President Joe Biden said Thursday that the United States will have enough supply of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the summer to inoculate 300 million Americans.

Biden made the announcement at the sprawling National Institutes of Health complex just outside Washington as he visited some of the nation’s leading scientists on the frontlines of the fight against the disease. He toured the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory that created the COVID-19 vaccine now manufactured by Moderna and being rolled out in the U.S. and other countries.

The U.S. is on pace to exceed Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office, with more than 26 million shots delivered in his first three weeks.

“That’s just the floor,” Biden said. “Our end goal is beating COVID-19.”

Biden announced on Thursday that the U.S. had secured contractual commitments from Moderna and Pfizer to deliver the 600 million doses of vaccine by the end of July — more than a month earlier than initially anticipated.

“We’re now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July,” he announced.

The pace of injections could increase further if a third coronavirus vaccine from drugmaker Johnson & Johnson receives approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

» READ MORE: Biden says U.S. is securing 600 million COVID-19 vaccine doses by July

— Associated Press

Rutgers University announced Thursday that all of its commencement ceremonies for the spring would again be held virtually.

”This decision was a disappointing one to make in light of the difficulties our graduating students have already endured, but public health concerns related to the ongoing pandemic continue to make it unwise for us to plan for large in-person gatherings this spring,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said Thursday in a message to the Rutgers community. “And unfortunately, it is not feasible to create appropriate, smaller ceremonies in a safe and equitable way.”

He said even if the speed of the vaccine rollout improves, New Jersey won’t be prepared to have large crowds gather, even outdoors, until mid to late summer at the earliest.

”With more than 18,000 graduating students across our campuses, we don’t have the capacity to ensure the health and safety of graduates and guests,” he said.

Rowan University, also in New Jersey, announced last month that it anticipated a similar approach to commencement as last spring. The school is planning a virtual ceremony on May 8 and smaller, in-person events the following week. Last year, the in-person events were held outdoors, with chairs spaced apart.

Other schools are still deciding. Pennsylvania State University said it expects to make a decision or provide more information in March.

”We need to get further into the semester and then assess conditions,” President Eric J. Barron said in a message to the campus last month. “We also understand that we need to make a decision as early as we can, as it takes time to organize outdoor events, and students and families need time to make plans.”

Any in-person ceremonies would be held outdoors, with the option to watch virtually, Barron said. There likely would be multiple, smaller events with limited guests, held over a longer period rather than the typical weekend, the school said.

— Susan Snyder

Pennsylvania’s largest teachers union and other education groups on Thursday asked Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration to prioritize educators for the COVID-19 vaccine, describing vaccination as critical to reopening schools.

”Unlike 26 other states, Pennsylvania’s vaccination plan does not prioritize school staff members, even though school staff members and students are in a uniquely dangerous position,” said the letter from the Pennsylvania State Education Association and groups including the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators and Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

”The best way to reduce health risks in schools and reduce reliance on social distancing guidelines is to vaccinate school staff members as soon as possible,” the letter said.

Pennsylvania has classified education workers in its 1B priority group. The state is currently vaccinating people in 1A, a group that was expanded by the addition of residents 65 and older and certain high risk groups.

The letter does not specifically ask the state to move teachers into 1A. Chris Lilienthal, a spokesperson for the PSEA, said the union “would suggest taking a portion of available vaccine and distributing it to schools and their health care partners” to administer to staff.

”That way we can work toward making vaccines available to educators who want it without upending the distribution of the vaccine to others who need it,” he said.

The letter was also signed by the American Federation of Teachers-Pennsylvania, the union that covers Philadelphia teachers and that has been in a standoff with the district over reopening school buildings.

Philadelphia, which is receiving doses directly from the federal government and operating independently, announced earlier this week that the city would partner with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to begin vaccinating teachers on Feb. 22.

— Maddie Hanna

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has not yet gotten the coronavirus vaccine despite being eligible for the shot at age 72.

”I don’t want to butt in line” in front of older people, the governor said. “I’m looking forward to getting the vaccine, and I was really heartened by the news I heard secondhand that Dr. Fauci said today they’re continuing to ramp up their efforts at the federal level.”

Currently, Pennsylvanians who are frontline health workers, nursing home residents and staff, 65 and older, or have high-risk conditions are eligible to be vaccinated, though appointments can be hard to come by. The commonwealth has not set a timeline for when it will next expand the pool of people eligible for vaccination.

— Erin McCarthy

All residents and staff who wanted the coronavirus vaccine at Pennsylvania’s nursing homes have gotten at least one dose, Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday, and so far 70% of them have gotten the second shot, meaning they’re fully vaccinated.

At long-term care facilities, which started vaccinating residents and staff later, 70% of residents and staff who wanted a shot have gotten one, he said, and the second doses will come after everyone gets their first.

The governor did not say what percentage of residents and staff opted to get the vaccine.

» READ MORE: COVID-19 vaccination in nursing homes is a tale of bumpy logistics, fear and uncertainty about the future

— Erin McCarthy

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday said Pennsylvania officials were working to implement “better solutions” to the challenges people 65 and older are facing as they try to find coronavirus vaccine appointments with Pennsylvania’s patchwork, decentralized system.

Pennsylvania’s vaccine rollout “is going slower than any of us, all of us would prefer,” he said. “And that’s deeply frustrating to all of us, but especially Pennsylvanians who are in line and don’t know when they’re gonna get the vaccine.”

Despite Wolf saying earlier this week that he “wasn’t sure” that a centralized registration would improve the rollout, and Department of Health senior adviser Lindsey Mauldin saying definitively that Pennsylvania was not considering one, the governor said Thursday that “there’s nothing that’s off the table,” including centralized or regional registration systems.

“We want to do whatever we think we can get to as quickly as possible to give people the access they don’t have right now that they need,” Wolf said.

He did not provide specifics or a timeline for next steps, but said he was set to meet Friday with a vaccine task force made up of a bipartisan group of legislators to discuss such possibilities. The task force will meet on a regular basis going forward, he said. “I believe we can do a better job,” Wolf said. “We certainly need to do a better job.”

Pennsylvania’s secretary of aging, Robert Torres, said he hoped in the future to proactively reach out to more seniors, but in the meantime, he encouraged people to reach out to their county’s area agency on aging if they are struggling to find vaccine appointments.

» READ MORE: Experts spent months on a fair COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan, only to witness ‘a chaotic free-for-all’

— Erin McCarthy

City Councilmember Allan Domb on Thursday escalated his attacks on Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration’s handling of the coronavirus vaccine distribution, criticizing the city for opposing his plan to establish large clinics at Lincoln Financial Field and other large venues.

Domb took special exception to Kenney’s office on Wednesday questioning whether Domb’s plan “deliberately” intended to increase already significant racial disparities in vaccine distribution. The city has said holding a mass vaccination clinic at the Linc could allow suburbanites and residents of New Jersey and Delaware to cut into the city’s vaccine supply, while not improving access for many Black and brown Philadelphians in neighborhoods with poor transit access.

“I don’t know whether I’m more offended or saddened by that statement,” Domb said at Thursday’s Council hearing. “At this moment our mayor is fighting against us and not with us. We need him with us. We’re on the verge of receiving massive quantities of vaccines … and we’re told by the mayor we do not need mass vaccination sites.”

Domb, however, decided Thursday not to go forward with a formal resolution calling on Kenney to adopt Domb’s plan, which he calls “Operation Philly Special” after the Eagles’ famous 2018 Super Bowl touchdown play.

While a handful of members have backed Domb in the dispute, it’s unclear whether his plan has broad support in Council. Resolutions typically win unanimous support, at least among Council’s Democrats, and Domb’s postponing the legislation may indicate he knows some members are not with him.

Following Domb’s speech, Council President Darrell L. Clarke urged cooperation with the administration.

“My role has grown into a person that tries to bring people together,” Clarke said. “I am just a firm believer as a glass-half-full kind of guy we can work together and get this done. We have to get this done.”

» READ MORE: Should Philly use the Linc as mass vaccine site? It’s now a political fight.

— Sean Collins Walsh

Philadelphia announced 312 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus Thursday.

The city also announced 11 additional deaths. A total of 2,980 residents have died of the virus.

As of Thursday, there were 370 patients with the coronavirus in Philadelphia hospitals, with 62 of them on ventilators.

— Laura McCrystal

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, predicted the supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses will pick up by March and April, enabling an expansion of vaccinations to those who want it nationwide.

“I would imagine by the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, ‘open season,’ namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” Fauci said during an interview on NBC’s Today show Thursday.

Even if the vaccine is made available to all adults by April, Fauci said it will still likely take several months to inoculate everyone, due to the logistics of shipping and vaccinating hundreds of millions of people across the country.

“Hopefully, as we get into the middle and end of the summer, we could have accomplished the goal of what we’re talking about, namely the overwhelming majority of people in this country having gotten vaccinated,” Fauci said.

Fauci also expressed confidence that the COVID-19 vaccines approved in the United States appear to be effective at combating a more transmissible strain of the virus that originated in the United Kingdom.

“The sobering news is that it does spread more rapidly,” Fauci said of the strain. “The uplifting news is that the vaccines that we now have, the Moderna and Pfizer and very likely the ones coming online soon, seem to do well against this U.K. variant.”

» READ MORE: Fauci predicts ‘open season’ for COVID-19 vaccinations by April

— Rob Tornoe

Despite the spread of COVID-19 variants across the commonwealth and the Philadelphia region, Pennsylvania continues to see a declining number of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths.

As of Thursday afternoon, 2,789 patients were hospitalized with the coronavirus in Pennsylvania, the fifth straight day below 3,000 and the lowest number since mid-November. The number of hospitalized patients is still much higher than during the summer, but well below a peak of 6,200 patients in mid-December.

Pennsylvania reported 115 new COVID-19 deaths Thursday, and the commonwealth is now averaging 108 deaths a day over the past seven days. That’s a decline of 51% from mid-November, when Pennsylvania was averaging 220 deaths a day.

New infections appear to be leveling off after declining the past month, with Pennsylvania reporting 3,978 new COVID-19 cases. The average number of new cases has been basically flat for the past week, but are down 63% from a peak over 10,500 cases a day in mid-December.

— Rob Tornoe

During the year of the pandemic, Susan’s Love’s all-consuming, sad, uplifting job was to keep the vulnerable residents of Lions Gate safe from the coronavirus.

To her dismay, the virus still infiltrated the Voorhees retirement community during New Jersey’s first, horrific wave in the spring. Ninety-nine staff members and residents tested positive. Fourteen residents died.

Love, who was CEO of Lions Gate, was “heartbroken,” her mother said, but she kept a smile on her face and doubled down on efforts to fight the insidious new disease.

There were no new deaths after May.

Until January 31. On that day, COVID-19 killed the first Lions Gate staff member: Susan Love.

» READ MORE: Susan Love spent months trying to keep COVID-19 out of a South Jersey retirement community. Then it killed her.

— Stacey Burling

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, clarified the results of a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed wearing two masks offered more protection than one.

“The recommendation is not that you have to wear [two masks]. What the CDC is saying is at minimum, wear a mask,” Fauci said during an interview on NBC’s Today show, “One mask at least, but if you want to really be sure, get a tighter fit with the second mask.”

Fauci said he has worn two masks occasionally, and suggested the fit is better “if you put a surgical mask on and put a cloth mask over.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday reported the results of a lab experiment that spaced two artificial heads six feet apart and evaluated how many coronavirus-sized particles spewed by one were inhaled by the other.

The researchers found that wearing one mask — surgical or cloth — blocked around 40% of the particles coming toward the head that was breathing in. When a cloth mask was worn on top of a surgical mask, about 80% were blocked.

When both the exhaling and inhaling heads were double-masked, more than 95% of the particles were blocked, said the CDC’s Dr. John Brooks.

— Rob Tornoe

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 793,000, evidence that job cuts remain high despite a substantial decline in new viral infections.

Last week’s total declined from 812,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That figure was revised higher from the previously-reported figure of 779,000. Before the virus erupted in the United States in March, weekly applications for jobless aid had never topped 700,000, even during the Great Recession.

The job market’s improvement slowed through the fall and in the past two months has essentially stalled. Over the past two months combined, employers have cut 178,000 jobs. Nearly 10 million jobs remain lost to the pandemic.

» READ MORE: U.S. unemployment claims dipped to 793,000 last week, with layoffs still high

— Associated Press

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will release new guidelines to help schools across the country reopen on Friday, the White House announced.

“There’s no debate over whether to open schools. There’s a debate over how,” Andy Slavitt, the senior advisor for the White House’s COVID-19 response, said during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

The Biden administration has urged schools to reopen where possible, but have received pushback from teachers and unions in some areas amid problematic vaccine roll-outs and local infection rates.

In Philadelphia, many educators have declined to report to schools as the Philadelphia School District and its largest union waited for word from a mediator on whether 2,000 teachers can be forced back into buildings.

Philadelphia public schools are scheduled to reopen for prekindergarten through second grades Feb. 22. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. had wanted 2,000 teachers back in buildings Monday, but the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers led a citywide action instead, with thousands teaching from outside buildings or working from home.

» READ MORE: Philly teachers don’t report to school buildings; teacher vaccinations expected to start Feb. 22

— Rob Tornoe and Kristen A. Graham

The coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom is likely spreading across the Philadelphia region at a higher rate than is being detected, with new cases confirmed Wednesday in Montgomery County and at the University of Pennsylvania.

Four people who caught the more transmissible strain have spread the virus to others in Montgomery County, officials said. None of the four reported having recently traveled.

“All of this signals to us that the variant is likely much more widespread within the community than can be confirmed through lab testing,” said Dr. Val Arkoosh, a physician and chair of the Montgomery County commissioners.

Experts agree the U.K. variant is transmitted more easily between people than the original COVID-19 strain, but say it has not mutated enough to render the existing vaccines ineffective. They’re still studying whether it is more deadly, according to the CDC.

In Philadelphia, seven cases of the variant have been identified but officials “expect that the true number is higher,” said Health Department spokesperson James Garrow. The strain has also been found in Bucks County.

As it and other mutations of the virus spread across the world — variants that were first detected in South Africa and Brazil are also being monitored — the Biden administration was reportedly considering Wednesday whether to impose domestic travel restrictions aimed at stemming the spread.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky warned at a White House briefing this week that although coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are dropping after the winter surge, Americans should keep up their guard.

» READ MORE: New cases in Montgomery County and at Penn show the coronavirus variant is spreading across the Philly region

— Justine McDaniel and Rob Tornoe

President Joe Biden is being accused of backpedaling on his pledge to reopen the nation’s schools after the White House added fine print to his promise and made clear that a full reopening is still far from sight.

Biden’s initial pledge in December was to reopen “the majority of our schools” in his first 100 days in office. In January he specified that the goal applied only to schools that teach through eighth grade. And this week the White House said that schools will be considered opened as long as they teach in-person at least one day a week.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the goal Wednesday, calling it part of a “bold ambitious agenda.” But she also said it’s a bar the administration hopes to exceed.

“His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools — so, more than 50% — open by day 100 of his presidency,” she said. “And that means some teaching in classrooms. So, at least one day a week. Hopefully, it’s more.”

Reopening efforts have faced roadblocks due in part to slow vaccine rollouts and standoffs with teachers. While schools in some areas are teaching in-person, many remain mostly or entirely online. In cities including Philadelphia and San Francisco, districts have faced resistance from teachers who refuse to return until their demands are met.

— Associated Press

Citing the need to get the COVID-19 vaccine to the communities hardest hit by the virus, the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium will enforce stricter rules at their clinics, the group’s founder, physician Ala Stanford, said Wednesday.

People who are not at increased risk of serious illness or death — including some who don’t even live in the communities where the clinics are opening — have been coming to her clinics, she said, which means less vaccine is going to those who need it most.

“It’s just the wrong thing to do, to come to communities and take it away from folks [in communities] where one in two people have known someone with severe disease, or someone who died from COVID,” Stanford told reporters at a news conference called to announce the changes. “So please, stop doing this. And if you can’t stop, we’re going to help you, because we’re going to be much more stringent.”

The group will halt sign-ups for its vaccination clinics until it has served a backlog of 46,000 people who registered with the group. Going forward, people who come to Black Doctors’ vaccination sites must prove they live in Philadelphia.

Philadelphians over age 75 will be able to get vaccinated at Black Doctors’ sites. Younger people will have to prove they have a high-risk condition included in the city’s 1B vaccination group. Those under 75 will also have to prove they live in a zip code where hospitalizations and deaths have been the highest in the city.

» READ MORE: Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium to tighten requirements around vaccine distribution

— Aubrey Whelan

— John Duchneskie