September 7 coronavirus news

Another federal official is making it clear that despite US President Donald Trump's predictions, there's hardly any chance a vaccine will be available to Americans by Election Day.

Trump, however, has projected optimism for a quicker timeline.

"(It's) going to be done in a very short period of time -- could even have it during the month of October," the President said at a press briefing Monday. "We'll have the vaccine soon, maybe before a special date. You know what date I'm talking about."

On August 6, Trump said he was "optimistic" a vaccine would be ready by around November 3.

"I believe we'll have the vaccine before the end of the year, certainly, but around that date, yes. I think so," Trump said.

And at a rally last week, he said, "It will be delivered before the end of the year, in my opinion, before the end of the year, but it really might even be delivered before the end of October."

The federal official is not the first to cast skepticism on Trump's forecast.

It's "extremely unlikely, but not impossible" that a Covid-19 vaccine could be authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration before the end of October, Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, told NPR last week.

Dr. Larry Corey, who's leading a group set up by the National Institutes of Health to work on coronavirus vaccines, also said he doesn't think there will be a vaccine available by Election Day.

"I would agree with Dr. Slaoui. The chances are very low, very remote," said Corey, who leads the COVID-19 Prevention Network.

Read why the US likely won't have a vaccine by Election Day:

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Oklahoma State University’s home opener against the University of Tulsa has been postponed by one week, the university announced on Monday.

The game is now scheduled for September 19. It previously had been scheduled for Saturday, September 12.

Last week, it was announced that the college football game between Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University would not be played on September 11 as previously scheduled.

A Tulsa news release said that in attempting to deal with Covid-19 protocols effectively, the football team has been limited in practice sessions since the beginning of preseason camp on August 7.

The release said that Tulsa had a nine-day pause because of multiple positive tests and was limited to seven practices in the 17 days of preseason camp.

Oklahoma State and TCU are members of the Big 12 Conference. Tulsa and SMU are part of the American Athletic Conference.

French football star Kylian Mbappe has tested positive for Covid-19 while on international duty, the French Football Federation (FFF) announced on Monday.

Mbappe took a test on Monday morning that returned positive, the FFF said, and was then isolated from the French national team. France is scheduled to play at home in Paris on Tuesday against Croatia in a UEFA Nations League match.

The 21-year-old is the seventh Paris Saint-Germain player to have tested positive for coronavirus in recent weeks. Neymar was reportedly among six others to test positive last week.

Mbappe played for France against Sweden on Saturday, scoring the only goal in a 1-0 win.

PSG are set to begin their domestic season on Thursday, but the availability of several of their players is in question following the spate of positive tests.

Read more:

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Ashleigh Barty will not be in Paris to defend her French Open tennis title.

The Australian said in a statement that she would not be traveling to Europe in part because of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as factoring in her lack of preparedness to play at Roland Garros.

Read the full story:

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Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine at George Washington University, says the lack of universal mask use could be the biggest mistake in the United States' coronavirus response.

“When you look at countries where the mortality is a fraction of what it is in the United States, the common theme from the very beginning of the pandemic was universal masking," he added.

Reiner said the US response to the pandemic has been an “abysmal failure.”

“The virus went all over the world,” he said. “It didn't just come to the United States, but because of that panoply of errors and our failure to learn from our mistakes, our failure to get the country to social distance and to mask up has kept us in the realm of about 1,000 deaths per day.”

Mexico’s Health Ministry identified 3,486 new Covid-19 infections on Monday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 637,509.

The Health Ministry also recorded 223 new virus-related fatalities, raising Mexico’s death toll to 67,781.

Mexico has the world’s fourth-highest count of coronavirus deaths, trailing the United States, Brazil and India respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Excess deaths: Over the weekend, Mexico’s Health Ministry said it had recorded 122,765 excess deaths in the country during the pandemic.

Mexico’s government has said for months that its death toll from Covid-19 is higher than official figures due to low testing in the country. But that lack of testing makes it impossible to know exactly how many of the total amount of excess deaths were due to the virus.

Brazil’s health ministry reported 10,273 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours and 310 new virus-related deaths on Monday.

The country’s total number of cases now stands at 4,147,794. Brazil's death toll increased to 126,960.

With more than 4.1 million confirmed cases, Brazil is currently the third worst-hit nation in the world, after it was recently surpassed by India in second position, behind the US.

Egypt has reported a total of 100,041 Covid-19 cases after the country’s health ministry added 178 new cases Monday. 

The health ministry also reported 11 new fatalities, bringing its total deaths to 5,541 since the start of the pandemic.

Egypt has been reporting fewer than 200 new daily cases in September, a significant drop from its peak in June when it was reporting more than a 1,000 cases per day, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The US Food and Drug Administration must avoid repeating the mistakes it made with some coronavirus treatments in the race to approve a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine, Dr. Vivek Murthy, former US surgeon general, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday. 

Some background: The FDA gave emergency use authorization to both convalescent plasma and hydroxychloroquine in decisions that are widely viewed as having been influenced by political pressure – and that the White House trumpeted both EUA decisions as breakthroughs.

Hydroxychloroquine has been shown to not be helpful, and the FDA withdrew the EUA for that treatment against coronavirus. Doctors say calling convalescent plasma a breakthrough is a gross exaggeration, although few question the EUA decision itself.

Murthy commented on a Wall Street Journal report, as yet unconfirmed, that vaccine makers including Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson plan to sign a pledge promising to only seek approval for their coronavirus vaccine candidates once they’re proven safe and effective. Murthy said he hoped it would help increase public confidence in an eventual vaccine.

“They also probably realize what's at stake here, which is that if the public does not have faith in a vaccine, then everyone suffers,” said Murthy.