Coronavirus updates: 23-year-old college student dies from COVID-19

Jim Gentile is one of hundreds of registered nurses who have gone on strike at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, some 25 miles northeast of Philadelphia. The nurses and their union say the main issue is inadequate staffing due to low wages, which they fear will only worsen as COVID-19 hospitalizations increase over the winter months.

"We're putting our foot down now because we know it's going to get twice as bad," Gentile told "Start Here," ABC News' daily news podcast.

Gentile, who works in the surgical services unit, said the hospital suspended all elective and non-emergency surgeries when the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year. He and his coworkers were then sent to other floors to take care of COVID-19 patients.

"I did postmortem care on more bodies in two months than I have in 42 years of nursing. That's how bad it was," he said. "That's not my job. Usually, we wake people up from surgery and everybody's happy and we send them home. So this was really quite a shift."

The hospital resumed all surgeries over the summer and Gentile was able to return to his unit. But as COVID-19 hospitalizations tick back up, Gentile worries he and his coworkers will again be taken out of their area of expertise and sent to the coronavirus wards.

"In two weeks, we've doubled the number of COVID patients in our hospital," he said. "There are not enough nurses to take care of the patients."

The nurses on the picket line are fighting for a fair contract and better wages.

Gentile said the hospital desperately needs to hire more nurses to help care for the influx of COVID-19 patients, but the wages are too low and can't compete with other area hospitals. In the last two years, 243 nurses have left St. Mary's Medical Center, according to Gentile.

"When they showed us the wages, we realized no nurses are going to come to our institution with wages this low," he said. "We're not going to be able to recruit, we're not going to be able to retain."

Gentile, who has watched coworkers and friends die from COVID-19, said it's a matter of life and death.

"They don't understand the PTSD that nurses are going through and all they care about is keeping, you know, the budget, the bottom line, the margin," he said. "It doesn't matter how much money you've lost. We've lost family, we've lost friends. We put our lives at stake."

When asked for comment, a St. Mary Medical Center spokesperson told ABC News the hospital has offered a wage increase, which the nurses rejected, and that outside nurses have been hired to fill in during the strike.

"We respect the union members’ right to strike, and we remain committed to negotiating in good faith to reach agreement on a fair, consistent and sustainable initial contract for St. Mary nurses," the spokesperson said in a statement. "We look forward to the day productive negotiations can resume."

This report was featured in the Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020, episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ daily news podcast.

"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

The European region saw a 10% decline in the number of new COVID-19 cases over the past week for the first time in more than three months, according to the latest weekly epidemiological report from the World Health Organization.

The report, dated Tuesday, said the decline is attributed to "the strengthening of public health and social measures across the region."

However, the number of new deaths from the disease "has increased substantially" in Europe, with an 18% jump over the past week in comparison to the previous one.

The European region recorded 46% of all cases and 49% of all deaths reported globally over the past week, with nearly 2 million new cases and almost 30,000 new deaths. The countries reporting the highest number of cases during that time were Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Russia, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Romania and Austria, according to the report.

The nations with the highest weekly mortality rates -- exceeding 60 deaths per 1 million population -- were the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, North Macedonia, Armenia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, France, Croatia and Montenegro. The United Kingdom was the first country in the region to record over 50,000 cumulative deaths, the report said.

Pfizer and partner BioNTech announced Wednesday that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate is more than 95% effective in the final analysis of its massive Phase 3 trial and has reached a key safety milestone that will allow the company to apply for authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "within days."

If the FDA gives the vaccine the green light, Pfizer will likely make history as the first company with an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine. It has plans to start delivering millions of doses of the potentially lifesaving vaccine to the most vulnerable overnight once the government gives a green light, possibly before the end of 2020, the company said.

Just last week, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine was more than 90% effective, according to a preliminary analysis based on the first 94 patients to develop symptomatic COVID-19 in a trial of more than 43,000 volunteers.

But with the pandemic raging in the United States and across the globe, it didn't take long for even more volunteers to become infected, quickly bringing Pfizer's trial to 170 COVID-positive cases -- exceeding the threshold needed for a "final" analysis on the vaccine's effectiveness.

In a press release, delivered before the stock market opened, Pfizer announced that among the 170 volunteers to develop COVID-19 in the clinical trial, 162 had been given placebo shots, while only eight volunteers to become infected were given the real vaccine.

This means Pfizer's vaccine is roughly 95% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19. The updated efficacy data follows news from competitor Moderna, which announced earlier this week that its vaccine was 94.5% effective in its own preliminary analysis.

It’s not known yet what level of immunity or how long the immunity lasts after receiving the vaccines. Trial volunteers will be followed for two years to answer questions like durability of protection.

Pfizer also announced another major milestone Wednesday -- enough safety data to merit FDA authorization. The FDA requires at least two months of safety data among at least half of the trial volunteers before it will consider granting a limited emergency authorization. Pfizer has now hit key milestones that will allow the company to apply for this limited authorization, which could happen in the coming days.

ABC News' Sony Salman contributed to this report.

Tokyo confirmed 493 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, the highest single-day tally for Japan's capital since the pandemic began.

According to local media reports, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is preparing to raise the COVID-19 alert level to the highest of four ranks and is also considering asking bars and restaurants to shorten their hours again as part of efforts to curb the rising infection rate.

Meanwhile, Japan confirmed more than 2,000 new cases on Wednesday for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Overall, the East Asian country has reported more than 120,000 cases including just under 2,000 deaths, according to the latest figures from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

The recent surge in infections comes amid the Japanese government's controversial "Go to Travel" campaign, which encourages domestic travel to help boost the economy by providing residents with subsidies of up to 50% on hotels, restaurants and transportation within Japan.

ABC News' Anthony Trotter contributed to this report.