The Oregon Health Authority announced three new COVID-19 deaths Saturday, and 353 new diagnoses. Since the start of the pandemic, 14,149 people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus in Oregon and 257 havedied.

The more densely populated Portland area continues to drive the rise in cases, with 149 new confirmed and presumptive new cases in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties onSaturday.

Away from Portland, Marion County reported 31 diagnoses, Lane County reported 37, and Umatilla County reported35.

The state provided these details about the people whose deaths it announcedSaturday:

Related:COVID-19 In Oregon: By TheNumbers

This map shows new cases of COVID-19 in each ZIP code in Oregon.ZIP codes are colored by the number of cases per 10,000 residents.ZIPs are shaded to show contrast; rates in Oregon remain lower than most of the U.S.

Health officials in Clark County, Washington, said Friday that another 44 people had tested positive for COVID-19 and a man in his 60s had died. Its not clear if the man who died had underlying healthconditions.

To date, 1,434 residents of the southwest Washington county have tested positive for COVID-19 and 34 people havedied.

According to the latest available data, Washington has 44,313 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,427 known deaths. As of Wednesday, coronavirus has led to the hospitalization of 4,944peopleinWashington.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has warnedthat if case numbers dont improve, he may have to start shutting down the economy again. Counties throughout the state will have to remain in their current phase of reopening until atleastJuly28.

Top Republican lawmakers are asking Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to reconsider her decision to tether Clackamas County to Multnomah and Washington counties as the stateeases COVID-19 restrictionsin the midst of thepandemic.

Coupling Clackamas County with the two most urban and densely populated counties in Oregon is unwarranted and unnecessarily burdens our local communities and businesses who are already struggling during this economic downturn, House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, said in a statement. The county commissioners have asked for this policy to be reconsidered, and today we echotheirplea.

But the Clackamas Board of Commissioners stepped back from asking the governor to take a new look at the countys application to further ease restrictions, amid a statewide surge in newdiagnoses.

Read more:Oregon Republicans Push To Reconsider Portland-area ReopeningStrategy

The Oregon Employment Department has introducedanonline formit hopes willmake it easier for Oregonians to apply for its Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program the unemployment benefit program for self-employed, contract and gigworkers.

The agency said the new form, created in partnership with Google, will allow the more than 100,000 people who have already applied for so-called PUA benefits to get their weekly paymentsfaster.

The form seeks to automate the weekly certification process that PUA applicants must complete. The form also should ensure that all applications are received with complete information, according to the Employment Department. The agency said the previous process included a PDF which resulted in some forms mistakenly being submitted blank, itsaid.

This is an encouraging step forward for Oregonians whove been waiting for benefits, as well as for the department. I am pleased we have made these changes and pledge that we will continue finding better ways to serve you, Oregon Employment Department Acting Director David Gerstenfeld said in astatement.

Original post:

Live Updates: Oregon COVID-19 Deaths, Infections Continue To Climb - OPB News

A new study suggests thatif wind instruments were covered in cloth, they could produce less of the particles that can carry the new coronavirus.

By Jason PlautzJul. 17, 2020 , 4:00 PM

Science's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

As U.S. schools and colleges debate how to reopen amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, band directors and musicians are wondering whenor whethermusic can be played safely. A new study finds that while musical instruments do generate airborne particles that could carry SARS-CoV-2, the risks for performers and audience may be manageable.

There is almost no research on whether musical instruments produce the airborne particlesor aerosolsthat can transmit the novel coronavirus. So its impossible to know whether keeping 2 meters away is enough to stay safe from a trumpet at full blast.

Without data, schools were already cutting band rehearsals out of fear, said Mark Spede, president of the College Band Directors National Association. Given the potential threat to music education and the livelihoods of musicians around the globe, Spedes group and the National Federation of High School State Associations raised about $275,000 from more than 100 arts groups to study the safety of performing during the pandemic.

Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder,had five student musiciansa soprano singer and clarinet, flute, French horn, and trumpet playersenter a clean room one at a time. The room was normally used for indoor air pollution research, and it was outfitted with tight seals, and multiple high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters remove almost all particles from the air.

The participants performed a short solo piece with a wide range of high and low notes and different styles of playing, including a smooth chorale and a staccato march. The players angled their instruments openings toward a series of tubes that feed into a trio of particle monitors that detected aerosols of different sizes. An imaging system also captured the airflow around the musicians to visualize where the particles moved.

The initial resultswhich were released online this week without peer reviewshowed for the first time thatthe instruments can produce aerosols in the range of sizes that can carry the COVID-19 virus. These aerosols can also stay airborne for long periods of time, and different instruments produced different amounts. For instance, the trumpet and clarinet, which run straighter from the mouthpiece to the instrument opening, had higher concentrations of aerosols.

To reduce the spread of aerosols, the researchers tested instrument covers, such as a cloth covering for the opening or a sack covering an entire clarinet; both effectively reduced aerosols, in some cases by half, without deadening their sound.

Another team at the University of Maryland, College Park,used computer models to examine whether an infected musician might spread the virus in different conditions. The modeling confirmed the importance of distancing to avoid infected plumes. It also suggested that conventional ventilation systems, where air supply and exhaust are both on the ceiling, are less effective than those in which the exhaust is on the floor.

The results add to recent work on airflow from instruments. A study in May had Vienna Philharmonic wind andstring musicians play after inhaling a mistthat is illuminated by headlights when exhaled. Another study, conducted this spring in Germany,tracked air flowfrom wind instruments. Both found that instruments produced less airflow than singing (although flutes produced more than other wind instruments).

Bernhard Richter, an otolaryngology specialist and co-director of the Freiburg Institute for Musicians' Medicine, who led the German study, says his teams initial results could inform safety recommendations. And he says the new aerosol work will offer even more sophisticated data. We don't know enough about aerosols and the critical issue of how they are spreading.

The researchers behind the aerosol study will now gather data from additional instruments, singers, dancers, and actors. Those could give a fuller picture of potential risks of performance and improve computer modeling on the effectiveness of distancing and air circulation, says Shelly Miller,an engineering professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who helped run the study.

Based on the initial findings, the organizations that funded the study recommend that indoor rehearsal rooms and performance venues use HEPA filters and increase circulation, and that musicians use instrument covers. They also recommend 2 meters of distancing and that performers face the same direction, which could limit band or orchestra size.

Miller says she hopes further data recommendations will let the band play on. Its heartbreaking to halt these activities because we dontknow if theyre hazardous or not.

Read the original post:

Is it safe to strike up the band in a time of coronavirus? - Science Magazine

Gregory Arnold walked into the wardens office April 1 as the novel coronavirus ripped through one of the largest immigration detention centers in the United States. Waiting with about 40 guards to begin his shift, he heard a captain say face masks were prohibited.

Incredulous, he and a guard who recently gave birth wanted to hear it from the boss. Arnold told Warden Christopher LaRose that he was 60 years old and lived with an asthmatic son.

Well, you cant wear the mask because we dont want to scare the employees and we dont want to scare the inmates and detainees, Arnold recalls the warden saying.

With all due respect, sir, thats ridiculous. Arnold retorted.

He said he wanted to wear a mask and gloves, and everyone else should be doing the same. But the warden was unmoved. And in the weeks that followed, Otay Mesa Detention Center would see the first big outbreak at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements 221 detention centers.

The origins of the outbreak are uncertain, but accounts of workers and detainees reveal shortcomings in how the private company that manages the center handled the disease: There was an early absence of facial coverings, and a lack of cleaning supplies. Symptomatic detainees were mixed with others.

Other centers would follow with their own outbreaks, and a Homeland Security Department internal watchdog survey of 188 detention centers taken in mid-April echoed some of what The Associated Press found at Otay Mesa: 19% of facility directors said there werent enough standard surgical masks, 32% said there werent enough N95 respirator masks, and 37% felt there wasnt enough hand sanitizer for detainees.

Like prisons, living conditions are cramped -- except people held in immigration detention centers arent accused of any crimes. They wait to appear before an immigration judge to argue they should be allowed to remain in the country.

Otay Mesa sits on a tucked-away periphery of San Diego amid vehicle storage lots, a gas-fired power plant, a state prison, county jail and juvenile detention camp. ICEs average daily population of 956 detainees last year made it the agencys 11th-busiest detention center.

The squat, two-story facility -- managed under contract by CoreCivic Inc. and shared with U.S. Marshals Service inmates -- is surrounded by two layers of chain-link fence topped by razor wire. Rooms of two to four bunk beds open into common areas with televisions, sofas and board games.

Margarita Smith, a guard who was named CoreCivics Otay Mesa employee of the year in 2019, said managers frequently discouraged workers from wearing masks. The topic came up during briefings in March.

They didnt want anyone wearing masks, said Smith, who was tapped by CoreCivic to lead an employee morale committee in January. They said it would frighten the detainees and make them think that were sick or something.

In a court filing, LaRose, the warden, said policies on masks evolved with guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Staff was required to wear them around quarantined detainees and they were optional for other employees starting the third week of March, he said, a statement that Arnold and Smith dispute.

RELATED: More Than 65 Medically Vulnerable Detainees Released From Otay Mesa Detention Center

Arnold said he wore a mask after learning about the detention centers first case on March 31, an employee who handed out equipment to guards starting their shifts. Unaware of any ban on facial coverings, detainees thanked him.

I was disgusted, Arnold said. Its obvious this thing was ramping up. I knew it was going to happen. I could just tell.

The contractor gave masks to detainees on April 10 but on condition they sign an English-language liability waiver, according to several detainees. It quickly retreated after a tense showdown with detainees.

Everyone was screaming, said Issis Zavala of Honduras, who refused to sign but was released with an ankle bracelet because a 2007 bout of tuberculosis made her vulnerable. They said, You just sign it. OK, if you dont want to sign, well just go.

On March 17, the day that San Diego limited public gatherings to 50 people and closed restaurants, colleagues gathered to grill the warden. One recalled wondering why so many people -- including about half the lieutenants -- were allowed to gather so closely together in one room.

When an employee pressed for clean rags, the warden answered twice that there was no need because the chemicals used for cleaning were very powerful. Others asked when they would get more wipes and gels.

Gloves were hard to find, Smith said. Arnold said the ones he saw were too small for his hands. Hand sanitizer dispensers were often empty.

Feeling the warden wasnt taking the virus seriously, Smith felt she had no choice. At 48, she missed a week of work in early March with pneumonia, has asthma and had been sick off and on since November.

She quit. I thought to myself Im not going to get sick again, she said. I just had a feeling that things werent going to go good.

The detainees, of course, had not choice but to stay. Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, Mexicos consul general in San Diego, wrote ICE April 16 about a generalized fear among detainees, raising concerns about mixing ill and asymptomatic detainees and requiring liability waivers for masks. A consulate hotline got more than 100 calls.

Common grievances included a lack of personal hygiene products, social distancing and masks, Gonzalez Gutierrez said. They complained that they were instructed to drink saltwater to deal with pain, and that employees were not wearing personal protective equipment.

CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said the contractor rigorously followed guidance of health officials and ICE. She noted the CDC didnt fully embrace masks until the first week of April and said employees and detainees get face coverings without having to sign a waiver.

We have responded to this unprecedented situation appropriately, thoroughly and with care for the safety and well-being of those entrusted to us and our communities, she said.

Zelaya, 35, said instructions came to wipe surfaces every hour on March 30 but rags were dirty. She used the same towel to clean toilets, door handles, phone receivers -- and her hands.

I clean houses, Zelaya remembers telling guards. You cant use the same towel.

Oh, we have a special chemical. It kills the bacteria, Zelaya said she was told.

RELATED: Immigrant Held At Otay Mesa Detention Center Dies From Coronavirus

Victor Rodriguez, 44, was among 35 detainees who went on a five-day hunger strike April 4. The Guatemalan man was upset about a detainee who worked in the dining hall handling food and appeared to have a fever, for which he was given ibuprofen. (CoreCivic said it prohibited detainees with symptoms from working in the kitchen and that it followed CDC guidelines on cleaning and disinfectants.)

Authorities insist detainees had plenty of free soap -- 23,300 bars from March 24 to April 23 -- but Rodriguez said the bar he got daily was barely enough to wash his hands or shower. Hand-sanitizer requests were denied because authorities worried they could be used for homemade alcohol.

Elizabeth Cruz, 22, said a detainee who was coughing badly in their cell the first week of April was removed for about a week, returned and removed again before testing positive. Cruz said she reported chest pain and breathing difficultly for two weeks but couldnt get more than allergy medication.

I know my body and I am not well, she remembers telling a nurse, who told her there was nothing more she could do.

Cruz, of El Salvador, eventually tested positive and was placed in isolation with eight other infected detainees.

The virus has brought renewed scrutiny to ICE. The agency housed an all-time high of more than 56,000 people last year, with more than 500,000 bookings over a 12-month period, but policies to severely limit asylum and recent releases aimed at controlling the virus reduced the population to 22,340.

Overall, ICE has had 3,596 detainees test positive -- 27% of those tested. Of those, 967 are currently in custody -- the rest were released, deported or have recovered. At ICE, 45 detention center workers have tested positive, along with an undisclosed number of contractors.

Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security secretary, told reporters in May in San Diego that ICE stopped taking detainees at Otay Mesa and one or two others and will continue to release the elderly and medically fragile. ICE cut the population at Otay Mesa by more than half in three months to 376 from 761 on April 1.

For weeks, Otay Mesa had the dubious distinction of the most cases in the ICE system but the spread effectively stopped; 168 detainees have tested positive since the start of the outbreak, as have 11 ICE employees and more than 30 CoreCivic workers. ICE said in a statement that increased testing and isolating detainees who tested positive contributed to improved conditions.

Cases are surging at facilities in Farmville, Virginia, with 315 detainees having tested positive, Anson, Texas, with 290, Eloy, Arizona, with 250 and Houston with 206, At Eloy, 128 of about 315 employees had tested positive as of earlier this month, according to CoreCivic, which manages the facility.

Arnold resigned after his April 1 confrontation with the warden, just as the virus was tearing through Otay Mesa. Smith took a two-week leave before resigning, torn over her loyalty to the job and what she considers is CoreCivics tendency to cut corners. Both have sued the company in federal court.

CoreCivic will address the guards accounts in court, Gilchrist said, but we can say generally that we deny their specious and sensationalized allegations that are designed to obtain a favorable outcome in court. Daniel Struck, an attorney for the warden, didnt respond to a request for comment.

Smith and Arnold believe the spread started with someone from outside -- perhaps a guard or lawyer. Smith called detainees sitting ducks.

After the first officer got it, it was like a fire there, Smith said. It just took off after that.

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How The Coronavirus Spread Through One Immigration Facility - KPBS

Symptoms of Covid-19 appear to fall into six different groupings, researchers have revealed, in work they say could help to predict whether a patient will end up needing a ventilator or other breathing support.

The team say the findings could give healthcare providers several days advanced warning of demand for hospital care and respiratory support.

But it could also help flag patients at risk of becoming seriously ill, meaning home support, such as an oxygen meter or nurse visits, could be provided so that any deterioration is spotted quickly and hospital attendance is prompt. At present, the team added, the average time to get to hospital with Covid-19 is 13 days.

Anything you can do earlier to stop people coming in half-dead is going to increase the chance of survival and also stop clogging up hospital beds unnecessarily, said Prof Tim Spector of Kings College London, a co-author of the work.

The study, which is published on medRxiv and has not yet been peer-reviewed, is based on data from the teams app, which has more than 4 million users.

The researchers drew on data from 1,653 users who tested positive for Covid-19, reported persistent symptoms and regularly logged updates on their health and situation. Overall, 383 of these users made at least one trip to hospital, and 107 required either extra oxygen or ventilation.

The team then used machine learning algorithms a type of artificial intelligence to explore whether some symptoms, among the 14 monitored, cluster together. The results suggest six different groupings based on the type of symptoms, when they occurred, and their duration within the first 14 days of participants sickness.

And there was more. We saw that there was a very clear gradient between these clusters and outcomes in terms of [participants need for] respiratory support, said Dr Claire Steves, clinical senior author on the paper from Kings College London, adding other factors such as older age or certain pre-existing medical conditions were more common in some groups.

The six groupings, or clusters, are:

Cluster 1: Mainly upper respiratory tract symptoms, such as a persistent cough, with muscle pain also present. About 1.5% of patients in this group required respiratory support, with 16% making one or more trips to hospital. This was the most common cluster of symptoms, affecting 462 participants.

Cluster 2: Mainly upper respiratory tract symptoms, but also a greater frequency of skipped meals and fever. Of patients in this group 4.4% required respiratory support, with 17.5% making one or more trips to hospital.

Cluster 3: Gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhoea, but few other symptoms. While only 3.7% of patients in this group later needed respiratory support, almost 24% made at least one visit to hospital.

Cluster 4: Early signs of severe fatigue, continuous chest pain and cough. Of patients in this group 8.6% required respiratory support, with 23.6% making one or more trips to hospital.

Cluster 5: Confusion, skipped meals and severe fatigue. Of patients in this group 9.9% required respiratory support, with 24.6% making one or more trips to hospital.

Cluster 6: Marked respiratory distress including early onset of breathlessness and chest pain, as well as confusion, fatigue and gastrointestinal symptoms. Almost 20% of this group needed respiratory support and 45.5% made one or more visits to hospital. But this was the least common symptom cluster, affecting 167 participants.

The team said the first two clusters seem to be milder forms of Covid-19.

Similar groupings were found when the researchers repeated the work with data from 1,047 different app users, with the team adding headaches, and loss of smell and taste, which cropped up in all clusters, but the latter was longer lasting in milder cases.

The researchers say tracking symptoms improves the ability to predict the trajectory of a Covid-19 patient.

Spector said: By recording all the symptoms and when they occur in something like a medical app you can significantly increase the ability to predict who is going to need hospital support, and potentially save lives.

Based on the first five days of reported symptoms, together with patient characteristics such as age, sex and pre-existing medical conditions, the team could predict 79% of the time whether a patient would later need respiratory support. Using patient characteristics alone, this figure was just under 70%; chance would give a figure of 50%.

Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the1918 influenza pandemicthat killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated albeit more mildly in subsequent flu pandemics.

How and why multiple-wave outbreaks occur, and how subsequent waves of infection can be prevented, has become a staple of epidemiological modelling studies and pandemic preparation, which have looked at everything from social behaviour and health policy to vaccination and the buildup of community immunity, also known as herd immunity.

Is there evidence of coronavirus coming back in a second wave?

This is being watched very carefully. Without a vaccine, and with no widespread immunity to the new disease, one alarm is being sounded by the experience of Singapore, which has seen a suddenresurgence in infectionsdespite being lauded for its early handling of the outbreak.

Although Singapore instituted a strong contact tracing system for its general population, the disease re-emerged incramped dormitory accommodationused by thousands of foreign workers with inadequate hygiene facilities and shared canteens.

Singapores experience, although very specific, has demonstrated the ability of the disease to come back strongly in places where people are in close proximity and its ability to exploit any weakness in public health regimes set up to counter it.

In June 2020, Beijing suffered from a new cluster of coronavirus cases which caused authorities to re-implement restrictions that China had previously been able to lift. In the UK, the city of Leicester was unable to come out of lockdown because of the development of a new spike of coronavirus cases. Clusters also emerged in Melbourne, requiring a re-imposition of lockdown conditions.

What are experts worried about?

Conventional wisdom among scientists suggests second waves of resistant infections occur after the capacity for treatment and isolation becomes exhausted. In this case the concern is that the social and political consensus supporting lockdowns is being overtaken by public frustration and the urgent need to reopen economies.

The threat declines when susceptibility of the population to the disease falls below a certain threshold or when widespread vaccination becomes available.

In general terms the ratio of susceptible and immune individuals in a population at the end of one wave determines the potential magnitude of a subsequent wave. The worry is that witha vaccine still many months away, and the real rate of infection only being guessed at, populations worldwide remain highly vulnerable to both resurgence and subsequent waves.

Peter Beaumont

Prof Alastair Denniston of the University of Birmingham, and an expert in the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare, warned that the approach did not give a precise prediction of the risk of severe sickness, and said the results were based on data from app users, meaning they may not hold across the wider population.

But, he added, the study has merit. This new use of symptom data is an important additional tool in helping us estimate risk in patients, and you could see how it could be helpful in trying to ensure people at highest risk get the extra monitoring and earlier intervention they need, he said.

Louise Wain, British Lung Foundation professor of respiratory research at the University of Leicester and one of the leads of the Phosp-Covid long-term follow-up study, addedthe findings could also shed light on who might benefit most from medicines such as dexamethasone.

But, she said, questions remain. We do still also need to understand how early disease trajectories relate to how quickly and completely people recover after theyve had the virus, and whether they can be used to identify those at greatest risk of long-term effects.

See more here:

Coronavirus symptoms fall into six different groupings, study finds - The Guardian

A volunteer receives a shot in a clinical trial for a potential coronavirus vaccine. U.S. intelligence officials say Russian hackers are attempting to break into U.S. health care organizations working on a vaccine. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption

A volunteer receives a shot in a clinical trial for a potential coronavirus vaccine. U.S. intelligence officials say Russian hackers are attempting to break into U.S. health care organizations working on a vaccine.

The National Security Agency, as well as its counterparts in Britain and Canada, all said Thursday that they're seeing persistent attempts by Russian hackers to break into organizations working on a potential coronavirus vaccine.

The Western intelligence agencies say they believe the hackers are part of the Russian group informally known as Cozy Bear. The intelligence agencies refer to it as APT29.

That group has been linked to Russian intelligence and was blamed for hacking Democratic Party emails in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

"APT29 has a long history of targeting governmental, diplomatic, think-tank, health care and energy organizations for intelligence gain so we encourage everyone to take this threat seriously," said Anne Neuberger, the NSA's cybersecurity director.

Russia denied the accusation.

"We can say one thing Russia has nothing at all to do with these attempts," Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, was quoted as saying by the state-run Tass news agency.

The Western intelligence agencies did not name any of the organizations being targeted. In addition, there was no word on whether the hackers had obtained any information, or what they might do with any such information.

But for several months now, the U.S. and others have been warning health care organizations to safeguard all sensitive information related to a potential vaccine.

"We are imploring all those research facilities and hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that are doing really great research to do everything in their power to protect it," Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told NPR in May.

Prior to Thursday's announcement, U.S. officials had already been warning about China, which has has a long track record of stealing Western intellectual property.

"We have the full expectation that China will do everything in their power to obtain any viable research that we are conducting here in the U.S.," Evanina said back in May. "That will be in line with their capabilities and intent the last decade plus, and we are expecting them to continue to do so."

Read more here:

U.S. Says Russian Hackers Are Trying To Steal Coronavirus Vaccine Research - NPR

The reopening and relaxing of social distancing restrictions in some states may be contributing to the first noticeable nationwide increase in coronavirus fatalities since April, when the pandemic initially peaked.

The number of cases in late June surged higher than during the outbreaks first peak. At this same time, daily Covid-19 fatalities decreased slightly, leading President Trump to proclaim that deaths were way down. But that divergence may have come to an end last week, when the average number of new deaths per day began steadily rising again.

Where deaths have increased since June 1

Daily new deaths since June 1

States where deaths have increased since June 1

Daily new deaths since June 1, seven-day average

Note: Data as of July 15.

Public health experts have pointed to a few factors that help explain why the death count was initially flat. Treatment has improved and young people, who are less likely to die from Covid-19, make up a larger share of new cases.

Additionally, more widespread testing means cases are caught sooner, on average. That means that the lag between diagnosis and death would be longer than in March, when tests were in critically short supply.

That lag may have come to an end last week, as the number of new deaths began to rise. Many of the states that reopened early are the ones seeing the biggest increases, while New York, the countrys hardest-hit city, has seen a 64 percent drop since June 1.

Deaths in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut

Deaths in rest of the United States

While the growth rate of new deaths has flattened slightly in the past few days, data suggest that the recent increase in deaths may continue. Most of the states seeing the sharpest increase in deaths also have some of the countrys highest positive test rates, as well as soaring hospitalization rates, an indicator that many more residents may be gravely ill.

In addition, a high share of positive tests most likely signals that there are a larger number of people whose infections are going undetected in a states official numbers.

Sources: New York Times database from state and local governments; the Covid-19 Tracking ProjectNote: Data is as of July 15, 2020. States listed above have a minimum of 100 cumulative deaths. Positive test rates are calculated using positive results from July 2 to July 15. Trend lines and new deaths per million show seven-day average data.

Original post:

After the Recent Surge in Coronavirus Cases, Deaths Are Now Rising Too - The New York Times

Irans president says an estimated 25 million people in the country could be infected with the coronavirus, way above the countrys official rate, as the World Health Organization reported a record daily increase of new cases of more 270,000.

Hassan Rouhani told a summit of the countrys coronavirus taskforce on Saturday that the health ministry estimated about 25 million Iranians might have contracted the virus and warned up to 35 million more might become infected in the months ahead.

The method by which the figure was derived was not disclosed, but the estimate gave an insight into the scale of the outbreak in the worst-hit country in the Middle East, with 270,000 confirmed cases and at least 13,979 deaths.

Rouhanis deputy head of communications, Alireza Moezi, added on Twitter that the 25-million estimate referred to those who have encountered the virus and achieved complete immunity.

We have to consider the possibility that 30 to 35 million more may face infection, Rouhani told a televised meeting of the task-force. We have not yet achieved herd immunity and we have no choice but to be united and break the chain of transmission of the coronavirus.

Iran refrained from fully locking down its population of 81 million but closed schools, cancelled public gatherings and banned movement between provinces in March. It lifted most of the restrictions a month later to relieve the impact of the closures on its ailing economy.

Australia postponed the next sitting of its national parliament as cases continued to surge in and around its second-largest city, Melbourne. A second lockdown has been imposed on the southern state of Victoria, weeks after the initial wave of restrictions was lifted and community transmission briefly appeared to have been eradicated.

The national body will be suspended for two weeks to account for the risk of politicians in Victoria spreading the virus to the capital, Canberra, and the surrounding state of New South Wales, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Saturday.

The risks posed by a parliamentary sitting are significantly higher and unlikely to be resolved in the next month, he said.

As the global count of cases being tracked by Johns Hopkins University crossed 14m, with nearly 600,000 deaths, France announced that masks would be made mandatory in enclosed public spaces including banks, shops and indoor markets starting on Monday.

The reproduction rate of the virus in the Brittany region has risen sharply in the past weeks, raising fears the virus may be regaining momentum in the country.

The WHO reported the greatest daily increase in global cases, with the total rising by 237,743 in the 24 hours to Saturday. The biggest increases were reported in the US, Brazil, India and South Africa.

Cases in the US grew by more than 76,000, a record for the worlds worst-hit country.

In a lecture for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, delivered online, the UN secretary-general Antnio Guterres said the pandemic had revealed, like an x-ray, fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built.

It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; the fiction that unpaid care work is not work; the delusion that we live in a post-racist world; the myth that we are all in the same boat, said Guterres, a former Socialist prime minister of Portugal.

He added that the coronavirus outbreak had created a generational opportunity to build a more equal, sustainable world. Because while we are all floating on the same sea, its clear that some are in superyachts while others are clinging to the floating debris, Guterres said.

The UN has appealed for $10.3bn (8.2bn) to help poor states, but has received only $1.7bn.

China launched mass health screenings in the western Xinjiang province after a spike in cases raised fears of a fresh outbreak. Flights into the regional capital rmqi were suspended along with the citys subway services after 17 cases were found on Saturday.

The whole city has entered a wartime state, and will suspend all kinds of group activities, state media quoted an official giving a briefing.

More here:

Global report: WHO reports record daily increase of coronavirus cases - The Guardian

India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.

New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.

Amid evidence that the disease was taking hold in poorer, rural areas of India with less effective public healthcare, the latest tally prompted renewed concerns about the countrys ability to cope with rising infections.

The figures have been released after a week in which authorities in India were forced to impose new lockdowns, including fresh restrictions on 128 million people in the state of Bihar, which came into force on Thursday.

The continuing and escalating outbreaks, on top of record cases in the United States which passed 75,000 daily cases in the last count have dampened hopes that the pandemic is anywhere close to being brought under control, even as researchers race to find a viable vaccine.

Three states in India Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu account for more than half of the total cases in the country so far. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, warned that the majority of cases in the country were still being missed.

The continuing rise has forced authorities to reinstate lockdowns in some cities and states.

In Bangalore, the government ordered a week-long lockdown that began on Tuesday evening after a rapid rise in cases.

Dr Anant Bhan, a global health researcher, said India was likely to experience a series of peaks as the virus spread in rural areas. He said the capital, New Delhi, and the financial capital, Mumbai, had already recorded surges, while infections have now shifted to smaller cities.

Indias response to the virus was initially sluggish, but on 24 March the prime minister, Narendra Modi, imposed a three-week nationwide lockdown of its 1.3-billion population.

By Friday more than 13.8m infections had been confirmed worldwide and nearly 590,000 people had died, according to Johns Hopkins University, with Brazil recording more than 2m infections by the end of the week and the US more than 3m.

Countries around the world have moved quickly to reintroduce restrictions as outbreaks flare up again. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, Spains second largest city, announced a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people from Saturday as part of a package of measures to curb an increase in coronavirus cases in the Catalan capital.

We have to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people Only 10 people will be allowed in weddings and funerals from Saturday, Colau told a press conference. Residents were urged to shop online and cultural and sports events will also be limited.

In France, which had already announced plans to make mask wearing mandatory in enclosed public spaces, authorities reported a sharp rise in the infection rate in Brittany. According to data released on Friday, the diseases reproduction rate in Brittany had risen from 0.92 to 2.62 between 10-14 July.

Its a worrying number because it means the epidemic is taking off again, Eric Caumes, an infectious disease specialist at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris, told BFM TV.

In China, flights into the city of rmqi in the far-western Xinjiang region were restricted on Friday, and underground and public bus services suspended, according to local social media.

The latest outbreak has underlined the continuing difficulty China faces in stamping out the virus even with its imposition of draconian measures which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Amid fears around the world over the ease in which new resurgences have escalated after countries relaxed restrictions, Hong Kong reported 50 new locally transmitted cases on Friday, stoking further concern about a third peak of infections in the global financial hub.

Tokyo hit a daily high of 293 infections as Japan tried to keep the worlds third-largest economy running while curbing infections, a precarious balancing act of opening restaurants and theatres with limited seating, and having store clerks work behind plastic shielding.

We have asked people and businesses to raise their alert levels, said Tokyos governor, Yuriko Koike. She said the recent higher numbers partly reflected more aggressive testing.

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Global report: coronavirus infections in India pass 1m as outbreaks flare globally - The Guardian

I feel like the party line has always been that everybody should decide, not slide into cohabitation, said Alexandra Solomon, a clinical assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University and the instructor of Northwesterns Marriage 101 course. What I have realized with the quarantine is what a privileged position that is. Its a privilege to make very mindful, thoughtful, intentional choices about when to move in together.

Of course, involuntary home confinement and financial strain against the backdrop of a global health crisis do not add up to domestic bliss for everyone. Joel Velez, 42, was quarantined in Florida with his wife of 18 years and their four children for about a month before he lost his job, for which he worked nights, in a layoff.

For the first time in years, Mr. Velez and his wife were on similar schedules, but their new abundance of time together confirmed something hed suspected for a while. We seem to have lost any kind of common ground besides, you know, where we live and our kids, he said. Last month, Mr. Velez suggested they see a counselor. According to Mr. Velez, his wife suggested they split up instead.

Mr. Velez wondered aloud whether, if the pandemic had never happened, his marriage might have limped along for another 15 years, neither party ever rising to the task of asking for a change.

This whole quarantine situation has forced us to face the problems that weve been experiencing, he said. To stop hiding from each other through work, or through our different schedules.

Robert Falconer, 29, and Julie Fisher, 28, live in Calgary, Alberta, and when their city began to shut down, they, too, had to immediately address a matter theyd been putting off: They had been talking about getting engaged, but there was always just a little too much going on in their lives.

In mid-March, Mr. Falconers parents, who were living in Asia, decided to come and live with him. Mr. Falconer and Ms. Fisher realized they would have to forgo seeing each other in person for a while to minimize exposure risks for their families. All at once, they had to choose: throw together a proposal straightaway, or wait until they could be together in person again, whenever that might be.

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What the Coronavirus Brought Relationships: Clarity - The New York Times

When you mix science and politics, you get politics. With the coronavirus, the United States has proved politics hasnt worked. If we are to fully reopen both the economy and schools safely which can be done we have to return to science.

To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus devastation and with a population twice that of Texas, has recently averaged about 200 new cases a day when Texas has had over 9,000. Germany, with a population four times that of Florida, has had fewer than 400 new cases a day. On Sunday, Florida reported over 15,300, the highest single-day total of any state.

The White House says the country has to learn to live with the virus. Thats one thing if new cases occurred at the rates in Italy or Germany, not to mention South Korea or Australia or Vietnam (which so far has zero deaths). Its another thing when the United States has the highest growth rate of new cases in the world, ahead even of Brazil.

Italy, Germany and dozens of other countries have reopened almost entirely, and they had every reason to do so. They all took the virus seriously and acted decisively, and they continue to: Australia just issued fines totaling $18,000 because too many people attended a birthday party in someones home.

In the United States, public health experts were virtually unanimous that replicating European success required, first, maintaining the shutdown until we achieved a steep downward slope in cases; second, getting widespread compliance with public health advice; and third, creating a work force of at least 100,000 some experts felt 300,000 were needed to test, trace and isolate cases. Nationally we came nowhere near any of those goals, although some states did and are now reopening carefully and safely. Other states fell far short but reopened anyway. We now see the results.

While New York City just recorded its first day in months without a Covid-19 death, the pandemic is growing across 39 states. In Miami-Dade County in Florida, six hospitals have reached capacity. In Houston, where one of the countrys worst outbreaks rages, officials have called on the governor to issue a stay-at-home order.

As if explosive growth in too many states isnt bad enough, we are also suffering the same shortages that haunted hospitals in March and April. In New Orleans, testing supplies are so limited that one site started testing at 8 a.m. but had only enough to handle the people lined up by 7:33 a.m.

And testing by itself does little without an infrastructure to not only trace and contact potentially infected people but also manage and support those who test positive and are isolated along with those urged to quarantine. Too often this has not been done; in Miami, only 17 percent of those testing positive for the coronavirus had completed questionnaires to help with contact tracing, critical to slowing spread. Many states now have so many cases that contact tracing has become impossible anyway.

Whats the answer?

Social distancing, masks, hand washing and self-quarantine remain crucial. Too little emphasis has been placed on ventilation, which also matters. Ultraviolet lights can be installed in public areas. These things will reduce spread, and President Trump finally wore a mask publicly, which may somewhat depoliticize the issue. But at this point all these things together, even with widespread compliance, can only blunt dangerous trends where they are occurring. The virus is already too widely disseminated for these actions to quickly bend the curve downward.

To reopen schools in the safest way, which may be impossible in some instances, and to get the economy fully back on track, we must get the case counts down to manageable levels down to the levels of European countries. The Trump administrations threat to withhold federal funds from schools that dont reopen wont accomplish that goal. To do that, only decisive action will work in places experiencing explosive growth at the very least, limits even on private gatherings and selective shutdowns that must include not just such obvious places as bars but churches, also a well-documented source of large-scale spread.

Depending on local circumstances, that may prove insufficient; a comprehensive April-like shutdown may be required. This could be on a county-by-county basis, but half-measures will do little more than prevent hospitals from being overrun. Half-measures will leave transmission at a level vastly exceeding those of the many countries that have contained the virus. Half-measures will leave too many Americans not living with the virus but dying from it.

During the 1918 influenza pandemic, almost every city closed down much of its activity. Fear and caring for sick family members did the rest; absenteeism even in war industries exceeded 50 percent and eviscerated the economy. Many cities reopened too soon and had to close a second time sometimes a third time and faced intense resistance. But lives were saved.

Had we done it right the first time, wed be operating at near 100 percent now, schools would be preparing for a nearly normal school year, football teams would be preparing to practice and tens of thousands of Americans would not have died.

This is our second chance. We wont get a third. If we dont get the growth of this pandemic under control now, in a few months, when the weather turns cold and forces people to spend more time indoors, we could face a disaster that dwarfs the situation today.

John M. Barry is a professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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A Shutdown May Be Needed to Stop the Coronavirus - The New York Times

Editors note: This is a live account of COVID-19 updates from Friday, July 17, as the day unfolded. It is no longer being updated. Click here to see all the most recent news about the pandemic, and click here to find additional resources.

Washington could be in for another round of coronavirus restrictions, Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday, during a news conference where he announced a limit of 10 people at social gatherings in Washington counties that are further along in the reopening process.

Inslees announcement came as Washington set a new record for confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, with state health officials Thursday reporting 1,267 new cases and six additional deaths.The tally clocked in at nearly twice the average number of cases per day in the past two weeks.

Throughout Friday, on this page, well be posting Seattle Times journalists updates on the outbreak and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world. Updates from Thursday can be found here, and all our coronavirus coverage can be found here.

OLYMPIA In the lateststatewide COVID-19 situation report released Friday afternoon by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH), public health officials describe "an explosive situation" in Washington state, where 1,267new COVID-19 cases were confirmed Thursday, the state's highest single-day uptick.

Per the report, transmission has steadily increased or accelerated across Washington state since the start of July "and will continue to do so unless concrete steps are taken to stop the spread." On July 14, Gov. Jay Inslee paused Washington's phased reopening plan through July 28.

The trends are not limited to early hot spots for the novel coronavirus, like King County, or locations with more recent flare-ups, like Yakima County.

While the reproductive number in Yakima County is lower than the rest of the state, positive signs from previous reports appear to be plateauing, the state DOH found, as the test positive rate remains high there.

The amount of daily new cases is higher than Washington's previous peak in March, the report stresses, with the demographics of the virus continuing to skew younger and with hospitalization on the rise across the state and across age groups.

Hospitalization rates are just starting to rise in Western Washington, where the surge is led by 20-to-39-year-olds. Per the state, the recent growth in cases among 20-to-29-year-olds is spreading to all age groups, "including low but increasing rates among children and teens." (In Eastern Washington, hospitalization rates are up among all age groups, per the report.)

In these trends, we are seeing the impact of our collective decisions, said Washington Secretary of Health John Wiesman in a news release. If we want to send our kids to school in the fall and avoid new restrictions, we must all make a conscious shift in the way we live our lives.

"That means staying at home as much as possible, reducing how many people we see in person and continuing to wear face coverings and keep physical distance in public.

Trevor Lenzmeier

State health officials confirmed 754 new COVID-19 cases in Washington on Friday, including seven new deaths, after reporting 1,267 new cases on Thursday a single-day record for the state.

The update brings the states totals to 45,067 cases and 1,434 deaths, meaning about 3.2% of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in Washington have died,according to the state Department of Health (DOH). The data is as of 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

So far, 767,657 tests for the novel coronavirus have been conducted in the state, per DOH. Of those, 5.9% have come back positive.

The state has confirmed 12,766 diagnoses and 631 deaths in King County, the state's most populous, accounting for about 44.4% of the state's death toll.

Trevor Lenzmeier

WASHINGTON (AP) Joe Biden on Friday unveiled a plan to reopen schools in the era of coronavirus, seeking to establish federal safety guidelines that he says will be based on science and not on political pressure for the country to arbitrarily put the pandemic behind it.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominees proposal ultimately leaves final decisions up to state and local officials. His guidelines to resume classes comes as the White House argues that most parents are anxious to see schools resume in-person classes in the fall. President Donald Trump says the decision to possibly avoid doing so in some areas is more motivated by politics than by legitimate fears about the pandemic.

They think its going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed, Trump said at a White House discussion on school plans last week. No way. Were very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools.

Trump has also threatened to hold back federal funding if schools dont bring their students back in the fall and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working on new guidance for how to do so.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has advanced much the same argument as Biden, saying the decision to reopen schools should be driven by science but arguing that doing so means bringing students back to classrooms.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) With the first day of school just weeks away in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out sweeping new rules Friday that all but ensure most of the states K-12 schools serving 6.7 million students will not reopen classrooms when the academic year starts.

The rules also mandate that all staff and students above 2nd grade who do return to campuses wear masks in school as the coronavirus pandemic surges.

Newsom said all schools, public and private, in counties that are on a state monitoring list for rising coronavirus infections cannot hold in-person classes and will have to meet strict criteria for reopening. Currently, 32 of Californias 58 counties are on the watchlist, including the vast majority of the states population and its biggest cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and many others

Students, teachers, staff and parents prefer in-class instruction. But only if we can do it safely, Newsom said during a televised briefing. The one thing we have the power to do to get our kids back into school? Wear a mask, physically distance, wash your hands.

The governors strict new regulations mark a dramatic shift from his earlier position that it was up to local school districts and boards to decide when and how to reopen. His announcement came as many of the states 1,000 school districts are set to resume instruction in mid-August, with many still finalizing reopening plans.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

Fresh studies give more information about what treatments do or dont work for COVID-19, with high-quality methods that give reliable results.

British researchers on Friday published their research on the only drug shown to improve survival a cheap steroid called dexamethasone. Two other studies found that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine does not help people with only mild symptoms.

For months before studies like these, learning what helps or harms has been undermined by desperation science as doctors and patients tried therapies on their own or through a host of studies not strong enough to give clear answers.

For the field to move forward and for patients outcomes to improve, there will need to be fewer small or inconclusive studies and more like the British one, Drs. Anthony Fauci and H. Clifford Lane of the National Institutes of Health wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Its now time to do more studies comparing treatments and testing combinations, said Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Read the highlights of recent treatment developments here.

The Associated Press

Detroit Public Schools invited students to in-person summer classes this week during the coronavirus pandemic and immediately faced demonstrations that wound up with some arrests of protesters and a lawsuit aiming to get the classes to shut down. The protesters said the district was using children as guinea pigs.

In Westwood, Mass., a summer school employee who didnt feel well tested negative for COVID-19 and returned to her job working with students with disabilities only to learn she really had the disease, WCBV reported. The Westwood Schools superintendent said in a statement that her exposure to students was limited to a three-hour block and noted that she was wearing personal protective equipment.

As school districts across the country struggle to make final plans about whether and how to open schools for the 2020-21 academic year, they are getting some real-time examples of what can happen when students return to school buildings.

Read the story here.

The Washington Post

On Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced tighter restrictions on social gatherings that effectively halted the burgeoning trend of drive-in concerts.

Starting Monday, anew 10-person limit on gatheringswill be imposed on counties in the third phase of the governorsSafe Start reopening plan. The five-person limit for counties in Phase 2 including King, Pierce and Snohomish remains in place.

The new order wipes outseveral drive-in concertsthat had recently emerged as an alternative to traditional shows. However,drive-in movie theaterswill still be allowed to operate.

Read more here.

Michael Rietmulder

Americas mainstream medical establishments have given their endorsement: Universal masking is essential for the nation to find its way out of a crippling COVID-19 pandemic and get schools back in session and the economy restarted.

The data is clearly there, that masking works, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday in awebcastwith the Journal of the American Medical Association. If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really do think that in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.

A CDCstudyreleased Tuesday said that by early May, a survey estimated that about 76% of American adults who left home in the previous week had used a cloth face covering.

Anotherreportby the CDC about two hairstylists at a salon in Missouri showcased masks remarkable effectiveness in preventing disease transmission.

The stylists fell ill with respiratory symptoms yet continued to work at the salon for several days, only to later test positive for the coronavirus.

The stylists served 139 clients while they were ill, typically spending 15 to 45 minutes with each of them. Yet not a single client was reported to have become sick, and none of those tested receive a positive test result. The reason? Scientists believe it was because both the hairstylists and their customers wore masks.

Here are four common myths about masks, debunked.

Read the story here.

Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times

Most Chicago children would return to the classroom two days a week and spend the other three days learning remotely once the school year begins under a tentative plan outlined Friday by officials from the nations third-largest school district.

Chicago Public Schools officials called the proposed hybrid approach a preliminary framework, though, and asked parents, students and staff to weigh in. A final decision about in-person instruction for fall classes wont come until late August, with classes set to begin Sept. 8.

We have to be ready for any possibility, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. COVID-19 has been unpredictable from the start and we have a responsibility to be prepared for what the public health indicators dictate, whether that means remote learning, in-person learning or something in between.

The Chicago Teachers Union this week called on the district to stick with virtual instruction to start the fall.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

The British government ordered an urgent review Friday into how daily coronavirus death figures in England are calculated amid claims the current method overestimates the tally.

The review was prompted by concerns over why England is still recording way more deaths than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Researchers looked at whether differing methods may account for the discrepancy.

On some days recently, England has seen more than 100 daily virus-related deaths as opposed to none in the other parts of the U.K. As a whole, the U.K. has recorded a coronavirus death toll of 45,119, the third-highest in the world behind the United States and Brazil.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

New York City is on track to allow zoos to open at limited capacity and allow professional sports to begin without spectators starting next week under the next phase of its reopening plan, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.

While a formal approval from the state had yet to be announced, de Blasio said the city is set to begin a limited version of Phase 4 of the reopening process starting Monday.

That means botanical gardens and zoos can reopen at 33% capacity, production of movies and TV shows can proceed and professional sports like baseball can be played without fans in the stands, de Blasio said.

The rest of the state is already in Phase 4, which typically permits opening malls and certain arts and entertainment centers. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo said this week that even if the city is approved to enter Phase 4, the state wont allow any additional indoor activity in places like malls and museums because of coronavirus transmission risks.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

At the start of one of the most daunting and divisive summits in recent history, the atmosphere among the European Union leaders was downright giddy.

Blame the coronavirus pandemic. With all kinds of masks, social distancing rules, and new ways of greetings, some of the leaders reveled in the novelty of it all as they met in person for the first time since February.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, so often a study in gravity at such meetings, was all merriment when she saw Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov with his mask slipped. With her face drawn in fake shock and horror, she pointed at his exposed nose to show he had committed a serious COVID-19 faux pas.

Other leaders at the summit in Belgium were trying out various versions of the elbow bump, with Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel almost turning it into an elbow duel. But there was no mistaking his good nature since he had Moien! the Luxembourgish for Good morning! printed on his mask.

The apparently carefree mingling and schmoozing disguised the reason they had all gathered in a cavernous Brussels meeting room instead of holding their summit by videoconference: The issues they are grappling with are so historic and divisive they need to look one another in the eye, and have face-to-face talks as they negotiate.

Since the pandemic hit Europe early this year, the EU has seen an unprecedented recession with the economy of the 27-nation EU contracting by 8.3% this year and lost 135,000 of its citizens to the disease.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

With infection spreading through social gatherings, Oregon set yet another single-day record on Thursday with 437 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19, the Oregon Health Authority reported.

The latest daily tally, the highest since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, raised the states case count to 13,509. Two more deaths were reported on Thursday as well, raising Oregons death toll from the disease to 249. The dead, both from Malheur County, were a 97-year-old man with underlying medical conditions and a 58-year-old woman whose health conditions are being confirmed.

States all over the country have seen surging case counts since they began easing limits on gatherings and business operations. Washington state also reported a single-day record Thursday, with 1,267 new cases.

Read more here.

Bennett Hall, Albany Democrat-Herald, Ore.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp sued the city of Atlanta over its face-mask requirement just after President Donald Trump arrived in the city without wearing a mask, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Friday.

In an interview on CBS This Morning, Bottoms questioned the timing of the lawsuit filed shortly after Trumps Wednesday visit to the city, calling the litigation really odd.

I pointed out that Donald Trump violated that order when he landed at our airport and did not wear a mask, she said.

She said Kemp is a Trump loyalist and he seems to work very hard to please the president of the United States, and that is often at the expense of the people in our state.

Asked whether she thinks Trump encouraged Kemp to file the lawsuit, she said she couldnt speak about whatever conversations they had.

But she added that Trump was violating the rules of our city in just a blatant disregard for the science.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

A return of stringent coronavirus restrictions in Israel, another daily record of reported cases in Japans capital and outbreaks in remote areas such as Chinas Xinjiang region underscored Friday the ongoing battle to quash COVID-19 flare-ups as the worlds latest hot spots pushed the confirmed global case tally toward 14 million.

India said the countrys total confirmed cases surpassed 1 million, the third-highest number behind the United States and Brazil, and its death toll reached more than 25,000. That followed Brazils announcement Thursday evening that its confirmed cases exceeded 2 million, including 76,000 deaths.

Governments are frantically trying to prevent and put down fresh outbreaks and keep their economies running as the pandemic accelerates in some parts of the world and threatens to come roaring back in others. Worldwide, confirmed cases numbered more than 13.8 million Friday and COVID-19 deaths totaled more than 590,000.

Israel on Friday reimposed sweeping restrictions to tackle a new surge in coronavirus cases in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called interim steps to avoid another general lockdown.

Continued here:

Coronavirus daily news updates, July 17: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world - Seattle Times

Austin Gavin was on vacation in South Carolina when the coronavirus began to spiral out of control in his home state of New York.

Cases were spiking in March. So was the death toll. An emergency hospital tent was built in Stony Brook, his hometown. Gavin, 72, was supposed to return in May to begin chemotherapy to treat his prostate cancer.

He searched Google for the best cancer hospitals in the country. Instead of going back to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York as planned, Gavin went to the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, which he thought was a safer choice.

The whole world changed for all of us, Gavin said. And the whole world had to deal with the virus, and then for those of us going through cancer treatment, we had to worry about not only COVID-19 but cancer as well.

As the world continues to adjust to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, patients and families in need of critical cancer care have had to take extra precautions. The essential treatment cancer patients seek often cant be postponed, so clinics like Moffitt have had to operate under stringent new protocols to continue to provide needed care while keeping staff and patients safe.

Cancer doesnt stop with COVID-19, said Dr. Jeffrey Lancet, an oncologist and researcher at the Moffitt Cancer Center. People are dealing with very serious advanced illnesses that require treatment and need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Like other hospitals in the area, Moffitt staff are taking extra steps to lower the risk of virus transmission, which includes requiring masks, relying on more on telehealth consultations and limiting visitors. But doctors have also had to get creative in how they treat patients, many who are are high risk for contracting COVID-19 because of their compromised immune systems.

Bone marrow treatments, which are a commonly used in some cancer patients, have been delayed because of the high risk of immunosuppression that can last for months if not years, Lancet said.

For patients in whom transplant is more elective, it may not need to be done next month as opposed to six months from now, Lancet said.

In adapting to the pandemic, Dr. Nikhil Khushalani, an oncologist who specializes in solid tumors at Moffitt, has opted to use oral medication over more invasive immunotherapies because it lowers the risk of inflammation in the body.

This is a higher risk population that we just have to be more cautious about, Khushalani said.

In March, Amy Sapien, 40, was diagnosed with invasive lobular carcinoma, a form of breast cancer. She began chemotherapy in July, and has been holed up in insolation for months to protect both herself and her eight-year-old son, Landen, who is also undergoing treatment for T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

The pandemic impacted Sapiens treatment plan at Moffitt. A double mastectomy wasnt an option, her surgeon said, because the hospital couldnt afford to double the operating time and resources during the pandemic when only a mastectomy was needed.

Because of coronavirus, she also went into surgery alone.

They removed part of my body and I didnt get to see anyone I knew in person for an entire day, Sapien said. (I) woke up nauseous and in pain. I had strangers to comfort me wearing masks so I couldnt see their expressions.

The risk of contracting the virus also impacted Sapiens routine at home, she said. She hasnt been inside a grocery store in a year, and more recently has stopped chatting with the Shipt delivery driver. She pulled her children out of school and daycare. Meals dropped off by well-meaning friends are left untouched on the doorstep.

When she isnt at doctors appointments, shes caring for her ill son. She administers his chemotherapy shots at home and prepares his daily medication. In her few minutes of spare time, shes online researching how coronavirus affects children.

(Landen) is very frustrated because you know, I made a lot of promises about life turning back to normal, she said. But then COVID-19 happened and all of it went away.

He can no longer visit his cousins because of the health risks, Sapien said. He spends most of his time playing video games online as a way to make friends.

Sapien, a social worker, also posts regular videos on Facebook pleading for people to wear a mask to keep her son safe. Even if the odds are low of contracting COVID-19 because of their extra precautions, she said the rising numbers across the state still terrifies her.

Im putting on a very brave face but Im absolutely terrified every day, she said. Theres a virus that we could have done something about and people were so selfish.

Sapien added: I just assume that if it makes its way into our house theres going to be a fatality.

Gavin, the cancer patient from New York, packed his car and drove to Tampa in late March with his wife and two dogs without even knowing where they would stay. At the time, Florida was mandating visitors from New York to quarantine for two weeks and with his New York license plate, Gavin worried he wouldnt get through. A social worker at Moffitt helped him, he said.

After more than two months and 32 radiation treatments, Gavin returned to his vacation home in Myrtle Beach. His last day of treatment in Florida was June 4.

I wrote a proclamation on my last day, he said. I plastered it all over the hospital walls on the hospital doors, elevator doors just thanking everybody for what they did.

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Cancer doesnt stop with coronavirus. Heres how Tampa Bay patients manage the risk - Tampa Bay Times

New Jersey remains in a holding pattern for reopening, Gov. Phil Murphy said Friday, meaning there are no immediate plans to let people back inside gyms, movie theaters, indoor dining and other businesses that remain closed.

Believe me, I want to get to gyms, I want to get to indoor dining, I want to get to theaters, Murphy said. But we cant do it if we think were gonna have a likelihood of killing people.

But, Murphy said, he will announce plans Monday for high contact outdoor sports to resume.

New Jersey remains in Stage 2 of its phased reopening plan, which was paused last week as the states transmission rate increased.

The states transmission rate, one of the key units used to measure the spread of the virus, is above the benchmark of 1, at 1.11. It was higher than 5 at the peak of the outbreak but more recently fell below 1 for weeks. It increased to more than 1 earlier this month and has hovered around that mark for the past week.

The states positivity rate, another closely monitored figure, was 1.66% as of Monday, the date for which data is available.

The only way we can keep our positivity rate and Rt low is by taking the precautions that we have across the past four months, the governor said. That means social distancing, wearing a face mask whenever you are out in public, washing your hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, and staying home if you exhibit any symptoms of respiratory illness.

Officials on Friday announced 202 more cases and 20 additional deaths attributed to the coronavirus, bringing New Jerseys totals to 176,551 confirmed cases and 15,684 fatalities from the virus.

Heres a roundup of coronavirus news:

N.J. struggles to secure PPE for second wave as coronavirus cases surge across the country. While COVID-19 cases in New Jersey have decreased dramatically since the peak three months ago, hospitals across the state are now struggling to stockpile PPE and get speedy test results as hard-hit states like Florida and Texas hundreds of miles away sap up resources.

Music to its ears: Tim Welch Vocal Studio is overcoming COVID-19 virtually. The Maplewood-based studio has been holding online singing lessons and parties where people of all vocal abilities and genres are coming together

You will die in captivity, they told notorious Exxon kidnapper. At risk of Covid, hes asking to get out. Arthur Seale, 28 years after the infamous kidnapping scheme that led to the murder of an Exxon executive, is asking for compassionate release from prison.

2 Jersey Shore towns limit number of badge sales after crowds flock to beaches. Belmar has capped the number of daily beach badges that can be sold at 7,500 per day and Manasquan set a limit of 1,000 per day on Saturdays and Sundays for any type of beach badge.

People who fly into N.J. will be asked to fill out survey amid out-of-state quarantine advisory. People flying into New Jersey will be asked to fill out an electronic survey starting Monday as the Garden State continues to call for travelers arriving from 22 states that qualify as coronavirus hotspots to voluntarily self-quarantine for 14 days.

After warning from teachers union president, Murphy talks school reopening in N.J. The head of New Jerseys largest teachers union said in an interview published Friday that New Jerseys schools dont have enough time to pull together proper protocols to safely reopen by September.

N.J. Supreme Court to decide if state can legally borrow $9.9B to offset losses. The State Republican Committee and Republican lawmakers filed suit against the New Jersey COVID-19 Emergency Bond Act on Thursday evening, shortly after it was passed by the state Legislature. The bond act allows the state to borrow up to $9.9 billion through June 30, 2021, provided borrowing requests are approved by a committee of four lawmakers

Liberty Island will partially reopen next week, Ellis Island to remain closed. After being shuttered for months because of the coronavirus, Liberty Island will partially reopen to visitors on Monday, July 20, the National Park Service announced Friday afternoon.

NJ Advance Media Staff Writers Brent Johnson, Rodrigo Torrejon, Chris Sheldon, Samantha Marcus, Avalon Zoppo, Ryan Patti, Ted Sherman, and contributed to this report.

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Coronavirus update: N.J. in holding pattern; Schools dont have enough planning time; What you need to know - NJ.com

He loved to get his family together, Ms. Flores said. And thats what took him.

My familys encounter with the virus started in the last week of June, when my 17-year-old nephew, who mistook his virus symptoms for strep, joined my 66-year-old mother, 69-year-old father, two sisters and a brother-in-law on a medical road trip to Houston, where my mother had scheduled a mammogram.

Hablas espaol? To read more of our stories in Spanish, subscribe to our newsletter El Times.

On their way back to the Valley, they visited relatives in Galveston. After Fathers Day, about a dozen relatives who had met one another during the trip began describing debilitating headaches, body chills, fever and trouble breathing, all classic Covid-19 symptoms.

The Contreras family was in a similar situation. They gathered for their festive pachanga on June 1, dancing to mariachi music, sharing family stories and savoring classic Mexican barbecue.

Because they kept it small, they thought they were doing the right thing, said Ms. Flores, who stayed home because she worried about the virus.

It only took a few days for Mr. Contreras to develop a severe respiratory illness. Two of his sons soon joined him in the hospital with difficulty breathing. Soon uncles, aunts and cousins also fell ill.

Ms. Flores told me that when she heard her grandfathers brain was bleeding, she rushed to the hospital and found him unconscious and connected to several tubes.

Your gera is here, she whispered, using the nickname he had given her as a child, alluding to her light complexion.

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I Went Home to Texas to Cover the Virus. Then My Family Got It. - The New York Times

Medical workers from New York wearing personal protective equipments test for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at temporary testing site for COVID-19 in Higher Dimensions Church on July 17, 2020 in Houston, Texas.

Go Nakamura | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The U.S.reported71,558 new Covid-19 cases Saturday, making it the second day in a row the nation seen more than 70,000 new infections, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

As of Saturday, the 7-day average has seen a 18.34% increase in new cases compared to one week ago.

The U.S. leads the world in reported cases with a total of 3.66 million total since Covid-19 hit. To date, 139,480 deaths from the virus have been reported in the U.S., the most fatalities of any nation in the world.

Nineteen states hit their own record highs in average daily new cases, with most seeing a more than 25% increase. As nearly all 50 states see increases in new cases, hospitalizations are growing in 33 states with 14 states hitting record highs in average current hospitalizations.

Florida reported 10,292 new cases and 90 more deaths Saturday, according to data from the state health department. Twelve percent of Floridians tested came back positive for the virus Friday, down from a recent high of 18%.

Texas reported 10,256 new cases, according to its health department. More than 17% of Texans tested came back positive for the virus as of Thursday.

Texas and Florida are major centers of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. The virus has surged since the spring after states in the Sunbelt started rapidly reopening their economies after brief lockdowns. Last Sunday, Florida reported more than 15,000 new cases, more than New York at its peak in April.

The U.S. hit a nationwide record on Thursday, with 77,255 new cases. White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday praisedNew York for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, amid a debate in the U.S. about whether states where the virus is surging should revert to stricter lockdown measures.

New York, once the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, has reduced daily new infections from more than 10,000 at its peak to 776 as of this late this week. New York City is scheduled to enter phase 4 on Monday, allowing outdoor activities like zoos, outdoor films and gardens.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in the country. Bars and indoor dining still haven't reopened in New York City as a precautionary measure. Governors in hotspot states like Arizona, Florida, Texas and Georgia have been reluctant to implement strict social distancing measures.

WATCH NOW: Dr. Anthony Fauci urges young people to take coronavirus seriously.

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U.S. reports more than 70,000 new coronavirus infections for second day in a row - CNBC

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S.

Kevin Dietsch | Reuters

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday that the coronavirus has hit the U.S. "very severely" and the country needs "to get better control over things" to reopen the economy and head toward normalcy.

"The United States of America has been hit very severely by this. You just need to look at the numbers and see the number of infections in the millions and the number of deaths ... keeps going up each day. We're still seeing an increase in hospitalizations." Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in an interview.

"We need to get better control over things. We need to open up the country because staying shut down has economic, employment, health and other negative consequences that are significant," he said.

The U.S. reported an additional 77,200 Covid-19 cases Thursday, a record-breaking daily increase that shattered its previous high by nearly 10,000 cases,according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.Forty-four states and the District of Columbia all reported that the seven-day average of daily new cases rose by more than 5% on Thursday from a week earlier, according to the Johns Hopkins data.

Some states have reported climbing cases for weeks, predominantly in the American West and South.California, Florida and Texas accounted for more than half of all new U.S. cases on Thursday.Hospitalizations also appear to be growingin at least 32 states, based on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data from theCovid Tracking Project.

"When you have more hospitalizations inevitably you're going to see more deaths because if people are serious enough to get hospitalized, a certain percentage of them are going to be very sick and a certain percentage of them are going to die, and that's exactly what you're seeing in certain areas," Fauci said.

Many states across the U.S. have paused or rolled back their reopening plans to prevent further spread of Covid-19. Some of the country's largest school districts have already announced they won't immediately invite students back for in-person instruction in the fall as cases climb.

"We've got to have a delicate balance of carefully and prudently going towards normality and opening up at the same time that we contain and not allow these surgings that we're seeing in certain Southern states," Fauci said. "That's a big challenge, that's the thing I get concerned about the most."

Fauci has reiterated that there's been an "unfortunate mindset" that public health guidelines have become obstacles to reopening the country. He said the "default position" for the nation's schools should be to do the best they can to return students to school while placing the safety and health of students and teachers first.

However, there are areas of the country where the coronavirus is still spreading significantly and should consider modifying how they return students to class, including wearing masks, separating desks and rotating students' schedules, he said.

President Donald Trump andEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos have ramped up their efforts to return students across the country to in-person classes this fall. DeVos has said that partial reopenings that combine in-person classes with online learning are unacceptable.

CNBC's Nate Rattner, Will Feuer and Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.

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Fauci says U.S. needs to 'get better control' of the coronavirus to reopen without outbreaks - CNBC

Tribes legal authority over nonmembers is both very simple and incredibly complex. Tribes dont operate under the federal Constitution; instead, each has its own laws. Congress has the authority under the Constitutionprimarily the Indian-commerce clauseto enact laws to modify tribes powers. But historically, Congress has not done this often, leaving intact tribal autonomy over tribe members.

When it comes to tribal powers over nonmembers, the Supreme Court has stepped in. In 1981, the Court decided in Montana v. United States that tribes normally cannot regulate nonmembers. However, the Court did say there were two exceptions, usually called the Montana exceptions: (1) tribes can regulate nonmembers when nonmembers affirmatively consent; and (2) tribes can regulate nonmembers when their conduct imperils the political integrity of Indian tribes.

The first Montana exception, as a practical matter, swallows the general rule. For the most part, nonmembers consent. Nearly 1 million nonmembers are employees of tribes or their enterprises, and many others reside with tribal-member relatives in tribal public housing. If tribes want nonmember consent, they can make it a condition of employment or residency. Nonmember-owned businesses on reservations use their own bargaining power to negotiate with the tribe on whether tribal law applies to them.

Rebecca Nagle: Oklahomas suspect case in front of the Supreme Court

However, when nonmembers do not consent and then disobey tribal regulations, tribes usually have little recourse, as the second Montana exceptions imperilment standard is almost impossible to meet. For instance, tribal-member victims of vehicular or train accidents caused by nonmembers cannot sue in tribal court. The Supreme Courts signal to nonmembers is that if the tribe is not outright destroyed by their conduct, then the tribe cannot regulate that conduct.

As a result, nonmembers who defy tribal laws in the 21st century are more like outlaws of the Old West, perpetrating terrible acts and expecting to get away with it. The nonmembers challenging tribal jurisdiction over them in the most recent Supreme Court cases on this issue allegedly committed acts of racial discrimination in lending, perpetrated child molestation at a retail store, and dumped 22 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste on Indian lands. The lender prevailed. The retail store likely would have won, but Justice Antonin Scalia died while the case was pending. The remaining eight justices split, leaving a tie. Under the Supreme Courts rule, the lower-court decision is affirmed without opinion, meaning the tribe prevailed. The dumping case is still pending, awaiting a recommendation from the solicitor general. These actors allegedly committed serious offenses against tribes and Indian people but tend to be viewed favorably by the Court.

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Why Tribes Should Have the Power to Enforce Strict Coronavirus Policies - The Atlantic

When Dr. Ray Baule, a neurosurgeon, sees fellow residents of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, not wearing masks or practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, he grows frustrated and worried.

That's because Baule knows exactly what it could all lead to he saw it firsthand during the three weeks he volunteered at New York City's Elmhurst Hospital in April, when it was overwhelmed with coronavirus patients while the city was the center of the global pandemic.

"I've seen a lot of stuff in my life, but when I went into the ICU, I was shocked. It was just the most incredible thing I had ever seen," said Baule, who completed a general surgical internship at Elmhurst in 1992. "These patients were very, very sick."

Medical professionals from across the country rushed to New York City when it became the center of the pandemic in the U.S. in March and April, but now they are alarmed by what they're seeing in their own backyards as their home states report record numbers of cases.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Almost 1 in 5 new cases of the coronavirus reported around the world one day this week came from just three U.S. states Texas, Florida and California an NBC News tally revealed Tuesday. The 27,574 cases recorded in those states Monday accounted for 18.9 percent of the global total and represented more than a third of the 61,751 new cases reported in the U.S.

Baule remembers well the chaos of those days at Elmhurst, when medical staffers were doing anything and everything just to keep up. Pediatricians were transporting patients, plastic surgeons were doing ventilator inventory, and he was working in the intensive care unit managing critical care patients, he said.

Now, back home in Rocky Mount, a town of about 55,000 less than 60 miles northeast of Raleigh, it seems like a completely different world, even as cases peak in the state.

"Recently I go into the store and I feel I'm the only one there wearing a mask. Even the people working there aren't wearing masks, which just blows my mind," said Baule, who said he wears a mask whenever he leaves the house. "People just don't realize. You don't realize it until you see how bad it is."

Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak

Ivette Palomeque, a nurse in Houston, also volunteered at Elmhurst Hospital during the peak in New York.

"It was definitely overwhelming, nothing like any health care provider has seen in their lifetime," she said. "I've seen death constantly, I've seen death frequently, but to this magnitude? Never."

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Palomeque arrived March 27 and didn't return home until June 29. She is back to treating patients at Memorial Hermann at Texas Medical Center, where she has worked for seven years.

"Let's say New York is full-blown chaos. This is controlled chaos," Palomeque said of what she's seeing in Houston. In Texas, the two-week death total was up by 99 percent over the previous two weeks.

"The patients are presenting the same in ... that they're getting very sick, requiring enormous amounts of oxygen and ventilation and things that clearly only an ICU would manage," she said. "So that's the dangerous part of this. If enough people get sick, it can definitely create a situation like a bed crunch."

She said that while the number of coronavirus patients isn't what she saw in New York, "that doesn't mean that it may not get there."

Palomeque said of Texans who weren't practicing social distancing or wearing masks: "I really wish they would've had a chance to see what I saw and experience what I experienced trying to take care of these people.

"For some of the general public, this will never be real unless they witness it with their own eyes or it hits them close to home, unfortunately," she said. "It's really disheartening to see so many people just not wearing a mask, not even caring, and it's just, like, I don't understand."

Her message: "Please wear your mask. People are dying. This is real."

Counties in Texas and Arizona have requested refrigerated trucks to use as makeshift morgues as the numbers of deaths have continued to rise, replicating disturbing images seen in New York City during its coronavirus peak.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego told MSNBC last week that Maricopa County, Arizona, announced that it was going to be getting refrigerated trucks because the Abrazo Health system had run out of morgue space.

"It is very scary out here," she said.

In response to the comment, Melissa DeRosa, secretary to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, asked on Twitter: "How could the rest of America have watched what happened in New York in March and let this happen in July?"

Jess Esperti, a nurse from Arizona who also treated patients at Elmhurst Hospital in April, said the hardest part was that so many patients were dying that there wasn't always enough time to inform family members or let them grieve.

"New York was such a whirlwind, because we didn't have time to do that with our patients," said Esperti, who works for several Phoenix-area hospitals. "People would call and ask for an update and find out that their loved one had passed.

"That's not any way that I would want anyone to go, not being able to talk to their family," she said.

Esperti said that while cases are rising in Arizona, she still has time to do what she wasn't always able to do in New York.

"Maybe it's going to get worse, but we at least have some time to be able to do those things for people that we weren't able to do at the very beginning," she said.

She said she recently treated a 74-year-old woman who wasn't going to be able to come off a BiPap machine, which helps push air into a patient's lungs.

"As soon as we got her in touch with all of her kids from around the country, all at once she felt better, like, 'Yeah, I can go now,'" Esperti said. "We got her family in a group video chat, and all of her kids watched as we took the BiPap off and she passed away."

Esperti said it was a sharp contrast from not always having time to give every family such intimate final moments during New York's coronavirus peak.

"It's something that I will forever, you know, try to be better at," she said. "I know what 'I don't have time' means because of New York."

Esperti said she was humbled by her volunteering experience and the teamwork of the medical staff in pushing through the crisis.

"You know, all of us nurses that were in New York, you can't really explain this to anybody," she said. "I mean, the only people that are going to understand is the people that actually worked there, because it's just impossible to explain fully what it was like."

Read more:

'This is real': Doctors, nurses who helped New York with coronavirus surge warn their home states - NBC News

Climate pollution is making heat waves longer, hotter and more frequent. As communities throughout the United States face surges in COVID-19 infections, more intense heat is creating additional public health challenges, with sweltering conditions complicating efforts to contain the virus and leading to a cascade of difficult choices.

The current heat wave across the South and Southwest has seen heat warnings and advisories for at least 11 states, stretching from Southern California to the Florida Panhandle. Last weekend in Phoenix, temperatures hit a record high of 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, July 12and were measured at or above 110 degrees for at least ten consecutive days.

This is part of a long-term upward trend in global temperatures caused by climate pollution. Over the last 60 years, each decade has been decisively warmer than the previous one. The number of deadly heat waves in 50 major cities across the U.S. has increased dramatically from an average of two heat waves per year during the 1960s, to more than six per year during the 2010s.

Now layer in a deadly pandemic.

Up to a quarter of all American households dont have access to air conditioning, and they are often the poor and the elderly, for whom coronavirus poses the greatest risk. Moving them to crowded cooling centers like public libraries, community centers and senior centers increases the likelihood of exposing and possibly killing those most vulnerable to the disease.

Consider, too, the millions of Americans who work outdoors who, for example, deliver mail or labor on highway construction crews as temperatures soar and heat waves worsen. These conditions set up an impossible choice between a persons health and the job that feeds their family.

Then there are the 25 million Americans with asthma: As temperatures climb and heat waves become more frequent, the metaphorical rope around their chests will tighten. Heat and humidity encourages mold growth and seasonal pollen, which are asthma triggers. On very hot days, the problem of ozone pollution which happens when heat and sunlight combine with pollutants to create ozone also increases. Ozone causes damage to everything from human lungs to crop yields. While this is especially worrisome for people with asthma and related illnesses, ozone is bad for all peoples health, triggering problems including chest pain and coughing. It can also harm lung tissue and reduce lung function, which is especially worrisome amid the threat of COVID-19, which itself can cause serious lung damage.

Because the burden of asthma is strongly related to social and economic status, access to health care and exposure to environmental triggers, the most vulnerable are most at risk here, too. African Americans, Latinos, and the poorparticularly poor childrenhave a higher incidence of the illness.

If you think putting up with a spell of hot weather is not a big deal, look at recent history. In France, record heat waves in June and July 2019 killed more than 1,400 people. In India, an intense heat wave in 2015 killed more than 2,300 people and had temperatures hot enough to melt pavement in New Delhi.

All across the United States, temperatures are climbing. According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the number of days in Minnesota with a heat index above 90 degrees could quadruple by around mid-century if no action is taken to climate pollution. And in Florida, the average number of days when the heat index is 105 degrees or higher is projected to increase more than five times by then from 25 dangerous heat days a year to 130 more than any other state.

There are also agricultural and economic impacts. Rising temperatures increase the likelihood of droughts and spread insect borne diseases. They will also have a profound impact on outdoor recreation and sports heat is already a leading cause of death and disability among high school athletes.

We have to tackle both health threats defeating the immediate threat of COVID-19, while also dramatically reducing the pollution thats heating up the planet. That means transitioning to clean energy, electrifying transportation, putting limits on pollution and prioritizing communities that carry the highest burden and health disparities.

As we move to repair the COVID-battered economy, we have a chance to make it better than it was before. In the U.S., we can rebuild better by investing in clean energy to create more jobs and less pollution. In doing so, well reduce shocks to the system from the global pandemic to devastating heat waves made worse by climate change.

Its time to act.

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The coronavirus crisis was already bad. Extreme heat waves are making it worse. - Environmental Defense Fund

While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there's no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading the virus, there have been reports of pets being infected.

And since the coronavirus is believed to have infected wild animals before jumping to humans, this is an area scientists need to learn more about in an effort to control the spread of Covid-19 and future illnesses.

Covid-19 was found in three of 11 cats at one mink farm, and the government said cats may play a role in the spread of the virus between farms.

At a farm in Teruel, Spain, 92,700 mink are to be culled after 78 of 90 animals tested were found to have the coronavirus -- 87% of the sample.

Can I catch coronavirus from my pet?

The CDC says the risk of animals spreading Covid-19 to people is "considered to be low" and the agency does not recommend routine testing of pets.

A YouTube video released by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-June said that "it doesn't seem like animals can give you the virus," although you may be able to give it to them.

Since animals can spread other diseases to humans, it's always best to wash your hands after touching a pet and before touching your face.

Didn't the coronavirus originate in wild animals?

Researchers believe the coronavirus spent some time infecting both bats and pangolins before it jumped into humans. Scientists suspect humans first came into contact with an animal sick with the disease at a wet market in China.

What is clear is that the coronavirus has swapped genes repeatedly with similar strains infecting bats, pangolins and a possible third species, a team at Duke University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and elsewhere reported in the journal Science Advances in May.

What's also clear is that people need to reduce contact with wild animals that can transmit new infections, they concluded.

How can I protect my pet from Covid-19?

Consider avoiding dog parks and other crowded public places, the FDA advises. The six-foot distancing rule applies to leashed pets, as well as to other people.

The FDA also suggests avoiding contact with animals if you are sick -- if possible, have someone else care for your pet until you're well again, or wear a face covering around them.

If your pet gets sick after contact with a person with Covid-19, call your veterinarian and find out about telemedicine consultations or other plans for seeing pets.

Animal rights groups warned that a bigger risk than the spread of the virus from animals to humans is the "spread of fear" causing owners to abandon their pets.

Should this change how we behave around animals?

Fur farms such as those where the mink outbreaks occurred are banned in many countries because of concerns around animal welfare and ethics.

Research published in Science Advances warned that humans are setting ourselves up to be infected with new viruses by operating "wet markets" where many different species of live animals are caged and sold, and by moving deeper into forests where animals live.

They said "reducing or eliminating direct human contact with wild animals is critical to preventing new coronavirus zoonosis [transmission from animals to humans] in the future."

Jane Goodall, the pioneering chimpanzee expert, said she hoped that the coronavirus would make us reflect on our relationship with the natural world.

She said humans had "disrespected" nature and animals, "and as we destroy the forests and the habitats, species which normally wouldn't interact have been crowded together" and have been forced into closer contact with humans.

Goodall noted that HIV originated with the hunting of chimpanzees, that Middle East respiratory syndrome -- another coronavirus -- comes from camels, and that modern farming practices create ideal conditions for a virus to jump from an animal to a human. The climate crisis could also bring further problems and more diseases.

"So, let's hope we come out of the pandemic and can work out together, a greener future economy, and a better way to live in harmony with the natural world," Goodall said, "for the sake of the environment, animals, our own health and future generations."

CNN's Maggie Fox, Laura Prez Maestro, Mick Kerver, Rob Picheta and Jen Christensen contributed reporting.

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From farmed mink to your pet cat, here's what we know about coronavirus and animals - CNN