September 2 coronavirus news

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden criticized President Trump's response to the coronavirus crisis, saying the administration "hasn't shown much grit at all."

Biden said Trump has "no real plan" for how to reopen schools safely this fall.

"He's offering nothing but failure and delusions from the start to finish to American families and our children. They are paying the price for his failures," Biden said.

Watch:

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis held a news conference today at Fort Logan Northgate School in Denver to provide further updates on a major challenge many students in the state have encountered during the Covid-19 crisis.

Polis says an estimated 65,000 Colorado students lack access to the internet. In an effort to help families with remote learning, the governor announced an agreement with T-Mobile that will provide free Wi-Fi hotspots, up to 100 gigabytes of annual data and access to internet ready devices for 34,000 low income households.

The criteria for free service is based on free and reduced school lunch eligibility. Gov. Polis discussed the racial and economic factors effecting families access to the internet across the state including homelessness, credit history and immigration status.

“Even worse, this access divide often falls along racial lines. Recent research from Colorado future center found that two thirds of students that lack internet access in Colorado, are Latino. In addition, we know that families experiencing homelessness, including many families and districts like Sheridan and DPS have an even more difficult time with access to the internet and being able to maintain that continuity of study for their kids without broadband without access. Students are unable to participate in remote learning. They're often unable to do their homework, if they're in school or in person. And they're more likely to disengage, and more likely to fall behind” Polis said.

Novel coronavirus cases in Europe are "almost back" to March levels, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Andrea Ammon, said on Wednesday during a debate held by EU Committee for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

“In August, now, we are seeing more that also (an) older population is affected, indicating that it's really a true increase in transmission.”

Regarding school reopenings and the risk of coronavirus spikes, Ammon said: “there are very few significant outbreaks in schools that have been documented and the evidence is really at the moment conflicting, meaning it's very inconclusive to say whether it's useful or not from a transmission point of view to close schools.”

James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, will transition to online learning for the month of September, following a notable uptick in coronavirus cases at the school, the university president announced in a letter.

CNN reported on Tuesday that the university was reporting a 21.14% seven-day moving average of daily positivity rates among students and employees.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will deliver remarks at 1:15 p.m. ET from Wilmington, Delaware, about Trump's coronavirus response and its impact on schools. He is expected to lay out his plan for reopening schools.

Meanwhile, President Trump is in Wilmington, North Carolina, today where he will deliver remarks on the USS Battleship on designating Wilmington as an "American World War II Heritage City." Today marks the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII.

Ahead of Trump's visit to the state, Biden slammed the President for his handling of the pandemic, arguing, "North Carolinians deserve a president who understands what it takes to manage a crisis, unite our nation, and build our economy back better." 

"If I am elected President, North Carolinians will have a partner in the White House — one who will immediately begin implementing a plan to tackle this pandemic and help us build back better," he said in a new statement. 

While Biden made a few stops to North Carolina during the primary, he has yet to return during the general election season. 

The Pan American Health Organization says that almost 570,000 health care workers in the Americas have contracted coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, with health care workers in the US and Mexico making up one-in-seven of all cases reported in those countries.

The majority of those infected were in the 30 to 49 age group.

At PAHO's weekly briefing, Director Dr. Carissa Etienne said that more than 140,000 workers in the healthcare sector in the US had become sick with Covid-19 — of whom 660 had died.

In Brazil almost 270,000 workers in health care had tested positive for Covid-19. She said that health workers were "becoming infected at an alarming rate."

Etienne added that when the pandemic broke out many health workers were redirected to help without sufficient training to protect themselves. In many hospitals Covid-19 patients were exposed to others who had different conditions, leaving health workers more vulnerable. This was especially the case, she said, when supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) were running low and workers had to re-use masks and gowns.

Etienne said the Americas region now have 13.5 million Covid-19 cases and almost 469,000 deaths from the virus. She noted that after months of unrelenting spread, cases were stabilizing in the United States and Brazil — but the two countries continued to report more new cases than any other nation.

Etienne said that Caribbean states were seeing a surge in the virus, with nearly half of all reported cases in the Bahamas being reported in the last two weeks. But she said most countries in Latin America had seen the number of new cases drop over the last week. In particular, Chile and Uruguay had managed to "flatten their curve" of infection.

At its briefing PAHO also asked the United States to reconsider its decision not to take part in the COVAX initiative, which is designed to enable poorer and smaller countries to gain access to a vaccine. COVAX is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the World Health Organization. Its aim is to "accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access," according to the WHO.

PAHO said more than 170 countries had signed up to the program. In June, the US government announced it was cutting funding to the WHO.

Miami University in Ohio reported at least 249 cases of Covid-19 among students at the start of this week, an increase of more than 100% from the previous week.

The school is now reporting a total of 529 cases among students and employees, according to the university dashboard.

As has been a trend with numerous colleges, many of the cases reported are among students living off campus. Miami University has begun classes remotely — but in person classes won’t start until the end of the month.

“During the past few days, we and many other universities are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases, particularly for students living off-campus, which must be reduced,” university President Gregory Crawford wrote in a statement.

The school also announced it would require all students to be tested before they move into residence halls later this month.

Read a portion of the letter from the university president:

Nicko Henderson, a freshman at Baylor University in Texas, is on his last day of mandated quarantine after there were several cases of coronavirus in his dorm hall.  

He said he and his roommate are brought meals three times a day, and they are only allowed to leave to use the bathroom and get water. Henderson said he is doing a lot of schoolwork while in his room. 

There have been more than 25,000 coronavirus cases in 37 states reported at colleges and universities across the US. 

Henderson commended Baylor’s efforts to “attack this head-on.” He said the school made many preparations before students got to campus, including tent spaces for learning, social distancing protocols and enforcing masks. 

Watch:

Auburn University is reporting 517 Covid-19 positive cases among students and staff across its campuses between Aug. 22 and Aug. 28. The main campus is reporting 498 in total among students and staff. No hospitalizations have been reported.  

Dr. Fred Kam, director of the Auburn University Medical Clinic, said the spike was expected. He had initially estimated the number of positive cases to be closer to 700. 

According to data published by Auburn, the stats are based on individuals who self-reported their positive results.