Coronavirus updates: 23-year-old college student dies from COVID-19
Jamesha Waddell, a senior at Livingstone College, died Thursday.
A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 1.3 million people worldwide.
Over 58.7 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks. The criteria for diagnosis -- through clinical means or a lab test -- has also varied from country to country.
The United States is the worst-affected nation, with more than 12.2 million diagnosed cases and at least 256,783 deaths.
Nearly 200 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least 10 of which are in crucial phase three studies. Of those 10 potential vaccines in late-stage trials, there are currently five that will be available in the United States if approved.
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Delta Air Lines extending middle-seat block through March
Delta Air Lines will continue to block middle seats through March 2021 "because customers tell us that adds confidence to their travel experience," CEO Ed Bastian told "GMA 3: What You Need to Know."
Bastian stressed that Delta hasn't "pulled back at all with our safety and cleaning protocols."
"Every airplane gets sanitized with electric spray fogging before we take off. We continue to focus on the filtration systems ,and they're state-of-the-art, and customers are required to wear masks," he said. "We don't have a single documented transmission of COVID aboard any of our planes."
"While travel is slow, it's steadily improving," Bastian said. "We're expecting over the Thanksgiving holiday period, starting on Friday for the next 10 days, about 2 million customers."
ABC News' Andrea Amiel and Lataya Rothmiller contributed to this report.
Nurse on the picket line speaks out: 'We're putting our foot down'
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.
Europe sees decline in cases for 1st time in months, but deaths continue to rise: WHO
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 vaccine 95% effective in final analysis, plans to seek emergency authorization 'within days'
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.
FDA could approve emergency use of Pfizer vaccine in December
Pfizer said it's completed its submission to the Food and Drug Administration in which the company requests emergency use authorization for its vaccine.
The FDA is expected to start digging into the efficacy and safety data immediately, and it could make a decision as early as mid-December.
ABC News' Sony Salzman contributed to this report.