July 13 coronavirus news

The Los Angeles Unified School District in California will “not begin with students at school facilities,” LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner said this morning. 

LAUSD is the second largest district in the nation and serves over 600,000 students in grades K-12.  

The San Diego Unified School District, in coordination with LAUSD, will also start the school year online only.

K-12 students at SDUSD will return to school, though not in-person, on August 31.

“Both districts will continue planning for a return to in-person learning during the 2020-21 academic year, as soon as public health conditions allow,” according to the joint statement.

SDUSD is the second largest district in the state.

Some background: On Friday, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing teachers, said 83% of 18,000 members polled said schools should not physically reopen on August 18, the first day of school for LAUSD.

LAUSD and UTLA have another bargaining session this week.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said training public health workers – specifically physician scientists such as himself, and updating the local public health networks – are key to preparing for a future pandemic. 

Fauci said this is the third coronavirus pandemic in 18 years: SARS, MERS and now Covid-19. “We've really got to use this as a lesson to be prepared for the next one,” he said.

Complacency is a real problem, Fauci said. In the United States, he said people have been a “victim of your own success.”

“We have let the local public health infrastructure in our country really go into tatters,” Fauci said.

“We were so good at controlling smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, that we let the infrastructure locally, essentially, go unattended,” he added.

New Jersey Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Judith Persichilli said that young adults are the fastest growing group in the state testing positive for Covid-19. 

Residents ages 18-29 accounted for 12% of the state’s cases in April, and in June, that age group represented 22% of the state’s total cases, she said. 

Residents ages 18 to 29 years old account for nearly 24,000 of the state’s cases. 

More than 730 residents have been hospitalized in that group, while 53 have died. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there are simple things states can do to turn around the trajectory of the virus in the US.

Fauci spoke about how after not shutting down the country completely, the US saw surges in states like California, Arizona, Texas and Florida, among others, as the country began to reopen.

He said the guidelines released for initial reopening attempts did not work well for the country, noting that some states went from shutdown to “complete throwing caution to the wind,” using examples of people without masks in crowded bars.

However, Fauci said that he is “confident” the US can get a handle on this situation.

“You don’t necessarily need to shut down again, but pull back a bit. And then, proceed in a very prudent way, observing the guidelines of going from step to step,” he said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Monday that the President wants to "point out the fact that when we use science, we have to use it in a way that's not political."

This was in response to a question about what Trump meant by retweeting a baseless claim by game show host Chuck Woolery that "everyone is lying" about the coronavirus –– including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She pointed to some health experts who say not to condemn crowds of protesters while still keeping churches closed as an example.

"We need to use science, lean in to science but not use it, and cherry-pick it to fit whatever our particular political persuasion is," McEnany said.

McEnany added that the President has confidence in the CDC.  

WATCH:

Coronavirus is “clearly the most challenging” public health crisis he’s ever dealt with – including HIV, Ebola, Anthrax and Zika, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said during a webinar with Stanford School of Medicine on Monday.

As cases continue to surge across the US and the Trump administration pushes to reopen schools, Fauci has actively continued to warn about the seriousness of the pandemic.

Fauci told the Wall Street Journal in a podcast last week that the country must control crowds, get people to wear masks and do a better job on physical distancing to get on top of the surging coronavirus pandemic as cases spike across parts of the South and Southwest.

Fauci noted that in order to get children back in school this fall, the country has to maintain control over the pandemic.

“We have got to keep our eye on that,” he said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany would not answer why the White House anonymously released a statement attempting to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert.

Asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta why the White House put out an opposition research style statement against Fauci from a “White House Official” without anybody putting their name to the statement, McEnany did not answer.

Pressed about putting a statement out from an anonymous source, something Trump has criticized in the past, McEnany again declined to answer, instead saying that Trump and Fauci have “always had a very good working relationship.”

CNN has reported that the White House is making a concerted effort to discredit Fauci as he becomes increasingly vocal about his concerns over reopening the country as coronavirus cases surge. The two men have not spoken in weeks.

WATCH:

The number of total coronavirus cases in Florida is now 282,435, up 12,624 cases since Sunday, according to the state's Department of Health.

More than half of positive coronavirus cases were people ages 25 to 54 year old, with the highest age group being 25-34 year-olds representing 20% of the total number.

If Florida were a country, it would be the fourth-highest in the world in reporting new cases. The state would rank 10th in terms of having the most cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

JetBlue says it will continue to block all middle seats through September 8, extending a policy that was set to expire at the end of the month. 

The policy also blocks sale of aisle seats on smaller aircraft.

Southwest and Delta also have policies that limit the number of seats sold on a given flight. 

The other major carriers, American Airlines and United, both have said they will sell every seat on their flights.