From Wednesday, December 2 through Friday, December 4, Alameda County reported 1,657 new coronavirus cases, including 580 cases on December 4, the highest single day of reported cases to date since the pandemic began in March. In the above image, the dotted line represents 500 cases. As of the issuance of today's Bulletin, the County has not published case data for the weekend.

Leaders of Operation Warp Speed have repeatedly said they are on track to vaccinate 20 million people in December, enough for nearly all the health care workers and long-term care residents who are first in line to get a vaccine.

Reports that vaccines produced by drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna appear to be safe and effective, along with the deliberate emphasis on science-based guidance from the incoming Biden administration, are likely to reverse uncertainty in a big way, said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine.

The shift is already apparent. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found that by the end of November 60% of Americans said they would get a vaccine for the coronavirus. This month, even as a federal advisory group met to hash out guidelines for vaccine distribution, a long list of advocacy groups — from those representing home-based health workers and community health centers to patients with kidney disease — were lobbying state and federal officials in hopes their constituents would be prioritized for the first scarce doses

“Pretty soon you’ve created an impenetrable barrier, and you really can quench the transmission of the virus,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck, who recently referenced the Swiss cheese model when speaking at a virtual gala fund-raiser for MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics in Manhattan.

For the third consecutive day, and the fifth time in the past week, county health departments reported a daily tally of more than 20,000 cases around the state, according to data compiled by this news organization. Only, on Sunday, the state reached that benchmark with data from a fraction of its counties — 15 of 58 — and over half coming in another record-setting day in Los Angeles County, where the tightest restrictions since the spring took effect Sunday night. For the first time of the pandemic, California is averaging more than 20,000 cases per day, and its positivity rate has climbed above 10%.

For millions of Californians, the COVID-19 pandemic will provide a most unwelcome gift this Christmas: a wide-ranging shutdown imposed as the state grapples with its most massive and dangerous surge in infections and hospitalizations to date.

The restrictions that took hold at 11:59 p.m. Sunday across Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley will remain in place for at least three weeks, meaning those regions will not be able to emerge from the state’s latest stay-at-home order until Dec. 28 at the earliest.

Five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area also announced last week that they are proactively implementing the new restrictions and plan to keep them in place until at least Jan. 4. Combined, those regions are home to some 33 million Californians, representing 84% of the state’s population.

More than two dozen federal stimulus programs crafted to help cash-strapped workers and businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic are set to expire in a matter of weeks, adding urgency to congressional negotiations over a new $908 billion relief package that might help break months of political deadlock.

Inauguration Day move into the White House for Bidens complicated by Covid

New cases reported Monday exceeded 600 for the second day in a row, bringing the total to more than 38,000, with about 550 deaths.

"The capital area is now a Covid-19 war zone," Health Minister Park Neung-hoo warned. Seoul and its environs are home to about half the country's population, and most of the recent infections.

The clampdown, which started last month, put an end to a hands-off approach that had made the Scandinavian nation a prime example in the often heated global debate between opponents and champions of pandemic lockdowns.

But as Covid-19 sweeps India, which has recorded more than 9.6 million infections, couples have been forced to make tough decisions about whether to go ahead with compromised versions of their weddings or cancel entirely. This has resulted in questions over whether the days of India's so-called "big fat weddings" are numbered.

And every indication is that this surge will continue to worsen for some time, because of the other milestones the U.S. has passed in recent days: 100,000 hospitalizations for the first time, the first consecutive days of more than 2,500 deaths (three, in fact), the first day of more than 200,000 new cases (which was followed by two more days above this threshold).

Consider that 43 percent of essential workers are people of color, according to Chandra Farley, director of the Partnership for Southern Equity’s Just Energy program. “We sometimes automatically characterize people as vulnerable, without saying they are made to be more vulnerable to certain things because of systemic racism and historic inequities,” Farley told WIRED in August.