Four Trump administration officials told Reuters the White House, on the advice of the National Security Council, has held classified meetings about the response to the novel COVID-19 coronavirus since January. In the process, the officials said, "some very critical people," including government experts, have been held out of the meetings because they don't have the necessary security clearance.

The meetings, which have been held in a high-security room at the Department of Health & Human Services, reportedly have dealt with topics such as the scope of the infections, quarantines, and travel restrictions.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar and his chief of staff Brian Harrison were allowed in the meetings, the officials said, and they reportedly resisted the classification of the gatherings, but were seemingly overruled.

A fifth source informed Reuters the meetings were classified because of their relationship to China, where the virus originated last year.

An NSC spokesman told Reuters the agency "has insisted on the principle of radical transparency" since the beginning. Read more at Reuters. Tim O'Donnell

The White House has announced that Johnson & Johnson is on track to meet its goal of delivering 20 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in the United States by the end of the month, something officials were reportedly unsure would be achieved.

White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients during a briefing on Friday said that Johnson & Johnson will deliver at least 11 million doses of its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine to the government next week, Politico reports.

"We've done a lot to help J&J, we're monitoring that very closely, and we anticipate a significant increase at the end of this month, which will enable them to reach at least 20 million doses," Zients said.

Johnson & Johnson had planned to deliver 20 million doses of its vaccine by the end of March after it received FDA approval. But CNN recently reported that Biden administration officials were "not confident" this goal would be met after the company "struggled to ramp up production."

The White House's announcement Friday was a surprise, then, with CNN's Kaitlan Collins noting that the goal had "been in doubt as of just a few days ago, given less than half the 20 million had gone out." Indeed, according to Politico, the administration on Tuesday said it only had four million doses of the vaccine to deliver. Unlike the other vaccines that have been approved in the U.S., Johnson & Johnson's comes with the key benefit of only requiring one dose.

The announcement came one day after President Biden announced he's setting a new goal of getting 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered during his first 100 days in office, double his previous goal of 100 million doses, which was met weeks early. The U.S. is on track to meet this new goal. Brendan Morrow

CNN's Sanjay Gupta appeared taken aback in a new interview as former CDC Director Robert Redfield shared his "opinion" on the origins of COVID-19.

Gupta spoke with Redfield as part of a new CNN documentary about the COVID-19 pandemic, and the former CDC chief revealed he thinks it's likely the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab and was possibly already being transmitted in September 2019.

"If I was to guess, this virus started transmitting somewhere in September, October in Wuhan," Redfield said. "That's my own view. It's only an opinion. I'm allowed to have opinions now."

Redfield continued that he thinks the "most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped," though he said he's not "implying any intentionality" and reiterated "it's my opinion." The World Health Organization's Dr. Peter Ben Embarek said last month it's "extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan and that instead, "our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway," per NBC News.

But Redfield told CNN, "I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human, and at that moment in time, the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human to human transmission." He noted, though, that "other people don't believe" this Wuhan lab theory, and "science will eventually figure it out."

Gupta commented on the "remarkable" nature of this conversation, noting that these are "significant" statements to be made by an official who served as the CDC's director throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, Gupta said on CNN while setting up the clip, "This was extraordinary." Watch the exchange below. Brendan Morrow

When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) shared a photo of himself signing a new bill to restrict voting access in the state, it featured Republican lawmakers gazing fondly upon him, as well as a prominent painting in the background.

The bill has been criticized as a measure that will largely affect Black voters and other voters of color, with groups like the ACLU arguing it amounts to voter suppression among already-disenfranchised groups. Kemp has denied that the bill seeks to suppress votes.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch agreed, calling it the state's "new, new Jim Crow." Bunch also reports that the painting centered in Kemp's photo is actually a painting of "a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County."

In a Twitter thread explaining his research, Bunch notes that the painting of the Callaway Plantation "is a monument to Georgia's history of brutal white supremacy that unfortunately didn't disappear when Mariah Callaway and the other slaves were emancipated in 1865." He draws a line from emancipation, to harsh Jim Crow laws of the 20th century, to today's 253 restrictive bills tightening voting rights, making the presence of the portrait particularly "shocking."

"The irony of Kemp signing this bill -- that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting on the sometimes 10-hour lines that state policies create in mostly Black precincts -- under the image of a brutal slave plantation is almost too much to bear," wrote Bunch. Summer Meza

A trial is reportedly set to begin to study delivering Oxford and AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine as a nasal spray.

Oxford is seeking participants for a trial to deliver the vaccine it developed with AstraZeneca as a nasal spray, with a recruitment sheet indicating the phase 1 trial would include around 30 healthy participants, the Financial Times reported. It's reportedly expected to take about four months, and the efficacy could then be studied in a larger trial.

"Some immunologists believe that delivering the vaccine to the site of infection may achieve enhanced protection, especially against transmission, and mild disease," Dr. Sandy Douglas said. "We hope this small safety-focused study will lay the foundation for future larger studies that are needed to test whether giving the vaccine this way does protect against coronavirus infection."

AstraZeneca earlier this week announced that its COVID-19 vaccine was shown to be 79 percent effective in a large U.S. trial, though the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in an unusual statement subsequently said the company appeared to have used "outdated information" that "may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data." AstraZeneca soon after released revised data showing the vaccine to be 76 percent effective. Dr. Anthony Fauci called the use of the outdated information an "unforced error" on the company's part, adding it was unfortunate because "this is very likely a very good vaccine."

The Financial Times reports that Russia's Gamaleya centre, which developed the Sputnik V vaccine, is also starting trials of a nasal spray vaccine, with director Alexander Gintsburg saying this week, "This is a very gentle and patient-friendly form of vaccination for children, especially little children, who can be traumatized when they see a syringe."

According to the report, the AstraZeneca nasal spray trial could start "as early as next week." Brendan Morrow

Dominion Voting Systems has filed another major lawsuit, this time against Fox News.

The voting company on Friday filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, alleging the cable channel "sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes, severely injuring Dominion in the process," The Associated Press reported.

Dominion has in recent months filed numerous defamation lawsuits against individuals who pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the company changed votes from former President Donald Trump to President Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were both sued by Dominion for $1.3 billion, as was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Dominion had not previously sued a news outlet, though in February, Fox was hit with a separate $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from the voting technology company Smartmatic over election fraud claims.

An attorney for Dominion, Justin Nelson, alleged that Fox News made a "conscious, knowing business decision to endorse and repeat and broadcast these lies" about election fraud involving the voting company "in order to keep its viewership." According to the AP, Dominion's attorneys have left the door open to also sue individual Fox News personalities. Brendan Morrow

The University of Southern California announced Thursday it has agreed to an $852 million settlement with about 700 women who say they were abused or subject to sexual harassment by Dr. Gorge Tyndall, a USC gynecologist for more than 30 years before being suspended in 2016 and arrested three years later. Combined with two other settlements, including a $215 million federal class action settled in 2018, USC has paid more than $1.1 billion to Tyndall's former patients.

USC officials called the final settlement "fair and reasonable" and "the end of a painful and ugly chapter in the history of our university." John Manly, a lawyer representing more than 230 of the plaintiffs, said "the enormous size of this settlement speaks to the immense harm done to our clients and the culpability of USC," which "knew early on, in the early '90s and all the way through his tenure, that this was happening."

Manly said Thursday's massive settlement would be distributed among plaintiffs in amounts ranging from $250,000 to several million dollars. USC President Carol Folt said it will be financed through a combination of "litigation reserves, insurance proceeds, deferred capital spending, sale of nonessential assets, and careful management of nonessential expenses," but not tuition, philanthropic gifts, or the university's $5.9 billion endowment.

The settlement dwarfs any previous collegiate sexual abuse payouts, including the $500 million settlement Michigan State University agreed to in 2018 with 332 women alleging sexual abuse at the hands of university sports doctor Larry Nassar. The record payout is "a recognition of suffering, and it's a pretty stunning mea culpa," Brett Sokolow, president of the Association of Title IX Administrators, tells The New York Times. "It's an admission of liability" for "hundreds of cases where the university had knowledge or without much diligence could have known what was going on, and failed to put an end to it."

Tyndall, 74, is awaiting trial on 35 felony counts. He has pleaded not guilty. Peter Weber