COLUMBIA, S.C. — With new COVID-19 cases reaching record levels in South Carolina, a teacher group is asking districts to go back to all virtual teaching until this second spike in the virus can be flattened.

The plea was given more emotional weight over the weekend after the death of 50-year-old third grade teacher Staci Blakely from COVID-19. Her family asked the school district to announce her death publicly to remind people how serious the disease can be, District Superintendent Greg Little said in a statement.

Blakely was a 28-year teaching veteran who was diagnosed with the novel coronavirus on Nov. 11. No one else in her classroom has been infected, the district said.

At least four school districts in South Carolina have returned to all virtual learning. Nearly a quarter of the state’s districts are teaching in person every day.

When averaged out over seven days, South Carolina is seeing about 2,300 new COVID-19 cases a day. That’s more than during the July peak that saw the state among the nation’s leaders in coronavirus spread.

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THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— Health officials warn Americans not to let their guard down

— UK gears up for coronavirus vaccination program watched around the world

— Citing low virus rates in schools, New York City reopens schools again

— Biden picks Calif. Attorney General Xavier Becerra to lead HHS, pandemic response

— Senator says Trump, McConnell likely to back COVID-19 relief

— Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in hospital after positive COVID-19 test

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Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

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BERLIN — A panel of medical experts in Germany is recommending that nursing home residents, people over 80 and certain medical personnel in acute and elderly care should receive coronavirus vaccines first when they become available.

A draft recommendation released Monday defines some 8.6 million people who would receive a vaccine first. That’s over 10% of the German population.

According to the 62-page document, only once those groups have been immunized and if vaccines are still limited should other high risk groups receive the shot.

The draft, which still needs to be approved, has a total of six categories grouped according to their risk of serious illness from COVID-19 and the likelihood they might expose others. Teachers belong to the fourth category, while people working in key positions of government, in critical infrastructure and in small stores are in the fifth.

All other healthy individuals under 60 — an estimated 45 million people in the country of 83 million — would be last in line for a vaccine.

The expert panel says people who have recovered from confirmed infection with COVID-19 do not need to get immunized.

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DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa posted another 35 deaths from the novel coronavirus on Monday, continuing the high level of deaths related to the pandemic.

The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Iowa has risen over the past two weeks from 29 deaths per day on Nov. 22 to 45 deaths per day on Sunday, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

State health officials reported on Monday 912 new cases in the previous 24 hours. State data indicates new case trends have slowed with the average number of daily new cases decreasing by nearly 37% in the past two weeks.

Although slowing, the virus spread remains high in Iowa. There were 1,083 new cases per 100,000 people in Iowa over the past two weeks, which ranks 16th in the country for new cases per capita. One in every 195 people in Iowa tested positive in the past week.

State data also show positive trends with fewer hospitalized patients at 898 on Monday and fewer people admitted in the previous 24 hours.

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VILNIUS, Lithuania — Lithuania’s government began advising people on Monday only to leave home for serious reasons, banned private parties of more than two families, and tightened requirements in shopping centers.

The government also directed almost all public sector employees to work from home, after initial measures failed to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Shops are urged not to have short-term sales promotions and to have no more than five people stand in a line. Also, only one person per family is recommended to go shopping.

People in the southernmost Baltic country will have to celebrate Christmas under the new regulations, which will last until at least the end of the month.

A country of almost 3 million, Lithuania managed to curb the first COVID-19 wave but now faces one of the highest surges in Europe per capita with 76,036 total cases and 637 deaths, most of those registered in the last two months.

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ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s government says it will maintain core lockdown measures through the Christmas holidays, acknowledging that monthlong restrictions have not reduced COVID-19 infections to the extent it had hoped for.

Schools, courts, and restaurants will remain closed through Jan. 7, government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced Monday, while non-essential travel between Greece’s administrative regions will also be banned.

Stay-at-home orders nationwide will remain in effect until that date, with movement outside households granted by the government by SMS.

Greece’s pandemic death toll reached 3,000 at the weekend, with most deaths occurring after Nov. 1. The number of daily infections, based on a seven-day rolling average, is currently at 1,609 compared to 2,674 in mid-November, Petsas said.

Restrictions for stores, churches, and hair salons will be announced later this week, Petsas said.

The current lockdown was launched on Nov. 7 and initially planned to last for three weeks.

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HELENA, Mont. — Montana’s first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine will go to health care workers in the state’s major hospitals, Gov. Steve Bullock announced Monday.

Hospitals first in line for the vaccine are in Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, Kalispell and Missoula.

Montana could receive 9,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in mid-December.

Large hospitals were selected as the recipients in the first round because the Pfizer vaccine must be stored in cold temperatures, and doses are shipped in boxes of 975 per box. The number of doses distributed to each hospital will be based on a survey conducted by the state’s health department.

A second shipment of vaccines is expected a week after the first round, which will contain both the Pfizer vaccine and a vaccine developed by drug company Moderna. The second shipment will be distributed primarily to rural hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, according to the governor’s office.

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HONOLULU — Officials gathered in Pearl Harbor to remember those killed in the 1941 Japanese attack, but public health measures adopted because of the coronavirus pandemic meant no survivors were present.

The military broadcast video of the ceremony live online for survivors and members of the public to watch from afar.

USS Utah survivor Warren Upton says it’s too bad he can’t be there in person, but that it’s for safety reasons. The 101-year-old planned to watch the ceremony from his home in California.

A moment of silence was held at 7:55 a.m. That’s the same time the attack began 79 years ago, resulting in the deaths of more than 2,400.

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LISBON — Portugal has surpassed the threshold of 5,000 COVID-19 deaths and set a new record for hospital admissions.

The General Directorate for Health said Monday that 3,367 patients with the novel coronavirus are in hospital and 78 people had died over the previous 24 hours.

Authorities officially recorded fewer than 3,000 cases of COVID-19, as the pandemic has ebbed from a peak of 7,497 daily cases in early November. Hospital admissions have leveled off but remain high.

Portugal’s 14-day cumulative number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people is 600, according to the European Centre for Disease Control. That makes it ninth highest in the 31 European countries monitored by the EU agency.

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DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ longtime partner, first gentleman Marlon Reis, has been hospitalized as a precaution after experiencing shortness of breath and a worsening cough eight days after being diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.

Polis’ office said in a statement late Sunday that the governor, who also was diagnosed with COVID-19, drove Reis to a hospital “for review and treatment.” Polis was not experiencing severe symptoms, his office said.

No additional information was immediately released. Both Polis and Reis tested positive Nov. 28, and both had been quarantining at home.

Polis, a Democrat, had described his symptoms as “very mild” Dec. 1 as he worked last week from home. He had previously said Reis was asymptomatic.

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WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, is warning that the upcoming holiday season may be even worse than Thanksgiving in terms of spreading the coronavirus.

Fauci told CNN on Monday that because the traditional Christmas season is an extended period that stretches into New Year’s, the prospects for spreading the virus as people travel “may be even more compounded than what we saw at Thanksgiving.”

Fauci said “it’s a very critical time in this country right now” with the virus surging and more important than ever for people to take precautions like avoiding indoor gatherings, wearing masks and social distancing.

Over Thanksgiving, many people traveled to gather with families, against warnings from health officials. Fauci said the U.S. is “probably just at the beginning” of seeing the resulting uptick in cases.

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PRAGUE — The Czech government has tightened rules for restaurants, bars and clubs several days after they were allowed to reopen.

Health Minister Jan Blatny says that starting on Wednesday such establishments can be open only until 8 p.m. instead of 10 p.m.

Blatny also says the government is re-imposing a ban on drinking alcoholic beverages in all public places. The move comes after the minister complained that some bars and clubs remained illegally opened until morning and demanded they pay high fines.

Bars, restaurants and clubs were allowed to reopen only on Thursday amid the government’s decision to ease some of its most restrictive measures imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of coronavirus infections in the hard-hit European country was on a decline since early November, but that trend might be coming to an end. The day-to-day increase of new cases was slightly higher the last four days than a week ago.

The Czech Republic had 546,833 confirmed cases with 8,902 fatalities.

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GENEVA — The World Health Organization’s emergencies chief says the rate of death from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is “shocking,” and the “brutal reality” is that transmission rates of the disease are so high that holiday hugs are ill-advised.

Dr. Michael Ryan says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a “difficult” time “when the U.S. is accounting for a third of all world cases at the moment, over the last number of weeks.”

“The epidemic in the U.S. is punishing. It’s widespread. It’s quite frankly, shocking, to see one to two persons a minute die in the U.S. — a country with a wonderful, strong health system (and) amazing technological capacities,” he said.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said most transmission happens among people who tend to spend a lot of time together, in workplaces or homes, but it’s sometimes hard to “disentangle” the exact time of transmission.

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RIO DE JANEIRO — The governor of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state said Monday he’s hopeful that vaccination against the novel coronavirus can begin on Jan. 25.

“We’re not turning our backs on the national vaccination plan, but we need to be more agile, and so we’re anticipating,” said Gov. João Doria, whose state is home to 46 million people. “Why start vaccination that saves the lives of millions only in March, if we can do it in January? We’re losing more than 600 lives every day,” he told reporters.

The potential CoronaVac vaccine is being developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac and would be mostly produced by Sao Paulo’s state-run Butantan Institute. It has yet to be approved by Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa.

Assuming CoronaVac is approved, the first phase of Sao Paulo’s program would provide two shots free of charge to 9 million people, of whom 7.5 million are over 60 years old, according to Doria’s presentation. The remaining 1.5 million are health workers, members of Indigenous groups and people in communities descended from escaped slaves. Those four groups have accounted for about three-quarters of Sao Paulo’s deaths since the start of the pandemic.

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ROME — Italy’s interior minister has tested positive for COVID-19 and was informed of the result during a government Cabinet meeting on Monday, a fellow minister said.

Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova in a Facebook post said Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese was forced to leave the session, which had been convened to discuss how to implement a national plan to bounce back from the economic damage of the pandemic. Bellanova said Lamorgese doesn’t have symptoms.

The interior minister, among other duties, oversees state police, whose mission includes ensuring that citizens comply with anti-COVID-19 measures enacted by the government, such as an overnight curfew.

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ROME — Italy registered some 5,000 fewer new COVID-19 cases on Monday, compared to the previous day’s confirmed caseload, but more than 50,000 fewer swab tests to detect the virus were performed as weekends usually see far fewer tests carried out.

The nation’s known confirmed overall case count in the pandemic, including the 13,720 infections in the Health Ministry’s daily update, stood at over 1.7 million. With the addition of 528 deaths, Italy’s confirmed tally of dead in the pandemic rose to 60,606.

Among the deaths on Sunday were two doctors, including a pediatrician, increasing to 233 the number of known deaths of physicians in the pandemic, according to the national federation of doctors and dentists.

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TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada will get up to 250,000 doses of the vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech before the end of the December.

The vaccine is expected be approved by Health Canada as soon as Thursday.

Trudeau had come under criticism from opposition parties for saying Canadians won’t be among the first to get a vaccine against COVID-19 because the first doses will likely go to citizens of the countries they are made in.

Canada doesn’t have mass vaccine-production facilities, but Trudeau says Canada ordered the most expansive portfolio of vaccines in the world.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island has reported more coronavirus cases per capita in the past week than any other state, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rhode Island averaged about 110 daily cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, the CDC’s COVID-19 Data Tracker shows.

Rhode Island is halfway through Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo’s “two-week pause,” the latest round of restrictions on business and personal activity meant to reduce community transmission of the coronavirus.