Operation Warp Speed officials cannot see coronavirus vaccine data early, official says

Operation Warp Speed officials cannot peek early at any data coming out of clinical trials of experimental coronavirus vaccine, an official told reporters Friday.

Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the US Department of Health Human Services, sought to reassure reporters that the process of approving any eventual coronavirus vaccine will be the same as for any vaccine.

Adverse reactions to the vaccine could also trigger the DSMB to stop the trial.

Makers of vaccines in advanced clinical trials in the US are seeking to enroll at least 30,000 volunteers so they can tell whether the vaccine is really safe and protects people from infection. But there could be enough data even before 30,000 people are enrolled, Mango said.

“What we are really looking for is cases — the number of positive cases from both the placebo and the vaccine group,” Mango said. “Once we get to 150 or so, statistically that is significant regardless of how many enrollees we have in the trial." 

“That may be surprising to some, but really the number of events that have to occur … is relatively small,” added US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield.

For a few hours every Saturday, Los Angeles' Skid Row -- home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of homeless people -- transforms into an outdoor beauty salon.

There, where tents line city blocks, people gather to get makeovers from Shirley Raines, or one of her team of volunteers, made up of licensed hair stylists, barbers, makeup artists.

Raines came up with the idea for her non-profit, Beauty 2 The Streets, after recognizing that a haircut, a new hair color and makeup can help homeless people to thrive.

When California ordered all its residents to stay at home in late March due to the coronavirus, Raines and her volunteers complied. But the following Monday, she found messages on her social media from community members who were alone and hungry. 

"I realized that we didn't have the luxury of self isolating because we built this relationship with the community so we need to still go out there and help them." 

Homeless people are very vulnerable to Covid-19 because they live in close quarters and have limited access to cleaning facilities. So the team began handing out food, hand sanitizer and water, while adhering to distancing guidelines and wearing masks.

Still, the desire for beauty products is there, Raines said, so they have been slowly bringing out wigs, makeup, combs and brushes so homeless people can style themselves.

She said if there's anything to learn from the pandemic, it's that "any one of us could be them (homeless) at any given time." 

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Two cricket players and 11 staff members in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 Season have tested positive for coronavirus, according to a statement issued Saturday by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

"Upon landing in the UAE [United Arab Emirates], all the participants have followed a mandatory testing and quarantine programme. Total of 1,988 RT-PCR COVID tests were carried out between August 20th-28th across all participant groups in the UAE. These groups include Players, Support Staff, Team Management, BCCI Staff, IPL Operational team, Hotel and ground transport Staff," read the statement.

As per the IPL 2020 Health and Safety Protocols, testing on all participants will be conducted regularly throughout the IPL 2020 Season, the statement added. 

The IPL 2020 will begin on September 19 and the final will be played on November 10. 

A return to campus for the new academic year has colleges and universities across the United States struggling to both contain outbreaks of Covid-19 and enforce policies meant to prevent its spread. 

At least 36 states have reported positive cases at colleges and universities, adding more than 8,700 cases to the country's tally. More than 5.9 million infections have been recorded in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Since classes started on August 19, 1,200 students at the University of Alabama have tested positive for the virus, the university system's website showed Saturday. Classes at the University of Dayton will continue online for at least two weeks after the school reported 116 cases on Thursday and another 148 on Friday, according to the university's website.

Several hundred students tested positive at Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, according to their schools.

Providence College in Rhode Island has implemented policies to prevent the virus' spread, but 17 students have been placed on "interim suspension" for violating those measures, meaning they will not be allowed on campus or in classes until they attend a hearing, college spokesperson Steven Maurano told CNN Saturday.

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They've flown around the globe and have seen the world side by side from the best seat in the house -- the cockpit of a Delta A330.

Meet Joe and Margrit Fahan, married and recently retired Delta pilots who chronicle their travels on their popular Instagram account, @flyingfahans. 

After completing their final Delta flight on August 13, the couple sat down with CNN Travel.

Capt. Joe Fahan has been a pilot for over 36 years. Commercial airline pilots must retire at age 65, and Fahan was a little over a year away from retirement when Covid-19 hit. Air travel basically ground to a halt, creating a major crisis for the industry. 

First Officer Margrit Fahan, Joe's wife and co-pilot, has been flying for 35 years. The last six years she has shared the flight deck with her husband, Joe, and has since witnessed the devastating effects of coronavirus on her industry. "I think the airlines fell back to a 5% capacity, 5% of their operation," said Margrit. 

Margrit still had a few more years of flying ahead of her and was not ready to retire -- but she did.

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, right, with his special adviser Dominic Cummings, who refused to apologize for driving the length of England with his wife and child during lockdown, and was not sacked. Credit: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images

When countries impose restrictions to combat coronavirus, there's an implicit pact between the government and people: we're all in this together.

So when the powerful or influential break the rules, it provokes fierce public anger and puts society's inequalities on full view.

EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, who resigned from his post Wednesday for breaking Ireland's coronavirus restrictions by attending a political golf society event with 80 other people, was just the latest member of the political elites to be caught flouting the rules.

Ireland's Minister for Agriculture Dara Calleary had already resigned over the so-called Golfgate scandal. The dinner was held a day after the government in which he served, facing a surge in cases, imposed restrictions -- effective immediately -- that limited indoor gatherings to six people, down from the 50 previously allowed.

On the other side of the world, New Zealand's health minister, David Clark, was forced to resign last month after missteps including breaking the country's stay-at-home order to take his family to the beach.

And social distancing appears to have been largely disregarded at the Republican National Convention in the United States this past week. In perhaps the most striking instance, more than 1,000 people gathered on a White House lawn, few wearing masks and sitting close together, to hear President Donald Trump accept his party's nomination Thursday night.

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This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

At least 25,009,250 people have been infected with Covid-19 worldwide since the global pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases Sunday.

The figures also show that at least 842,702 people have died after contracting the virus.

Case numbers have soared exponentially since they first were reported in China in December 2019. The world recorded 1 million cases more than three months later, on April 2. The tally hit 10 million cases on June 28 and took just six weeks to double.

While the world has learned a great deal about how to control the spread of the virus, governments are starting to lose their grip on the situation once more.

Countries that were hit early in the pandemic saw case numbers dip after they imposed strict rules around social distancing and movement. But the figures are rising fast again as lockdowns are lifted and frustrations among the public lead to a growing backlash against mask-wearing and other restrictions that have led to job losses, economic damage and widening inequality.

As fall approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, doctors are already seeing signs of a dramatic second wave of infection that will be almost impossible to contain until a vaccine is developed and widely distributed -- another step that is already facing fierce opposition.

A health worker in an enclosed kiosk collects a swab sample for a coronavirus test, at the Government District Hospital, on August 28, in Noida, India. Sunil Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

India has recorded 78,761 new infections of Covid-19, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said Sunday, its second highest single-day increase in cases since the start of the pandemic.

The country has now recorded 3,542,733 cases of Covid-19.

The ministry also reported 948 new deaths due to the virus, bringing the India's death toll to 63,498.

Only the US and Brazil have identified more Covid-19 cases than India. India has 765,302 active cases of coronavirus and 2,713,933 people have recovered.

A Girl Scout troop in Colorado has made personal protective equipment (PPE) for a local elementary school -- and they used money made from cookie sales to do it.

Emma Bangerter, a fifth grader at Wildcat Mountain Elementary School in Highlands Ranch -- and a member of Troop 65430 -- says the struggles associated with reopening schools amid a pandemic inspired her troop.

"My Girl Scout troop and I came up with the idea for this project out of the need ... to ease the tension of going back to school for staff and students," Bangerter, aged 10, told CNN. "So using our troop's cookie money, we bought the material to make the sneeze guards, reusable masks and mask lanyards."

Bangerter says most students at Wildcat are schooling via a hybrid model -- they attend school in-person for two days a week and learn virtually the other days.

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