July 20 coronavirus news

Climate activist Greta Thunberg announced on Twitter on Monday that she would donate 100,000 euros ($114,000) to combat the spread of Covid-19 in the Brazilian Amazon.

The announcement came after the teenager was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, which has a prize amount of 1 million euros ($1.14 million.)  

The donation -- which will come from the prize money -- will be made through the activist's Thunberg Foundation to SOS Amazonia, which is led by Fridays for Future Brazil, an organization that is helping to fight the coronavirus pandemic in indigenous territories. 

Another 100,000 euros will be given to the Stop Ecocide Foundation to “support their work to make ecocide an international crime,” she said in the announcement. 

In a video posted on her Twitter account, the Swedish activist said she would donate the full prize money but has not yet provided information on the other recipients.

Colombia reported 6,727 new coronavirus cases on Monday, bringing the country’s total to 204,005, its health ministry said. 

The ministry also reported 193 new deaths from the virus, raising the nationwide tally to 6,929.

Despite the growing number of coronavirus cases, Colombian President Ivan Duque has so far resisted calls to reimpose strict lockdown measures that were first lifted at the beginning of June. 

Colombia's capital Bogota and other main cities are instead following a localized approach by closing only the most affected neighborhoods. 

The Southwestern Athletic Conference announced Monday the postponement of all scheduled fall sports along with SWAC championships due to continuing concerns related to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a news release.

The fall sports impacted are men’s and women’s cross country, football, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball.

The conference has started the process of formalizing plans to conduct a schedule for the fall sports during the 2021 spring semester.

For football, the plan includes a seven-game conference schedule beginning with an eight-week training period in January 2021. Each member institution will play a total of six conference games (four divisional/two non-divisional) with the option to play one non-conference game. 

Additional details on scheduling women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country along with the SWAC football championship game will be released at a later date. 

Multiple NCAA conferences have announced postponements of many or all fall sports or have moved to conference-only competition.

Key Republicans are pushing back on the White House proposal to zero out funding for Covid-19 testing and tracing in the next stimulus bill.

GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Shelley Moore Capito, Mitt Romney and Lamar Alexander told reporters today they disagree with the White House posture to deny additional money for testing and tracing in the next stimulus package.

Here's what they said:

If a coronavirus vaccine were available today, half of all Americans wouldn’t get it because of a lack of trust, former US Surgeon Gen. Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Monday.

One of the most important assets government should have in a pandemic response is public trust, and it must be cultivated at all costs, Murthy said.

“That’s a shocking number and deeply concerning.”

President Trump has spent the past few months telling his supporters not to wear masks and questioning scientists and public health officials’ guidance on reopening the country.

“We know that distributing vaccines is going to be hard enough and if people aren't willing to take it because we haven't built enough public trust, that’s going to seriously impair our ability to build herd immunity,” Murthy said.

The former US surgeon general said leaders have to tell the truth, especially when mistakes are made, they need to lead with science and scientists, and communicate frequently and consistently.

Murthy said resumption of the White House coronavirus task force briefings might help improve trust. “That could really help the cause, because the truth is that how you communicate determines whether you build or destroy public trust,” Murthy said.

Trump ended the daily White House coronavirus briefings several months ago, but announced Monday he’s resuming them.

At least 80,120 people have died from coronavirus in Brazil since the pandemic started, according to new figures from the country’s health ministry on Monday.

Since yesterday, 632 people are reported to have died. The total number of infections in Brazil is now 2,118,646 – an increase of 20,257 since Sunday. 

Along with President Jair Bolsonaro, two members of his cabinet announced they tested positive for the virus on Monday. The Brazilian Minister of Education, Milton Ribeiro, announced he tested positive for Covid-19 and just hours earlier, Brazil’s Minister of Citizenship Onyx Lorenzoni tweeted that he had tested positive.

Some state health secretaries in Brazil have reported issues in sending local data to the national health ministry in recent days.

On Friday, Mato Grosso’s state health secretary said a systems migration of data did not affect its disclosure of the number of confirmed cases and deaths reported. On Saturday, Rio de Janeiro state did not register numbers for the national tally. Rio de Janeiro’s state health secretary said the issue has been fixed. 

The state health secretaries of Goias and Rondonia said difficulties in registering their data may have been caused by problems in the health ministry system.

The National Football League and the players union have agreed on a daily Covid-19 testing protocol that will commence at the start of training camps and last for two weeks.

Results from those weeks of testing will dictate a move to test every other day.

On Monday, the NFL’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, outlined the guidelines on a conference call with select media including NFL.com and ESPN. Sills is quoted by ESPN as saying, “This is ongoing work. There's no finish line with health and safety, and I think these protocol are living, breathing documents, which means they will change as we get new information. They will undoubtedly be changing over time, which is what we usually see in medicine."

A league source confirmed to CNN that every player will need to test negative for Covid-19 multiple times before entering team facilities for the first time.

Teams will be reporting to training camp on July 28. 

Sills outlined some of the testing specifics on the media call. If after two weeks of daily testing the results for all team members are below 5%, testing will shift to every other day.

NFL.com reported that players will “wear proximity recording devices during all team activities.” The league will use the data gathered from the devices to help with Covid-19 contact tracing.

The National Football League Players Association confirmed the agreement in a statement on Monday.

Georgia reported 2,452 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, bringing the total number of cases to 145,575 statewide, according to data release by the state's Department of Public Health. 

The Department of Public Health also recorded three additional deaths, bringing the state's death toll to 3,176.

The state reported 37 additional hospitalizations and a total of 2,829 intensive care admissions. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Georgia Department of Public Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

There are at least 3,814,463 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 140,855 people have died from the virus in the country, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally. 

So far on Monday, Johns Hopkins has recorded 41,203 new cases and 321 reported deaths. 

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.