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 down 15% and deaths down about 5%. New cases globally are continuing nearly flat and deaths are down slightly. But all the data seems too high, considering we’re heading into the school year and then the flu season. Economic news related to COVID-19 is found here.
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COVID-19 now No. 3 cause of death in US – COVID-19 is currently the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., eight months after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country. The coronavirus is behind only heart disease and cancer among causes of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “COVID is now the No. 3 cause of death in the U.S. – ahead of accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and many, many other causes,” Thomas Frieden, former director of the CDC, told CNN on Monday. The U.S. has confirmed more than 5.4 million cases of COVID-19, leading to at least 170,434 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The country has been recording an average of more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths per day over the past three weeks, according to New York Times data. Daughter of Trump voter who died of COVID-19 addresses Democratic… Sharon Stone blames ‘non-mask wearers’ for sister, brother-in-law… Frieden also told CNN that the rate of death in the U.S. is higher than in several other countries. Last week, Americans were eight times more likely than Europeans to die from the coronavirus. The news comes as testing has fallen by about an average of 68,000 per day, the COVID Tracking Project has found, and 15 states conducted fewer tests this week than last week. But more than 30 states still have test positivity rates of more than 5 percent, the World Health Organization’s recommended rate before economic reopenings.
Flu and Covid: winter could bring ‘double-barrel’ outbreak to US, experts say – Public health experts, researchers and manufacturers warn the coming flu season could bring a “double-barrel” respiratory disease outbreak in the United States, just as fall and winter are expected to exacerbate the spread of Covid-19. At the same time, researchers said the strategies currently used to prevent Covid-19 transmission – namely, hand-washing, mask-wearing and social distancing – could also help lessen flu outbreaks, if Americans are willing to practice them. “We will be faced with basically a double-barrel respiratory virus season, both influenza and Covid,” said Dr William Schaffner, medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee. Flu season typically peaks between December and February in the northern hemisphere. It caused an estimated 61,000 deaths and 810,000 hospitalizations in 2019 in the US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By comparison, Covid-19 has killed more than 166,000 people in the US with months to go before the end of the year, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. The disease hospitalized an estimated 293,000 people just between March and May 2020, according to the healthcare consulting firm Avalere. Those deaths and infections also occurred despite huge efforts – such as shutting down large parts of the US economy – being put into action to slow the virus’s path. While the flu’s seasonality is not clearly understood, the way it spreads is well documented. Flu is transmitted in much the same way Covid-19 spreads: coughs, sputters and sneezes in close proximity in closed spaces and in crowds. For those reasons, social distancing measures are effective against influenza as well as Covid-19 and were practiced during the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. When community spread of Covid-19 began in the United States in March, widespread shutdowns shaved “four to six weeks” off the flu season in 2020, said Dr Richard Kennedy, co-director of the Mayo Clinic’s vaccine research lab. That was “probably as a direct result of the social distancing and the mask-wearing and the shutdown,” said Kennedy. A similar phenomenon is taking place in the southern hemisphere, where winter flu season is now tapering off. Countries such as Chile have seen historically low influenza transmission.
COVID-19 Makes Getting a Flu Shot More Important Than Ever – With the coronavirus still spreading widely, it’s time to start thinking seriously about influenza, which typically spreads in fall and winter. A major flu outbreak would not only overwhelm hospitals this fall and winter, but also likely overwhelm a person who might contract both at once.Doctors have no way of knowing yet what the effect of a dual diagnosis might be on a person’s body, but they do know the havoc that the flu alone can do to a person’s body. And, we know the U.S. death toll of COVID-19 as of Aug. 17, 2020 was 170,000, and doctors are learning more each day about the effects of the disease on the body. Public health officials in the U.S. are therefore urging people to get the flu vaccine, which is already being shipped in many areas to be ready for September vaccinations.Flu cases are expected to start increasing early in October and could last late into May. This makesSeptember and early October the ideal time to get your flu shot.But there’s reason to be concerned that flu vaccination rates could be lower this year than in past years, even though the risk of getting seriously ill may be higher because of widespread circulation of the coronavirus.In an effort to avoid getting sick, millions of Americans avoided seeing their health care provider the past few months. Social distancing and stay-at-home orders have resulted in a decreased use of routine medical preventive services such as vaccinations. Many employers that often provide the flu shot at no cost to employees are allowing employees to work from home, potentially limiting the number of people who will get the flu shot at their jobs. As a health care professional, I urge everyone to get the flu vaccine in September. Please do not wait for flu cases to start to peak. The flu vaccine takes up to two weeks to reach peak effectiveness, so getting the vaccine in September will help provide the best protection as the flu increases in October and later in the season.
Federal and state websites flunk COVID-19 reading-level review – Information about COVID-19 offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House, and state health departments failed to meet recommendations for communicating with the public, according to a Dartmouth study.The review of written web content during the onset of COVID-19 demonstrates that official information about the virus might have been too complex for a general audience. On average, government sources communicated about three grades higher than the reading level recommended by existing guidelines for clear communication.The research, which also analyzed international health web pages, appears as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal published by the American Medical Association.”How public health information is presented can influence understanding of medical recommendations,” said Joseph Dexter, a fellow at Dartmouth’s Neukom Institute for Computational Science and senior author on the study. “During a pandemic it is vital that potentially lifesaving guidance be accessible to all audiences.”The U.S. Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires that “federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use.” The CDC, the American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health all recommend that medical information for the public should be written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level.After studying 137 web pages from federal and state sources, the team found that communications about COVID-19 averaged just over an 11th-grade reading level. According to the study, information shared by the CDC and other U.S. sources during the onset of COVID-19 exceeded recommendations on the number of words in a sentence, word size, and the use of difficult terms related to public health.
Measure the risk of airborne COVID-19 in your office, classroom, or bus ride – AMID THE PANDEMIC, once normal activities are now peppered with questions and concerns. Can kids go back to crowded schools? Is it safe to eat dinner with friends? Should we worry about going for a run? A recent modeling effort may help provide some clues. Led by Jose-Luis Jimenez at the University of Colorado Boulder, the charts below estimate the riskiness of different activities based on one potential route of coronavirus spread: itty-bitty particles known as aerosols. (Read more about what “airborne coronavirus” means and how to protect yourself). Coughing, singing, talking, or even breathing sends spittle flying in a range of sizes. The closer you are to the spewer, the greater the chance of exposure to large, virus-laden droplets that can be inhaled or land in your eyes. But many scientists have also grown concerned about the potential risks of aerosols – the smallest of these particles – which may float across rooms and cause infections. It’s a worry that’s greatest where ventilation is poor and airborne particulates could build. While the World Health Organization recently acknowledged that aerosol transmission cannot be ruled out for some situations, they emphasized more research is needed to conclusively demonstrate its role in the spread of the virus. “We do not have a ton of information, but we cannot afford to wait for a ton of information,” Jimenez says. The new model incorporates what is known about the coronavirus’s spread from case reports of potential airborne transmission, such as the Washington choir practice where one person was linked to dozens of other infections during a 2.5-hour rehearsal. It’s further calibrated based on studies that attempt to untangle how much virus people emit while performing activities that involve exhalation. An important note: the model does not account for how the risk increases with closer proximity, where droplet and aerosol concentrations will be higher, or for people touching their eyes or noses with contaminated hands.
Cloth Masks Do Protect the Wearer – Breathing in Less Coronavirus Means You Get Less Sick – Masks slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by reducing how much infected people spray the virus into the environment around them when they cough or talk. Evidence from laboratory experiments,hospitals and whole countries show that masks work, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends face coverings for the U.S. public. With all this evidence, mask wearing has become the norm in many places.I am an infectious disease doctor and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. As governments and workplaces began to recommend or mandate mask wearing, my colleagues and I noticed an interesting trend. In places where most people wore masks, those who did get infected seemed dramatically less likely to get severely ill compared to places with less mask-wearing.It seems people get less sick if they wear a mask.When you wear a mask – even a cloth mask – you typically are exposed to a lower dose of the coronavirus than if you didn’t. Both recent experiments in animal models using coronavirus and nearly a hundred years of viral research show that lower viral doses usually means less severe disease.No mask is perfect, and wearing one might not prevent you from getting infected. But it might be the difference between a case of COVID-19 that sends you to the hospital and a case so mild you don’t even realize you’re infected. When you breathe in a respiratory virus, it immediately begins hijacking any cells it lands near to turn them into virus production machines. The immune system tries to stop this process to halt the spread of the virus. The amount of virus that you’re exposed to – called the viral inoculum, or dose – has a lot to do with how sick you get. If the exposure dose is very high, the immune response can become overwhelmed. Between the virus taking over huge numbers of cells and the immune system’s drastic efforts to contain the infection, a lot of damage is done to the body and a person can become very sick. On the other hand, if the initial dose of the virus is small, the immune system is able to contain the virus with less drastic measures. If this happens, the person experiences fewer symptoms, if any. Many animal studies have shown that the higher the dose of a virus you give an animal, the more sick it becomes. In 2015, researchers tested this concept in human volunteers using a nonlethal flu virus and found the same result. The higher the flu virus dose given to the volunteers, the sicker they became.In July, researchers published a paper showing that viral dose was related to disease severity in hamsters exposed to the coronavirus. Hamsters who were given a higher viral dose got more sick than hamsters given a lower dose. Based on this body of research, it seems very likely that if you are exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the lower the dose, the less sick you will get.
Young People Are Primary Coronavirus Spreaders, WHO Warns – The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a blunt warning as many schools and universities around the world grapple with how to reopen safely: young people are the main spreaders of the coronavirus, according to a news briefing hosted by the WHO on Tuesday. “People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are increasingly driving the spread,” Takeshi Kasai, the WHO’s Western Pacific regional director, said at the briefing. “The epidemic is changing.” Many colleges are noticing that trend anecdotally. Just after re-opening for in person education, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill had to transition to remote learning after outbreaks occurred in fraternities and residence halls. The University of Notre Dame in Indiana also announced that it was going fully remote for the next two weeks after a surge of infections around campus. “In just the past week (Aug. 10-16), we have seen COVID-19 positivity rate rise from 2.8 percent to 13.6 percent at Campus Health,” said Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Vice Chancellor Robert Brown in a letter about a week after classes started, as CNN reported. “As of this morning, we have tested 954 students and have 177 in isolation and 349 in quarantine, both on and off campus,” the letter said. At Appalachian State University, a cluster of positive cases was found around the football team. Iowa State University identified 175 positive cases when students were moving in, according to CNN. Michigan State University also said it will go remote for the first semester after 187 students tested positive for the virus. The surge in cases among those considered least at-risk is happening around the world, according to the WHO. In the Philippines and in Australia, more than half the confirmed cases are from people under 40. In Japan, 65 percent of positive infections were from people in the first half of their lives as well, as The Washington Post reported. The findings from the WHO echo a July 2020 study from South Korea, which found that teens and tweens were the most likely to spread the novel coronavirus, as EcoWatch reported at the time. The WHO findings were based on an analysis of roughly 6 million international cases that spanned from late February to mid-July. The numbers showed an uptick in the proportion of children and young adults infected. “While we see differences across regions, we do see a consistent shift towards more younger people being reported among COVID-19 cases,” the WHO told Al Jazeera. The largest increase was observed in the 15-24 age group, which grew from grew from 4.5 to 15 percent of the total positive infections in the data set, according to Al Jazeera. “This increases the risk of spillovers to the most vulnerable: the elderly, the sick, people in long-term care, people who live in densely populated urban areas and underserved rural areas,”
Virus Vaccine Rush Leaves Little Recourse for Anyone It Harms -Americans who suffer adverse reactions to coronavirus vaccines that the U.S. is racing to develop will have a hard time getting compensated for injuries from the drugs.That’s because pandemic-related claims for vaccines will be routed to a rarely used federal program set up to encourage drugmakers to help combat public health emergencies. It spares pharmaceutical and device makers from costly liability lawsuits in exchange for taxpayers compensating injured patients — though it doesn’t guarantee there’s funding to do so. Since it began in 2009, the program has paid out less than $6 million, and it has yet to receive any dedicated U.S. government funding for Covid-19. “In the best case scenario, this is going to be a big deal,” said Richard Topping, a former Justice Department attorney who represented the U.S. during disputes over the debunked link between vaccines and autism in children. “Worst case scenario? It will be a crisis.” President Donald Trump is pushing drugmakers to develop a Covid-19 vaccine in record time under an initiative known as Operation Warp Speed that seeks to deliver 300 million doses by January 2021. However, most Americans are unlikely to actuallyreceive a shot until much later next year, according to U.S. top infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci. As the U.S. vies to be first, Russia this week said it will soon start mass inoculations — even though safety and efficacy tests on its vaccine aren’t complete, causing concern in public health experts.
Mild COVID-19 cases can produce strong T cell response – Mild cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can trigger robust memory T cell responses, even in the absence of detectable virus-specific antibody responses, researchers report August 14 in the journal Cell. The authors say that memory T cell responses generated by natural exposure to or infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–the virus that causes COVID-19–may be a significant immune component to prevent recurrent episodes of severe disease. “We are currently facing the biggest global health emergency in decades,” says senior author Marcus Buggert (@marcus_buggert) of the Karolinska Institutet. “In the absence of a protective vaccine, it is critical to determine if exposed or infected people, especially those with asymptomatic or very mild forms of the disease who likely act inadvertently as the major transmitters, develop robust adaptive immune responses against SARS-CoV-2.” To date, there is limited evidence of reinfection in humans with previously documented COVID-19. Most studies of immune protection against SARS-CoV-2 in humans have focused on the induction of neutralizing antibodies. But antibody responses tend to wane and are not detectable in all patients, especially those with less severe forms of COVID-19. Research in mice has shown that vaccine-induced memory T cell responses, which can persist for many years, protect against the related virus SARS-CoV-1, even in the absence of detectable antibodies. Until now, it was not clear how SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses relate to antibody responses or to the clinical course of COVID-19 in humans.
We now have the best evidence yet that everyone develops long-term coronavirus immunity after infection – and it’s not just about antibodies – Scientists may now have an answer to one of the most crucial lingering questions about COVID-19: whether people develop long-term immunity. Early research suggested that coronavirus antibodies – blood proteins that protect the body from subsequent infections – could fade within months. But in their concern about those findings’ implications, many people failed to consider our immune system’s multilayered defense against invading pathogens. Specifically, they discounted the role of white blood cells, which have impressive powers of recollection that can help your body mount another attack against the coronavirus should it ever return. Memory T cells are an especially key type, since they identify and destroy infected cells and inform B cells about how to craft new virus-targeting antibodies. A study published Friday in the journal Cell suggests that everyone who gets COVID-19 – even people with mild or asymptomatic cases – develops T cells that can hunt down the coronavirus if they get exposed again later. “Memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19,” the study authors wrote, adding that they “may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19.” That’s because memory T cells can stick around for years, while antibody levels drop following an infection. The authors of the new study examined blood from 206 people in Sweden who had COVID-19 with varying degrees of severity. They found that regardless of whether a person had recovered from a mild or severe case, they still developed a robust T-cell response. Even coronavirus patients who did not test positive for antibodies developed memory T cells, the results showed.
Preparing for the COVID-19 Third Wave: The Case for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy – Hypoxia is the main cause of death for COVID-19 patients. Patients cannot get enough oxygen at the tissue level, leading to pulmonary fibrosis and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). It is similar to a mountain climber’s disease – high altitude pulmonary edema – where liquids build up in the lungs and thus prevents oxygen from circulating from the lungs to the blood. Without oxygen, this dangerous condition, hypoxia, according to WebMD website, leads to damage to brain, liver, and other organs. With COVID-19, a second major cause of death comes with what is known as the cytokine storm syndrome. This inflammatory response mechanism is still not clear but appears to occur when proteins are released during one’s immune response to the disease. That can contribute to the morbidity by attacking and killing the body’s own cells. Treatments of COVID-19 hypoxia has typically involved the use of anti-inflammatory drugs, such as corticosteroids or those used for rheumatoid arthritis and Still’s disease, 7 a rare inflammatory arthritis. Some of the drugs have a long half-life in the body, and it is “possible to have significant side effects,” In any case, the drugs administered might not succeed alone, and then the patient might be placed on oxygen through a mask and administered high flow oxygen therapy (HFOT). HFOT is another method of non-invasive respiratory support. A patient that is not improving following those steps typically then is placed on invasive mechanical ventilation. An advanced treatment measure for those who get so sick that even mechanical ventilators cannot keep them alive is a radical option called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). It is a form of lung and sometimes heart bypass that allows for the insertion of tubes into a patient’s blood vessels, which is used to remove the venous blood, that is then run through an artificial lung which then pushes oxygen rich blood back into the body. Patient’s survival rate is 50% or lower, and only 264 hospitals in the USA out of 6,000 are capable of performing this procedure.9 Still another approach to combating COVID-19 is passive antibody administration in a treatment known as convalescing plasma therapy (CPT) in which the antibodies in a recovered COVID-19 patient’s whole blood or plasma is taken to treat another COVID-19 patient; if administered early the hope is in 10 to 14 days, the patient develops primary immunity against the virus. During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, a therapy was indeed found that showed effectiveness against the influenza. “In 1918 Dr. Orval Cunningham of Kansas City was brought a dying friend of a fellow physician. With just a one-hour treatment with compressed air at 1.68 atmospheres absolute, the patient experienced improvement. Combined with additional hyperbaric treatments over the next 3 days this patient’s life was saved. Others followed.”11Known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), it is “a process in which your entire body is exposed to oxygen under increased atmospheric pressure.”12It typically involves a mono-place chamber suitable for one patient, or a multi-place chamber a room, capable of holding two hospital gurneys and/or seats for up to a dozen patients.13
A look within cytokine storms – One of the most severe manifestations of COVID-19 is Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition in which the lungs can’t provide enough oxygen to the body’s vital organs. A subgroup of COVID-19 patients sustain a dangerous inflammatory response known as a ‘cytokine storm’ that causes ARDS and damage to other organs.“Cytokine storms likely contribute to a substantial portion of those infected who require hospitalization for respiratory distress, and certainly those with multi-organ dysfunction,” says Randy Cron, a rheumatologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.Cytokine storms can be brought on by infectious and autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and arthritis. Regardless of their trigger, they are characterized by high levels of pro-inflammatory molecules that cause the immune system to damage normal tissues. Clinicians can adopt various strategies to reduce these storms – using glucocorticoids for broad immunosuppression, for example. Dexamethasone has improved survival rates in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. More targeted anti-cytokine approaches, using monoclonal antibodies against the cytokines Interleukin-1 (IL-1) or Interleukin 6 (IL-6), approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, are also showing promise. The race to find new treatments for COVID-19, has also brought cell therapy to the forefront. “Recent trials hinted that the anti-inflammatory effects of mesenchymal stem cell injection might reduce lung injury and mortality in non-viral induced ARDS,” says Maroun Khoury, a cell biologist at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile. “It is too early to say whether this approach will work in COVID-19 patients, but the increasing number of registered cell therapy-based trials highlights the growing interest in exploring stem cells as a potential therapy,” he adds. However, the decision to pharmacologically immunosuppress a critically unwell patient with COVID-19 remains a difficult one. The possible beneficial effects of reducing inflammation need to be carefully weighed against the potential promotion of further infection, which would complicate the course of disease.
U.S. coronavirus death toll hits 170,000 ahead of fall flu season (Reuters) – The United States surpassed 170,000 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, as health officials express concerns over COVID-19 complicating the fall flu season. Deaths rose by 483 on Sunday, with Florida, Texas and Louisiana, leading the rise in fatalities. The United States has at least 5.4 million confirmed cases in total of the novel coronavirus, the highest in the world and likely an undercount as the country still has not ramped up testing to the recommended levels. Cases are falling in most states except for Hawaii, South Dakota and Illinois. Public health officials and authorities are concerned about a possible fall resurgence in cases amid the start of the flu season, which will likely exacerbate efforts to treat the coronavirus. Centers for Disease Control Director Robert Redfield warned the United States may be in for its “worst fall” if the public does not follow health guidelines in an interview with Web MD. Months into the pandemic, the U.S. economic recovery from the recession triggered by the outbreak is still staggered, with some hot spots slowing their reopenings and others shutting down businesses. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is anticipating an uptick in COVID-19 cases in the coming months, resulting in around 300,000 total deaths by December, and a nearly 75% increase in hospitalizations. Worldwide there are at least 21.5 million coronavirus cases and over 765,000 confirmed deaths. The United States remains the global epicenter of the virus, with around a quarter of the cases and deaths.
COVID-19 updates: Texas approaches 10,000 deaths as Dallas County reports thousands of cases from state backlog – Dallas County officials said they were notified of an additional 5,195 cases from the past six months by state officials Saturday due a backlog in state data. Nearly 10,000 people have died in Texas from COVID-19 since tracking began in March, state officials reported Sunday, as state data backlogs continue to plague counties’ tracing efforts. Roughly 1.75% of all Texans have tested positive for COVID-19 so far. Of them:
- 9,983 people have died
- 399,572 have recovered
- At least 125,487 people across the state are considered active cases
Counties across the state have been reporting large backlogs of data from Texas officials for the past few days, with Dallas County officials reporting 5,195 additional cases Sunday from the past six months. The majority of the Dallas County cases were from people who tested positive in July: 4,298. The rest were as follows:
- 13 people in March
- 149 in April
- 80 more people in May
- 52 in June
- Another 603 in August so far
Dallas County officials said there were 166 new cases Sunday, with one additional death after a Dallas man in his 50s died. He had been critically ill in a local hospital and had had underlying high-risk health conditions. The combined new numbers raise the county’s cumulative total to 63,428 people who have tested positive since tracking began in March, with 825 deaths, officials said.
Texas becomes 4th state to surpass 10,000 virus deaths (AP) — Texas surpassed 10,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths Monday as the lingering toll of a massive summer outbreak continues, and health experts expressed concerns that recent encouraging trends could be fragile as schools begin reopening for 5 million students across the state.Roughly four in every five of those deaths were reported after June 1. Texas embarked on one of the fastest reopenings in the country in May before an ensuing surge in cases led Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to backtrack and impose a statewide mask order. August has seen an improving outlook, although Texas officials are now concerned that not enough people are seeking tests.The Texas Department of State Health Services reported 51 new deaths Monday, along with more than 2,700 new cases, Numbers are typically lower on Monday due to reporting lags over the weekends.Texas joins New York, New Jersey and California as the other states to surpass 10,000 coronavirus deaths. Florida is also approaching the grim milestone.Hundreds of new deaths have been reported daily in Texas over recent weeks, dampening otherwise positive signs that include hospitalizations falling off by the thousands since July and the rate of positive cases on the decline. Many of the most recent deaths reported actually occurred weeks ago since Texas doesn’t add them to the state’s tally until death certificates are filed. Abbott is now urging Texans not to grow complacent as the numbers improve and schools and universities reopen. Already elsewhere in the U.S., new virus clusters have sprung up at the start of the fall semester, some of them linked to off-campus parties and packed clubs.
Notre Dame Moves To Virtual Classes; Texas COVID-19 Cases Bounce Back- The University of Notre Dame just joined UNC by suspending in-person classes amid growing outcry from students and the community about the dangers of COVID-19. The university has reportedly seen a “steady increase” in tests positivity rates. The shift will last for at least the next 2 weeks. said it will suspend in-person classes and shift to remote learning for the next two weeks because of a “steady increase” in virus positivity rates. ND said 147 people have tested positive since Aug. 3, many of whom were seniors who lived off campus and spread the virus at gatherings, according to the university’s website. The move comes a day after UNC, one of the biggest colleges to attempt in-person learning, said it would shift to online classes because of a spike in cases. Meanwhile, in the states, Texas’s new-case count climbed by 7,282 on Tuesday to 550,232, according to state health department data. The increase was almost triple the day-earlier addition, though Monday tallies tend to be the smallest of the week because of a falloff in weekend testing. There were 216 new fatalities, bringing the cumulative total to 10,250. Coronavirus cases in the US increased 0.8% to 5.46 million compared with the same time a day earlier. Florida has just reported its latest batch of COVID-19 cases, with 3,838 new cases reported, along with 219 new deaths and 501 new hospitalizations, bringing the state’s totals to 579,932 cases, 9,893 deaths and 34,695 hospital admissions. There are now 146,990 confirmed cases in Miami-Dade County, 67,193 cases in Broward, and 39,460, in Palm Beach. State officials tallied the positivity rate at roughly 8%.
Georgia, Texas and Florida lead the country in coronavirus cases per capita – After adjusting for population, US states in the South and West continue to report the most daily coronavirus cases even after declines over the past few weeks. Per capita, Georgia has reported the most cases per day over a seven-day average of any state, followed by Texas and Florida. The states are led by governors who pushed to reopen during the spring, saw major summer surges of cases and are currently pushing to reopen schools. Texas has issued a mandate requiring face masks, while Florida and Georgia have not. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has gone so far as to keep cities from making stricter rules and has sued the city of Atlanta for trying to require face masks. Georgia has allowed restaurants, bars and gyms to open at limited capacity. A White House Coronavirus Task Force report dated August 16 and obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) recommends that Georgia do more to fight coronavirus. The report comes as colleges are quickly learning it may be next to impossible to create a coronavirus-free environment on campus. Across the US, the virus continues to spread at high rates. The seven-day average of daily new coronavirus cases in the US declined on Monday to 49,000, the first time it’s been below 50,000 since July 6. Still, worldwide, that average daily total is surpassed only by India, which has four times the number of people. The US’s seven-day average of new deaths has been over 1,000 per day for the past 23 days. In Florida, officials reported deaths of more than 200 people in a day Tuesday — for at least the 10th time in the past month. More than 5.5 million Americans have been infected since the start of the pandemic and at least 172,000 have died.
Bill Cassidy Becomes 2nd Senator To Test Positive For COVID-19- Live Updates -CNN just reported that Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has tested positive for COVID-19, his office said Thursday. He plans to quarantine for 14 days. He’s only the second Senator, after Republican Rand Paul, to test positive, though roughly a dozen House members have tested positive, while dozens more have been forced to quarantine for a number of reasons. At least two governors, the governors of Oklahoma and Ohio, have tested positive as well. Johnson & Johnson is planning to test its anti-COVID-19 vaccine on 60,000 people worldwide, the largest vaccine trial anywhere to date.In what was no doubt welcome news for the market, the Phase 3 trials, which are set to begin by September, are double the size of other vaccine tests. Dow Jones quoted a J&J spokesman as saying it wanted “to enroll a robust number of participants who are representative of those populations affected by COVID-19.”The trials will run in 28 US states with high transmission rates, and eight hard-hit nations (including Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa and of course the US0.Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation making it easier for New Yorkers to submit absentee ballots to encourage people to vote who are afraid of being exposed to the coronavirus.The new law was inspired by Trump’s “undermining” of the Post Office. The new law allows people who fear infection to request an absentee ballot, and outlines rules for counting votes by when they are postmarked or received.Virus cases in England increased by more than a quarter in the week through Aug. 12, underscoring the risks facing BoJo’s government as it tries to boost economic activity without triggering a new peak in the pandemic.Two in the Mets organization have tested positive, prompting the team to cancel tomorrow’s subway series opener against the Yankees, Thursday’s game vs the virus-plagued Marlins has also been postponed. Are the Mets really sick? Or is this just some kind of ploy to beat back Steve Cohen?
Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, who represents part of the Coal Region, says he tested positive for the coronavirus – U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser said Saturday that he has tested positive for COVID-19, making him the second federal lawmaker from Pennsylvania to announce a positive diagnosis amid the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesman for Meuser, a Republican whose 9th District includes Carbon and Schuylkill counties, said Saturday afternoon that the lawmaker was “feeling fine,” and that he has contacted everyone he interacted with during the last 72 hours.“I have been following all [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] health and safety guidelines, and will be taking all necessary actions, including postponing upcoming public events and working from home in quarantine until I receive a negative test result,” Meuser said in a statement. “I am thankful to God that my grown children were not at home and that my wife Shelley has tested negative.”The test result means Meuser was not on Capitol Hill Saturday, where House lawmakers were voting on legislation to boost funding for the U.S. Postal Service and prohibit operational changes that could delay mail service, affecting ballots in the presidential election.
Allegheny County posts covid-19 case increase in triple digits – Coronavirus cases in the triple digits were reported Thursday in Allegheny County, a day after the county had its lowest number of new covid-19 cases in almost two months. The death toll in the county grew Thursday, as well, with one new death reported. There were 100 new cases reported Thursday by the Allegheny County Health Department, after just 27 were reported Wednesday. New cases have stayed under 100 for most of the month, having now reached triple digits just three times in August. The new cases come from 1,648 test results that span June 23-Aug. 19, with the county saying all but three specimen collection dates were from the past week. Ages for new cases, of which 96 are confirmed and four probable, range from 2 to 91, with a median age of 44. The new covid-19 death was a person in their 70s with a date of death of Aug. 12. Allegheny County’s death total is now 298 and case total is now 9,676. As of Thursday, there are currently 94 covid-19 patients hospitalized in Allegheny County, 21 of which are on ventilators, according to the state’s dashboard. The county estimates 6,627 covid-19 cases have recovered, according to health department data. At a Wednesday news conference, Health Director Dr. Debra Bogen said that during the surge in positive cases in July, the health department reassigned staff members who had been in charge of maintaining hospitalization data to work as case investigators and contact tracers. Bogen said the county now is in the process of entering a “backlog” of data on older hospitalizations into its database. Many of the hospitalizations occurred in July. “We didn’t feel like a new daily number of past or present hospitalizations that included many hospitalizations from last month would be beneficial,” Bogen said.
Coronavirus in Ohio Friday update: 1,043 new cases, 26 additional deaths – The Ohio Department of Health has released the latest number of COVID-19 cases in the state. As of Friday, August 21, a total of 113,046 (+1,043) cases were reported in Ohio since the pandemic began, leading to 3,955 (+26) deaths and 12,719 (+104) hospitalizations. The Department of Health adds the data when it is informed of a case or death. The information is backdated to the actual date the person started exhibiting symptoms or the date the person died. Governor Mike DeWine opened Thursday’s briefing with a look at the latest numbers. He remarked that after three straight days of fewer than 1,000 cases, we are now over 1,000. The governor revealed the latest map of counties under the Ohio Public Health Advisory System. All central Ohio counties, other than Franklin, are no longer red. 3 central Ohio counties drop out of Level 3, Franklin County still red but ‘edging down’ DeWine said Franklin County is trending down and may no longer be red by next week. Governor DeWine says once again, we’ve seen a fundamental shift with cases going up in the rural communities. DeWine says adult day centers and senior centers may open, beginning September 21, in a reduced capacity if they can meet certain standards. On Wednesday, DeWine announced the signing of a health order that provides guidelines for Ohio sports to move forward this fall. Gov. DeWine announces signature of health order on fall sports DeWine added schools will also be allowed to play fall sports in the spring if that’s what they decide to do. No spectators will be allowed, other than family members or those ‘very close’ to the particular child.
Sturgis motorcycle rally: At least 7 Covid-19 cases in Nebraska tied to the South Dakota event – Coronavirus cases linked to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota last week have now reached across state lines to Nebraska, public health officials said. At least seven Covid-19 cases in Nebraska’s Panhandle region have been tied to the rally, Kim Engel, director of the Panhandle Public Health District, confirmed in an email to CNN. The department said that contact tracing had been completed, and declined to comment further. The cases that have appeared in Nebraska are the latest to be connected to the 80th annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, which took place August 7-16. South Dakota state health officials announced Thursday that a person who worked at a tattoo shop in Sturgis had tested positive for the virus, and could have possibly exposed people during the event last week. The person was an employee of Asylum Tattoo Sturgis, and could have spread the virus to others on August 13-17 from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., officials said. Earlier this week, officials said a person who spent hours at a bar during the rally had also tested positive. That individual visited One-Eyed Jack’s Saloon in Sturgis on August 11 from noon to 5:30 p.m. while able to transmit the virus to others, health officials said. Anyone who visited either the tattoo shop or the saloon, which are located at the same address, during that period should monitor for symptoms for 14 days after the visit. Health experts were concerned that this year’s Sturgis motorcycle rally could be a “super spreader” event. The 10-day mass gathering typically draws crowds of more than 500,000 people from all over the country, including coronavirus hotspots. South Dakota Department of Transportation officials tracked more than 462,000 vehicles entering Sturgis during the rally. Though the total was a 7.5% decline from the previous year, it is still one of the largest mass gatherings since the start of the pandemic. Many of the attendees did not comply with health guidelines such as wearing masks and keeping distance from others, as seen at a concert for the rock band Smash Mouth. A little more than 60% of people in Sturgis voted against holding the motorcyle event. But city officials said they felt they wouldn’t have been able to stop the crowds from coming in and instead opted to prepare for the event as best they could. South Dakota reported 193 new cases on Friday. It’s one of several US states that have seen an increase in new cases this past week compared to the week prior, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Bill Gates: Millions more will die in this pandemic, and ‘freedom’ hinders the disappointing U.S. response – Almost 800,000 people around the world have already died from COVID-19, according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins University and Microsoft MSFT, -0.72% co-founder Bill Gates predicts that “the worst is still ahead” and the death toll will ultimately rise by millions.Emerging markets, where health-care systems and economies are already struggling, is where the pain will be most pronounced, he explained in a recent interview in the Economist.But the U.S. is dealing with its own unique set of issues, as politics and conspiracy theories have contributed to what he said has been a disappointing response. Why? In the name of freedom. ‘We believe in freedom, individual freedom. We optimize for individual rights.’According to Gates, Trump supporters have wielded “freedom” to make a political statement that continues to complicate the U.S. response to the pandemic. Refusing to wear a mask, for instance, is one way for them to signal their anger and resistance. Will that change if Joe Biden wins the presidency? Don’t count on it. “I don’t think a change in administrations will get people to wear masks,” Gates said. “It’s hard to see how we build that trust network and improved behavior. It’ll mostly be incremental.”It’s more than that, though. Gates explained that the U.S. was unprepared from the beginning, as testing efforts were slow to make an impact once the virus began to spread.China, on the other hand, “did a very good job of suppressing the virus,” thanks, in part, to the “typical, fairly authoritarian” approach and the “individual rights that were violated,” he said. The good news is that Gates is looking for the pandemic to pass by the end of 2021, as a reasonably effective vaccine should be in mass production by then. Watch the full 42-minute interview, which was posted on Wednesday:
US Coronavirus: Covid-19 deaths should start dropping across US by next week, CDC chief says – CNN – Covid-19 deaths in the US should start dropping around parts of the country by next week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director said, as Americans stick to mitigation efforts that help curb the spread of the virus. So far, more than 5.5 million Americans have been infected and at least 174,255 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country’s seven-day average for daily deaths has topped 1,000 for at least 24 days in a row. Mitigation measures like controlling crowds and shutting down bars work, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Thursday, but it takes time until they’re reflected in the numbers. “It is important to understand these interventions are going to have a lag, that lag is going to be three to four weeks,” Redfield said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Hopefully this week and next week you’re going to start seeing the death rate really start to drop.” The daily average of new cases in the US has been on the decline for weeks. Redfield’s message comes as one Trump administration official said Covid-19 case trends are now “going in the right direction.” But Redfield warned that while officials have observed cases fall across red zones in the country, cases in yellow zones across the heart of the US aren’t falling.
COVID-19 hits U.S. mink farms after ripping through Europe – COVID-19 has now struck mink farms in the United States, too. Yesterday, roughly 10 days after farmers in Utah reported a rash of mink deaths, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed the SARS-CoV-2 virus had infected the weasellike mammals, which are raised for their fur. Infections of mink have already been documented in other countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain. In June, authorities in these countries gassed hundreds of thousands of animals, concerned that the mink could harbor the virus indefinitely, enabling infections to persist among farm animals – and potentially spread to humans. In Utah, the trouble started on 6 August, when farmers called the state’s Department of Agriculture and Food. At issue: “deaths in numbers they’d never seen before,” The wave of deaths set things into high gear, and farmers quickly sent deceased animals to Tom Baldwin, a veterinary pathologist at Utah State University, Logan, for inspection. The initial samples were not usable, Baldwin says, because they had deteriorated by the time they arrived on 7 August. Eventually, however, some of the “great many” dead mink he received were in good enough condition to be necropsied. After cutting them open, he says he found lungs that were “wet, heavy, red, and angry,” all signs of pneumonia. That type of pneumonia is not typical in mink, he notes, but it was nearly identical to photographs of mink necropsies performed in Europe. By 14 August, both the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory and USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory had confirmed the animals were infected with the COVID-19 virus. In the Netherlands, farmers had killed more than 1 million mink as of 2 August. U.S. farms churn out more than 2.5 million pelts annually, according to USDA. Utah is the country’s second highest producer, processing more than 550,000 pelts annually. There are still “big, unanswered question[s]” regarding “how readily this virus can move from mink into human beings,” Baldwin says. The Dutch government reported multiple cases of transmission from mink to farm staff, and several staffers on the Utah farms who came in contact with the mink have confirmed COVID-19. Researchers are now trying to determine whether these workers gave the virus to the mink, or vice versa. The two farms are under 30-day quarantines, as USDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state authorities investigate further. Even a nonzero chance that the virus could mutate and amplify in mink populations – before making a jump back into humans – is worrisome, Baldwin says. “Given we’re dealing with real people with families and husbands and wives,” he says, “that’s enough for me to consider this a very serious matter.”
TODAY’S BIG QUESTION: WHAT IS IT ABOUT MINK AND COVID-19? – The past few months have taught us that mink are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus. In what’s believed to be the first documented case of animal-to-human transmission, Dutch officials announced in May that a worker at a fur farm in the Netherlands seems to have gotten COVID-19 from a mink. In June, the country decided to shut down its mink fur farming industry – the fourth largest in the world – likely by the end of the year. The virus has since been found at mink farms in Spain and Denmark. And now, the U.S. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced two mink farms in Utah reported “deaths in numbers they’d never seen before,” a USDA spokesperson toldScience, in addition to several staff coming down with COVID-19. Nat Geo’s Dina Fine Maron tells me there’s no information yet on whether the virus spread from mink to humans or vice versa (that’ll require genetic testing, which is currently underway), and the USDA hasn’t shared whether it’s testing for the virus at any of the nation’s other 275 mink farms. (U.S. mink farms produce about three million mink pelts a year.) Hundreds of thousands of mink have already been culled in Europe (above, in the Netherlands) to help control spread of the virus, but there are no plans yet to cull the animals on U.S. farms. Maron discusses the situation further on this tweet thread. That said, there’s still no evidence that animals – including mink – play a significant role in the spread of the virus. We do know that humans have occasionally spread the virus to animals, such as their pet dogs and tigers and lions at the zoo, but those cases too are extremely rare. Scientists are still trying to learn in which species the virus can not only take hold but also replicate.
What you need to know about the coronavirus right now – (Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now: U.S. students are returning to school in person and online in the middle of a pandemic, and the stakes for educators and families are rising in the face of emerging research that shows children could be a risk for spreading the new coronavirus. Several large studies have shown that the vast majority of children who contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have milder illness than adults. And early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to the deadly virus that has killed more than 780,000 people globally. But more recent studies are starting to show how contagious infected children, even those with no symptoms, might be. Novel coronavirus infections have spread nationwide from a church in the South Korean capital, raising fears that one of the world’s virus mitigation success stories might yet suffer a disastrous outbreak, a top health official said on Thursday. “The reason we take the recent situation seriously is because this transmission, which began to spread around a specific religious facility, is appearing nationwide through certain rallies,” Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told a briefing. The positive cases from the rallies include people from nine different cities and provinces across the country. Kim did not identify those places but said 114 facilities, including the places of work of infected people, were facing risk of transmission.The spread of the coronavirus in Brazil could be about to slow, the Health Ministry said, amid reports the transmission rate has fallen below a key level and early signs of a gradual decline in the weekly totals of cases and fatalities. The cautious optimism comes despite figures again showing a steady rise in the number of confirmed cases and death toll in the last 24 hours, cementing Brazil’s status as the world’s second biggest COVID-19 hot spot after the United States. According to ministry data, Brazil saw a drop in the number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases to 304,684 last week from a peak of 319,653 in the week ending July 25. The weekly death toll fell to 6,755 from a peak of 7,677 in the last week of July.
New COVID-19 Cases Hit 5-Month High In South Korea, France Smashes Post-Lockdown Record: Live Updates – After reviving mandatory mask orders in Paris, French officials on Sunday proposed making face masks mandatory in shared work-spaces as the country continued to grapple with a coronavirus rebound. The health ministry reported 3,310 new infections on Sunday, marking a post-lockdown high for the fourth day in a row, while the number of clusters being investigated has increased by 17 to 252. The spike in new cases prompted the UK to impose a mandatory 14-day quarantine on any travelers returning from France. While France drew most of the attention in Europe Sunday morning, South Korea triggered anxieties in Asia after reporting a staggering 279 new cases on Sunday, breaking above 200 for the first time in five months, with a set of clusters in the greater Seoul area contributing most of the new cases. Of these new cases, 146 were in Seoul and 107 were linked to Sarang Jeil Church, which is led by Reverend Jun Kwang-hoon, a controversial pastor and an outspoken government critic. SK Health ministry officials said they would file a complaint against the leader of the church for violating social distancing rules. Meanwhile, South Korea and the US said they would delay the start their annual joint military drills until Tuesday after a South Korean officer tested positive. That marked a 2 day delay. Chinese state media reported that the number of people in Xinjiang with coronavirus who have recovered far exceeded the number of newly reported cases for the 9th day in a row, a sign that the outbreak in the far-flung region dominated by an oppressed Muslim ethnic group is finally starting to wane. Only 4 new cases were reported across the vast region on Sunday, down from 19 new cases across the entire country on Sat. Worldwide, total cases have passed 21.35 million after another roughly 260,000 cases were added yesterday…
Peru tops half a million coronavirus cases as political crisis deepens – With COVID-19 infections and deaths having soared since the economy began to reopen in July, Peru’s political and social crises have escalated. Strikes have broken out in the mining sector over high rates of infections, and an August 9 clash between indigenous protesters and police in the hard-hit Amazon region left four indigenous workers dead. With 796 COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants, Peru has the highest mortality rate in all the Americas and the second-highest in the world, trailing only Belgium. Its total number of coronavirus cases has topped 535,000, with a record of over 10,000 new cases being recorded on Sunday. The Ministry of Health (Minsa) has recorded over 26,000 deaths, although the real number is believed to be twice as high because of excess deaths that were not investigated. Since the beginning of the re-opening of the economy, the number of infections jumped by 78 percent in six weeks, reports El Comercio. There has also been a 75 percent increase in infections among children and adolescents. In response to this uncontrolled spread of the pandemic, President Mart’n Vizcarra has ordered the reinstatement of a blanket quarantine on Sundays only. This means “all family and social reunions are prohibited,” and parks will remain closed. As for the rest of the week, work will continue. This comes on top of rolling lockdowns in 15 of Peru’s 25 regions. In the capital of Lima and elsewhere, militarized units of the Peruvian National Police have been deployed to rigorously enforce the Sunday curfew. The government’s contention is that the deadly virus is being spread primarily by social gatherings between friends and families – not by herding Peruvians back into the mines and other workplaces. Within the working class, however, there is growing resistance to the homicidal conditions of work imposed by the employers and backed by the government. Miners at the Minera Aurifera Retamas S.A. (MARSA) gold and silver mine walked out last week after 280 miners had contracted the coronavirus on the job. They denounced the owners of the mine, one of the largest underground mines in the country, for failing to provide the most minimal sanitary conditions.
Missionaries gain access to Amazon’s Indigenous peoples, despite pandemic (RNS) – When the first COVID-19 cases hit Brazil in March, the government agency in charge of protecting the country’s Indigenous peoples, the National Indigenous Foundation, ordered all civilians to leave the Indigenous reservations. Only essential workers, such as health care personnel and those involved in food distribution, could remain. But a new law signed by President Jair Bolsonaro on July 7 has made an exception for one group: Christian missionaries. A simple form from a doctor vouching for a faith worker’s health is enough to allow the person to stay as an essential worker. According to Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for the Indigenous Peoples Association of the River Javari Valley, known as UNIVAJA, some missionaries had never heeded the order to leave. “A few villages reported that there were evangelical missionaries in their areas who refused to go away,” Marubo told Religion News Service. In April, UNIVAJA sued to force the expulsion of several evangelical missionaries, at least two of whom are U.S. citizens, from the Javari Valley, an important legal victory against a group that is closely aligned with Balsonaro. Now, Indigenous groups and those who defend their rights worry that the new law will prompt missionaries to enter their reservations, which have long been protected by the Brazilian government in an effort to preserve their culture. One of the missionaries expelled in April was Andrew Tonkin, a member of the Frontier International Mission, an independent Free Will Baptist mission ministry based in the United States that trains missionaries who are then sent by their home churches. One of its goals, according to its website, is to “establish mission work among the unreached Indigenous people groups across the world.” “He already managed to approach an area of isolated peoples without authorization,” said Marubo. “People who know him say that he believes that the men’s rules don’t apply because (his presence) is God’s will.”
Amid coronavirus, Sweden hits worst death toll in 150 years: report – Sweden has tallied a record number of deaths in the first half of 2020, surpassed only by the country’s death toll during the entirety of 1869, according to multiple reports. The news arose from a Wednesday announcement from the country’s Statistics Office, per Reuters. Sweden’s lax approach to coronavirus lockdowns resulted in an unsettling rise in virus-related deaths by mid-April.The outlet noted that the 4,500 coronavirus-related deaths in Sweden far exceeded other Nordic countries by late June but were lower than other areas like Britain and Spain. Sweden’s coronavirus death toll has since increased to more than 5,800 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.A total of 51,405 deaths occurred in Sweden from January until June, according to government data. This record exceeds the country’s annual death tolls since 1869, per multiple reports, when 55,431 Swedes died, in part to famine.COVID-19 reportedly swelled the nation’s death toll by 10% for the period’s average for the previous five years. Instead of stricter measures, Sweden had called for its people to take personal responsibility to control virus spread. In early June, Dr. Anders Tegnell, the nation’s leading epidemiologist, reportedly said the country could have done more to prevent virus’s spread.
Sweden’s Lead Epidemiologist: Wearing Face Masks Is “Very Dangerous” – Sweden’s top expert on the coronavirus has warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus. “It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19,” said Anders Tengell, who has overseen Sweden’s response to the pandemic while resisting any form of lockdown or mask mandate.“Face masks can be a complement to other things when other things are safely in place,” Tengell added.“But to start with having face masks and then think[ing] you can crowd your buses or your shopping malls – that’s definitely a mistake,” he further urged.Tegnell has consistently spoken out against the use of masks, last month declaring that “With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport.”“The findings that have been produced through face masks are astonishingly weak, even though so many people around the world wear them,” Tengell has urged.“I’m surprised that we don’t have more or better studies showing what effect masks actually have. Countries such as Spain and Belgium have made their populations wear masks but their infection numbers have still risen,” the epidemiologist also declared.
Coronavirus: Germany, Spain record highest daily cases since April – Germany and Spain have both recorded their highest respective daily coronavirus infection rate since April, with other countries in the region also reporting a sharp rise in new cases. Several European countries have imposed travel restrictions, social-distancing measures and mask-wearing procedures to prevent the spread of the virus. However, the World Health Organization cited a relaxation of public health measures, in addition to people “dropping their guard,” as possible explanations for the resurgence in the number of new Covid-19 infections across the region. Germany recorded 1,707 new cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, reflecting its highest daily toll since April. The country has now reported 228,261 cases of the virus, with 9,253 related deaths, according to data compiled from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. Spain has seen another 3,715 new cases of the virus confirmed in the past 24 hours, with an additional 127 deaths. As in Germany, Spain’s daily infection rate has not been this high since late April. Elsewhere, Italy reported 642 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, notching its highest jump in new infections since late May. The country has recorded a total of 255,278 cases, with 35,412 deaths. Meanwhile, France’s health ministry reported 3,776 new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, with the daily tally going above 3,000 for the third time in the last five days. France has recorded a similar number of cases to Italy, with 30,434 deaths. Hans Kluge, regional director for Europe at the WHO, said on Thursday that the “epicenter” of the pandemic was now in the Americas, but the European region was “on a trajectory of its own, showing a different trend compared to the rest of the world.” The United Nations health agency estimates that around 3.9 million people have contracted the coronavirus in the European region, corresponding to 17% of the global total.To date, more than 22.4 million people have contracted the coronavirus worldwide, with 788,015 related deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
COVID-19 Mutation That’s “10 Times More Infectious” Than The Original Discovered In Malaysia – The English-language press is generally no fan of Philippines’ pseudo-‘Strongman’ Rodrigo Duterte. Nonetheless, they’ve begrudgingly given him credit for his military-imposed lockdowns, and for reimposing the restrictive measures in and around Manila. Still, none of this has stopped Southeast Asia’s biggest outbreak from clearly still has a long way to go to bring COVID-19 to heel. And as South Korea is showing us right now, the virus can be surprisingly difficult to eradicate completely, just one more reason why the world needs to find a more sustainable way to live with COVID-19, rather than resorting to lockdowns as the only tool in the kit. But there’s one variable that could upend all of this thinking, and effectively force all vulnerable populations into strict lockdown mode: that would be a mutation that causes it to become even more deadly. As Dr. Fauci once warned, mutations could make the virus more virulent and more infectious, and there’s already some evidence that certain strains of the virus are much deadlier than others. And as Bloomberg reported on Monday, Southeast Asia – Malaysia specifically – has seen evidence that a certain mutation is more infectious, just like other mutations catalogued in the UK, NY and elsewhere. They call the mutation “D614G”. It’s also the “predominant variation of the virus” seen in Europe and the US – meaning it’s the same “world-conquering” virus we reported on back in June. Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the Philippines, which faces the region’s largest outbreak, is studying to see whether the mutation makes it more infectious.The strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in a Malaysian cluster of 45 cases that started from someone who returned from India and breached his 14-day home quarantine. The Philippines detected the strain among random Covid-19 samples in the largest city of its capital region.The mutation “is said to have a higher possibility of transmission or infectiousness, but we still don’t have enough solid evidence to say that that will happen,” Philippines’ Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing on Monday. And now, we can add ‘Southeast Asia’ to its list of conquered territory.
Southeast Asia Detects Mutated Virus Strain Sweeping the World – Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the Philippines, which faces the region’s largest outbreak, is studying to see whether the mutation makes it more infectious.The strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G, was found in a Malaysian cluster of 45 cases that started from someone who returned from India and breached his 14-day home quarantine. The Philippines detected the strain among random Covid-19 samples in the largest city of its capital region.The mutation “is said to have a higher possibility of transmission or infectiousness, but we still don’t have enough solid evidence to say that that will happen,” Philippines’ Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a virtual briefing on Monday. The strain has been found in many other countries and has become the predominant variant in Europe and the U.S., with the World Health Organization saying there’s no evidence the strain leads to a more severe disease. The mutation has also been detected in recent outbreaks in China.There’s no evidence from the epidemiology that the mutation is considerably more infectious than other strains, said Benjamin Cowling, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Hong Kong. “It’s more commonly identified now than it was in the past, which suggests that it might have some kind of competitive advantage over other strains of Covid-19,” he said. As Southeast Asian countries take various steps to prevent a resurgence while reopening limited travel, they struggle with people breaching quarantine rules after returning from overseas as well as false negative test results at borders. The man who returned from India had tested negative when he arrived in Malaysia. He has since been sentenced to five months in prison and fined for breaching quarantine. People need to be wary and take greater precautions because this strain has now been found in Malaysia,” the country’s Director-General of Health Noor Hisham Abdullah wrote in a Facebook post, saying the strain can make it 10 times more infectious without citing a study. .
New excess death counts reveal more complete toll of coronavirus pandemic – Newly reported data from the Financial Times (FT) on the number of excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic paints a chilling portrait of the true death toll caused by the novel coronavirus. As of mid-July, there were 178,500 excess deaths in just fifteen urban areas internationally, including New York City, Mexico City, Lima, Jakarta, Istanbul and Madrid. The report was published the same day that the global reported case and death totals passed 22.5 million and 790,000, respectively. The world has averaged more than a quarter-million new cases and at least 5,500 deaths each day since July 25. The United States, India and Brazil remain the main epicenters of the pandemic. Yesterday was the second day since July 4 that the average number of new cases in the US fell below 50,000, although new deaths have stayed steady at more than 1,000 a day since July 29. There are nearly 5.7 million cases in the country, and more than 176,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths. Excess deaths are defined as the number of deaths in a region that are beyond the historical averages and can be caused by, among other things, disease outbreaks, natural disasters and war. New York City, for example, has reported 23,600 deaths from the pandemic so far but 27,200 excess deaths, 15 percent more than those reported as having died from the pandemic and 208 percent above the city’s historical average. Other cities have similarly high excess death tolls. Lima, Peru, has suffered 23,200 excess fatalities, more than twice the 10,600 known coronavirus deaths. Authorities in Mexico City count 9,472 dead from the pandemic, whileFT notes 22,800 excess deaths in the Mexican capital. In Jakarta, 1,014 people have officially died due to COVID-19, compared to 5,300 excess deaths. Similar death tolls have been found in Guayas province, Ecuador (1,666 coronavirus deaths, 14,600 excess deaths), London (6,885, 10,000), and Madrid (8,451, 16,200). Death rates have also climbed well above their historical averages in many countries. Brazil, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the US have experienced at least a 20 percent increase in mortality since the start of the pandemic. The United Kingdom, Belgium, Chile, Italy and Spain suffered at least a 40 percent increase, while Peru and Ecuador have death rates more than double their historical averages. Moreover, as the FT itself notes, the excess death counts are still incomplete and the real death tolls are likely even higher than what is currently known. It can take up to eight weeks for mortality data to filter through national databases maintained by institutions like the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning that getting real-time data on deaths, especially when a pandemic creates a backlog in the system, is virtually impossible. In addition, not all countries have recent all-cause mortality data available, making global excess death analyses difficult. Even before the pandemic, the resources for medical emergencies and life-saving procedures were stretched thin from decades of defunding. As numerous reports revealed in Wuhan, northern Italy and New York City during the first months of the pandemic, these resources had to be partly or wholly devoted to dealing with the contagion, leaving those with more mundane but no less deadly ailments, such as heart attacks or strokes, to fend for themselves. Evidence also emerged of people being afraid to go to hospitals even with serious conditions for fear of contracting the coronavirus, and dying as a result.
Renowned EU Scientist: COVID-19 Was Engineered In China Lab, Effective Vaccine “Unlikely” – It will not be possible for the Dr. Fauci’s of the world to dismiss Professor Giuseppe Tritto as a crank. Not only is he an internationally known expert in biotechnology and nanotechnology who has had a stellar academic career, but he is also the president of the World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technologies (WABT), an institution founded under the aegis of UNESCO in 1997. In other words, he is a man of considerable stature in the global scientific community. Equally important, one of the goals of WABT is to analyze the effect of biotechnologies – like genetic engineering – on humanity. In his new book, this world-class scientist does exactly that. And what he says is that the China Virus definitely wasn’t a freak of nature that happened to cross the species barrier from bat to man. It was genetically engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 (high-containment) lab in a program supervised by the Chinese military.Prof. Tritto’s book, which at present is available only in Italian, is called Cina COVID 19: La Chimera che ha cambiato il Mondo (China COVID 19: The chimera that changed the world). It was published on August 4 by a major Italian press, Edizioni Cantagalli, which coincidentally also published the Italian edition of one of my books, Population Control (Controllo Demografico in Italian) several years ago. What sets Prof. Tritto’s book apart is the fact that it demonstrates – conclusively, in my view – the pathway by which a PLA-owned coronavirus was genetically modified to become the China Virus now ravaging the world. His account leaves no doubt that it is a “chimera”, an organism created in a lab.
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