INDIANAPOLIS — Tuesday's latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic:
IU football pauses all team-related activities
The Indiana football team has paused all team-related activities due to an increase in COVID-19 cases within the program. No decision has been made on Saturday's game against Purdue.
The team did not practice Tuesday morning and all players and Tier I coaches and staff underwent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. The decision to pause was made by the IU Athletics Medical Advisory Group.
ISDH daily update
The Indiana State Department of Health is reporting 5,457 new cases of COVID-19 and 124 more deaths from the virus. That brings the state's total to 392,663 positive cases and 6,109 confirmed deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The positivity rate between Nov. 25 and Dec. 1 was 16.8 percent for all tests and 27.6 percent for unique individuals.
500 Festival announces 2021 Miler Series will be virtual
The 500 Festival announced Tuesday the 2021 Miler Series Presented by OrthoIndy will be virtual due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The three-race series includes 3-mile, 6-mile and 10-mile races. It's usually held in the early spring in downtown Indianapolis, but next year participants will have to walk or run on their own and send in their times.
The 2021 Virtual Miler Series will take place the first week in February, March, and April next year. Participants can submit their 3, 6, and 10-mile results anytime between Feb. 1 and April 30, but the 500 Festival is encouraging participants to send in times the first week of each month.
For more information on the Miler Series, including details on registration and how to record miles, click here.
FDA posts positive review of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
Documents released by U.S. regulators Tuesday confirmed that Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine was strongly protective against COVID-19 -- offering the world’s first detailed look at the evidence behind the shots.
But the U.S. judges experimental vaccines in a unique way: On Thursday, the FDA will convene what’s essentially a science court that will debate -- in public and live-streamed -- just how strong the data backing the shots really is.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech previously reported the shots appear 95% effective at preventing mild to severe COVID-19 disease in a large, ongoing study. That’s based on the first 170 infections detected. Only eight of the infections were among volunteers given the real vaccine while the rest had received a dummy shot.
Trump to sign executive order to prioritize Americans getting vaccine
The Trump administration is aiming to instill public confidence as well as claim major credit for the forthcoming coronavirus vaccines with a White House summit on Tuesday featuring experts who will outline distribution plans in detail.
The “Operation Warp Speed” summit will feature Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a host of government experts, state leaders and business executives, as the White House looks to explain that the vaccine is safe and lay out the administration’s plans to bring it to the American people.
Senior administration officials provided details on the summit on Monday. An official with the Biden transition confirmed no invitation was extended.
Trump is set to kick off the event with remarks aiming to “celebrate" vaccine development, according to an official who previewed the event. Trump also will sign an executive order to prioritize Americans for coronavirus vaccines procured by the federal government. A second official said the order would restrict the U.S. government from donating doses to other nations until there is excess supply to meet domestic demand. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans for the summit. It was not immediately clear what, if any, impact the order would have on other nations' abilities to access the vaccines.
Latest US, world numbers
There have been more than 14.95 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. as of 4:30 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University. There have been more than 283,700 deaths and 5.71 million people recovered.
Worldwide, there have been more than 67.1 million confirmed cases with more than 1.53 million deaths and 43.1 million recoveries.
The real number of people infected by the virus around the world is believed to be much higher — perhaps 10 times higher in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — given testing limitations and the many mild cases that have gone unreported or unrecognized.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness like pneumonia, or death.
UK rolls out 1st doses of Pfizer vaccine
A retired British shop clerk received the first shot in the country’s COVID-19 vaccination program Tuesday, signaling the start of a global immunization effort intended to offer a route out of a pandemic that has killed 1.5 million.
Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 next week, got the shot at 6:31 a.m. on what public health officials have dubbed “V-Day.” She was first in line at University Hospital Coventry, one of several hospitals around the country that are handling the initial phase of the United Kingdom’s program. As luck would have it, the second injection went to a man named William Shakespeare, an 81-year-old who hails from Warwickshire, the county where the bard was born.
The U.K. is the first Western country to start a mass vaccination program after British regulators last week authorized the use of a COVID-19 shot developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. U.S. and European Union regulators may approve the vaccine in coming days, fueling a global immunization effort.