July 8 coronavirus news

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said agency guidance on schools should not be utilized to keep schools closed.

“The guidance that CDC continues to put out for schools K-12 and higher learning is intentional for reopening and keeping our schools open,” Redfield said.

The CDC will issue new guidance on reopening schools next week. 

Redfield said his agency is willing to work with individual school districts to advise them on the different strategies outlined in the updated guidance. 

“We’re prepared to work with all the school districts and schools to help them facilitate their development of their own unique plan to accomplish that,” he said. 

WATCH:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo brushed off President Trump’s “threat” about defunding states if governors don’t reopen schools. 

“You’re not going to bully New Yorkers. That’s not going to happen, right?" he said.

The state spends about $70 billion on education each year and only $3 billion comes from the federal government. Those federal funds go to the students most in need, according to Jim Malatras, president of the State University of New York’s Empire State College and working on the governor’s task force for reopening.

Expanding on potential schools reopening in the fall, Cuomo said specific district plans can be denied, accepted or districts can be asked for alterations.

Following those decisions, the state will make a global decision as to whether any school district can reopen.

He said it’s possible to have a regional reopening and he acknowledged concerns about teachers’ safety.

Responding to a reporter’s question about greenlighting the proposed New York City plan for reopening, Cuomo said ideally you would make the decision the night before. “I don’t have the luxury of waiting for the night before. Our institutional, systemic drop-dead date is the first week in August,” he said.

WATCH:

White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said Wednesday that the Trump administration is seeing some “encouraging” trends in Arizona, Texas and Florida — three of the hotspot states seeing a surge of coronavirus cases across the sunbelt.

Birx also referenced a stabilizing of emergency room visits for Covid-19-like symptoms in Arizona, calling it “an early indicator and we find that encouraging.” 

Similarly, in Florida, Birx said, they are starting to see “early suggestions of decreasing emergency room visits for the symptoms of Covid and some stability starting in that (test positivity rate) hoping that heralds a stability in the number of daily reported cases.”

However, CNN's health team notes that they are not hearing the same when it comes to hospitalizations. 

“We also understand that we went through a holiday weekend and holiday weekends can impact data on both ends — underreporting through the weekend and catch up reporting on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after a holiday weekend,” she added. 

“Texas is in a similar situation with their (test positivity rate),” Birx said.

People living in states with coronavirus surges should return to the White House's original "phase one" recommendations on gatherings, Dr. Deborah Birx said on Wednesday.

Citing guidelines like wearing face masks and avoiding bars and indoor events, Birx said those steps should be resumed in order to bring cases back under control.

She said they are "asking the American people in those counties and in those states to not only use those face coverings, not going to bars, not going to indoor dining, but really not gathering in homes either. And decreasing those gatherings back down to our phase one recommendation, which was 10 or less."

Birx touted the importance of mask-wearing and said "any kind of indoor gathering" should be avoided in places experiencing a spike in cases.

President Trump has repeatedly said the economy should not be shut down again, even as cases increase.

WATCH:

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue new guidance on reopening schools next week after President Trump dismissed their current recommendations as “very tough & expensive."

Speaking at a briefing by the White House coronavirus task force, Vice President Mike Pence said the new guidance would be "part of a five-part series of recommendations that will give all new tools to our schools."

"We’re absolutely determined to work in partnership with our states to give the guidance for states and communities to be able to safely reopen our schools," Pence said.

Still, he repeated a statement made a day earlier by the CDC's director that the agency's guidelines should not act as a barrier to reopening schools.

"As the President made clear yesterday it's time. It's time for us to get our kids back to school," Pence said.

Some context: Earlier Wednesday, Trump accused the CDC of producing “very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools,” saying he disagreed with the health agency’s recommendations.

“While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things,” Trump wrote. “I will be meeting with them!!!”

WATCH:

Vice President Mike Pence said the White House coronavirus task force is focusing their efforts in states where half of the new cases have arisen, including Arizona, Florida and California. Pence said governors have described a need for personnel.

Pence is holding a briefing alongside Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator; Brett Giroir, assistant Secretary for Health; Robert Redfield, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Alex Azar, Health and Human Services secretary; and Betsy DeVos, Education secretary. Those in attendance are wearing masks.

Pence, who took off his mask to speak, is making comments now.

WATCH:

More than 3 million cases of coronavirus have been reported in the US, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

The US has the most cases of coronavirus of any country in the world. Brazil — which has more than 1.6 million, according to Johns Hopkins' tally — is the second most impacted country. India had the third most cases, with more than 700,000.

“Mixed messages” are confusing people and leading to the spread of coronavirus in Florida, says Carlos Hernandez, the mayor of Hialeah, a city in Miami-Dade County. 

“That's making it very difficult at the city levels because people are getting different messages from the federal government, state government — even here at the county, we're getting mixed messages,” Herandez said. 

The Republican mayor said the lack of contact tracing is “not acceptable.” He said he is not aware of any contact tracing being done in his city by state officials.

“This is something that if we don't unite and if we don't all take care of each other, again, we’re going to find ourselves in a very critical situation very soon in south Florida,” he said. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo today laid out the timeline for how the state will make the decisions about reopening schools in the fall.

School districts will submit their plans for reopening by the end of the month, the governor said during a coronavirus briefing today. After that, Cuomo said, the state will "look at the data in that first week" of August and "we'll make a decision" on reopening schools.

Cuomo said that the state "will open the schools if it's safe."