Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
The news posted last week for the coronavirus 2019-nCoV (aka SARS-CoV-2), which produces COVID-19 disease, has been surveyed and some important articles are summarized here. The articles are more or less organized with general virus news and anecdotes first, then stories from around the US, followed by a few items from other countries around the globe. US new cases are at 3-week lows but deaths are rising rapidly. Deaths should peak in about 3 weeks based on the new cases peak. New cases globally are rising at an accelerating rate. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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Dogs can sniff out COVID-19 with 94 percent accuracy, study says – Man’s best friend could soon be man’s best chance at ever setting foot in a stadium again. Dogs can sniff out the coronavirus with a striking 94 percent accuracy rate – raising the possibility of instant tests at sporting events and airports, according to a new study.Canine handlers trained eight dogs from Germany’s Armed Forces to discern human saliva infected with COVID-19 from healthy saliva, according to the study, which was lead by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover and the Hanover Medical School.Researchers then set up samples from 1,000 people at random, ordered the dogs to pinpoint the infected ones – and found the animals were accurate 94 percent of the time, according to the study.The pooches were able to make the potentially life-saving distinction because the virus likely “completely changes” an infected person’s internal chemistry – giving their saliva a different scent, said one researcher involved.”We think that the dogs are able to detect a specific smell of the metabolic changes that occur in those patients,” Maren von Koeckritz-Blickwede, a professor at the university who conducted the study, said in a Youtube video about the experiment. The study raises hope that dogs could help prevent outbreaks through the use of lightning-fast testing at sporting events and airports and other mass gatherings, researchers said.
Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level associated with increased risk of COVID-19 infection – The pronounced impact of vitamin D metabolites on the immune system response, and on the development of COVID-19 infection by the novel SARS CoV-2 virus, has been previously described in a few studies worldwide. The collaborative group of scientists from the Leumit Health Services (LHS) and the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University aimed to determine associations of low plasma 25(OH)D with the risk of COVID-19 infection and hospitalization. Using the real-world data and Israeli cohort of 782 COVID-19 positive patients and 7,025 COVID-19 negative patients, the groups identified that low plasma vitamin D level appears to be an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection and hospitalization. The research was just published in The FEBS Journal.”The main finding of our study was the significant association of low plasma vitamin D level with the likelihood of COVID-19 infection among patients who were tested for COVID-19, even after adjustment for age, gender, socio-economic status and chronic, mental and physical disorders,” said Dr. Eugene Merzon, Head of the Department of Managed Care and leading researcher of the LHS group. “Furthermore, low vitamin D level was associated with the risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 infection, although this association wasn’t significant after adjustment for other confounders,” he added. “Our finding is in agreement with the results of previous studies in the field. Reduced risk of acute respiratory tract infection following vitamin D supplementation has been reported,” said Dr. Ilan Green, Head of the LHS Research Institute.
Masks Aren’t Enough: Dr. Fauci Says People Should “Probably Use Eye Shields” To Protect Against COVID-19 – Americans can’t seem to handle wearing masks to stop the coronavirus. Now, imagine if the CDC changed its guidelines to also call for “eye protection” like medical goggles to stop the spread of the virus (and protect your neighbor, as well as yourself).Well, Dr. Fauci is apparently preparing to do just that.During an interview with ABC News, Dr. Fauci said Wednesday that he may soon advise Americans to wear ‘eye protection’ to avoid being infected by COVID-19 as deaths along the Sun Belt climb to record highs.“If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it,” the doctor said, before adding that it’s not universally recommended, “but if you really want to be complete, you should probably use it if you can,” he said. Watch a clip from the interview below Anybody listening to this would probably have a litany of questions for the doctor. But instead of trying to clarify this, he just said that Americans should aim to “protect as many mucosal surfaces as possible”. Very informative, indeed. Moving on, Dr. Fauci said the pre-enrollment for Moderna’s final clinical trial for a possible COVID-19 vaccine includes 19% black and 19% hispanic participants across 89 sites throughout the country. “Now we want to get that and even more” because of how the virus has disproportionately affected minority communities with worse outcomes and higher death rates, Dr. Fauci said.
Covid-19: To Clean or Not to Clean? – Yves Smith – As it becomes clear, at least to those of us in the US, that Covid-19 will be with us a lot longer than anyone wants to contemplate, the next question for those of us fortunate enough not to have contracted it is how to minimize risk. And since this now looks to be a long haul, with many reporting or even exhibiting symptoms of Covid compliance fatigue, defining what are bona fide risks versus ones that are low, becomes even more important, since trying to do too much is likely to result in not doing much of anything well enough.A new article in The Atlantic (hat tip ChiGal) argues that many of us are engaged in cleaning theater, just as much of what the TSA does in airports is security theater:As a covid-19 summer surge sweeps the country, deep cleans are all the rage. National restaurants such as Applebee’s are deputizing sanitation czars to oversee the constant scrubbing of window ledges, menus, and high chairs. The gym chain Planet Fitness is boasting in ads that “there’s no surface we won’t sanitize, no machin e we won’t scrub.” New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time in its 116-year history, to blast the seats, walls, and poles with a variety of antiseptic weaponry, including electrostatic disinfectant sprays. And in Wauchula, Florida, the local government gave one resident permission to spray the town with hydrogen peroxide as he saw fit. “I think every city in the damn United States needs to be doing it,” he said … But what if this is all just a huge waste of time?In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to clarify that while COVID-19 spreads easily among speakers and sneezers in close encounters, touching a surface “isn’t thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” Other scientists have reached a more forceful conclusion. “Surface transmission of COVID-19 is not justified at all by the science,” Emanuel Goldman, a microbiology professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told me. He also emphasized the primacy of airborne person-to-person transmission … Surface transmission – from touching doorknobs, mail, food-delivery packages, and subways poles – seems quite rare. (Quite rare isn’t the same as impossible: The scientists I spoke with constantly repeated the phrase “people should still wash their hands.”) The difference may be a simple matter of time. In the hours that can elapse between, say, Person 1 coughing on her hand and using it to push open a door and Person 2 touching the same door and rubbing his eye, the virus particles from the initial cough may have sufficiently deteriorated.
COVID-19 may cause deadly blood clots – COVID-19 may increase the risk of blot cots in women who are pregnant or taking estrogen with birth control or hormone replacement therapy, according to a new manuscript published in the Endocrine Society’s journal, Endocrinology. One of the many complications of COVID-19 is the formation of blood clots in previously healthy people. Estrogen increases the chance of blood clots during pregnancy and in women taking birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy. If infected with COVID-19, these women’s risk of blood clotting could be even higher, and they may need to undergo anticoagulation therapy or to discontinue their estrogen medicines. “During this pandemic, we need additional research to determine if women who become infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy should receive anticoagulation therapy or if women taking birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy should discontinue them,” said the study’s corresponding author, Daniel I. Spratt, M.D., of Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, and Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Mass. “Research that helps us understand how the coronavirus causes blood clots may also provide us with new knowledge regarding how blood clots form in other settings and how to prevent them.”
Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage – Two new studies from Germany paint a sobering picture of the toll that Covid-19 takes on the heart, raising the specter of long-term damage after people recover, even if their illness was not severe enough to require hospitalization.One study examined the cardiac MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from Covid-19 and compared them to heart images from 100 people who were similar but not infected with the virus. Their average age was 49 and two-thirds of the patients had recovered at home. More than two months later, infected patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group: 78 patients showed structural changes to their hearts, 76 had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation.These were relatively young, healthy patients who fell ill in the spring, Valentina Puntmann, who led the MRI study, pointed out in an interview. Many of them had just returned from ski vacations. None of them thought they had anything wrong with their hearts. “The fact that 78% of ‘recovered’ [patients] had evidence of ongoing heart involvement means that the heart is involved in a majority of patients, even if Covid-19 illness does not scream out with the classical heart symptoms, such as anginal chest pain,” she told STAT. The other study, which analyzed autopsy results from 39 people who died early in the pandemic and whose average age was 85, found high levels of the virus in the hearts of 24 patients. “We see signs of viral replication in those that are heavily infected,” Dirk Westermann, a cardiologist at the University Heart and Vascular Centre in Hamburg, said in an interview. “We don’t know the long-term consequences of the changes in gene expression yet. I know from other diseases that it’s obviously not good to have that increased level of inflammation.” Taken together, the two studies, published Monday in JAMA Cardiology, suggest that in many patients, Covid-19 could presage heart failure, a chronic, progressive condition in which the heart’s ability to pump blood throughout the body declines.
Clapped out of ICU, passed away days later: the secondary impact of Covid-19 –When Rudresh Pathak finally left intensive care after 81 days, staff at Pilgrim hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire – where he had worked as a consultant psychiatrist for nearly three decades – lined the corridors to applaud.Though visibly weak, the 65-year-old, who is thought to be one of a few patients in the UK to have remained on a ventilator with Covid-19 for so long, clapped along. He started to get better; he ate solids and was engaging in physiotherapy so he could stand and start walking again. The family were told that he would probably be discharged within the next 10 days. On 19 June, three days after he left the ICU, his daughter visited him for the first time since he was admitted to the hospital. But later that evening, he had a stroke. “It kind of knocked us out. We weren’t expecting it,” Neha said. On 26 June, 10 days after that celebratory clapping, her father died. Rudresh Pathak’s story of slow, hopeful recovery followed by a stroke and rapid deterioration highlights concerns about the extensive and enduring impact of coronavirus in some patients, his daughter said. A study published last month points to associated brain complications, including strokes, that require being admitted to hospital. Of the 125 patients in the study, 77 had a stroke. Infections have long been known as a risk factor for strokes, but there is some evidence to suggest that if a patient has a stroke while suffering from Covid-19, they are more likely to suffer a worse type of stroke with multiple large artery blockages in the brain, more severe disability and a higher chance of dying of the stroke. One possible explanation is that a minority of patients with Covid-19 have a profound inflammatory response often associated with more widespread blood clotting. People with severe Covid-19 may get blood clots not only in the brain but elsewhere, such in the leg (deep vein thrombosis), or in the lungs (pulmonary embolism). Werring said evidence suggests 1% to 5% of people who have Covid-19 may have a stroke, adding: “This seems to be a little bit higher than one would expect than other viruses, such as influenza, where the risk of stroke is under 1%.”
More than half of Spanish coronavirus patients suffering from neurological problems: research – More than half of patients in Spain suffering from the coronavirus have reported neurological symptoms including the loss of taste or sense of smell, according to a new study.The study, published in early June in the scientific journal Neurology, found that 57 percent of COVID-19 patients in two Spanish hospitals reported at least one neurological symptom, ranging from milder symptoms such as headaches and dizziness to more severe symptoms including psychosis, insomnia and anxiety.”Some of the symptoms, like myalgia, insomnia and headaches, had not been observed in previous studies,” study co-author Tomfls Segura, chief of neurology at University Hospital of Albacete, told the news service El Pais.Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries in Europe during the early months of the pandemic.The country has more cases than Italy, once a hot spot for the virus on the European continent. Spain has registered more than 272,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with more than 28,000 deaths as of Tuesday afternoon. The study comes as the country last week tightened restrictions just one month after lockdown orders were lifted due to new outbreaks. Neurological complications accounted for 4.1 percent of deceased patients involved in the study, according to its abstract, suggesting that mitigating the more severe neurological symptoms could limit the number of deaths from COVID-19 around the world. “In our series, more than half of patients presented some form of neurological symptom,” the researchers wrote.”Clinicians need to maintain close neurological surveillance for prompt recognition of these complications. The investigation of the mechanisms and emerging consequences of SARS-CoV-2 neurological involvement require further studies.” A separate study conducted by researchers at the University College London also suggested that COVID-19 was linked to a host of neurological symptoms including strokes and inflammation in the brain.
Vaccine Research on Covid-19: An Update – Better understanding of the immunology of Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccines is central. The more effort is dedicated to this, in both clinical and pre-clinical research, the faster we will get to better treatment and vaccine solutions and less risks will be assumed. Now let’s see what’s going on:First and foremost, before deploying any vaccine on a mass scale, apart of efficacy results, it must have been shown to be safe. In case that there are some safety issues but the protective effect is overwhelmingly beneficial so as to view those risks as a toll we can collectively/individually pay, these should be carefully analysed, described, quantified and communicated to the public before approval.One of the biggest mistakes would be to approve of a vaccine only to later see more frequent or more severe adverse effects than had been anticipated. Rare adverse events occurring at about 1:20.000 or lower frequency is something that we should to have in mind as a possibility once we have an approved candidate. The WHO provides general guidelines (2004) for vaccine evaluation/development. It has to be noted that because we are talking here about a novel virus and antigens in all cases, except the BCG candidate, massive trials will be starting with nearly zero previous information even if we can count with experience on SARS1.0 and MERS trials (never scaled up to Phase III) that might give hints but not assurances on vaccine development against Covid-19. Regarding clinical trials, Phase I is a safeguard trial done with a few individuals (10-20) to check that the candidate is safe enough for trials with more volunteers. Being in a hurry, some candidates are running directly with so-called Phase I/II trials. So far, such acceleration has not been seen as problematic. So far. The objective of Phase II (about 100 to few hundreds of subjects) is to characterize the immune response that the vaccine provides and decide if it looks good enough to proceed with Phase III. Before starting Phase III all considerations about safe manufacturing and scaling up should/must have been settled. Phase III (many thousands on subjects, the larger the trial, the shorter the duration, but also depending on the rate of spread when and where the trial starts). Some selection of racial and age cohorts will be necessary given the known information. Phase III is to assess the efficacy of the vaccine, so during Phase III both, placebo and vaccinated subjects, will be naturally challenged in the normal epidemic evolution and tested to see how the vaccine provides immunity/protection against the vaccine. Forced challenging (as in deliberate exposure to Covid-19) has been proposed to accelerate development . As you can imagine, this proposal is the subject of bioethical questions with no easy answer.
Covid-19 vaccines may cause mild side effects, experts say – While the world awaits the results of large clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccines, experts say the data so far suggest one important possibility: The vaccines may carry a bit of a kick. In vaccine parlance, they appear to be “reactogenic,” meaning they have induced short-term discomfort in a percentage of the people who have received them in clinical trials. This kind of discomfort includes headache, sore arms, fatigue, chills, and fever. As long as the side effects of eventual Covid-19 vaccines are transient and not severe, these would not be sources of alarm – in fact, they may be signals of an immune system lurching into gear. It’s a simple fact that some vaccines are more unpleasant to take than others. Think about the pain of a tetanus shot, for instance. But experts say it makes sense to prepare people now for the possibility that Covid-19 vaccines may be reactogenic.”I think one of the things we’re going to have to realize is that all of these vaccines are going to be reactogenic … . They’re all going to be associated with reactions,” said Kathryn Edwards, scientific director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program in Nashville, Tenn. “I think if you were to point out that, look, this is going to be a little bit painful, but there’s an end to it, and there’s a greater good to be gained here, I think that that’s probably worthwhile,” agreed Brian Southwell, senior director of the science in the public sphere program at the Center for Communication Science at RTI International, a think tank located in Research Triangle Park, N.C.At least two manufacturers, Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna and CanSino, a Chinese vaccine maker, stopped testing the highest doses of their Covid-19 vaccines because of the number of severe adverse events recorded among participants in their clinical trials. Ian Haydon, one of the volunteers who received the highest dose in the Moderna Phase 1 clinical trial, ended up seeking medical care after he spiked a fever of 103 Fahrenheit 12 hours after getting a second dose of the vaccine. (Most Covid-19 vaccines will likely require two doses to work.) The side effects are being seen across a number of different vaccines, made in different ways. This does not appear to be a problem linked to a specific type of Covid-19 vaccine.
You’re going to need more than one coronavirus shot. One dose of a vaccine probably won’t be enough, experts say. We’re all holding our breath for a coronavirus vaccine – for the day everyone can line up, get a shot, and then finally return to life as normal. But there are many problems with that vision, a primary one being: We’re all going to need more than one shot.Research is coalescing around the idea that coronavirus antibodies dissipate after a period of weeks or months. Although our immune systems have more than just that one line of defense, those findings suggest that our immunity to the virus – whether generated in response to an infection or as the result of a vaccine – might be similarly transient.Because the efficacy of a vaccine hinges on its ability to prompt the body to generate antibodies that protect you from future infection, it’s likely that people will need two doses of a coronavirus vaccine a few weeks apart for it to be effective. Some experts suggest we then may need to get regularly revaccinated.”If immunity does turn out to be fleeting,” disease ecologist Marm Kilpatrick told Business Insider, “we’ll need a plan of a vaccination plus a booster, or revaccination at periodic intervals.” Countless vaccines, like the one that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, require back-to-back doses. Some companies leading the coronavirus vaccine race are giving trial participants two shots three weeks apart. Pfizer is one of those: Early data showed that a two-dose regimen boosted the immune system response, with Pfizer researchers observing the highest level of neutralizing antibodies one week after the participants’ second dose.
Kennedy Jr. Warns Parents About Danger Of Using Largely-Untested COVID Vaccines On Kids – Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned Americans on Thursday to be cautious about any new coronavirus vaccine, pointing out that key parts of testing are being skipped. “The Moderna vaccine, which is the lead candidate, skipped the animal testing altogether,” Kennedy said during an online debate on mandatory vaccinations with renowned Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The debate was aired by Valuetainment and moderated by Patrick Bet-David. Kennedy is part of a political family, being the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Both were murdered in the 1960s.Another aspect of testing was equally unsatisfying, Kennedy said. The Moderna vaccine was tested “on 45 people. They had a high-dose group of 15 people, a medium-dose group of 15 people, and a low growth group of 15 people.”“In the low-dose group, one of the people was so sick from the vaccine they had to be hospitalized,” he explained.“That’s six percent. In the high-dose group, three people got so sick they had to be hospitalized. That’s twenty percent.”In spite of these significant problems, “they’re going ahead, and making two billion doses of that vaccine.”Another problem with the testing of the coronavirus vaccine is that it’s tested not on “typical Americans,” but a carefully selected group of people who don’t suffer from certain conditions.“They use what they call exclusionary criteria,” Kennedy said.”They are only giving these vaccines in these tests that they’re doing to the healthiest people.” “If you look at their exclusionary idea criteria: You cannot be pregnant, you cannot be overweight, you must have never smoked a cigarette, you must have never vaped, you must have no respiratory problems in your family, you can’t suffer asthma, you can’t have diabetes, you can’t have rheumatoid arthritis or any autoimmune disease. There has to be no history of seizure in the family. These are the people they’re testing the vaccine on.” He asked, “What happens when they give them to the typical American? You know, Sally Six-Pack and Joe Bag of Donuts who’s 50 pounds overweight and has diabetes.” Kennedy stressed several times that “any other medicine … that had that kind of profile in its original phase-one study would be [dead on arrival].””No medical product in the world would be able to go forward with the profile that Moderna has,” he reiterated.
Public Health Experts Fear a Hasty FDA Signoff on Vaccine –The vaccine trial that Vice President Mike Pence kicked off in Miami on Monday gives the United States the tiniest chance of being ready to vaccinate millions of Americans just before Election Day.It’s a possibility that fills many public health experts with dread.Among their concerns: Early evidence that any vaccine works would lead to political pressure from the administration for emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration. That conflict between science and politics might cause some people to not trust the vaccine and refuse to take it, which would undermine the global campaign to stop the pandemic. Or it could lead to a product that is not fully protective. Confidence in routine childhood vaccinations, already shaken, could decline further.”The fear is that you wind up doing to a vaccine what [Trump has] already done with [opening] school,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a former FDA deputy commissioner and a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Take an important, difficult question and politicize it. That’s what you want to avoid.”On Monday at 6:45 a.m., the first volunteer in the landmark phase 3 trial for the Moderna Therapeutics vaccine received a shot at a clinic in Savannah, Georgia. Clinicians at 88 other sites, stretching from Miami to Seattle, were also preparing to deliver the experimental shot in a trial that aims to enroll 30,000 people.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, told reporters he hoped 15,000 could be vaccinated by the end of the week, although he provided no information about progress toward that goal. All volunteers would receive a second shot 29 days after their first inoculation. (Half will receive a placebo containing saline solution.) Another vaccine, produced by Pfizer with the German company BioNTech, also entered a large phase 3 U.S. trial this week. It’s being tested independently of the National Institutes of Health, which is partially funding the Moderna trial as well as tests for an Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine trial, and others in the future. AstraZeneca has said some doses of its vaccine might be ready as early as September. Such a fast pace worries some experts. .”I don’t see how that’s remotely possible unless the thing I most fear happens, a truncated phase 3 trial with just an idea of efficacy, an idea of common side effects, and then it rolls out,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Over 7,500 children in Tennessee have been diagnosed with COVID-19 New data released last week by the Tennessee Department of Health has revealed that 7,572 school-age children – those between the ages of 5 and18 – have been diagnosed with COVID-19. This figure is a damning exposure of the lie that children are somehow less susceptible to catching or spreading the virus, which has been used to justify the push to restart in-person schooling in the coming weeks. As well, the confirmed total is not a true reflection of the extent of the virus due to the overall lack of testing among this age group. As part of the homicidal return-to-work drive initiated by the Trump administration with the complicity of the Democratic Party, Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, began the process of lifting restrictions on May 1, one of the first to do so. Forcing schools to reopen is a critical next step in getting workers back on the job, even as infections and hospitalizations from COVID-19 hit record highs in the US. The virus has been on a rampage throughout Tennessee since the lifting of restrictions in May. On Sunday, there were 3,140 new cases, and the last week saw nearly 130 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. Overall, the state has nearly 94,000 cases of the novel coronavirus and is fast approaching 1,000 fatalities, figures which are expected to be amplified by the reopening of schools. Despite this, and following the demands of the Trump administration, preparations are underway to send children and teachers back into the schools, with some districts beginning classes as early as July 30. The response of Governor Lee’s administration is for the districts themselves to formulate their own plans for reopening, although Lee has indicated he will be issuing state guidelines on Tuesday following recommendations released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week. As a result of this “hands off” policy, reopening plans vary from district to district, which has led to uncertainty and chaos for students and educators alike. This muddled and improvisational approach is underway in other states as well. A teacher in West Virginia explained the situation in that state – where new infections are also rising – telling the WSWS, “The problem here is that the state department really should’ve made the decision early on as to what the [state is] going to do, but they don’t want to take any responsibility with that so they’re putting the responsibility off on the counties.” Adding, “The problem with that is that each county is going to have its own plan which [would] require special funding, and they have no way to get additional funding directly.”
Young, healthy adults with mild COVID-19 also take weeks to recover: CDC – (Reuters) – Young, previously healthy adults can take weeks to fully recover from even a mild COVID-19 infection, with about a fifth of patients under 35 years reporting not returning to their usual state of health up to 21 days after testing positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A telephone survey across 13 states of symptomatic adults with mild COVID-19 found 35% had not returned to their usual state of health when interviewed two to three weeks after testing, the CDC reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on Friday. Cough, fatigue and shortness of breath were among the symptoms reported while testing that persisted even weeks later, according to the report. The findings indicate recovery can be prolonged even in young adults without chronic medical conditions, making a case for public health messaging to target populations that might not perceive COVID-19 as being a severe illness. Between April 15 and June 25, telephone interviews were done with a random sample of people over 18 years of age who got themselves tested for COVID-19 at an outpatient visit, CDC said. The interviews were done 14 to 21 days after the test date, and patients were asked about symptoms during testing, whether they had returned to their usual state of health, and if they suffer from a chronic medical condition. Among 292 people interviewed, 274 reported experiencing one or more symptoms at the time of testing. Among symptomatic respondents who reported not having returned to their usual state of health, 26% were between 18 and 34 years of age, 32% were between 35 and 49 years, and 47% were over 50.
COVID-19 ‘long haulers’ fight for months with lingering symptoms — An unknown but growing number of the 4 million U.S. COVID-19 patients say they can’t shake symptoms ranging from fatigue to serious respiratory or neurological problems, often for months after diagnosis. The ailments are all the more challenging because patients say they often face skeptical families, friends, employers and even doctors. Research is limited on these so-called “long haulers.” New York City’s Mount Sinai hospital appears to have the first post-COVID treatment center in the U.S. A study of 143 patients in Italy out this month in JAMA Network found 87% of patients who had recovered from COVID-19 reported at least one lingering symptom, notably fatigue and trouble breathing. Natalie Lambert, an Indiana University associate research professor, analyzed at least 1,100 responses to a poll about post-COVID-19 symptoms in the 81,000-member Survivor Corps Facebook group. More than half of the patients reported at least one of six symptoms, including the now-common fatigue and breathing problems. The list also includes two – inability to exercise or be active and difficulty concentrating – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t yet cited in its list of COVID-19 symptoms. Karyn Bishof appears to have most of them. On Saturday, the Boca Raton, Florida, resident hit Day 133 of suffering from a staggering list of symptoms that includes: cough, chronic fatigue, memory issues, vision impairment, chest heaviness, drastic heart rate and oxygen changes, sore throat, hair loss, heart palpitations, reflux, nausea, dizziness, vertigo, rapid hot flashes, joint paint, full-body itchiness, tremors, mild fever, dry mouth, excessive thirst, overheating with no fever, rash, sleep apnea, chest pain and tinnitus. She started her own poll in the Survivor Corps group in June to see how many other so-called COVID-19 “long haulers” there were. More than 1,500 people said they, too, were still suffering and more than half said the symptoms lasted more than three months. Lambert said patients face even more skepticism with symptoms affecting the brain. Those include problems with memory, sleeping, irritability, or sadness. Patients said their doctors often attribute sleeping problems to stress. More than 40% of respondents in Bishof’s poll reported their doctors hadn’t listened to or believed them.
COVID-19 infections pose a risk of long-term problems like chronic fatigue and other complications — A Newcastle scientist has warned people to remain vigilant about COVID-19 because the long-term effects of the disease are unknown. Such risks mean people should continue to take action to avoid being exposed to the coronavirus. Some people who catch COVID-19 have reported experiencing debilitating symptoms for weeks. In some cases, these symptoms have continued for more than two months. Some have categorised these symptoms as a form of chronic fatigue syndrome. This can involve persistent and disabling fatigue, amid various other symptoms. It is somewhat of a controversial condition, as not all medical professionals necessarily recognise it or know how to treat it. Previous research has shown clusters of chronic fatigue syndrome followed other infectious outbreaks, including SARS, Ross River virus and Epstein-Barr virus [glandular fever]. Some who face this kind of ill-health get better relatively quickly, while others experience longer periods of post-viral fatigue. Manchester University researchers have called for funding to “examine the prevalence of fatigue-related symptoms following COVID-19 infection”. Such research could explore “pragmatic relatively low-cost techniques to treat post-viral fatigue to alleviate symptoms and improve the quality of life”. Asked about this type of condition, University of Newcastle Associate Professor Jay Horvat said he refers to them as “extra-respiratory manifestations”. “There is evidence that there are long-term neurological effects associated with a number of viral infections” said Dr Horvat, also of Hunter Medical Research Institute.
Texas’ COVID-19 Death Toll Tops 5,000 As New Cases Slide To 2-Week Low- Live Updates Texas numbers were the rare silver lining in another day of slightly less dismal numbers across the Sun Belt, and increasingly, in the deep south as well. Texas reported just 5,810 new cases on Sunday, a sharp drop from the prior day and the state’s lowest daily total since July 13 (about 2 weeks ago),. That brought the Lone Star State’s tally to 381,656. But the bigger milestone on Sunday came from the “deaths” column, when the state reported another 153 fatalities, pushing Texas’s death toll north of 5,000 to 5,038. The state’s positivity rate has increased slightly to 13.76%. California reported 8,259 new cases on Sunday, as the pace appeared to slow across the state, even as worries about a potential return to lockdown simmer. Sunday’s number (reported with a 24-hour delay) came in below both the 14-day average of 9,421 and the 10,666 from the prior day The statewide total climbed to 453,659 confirmed cases. The number of fatalities increased by 79, which was below the 14-day daily average of 98 and also below the 151 reported the previous day. A total of 8,416 people have died. As cases continue to slow in certain parts of the Sun Belt, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he is seeing “unmistakable signs” that the pandemic is slowing in Texas and Arizona, though he is less certain about California and Florida. This as one Democratic lawmaker called for Los Angeles County to restore a stay-at-home order. US cases rose by 65,965 in the latest daily count, a 1.6% increase that’s lower than the 1.8% average over the prior seven days. Deaths increased by 921, breaking a four-day streak of more than 1,000 deaths per day.
Texas revises its coronavirus death tally upward by 12 percent – The Texas Department of State Health Services has revised the state’s coronavirus death toll upward by more than 600 after state health officials yesterday began including deaths marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19. The state has now suffered more than 5,200 known deaths, and currently hosts the highest number of daily deaths in the country, at 156. It also yesterday became the fourth state to exceed 400,000 confirmed cases. If a similar revision needs to be made to the fatality rate across the US, more than 18,000 new deaths would have to be added to the national toll. The change in reporting for deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic in Texas highlights the haphazard nature of data reporting in the United States. Instead of a national database and dashboard to collect and display the extent of and death inflicted by the pandemic, states have been forced to scramble to report their own, often incomplete data. Missing data often includes testing and contact tracing information, as well as the time coronavirus tests take to complete. Moreover, because the average time it takes for states to conduct the tests is often a week or more, much of the reported data is showing the state of the pandemic the previous week. Even though the US has conducted more than 55 million tests, the lag means that those who eventually test positive may have unknowingly spread the disease for days. This state of affairs is one of the reasons the coronavirus has spread so widely across the country. As the World Health Organization has noted again and again, “the basic measures [that are] needed to suppress transmission and save lives: find, isolate, test and care for cases; and trace and quarantine their contacts.” Such measures are essentially impossible to coordinate at the national scale when the data on the disease is so disparate and uncurated. There are now 18 states in the United States that now record a 7-day average of more than 1,000 new cases of coronavirus each day. Six states – Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, California, Florida – currently record more than 2,000 new cases each day. There are 12 states with more than 100,000 cases, with Tennessee set to be the 13th in the next two days, and 26 states that have more than 1,000 confirmed deaths. Collectively in the country, there are now 4.4 million known cases, along with more than 150,000 deaths.
Florida records 9,300 new coronavirus cases, blows past New York – (Reuters) – Florida on Sunday became the second state after California to overtake New York, the worst-hit state at the start of the U.S. novel coronavirus outbreak, according to a Reuters tally. Total COVID-19 cases in the Sunshine State rose by 9,300 to 423,855 on Sunday, just one place behind California, which now leads the country with 448,497 cases. New York is in third place with 415,827 cases. Still, New York has recorded the most deaths of any U.S. state at more than 32,000 with Florida in eighth place with nearly 6,000 deaths. On average, Florida has added more than 10,000 cases a day in July while California has been adding 8,300 cases a day and New York has been adding 700 cases. The surge in Florida has continued as the state’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said he will not make mask-wearing mandatory and that schools must reopen in August. On the contrary, New York state has managed to get the virus under control, with stores and restaurants shuttered and the wearing of masks mandatory. The rise in cases also comes as President Donald Trump is pushing to re-open U.S. schools in the fall, despite teachers’ and families’ concerns that children could contract or transmit the disease should they return to the classroom. After New York, Texas has the most total coronavirus cases at 391,000. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Tropical Storm Hanna, which made landfall on Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane, was especially challenging as it was sweeping through an area of the state that has been the worst hit by the coronavirus. For the tenth time in July, Alaska set a record for a one-day rise in cases, with 234 new infections on Sunday, bringing the state’s total to 3,100. Oklahoma hit a record for new cases five times in July, with 1,204 new infections on Sunday bringing the state’s total to 31,285.
Florida reports record increase in COVID-19 deaths for second day in a row – Florida reported a record increase in new COVID-19 deaths for a second successive day on Wednesday, with 217 fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to the state health department. Florida also reported 9,446 new cases, bringing its total infections to over 451,000, the second highest in the country behind California. Florida’s total death toll rose to 6,457, eighth highest in the nation, according to a Reuters tally. Florida was among six states on Tuesday that reported single-day records for coronavirus deaths. Arkansas, California, Montana, Oregon and Texas also had their biggest one-day spikes in coronavirus fatalities since the pandemic started. Total U.S. deaths surpassed 150,000 on Wednesday, the highest level in the world and rising at the fastest rate since early June. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2P87LUu) Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June.
Coronavirus outbreak show signs of slowing in Arizona, Texas and Florida – Coronavirus outbreaks in Arizona, Florida and Texas appear to be slowing down as more people practice social distancing and states halt reopening plans. On Sunday, Arizona reported a 13% drop in the seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases, logging 2,627 newly diagnosed cases over the previous 24 hours, down from 3,022 the previous week, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The state has also begun to see signs that its Covid-19 hospitalizations may be slowing down, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer group founded by journalists from The Atlantic magazine. As of Sunday, coronavirus hospitalizations also fell by about 14% from the previous week to a seven-day average of 2,919. Cases in Texas have fallen almost 19% over the previous week, hitting roughly 8,404 daily new cases based on a seven-day moving average on Sunday, according to the CNBC analysis. Its peak in average daily new cases was 10,572 on July 20. CNBC uses a seven-day average to calculate Covid-19 trends because it smooths out inconsistencies and gaps in state data. Although Texas is showing signs that its number of new infections is starting to slow, it hit a record high in average hospitalizations of 10,840 Covid-19 patients on Sunday. The same day, the state also broke a grim record of average daily new deaths of 152. Florida has just begun seeing its curve start to flatten since reaching a record-high average of daily new cases of 11,870 on July 17, according to data from Johns Hopkins. On Sunday, the state had 10,544 average new cases, which is an 8% decrease compared with a week ago. However, the state is still reporting growth in hospitalizations and fatalities as the virus continues to hit densely populated cities in southern Florida. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said Monday that officials are starting to see a leveling-off of cases in hard-hit states due to people “stepping up to the plate.” “It’s due to the fact that people are actually wearing masks. They’re wearing their masks. They’re social distancing. They’re engaging in good personal hygiene,” Azar said on “Fox and Friends.” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, also said Monday that hot-spot states in the Sunbelt region of the U.S. are starting to plateau in the number of new Covid-19 cases. “On the whole, it looks like Arizona, Texas and probably Florida at the very least are starting to hit a plateau.” However, Gottlieb cautioned that “even as these states come down, other states look like they are heating up, and so they’ll start to offset the gains we are making in the Sunbelt.”
Coronavirus cases on the rise in the Midwest as they ebb in the Sun Belt – As new coronavirus infections appeared to plateau in the Sun Belt but creep up in the Midwest, governors and local authorities imposed additional restrictions Tuesday, and a powerful teachers union warned that its members would strike if ordered to return to unsafe schools this fall. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, warned that positive coronavirus tests were rising in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky as the number of new cases is showing signs of leveling off in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California. “We just can’t afford, yet again, another surge,” Fauci said on “Good Morning America.” A few hours later, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Fauci’s appraisal was correct as he announced limits on county fairs, barring grandstand events, rides and games. He noted that emergency visits are decreasing and new cases have plateaued, but hospitalizations are on the upswing. Stressing the highly infectious nature of the virus, DeWine told reporters at his televised briefing about a 40-minute car ride that four people recently took to an Ohio lake. One person had the virus but didn’t know it. Within days, 10 people were sick, with two hospitalized and in intensive care, and three businesses had to be temporarily shuttered, he said. “From a single car ride,” DeWine said, urging the public to wear masks and follow other public health precautions. “If we do what we need to do we can start these numbers going in the right direction,” he added. “We are at a crucial time.”
Six U.S. states see record COVID-19 deaths, Latinos hit hard in California – (Reuters) – A half-dozen U.S. states in the South and West reported one-day records for coronavirus deaths on Tuesday and cases in Texas passed the 400,000 mark as California health officials said Latinos made up more than half its cases. Arkansas, California, Florida, Montana, Oregon and Texas each reported record spikes in fatalities. In the United States more than 1,300 lives were lost nation wide on Tuesday, the biggest one-day increase since May, according to a Reuters tally. California health officials said Latinos, who make up just over a third of the most populous U.S. state, account for 56% of COVID-19 infections and 46% of deaths. Cases are soaring in the Central Valley agricultural region, with its heavily Latino population, overwhelming hospitals. The state on Tuesday reported 171 deaths. Florida saw 191 coronavirus deaths in the prior 24 hours, the state health department said. Texas added more than 6,000 new cases on Monday, pushing its total to 401,477, according to a Reuters tally. Only three other states – California, Florida and New York – have more than 400,000 total cases. The four are the most populous U.S. states. California and Texas both reported decreases in overall hospitalizations as Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. infectious diseases expert, saw signs the surge could be peaking in the South and West while other areas were on the cusp of new outbreaks.
Americans Dying of COVID-19 at Rate Over 17 Times Higher Than Europeans, Canadians – More than six months into the U.S. outbreak of the coronavirus, Americans are dying of COVID-19 at a rate over 17 times higher than that in the European Union and Canada, when adjusted for population.In the U.S., with a population of about 328 million, an average of about three people per million are dying each day, according to data compiled by Our World in Data. That’s about 17 times higher than in the European Union, which has a population of about 446 million and less than one (0.18) daily death per million, on average. In Canada, home to about just under 38 million people, less than one (0.16) person per million is dying daily, on average. The U.S. has a seven-day average of just over 1,000 deaths per day, according to a New York Times tracker. The seven-day average in Canada is about six COVID-19 deaths per day. Meanwhile, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported Tuesday that its 14-day cumulative average of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 stood at zero. Among the countries currently most affected by the pandemic, the U.S. has the fourth highest mortality rate, with 45.24 deaths per 100,000 people in the population, according to an analysis by Johns Hopkins University. The United Kingdom, which formally withdrew from the European Union at the end of January, has the highest mortality rate of the most affected countries, with 68.95 deaths per 100,000, followed by Peru and Chile, with 57.58 and 49.05 deaths per 100,000, respectively.
U.S. coronavirus cases and state maps: Tracking cases, deaths – The disease caused by the novel coronavirus has killed at least 148,000 people in the United States since February. Numbers of cases are increasing in most states and soaring in some. The overall daily death toll had declined from April through early July, largely because of a sharp decrease in New York and New Jersey. But by July 10, after all states had begun reopening, death numbers had begun to tick up again for the first time since March.Health officials anticipated the rise because the virus had been accelerating through populous states such as Texas, Florida andCalifornia for weeks. Localities reported not only a surge in new cases but also large increases in hospitalizations, crowded ICUs, and a jump in the percentage of positive tests. The United States topped 50,000 new cases in one day for the first time on July 1, two days after the country’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, warned that the country could begin to see 100,000 new cases a day “if this does not turn around.” Criteria for reporting deaths continues to change in some states and cities, and numbers in this story may fluctuate as jurisdictions adjust their counting and reporting procedures. For instance, in mid-April, New York City added more than 3,700 deaths of people who were presumed to have the coronavirus but were never tested, and New Jersey added more than 1,800 on June 25.Health officials – including Fauci, in earlier testimony – have said the virus has killed more people than official death tolls indicate. It has hit communities of color especially hard.The virus continues to kill in New York, where at least 414,000 cases have been reported and at least 29,000 have died. But the pace has slowed considerably from the peak weeks in spring when more than 1,000 died on some days. On July 12, New York City went 24 hours without a covid-19 death for the first time since March.The new epicenters are in the Sun Belt, particularly south Florida. Alarmed by the astounding increases and stresses on their healthcare systems, governors in several states have begun to pause reopening plans and in some cases, reimpose restrictions, such as closing bars and restaurants.Meanwhile, smaller outbreaks continue to arise in summer camps,prisons, factories and other workplaces and on college campuses as athletes showed up for summer workouts. In the absence of a federal plan to control the virus, some health officials, governors, mayors and corporations have championed the need for wearing masks in hopes of squelching rampant transmission. By mid-July, masks were required not just in hard-hit urban areas but in states such as Oregon and Alabama and in national retail chainWalmart.
At least 735 COVID-19 deaths confirmed in US prison system – As of July 28, throughout the US incarceration system, including all federal and state-run prisons and jails, at least 735 inmates have died from COVID-19 and there have been over 82,000 confirmed cases. On any day in the US, there are estimated to be 2.3 million incarcerated individuals. Approximately 12,000 cases were added in the last week alone, a 16 percent increase from the total on July 21. This is nearly double the worst week during the April peak of the virus and an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to the week of June 16. The exponential growth of the infection and death-rates in prisons is intimately tied to COVID-19’s spread in the wider community. The states which have experienced the deadliest resurgences following deadly economic reopening overseen by Republican and Democratic governors have seen the highest number of deaths and infections in their prisons and jails. In the last three days alone, as the state passed 450,000 infections overall, 10 inmates in Florida prisons died from COVID-19, bringing the state’s total to 46 prisoner deaths. At the Columbia Correctional Institute in Lake City at least three men have died. The Florida Department of Corrections refused to publicly recognize any inmate deaths before a local medical examiner leaked them to the News Service of Florida. Cynthia Cooper, whose husband is incarcerated at the facility, told the Tampa Bay Times, “I never thought I’d see the day when I was afraid of something more than him just being in prison. But it’s come to that.” The accelerating crisis in the state is a product of the criminal response of state authorities to the virus. Despite a population of over 96,000 inmates, statewide only 43,272 COVID-19 tests have been administered since the beginning of the pandemic. Furthermore, health and prison experts’ recommendation that all non-violent and at-risk criminals be immediately released has been ignored. On April 2, Republican Governor and Trump acolyte Ron DeSantis responded to desperate pleas to reduce the prison population to slow the virus’ spread, stating, “I don’t see how in a time of pandemic, where people are on edge already, [that] releasing felons in society would make a whole lot of sense.”
Florida, California and North Carolina report record new coronavirus deaths for one day – Florida, North Carolina and California on Wednesday set state records for coronavirus-related deaths reported in a single day, according to data tracked by The Washington Post, as the nationwide death toll nears 150,000. Daily new cases in late July reached more than double the previous peak from April. While headlines have focused on new hot-spot states in the South and West, top health officials are also urging preventive measures in states such as Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana and Kentucky that are seeing only subtle increases in positive cases. Leading infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci warned Wednesday that these states should be vigilant to avoid the surges experienced in the South. Fauci said that on a conference call with governors a day earlier, he “made that point to them that it is very important to get ahead of the curve.” Here are some significant developments:
- The head of the Federal Reserve said Wednesday that rising numbers of coronavirus cases since mid-June are beginning to slow an economic recovery.
- Alabama Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville (R) is defying District of Columbia orders for visitors from certain states to self-quarantine for 14 days as he fundraises and attends face-to-face meetings in D.C.
- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), who has frequently been seen around the Capitol without a mask and in close contact with others, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Attorney General William P. Barr – who was in proximity to Gohmert at a hearing Tuesday – has tested negative.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is requiring that all lawmakers wear masks while on the House floor.
- Florida’s state-run virus testing sites will be closed over the weekend in anticipation of a tropical storm.
- Trump called for a short-term fix Wednesday to address expiring unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions, saying the other parts of the GOP’s $1 trillion relief bill can wait.
U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 150,000 as Country Struggles to Contain Virus – The U.S. death toll from the new coronavirus passed 150,000 Wednesday, in a grim marker of the country’s struggle to control the disease.The U.S. has now reported more than 4.4 million confirmed cases and 150,713 deaths, according to Thursday morning figures from Johns Hopkins University. That number means the U.S. outbreak is by far the deadliest in absolute numbers. While it only holds about 5 percent of the world’s population, according to NPR, it has accounted for almost a quarter of the world’s 667,218 coronavirus deaths. “Basically, none of this should have happened,” commercial pilot Rob Koreman of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who has to keep abreast of the numbers because of his work, told Reuters. “We needed state coordination, if not flat-out a federal mandate.” The U.S. reported its first coronavirus death Feb. 29, CNN reported. It took 54 days for that number to rise to 50,000 on April 23, 34 days for it to climb to 100,000 May 27 and another 63 days to reach 150,000. Around 33,000 of the nation’s deaths were in New York and almost 16,000 were in New Jersey, NPR reported. Those states were early epicenters of the outbreak, and the nation’s daily death toll is still well below the highs of April and early May.However, the national death toll has begun to climb following a surge of cases in the South and West. The daily average of deaths for the week ending Tuesday rose above 1,000 for the first time since June 2, CNN reported. In 29 states, the average number of deaths per day was at least 10 percent higher compared to the previous week, and some states are reporting their highest daily death tolls to date. California broke its record for most deaths reported in a single day with 197 on Wednesday, while Florida broke its record two days in a row, with 186 deaths on Tuesday and 216 on Wednesday, according to NPR. While the number of new cases is now beginning to fall slightly, public health experts expect deaths to continue to rise since mortality tends to lag behind infections, according to CNN. “We have this terrible death toll because we have done a lousy job at limiting transmission.” The death toll has risen much higher than initial predictions, The New York Times pointed out. In April, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci said he hoped the toll would not rise above 60,000 and a respected research center predicted a little more than 70,000 deaths by early August. “The aspect which is really impossible to predict is human behavior,” Yale epidemiology professor Virginia Pitzer told The New York Times of the models. “To what extent are people going to socially distance themselves? To what extent are politics going to influence whether you wear a mask? All of these factors are impossible to factor in.”
Arizona, Florida report record increase in COVID-19 deaths (Reuters) – Florida reported a record increase in new COVID-19 deaths for a third day in a row on Thursday, with 252 fatalities in the last 24 hours, according to the state health department. Arizona also reported a record increase with 172 fatalities on Thursday, bringing that state’s death toll to 3,626. Both states had been hotspots with major outbreaks but new cases have recently slowed in both, according to a Reuters tally. Florida reported 9,956 new cases, bringing its total infections to over 461,000, the second highest in the country behind California. Florida’s total death toll rose to 6,709, the eighth highest in the nation. Due to the spike in cases, the Miami-area school district, the nation’s fourth-largest district, said students would not return to classrooms when the new academic year begins in a few weeks. Florida was among six states on Wednesday that reported single-day records for coronavirus deaths. California, Idaho, North Carolina, Texas and South Dakota also had their biggest one-day spikes in coronavirus fatalities since the pandemic started. California, Florida and Texas are the three most populous state and where about a quarter of all U.S. residents live. One person in the United States died about every minute from COVID-19 on Wednesday as the national death toll surpassed 150,000, the highest in the world. Deaths are rising at the fastest rate since early June. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2P87LUu) Coronavirus cases are rising in 37 states, down from 44 a week ago, according to a Reuters analysis of cases the past two weeks compared with the prior two weeks. Deaths are rising in 26 states, up from 23 last week. Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June.
US COVID-19 death toll soars past 151,000, with one death every minute – US coronavirus deaths soared past 151,000 on Thursday, with nearly 4.5 million reported cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. One person is dying in the US nearly every minute of COVID-19-related causes. The US deaths account for nearly a quarter of the world’s death toll, which stands at more than 668,000, and more than a quarter of the global case count of more than 17 million. Deaths have risen in the US for three weeks in a row, according to a Reuters analysis. Deaths are rising in 26 states, up from 23 last week. New coronavirus cases are rising in 37 states, down from 44 a week ago. As deaths generally lag behind cases, the death toll is expected to continue to rise over the next several weeks at least. The biggest hotspots remain in Florida, Arizona, California and Texas, while COVID-19 infections appear to be “moving up” from the South into Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, and Kentucky. White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Deborah Birx said on Thursday that this shift was “because of vacations and other reasons of travel.” Florida’s Department of Health on Thursday confirmed 9,956 new coronavirus cases, bringing the state’s known total to 461,379. There were 253 reported deaths in the state, breaking a fatality record for the third day in a row, and marking the highest single-day number of deaths since the pandemic began. The statewide death toll now stands at 6,596, the eighth highest in the nation. Miami-Dade County reported 2,773 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases and 60 new deaths, according to the Department of Health. The county now has 115,916 confirmed cases – 4.3 percent of its entire population – and 1,515 deaths. On Wednesday, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the state’s largest district, announced it would be resuming classes August 31 with all instruction taking place virtually. In a press release, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the “decision to commence the academic year on the My School Online distance learning platform is representative of our commitment to safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our students and workforce.” The decision of the school district to begin the school year with all online instruction and no in-person classes runs counter to Governor Ron DeSantis’ order to open all Florida public schools in-person, five days a week. Earlier this month, DeSantis made the absurd claim, “If you can do Home Depots, if you can do Walmart, if you can do these things, we can absolutely do schools.”
‘Mini surge’ of coronavirus among Greenwich teens blamed on house parties – One of the wealthiest communities in the country is experiencing a sharp uptick in coronavirus cases after several house parties involving teenagers and young adults, The New York Times reported Friday. After weeks of lockdown, high school graduates in Greenwich, Conn., attended get-togethers in mid-July, according to accounts from students and school officials. Now, two weeks later, the town is undergoing what health officials called a “mini surge” of cases. More than 20 people between the ages of 16 and 21 have tested positive for the virus in the town, with more expected as testing continues, according to Greenwich health officials. Statewide, more than 49,000 people have tested positive for the virus with more than 4,000 coronavirus-related deaths. Connecticut has one of the lowest daily case averages in the country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Gov. Ned Lamont (D) on Tuesday warned residents to stay away from large clusters of people. “Connecticut has one of the lowest COVID-19 infection rates in the country right now,” he said in a statement. “But if we are not careful, this can change rapidly.” Discussions of the house parties – who attended and who has contracted the virus – has largely taken place in private accounts. Contact tracers say they have had difficulty finding teenagers who will admit they were at any of the parties, making it harder to keep the virus in check. Officials in the nearby town of Darien found that five people between the ages of 10 and 19 tested positive for the virus last week. Some of the infections are believed to have been caused by similar parties.
Florida closes all state-run testing sites as storm approaches -Florida’s state-run coronavirus testing sites will close over the weekend as a tropical cyclone in the Caribbean is expected to hit the peninsula.The Florida Division of Emergency Management ordered all state-supported drive-through and walk-up coronavirus testing sites to close Thursday at 5 p.m., agency spokesman Jason Mahon told The Post on Wednesday. The more than 50 sites across the state will reopen on a rolling basis next week beginning Tuesday, and all should be operational again Wednesday, barring storm damage.The sites, which are usually set up in parking lots and large outdoor areas, are often furnished with free-standing structures such as tents, tables and cones, which could become projectiles in tropical storm winds, Mahon said.Testing also slowed in Texas when Hurricane Hanna made landfall last week. In Starr County, health officials didn’t screen for the virus for at least six days.The unnamed storm, expected to become Tropical Storm Isaias by the time it nears Hispaniola on Thursday, is forecast to potentially approach Florida over the weekend. However, because it has yet to develop a clear center of circulation, forecast uncertainty is greater than usual.Everything from a track into the Gulf of Mexico, west of Florida, to a storm that moves through the Bahamas, off the state’s east coast, remains plausible.The National Hurricane Center cautions: “While this system could bring some rainfall and wind impacts to portions of Cuba, the central and northwest Bahamas, and Florida later this week and this weekend, it is too soon to determine the location or magnitude of those impacts.”
WHO warns that COVID-19 pandemic is resurgent across Europe – The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday that the lifting of lockdown measures is driving a resurgence of COVID-19 in Europe. The rise in new cases is the product of stark class inequalities and the exploitation of migrant labor across the continent. “The recent resurgence in COVID-19 cases in some countries following the easing of physical distancing measures is certainly cause for concern,” a WHO-Europe spokeswoman told AFP. She said governments should prepare for large-scale lockdowns to prevent major new outbreaks: “Where new clusters of cases appear, these need to be controlled through rapid and targeted interventions including rapid case detection and isolation and diligent contact tracing and quarantining. … If the situation demands, reintroduction of stricter, targeted measures with the full engagement of communities may be needed.” Over the weekend, the number of dead in Europe from COVID-19 passed 200,000, as the number of officially registered European cases approaches 3 million. While it is surging across Eastern Europe – with over 5,000 daily new cases in Russia, and over 1,000 each in Ukraine and Romania – the number of daily COVID-19 deaths, however, at several hundreds, is well below the thousands who died daily this spring. Lockdowns across Western Europe blunted much of the pandemic’s impact. Since May 20, Europe has seen roughly 20,000 new cases per day, less than half the April peak. The policy of the European Union (EU), entirely focused on using the pandemic as a pretext to hand multi-trillion-euro bailouts to the banks and major corporations, is, however, leading to disaster. As the pandemic spreads in Eastern Europe, the premature ending of lockdowns in the original centers of the pandemic in Western Europe is leading to a rapid resurgence of cases. On Saturday, Romania saw a record 1,284 cases and Ukraine a near-record 1,106, as the far-right Ukrainian regime imposes IMF austerity measures and slashes social spending, forcing millions of Ukrainians to find work in central or western Europe. Many work as migrant farm labourers and are badly exposed due to appalling working conditions there – even in Europe’s wealthiest countries.
With over 16 million COVID-19 cases, the pandemic is devastating developing nations – Notwithstanding the transient declines in numbers reported over weekends, the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is demonstrating its tenacity in wreaking havoc on the inhabitants of this planet. On Saturday, the number of cases sped past 16 million, bringing the global per capita rate to 2,089 cases per a million population, or 0.21 percent. Even if the number of undiagnosed cases was five to 10 times higher, in absolute terms, the pandemic remains very much in its initial stages of development.The prospect of natural herd immunity in the foreseeable future is remote, and, by all accounts, the introduction of a viable vaccine will be a geopolitical fiasco that will make the US testing debacle seem like child’s play. Many industries, assisted through lucrative deals from their governments, have quickly adapted to enrich themselves on the scourge.The seven-day average of new cases has risen to 253,089 per day. More than 650,000 deaths have been tallied, with a seven-day average of 5,655 fatalities per day. One concerning statistic that has seen a sudden jump is in the category of people with serious or critical infections. After reaching a peak of 59,817 cases on April 29, it declined to 44,583, after which it began climbing again. It has now reached 66,170 cases. The mortality rate for these patients varies from 30 to 50 percent, suggesting that the number of daily deaths will continue to trend higher for some time. Three countries – the US, Brazil, and India – have more than 1 million cases. Twenty other countries have reported more than 100,000 cases. Countries where the pandemic is sustained at a high rate or surging include South Africa, India, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and the United States. Despite a steady number of cases, the fatality rate in Iran, at more than 200 deaths per day, has climbed higher than in March, during the initial surge. Developing countries that fly under the radar of mainstream COVID-19 reports, where outbreaks are bringing the healthcare infrastructure to near collapse, include Indonesia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.South Africa, entering its winter season, has now become the epicenter of the African continent for the COVID-19 pandemic, ranking fifth in the world in the number of cases reported. As of this writing, there have been 445,433 infections, with half of these cases confirmed since July 7. There have been 6,769 deaths, with a rising seven-day average of 244 fatalities per day. On Saturday, there were 312 deaths.
Tsunami of fake news hurts Latin America’s effort to fight coronavirus – For months Gustavo Andrade has been battling to convince his parishioners to take Covid-19 seriously. “This town is full of infected people. Two or three die every day,” said the priest, from the town of Venustiano Carranza in southern Mexico.Yet for all Andrade’s efforts, many locals remain unconvinced. “Their understanding is that these deaths are from the poison the mayor is spraying as part of the anti-dengue fumigation,” he said.The culprit for the confusion is fake news. As Latin America battles the advance of Covid-19, which has now claimed more than 160,000 lives in the region, it is also fending off a tsunami of online disinformation designed to bamboozle and deceive.From the Mexican state of Chiapas to Cearfl in Brazil, social networks are awash with quack cures and fantastical conspiracies that can carry an all-too-real human cost. The misinformation streaming through millions of Latin American mobile phones and computers ranges from the bizarre to the ridiculous. In recent weeks, there have been claims that Brazilian coffins were being filled with rocks to inflate the country’s Covid-19 death toll; that drones were being used to deliberately contaminate indigenous communities in Mexico; that the CIA was helping spread the coronavirus in Argentina; that seafood in northern Peru was not safe to eat because the corpses of Covid-19 victims were being dumped in the Pacific Ocean; and even that the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had been spotted boogying and boozingat a bar on the Sao Paulo coast.Many of the false claims include miracle Covid-19 cures including Peruvian sea water, Venezuelan lemongrass and elderberry tea and supernatural seeds being hawked by one Brazilian televangelist. In Bolivia, politicians have been promoting the use of a toxic bleaching agent as a potential cure – with panicked residents in the hard-hit city of Cochabamba reportedly lining up to buy the poisonous product. Yasodora Cordova, a Brazilian expert in online misinformation, said the tight-knit social groups that define Latin American society were one reason the region was such a “fertile ground” for fake news. Cordova, who has spent a decade studying online conspiracy theories, recalled how during the Zika epidemic viral YouTube videos falsely claimed the illness could be cured with honey or garlic, as has happened again this year with the coronavirus.
China reports its highest number of local Covid-19 infections since March – China recorded 57 local Covid-19 cases on Sunday, the highest number the country has seen since it brought the coronavirus largely under control in March, according to figures released by the National Health Commission on Monday.Among the locally transmitted cases, 41 were found in the far western region of Xinjiang, where the coronavirus resurfaced on July 15 after nearly five months of no new cases.The remaining cases were discovered in the country’s northeast, including 14 in Liaoning province and two in Jilin province.Sunday’s figure is the highest number of local infections the country has reported since March 6, surpassing the daily spikes during a coronavirus outbreak in Beijing last month.On Sunday, China also recorded four imported cases and 44 asymptomatic infections. The country does not include asymptomatic cases in its overall tally of confirmed infections. As of Monday, China has reported a total of 83,981 confirmed cases, including 4,634 deaths, according to the NHC.
Dozens of Australian schools shut down after coronavirus outbreaks — Just one week after the state Labor government in Victoria reopened schools for the beginning of term three, dozens of campuses have been forced to close after teachers and students became infected with coronavirus. According to a public list compiled by the Department of Education, 49 primary and secondary schools in Victoria have closed. Almost all of these are in Melbourne, Australia’s coronavirus epicentre. Teachers on social media have reported that other schools have been affected without being publicly identified, leaving the real tally unknown. According to the Age, since the initial phase of the pandemic in mid-March, 91 Victorian schools have closed after confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases. The worst affected remains Al-Taqwa College in the western working class suburb of Truganina, with 183 confirmed cases among staff and students. Several schools have also shut down in Sydney, the latest being Georges River Grammar School in Georges Hall. One student tested positive, while another 18 students and 4 staff are identified as close contacts. The situation is an indictment of state and federal governments, and the teacher unions, which agreed to the schools reopening and have worked to defuse escalating opposition and anger among school staff. Schools in Victoria were reopened last Monday, amid record levels of daily coronavirus cases. Year 11 and 12 students are continuing as usual, together with Year 10 students doing senior subjects. This cohort alone totals more than 100,000 young people. Every morning and afternoon, many of these are catching public transport across the city. At school there has been no reduction in class sizes, so between 20 and 30 young adults spend the day in a room together. Wearing a mask or face covering when in public is now compulsory in Melbourne, but teachers have been advised not to wear one while teaching. Students from Foundation to Year 10 have been asked to do remote learning from home, though there are many exemptions, including for children whose parents cannot work from home. Teachers have been told that they are expected to work from school, even if all of their students are learning from home. Individual principals have the discretion to allow or refuse teacher requests to work from home. This includes those who have pre-existing medical conditions, are pregnant, approaching retirement age, or who are otherwise especially vulnerable to COVID-19. Those forced to attend school are sharing staff room spaces, bathrooms, and are also compelled to attend multiple staff meetings each week.
Mounting COVID-19 deaths expose deep crisis in Australian aged care homes – The rapid spread of COVID-19 infections and deaths in aged care facilities across Melbourne, the capital of the Australian state of Victoria, is spiralling out of control. Of Victoria’s 51 deaths in the “second wave,” 31 have come from nursing homes. Staff and residents alike are contracting the virus in growing numbers, despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that the situation was “looking better” in Victoria. There are now more than 538 cases linked to at least 40 homes across the metropolitan area, with new outbreaks occurring daily. Of Victoria’s record number of 10 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, seven were linked to nursing homes. Doctors are warning that the aged care system in Victoria is on the verge of collapse because of protracted federal and state government under-funding and the reliance of operators on low-paid casual workers. Australian Medical Association national president Tony Bartone told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation today that “underfunding, workforce issues, guidelines, accreditations” and other failures “clearly underpin a lot of what’s happening now.” Bartone said: “You can’t really fix that in the middle of a pandemic,” adding: “The lack of trained appropriate aged care workers has been chronic in the industry.”
Coronavirus Is Back With a Vengeance in Places Where It Had All but Vanished – WSJ – Australia reported only a handful of new coronavirus cases in early June, while Hong Kong went three weeks without a single locally transmitted infection that month. Japan had already lifted a state of emergency in May after the number of new cases dropped to a few dozen nationwide.All three reported new high-water marks in daily infection numbers in the past week, showing how difficult it can be to keep the virus at bay, even in places lauded for taking early and decisive action.The number of infections in all three places are still small in comparison to the world’s hardest hit countries, but the fresh waves demonstrate the tricky balancing act authorities face as they attempt to reopen their economies.One misstep can quickly undo the gains from weeks of closures, and public-health experts say some complacency and fatigue with social-distancing restrictions is inevitable in a long pandemic.In Australia, the southeastern state of Victoria recorded 484 new cases on Jul. 22, eclipsing a nationwide high set in March. By Monday, the state’s daily infections had climbed to 532 – with most in the capital, Melbourne.”We reported only two cases on June 9, less than six weeks ago, and this shows how quickly outbreaks can occur and spread,” Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, Michael Kidd, said. Victoria has accumulated some 7,000 new cases since June 9. Japan has seen a similar resurgence. The seven-day average for daily new cases in Tokyo more than quadrupled this month to 258 as of Sunday. Across Japan, there were a record 981 cases recorded Thursday. The government has again moved to secure hotel rooms to quarantine the infected after releasing most of the rooms it had previously requisitioned. Facing the prospect of a protracted recession after a year of antigovernment protests followed by the pandemic, Hong Kong’s government gave every adult permanent resident $1,290 to encourage people to spend and revive the recession-hit economy. Since then, Hong Kong has racked up more than 1,300 new cases, 87% of them locally transmitted. Within days of the cash handouts reaching residents, renewed social distancing saw fresh closures or restrictions on gyms, bars and restaurants.
South Africa’s excess deaths surge as virus like ‘wildfire’ (AP) – Global hot spot South Africa is seeing a “huge discrepancy” between confirmed COVID-19 deaths and an unusually high number of excess deaths from natural causes, while Africa’s top health official said Thursday the coronavirus is spreading there “like wildfire.” A new report by the South African Medical Research Council, released late Wednesday, shows more than 17,000 excess deaths from May 6 to July 14 as compared to data from the past two years, while confirmed COVID-19 deaths have surpassed 6,000. “The numbers have shown a relentless increase – by the second week of July, there were 59% more deaths from natural causes than would have been expected,” the report says. The council’s president, Glenda Gray, said the excess deaths could be attributed to COVID-19 as well as other widespread diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis while many health resources are redirected toward the pandemic. Meanwhile, some South Africans are thought to be avoiding health facilities as fears of the new virus spread and public hospitals are overwhelmed. “The coronavirus storm has indeed arrived,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told the nation Thursday evening as cases surpassed 400,000. He announced that schools would “take a break” for a month to protect students. South Africa now has the world’s fifth largest caseload. It makes up more than half the confirmed cases on the African continent with 408,052.
Global death toll passes 650k as Belgian PM warns of total lockdown – as it happened -Here are the latest global coronavirus developments from the last few hours:
- Global virus deaths passed 650,000 as new surges prompt fresh curbs. More than 100,000 deaths have been recorded since 9 July, and the global toll has doubled in just over two months.
- Donald Trump wore a mask and talked up the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year in battleground state North Carolina. During a visit to a Fujifilm plant in Morrisville, the president wore a mask publicly for a second time and expressed confidence in the country’s economic recovery.
- Spain’s PM said the UK quarantine decision not justified.Britain’s decision to impose a two-week quarantine on people travelling from Spain is unfair, Pedro Sflnchez said. He added that the Spanish government is in touch with British authorities in a bid to get the country to reconsider its position.
- Google employees will work from home until at least summer 2021. The company will keep its employees home until at least next July, the Wall Street Journal reported, marking the largest tech firm to commit to such a timeline in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Lebanon reimposed severe Covid-19 restrictions for the next two weeks. It has shut places of worship, cinemas, bars, nightclubs, sports events and popular markets, after a sharp rise in infections.
- The International Monetary Fund approved $4.3bn in aid to South Africa to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic. The country’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, in June predicted the economy would shrink 7.2% in 2020, its deepest slump in 90 years.
- Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli issued scathing criticism of the Italian government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He said he was humiliated by a recent lockdown, surprise comments as the 61-year-old superstar was a symbol of national unity at the height of the lockdown.
Brazil’s first lady tests positive for COVID-19 Brazilian first lady Michelle Bolsonaro has tested positive for COVID-19 weeks after her husband, President Jair Bolsonaro, announced he had done the same. She is in “good health” and following established health protocols, according to a Wednesday statement. Michelle Bolsonaro is being monitored by a presidential medical team. The president and first lady on Wednesday attended a public event in Brasilia, where she wore a face mask while delivering remarks about an initiative for women in rural areas and indigenous communities, NPR reported. The news of Michelle Bolsonaro’s infection came on the same day that the country’s science and technology minister Marcos Pontes shared on Twitter that has also tested positive for coronavirus. Pontes is the fifth member of Bolsonaro’s Cabinet to contract the disease. Jair Bolsonaro said last week that he tested negative for coronavirus after announcing that he had contracted the disease on July 7. The leader has not avoided public events since the start of the pandemic and has repeatedly downplayed the effect of the disease. The Brazilian president also announced earlier this month that he was taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that has been touted by President Trump as a treatment for COVID-19.
India coronavirus deaths pass Italy’s as floods hamper battle India’s coronavirus death toll has passed 35,000, overtaking that of Italy, as floods affecting millions and killing almost 350 hamper the battle against the pandemic. With 779 deaths in 24 hours, the health ministry on Friday put the number of total fatalities at 35,743 – the world’s fifth-highest tally behind the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Mexico, according to Johns Hopkins University. Total infections in the world’s second-most populous country stand now at 1.63 million, surpassed only by the US and Brazil, both of which have much smaller populations. But many experts have cast doubt on India’s official numbers, saying authorities are not testing enough people and many coronavirus-linked deaths are not properly recorded. “Serological surveys that are being done around the country for antibodies are showing the real number of cases in India are much higher than the confirmed number,” Mumbai – home to 20 million people and the capital of India’s worst-hit state, Maharashtra – serological surveys showed “nearly 60 percent of people have had the virus”. Last week, a study indicated that almost a quarter of people in New Delhi have had the virus – nearly 40 times the official total. Meanwhile, floods caused by annual monsoon rains in eastern and northeastern India that have displaced tens of thousands of people have been hampering efforts to stop the coronavirus spreading. Floods have swamped large parts of the densely populated Bihar state and affected nearly four million people by Friday, stymieing the response to the pandemic. The floods have killed at least 24 people in the state, where the downpours have submerged thousands of villages in 12 districts and further strained the already fragile healthcare system. India set to surpass two million COVID-19 cases within days -While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other ministers in his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government continue to cynically claim that India, under their leadership, is mounting a “successful battle” against COVID-19, the virus is in fact rampaging across the country; and is now deeply entrenched in both India’s teeming cities and in rural areas, where health care facilities are all but non-existent.Currently, India is the country with the third highest number of infections in the world after the US and Brazil. Total infections have surged passed the grim milestone of 1.5 million. India is also currently sixth in terms of recorded COVID-19 deaths, with 34,191 fatalities. However, it is widely recognised that the figures provided by India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare fall well short of the true number of infections and deaths.Even going by the official figures, India has one of the most rapidly rising case counts in the world. Official cases have doubled within just 19 days, compared to 40 days in the US and 36 days in Brazil. During the last six days, India has reported nearly 50,000 new cases daily, including 49,292 cases on Tuesday. Over the past 12 days, half a million new infections have been registered. Leading epidemiologists and medical experts believe the impact of the pandemic is far greater than these figures suggest. In an interview with journalist Karan Thapar of The Wire on July 25, Bhramar Mukherjee, Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of Michigan, said that COVID-19 is surging like a “storm” across India. She expressed shock about the virus’ spread into villages with “fragile” health care systems. According to Mukherjee’s assessment, India has between 20 and 30 million undetected COVID-19 cases. Within six weeks, she believes the true number of infections will reach 100 million.
Hong Kong Cancels Fall Election As Coronavirus “Third Wave” Intensifies – Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam on Friday announced that the city state would postpone its elections set for the fall as the “third wave” of SARS-CoV-2 causes more outbreaks than the prior two waves (prompting HK to crack down on indoor dining/bars and impose the most restrictive social distancing measures yet).Here’s more from the SCMP:Hong Kong’s embattled leader has invoked emergency powers to postpone the Legislative Council elections scheduled for Septe mber 6, citing health risks from the resurgent Covid-19 crisis as the primary reason.Flanked by the ministers for justice, health and constitutional affairs, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor told a press conference on Friday evening the decision was the most difficult she had made in the last seven months.“Since January, we have been fighting the pandemic for seven months. This pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to our economy,” she said.”We have not been complacent. We need to be on high alert all the time and respond.“We are facing a serious situation … The World Health Organisation’s chief recently said we sometimes need to make some hard choices, and my decision today is the hardest of all.”Lam said she was invoking the Emergency Regulations Ordinance in doing so, and her decision was supported by the central government.
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