July 16 coronavirus news

The governor of Georgia is suing Atlanta’s mayor over the city’s mask mandate, which he said violates his own emergency orders. 

Some context: The lawsuit against Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the Atlanta City Council comes one day after Kemp extended his statewide emergency order, adding language that specifically prohibits local governments from adding mask mandates.

The lawsuit asks a judge to declare that Bottoms exceeded her authority and cannot enforce the local mask rules.

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Americans have gotten into an “unfortunate mindset” of thinking that public health measures are the enemy of getting the economy going again, the nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said today.

These measures are not the enemy, Fauci told Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg Thursday during a live chat.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also stressed the importance of following the phases for reopening. 

“Because if you're in a situation where you should not have jumped over one of the checkpoints, you’ve got to think about pulling back, starting all over again, and doing the gradual entry into, quote, normality in a way that's in accordance with the guidelines," he said.

Fauci also said the public needs to understand the importance of abiding by these guidelines.

“I would recommend as strong as you possibly can to get people to wear masks, to avoid crowds, to keep distances, outdoors always better than indoors,” he added. 

Done right, mask use and social distancing can help turn back the recent resurgence in cases in many states, Fauci said.

Brazil’s health ministry reported 45,403 new cases of novel coronavirus on Thursday, bringing the nationwide total to 2,012,151.

The ministry also reported 1,322 new Covid-19 fatalities, bringing the national death toll to 76,688.

Point-of-care coronavirus testing will be essential at every nursing home in the country, Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said Thursday.

The US Department of Health and Human Services announced this week that it is providing a point-of-care tests to all 15,400 nursing homes in the country. The tests will start shipping next week first to the hundreds of homes that are on the list of homes most vulnerable to infection. 

Verma said at a HHS news conference that the department is recommending nursing homes test staff on a weekly basis. The department also wants every nursing home resident tested.

Verma said asymptomatic carriers have been a problem for the industry. 

Each home will get a test reader, Verma said. The instrument should be able to read about 20 tests per hour, each with a 15-minute turnaround time. The federal government will supply the homes with enough assays to test every resident and all employees once a week for about four weeks. The homes will have to buy the tests after that, Verma said.

Point-of-care tests with a quick turnaround time will allow the nursing home to take quick infection control action, she said.

“It’s also important for people to appreciate that the coronavirus isn’t just a threat to the lives of people in nursing homes, but it’s also been a long drawn out nightmare for them in terms of the quality of their lives,” Verma said. “It’s kept them apart from their loved ones and kept them held inside their homes with diminished group activities to boot,” she added.

Verma said she believes the point of care tests will be key to helping nursing homes get back to some kind of normal. She envisions the tests may even be used on some visitors so that residents could be reunited with family members. 

NASA has delayed the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope until Halloween 2021. 

NASA said it is now "targeting Oct. 31, 2021, for the launch of the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana, due to impacts from the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, as well as technical challenges," the agency tweeted.

People don’t need repeated tests for coronavirus once they have tested positive one time, Assistant Health Secretary Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Thursday.

“This is a remnant of very early on when we had cruise ships and people were in quarantine,” Giroir said Thursday at a briefing at the US Health and Human Services Department.

With cruise ship passengers, a negative test was required to get out of isolation. The current guidelines say people can leave isolation if they have been free of symptoms for three days and it has been at least 10 days since the onset of symptoms. Guidelines also say people may leave isolation if they receive two negative tests in 24 hours. But Giroir said that two-test standard is no longer needed for most patients.

“We know that if you're 10 days since the onset of your symptoms, and at least three days … asymptomatic, you are no longer contagious. You do not need to be retested,” Giroir said. 

Some people can test positive after they are no longer infectious because remnants of the virus remain in their bodies.

The exception, he said, is if a person is very ill and in the hospital. The virus can linger longer in those patients, as well as in people with immunosuppression or some immune deficiency. 

He said that guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be coming out about this issue “very soon.” 

“The great majority of people who are diagnosed who are just sick at home do not need to be retested it's clogging up the system,” Giroir said. “And quite honestly, it does a disservice to them, because they can be quote positive for a much longer time than they are infected and it keeps them out of work, school, all those other things.”

The largest public school district in Alabama will be teaching remotely for at least the first nine weeks of the school year, the Mobile County superintendent announced Thursday.

Superintendent Chresal Threadgill called the move the right decision for students and teachers, saying, “I cannot, with strong reservation, put their health and even their lives in jeopardy.”

The district includes the city of Mobile and has more than 53,000 students. In addition to keep children out of school buildings, the beginning of the school year is being pushed back from August 10 to September 1.

South Carolina reported its most Covid-19-related deaths in a single day Thursday with 69 confirmed and three probable deaths.

The Department of Health and Environmental Control noted that these deaths occurred over the past few weeks and that the lag time in reporting is related to ensuring the deaths are related to Covid-19.

This often involves waiting for a medical certifier or coroner’s report and can be delayed if the person experienced multiple medical issues. 

The state also reported 1,842 new Covid-19 cases — almost identical to Wednesday’s count — bringing the total number of confirmed cases in South Carolina to 63,880 and the total number of confirmed deaths to 1,053.

To note: The figures above were released by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

The Mid-American Conference (MAC) announced Thursday that out of caution for the health and well-being of athletes, coaches and others involved, it will postpone the start of field hockey, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country until September 3.

According to a news release, this decision applies to exhibition and non-conference games and will align with the start of football season, allowing all fall competition to begin at the same time.

"The decision will provide additional time to prepare for the safe return to competition on an adjusted timeline," a statement said.