COVID-19 updates: Anti-vaccine protesters halt vaccinations at Dodger Stadium

Demonstrators carrying anti-mask and anti-vaccine signs blocked the entrance.

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 102.5 million people worldwide and killed over 2.2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.


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South Carolina confirms its 1st case of UK variant

An adult in South Carolina’s Lowcountry region has become the state’s first confirmed case of the United Kingdom COVID-19 variant, South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control said.

The person "has an international travel history," the department said.

The U.S. has confirmed at least 434 cases of the B.1.1.7 U.K. variant across 30 states, South Carolina officials said.

"Experts agree that existing vaccines work to protect us from this variant, even if we don’t know just how effective they are," the South Carolina officials said. "At this time, there’s no conclusive evidence to prove that the B.1.1.7 variant causes more severe illness."

ABC News’ Josh Hoyos contributed to this report.


Coachella, Stagecoach canceled

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts and Stagecoach Country Music festivals, set for April, were canceled on Friday by Dr. Cameron Kaiser, health officer for Riverside County, California.

Riverside County’s positivity rate stands at 20%. The county has 0% bed availability in its intensive care units.


US surpasses 90,000 deaths in January

January has been the deadliest month since the pandemic began, with 90,844 total deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll stands at 436,810 -- with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention projecting that more than 77,000 deaths could be reported by Feb. 20.


Brazil variant detected in California

California is now the second U.S. state with known detection of the Brazil P.1 variant.

Minnesota health officials confirmed earlier this week the nation's first known COVID-19 case associated with the variant.

Inside Stanford's Clinical Virology Laboratory, Dr. Benjamin Pinsky and his team found two strains of the virus: the Brazil strain and the U.K. strain, KGO reported Saturday morning.

"It's in about 17% of the samples that we've sequenced," Pinsky told KGO.


California lifts stay-at-home order for all regions

The California Department of Public Health lifted a stay-at-home order for all regions statewide on Monday.

Four-week intensive care unit capacity projections for the three regions that had still been under the order -- San Joaquin Valley, Bay Area and Southern California -- are now above 15%, the threshold that allows regions to exit the order. The Sacramento region exited the order on Jan. 12 and the Northern California region never entered the order, according to a press release from the California Department of Public Health.

The move allows all counties statewide to return to the rules and framework of California's "Blueprint for a Safer Economy" and color-coded tiers that indicate which activities and businesses are open based on local COVID-19 infection rates and test positivity. The majority of the counties are in the strictest -- or purple -- tier. Individual counties may choose to impose stricter rules, according to the press release.

"Californians heard the urgent message to stay home as much as possible and accepted that challenge to slow the surge and save lives," Dr. Tomas Aragon, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. "Together, we changed our activities knowing our short-term sacrifices would lead to longer-term gains. COVID-19 is still here and still deadly, so our work is not over, but it’s important to recognize our collective actions saved lives and we are turning a critical corner."

California, home to nearly 40 million people, has the highest tally of diagnosed COVID-19 cases of any U.S. state, with more than 3.1 million, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.