coronavirus death toll, surpassing 3,000 people. Source
Nature Communications publishes a global analysis of 3,111,714 COVID-19 cases from 46 countries. It found no differences in the proportion of men versus women with COVID-19, but men were three times more likely to require intensive care, and have a higher risk of death than women. The authors suggest that this difference may be due to sex-based differences in immune responses, among other factors favoring women. Source
Science publishes an analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes from 772 people, linking an international medical conference held on 27-28 February in Boston to hundreds of thousands of coronavirus cases worldwide. A previous report linked the conference to tens of thousands of cases, globally. Sources 1,2
• The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, A panel of independent experts, voted to grant emergency authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, 17 to 4, with one abstention. Some panelists cited concerns about safety among 16- and 17-year-olds – who were included in the EUA- since only 153 of them received the vaccine. Source
• The Trump administration announced that it will purchase 100 million additional doses of Moderna’s experimental coronavirus vaccine, which will enable the country to vaccinate a total of 150 million of its 330 million people. Source

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