Already battling one new, possibly more infectious coronavirus variant, the United Kingdom announced Wednesday that it is now host to another perhaps even more transmissible strain of the virus.

Dozens of countries have closed their doors to the U.K. and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has effectively canceled Christmas for millions in an attempt to contain the new variant. The government's scientific advisers are almost certain it is more infectious than others in circulation.

On Wednesday, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock told a press conference that a second variant — similar to the British strain but first arising in South Africa — had now been detected in two U.K. cases.

"Both are contacts of cases that have traveled from South Africa in the past few weeks," Hancock said. "This new variant is highly concerning, because it is yet more transmissible and it appears to have mutated further than the new variant that has been discovered in the U.K."

Hancock said Britain was quarantining any contacts of these cases, restricting travel with South Africa, and telling anyone who's been to the country in the past two weeks to quarantine themselves immediately.

Dr. Celine Gounder, a member of President-elect Joe Biden's Covid-19 advisory board, said Wednesday that vaccines need to be administered at a significantly faster clip.

"We really need to be administering vaccines at rates much higher than we have been," Gounder said in an interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle. "We only did a few tens of thousands in the first week. We need to be doing a million a day, if we want to reach 100 million doses in a hundred days."

Gounder said the solution is a "massive ramping-up of capacity."

She said the advisory board is "doing what we can to plan" the strategy it will put in place when Biden takes the oath of office Jan. 20.

But until then, Gounder said, "we are on the sidelines ... watching this unfold, and it's very anxiety-provoking to see what is happening in hospitals right now, to see hospitals full, ICUs full, doctors and nurses are burned out."

Monica Leigh Newton said she turned on her car’s hazard lights and drove 100 miles an hour to get her mom, Elaine McRae, to the emergency room in Gulfport, Mississippi, where the older woman worked as a nurse on the Covid-19 floor.

McRae’s oxygen levels that August evening had dropped to a level that could incur brain damage. Newton’s mother never returned home after testing positive for Covid-19 at the hospital. Seventy-two days later in November, she died at the same hospital where she had treated coronavirus patients.

“I was literally watching her deteriorate slowly,” Newton said of her mom, whom she called her best friend and hero. “She was losing everything that I've ever seen in my mom. My mom is the strongest human being in the world and that was just slowly being sucked out of her by this virus.”

What bothers Newton is that no one knows exactly how many health care workers, like her mom, have died of the coronavirus — thus quantifying in some way the sacrifices they made and the suffering they experienced from a disease they worked so hard to defeat.

As the U.S. Covid-19 death toll continues to mount, the deaths of front-line health care workers remain largely unaccounted for. Doctors, nurses, paramedics and support staff have courageously taken on enormous risk during the pandemic, the most consuming health crisis in more than 100 years, but there is no specific death count for them. These are the same people who have received rounds of applause at the end of their shifts and plaudits from the president and high-ranking members of government and industry.

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A New York City health care worker who had a "significant allergic reaction" after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine is in stable condition, health officials said Wednesday.

The officials cautioned that it was the only report so far of a "serious adverse event" of the more than 30,000 vaccinations administered to health care workers in the city this month. The city's Department of Health did not specifically say whether the worker received a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or an alternative vaccine created by the biotechnology company Moderna.

But health officials said side effects and allergic reactions are possible in some people, although uncommon, adding that clinical trials and reports that showed adverse effects associated with the Pfizer vaccine indicated "reactions such as these are rare."

The most common side effects associated with the Moderna vaccine were fatigue, headache and muscle pain, according to Food and Drug Administration documents released last week.

Some New York Stock Exchange workers will return to remote working amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in the largest city in the U.S.

“On Monday, December 28, 2020, in response to changes in the NYC-area public health conditions, NYSE Designated Market Makers (DMMs) will temporarily return to remote operations (with limited exceptions),” the NYSE said in a statement on Tuesday.

“DMMs will retain their regulatory obligations to maintain fair and orderly markets in all NYSE-listed securities and they will electronically provide liquidity and facilitate the auctions in their assigned securities. The NYSE trading floor will remain open and continue to support all NYSE Floor Broker activity, including ’D Orders,” the statement said.

After a historic closure in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NYSE partially reopened its doors in late May. In the partial reopening, only about 80 floor brokers were welcomed back, about 25% of the number before the coronavirus pandemic.

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will buy an additional 100 million doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine, ensuring that every American who wants to be vaccinated can be by June.

The announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services said that Pfizer will manufacture and deliver up to 100 million doses of the vaccine to government-designated locations. This comes on top of the 100 million doses already purchased by the U.S. government.

Under the agreement, Pfizer will deliver at least 70 million doses by the end of June and 30 million by the end of July. This expands the total number of Pfizer vaccine doses purchased by the federal government to 200 million, HHS said.

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The U.S. counted 3,350 Covid-19 deaths and 204,516 new cases Tuesday as the virus continues its spread.

The nation's toll is at more than 323,000 deaths and 18.3 million infections, according to NBC News' tally.

The U.S. has averaged 218,796 cases per day and 2,755 reported deaths per day the past week. Four weeks ago the country averaged 163,057 cases and 1,535 deaths per day.

These states set single-day records:

• Mississippi, 79 dead
• West Virginia, 42 dead
• Wisconsin, 128 dead

The new coronavirus variant — which has prompted dozens of countries to close their doors to the United Kingdom and sparked chaos at British ports — likely first mutated inside a single person in southeast England, the government's expert advisers said Wednesday.

Peter Horby, chair of the U.K. government's New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, or Nervtag, told British lawmakers Wednesday that the virus was first spotted on Dec. 8 and likely originated in a single person in Kent, a coastal county southeast of London.

After weeks of analysis, Horby said scientists are now "almost certain" that the new variant is more infections than others in circulation — perhaps up to 70 percent more transmissible. He said they do not yet know whether it is any more or less deadly, and whether it would respond any differently to vaccines or antibodies from previous infection.

The variant has an unusually high number of mutations, which usually happens when a person has a long-term infection that allows the virus to change while inside the body, Horby said. This usually happens with people who are immunocompromised, or who have been exposed to treatments such as convalescent plasma, he added.

Despite new lockdown measures imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the new variant has already been detected in every region of the U.K. and international travel bans have not stopped it being detected across Europe and as far away as Australia. Many experts believe it is likely in the United States already.

Black churches have certainly not been spared from the incalculable loss from the coronavirus pandemic.

Churches have long been a haven for Black communities, as places for spiritual nourishment, social connection, community organizing. But with the pandemic hitting Black populations disproportionately, communities are reeling from the loss of pastors and other faith leaders.

The deaths have tested churches' resolve while expanding their imagination about how to function during and, eventually, after the pandemic.

"Covid-19 for the Black church has been devastating," said the Rev. Eric George Vickers, lead pastor of the historic Beulah Baptist Church in Atlanta. "Church is community for us. It's the place for spiritual guidance, social awareness, home training, encouragement, you name it. The loss this year can't be properly explained or expressed. It can only be experienced."

With widespread sorrow, however, does come some sense of hope.

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DOVER, England — Truck drivers scuffled with police and sounded their horns in protest around the English port of Dover as a partial blockade by France designed to contain a highly infectious coronavirus variant angered thousands stranded before Christmas.

Paris and London agreed late on Tuesday that drivers carrying a negative test result could board ferries for Calais from Wednesday after much of the world shut its borders to Britain to contain the new mutated variant.

A British minister said the military would start testing drivers but he warned that it would take time to clear the backlog, hammering Britain's most important trade route for food just days before it leaves the European Union's orbit.

Huge lines of trucks have been stacked on a motorway towards the Eurotunnel Channel Tunnel and Dover in the southeast county of Kent, while others have been parked on the former nearby airport at Manston.

TV footage showed drivers honking their truck horns and flashing lights in unison in protest.