Coronavirus updates: Herd immunity by fall 'ambitious,' says surgeon general nominee

An estimated one in eight people in England have already been infected with the novel coronavirus, according to antibody data from the U.K. Office for National Statistic's COVID-19 Infection Survey.

The survey estimates that 12.1% of the population in England would have tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 on a blood test in December 2020, suggesting they had the infection in the past.

"The estimate is weighted to be representative of the overall population and suggests that an average of 5.4 million people aged 16 years and over in England would have tested positive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 during this time," the report said. "This equates to 1 in 8 people aged 16 years and over."

That estimate was one in 10 people in Wales, one in 13 people in Northern Ireland and one in 11 people in Scotland, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, a regional analysis of antibody data for England found that the highest positivity was seen in Yorkshire and The Humber, followed by London and the North West, according to the survey.

The survey, which was launched in the United Kingdom in mid-April of last year, measured several factors: how many people test positive for COVID-19 at a given point in time, regardless of whether they report experiencing symptoms; the average number of new infections per week over the course of the study; and the number of people who test positive for antibodies, to indicate how many people are ever likely to have had the infection.

The U.K. -- an island nation of 66 million people made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- has confirmed more than 3.4 million cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including more than 89,000 deaths. There were 37,535 new cases and 599 additional fatalities from the disease confirmed in the last 24 hours, according to the latest data published on the U.K. government's website.

One family's holiday gathering in Pennsylvania has turned out to be a superspreading event, according to a report by Philadelphia ABC station WPVI.

Darlene Reynolds, 55, said she woke up with a scratchy throat on Dec. 26, the day before relatives from as far as Canada were planning to come over for a holiday party at her home in the Milmont Park section of Ridley Township.

"I had no fever because I kept checking it," Reynolds told WPVI. "I said, 'I'll keep a distance since I have a tiny little cough.'"

Soon after the party, people started getting sick.

"We were sick, but we didn't know we had COVID. We could've had the flu, but it was scary," Reynolds told WPVI. "We got tested and we tested positive."

In total, 18 family members ranging in age from 1 to 62 contracted COVID-19. Reynolds said both her husband and their son were hospitalized.

Just hours after California's top epidemiologist recommended pausing the use of COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna's lot 041L20A due to "possible allergic reactions" that are under investigation, Mendocino County officials discovered that the batch in question was used at a mass vaccination event in San Diego.

"The county has reviewed the lot numbers administered through our mass vaccination clinics as well as the inventory stored in our freezer. Upon further review, we are confirming that 100 doses of Mendocino County Public Health's Moderna vaccine associated with the batch the state is concerned with were used at a vaccination event at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds on January 7th," Mendocino County vaccine coordinator Adrienne Thompson said in a statement Monday night.

According to Thompson, all 100 doses were administered at the event and comprised a separate order from the state. No adverse reactions occurred.

"County staff will be contacting all 100 individuals that received a vaccine with this lot number to alert them of the recall," Thompson said. "No other side effects have been noted from use of this vaccine."

Mendocino County's public health officer, Dr. Andrew Coren, said events such as this are not unexpected because these are new vaccines, and it should not deter the public from getting vaccinated.

"This isolated event has not increased the percentage of vaccine reactions, which continue to be about one person in 100,000," Coren said in a statement Monday night. "Getting vaccinated continues to be the best way for all of us to help move beyond this virus and return to a normal way of life."

There were 137,885 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the lowest daily case count that the country has seen since Dec. 25. Monday's tally is also far less than the country's all-time high of 302,506 newly confirmed infections on Jan. 2, Johns Hopkins data shows.

An additional 1,382 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered nationwide on Monday, down from a peak of 4,462 new deaths on Jan. 12, according to Johns Hopkins data.

COVID-19 data may be skewed due to possible lags in reporting over the holiday weekend and earlier holidays.

A total of 24,078,773 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 399,003 have died, according to Johns Hopkins data. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

Much of the country was under lockdown by the end of March as the first wave of pandemic hit. By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up over the summer.

The numbers lingered around 40,000 to 50,000 from mid-August through early October before surging again to record levels, crossing 100,000 for the first time on Nov. 4, then reaching 200,000 on Nov. 27 before topping 300,000 on Jan. 2.