COVID-19 case counts rise between holidays

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo closed down indoor dining again starting Monday as the number of COVID-19 cases begin to climb faster after Thanksgiving. Some expect the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine as soon as Saturday after a panel of advisers gave the thumbs up on Thursday. One of the four members of the panel who voted no, Dr. Archana Chatterjee, told CNBC she thinks the vaccine is safe for adults, but she thought more studies were needed to approve it for people younger than 18. The FDA asked the panel whether people 16 and older should receive the shot. One member abstained from the vote, and the other 17 said yes.

How are things looking heading into Christmas? The two-week rolling average of new cases each day has reached about 195,000, a 16 percent increase since the day before Thanksgiving. The number of people in the hospital for COVID-19 surpassed a record 107,000 as of Thursday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

Dig deeper: Read Mindy Belz’s Advent reflections on how the pandemic shaped her perspective over the course of 2020.