COVID-19 updates: Classes in Chicago canceled for 4th day
Chicago Public Schools has been in talks with teachers over COVID-19 safety.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.4 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 837,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 62.5% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Latest headlines:
- 1 in 5 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19
- Half of NYC COVID hospitalized patients were admitted for other reasons
- COVID vaccines can cause temporary menstrual cycle changes: Study
- CDC director responds to criticism of COVID-19 guidance
- Florida allowed up to 1 million COVID-19 tests to expire, official says
LA County records record over 43,000 new cases in single day
Los Angeles County saw over 43,000 new cases in one day, a new record, health officials announced Friday.
This beats Thursday's previous record high of 37,000.
There are 2,902 people with COVID-19 currently hospitalized in the county, according to health officials.
L.A. County Director of Public Health Dr. Barbara Ferrer noted that vaccinated individuals are "between 10 and 30 times less likely to need hospital care than those unvaccinated."
"Every resident can also do their part to protect our healthcare personnel and hospitals. Please get vaccinated or boosted as soon as possible if eligible," she said in a statement.
-ABC News' Alex Stone
1 in 5 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19
The U.S. recorded more than 705,000 COVID-19 cases Thursday and is currently averaging 586,000 new cases per day -- the highest ever recorded during the pandemic. new federal data shows.
With a total confirmed case count of 58.8 million COVID-19 infections, this means one in approximately every five Americans have tested positive for the virus.
New York City is currently recording the country's highest case rate, followed by New Jersey and New York state
Meanwhile, the U.S. is reporting an average of about 1,200 new COVID-19 deaths per day, up by about 10% in the last week.
The death toll currently stands at 834,000, meaning about 1 in every 393 Americans has died from COVID-19.
-ABC News' Arielle Mitropoulos
Pfizer vaccine lowers risk of inflammatory condition in teens: CDC
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dramatically reduces the risk of teenagers developing MIS-C, a dangerous inflammatory condition, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Friday.
MIS-C is a condition in which different body parts can become inflamed such as the heart, lungs and kidneys. It tends to appear in kids and adolescents two to six weeks after becoming infected with COVID-19.
Researchers looked at children and teens between ages 12 and 18 from 24 hospitals across the country.
They found that the vaccine was 91% against MIS-C. Of the children who were critically ill with MIS-C and required life support, all were unvaccinated.
"No fully vaccinated patients with MIS-C required respiratory or cardiovascular life support, as opposed to 39% of unvaccinated MIS-C patients who did," the authors wrote.
-ABC News' Sony Salzman
Half of NYC COVID hospitalized patients were admitted for other reasons
About half of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in New York City were originally admitted for other reasons, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
Across the state, 42% of COVID-19 patients entered hospitals for reasons unrelated to the virus, such as a car accident, and only learned they were positive during their stays, Hochul said during a press conference Friday.
This is the first time that New York has differentiated between patients who go to hospitals to get care for COVID-19 and those who seek out care for other issues but test positive upon arrival.
Hochul also asked New Yorkers who have mild symptoms to not got to emergency rooms to get tested or treated because many hospitals are currently understaffed.
"If you're an adult with very minor symptoms, you can handle a runny nose. You can handle the throats being a little sore, a little bit of a cough. Just treat as if you would the flu, all the protocols," she said. "But please don't overburden our emergency rooms."
Hochul added that nearly 20% of all emergency rooms in the state are made up of people who are there only to get tested for COVID-19.
-ABC News' Will McDuffie
CDC director responds to criticism of COVID-19 guidance
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is standing by her agency's new quarantine and isolation guidance for COVID-19, which the nation’s largest association of physicians has criticized as "confusing."
The CDC updated its guidelines on Dec. 27, saying asymptomatic people who test positive for COVID-19 should self-isolate for five days rather than 10. In a scathing statement released Wednesday night, the American Medical Association (AMA) said the new recommendations "are risking further spread of the virus."
"The American people should be able to count on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for timely, accurate, clear guidance to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. Instead, the new recommendations on quarantine and isolation are not only confusing, but are risking further spread of the virus," the AMA's president, Dr. Gerald E. Harmon, said in the statement. "With hundreds of thousands of new cases daily and more than a million positive reported cases on January 3, tens of thousands -- potentially hundreds of thousands of people -- could return to work and school infectious if they follow the CDC’s new guidance on ending isolation after five days without a negative test."
But Walensky defended the new guidance, telling ABC News' Cecelia Vega in an interview Friday on "Good Morning America" that the CDC "make[s] these recommendations in the context of science, in the context of ongoing epidemiology and in the context of what is feasible in collaboration with our public health and local and state public health partners."
"I've read the AMA statement and I have deep respect for the AMA," Walenskey said, "but I will also say we've heard a lot of support for ongoing guidance from public health partners, from other clinical and laboratory partners as well."
Walensky referenced "dozens of studies" that have shown a COVID-19 patient is most infectious in the one to two days before symptoms and the two to three days after symptoms.
"So by five days after your symptoms, the vast majority of your contagiousness is really behind you," she said. "And what we say at day five then is, are your symptoms gone? Are you feeling better? Is your cough gone, sore throat gone? And if so, then it is safe to go out if you are wearing a mask all the time. And that means not going out to restaurants, not going out to gyms, not going out and visiting grandma, but really conscientiously wearing your mask for those last five days."
Walensky noted that people may choose to take an antigen or at-home test at day five, if they have access to one. But it's not required.
"If that test is positive, you should stay home for those extra five days. But if that test is negative you should go out and continue to wear your mask," she said. "You know, these tests are actually not authorized for the purpose of evaluating contagiousness."