September 15 coronavirus news

US President Donald Trump continued to claim that coronavirus will “go away,” claiming it might disappear without a vaccine, while speaking at an ABC town hall on Tuesday

Trump also claimed “herd development” can help the disease dissipate, and some doctors, including Scott Atlas, have argued for that strategy.

“I’m not looking to be dishonest. I don’t want people to panic, and we are going to be OK. We’re going to be OK and it is going away, and it’s probably going to go away now a lot faster because of the vaccine. It would go away without the vaccine, George, but it’s going to go away a lot faster with the vaccine,” Trump said.

Herd immunity: When pressed about his claim that the virus might go away without a vaccine, Trump apparently argued for herd immunity, a strategy that has become controversial in recent weeks.

“And you’ll develop, you’ll develop herd, like a herd mentality. It’s going to be herd developed and that’s going to happen, that will all happen, but with a vaccine, I think it will go away very quickly,” Trump said. “But I really believe we’re rounding the corner, and I believe that strongly.”

Trump then said that Dr. Scott Atlas, a coronavirus adviser to the administration, said herd immunity could have been helpful from the beginning of the pandemic, though Atlas has claimed he has never advised the President for a herd immunity strategy.

“You look at Scott Atlas, you look at some of the other doctors that are highly, from Stanford, look at some of the other doctors. They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning,” Trump said.

Atlas’ comments: In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, Atlas said he had never recommended herd immunity as a strategy to fight the virus.

“I have never, literally never, advised the President of the United States to pursue a strategy of herd immunity, of opening the doors and letting people get infected,” Atlas told the BBC. “I have never advised that, I have never advocated for that to the task force, I have never told anybody in the White House that that’s what we should be doing.”

US President Donald Trump contradicted his administration’s top health advisers call for Americans to wear facial masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, saying during a town hall hosted by ABC on Tuesday that “there are a lot of people that think that masks are not good.”

Trump was asked why he hasn’t supported a national mask mandate and why he doesn’t wear one more often.

Trump said he does wear masks “when I have to.” He also blamed Democrats and Joe Biden for not instituting a national mask mandate, as though Biden was in office.

“They said at the Democrat(ic) National Convention they’re going to do a national mandate. They never did it, because they’ve checked out and they didn’t do it. And … Like Joe Biden. They said ‘We’re going to a national mandate on masks.’ … But he didn’t do it. He never did it.”

Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for a specific example, Trump said waiters.

“They come over, they serve you and they have a mask. And I saw it the other day, where they were serving me and they’re playing with mask. I’m not blaming them … they’re playing with the mask … they’re touching it and then they’re touching the plate. That can’t be good,” Trump said.

Then Trump cited early statements from federal officials discouraging mask use, as though top federal health officials have not underscored to the public that science has evolved on the issue.

“They said very strongly, George, ‘Don’t wear masks.’ Then all of the sudden they went to wear masks. The concept of a mask is good, but … you’re constantly touching it. You’re touching your face. … There are people that think masks are good,” he added.

In July, Trump said he was “all for” wearing face masks, despite refusing to wear one in public. 

The deadly coronavirus may have circulated in the United States as early as December, about a month earlier than believed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to researchers with UCLA.

Their study, published last Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant increase in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illnesses as early as the week of December 22.

The first known case of Covid-19 in the US was thought to be a patient in Washington who had visited Wuhan, China, according to the CDC. The case was reported in January.

Dr. Joann Elmore and colleagues looked through nearly 10 million medical records from the UCLA Health system, including three hospitals and 180 clinics.

Elmore said she started the search after receiving a number of emails from anxious patients in March through her clinic’s patient portal at UCLA. Patients kept asking if the cough they had in January could have been Covid-19.

“With the outpatients, I found a 50% increase in the percentage of patients coming in complaining of a cough. It came out to over 1,000 extra patients above the average of what we would typically see,” Elmore told CNN.

Read the full story here.

An Australian Defence Force (ADF) member broke his quarantine restrictions in Sydney Tuesday by allowing a female guest in his hotel room, according to New South Wales police.

“Two Penalty Infringement Notices (PINs) have been issued after a serving member of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) entertained a guest while undertaking mandatory quarantine in a Sydney hotel overnight,” a news release from NSW police read.

The ADF member was under mandatory hotel quarantine after returning from an overseas deployment, police said.

ADF officers were “conducting security” at the Sydney hotel around 12:45 a.m. “when they heard a female voice in the room.”

The 26-year-old ADF member and 53-year-old woman, who was a guest staying at the hotel, were each fined 1,000 Australian dollars ($730) for failing to comply with coronavirus restrictions, NSW police said.

ADF officers later escorted the woman from the quarantine area and asked her to check out immediately and get a coroanvirus test before self-isolating at her home. The ADF member remains in hotel quarantine.

President Trump “failed to tell the public the truth that he knew” about the novel coronavirus in February, veteran journalist Bob Woodward told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Speaking on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Woodward said the President knew the seriousness of the virus in February. Woodward went on to say that Trump could have warned Americans about the virus during his State of the Union speech that month.

“He gave the famous State of the Union speech to the Congress, 40 million people watched. He spent 15 seconds on it, saying we are doing everything that we can,” Woodward told Cooper. “This is the moment a leader would say I got a warning. Trouble is coming. There are things we can do. But then he goes on and says, I didn’t want to tell the truth, because I would panic people. That’s not what people in this country do when they are told the truth.”

Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, telling the journalist on Feb. 7, “This is deadly stuff.” In March, Trump admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

In a new clip aired on “Anderson Cooper 360” Tuesday, Woodward asked Trump on March 19, “Was there a moment in all of this, last two months, where you said to yourself — you know, you’re waking up or whatever you’re doing and you say, ‘Ah, this is the leadership test of a lifetime?’”

“No,” Trump replied.

Woodward asked, “No?”

“I think it might be, but I don’t think that,” Trump said. “All I want to do is get it solved. There are many people that said that to me. They said, you’re now a wartime President.”

CNN’s Caroline Kelly contributed to this report.

Watch:

President Trump insisted that he didn’t downplay the coronavirus but rather “up-played it in terms of action taken” at ABC’s town hall set to air in full Tuesday night.

Responding to a question from an undecided voter at ABC’s town hall, Trump contradicts his own statements to journalist and author Bob Woodward where he said he “wanted to always play it down.”

“Well I didn’t downplay it, I actually in many ways, I up-played it in terms of action. My action was very strong because what I did with China, I put a ban on. With Europe, I put a ban on. And we would have lost thousands of more people had I not put the ban on,” Trump said. “So that was called action, not with the mouth but in actual fact. We did a very very good job when we put that ban on, whether you call it talent or luck, it was very important so we saved a lot of lives when we did that.”

Trump said last week that he was a cheerleader for the country and didn’t want to create a panic responding to the comments he made to Woodward.

“The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country, I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say,” Trump said on Sept. 9.

The assistant secretary of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, accused the media of being dishonest about the coronavirus pandemic and reiterated talking points about Covid-19 that President Trump has pushed for months, including that schools should reopen for in-person learning and that very few children are affected by Covid-19.

“I just wish that the media would get honest about its coverage of Covid,” MCance-Katz told embattled Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo in the HHS “Learning Curve” podcast Friday. “For children, this is not a life-threatening illness.”

McCance-Katz, who was appointed to SAMHSA by Trump in 2017, acknowledged that children do get the severe form of the virus “in rare cases,” but said “with a great, great majority of children this is not a serious illness,” something Trump has also repeated for months.

“And when we put them in school with safety measures in place, why can’t they go to school?” she burst out at one point in the interview.

Many studies have shown children do get Covid-19 and do die from it. They also can spread the virus to others. The American Academy of Pediatrics says more than 500,000 children have been diagnosed with the infection.

“So, lost in all of this response to Covid and nonstop 24/7 horrors of Covid and if you can’t find something to talk about, it appears to me they make things up. It just does,” McCance-Katz said at another point in the interview, referring to media coverage of the pandemic.

McCance-Katz also expressed dismay with the way states have tried to handle the surging pandemic.

“There was no agreement to this nonstop restriction and quarantining and isolation and taking away anything that makes people happy,” she said. “You can’t go to a movie, you can’t go to a football game.”

McCance-Katz, a psychiatrist with a doctorate in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale, argued at one point that the shutdown last spring was too severe.

“I’m going to say it,” she said. “We shut down the entire country before the virus, in my opinion, had a chance to get around the entire country. … We used a sledgehammer when I think we needed a scalpel.”

She argued that getting the economy and schools reopened is integral for Americans’ mental health.

A new study finds some evidence that infusions of convalescent plasma may help severely ill coronavirus patients survive better. 

Patients given the plasma treatments at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City were a little less likely to die and a little less likely to get worse in the hospital than patients not given the treatment, researchers reported Tuesday.

The US Food and Drug Administration has given emergency use authorization to the use of blood plasma for treating coronavirus. It’s an old approach. The idea is that the blood of survivors of a viral disease, in this care coronavirus, has antibodies and other factors that can jumpstart the immune response of someone more newly infected.

Dr. Nicole Bouvier and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai looked at the cases of 39 patients with severe or life-threatening Covid-19. About half got plasma and the rest did not.

About 28% of those not treated needed more oxygen as time went on, compared to 18% of those treated with plasma, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

“Survival also improved in plasma recipients,” they wrote. There were not enough patients in the trial to put a firm number on the survival benefit. “Convalescent plasma is potentially effective against Covid-19, but adequately powered, randomized controlled trials are needed,” the team wrote. “In addition, the efficacy of passive antibody transfer relies heavily on the quality of the donor convalescent plasma.”

The treatment also seemed safe enough. “Among the 39 convalescent plasma recipients, no serious adverse events were judged to be directly caused by convalescent plasma transfusion,” the team wrote.

There are at least 6,601,337 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 195,637 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

So far on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 47,685 new cases and 1,144 deaths.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

Medical grade masks such as N95 respirators may not fit female and Asian health care workers as well as their male, Caucasian counterparts, researchers in Australia reported Tuesday.

It’s an especially important question because of the coronavirus pandemic and the researchers recommend more consistent testing of masks for health care workers, rather than having each worker check the fit.

Britta von Ungern-Sternberg from the Perth Children’s Hospital and colleagues reviewed data and studies going back to 2003 on how well filtering facepiece respirators fit, and found the masks passed fit tests just 85% of the time for women, compared to 95% of the time for men.

They also found these rates were lower among Asians, (84%), than Caucasians, (90%). Fit test pass rates were particularly low in Asian females, with an average fit pass rate of 60%, they reported in the journal Anaesthesia. How well a mask fits is more important than the how well the material it is made of filters the air, the researchers said.

Health care workers are more likely than other people to become infected with coronavirus, the team noted. Inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) is sometimes to blame, and poorly fitting masks and respirators can be a factor.

The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health standards requires N95 masks used in the US to meet a fit of 95%, defined by a fit test panel. The team notes that the dimensions of that test panel come from a group in which women and Asian people are underrepresented.

The researchers also compared mask “fit checks,” when a health care worker checks their own mask to make sure it’s fitting properly, to “fit tests,” which are more involved and costly but yield a more accurate assessment. Health care workers are supposed to check their masks every time they are used, but the researchers do not recommend replacing fit tests with fit checks.

Qualitative fit testing involves releasing sprays that test bitter or sweet test agents. If the mask-wearer cannot taste the bitter or sweet test agents, the mask is determined to fit. Quantitative fit testing involves actually measuring the concentration of substances inside and outside the mask to determine how well the mask fits and filters particles.

Researchers believe they have found evidence that the novel coronavirus may have been circulating in the US as early as late December, about a month before the current timeline from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

Their study, published last Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant uptick in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illnesses as early as the week of Dec. 22.

The first known case of Covid-19 in the US was thought to be a patient in Washington who had visited Wuhan, China, according to the CDC.

Dr. Joann Elmore and colleagues looked through nearly 10 million medical records from the UCLA Health system, including three hospitals and 180 clinics. Elmore said she started the search after receiving a number of emails from anxious patients in March through her clinic’s patient portal at UCLA. Patients kept asking if the cough they had in January could have been Covid-19.

“With the outpatients, I found a 50% increase in the percentage of patients coming in complaining of a cough. It came out to over 1,000 extra patients above the average of what we would typically see,” Elmore told CNN.

The number of patient visits to the ER for respiratory complaints, as well as the number of people hospitalized with acute respiratory failure between December 2019 and February 2020, were all up compared to records from the past five years. The uptick in cases started in the final week of December.

“Some of these cases could have been due to the flu, some could be for other reasons, but to see these kinds of higher numbers even in the outpatient setting is notable,” Elmore said.

Elmore hopes this research shows that real time data collected on diseases like this could potentially help public health experts identify and track emerging outbreaks much earlier and potentially slow or stop the spread of disease.

Dr. Claudia Hoyen, an infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center who did not work on the study, also believes it’s possible Covid-19 may have been in the US much sooner than first realized.

Kristian Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, doesn’t, however. “We know from the SARS-CoV-2 genetic data that the pandemic started in late November / early December in China so there’s absolutely no way the virus could have been spreading widely in December 2019. From the same genetic data we know that widespread transmission didn’t start in the United States until (around) February 2020,” Andersen said in an email.

“The paper is picking up spurious signals and the hospitalizations are more likely from flu or other respiratory diseases,” Andersen wrote.

Brazil’s health ministry reported 36,653 new Covid-19 infections and 1,113 new coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday.

That brings the country’s total number of coronavirus cases to 4,382,263 and raises the death toll to 133,119.

According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, Brazil is the third-worst hit country in the world in terms of cases, behind only India and the United States.

Brazil is second-worst in terms of deaths, with only the US having suffered more coronavirus fatalities so far.

It might not be until 2022 when the world can begin thinking about returning to “pre-Covid” life, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief science officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva, said Tuesday.

“We’re looking at 2022 at least before enough people start getting the vaccine to build immunity. So for a long time to come, we have to maintain the same kind of measures that are currently being put in place with physical distancing, the masking and respiratory hygiene,” said Swaminathan, speaking to reporters during a virtual meeting hosted by the United Nations Foundation.

“Those will have to continue after the vaccine starts getting rolled out, because we need 60% to 70% of the population to have immunity before you will start seeing a dramatic reduction in transmission of this virus,” Swaminathan said. “We also don’t know how long these vaccines will protect for — that’s the other big question mark: How long does immunity last? And it’s possible that you will need a booster.”

Swaminathan added that health officials are currently looking to control the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, rather than eliminate it at this point.

While a timeline remains uncertain and difficult to predict, “I think it’s safe to say that it could be 2022 when we will start thinking about going back to pre-Covid normal life,” Swaminathan said.

Swaminathan added that she doesn’t think the coronavirus will become a seasonal virus as time goes on, but instead we could expect to see “ups and downs” in cases and transmission.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced Tuesday he is extending the city’s outdoor dining program until December. It was originally set to expire Oct. 31.

This means restaurants can continue to use private outdoor spaces as well as public spaces on streets and sidewalks, Walsh said during a briefing. 

“We’re going to waive application fees for outdoor dining propane heaters in dining areas. You still need a permit from the fire department, the safety regulations around their use remains 100% in place. But the fee will be waived so we’re trying to help our restaurants continues to take advantage of outdoor space as long as possible,” Walsh said.

Restaurants will be able to use electric heaters without a permit as long as the cords don’t cross the sidewalk,” the mayor said.

The latest numbers: Boston reported at least 51 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total to approximately 16,245 cases in the city, Walsh said. There were two deaths over the weekend, bringing the total number of deaths to approximately 757. 

The positive Covid-19 test rate in Boston is 1.6%, down from 1.7% last week but Walsh encouraged residents to continue adhering to mask and social distancing guidance to avoid a spike in numbers. Walsh said 2,700 Boston residents were tested every day on average last week, including college students.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said “it’s just a matter of time” before the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial resumes in the United States. 

The trial went on pause worldwide last week while doctors looked into the illness of a Phase 3 clinical trial participant who received the vaccine and became ill. 

“It would be unusual to completely stop a trial on the basis of one single adverse event,” Fauci told CNN on Tuesday afternoon. 

The study participant who became ill is enrolled in a trial in the UK being run by the University of Oxford, which is working with AstraZeneca on the vaccine, since they developed.

The UK arm of the trial has already resumed. In its information for trial participants, the university mentions that study volunteers “developed unexplained neurological symptoms including changed sensation or limb weakness” and that “after independent review, these illnesses were either considered unlikely to be associated with the vaccine or there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine.” 

Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said doctors leading the trial sites in the US will be told to look out for similar symptoms. 

“You have to be extra special careful and watch out to see if it happens again, and then if it does, it becomes an entirely different situation,” he said.

After her husband died of Covid-19, Sondra Wolfe wants people to see the human lives behind the numbers.

“People see the numbers and so many of them don’t care. I want to put a human face and a family, what a family is going through, the grief that this has caused and maybe change some minds that this is a real thing,” Wolfe told CNN on Tuesday.

She described her husband, Mike, as a great father, grandfather and husband. She said losing him is leaving a big hole in their family and community.

“He took care of all of us. He was just an all around great guy,” Wolfe said.

She said it is frustrating that President Trump and other federal leaders did not act on the severity of the pandemic earlier.

“Other countries have this under control and are protecting their citizens, and that they’ve made this political and about an election and about ratings, just makes me angry. This is about people and lives,” she said.

“It is not going away,” she added. “It is not political. It is a health crisis and we need to do what we can to take care of each other.”

She urged people to wear masks and have empathy, saying that simple action could save lives.

“If you would pass this on to somebody else, how would it make you feel. If your selfishness was responsible for somebody’s death,” Wolfe said.

Watch:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced 87 Covid-19 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the highest number of deaths reported in one day since early May. 

He clarified that while the deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, it doesn’t mean the deaths occurred in that time frame. About 83% of the deaths occurred within the last month, while the rest happened before then, he said. 

DeWine said there have also been at least 1,001 new Covid-19 cases – bringing the total to approximately 139,485 cases with a 3.6% positivity rate. There have been at least 4,506 total deaths reported in the state.

The governor said that in a recent conversation with university presidents in Ohio about the return to campus, many said that the major issue they are facing is large student gatherings without masks. DeWine encouraged students to wear their masks in any social situation and to remain outdoors whenever possible.

On the economy: DeWine also announced the launch of a new work program meant to help those lost their jobs during the pandemic find new positions. The program, which will first launch in Cleveland, will pair each person with a coach that will identify their strengths and provide any additional job training that is needed, he said.

The state is currently working with 30 employers on the job program and will provide job fairs to connect applicants and companies, he said.

Note: These numbers were released by the state of Ohio, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

US stocks were mostly in the green at the end of Tuesday. While the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite added another day of gains, the Dow finished flat.

Here’s where things finished:

The market had started the session higher following positive news about China’s economic recovery, and some better-than-expected economic data.

Remember: As stocks settle after the trading day, levels might still change slightly.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved Miami-Dade County into phase two of the reopening plan yesterday – and today Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber fired back in a scathing letter.

“Last time we reopened our economy, our County experienced a surge in the virus that has killed 2,328 residents,” Gelber said in the letter. “With no meaningful ability to control surges and the resulting community spread, the virus swelled to unimagined levels.”

Gelber blamed the state for failing to implement an “effective and sufficiently staffed contact tracing program” in Miami-Dade County and for sending mixed messages regarding mask use. 

“As we reopen, our positivity rates are actually worse than they were the last time we reopened,” the letter said. “So the only way this doesn’t become déjà vu all over again, is if we do something different.” 

Gelber urged DeSantis to improve contact tracing, to consider using a digital contact-tracing app and to mandate masks statewide.

CNN has reached out to the governor’s press office for comment.

New York state on Tuesday reported a Covid-19 infection rate of 1%, according to a news release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The 1% rate was derived from the 73,678 Covid-19 tests reported to state authorities on Monday — 766 of which were positive, the release said. 

The latest Covid-19 positivity rate follows 38-straight days of a rate below 1% in the state. 

New York also reported 11 new Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday. So far, New York has recorded 445,714 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and 25,405 people who have died.

One thing to note: These numbers were released by New York state, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Countries that are going into the winter months will have to choose between having bars and nightclubs open, or schools in session, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, said Tuesday.

“We have to sustain pressure on this virus, we have to reduce transmission at community level in order to lower the risk to those older and vulnerable people and to maintain an environment in which our children can continue to attend school,” Ryan said during a briefing in Geneva. 

“So, what is more important? Are children back at school? Are the nightclubs and the bars open?” he said. “I think these are decisions that we have to make in coming into the winter months.” 

Since there isn’t yet a vaccine, in order to keep children in school and protect older and vulnerable people, there is no alternative to sustained surveillance, test and trace, quick results, cluster investigation, isolation of cases and quarantining of contacts, Ryan said.

“I’m sorry to be boring, and I’m sorry to keep saying this over and over and over again, but there are no alternatives,” he said. “This is what we must do.” 

“If we are to serve our children and those older and vulnerable people in our population who might die this winter in these countries, then we must sustain these other activities and these cannot be sustained without government commitment to do this and society’s commitment to participate and be part of this,” he said. 

Officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are not “disloyal to the administration. They are loyal to science,” former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday.

“I know the doctors and scientists at CDC well,” Frieden said at a briefing hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “They are devoted to stopping disease wherever and whenever it occurs.” 

Frieden, who is now President and CEO of the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, said the CDC is not loyal to any political party.

“The pledge of CDC to the American people is to base all decisions on the highest quality data, openly and objectively derived, to put the benefits to society above the benefits to the institution,” he said. 

He said that pledge is part of the CDC’s DNA.

“I’m afraid what some may see as disloyalty to an individual is actually loyalty to the cause of protecting the American people,” said Frieden.

There have been at least 6,585,763 cases of coronavirus in the US, and at least 195,275 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

So far on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 32,111 new cases and 782 reported deaths.

New York state has removed six states from its Covid-19 travel advisory list, according to a statement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office on Tuesday.

Travelers from California, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada and Ohio no longer have to self-quarantine for 14 days upon their arrival to New York, Cuomo’s office said. 

The Northern Mariana Islands have also been removed from the list, while Puerto Rico has been added, the statement said.

“When other states and territories make progress fighting COVID-19, that’s good for New York and while I am glad to see areas removed from the travel advisory list, it still remains far too long,” Cuomo said. “Make no mistake: We must continue to be New York Tough and stay smart. Wearing masks, social distancing and hand washing is what tamed this beast in New York and we must keep it up.”

Major League Baseball announced on Tuesday that the home of the Texas Rangers, Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, will host the 116th World Series this October. 

It will be the first neutral site World Series since the 1940s. 

MLB’s 2020 postseason plan includes hosting games at four neutral site stadiums in California and Texas starting with the Division Series. 

The league made the historical change “due to health, safety and competitive considerations.”

Nursing homes in New York can resume limited visitations for facilities that have not have a Covid-19 case for at least 14 days as of Thursday, the New York State Health Department said.

This is an update to previous guidelines that asked for a 28-day window before eligibility. 

According to the New York State Department of Health, this guidance would allow eligible visitation in approximately 500 of the states 613 nursing homes. 

The guidelines also require visitors to present a negative test result within seven days. 

Officials said the number of visitors to a nursing home must not exceed 10% of the resident census at any time, adding that only two visitors will be allowed per resident at any one time.

The University of Arizona has issued a recommendation, in accordance with the local county health department, strongly urging students to shelter in place until Sept. 30, the university announced, following a large number of positive Covid-19 cases.

Exceptions include obtaining food, attending work, seeking medical treatment and going outside where social distancing is possible. 

The school is also limiting in person instruction to “essential courses” only until Sept. 27. 

The University of Arizona recorded 261 positive Covid-19 tests on Monday, according to the school’s coronavirus dashboard, and has seen roughly 1,400 cases total since July 31.

“Proving that a vaccine works is easier than proving that it’s safe,” former US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday.

During an event hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Frieden said he has two safety concerns regarding a potential Covid-19 vaccine.

“First are the Kawasaki-like syndrome and illnesses that we’ve seen in children, and possibly similar illnesses in adults,” Frieden said. “That is an immune reaction, and therefore there’s a theoretical chance that some vaccines could create that kind of reaction.”

Frieden, who is currently president and CEO of the global health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, emphasized that he is not predicting this will happen, but suggesting that we do due diligence in watching out for it.

“The second concern is sometimes called antibody-dependent enhancement,” Frieden said. “This has been seen in some old vaccines, half a century ago, but it also was seen in an animal model of one SARS vaccine.”

“The risk there would be some people – after vaccination, if they then became infected with Covid – could get sicker then they would have otherwise,” he explained.

Frieden said that we likely will not know everything we need to about vaccines until they are given to thousands, or maybe even millions of people.

“But we need to track safety at every step of the way and be completely open with the public about it,” he said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday he will not ban trick-or-treaters on Halloween amid the pandemic.

Speaking on CNN affiliate News 12 Long Island, Cuomo said he didn’t think it was appropriate, according to his office. 

“I would not ban trick-or-treaters going door to door. I don’t think that’s appropriate. You have neighbors — if you want to go knock on your neighbor’s door, God bless you and I’m not going to tell you not to. If you want to go for a walk with your child through the neighborhood, I’m not gonna tell you you can’t take your child to the neighborhood, I’m not going to do that — I’ll give you my advice and guidance and then you will make a decision what you do that night,” Cuomo said, according to his office. 

In an interview with the New York Times, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates described optimism that the United States would ultimately help provide Covid-19 vaccines for poor countries around the world.

“It’s my disposition,” Gates said in the interview, published Monday. “Plus, I’ve got to call these people up and make the pitch to them that this really makes sense – and I totally, totally believe it makes sense.” 

The Times said Gates was referring to leaders in the White House and Congress, who he has lobbied for $4 billion for Covid-19 vaccines for poorer countries.

“As they say,” Gates said, “the US government – after it’s tried every other thing – does the right thing.”   

The Goalkeepers Report from the Gates Foundation, which published Monday, showed that a large number of deaths could be prevented if Covid-19 vaccines were distributed to all countries based on their populations, rather than to rich countries first. But Gates acknowledged that this will not be soon. 

Gates said it “looks selfish” that the US avoided joining global Covid-19 vaccine development efforts and focused on deals with vaccine companies that ensure millions of doses are allocated to the United States, but he did not feel it was unjustified. 

“You’re not going to succeed in getting the US to treat itself as just a random 5% of the world’s population,” Gates said, noting that American taxpayers have covered much of the costs for clinical trials and vaccine manufacturing.

Gates told the Times he expected by next year, regardless of who wins the election, the US would come around to paying much of the estimated $4 billion needed to get Covid-19 vaccines to others around the world. Congress has repeatedly kept funds for AIDS, malaria and childhood vaccinations in the foreign aid budget, Gates said, despite attempts to slash them; with the idea that no country is safe from Covid-19 until every country is, “there’s a better global argument for generosity on this one than there is for H.I.V. or malaria,” he said. 

Seán Ó Fearghaíl, the speaker of the Dáil in Ireland, has announced that all Irish cabinet members are now self-isolating.

The Dáil, the Irish lower house, is also suspended until at least next Tuesday. 

New York University has instructed all residents and employees in one of their dormitories to quarantine until at least Tuesday night, following a diagnosis of six positive cases out of roughly 400 students living in the building, the university announced in its latest campus update.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we are also retesting all residents of Rubin Hall (and employees, too), and instructed them on Saturday to begin quarantining until at least Tuesday night,” administrators said. “We hope to have the results of Monday’s tests back by Tuesday evening and can evaluate, in consultation with the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, what steps to take after that, which may well include extending the quarantine.”

NYU has reported a total of 65 cases since Aug. 1, according to the school’s coronavirus dashboard — returning an overall positivity rate of .19%. The school has reported 48 cases in the most recent 14-day period, returning a positivity rate of .31%.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said a national mask mandate “probably would not work.”

Speaking during a news conference with Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, Fauci said, “There is such a degree of variability of accepting mandates throughout the country.”

Fauci added this has been discussed “in great detail at the level of the White House coronavirus task force.”

“If the citizens of a particular state, a city, a county or what have you, are really in lockstep with the authority, that does it – there’s not a big problem,” he said.

However, issues arise when a majority of the population in an area do not agree with the mandate – and that begs the question: How do you enforce the mandate?

Fauci said anything that puts an “authoritative statement to the citizenry often is met with a considerable amount of pushback.”

SeaWorld has laid off at least 1,896 employees, due to “significant and sustained” effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, Kyle Miller, Park President of SeaWorld Orlando said in a letter to the State of Florida.

The letter is a requirement of employers in Florida, who must submit a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) alerting local government when a mass layoff occurs.  

SeaWorld closed its parks on March 16 and within weeks had temporary furloughed the vast majority of its workforce. Though the parks reopened at a reduced operating and guest capacity in June, “self-imposed limitations, consumer concerns and other factors” have made the recovery slow and have forced the company to make permanent the temporary furloughs. 

The layoff touches nearly all positions at SeaWorld, including waiters and waitresses, security officers, performers, sales clerks and photographers.  

“SeaWorld intends to accomplish this mass layoff with the least amount of disruption to the lives of its ambassadors and their families, and the Orlando community,” Miller said in the letter.

Philanthropist Bill Gates said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that the US Food and Drug Administration has lost credibility during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We saw with the completely bungled plasma statements that when you start pressuring people to say optimistic things, they go completely off the rails. The FDA lost a lot of credibility there,” Gates told Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker.

“Historically, just like the CDC was viewed as the best in the world, the FDA had that same reputation as a top-notch regulator,” Gates said. “But there’s been some cracks with some of the things they’ve said at the commissioner level.” 

In a Stat interview published Monday, Gates criticized FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn’s mischaracterization of data about convalescent plasma as a Covid-19 treatment. Hahn has previously acknowledged his misstatement and said criticism of his remarks was “entirely justified.” 

On Bloomberg Television, Gates also spoke about his frustration with the lack of US funding for vaccinations in the developing world.

“The inequity of this – whether it’s between citizens in the country, blue collar versus white collar, blacks experiencing a higher sickness rate than others – poor countries can’t borrow money and spend money like the U.S. and other rich countries have,” Gates said. “Almost every dimension of inequity has been accentuated here.”

At least 422,190 students in the New York City Public School System have requested the entirely remotely learning option for the fall, according to data provided by the city’s Department of Education — a little more than 40% of the total 1 million plus students enrolled in the nation’s largest public school system. 

Roughly 58% of students are planning to return to school buildings as part of a hybrid learning model beginning next week, according to the DOE. 

Parents in the New York City public school system were given the option to opt out of the in-person hybrid plan after it was first announced. In August, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 74% of families had said they were planning to participate in in person learning at the time. 

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, called the US response to Covid-19 “shocking” and “mismanaged” in an interview published on Monday in Stat.

“You know, this has been a mismanaged situation every step of the way,” Gates told Stat. “It’s shocking. It’s unbelievable – the fact that we would be among the worst in the world.” 

Gates said the change to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Covid-19 testing guidelines for people without symptoms “blows the mind.” 

He criticized US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn and his mischaracterization of findings arounds convalescent plasma. Hahn has acknowledged the misstatement and said criticism of his remarks was “entirely justified.” 

“This is third grade math. I mean, are you kidding?” Gates said in the interview. “The head of the FDA got up and said it was a 35% death reduction where it’s not even a 3% reduction based on just a tiny little subset that was nonstatistical. This is unheard of.” 

Gates also mentioned Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who is now a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. CNN has reported that Atlas has advocated herd immunity through mass infection in briefings and written pieces in recent months; Atlas has denied pushing a herd immunity strategy in the White House. 

“The administrations now hired this Stanford guy who has no background at all just because he agrees with their crackpot theories,” Gates said.

The daily Covid-19 indicators are all under desired thresholds, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

Here’s what the numbers in New York City look like:

Remember: These numbers were released by the city’s public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wants the House to remain in session until congressional leaders can reach a coronavirus stimulus deal. 

“We are committed to staying here until we have an agreement — an agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” Pelosi said during an interview with CNBC.

Her comments came after she had a phone call about the situation with House Democrats on Tuesday morning. 

Remember: With fewer than two months until the election, the odds for a massive stimulus compromise intended to help bolster small businesses, provide additional unemployment benefits and give more money to schools as they adapt amid the coronavirus pandemic have fallen practically to zero.

Delta Air Lines says most employees will not be furloughed when restrictions attached to pandemic bailout funds expire on Oct. 1.

In a new memo to employees, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said 40,000 employees took unpaid leaves of absence and one in five retired early or resigned.

Bastian said that means company flight attendants and ground-based frontline employees in the US will not be furloughed. But Bastian said he expects an “overage of pilots” come October 1 and that talks with its union continue.

“While we are all grateful for our ability to mitigate furloughs, it’s important to remember that we are still in a grim economic situation,” said Bastian. “It’s clear the recovery will be long and choppy.” Delta said it is still flying 30 percent of last year’s passenger levels and it is burning through $750 million each month.

The clock is ticking for airline workers with no sign that Congress will take up extending payroll support. Earlier this month, United Airlines and American Airlines sent out notices to more than 30,000 employees that they would be furloughed come October 1.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) said there is a “strong possibility” that the “current manufacturing capacity may not be enough to supply a global Covid-19 vaccination programme.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Arnaud Bernaert, head of Health and Healthcare at WEF, said there are several ways this dire situation can be addressed.

“More partnerships between researchers and manufacturers, are needed,” he said, explaining that one solution “requires hacking the current system.”

Current funding “usually comes with obligations for the manufacturers to produce on the territory of the country providing financial resources,” he explained. This may result in “limited availability” of the vaccine in other countries.

The Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN), which accounts for more than 65% of vaccines produced in each WHO region (except the European Region) “needs to be put to work,” he said.

Bernaert is suggesting a “pairing mechanism for vaccine innovators and vaccine manufacturers” – which would help find more capacity among the many vaccine candidates that are out there right now.

By doing “The Great Reset … the interest of all prevail over the ones of an elite,” Bernaert said.

WATCH:

Germany’s Education and Research minister does not expect a coronavirus vaccine to be broadly available before mid-2021.

Anja Maria-Antonia Karliczek spoke at a government news briefing Tuesday, where the country’s Health Minister Jens Spahn said that between 55 and 65% of its citizens would need to be vaccinated once the treatment has been found.

Spahn said he wanted to know more about the Russian vaccine, which has been approved by Moscow before Phase 3 trials.

“We would like to know more at times because there is not enough transparency,” Spahn said, adding that he was concerned about the speed at which it had been approved. “It is not about being first,” he added.

Spahn also said he was certain there was a willingness in the population to get tested and that Germany had enough information on Covid-19 to avoid a second lockdown.

“We don’t have the same situation as in March, because we know more,” Spahn said, explaining that distancing measures, washing hands and wearing a mask had helped prevent a second wave in the country.
“If we do this in the fall and winter, and we practice this, we will get through the fall and winter well,” he said.

Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research will also grant funds to biotechnology companies Curevac and BioNTech for the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Curevac will receive €252 million ($300 million) and BioNTech will receive €375 million.

Hong Kong’s government said Tuesday said it had detected 38 fresh cases after examining 1.78 million people during a two-week city-wide mass coronavirus testing drive. 

Health officials carried out the testing between September 1 and September 14.

During the community testing program, 42 people tested positive, but five people had tested positive before the drive started and were known to authorities, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said Tuesday.

 “Although the Universal Community Testing Program has come to an end, the Government will continue to extend and conduct repeated testing for target groups or vulnerable groups, and would not relax its anti-epidemic efforts,” Chan said.

Hong Kong spent $68 million on the mass testing program, according to Secretary for Civil Service Patrick Nip, of which $47 million was spent on medical and testing support staff.

The city offered free tests to the entire population of more than 7 million people in the program.

The territory reported zero cases of local transmission with four imported cases on Tuesday.

Hong Kong currently has 4,976 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 101 deaths, according to the Center for Health Protection.

More than half a million children in the United States have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The child cases are likely underreported, because the way data is collected is not consistent across states. Even then, children now represent nearly 10% of all reported cases in the US.

It’s getting worse. The groups found that 72,993 new child cases were reported between August 27 and September 10, a 15% increase in child cases over two weeks.

And even though the vast majority of children have only mild symptoms after contracting Covid-19, a number of kids have suffered serious complications. Some have died.

Eli Lipman is one of the kids who has suffered from “long-haul” Covid-19. The 9-year-old has had a 100 degree fever every day for months, his dad Jonathan Lipman told CNN. Eli said he felt like “the day after you got smashed into a wall.”

A version of this story appeared in the September 15 edition of CNN’s Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction newsletter. Sign up here to receive the need-to-know headlines every weekday.

Read the full story here or sign up to the newsletter here.

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has announced that 155 health workers have died after contracting Covid-19 since March.

The ministry released the data on health worker fatalities on Tuesday, in order to provide insurance relief to the victims’ families. 

Maharashtra state has the highest number of health worker fatalities with 21, including six doctors.

The majority of the deaths are among social healthcare workers, multi-purpose health workers and auxiliary nurses.

A total of 64 doctors have succumbed to Covid-19 across India since March. 

India has seen a steady uptick in the number of confirmed virus cases. On Tuesday, the health ministry recorded more than 83,000 new cases, bringing the country’s total to 4.9 million patients.

It is “unacceptable” that some people in the UK have reportedly been asked to wait weeks, or travel hundreds of miles, for a coronavirus test, the country’s Home Secretary said on Tuesday.

“Clearly there is much more work that needs to be undertaken,” Priti Patel told the BBC. “Coronavirus is increasing, and therefore the demand is increasing as well for testing.”

Meanwhile, a membership organization for the National Health Service on Tuesday said that a testing shortage was starting to force some of its members’ staff to “self-isolate in the absence of a test,” and that it was concerned about preparations for the coming winter. 

“The government has always seemed more concerned with managing the political implications of operational problems rather than being open and honest about them,” said Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers.

The UK Government says it is conducting just over 200,000 tests per day. 

Reported coronavirus infections have been surging in the country. There were an average of 3,004 new infections per day in the last seven days, compared to 2,032 per day in the previous seven-day period. 

The British government has at times sent mixed messages on who should be getting coronavirus tests.

Last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC that there had been “a rise in the number of people who are not eligible for a test coming forward and getting those tests.” He estimated that 25% of those getting tested were not eligible. 

UK government guidelines are that only those displaying one of three symptoms, or those who have been asked by a government body, are eligible for a test.

Nonetheless, on July 21, Hancock tweeted that “anybody who needs a test can get a test,” and that “if you have symptoms, if in doubt, get a test.”

On September 9, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that “the world we want to move to as fast as possible is a world in which everybody can take enabling tests at the beginning of the day, and antigen tests to identify whether or not we have the virus.”

Hong Kong reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases or the first time since July 7, Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said on Tuesday.

The city also announced the easing of restrictions starting on Friday. Venues including bars, swimming pools, theme parks and clubs will be able to open, while dine-in services at restaurants will be extended until midnight. 

Chan said despite the drop in cases group gatherings will still be limited to no more than four people and mask wearing in public will still be mandatory.

Hong Kong currently has 4,976 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 101 deaths according to the Center for Health Protection.

A bipartisan group of US House members is unveiling a sweeping proposal to inject up to $2 trillion in aid to the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, a move aimed at jump-starting talks that have devolved into bitter acrimony and finger-pointing between the White House and Democratic leaders in the heat of this election year.

The proposal touches on many of the elements under discussion – aid to small businesses and schools, a new round of checks to Americans, more jobless benefits and funding to help with the November elections – while achieving bipartisan consensus on issues that have left the two sides bickering for the past several months, such as money for cash-strapped states and cities.

While the proposal stands little chance of becoming law, and just specifies overall numbers while leaving out many policy details, it represents a rare bipartisan breakthrough given Congress has been locked in a partisan impasse for months after Washington poured $3 trillion in the spring to help an economy ravaged by the pandemic.

Read more:

The Capitol dome is seen early Wednesday morning before Amb. William Taylor And Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State George Kent testify at the first public impeachment hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill November 13, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Related article Rank-and-file House members achieve rare bipartisan consensus in bid to press Hill leaders to cut stimulus deal

Israel smashed its daily coronavirus record with 4,973 cases diagnosed on Monday, according to the Ministry of Health, surging past the previous record of 4,217 set last week. Israel is also seeing new highs in the number of severe cases with 533 serious cases and 140 patients on ventilators.

Deputy Health Minister, Yoav Kisch, speaking on Israel’s Channel 12 News Tuesday morning, warned the country could see deaths “like there were in New York and Italy, God forbid,” urging people to heed the imminent restrictions. 

The new record comes three days before Israel is set to enter a second general lockdown to bring the numbers under control, making it perhaps the first country in the world to reimpose a general lockdown. Although not as strict as the first lockdown in April, the new restrictions, scheduled to last three weeks through the Jewish high holidays, will see the closure of schools, restaurants (except delivery), entertainment venues and more. Gatherings will be limited to 20 people outdoors and 10 people indoors.

The record also comes with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC for a signing ceremony of normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The ceremony itself has sparked concerns over the spread of coronavirus, since the White House is expecting a crowd of hundreds of people and is not requiring the wearing of masks, which is obligatory in Israel. 

“We are expecting to keep it as distanced as possible,” a senior White House official told CNN.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed the world’s economies into historic slumps. But China is bucking the trend.

The world’s second largest economy has been in recovery mode for months. Now, consumers are starting to spend more, pushing retail sales up to 3.36 trillion yuan ($495 billion) in August, a 0.5% increase over the previous year. While small, the gain marks the first time sales have increased in 2020.

Chinese authorities touted the uptick at a monthly press conference Tuesday, and pointed out that the country is seeing economic improvement elsewhere, too.

“The job market has stabilized, and travel restrictions have loosened,” said Fu Linghui, a spokesman for National Bureau of Statistics.
“People are more willing to come out and spend.”

Read more:

In this photo taken on September 5, 2020, people wearing face masks walk in a shopping mall in Wuhan, China's central Hubei province.

Related article China's economy shrugs off global slump as shoppers join the recovery

Austria has reported a moderate rise in cases in parts of the country, including the capital Vienna.

Under Austria’s pandemic traffic light system, the affected regions have been classified as “yellow,” meaning that there is a slight increase in virus clusters.

Outbreaks in yellow zones can be largely controlled by official measures, according to the Austrian health authority’s website.

The country’s leader, Sebastian Kurz, has previously warned that Austria is on the brink of a second Covid-19 wave.

He added that Austrians should continue to comply with all pandemic measures.

Austria has reported 33,541 cases overall, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.

Overcrowded parties have forced several US high schools to go back to online learning in hopes of staving off Covid-19 outbreaks.

Two of those schools are in Massachusetts, which is reporting fewer cases than last week, and New York, which has maintained an infection rate less than 1% for 38 days.

Although the states’ numbers are promising, experts have warned that people attending large gatherings are a serious threat to managing the spread of the virus that has infected more than 6.5 million and killed 194,536 people in the US. Student parties have already sent colleges and universities scrambling to manage outbreaks, and now high school administrators are working to avoid the same.

A crowded student party “that involved alcohol and complete lack of safety precautions” pushed Lincoln-Sudbury High School outside of Boston to go back to remote learning the first two weeks of school, a letter from the superintendent said. And Pelham High School in Westchester, New York, has also extended online learning after two nights in a row of students partying in the woods, the school district announced.

Read more:

BOSTON, MA - AUGUST 21: Classrooms are being reconfigures to allow for social distancing at Boston Preparatory Charter School in Boston, MA on August 21, 2020. Boston's independently run charter schools are planning to start the school year remotely, although most intend to offer in-person learning for small groups of high needs students. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Related article Crowded parties and coronavirus concerns keep high schoolers from returning to the classroom

South Korea’s government has said it plans to secure a Covid-19 vaccine for 30 million people in the country, just under 60% of the population.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said that the government plans to do this by negotiating with foreign companies and international organizations. South Korea has a total population of nearly 52 million.

Chung has also ordered officials to prepare inoculation plans and to support domestic companies trying to develop a vaccine.

Seoul will continue to seek other ways to import vaccines, Chung added during a press briefing Tuesday.

Kwon Joon-wook, deputy director of Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention Agency, said the foreign vaccine would be chosen primarily based on safety. 

Those in the medical profession will receive the vaccine first, including health care workers involved in the vaccination drive and disease prevention, Kwon added.

South Korea has reported 22,391 coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The woman’s voice shakes as she recalls her quarantine days in a Venezuela motel. 

She, like the more than two dozen healthcare professionals or aid workers we spoke with to inform this report, asked CNN not to reveal their identity for fear of reprisal from the Venezuelan government. 

Her ordeal began when her father died in the once-oil rich city of Maracaibo, in northeastern Venezuela. Doctors suspected that he was a victim of Covid-19, though test results were inconclusive. Still in mourning, his whole family was required to take a rapid test. Hers also came back inconclusive. 

From that point on, her life was completely controlled by Venezuela’s government, she says – from where she slept to what she ate.

“I was immediately isolated from that moment on. I heard nothing from my family, I didn’t have any contact with them, I couldn’t get anywhere near them,” she says. “I felt frustrated, I thought I was going to die.” 

First she was put in a government-run diagnostics center for three days, where she says she shared a room with no air conditioning with four other patients. She had to share a dirty bathroom with the other suspected cases, two of whom, she says, “were in very poor health.” Then she was told she would be transferred to a motel.

“Prison-like” quarantine: Doctors we spoke to say Venezuela’s government has been using motels and other makeshift facilities to quarantine patients suspected of having the novel coronavirus, in a bid to separate them from the general population and keep them from overburdening the country’s already depleted and crumbling hospitals. But these facilities have earned a reputation for being unsanitary, crowded and prison-like, with many Venezuelans fearing being locked inside them.

Read the full story:

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - JULY 20: A member of the medical staff disinfects the corridors of the hotel where COVID-19 patients are staying during week 19 of radical quarantine on July 20, 2020 in Caracas, Venezuela. To manage hospital occupation rates, Venezuelan government has 4,000 hotel rooms nationwide to host and isolate patients of COVID-19 with no or mild symptoms. The Milenio hotel, in the Chaguaramas area, has 60 rooms and is now hosting 61 patients. They stay in single or double rooms with air conditioning, cable TV and internet service. Three groups of doctors rotate in shifts of three days and stay at the hotel. Patients are tested every two or three days and receive doses of Chloroquine and Azithromycin. There is international concern about the real capacity of the government of Nicolas Maduro to control the pandemic due to the health, social and economic crisis the country is going through. According to Johns Hopkins University, Venezuela has 12,334 positive cases (half of them already recovered) and 116 reported deaths. (Photo by Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Getty Images)

Related article 'I thought I was going to die.' Inside Venezuela's mandatory quarantine motels

Travelers eager to fly again may want to consider Italy as their next destination.

Rome’s Fiumicino Airport has become the first airport in the world to earn “the COVID-19 5-Star Airport Rating” from Skytrax, an international airport industry ratings body.

Though Skytrax is best known for its annual rankings of the world’s best airports, the global Covid-19 crisis prompted the organization to come up with a designation for airport hygiene.

According to a release from Skytrax, the organization based its rating on “a combination of procedural efficiency checks, visual observation analysis and ATP sampling tests.”

Fiumicino Airport (FCO), also known as Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, is the busiest airport in Italy.

Top marks: On September 1, the airport opened a 7,000-square-foot Covid testing center, which is co-managed with the Italian Red Cross.

But it’s not only organized, rapid testing that Skytrax noted in its review of FCO. The airport scored points for having easy-to-read signage in multiple languages, strict enforcement of mask wearing, visibly present cleaning staff and efficiency thanks to the consolidation of all incoming and outgoing flights to a single terminal for easier tracking.

Read the full story:

ROME, ITALY - AUGUST 25: Passengers arriving from high-risk countries wait to carry out rapid antigenic tests for Covid-19 at a testing station set up inside Leonardo Da Vinci airport, on August 25, 2020 in Fiumicino, Rome, Italy. The region has introduced mandatory COVID-19 tests for anyone arriving from Croatia, Greece, Spain and Malta to avoid a spike of new cases. (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

Related article Rome's Fiumicino Airport awarded world's first five-star anti-Covid award

Two passengers on separate flights were forced to disembark from planes in Japan this month after refusing to wear masks while on board. 

One incident occurred Saturday and involved a Hokkaido Air System Company flight from Hakodate to the island of Okushiri, both of which are located in the northern province of Hokkaido. One man who was not wearing a mask was ordered off the plane by the captain, according to Matsuhiro Ohta, a public relations official with Hokkaido Air System Company, which is a subsidiary of Japan Airlines, delaying the flight by a half hour.

Ohta said that it appeared the issue stemmed from miscommunication – the passenger claimed after he was forced off the flight that he was developing a rash while wearing the mask. However, Ohta said the passenger was unruly and uncooperative and that his refusal to wear a mask was only part of the reason he was not allowed to fly.

The other incident occurred on September 7. A Peach Aviation flight from the city of Kushiro in Japan’s north to Osaka was forced to make what the airline called an “unscheduled stop” after a passenger refused to put on a mask despite repeated requests from flight attendants. The company told CNN that it is not ruling out taking legal action against the passenger. 

Ultimately, the flight made its way to Osaka after a delay of two hours and 15 minutes.

Read the full story:

An Airbus SAS A320 airplane for A&F Aviation Co.'s "Peach" airline lands at Kansai Airport in Izumisano City, Osaka, Japan, on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011. All Nippon Airways Co.'s low-cost affiliate, formed earlier this year, will operate under the brand name "Peach" and start flights from Osaka, western Japan, by March, 2012. Photographer: Tetsuya Yamada/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Related article 2 passengers forced off planes in Japan this month for not wearing masks

The United States reported 33,826 new Covid-19 infections and 418 virus-related deaths on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

At least 6,554,820 cases, including 194,536 fatalities, have now been recorded in the US.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

CNN is tracking US cases here:

As athletes recover from Covid-19, taking images of their hearts to screen for inflammation may help doctors determine when it could be safe to get back in the game, new research suggests.

The small study – conducted by researchers at Ohio State University – found in cardiac magnetic resonance images, or MRIs, that among 26 of the university’s competitive athletes who were recovering from Covid-19, four showed signs of inflammation of the heart muscle, called myocarditis.

“Our objective was to investigate the use of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging in competitive athletes recovered from COVID-19 to detect myocardial inflammation that would identify high-risk athletes for return to competitive play,” the researchers wrote in a research letter published in the journal JAMA Cardiology on Friday.

The researchers performed cardiac magnetic resonance imaging on 26 competitive athletes referred to the university’s sports medicine clinic after testing for Covid-19 between June and August. The athletes were involved in football, soccer, lacrosse, basketball and track – and none had illness severe enough to require hospitalization.

Only 12 athletes reported having mild symptoms, such as sore throat, shortness of breath or fever, while others did not show any symptoms, according to the study. The cardiac imaging was performed after each athlete quarantined for at least 11 days.

The imaging showed that four athletes, or 15%, had findings consistent with myocarditis and eight additional athletes, or 30.8%, had signs of prior myocardial injury. It’s unclear from this study if this inflammation will resolve itself or produce lasting damage.

Read the full story:

Human Body Organs Anatomy (Heart with Nervous System); Shutterstock ID 623582930; Job: -

Related article Covid-19 study suggests to screen recovering athletes for heart inflammation

Since many Florida public schools opened their doors about a month ago, the number of children under 18 who have contracted Covid-19 statewide has jumped 26%, state data show.

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to push for in-person instruction across the Sunshine State. Even though his administration has released county-level data that indicates the 26% jump, it has not released school-level Covid-19 data for all K-12 public schools, which CNN began asking the state Department of Health for on August 31.

On September 2 – nearly two weeks ago – state officials said by email the data would be released in the coming days and weeks. But still, the state hasn’t provided this key information.

Lack of data: To deal with this information gap, some school districts have created their own Covid-19 data dashboards or released coronavirus case numbers on social media pages or their websites. While useful in those jurisdictions, the overall result is a patchwork of data that varies in completeness and timeliness by district at a time when students, parents, teachers and administrators are making tough decisions about whether to opt for virtual or in-person learning. 

It’s a problem that reverberates across the US as the White House and federal agencies come down hard in favor of reopening school but often fail to give reliable information to those on the front lines.

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Administrators say parents were warned social distancing would not be possible at all times at Jensen Beach Elementary School in Florida.

Related article Covid-19 cases among Florida children jumped 26% in a month. It's still hard to know which schools are safe

The Covid-19 pandemic has stopped, and in many cases reversed, progress towards achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, according to the fourth annual Goalkeepers Report, published Monday from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

“The first three years, we were able to report the steady and gradual progress towards those goals,” Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and co-chair of the foundation, told reporters. “Every single one of the goals was moving in the right direction,” he added.
“Of course, this year is different. It’s unique. The Covid-19 pandemic not only stopped progress, but it pushed us backwards, and that varied quite a bit by different areas,” he said. 

The 2020 Goalkeepers report analyzes the damage that the pandemic has done and is doing to health, economies “and virtually everything else,” and argues the world must work together to overcome it. 

Setback in vaccinations: Vaccinations reached over 80% of the world’s children and prevented more than 2 million deaths in 2019. Because of Covid-19, vaccine coverage in 2020 is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s, the report says. 

Coronavirus vaccines won’t end the pandemic unless they are equitably allocated. A model from Northeastern University, which is included in the report, shows that 61% of deaths could be averted if a vaccine was distributed to all countries proportional to population. If vaccines go to high income countries first, deaths will be cut by only 33%.

Plunged into poverty: The pandemic has pushed almost 37 million people below the extreme poverty line in 2020, with the extreme poverty rate going up by 7% in just a few months, according to the report. Some 68 million people have fallen below the poverty line in lower-middle-income countries, the report says.

The Nevada company that hosted an indoor campaign rally for President Donald Trump attended by thousands of people will face a fine of $3,000 for violating state coronavirus guidelines banning large gatherings.

Sunday’s rally in Henderson, Nevada – which was held inside a facility owned by Xtreme Manufacturing – was expected to violate the state’s restriction on gatherings of 50 people or more. Attendees at the rally were not required to wear masks, and there was little social distancing. The city of Henderson had warned Xtreme Manufacturing that it would be violating the regulations if the rally proceeded.

“During the event, a compliance officer observed six violations of the directives and the City’s Business Operations Division has issued a Business License Notice of Violation to Xtreme Manufacturing and assessed a penalty of $3,000,” Kathleen Richards, senior public information officer for the city of Henderson, told CNN in a statement Monday.

Richards added that the company “has 30 calendar days to respond to the notice and pay the penalty or dispute the notice of violation.”

Supporters wait for President Donald Trump to speak at a rally at Xtreme Manufacturing, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2020, in Henderson, Nevada.

Related article Trump indoor rally site fined $3,000 for violating state coronavirus guidelines

The Australian state of Victoria reported zero new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, according to its Department of Health and Human Services, the first time in two months since infections surged in July.

“Yesterday there were 42 new cases reported and 0 lives lost. Our thoughts are with all affected. The 14 day rolling average & number of cases with unknown source are down from yesterday as we move toward COVID Normal,” the DHHS tweeted on Tuesday.

New phase of reopening: Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews announced that regional Victoria would enter the third phase of its reopening on Wednesday. The state capital Melbourne, however, will remain under lockdown restrictions until September 28.

“Having reached a 14-day average of 3.6 and with no mystery cases, regional Victoria has reached the necessary ‘trigger point’ in our road map - meaning our public health experts have advised we can take this next step,” Andrews said in a statement Tuesday.

In the third phase of reopening, the government will allow “household bubbles,” where one household can choose another household to visit with up to five visitors.

The third phase will also allow for outdoor and non-contact sports, and up to 10 people will be allowed for public gatherings. The third phase will also allow for regional travel and businesses to reopen with proper social distancing measures, Andrews said.

Local health officials have ordered a number of Michigan State University fraternities and sororities to quarantine for two weeks following hundreds of reported cases in the area.

In an emergency order issued on Monday, Ingham County Health Department listed 30 addresses in East Lansing, Michigan, that will be required to quarantine from Monday until September 28. 

“Through case investigation, the Ingham County Health Department (ICHD) has identified congregate housing in the city of East Lansing as a risk factor,” Linda Vail, a health officer for the Ingham County Health Department, wrote in the order. “The health department has identified several fraternity and sorority houses, and several large rental houses with known cases or exposure to COVID-19.”

Surging infections: The decision comes after at least 342 people affiliated with the university have tested positive for Covid-19 since August 24, the health department said. 

Ingham County experienced a 52% increase in total case count since August 24, with one third of Ingham County cases since the pandemic started being reported in the past three weeks. The majority of all new cases reported come from students at Michigan State University.

Read the full story here.

Japan recorded 270 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, the lowest daily spike since July 13 before the country was hit by a second wave of infections, according to the Health Ministry.

Nine new deaths were also recorded Monday, bringing the total death toll to 1,464, with the total caseload at 76,670, the Health Ministry said.

Eighty new cases were recorded in Tokyo on Monday, marking the first time the capital’s daily new infections fell below 100 in eight days, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government. The city has reported a total of 23,083 cases.

As daily infections drop, authorities are planning to ease restrictions. In central Tokyo, the 10 p.m. closure request for bars and restaurants that serve alcohol will end today.

The people responsible for a weekly report released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been in “trench warfare” with Washington officials over the report’s scientific integrity, infectious disease specialist Dr. William Schaffner said Monday. 

Schaffner said he was “very disturbed” by the news that Trump-appointed officials at the Department of Health and Human Services pushed the CDC to change its weekly science reports so they would not undermine President Donald Trump’s political messages.

“I’ve since learned that the people who run that program, who put out that bulletin, have been in trench warfare with the folks in Washington,” Schaffner told CNN. “They have struggled and succeeded, I think, in maintaining the scientific integrity of those reports, but that struggle continues.”

Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who spent a brief time at CDC and who often works closely with the agency, added that it’s “totally inappropriate” for Washington to try to influence the report, but the American people can still trust the information they are getting from the CDC.

“We can trust what we’re getting. These are professional people,” said Schaffner. “They’re just working on behalf of the American people.”

Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Monday that President Donald Trump’s comments that “nothing more could have been done” to handle the coronavirus pandemic was “absurd.” 

“By mid-April here in the northeast in the New York-New Jersey area where I live, the densest part of the country, we knew how to flatten the curve,” Johnson said. “We knew how to slow the spread of the virus through aggressive physical distancing, through hygiene, wearing masks, but after April even though things slowed down here in the northeast, we had the spikes in the rest of the country simply because our national leadership, our President, allowed this to become a political issue.”

Some context: Trump’s comments were from an Aug. 14 call he made to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. It was their 19th conversation, following 18 interviews that formed a key component of Woodward’s book “Rage.” Trump had privately told Woodward in February he knew critical details about how deadly the virus was, and in March admitted he was playing it down.

“This didn’t have to be this way,” Johnson said. “You have a nation on Earth with the mightiest public health care apparatus, that has had the most dismal public health care response and it didn’t have to be this way.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened mental health issues, especially for young people of color, a mental health expert said Monday.

Isha Weerasinghe, who leads mental health work for the Center for Law and Social Policy, said that poor support for mental health in many communities has been made worse during the pandemic. She cited a lack of connectedness due to isolation, economic hardships, increased stress due to police brutality and its impacts, and anti-Asian violence and bullying. 

“You pair that with increased anxiety and increased isolation, it’s no wonder that there have been increased mental health conditions, adverse mental health conditions, which includes self-harm and suicide ideation and attempts,” Weerasinghe said at an American Foundation for Suicide Prevention briefing.

She added that the lack of access to health care in many communities extends to a lack of mental health care.

“There have been, of course, through the pandemic relaxed regulations in terms of telehealth, but when we’re talking about people living in low income communities and households … they are privileges that only some of us are able to access,” Weerasinghe said. 

Many of these communities were burdened with higher levels of mental health issues before the pandemic began. 

She cited data from recent years showing disproportionately high rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety and depression among young people of color, whose communities have now been hit harder by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’ve seen an egregious increase in suicide rates for Native young people, said Weerasinghe, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Fatal Injury and Violence data from 2016 to 2018. “We’ve seen an increase in suicide rates in Black and Hispanic young men, and we’ve seen an increase in rates of non-fatal self-harm for all young people, with an increase particularly among Black young people.”

The CDC recently released a report showing more people were thinking about suicide this June. 

Nearly 550,000 children in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The groups found that 72,993 new child cases were reported from Aug. 27 through Sept. 10. This is a 15% increase in child cases over two weeks, bringing the total to at least 549,432 cases, the groups said in their weekly report on pediatric coronavirus cases.

Cases listed by age are provided by health department websites of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, but only a subset of states report hospitalizations and mortality by age.

From the data available from 24 states and New York City, children made up 0.6% to 3.6% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3% and 8.2% of all child Covid-19 cases ended up in the hospital. From the 42 states that track mortality by age, children were 0% to 0.3% of deaths, and 18 states that reported on deaths by age had no deaths among children.

The AAP would like even more detailed reporting from states.

“At this time, it appears that severe illness due to Covid-19 is rare among children,” the report said. “However, states should continue to provide detailed reports on Covid-19 cases, testing, hospitalizations, and mortality by age and race/ethnicity so that the effects of Covid-19 on children’s health can be documented and monitored.”

Children represent nearly 10% of all reported cases in the US, according to the report. The child cases are likely underreported because the tally relies on state data that is inconsistently collected.