Coronavirus Watch: FDA likely to give thumbs up to J&J's one-shot vaccine

Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine candidate is effective and raises no safety concerns, according to a report Wednesday, paving the way for the shot to become the third authorized in the U.S.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee is holding an all-day meeting Friday to review the data and is likely to give the vaccine a thumbs up. That could lead to an FDA authorization for the vaccine within the next few days.

J&J has agreed to provide 100 million doses of its vaccine in the U.S. by June, including 20 million by the end of March. Those doses will add to the 300 million doses Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna each have promised to deliver by the end of July.

It's Wednesday, and this is the Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's more news you need to know:

• CVS and Walgreens drugstores will start vaccinations in more states, citing additional doses from the federal government. CVS Health Corp. says it will add stores in six states, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Walgreens said it will expand into California, Oregon and Virginia, among other states.
• The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it would distribute more than 25 million masks to over 1,300 community health centers and 60,000 food pantries and soup kitchens in an effort to reach underserved communities and as part of the president's promise to make the pandemic response more equitable. 
• The B.1.351 variant first detected in South Africa was reported over the last week in Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, New York and Tennessee for the first time. The variant is a concern because experts warn it might spread more readily than the original virus and might reduce the effectiveness of some COVID-19 vaccines.
• More than 2,400 doses of vaccine in Tennessee’s most populous county went to waste over the past month while local officials sat on tens of thousands of shots that they thought had already gone into arms, the state’s top health official said.
• Ghana became the first country in the world to receive vaccines acquired through the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative as the nation received a delivery Wednesday of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Ghana is among 92 countries that have signed onto the COVAX program.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported more than 28.2 million COVID-19 cases and 503,000 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 112.3 million cases and more than 2.4 million deaths. More than 13.4% of people in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine shot, and about 6% of people have received both doses, according to the CDC.

See the numbers in your area here, check out where cases are rising here, and see how many vaccines your state has received here.

Are you on Clubhouse? If so, tune in to our live discussion on COVID-19 here 7 p.m. ET Thursday.

– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck