Health News Roundup: French coronavirus infections ease further; WHO says all hypotheses still open in probe into virus origins and more

UK variant of COVID-19 accounts for 18% of infections in Italy The highly contagious variant of the COVID-19 virus first found in Britain accounts for some 17.8% of all new infections in Italy, with the infection rate ticking up in many parts of the country, the health ministry said on Friday.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Spain tops one million fully vaccinated, retailers offer help to speed up campaign

Supermarkets, department stores and consumer-goods firms in Spain offered to help overloaded health authorities with coronavirus vaccinations on Friday, while the government said more than 1 million people had already received two shots. Five major retail associations said in a letter to health authorities that their members - many of which already carry out annual inoculations of staff - could administer COVID-19 jabs to their workers to ease the pressure on the health service.

UK variant of COVID-19 accounts for 18% of infections in Italy

The highly contagious variant of the COVID-19 virus first found in Britain accounts for some 17.8% of all new infections in Italy, with the infection rate ticking up in many parts of the country, the health ministry said on Friday. The estimated COVID-19 reproduction "R" number has risen to 0.95 from 0.84 a week ago, the health ministry said, as officials warned that new restrictions are likely to be announced later in the day for a number of regions.

69 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines delivered, 48.4 million administered: U.S. CDC

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 48,410,558 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and delivered 69,014,725 doses. The tally of vaccine doses are for both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech, vaccines as of 6:00 a.m. ET on Friday, the agency said.

WHO says all hypotheses still open in probe into virus origins

All hypotheses are still open in the World Health Organization's search for the origins of COVID-19, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Friday. A WHO-led mission in China said this week that it was not looking further into the question of whether the virus escaped from a lab, which it considered highly unlikely. The United States has said it will review the mission's findings.

White House not mandating COVID-19 testing before domestic flights

The White House said on Friday it was not planning to require passengers to get negative COVID-19 test results before U.S. domestic airline flights after the potential of new rules raised serious concerns among U.S. airlines, unions and some lawmakers. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said at a media briefing "reports that there is an intention to put in place new requirements, such as testing, are not accurate."

China refuses to give WHO raw data on early COVID-19 cases: WSJ

Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early COVID-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing WHO investigators.

French coronavirus infections ease further

France's pace of infection with the coronavirus again slowed on Friday, with 20,701 new confirmed COVID-19 cases compared to 21,063 on Thursday and 22,139 last Friday. The seven-day moving average of new cases has been on a downward trend for 11 days and now stands at 18,663.

Vaccinated COVID-19 patients appear less contagious; arthritis drug in spotlight

The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

COVID-19 post-vaccination may be less contagious Analysis: Collapsed health system makes Venezuela vaccination campaign an uphill battle

Venezuela's deteriorated health system and collapsed economy will make the country one of the toughest places in the region to conduct a coronavirus vaccination campaign, an effort that already trails most of South America, experts said. The country has one of the region's lowest coverage rates for even basic vaccines, according to regional health figures, driven by years of blackouts, loss of medical personnel and decay of local clinics that are crucial for such campaigns.

Exclusive: EU drugs regulator plans to fast track variant-modified COVID vaccines

Europe's medicines regulator is planning to speed up assessments of any COVID-19 vaccines that are modified to protect against variants of the virus, the head of the agency's COVID-19 task-force told Reuters on Friday. Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaluation team at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said there should be no need for lengthy large-scale trials like those needed to evaluate the first COVID-19 vaccines, since tweaks for new variants can be tested on smaller groups.