Editors note:This is a live account of COVID-19 updates from Tuesday, July 14, as the day unfolded. It is no longer being updated.Click hereto see all the most recent news about the pandemic, andclick hereto find additional resources.

As coronavirus cases continue to spike in the United States, President Donald Trump is pushing to reopen the economy andthe White House is working to undercut its most trusted coronavirus expert.

In Washington state on Monday, health officials released two unusual numbers related to the pandemic, reporting 39 fewer deaths and a record-high 1,101 additional cases.

Throughout Tuesday, 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 Monday can be found here, and all our coronavirus coverage can be found here.

OLYMPIA Counties in Washington state wont be able to relax restrictions further for at least two weeks as confirmed cases of the new coronavirus climb around the state, Gov. Jay Inslee announced Tuesday.

And with a steady increase in cases across Washington, the governor, in a news conference, warned he may have to roll back parts of the gradual reopening made in recent months since the pandemic peaked here.

As the virus roars back across chunks of America, Washington, so far, has avoided the steep rise in confirmed cases and hospitalizations seen in Arizona, Florida and elsewhere.

But Inslee said the current rise of confirmed cases here along with an estimated transmission rate indicating infected people are spreading the virus to others leaves Washington in a dangerous position if left unchecked.

Read the full story here.

Joseph O'Sullivan

Researchers on Tuesday reported strong evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted from a pregnant woman to a fetus.

A baby born in a Paris hospital in March to a mother with COVID-19 tested positive for the virus and developed symptoms of inflammation in his brain, said Dr. Daniele De Luca, who led the research team and is chief of the division of pediatrics and neonatal critical care at Paris-Saclay University Hospitals. The baby, now more than 3 months old, recovered without treatment and is very much improved, almost clinically normal, De Luca said, adding that the mother, who needed oxygen during the delivery, is healthy.

De Luca said the virus appeared to have been transmitted through the placenta of the 23-year-old mother.

The New York Times

The state Department of Health (DOH) is refining how it records deaths as it works to better track the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, anytime someone with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis dies, DOH has been attributing those deaths to the virus, said Katie Hutchinson, heath statistics manager for DOH.

In the vast majority of those cases, COVID-19 was the cause of the persons death. But sometimes, people with COVID-19 happen to die of something else. Or, they have incomplete death certificates and the state isnt immediately sure whether COVID-19 played a role.

To differentiate among these, DOH on Monday began classifying deaths of people with COVID-19 into four categories: Confirmed, pending, suspect and non-COVID-19-related.

DOH has removed deaths from the official tally when it determined COVID-19 was not the primary cause. Hutchinson said the agency plans to continue doing so.

Read the full story here.

Ryan Blethen

In the last five months, Amazon job listings decreased about 19% globally, but still number more than 30,000. In the companys headquarters city of Seattle, listings are off 36%.

Amazon has more openings in Seattle about 7,300 than any other single location, down from about 11,500 in early February.

That was before the coronavirus pandemic upended all aspects of life, driving a wave of business to Amazon which made 175,000 temporary hires in its warehouses and transportation network this spring while much of the rest of the economy shut down, causing widespread unemployment.

The Seattle-areas role as a technology hub has insulated it to a certain extent. King Countys unemployment rate was 14.3% in May. (The June update is due next week.) But employment in the information industry, which includes many technology jobs, was up 2.8% in 12 months ended in May.

Read the full story here.

Benjamin Romano

Its been two weeks since Seattle Public Schools releasedpreliminary detailsabout its plan to reopen buildings in the fall. Now, amid heightened debate across the region and the country about the health risks of resuming instruction in person, the teachers union and some School Board members are searching for alternatives.

This week, the Seattle Education Association issued a statement opposing in-person teaching in the fall, calling it reckless under current conditions and advocating 100% remote learning. The union is currently bargaining with the school district over work conditions for this fall.

At the same time, a few School Board members are drafting anambitious alternativeto the complex reopening plan the district had previously proposed: two hours of instruction outdoors on most days, and remote learning in most other cases. School buildings would be reserved for a narrow list of activities, including special-education services and support for remote learning.

Read the full story here.

Dahlia Bazzaz

Doctors say employers should not use COVID-19 antibody tests to decide whether employees are safe to return to work, yet such testing is being promoted by lab companies and hospitals to businesses through back to work programs.

The idea is tantalizing: If scientists knew a COVID-19 infection caused the body to produce antibodies that reliably protect against re-infection, determining whos safe to return to work could be as simple as a well-designed blood test.

Yet the American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Minnesota Department of Health each say the evidence backing test accuracy and protectiveness from antibodies is not yet strong enough. Even the lab companies and hospitals admit they cant offer immunity certificates to people who have the antibodies today.

We dont know what level of antibodies makes someone immune to COVID-19. All we can tell is that the person has been exposed, said Dr. Susan Bailey, a Texas allergist and immunologist who is president of the American Medical Association. We dont necessarily know what that immune response means, in terms of someones ability to go back to work or to school.

Read the full story here.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

State health officials confirmed 547 new COVID-19 cases in Washington on Tuesday, and five new deaths.

The update brings the states totals to 42,304 cases and 1,404 deaths, meaning about 3.3% of people diagnosed in Washington have died, according to the state Department of Health (DOH). The data is as of 11:59 p.m. Monday.

So far, 718,234 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 12,213 diagnoses and 624 deaths in King County, the state's most populous, accounting for a little less than half of the state's death toll.

Nicole Brodeur

Consumers should take extra precautions with their hand sanitizer, according to Public Health - Seattle & King County, which warned against products that may cause methanol poisoning.

The agency sent out a series of tweets, including a list of 11 manufacturers whose products should be avoided.

Another tweet noted the signs of methanol poisoning, including headache, blurred vision or blindness, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, loss of coordination and decreased alertness. Anyone experiencing symptoms should call Washington Poison Center at 1-800-222-1222.

Public Health also urged consumers to only choose a sanitizer that is at least 60 percent alcohol; to avoid products that say FDA approved, since the are no sanitizers that are approved by the agency; and keep hand sanitizers out of the reach of children and supervise their use.

BATON ROUGE, La. Vice President Mike Pence insisted Tuesday the countrys schools should reopen to in-person instruction for students, making the point in Louisiana as the state has reemerged as one of the nations hot spots for the coronavirus only months after signs pointed to a successful outbreak response.

Appearing at Louisiana State University, the Republican vice president described the nation as in a much better position today to deal with the pandemic even as virus cases surge across much of the country. He and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called for students at every level from elementary school through college to return to classrooms, with Pence calling that critical to reopening the country.

Its the right thing to do for our children. Its also the right thing to do for families, Pence said at Tiger Stadium, where he met with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, members of the congressional delegation and state higher education officials.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

BILLINGS, Mont. It was meant to be a last line of defense to protect the most vulnerable as the coronavirus spread across the United States: Montana officials offered free testing in May for staff and residents at assisted living and long-term care facilities.

But not all of them followed through, according to state data, including a facility in Billings, Montanas largest city, that cares for people with dementia and other memory problems. The virus has infected almost every resident there and killed eight since July 6, accounting for almost a quarter of Montanas 34 confirmed deaths. Thirty-six employees also have tested positive.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

A coronavirus vaccine being tested in Seattle triggered strong immune responses in 45 volunteers, according topreliminary resultspublished Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

After two doses of the vaccine, volunteers neutralizing antibody responses were higher than the average levels seen in the blood of people who had been infected with the novel coronavirus.

Volunteers were first injectedin Seattleon March 16, marking the first human tests on any coronavirus vaccine. Since then, the field has exploded, with more than 20 experimental vaccines now in human trials and more than 100 in preclinical stages.

Dr. Lisa Jackson, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, is lead author of the new report.

I think the results are encouraging, she said.

The speed with which the trials have progressed is also impressive. Processes that usually take years or even decades are now being accomplished in a matter of months, Jackson said.

Read the full story here.

Sandi Doughton

In 1984, scientists discovered the virus at the root of an alarming epidemic that was sickening otherwise healthy young men with aggressive cancers and rare, life-threatening pneumonias.

The discovery of HIV was a long-awaited moment, and Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler vowed that the scourge of AIDS would soon end. A vaccine would be ready for testing within two years, she proclaimed.

Yet another terrible disease is about to yield to patience, persistence and outright genius, Heckler said.

Thirty-six years later, there still is no HIV vaccine. But instead of a cautionary tale of scientific hubris, that still-continuing effort is leading to even greater confidence in the search for a coronavirus vaccine, from some of the same researchers who have spent their careers seeking a cure for AIDS.

Those decades of research into HIV have taught scientists an enormous amount about the immune system, honed vaccine technologies now being repurposed against the coronavirus and created a worldwide infrastructure of clinical trial networks that can be pivoted from HIV to the pathogen that causes the disease COVID-19.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of universities, the Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the pandemic.

The decision was announced at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and return to the status quo.

A lawyer representing the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said only that the judges characterization was correct.

The announcement brings relief to thousands of international students who had been at risk of being deported from the country, along with hundreds of universities that were scrambling to reassess their plans for the fall in light of the policy.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

The U.S. and Canada are poised to extend their agreement to keep their shared border closed to nonessential travel to Aug. 21, but a final confirmation has not been given, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

The agreement would likely extend the closure by another 30 days. The official was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an announcement this week, and spoke on condition of anonymity. The restrictions were announced on March 18 and were extended in April, May and June.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that a decision on the border would be announced later this week.

Were going to continue to work hard to keep Canadians safe and to keep our economies flowing, and we will have more to say later, Trudeau said.

Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said on Friday that an opening between the U.S. and Mexico wouldnt be prudent right now, given that coronavirus cases in the states of the southern United States, California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, are on the rise.

Most Canadians fear a reopening. The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world while Canada has flattened the epidemic curve.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

Hawaiis governor said Monday he will wait another month to waive a 14-day quarantine requirement for out-of-state travelers who test negative for COVID-19, citing increasing virus cases in Hawaii, uncontrolled outbreaks in several U.S. mainland states and a shortage of testing supplies.

The testing plan, as announced last month, was scheduled to take effect Aug. 1. It's now postponed to Sept. 1.

Many in Hawaiis business community had been looking forward to the testing program, as it would make it easier for tourists to visit and potentially boost the economy. The quarantine requirement has virtually shut down tourism to the state since it took effect in late March. Hotels have closed and the unemployment rate stands at 22.6%, the second highest in the nation.

Gov. David Ige said at a news conference he and the states mayors, whom he consulted, understood the gravity of the choices they were presented with. On the one hand, he said, Hawaii could have an uncontrolled surge of COVID-19 if it reopened. On the other, delaying the traveler testing program would risk further economic damage.

Read the story here.

The Associated Press

Hong Kong implemented its strictest suite of social distancing measures yet as the Asian financial hub looks set to be the first in the region where a new outbreak surpasses previous waves in severity.

Bars, gyms and beaches will be closed, public gatherings limited to four people, and fines will be doled out to those refusing to wear masks on public transportation as authorities try to slow a growing resurgence. Officials said they detected 40 local cases on Tuesday, bringing the total outbreak to 224 people in about a week.

The breadth of Hong Kongs social distancing measures reflects the large proportion of cases of unknown origins, which grew to a record of 24 out of 40 local cases on Tuesday. Because officials cannot identify where the infections are centered, they cant deploy less disruptive targeted measures like in South Korea and Japan, and have instead levied broad policies for the whole city.

Read the story here.

Bloomberg

Medics in white coats replaced uniformed soldiers as stars of Frances Bastille Day ceremonies Tuesday, as the usual grandiose military parade in Paris was recalibrated to honor medics who died fighting COVID-19, supermarket cashiers, postal workers and other heroes of the pandemic.

Yet for thousands of participants in a protest across town, the national homage wasnt nearly enough to make up for missteps by French President Emmanuel Macron and his government before and during the coronavirus pandemic. Riot police sprayed tear gas and unruly demonstrators hurled smoke bombs as the largely peaceful demonstrators marched to Bastille plaza, where the French Revolution was born on July 14, 1789.

The contrasting scenes marked a Bastille Day unlike any other, overshadowed by fears of resurgent infections in a country where more than 30,000 people have already lost their lives to the coronavirus.

With tears in their eyes or smiles on their faces, medical workers stood silently as lengthy applause in their honor rang out over the Place de la Concorde in central Paris from Macron, the head of the World Health Organization and 2,000 other guests. A military choir sang the Marseillaise national anthem, and troops unfurled an enormous French tricolor flag across the plaza.

Link:

Coronavirus daily news updates, July 14: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world - Seattle Times

As the virus works its strange, invisible magic inside me, I watch its outward manifestations: constellations of blood-red spots called petechiae strewn across my stomach, breasts and arms; purple circles under my eyes; eight pounds gone; my first white hairs. Before our travels, Id considered myself a healthy 37-year-old and regularly went on runs around my neighborhood. Now a flight of stairs leaves me breathless. On the oximeter, my pulse races at the slightest stressors.

Over the phone my doctors voice is tired, almost defensive. Shes worried about blood clots, and tries to get me into several labs for tests, but I cant pass their symptom checks. At this stage, she tells me, the only place that will take someone with Covid symptoms is a hospital. If the pain gets worse, I should go to the nearest emergency room in Providence.

A friend whose Covid-19 battle lasted a more typical 14 days drops off groceries; the last rolls of toilet paper in the aisle. For months weve relied on delivery services for supplies.

You can take your mask off, she calls from the sidewalk. Im not scared anymore.

From her undyed part, gray hairs reveal themselves in all their lived wisdom and glory. When she offers to go to the hospital with me, tears drop into the mask dangling from my chin.

At the E.R., seven hours of tests: EKG, CT scan, chest X-ray, ultrasound. I lie on the hospital bed, one arm pinioned by an IV, wires threading from my chest to the heart monitor bleating above my head. A patient moans, and the halls echo with the commands of X-ray technicians shouting Dont breathe! Breathe, a remedial paparazzi.

The doctor comes in with no news. Even from the inside, my pain cannot be seen. What is it? I plead.

I know youre scared, he replies, staring at me over his mask. Im scared too.

The doctors think its post-viral syndrome, I explain to family, friends, co-workers, though the pain is anything but post. Its animate, moving, alive inside me. Instead of the orange cat, I now imagine a pale green dragon stealing out the door, a thick, scaly tail snaking behind, thumping ominously.

Continued here:

Whipped by the Long Tail of the Coronavirus - The New York Times

President Donald Trump is pressing state and local officials to reopen schools this fall, despite coronavirus infections surging nationwide. While experts say there are significant social benefits to resuming in-person classes, they caution that schools will need to balance those against potential risks to provide a safe learning environment for students as well as teachers and administrators.

Evidence suggests that children are not as susceptible as adults to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Even among those who have been infected, it's relatively rare for children to develop serious complications or require hospitalization.

But this doesn't mean classrooms can be exempt from social distancing and other safety precautions, particularly if schools intend to welcome kids back on site in less than two months.

"It really shouldn't be a debate of getting kids back to school, but getting kids back to school safely," said Dr. Jennifer Lighter, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at NYU Langone Health in New York.

Having kids physically present in schools in the fall as much as possible would be an "ideal situation," Lighter said, but schools will need to implement policies that allow students to maintain some distance indoors and avoid close contact for prolonged periods of time. This could include decreasing class sizes, rearranging desks to ensure kids aren't clustered together or facing one another and moving gym classes or other recreational activities outdoors, she said.

In the U.S., children make up about 22 percent of the population, but kids account for only 2 percent of coronavirus cases so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.

It's not yet known what accounts for that disparity, said Dr. C. Buddy Creech, an associate professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

"This has been a strange pandemic because usually for respiratory viruses, children are the first and most substantially affected," Creech said. "This has really been a flip of that, where it's our adults, and particularly older adults, that have been more affected."

It's also unknown how and why the risks aren't the same for all young people. There are signs that adolescents particularly those with pre-existing conditions are at similar risk of infection as adults, though more research is needed, according to Dr. William Raszka, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine.

"The younger you are, probably the less likely you are to be able to transmit the disease," he said. "Once you get to high school age, you're going to be a little bit more concerned, [and] once you're in college age, you're going to be a lot concerned."

Schools will have to keep these differences in mind as they craft their safety procedures, Lighter said.

"I don't think it's one size fits all," she said. "Young children are really a different risk category than older adolescents, so the guidelines that we have for elementary [and] middle school children should probably be different than the ones that we have for our high school students."

In Europe and the U.S., it was reported that some children infected with the coronavirus experienced inflammatory symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, a result of the child's immune system essentially kicking into overdrive. More than 100 cases of the complication, dubbed multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C, were reported in New York, which was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in North America in March and April. Though potentially deadly, Lighter said MIS-C is "exceedingly rare."

She added that in some circumstances, it may be important for schools to reopen because these institutions have important social functions, beyond just providing an education.

"I think children have had significant social and emotional concerns from online learning over the past several months," Lighter said. "I don't think online learning works very well for children, especially young children, and especially children that are in poverty."

Dr. Shilpa Patel, a New Jersey-based pediatrician, said it's challenging to make predictions because scientists are still learning about the virus. But she said she has no hesitations about letting her kids return to school this fall.

"Nothing will be normal until we get a vaccine," Patel said. "These are trying times that we're living in, but yes, I will send my kids back to school in September."

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on the environment and space.

Lauren Dunn

Lauren Dunn is a producer with the NBC News medical unit in New York.

Patrick Martin is an associate producer in the NBC News Health & Medical Unit.

Go here to see the original:

Back to school: What doctors say about children and COVID-19 - NBC News

If the primary runoff elections are a test run for November, cracks are becoming apparent in the state's voting system as it struggles to function under the strain of rampant coronavirus spread.

Early voting is over, and Tuesday is election day in Texas for the low-turnout contests to finalize party nominations for the November general election. In-person voting has generally run smoothly in early balloting, in large part because only a small sliver of registered voters have shown up. But people trying to vote by mail, turning to whats typically a lightly used system to avoid the risks of human contact at polling places, have faced a host of hurdles and challenges that may foreshadow greater disarray come November. The problems are most pronounced for voters with disabilities.

Have you run into hurdles or problems while trying to vote in Texas? We want your help in reporting on those challenges. Learn more.

Angela Wolf, who is blind, tried to vote by mail instead of showing up at an Austin polling place to use an accessible machine like she has in the past. Her application came up mislabeled when she ran it through a screen reader meant to help her fill it out. Its likely she wont be able to independently mark up her paper ballot. A single mom with small children, shell have to break their isolation bubble to get sighted assistance from an adult.

Lisa Jackson felt a personal responsibility to avoid potentially exposing poll workers and fellow voters in Comal County while she waited last week to learn if she had been infected with the virus. After a series of calls, the marketing professional learned her only options were to vote curbside or submit an emergency application for a mail-in ballot. The first still felt too risky for the poll worker; the latter required a signature from her doctor and finding someone willing to pick up and then deliver her ballot while she remained quarantined.

In the small East Texas town of Henderson, Rodney Vallantyne who has been strictly isolating at home sought to vote by mail but had no idea how to go about getting a ballot until receiving a link to the application from a reporter. Its not easy for the 60-year-old to get around; he has a rare form of dystonia and deals with chronic pain. He managed to get his application turned in but then had to consider how to get a stamp in a short time frame. He went as far as calling the local post office hoping it would allow him to leave his ballot in his mailbox with a separate envelope containing the exact loose change needed to cover postage. A postal worker agreed to take care of it for him.

I really took [it] for granted thinking, Oh, yeah, we have accessible voting in Texas. Well that is half true, said Wolf, who teaches at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. There are people with multiple disabilities who have the right to vote, but its not accessible.

In Travis County, about 4,600 voters some with disabilities, some 65 and older, many of them drawn to vote by mail for the first time during the pandemic incorrectly filled out their applications to vote by mail for the runoff. They were seemingly tripped up by a series of checkboxes offering separate options to request ballots for all elections in the calendar year, for a party primary and for a runoff. Thousands of voters indicated they wanted a ballot but left unmarked either the runoff box or the one indicating their party. Now, unless theyre willing to vote in person, some will be shut out of their party runoffs.

Its the fault of the form, said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir. The form didnt say anything about primary runoff and which ballot to ask for, and voters improvised.

In an era of forced isolation, the accessibility void and information gap surrounding mail-in voting a practice with strict eligibility criteria thats typically used by just a small share of the Texas electorate have translated into electoral barriers for many in the state as more voters seek out the option.

Since the new coronavirus emerged as a threat to Texas voters, the state has been embroiled in a fight over how to safeguard the right to vote during the pandemic. Texas Democrats and civil rights advocates have been unsuccessful in expanding who can qualify for a ballot they can fill out at home and mail in, losing out to Republican leaders opposition in court. Thats left existing rules in place for voters who are 65 and older, those who cite a disability or an illness, and those who will be out of the county theyre registered in during the election period.

But in fielding calls through their voter rights hotline, advocates with Disability Rights Texas say theyve heard from a crush of voters with disabilities in the last month some of whom have even voted by mail before who were confused as to whether they still qualified.

For voters like Wolf with visual impairments, advocates have also been trying to decipher how to guide them through filling out a ballot at home, which requires them to mark it up and sign the flap of the ballot envelope or find a witness to sign it for them. In processing mail-in ballots, a committee of local election officials reviews that endorsement to make sure it matches the signature a voter used on their application to vote by mail.

(That signature verification process is the subject of a federal lawsuit against the state in which plaintiffs allege it is unconstitutional and in violation of federal protections for people with disabilities.)

For those seeking guidance on voting during the pandemic, a review of county election websites by Disability Rights Texas also found that a majority didnt meet basic accessibility functions. Those are just some examples of how the pandemic has exacerbated the hurdles voters with disabilities must overcome to exercise their basic right to vote, said Molly Broadway, a voting rights training specialist for Disability Rights Texas.

If anything, this experience has provided a time to really understand what voters with disabilities are going through on a regular basis, Broadway said. This isnt just a pandemic for them. This is every time theres an election.

Just more than a million voters cast ballots in person or by mail during early voting a turnout rate of about 6.5% of the states nearly 16.4 million registered voters.

While mail-in expansion efforts have been foiled, some counties have still reported a sizable increase in the number of voters applying to vote by mail. In some cases, that was by design. For example, officials in Harris County opted to preemptively send applications for mail-in ballots to all of the voters on their rolls who are 65 and older instead of waiting for voters to request them.

But amid a surge in voters navigating the mail-in system for the first time, Travis County has been grappling with a workaround for voters who filled out their ballots incorrectly. For some, that may ultimately mean voting in person to participate in the runoff.

Among those voters is Austin resident Chuck Russell, a retiree who voted in person during the March primary election but hoped to avoid visiting a polling place during the pandemic. He knew he qualified for a mail-in ballot because hes over 65, but still had to work through several obstacles.

First, he mistakenly believed he could apply online. (He had actually gone through the Texas Democratic Partys portal to fill out an application that would be mailed to him for his signature.) Once he found the hard copy in his mailbox, he had just two days to get it to the Travis County Clerks Office on the deadline day to receive applications. But a week later, he still hadnt received the ballot in the mail. Russell began to worry if hed get it in time to drop it in the mail by election day and considered whether to vote in person before the early voting period ended. (To do so, hed need to surrender the mailed ballot he hadnt yet received or cast a provisional ballot that wouldnt be counted until officials certified he didnt also vote by mail.)

[I] would probably have to go to a voting location to vote in person on Tuesday, which I was trying to avoid in the first place, Russell wrote in an email Thursday evening. Would have been better off not even requesting a mail in ballot and just did early voting like I usually do.

More:

Texas runoff elections show stress of coronavirus on states voting system - The Texas Tribune

Subfamily of viruses in the family Coronaviridae

Coronaviruses are a group of related RNA viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, these viruses cause respiratory tract infections that can range from mild to lethal. Mild illnesses include some cases of the common cold (which is also caused by other viruses, predominantly rhinoviruses), while more lethal varieties can cause SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Symptoms in other species vary: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are as yet no vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.

Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria.[5][6] They are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome and a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry.[7] The genome size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 26 to 32 kilobases, one of the largest among RNA viruses.[8] They have characteristic club-shaped spikes that project from their surface, which in electron micrographs create an image reminiscent of the solar corona, from which their name derives.[9]

The name "coronavirus" is derived from Latin corona, meaning "crown" or "wreath", itself a borrowing from Greek korn, "garland, wreath".[10][11] The name was coined by June Almeida and David Tyrrell who first observed and studied human coronaviruses.[12] The word was first used in print in 1968 by an informal group of virologists in the journal Nature to designate the new family of viruses.[9] The name refers to the characteristic appearance of virions (the infective form of the virus) by electron microscopy, which have a fringe of large, bulbous surface projections creating an image reminiscent of the solar corona or halo.[9][12] This morphology is created by the viral spike peplomers, which are proteins on the surface of the virus.[13]

Coronaviruses were first discovered in the 1930s when an acute respiratory infection of domesticated chickens was shown to be caused by infectious bronchitis virus (IBV).[14] Arthur Schalk and M.C. Hawn described in 1931 a new respiratory infection of chickens in North Dakota. The infection of new-born chicks was characterized by gasping and listlessness. The chicks' mortality rate was 4090%.[15] Fred Beaudette and Charles Hudson six years later successfully isolated and cultivated the infectious bronchitis virus which caused the disease.[16] In the 1940s, two more animal coronaviruses, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) and transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), were isolated.[17] It was not realized at the time that these three different viruses were related.[18]

Human coronaviruses were discovered in the 1960s.[19][20] They were isolated using two different methods in the United Kingdom and the United States.[21] E.C. Kendall, Malcom Byone, and David Tyrrell working at the Common Cold Unit of the British Medical Research Council in 1960 isolated from a boy a novel common cold virus B814.[22][23][24] The virus was not able to be cultivated using standard techniques which had successfully cultivated rhinoviruses, adenoviruses and other known common cold viruses. In 1965, Tyrrell and Byone successfully cultivated the novel virus by serially passing it through organ culture of human embryonic trachea.[25] The new cultivating method was introduced to the lab by Bertil Hoorn.[26] The isolated virus when intranasally inoculated into volunteers caused a cold and was inactivated by ether which indicated it had a lipid envelope.[22][27] Around the same time, Dorothy Hamre[28] and John Procknow at the University of Chicago isolated a novel cold virus 229E from medical students, which they grew in kidney tissue culture. The novel virus 229E, like the virus strain B814, when inoculated into volunteers caused a cold and was inactivated by ether.[29]

The two novel strains B814 and 229E were subsequently imaged by electron microscopy in 1967 by Scottish virologist June Almeida at St. Thomas Hospital in London.[30][31] Almeida through electron microscopy was able to show that B814 and 229E were morphologically related by their distinctive club-like spikes. Not only were they related with each other, but they were morphologically related to infectious bronchitis virus (IBV).[32] A research group at the National Institute of Health the same year was able to isolate another member of this new group of viruses using organ culture and named the virus strain OC43 (OC for organ culture).[33] Like B814, 229E, and IBV, the novel cold virus OC43 had distinctive club-like spikes when observed with the electron microscope.[34][35]

The IBV-like novel cold viruses were soon shown to be also morphologically related to the mouse hepatitis virus.[17] This new group of IBV-like viruses came to be known as coronaviruses after their distinctive morphological appearance.[9] Human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43 continued to be studied in subsequent decades.[36][37] The coronavirus strain B814 was lost. It is not known which present human coronavirus it was.[38] Other human coronaviruses have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HCoV HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019.[39][40] There have also been a large number of animal coronaviruses identified since the 1960s.[5]

Coronaviruses are large, roughly spherical, particles with bulbous surface projections.[41] The average diameter of the virus particles is around 125nm (.125 m). The diameter of the envelope is 85 nm and the spikes are 20nm long. The envelope of the virus in electron micrographs appears as a distinct pair of electron-dense shells (shells that are relatively opaque to the electron beam used to scan the virus particle).[42][43]

The viral envelope consists of a lipid bilayer, in which the membrane (M), envelope (E) and spike (S) structural proteins are anchored.[44] The ratio of E:S:M in the lipid bilayer is approximately 1:20:300.[45] On average a coronavirus particle has 74 surface spikes.[46] A subset of coronaviruses (specifically the members of betacoronavirus subgroup A) also have a shorter spike-like surface protein called hemagglutinin esterase (HE).[5]

The coronavirus surface spikes are homotrimers of the Sprotein, which is composed of an S1 and S2 subunit. The homotrimeric Sprotein is a class I fusion protein which mediates the receptor binding and membrane fusion between the virus and host cell. The S1 subunit forms the head of the spike and has the receptor binding domain (RBD). The S2 subunit forms the stem which anchors the spike in the viral envelope and on protease activation enables fusion. The E and M protein are important in forming the viral envelope and maintaining its structural shape.[43]

Inside the envelope, there is the nucleocapsid, which is formed from multiple copies of the nucleocapsid (N) protein, which are bound to the positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome in a continuous beads-on-a-string type conformation.[43][47] The lipid bilayer envelope, membrane proteins, and nucleocapsid protect the virus when it is outside the host cell.[48]

Coronaviruses contain a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA genome. The genome size for coronaviruses ranges from 26.4 to 31.7 kilobases.[8] The genome size is one of the largest among RNA viruses. The genome has a 5 methylated cap and a 3 polyadenylated tail.[43]

The genome organization for a coronavirus is 5-leader-UTR-replicase (ORF1ab)-spike (S)-envelope (E)-membrane (M)-nucleocapsid (N)-3UTR-poly (A) tail. The open reading frames 1a and 1b, which occupy the first two-thirds of the genome, encode the replicase polyprotein (pp1ab). The replicase polyprotein self cleaves to form 16 nonstructural proteins (nsp1nsp16).[43]

The later reading frames encode the four major structural proteins: spike, envelope, membrane, and nucleocapsid.[49] Interspersed between these reading frames are the reading frames for the accessory proteins. The number of accessory proteins and their function is unique depending on the specific coronavirus.[43]

Infection begins when the viral spike protein attaches to its complementary host cell receptor. After attachment, a protease of the host cell cleaves and activates the receptor-attached spike protein. Depending on the host cell protease available, cleavage and activation allows the virus to enter the host cell by endocytosis or direct fusion of the viral envelop with the host membrane.[50]

On entry into the host cell, the virus particle is uncoated, and its genome enters the cell cytoplasm. The coronavirus RNA genome has a 5 methylated cap and a 3 polyadenylated tail, which allows it to act like a messenger RNA and be directly translated by the host cell's ribosomes. The host ribosomes translate the initial overlapping open reading frames ORF1a and ORF1b of the virus genome into two large overlapping polyproteins, pp1a and pp1ab.[43]

The larger polyprotein pp1ab is a result of a -1 ribosomal frameshift caused by a slippery sequence (UUUAAAC) and a downstream RNA pseudoknot at the end of open reading frame ORF1a.[51] The ribosomal frameshift allows for the continuous translation of ORF1a followed by ORF1b.[43]

The polyproteins have their own proteases, PLpro (nsp3) and 3CLpro (nsp5), which cleave the polyproteins at different specific sites. The cleavage of polyprotein pp1ab yields 16 nonstructural proteins (nsp1 to nsp16). Product proteins include various replication proteins such as RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (nsp12), RNA helicase (nsp13), and exoribonuclease (nsp14).[43]

A number of the nonstructural proteins coalesce to form a multi-protein replicase-transcriptase complex. The main replicase-transcriptase protein is the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). It is directly involved in the replication and transcription of RNA from an RNA strand. The other nonstructural proteins in the complex assist in the replication and transcription process. The exoribonuclease nonstructural protein, for instance, provides extra fidelity to replication by providing a proofreading function which the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase lacks.[52]

Replication One of the main functions of the complex is to replicate the viral genome. RdRp directly mediates the synthesis of negative-sense genomic RNA from the positive-sense genomic RNA. This is followed by the replication of positive-sense genomic RNA from the negative-sense genomic RNA.[43]

Transcription The other important function of the complex is to transcribe the viral genome. RdRp directly mediates the synthesis of negative-sense subgenomic RNA molecules from the positive-sense genomic RNA. This process is followed by the transcription of these negative-sense subgenomic RNA molecules to their corresponding positive-sense mRNAs.[43] The subgenomic mRNAs form a "nested set" which have a common 5'-head and partially duplicate 3'-end.[53]

Recombination The replicase-transcriptase complex is also capable of genetic recombination when at least two viral genomes are present in the same infected cell.[53] RNA recombination appears to be a major driving force in determining genetic variability within a coronavirus species, the capability of a coronavirus species to jump from one host to another and, infrequently, in determining the emergence of novel coronaviruses.[54] The exact mechanism of recombination in coronaviruses is unclear, but likely involves template switching during genome replication.[54]

The replicated positive-sense genomic RNA becomes the genome of the progeny viruses. The mRNAs are gene transcripts of the last third of the virus genome after the initial overlapping reading frame. These mRNAs are translated by the host's ribosomes into the structural proteins and a number of accessory proteins.[43] RNA translation occurs inside the endoplasmic reticulum. The viral structural proteins S, E, and M move along the secretory pathway into the Golgi intermediate compartment. There, the Mproteins direct most protein-protein interactions required for assembly of viruses following its binding to the nucleocapsid. Progeny viruses are then released from the host cell by exocytosis through secretory vesicles. Once released the viruses can infect other host cells.[55]

Infected carriers are able to shed viruses into the environment. The interaction of the coronavirus spike protein with its complementary cell receptor is central in determining the tissue tropism, infectivity, and species range of the released virus.[56][57] Coronaviruses mainly target epithelial cells.[5] They are transmitted from one host to another host, depending on the coronavirus species, by either an aerosol, fomite, or fecal-oral route.[58]

Human coronaviruses infect the epithelial cells of the respiratory tract, while animal coronaviruses generally infect the epithelial cells of the digestive tract.[5] SARS coronavirus, for example, infects via an aerosol route,[59] the human epithelial cells of the lungs by binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor.[60] Transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus (TGEV) infects, via a fecal-oral route,[58] the pig epithelial cells of the digestive tract by binding to the alanine aminopeptidase (APN) receptor.[43]

The scientific name for coronavirus is Orthocoronavirinae or Coronavirinae.[2][3][4] Coronaviruses belong to the family of Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria.[5][6] They are divided into alphacoronaviruses and betacoronaviruses which infect mammals and gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses, which primarily infect birds.[61][62]

The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all coronaviruses is estimated to have existed as recently as 8000 BCE, although some models place the common ancestor as far back as 55 million years or more, implying long term coevolution with bat and avian species.[63] The most recent common ancestor of the alphacoronavirus line has been placed at about 2400 BCE, of the betacoronavirus line at 3300 BCE, of the gammacoronavirus line at 2800 BCE, and of the deltacoronavirus line at about 3000 BCE. Bats and birds, as warm-blooded flying vertebrates, are an ideal natural reservoir for the coronavirus gene pool (with bats the reservoir for alphacoronaviruses and betacoronavirus and birds the reservoir for gammacoronaviruses and deltacoronaviruses). The large number and global range of bat and avian species that host viruses has enabled extensive evolution and dissemination of coronaviruses.[64]

Many human coronaviruses have their origin in bats.[65] The human coronavirus NL63 shared a common ancestor with a bat coronavirus (ARCoV.2) between 1190 and 1449 CE.[66] The human coronavirus 229E shared a common ancestor with a bat coronavirus (GhanaGrp1 Bt CoV) between 1686 and 1800 CE.[67] More recently, alpaca coronavirus and human coronavirus 229E diverged sometime before 1960.[68] MERS-CoV emerged in humans from bats through the intermediate host of camels.[69] MERS-CoV, although related to several bat coronavirus species, appears to have diverged from these several centuries ago.[70] The most closely related bat coronavirus and SARS-CoV diverged in 1986.[71] A possible path of evolution of SARS coronavirus and keen bat coronaviruses is that SARS-related coronaviruses coevolved in bats for a long time. The ancestors of SARS-CoV first infected leaf-nose bats of the genus Hipposideridae; subsequently, they spread to horseshoe bats in the species Rhinolophidae, then to Asian palm civets, and finally to humans.[72][73]

Unlike other betacoronaviruses, bovine coronavirus of the species Betacoronavirus 1 and subgenus Embecovirus is thought to have originated in rodents and not in bats.[65][74] In the 1790s, equine coronavirus diverged from the bovine coronavirus after a cross-species jump.[75] Later in the 1890s, human coronavirus OC43 diverged from bovine coronavirus after another cross-species spillover event.[76][75] It is speculated that the flu pandemic of 1890 may have been caused by this spillover event, and not by the influenza virus, because of the related timing, neurological symptoms, and unknown causative agent of the pandemic.[77] Besides causing respiratory infections, human coronavirus OC43 is also suspected of playing a role in neurological diseases.[78] In the 1950s, the human coronavirus OC43 began to diverge into its present genotypes.[79] Phylogentically, mouse hepatitis virus (Murine coronavirus), which infects the mouse's liver and central nervous system,[80] is related to human coronavirus OC43 and bovine coronavirus. Human coronavirus HKU1, like the aforementioned viruses, also has its origins in rodents.[65]

Coronaviruses vary significantly in risk factor. Some can kill more than 30% of those infected, such as MERS-CoV, and some are relatively harmless, such as the common cold.[43] Coronaviruses can cause colds with major symptoms, such as fever, and a sore throat from swollen adenoids.[81] Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia (either direct viral pneumonia or secondary bacterial pneumonia) and bronchitis (either direct viral bronchitis or secondary bacterial bronchitis).[82] The human coronavirus discovered in 2003, SARS-CoV, which causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), has a unique pathogenesis because it causes both upper and lower respiratory tract infections.[82]

Six species of human coronaviruses are known, with one species subdivided into two different strains, making seven strains of human coronaviruses altogether.

Four human coronaviruses produce symptoms that are generally mild:

Three human coronaviruses produce symptoms that are potentially severe:

The human coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-229E, and HCoV-NL63 continually circulate in the human population and produce the generally mild symptoms of the common cold in adults and children worldwide.[83] These coronaviruses cause about 15% of common colds,[84] while 40 to 50% of colds are caused by rhinoviruses.[85] The four mild coronaviruses have a seasonal incidence occurring in the winter months in temperate climates.[86][87] There is no preponderance in any season in tropical climates.[88]

In 2003, following the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which had begun the prior year in Asia, and secondary cases elsewhere in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a press release stating that a novel coronavirus identified by a number of laboratories was the causative agent for SARS. The virus was officially named the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). More than 8,000 people were infected, about ten percent of whom died.[60]

In September 2012, a new type of coronavirus was identified, initially called Novel Coronavirus 2012, and now officially named Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).[98][99] The World Health Organization issued a global alert soon after.[100] The WHO update on 28 September 2012 said the virus did not seem to pass easily from person to person.[101] However, on 12 May 2013, a case of human-to-human transmission in France was confirmed by the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.[102] In addition, cases of human-to-human transmission were reported by the Ministry of Health in Tunisia. Two confirmed cases involved people who seemed to have caught the disease from their late father, who became ill after a visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Despite this, it appears the virus had trouble spreading from human to human, as most individuals who are infected do not transmit the virus.[103] By 30 October 2013, there were 124 cases and 52 deaths in Saudi Arabia.[104]

After the Dutch Erasmus Medical Centre sequenced the virus, the virus was given a new name, Human CoronavirusErasmus Medical Centre (HCoV-EMC). The final name for the virus is Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The only U.S. cases (both survived) were recorded in May 2014.[105]

In May 2015, an outbreak of MERS-CoV occurred in the Republic of Korea, when a man who had traveled to the Middle East, visited four hospitals in the Seoul area to treat his illness. This caused one of the largest outbreaks of MERS-CoV outside the Middle East.[106] As of December 2019, 2,468 cases of MERS-CoV infection had been confirmed by laboratory tests, 851 of which were fatal, a mortality rate of approximately 34.5%.[107]

In December 2019, a pneumonia outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China.[108] On 31 December 2019, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of coronavirus,[109] which was given the interim name 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization (WHO),[110][111][112] later renamed SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses.

As of 14 July 2020, there have been at least 572,411[94] confirmed deaths and more than 13,070,097[94] confirmed cases in the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wuhan strain has been identified as a new strain of Betacoronavirus from group 2B with approximately 70% genetic similarity to the SARS-CoV.[113] The virus has a 96% similarity to a bat coronavirus, so it is widely suspected to originate from bats as well.[114][115] The pandemic has resulted in travel restrictions and nationwide lockdowns in many countries.

Coronaviruses have been recognized as causing pathological conditions in veterinary medicine since the 1930s.[17] They infect a range of animals including swine, cattle, horses, camels, cats, dogs, rodents, birds and bats.[116] The majority of animal related coronaviruses infect the intestinal tract and are transmitted by a fecal-oral route.[117] Significant research efforts have been focused on elucidating the viral pathogenesis of these animal coronaviruses, especially by virologists interested in veterinary and zoonotic diseases.[118]

Coronaviruses infect domesticated birds.[119] Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a type of coronavirus, causes avian infectious bronchitis.[120] The virus is of concern to the poultry industry because of the high mortality from infection, its rapid spread, and its effect on production.[116] The virus affects both meat production and egg production and causes substantial economic loss.[121] In chickens, infectious bronchitis virus targets not only the respiratory tract but also the urogenital tract. The virus can spread to different organs throughout the chicken.[120] The virus is transmitted by aersol and food contaminated by feces. Different vaccines against IBV exist and have helped to limit the spread of the virus and its variants.[116] Infectious bronchitis virus is one of a number of strains of the species Avian coronavirus.[122] Another strain of avian coronavirus is turkey coronavirus (TCV) which causes enteritis in turkeys.[116]

Coronaviruses also affect other branches of animal husbandry such as pig farming and the cattle raising.[116] Swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), which is related to bat coronavirus HKU2, causes diarrhea in pigs.[123] Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is a coronavirus that has recently emerged and similarly causes diarrhea in pigs.[124] Transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), which is a member of the species Alphacoronavirus 1,[125] is another coronavirus that causes diarrhea in young pigs.[126][127] In the cattle industry bovine coronavirus (BCV), which is a member of the species Betacoronavirus 1 and related to HCoV-OC43,[128] is responsible for severe profuse enteritis in young calves.[116]

Coronaviruses infect domestic pets such as cats, dogs, and ferrets.[119] There are two forms of feline coronavirus which are both members of the species Alphacoronavirus 1.[125] Feline enteric coronavirus is a pathogen of minor clinical significance, but spontaneous mutation of this virus can result in feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a disease with high mortality.[116] There are two different coronaviruses that infect dogs. Canine coronavirus (CCoV), which is a member of the species Alphacoronavirus 1,[125] causes mild gastrointestinal disease.[116] Canine respiratory coronavirus (CRCoV), which is a member of the species Betacoronavirus 1 and related to HCoV-OC43,[128] cause respiratory disease.[116] Similarly, there are two types of coronavirus that infect ferrets.[129] Ferret enteric coronavirus causes a gastrointestinal syndrome known as epizootic catarrhal enteritis (ECE), and a more lethal systemic version of the virus (like FIP in cats) known as ferret systemic coronavirus (FSC).[130][131]

Coronaviruses infect laboratory animals.[116] Mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), which is a member of the species Murine coronavirus,[132] causes an epidemic murine illness with high mortality, especially among colonies of laboratory mice.[133] Prior to the discovery of SARS-CoV, MHV was the best-studied coronavirus both in vivo and in vitro as well as at the molecular level. Some strains of MHV cause a progressive demyelinating encephalitis in mice which has been used as a murine model for multiple sclerosis.[118] Sialodacryoadenitis virus (SDAV), which is a strain of the species Murine coronavirus,[132] is highly infectious coronavirus of laboratory rats, which can be transmitted between individuals by direct contact and indirectly by aerosol. Acute infections have high morbidity and tropism for the salivary, lachrymal and harderian glands.[134] Rabbit enteric coronavirus causes acute gastrointestinal disease and diarrhea in young European rabbits.[116] Mortality rates are high.[135]

There are no vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections. Treatment is only supportive. A number of antivirial targets have been identified such as viral proteases, polymerases, and entry proteins. Drugs are in development which target these proteins and the different steps of viral replication. A number of vaccines using different methods are also under development for different human coronaviruses.[43]

There are no antiviral drugs to treat animal coronaviruses.[citation needed] Vaccines are available for IBV, TGEV, and Canine CoV, although their effectiveness is limited. In the case of outbreaks of highly contagious animal coronaviruses, such as PEDV, measures such as destruction of entire herds of pigs may be used to prevent transmission to other herds.[43]

Originally posted here:

Coronavirus - Wikipedia

The evidence that this type of transmission is happening with SARS-CoV-2arguably already exists.Several big studiespoint to airborne transmission of the virus as a major routefor the spread of covid-19. Other studies have suggested the virus can remain in aerosolized droplets for hours. One new study led by Roy and his team at Tulane shows that infectious aerosolized particles of SARS-CoV-2 could actually linger in the air for up to 16 hours, and maintain infectivity much longer than MERS and SARS-CoV-1 (the other big coronaviruses to emerge this century).

We still dont know what gives SARS-CoV-2 this airborne edge. But it may be one reason this is a pandemic, and not simply a small outbreak like any other coronavirus, says Roy.

Whether the virus is airborne isnt simply a scientific question. If it is, it could mean that in places where the virus has not been properly contained (e.g., the US), the economy needs to be reopened more slowly, under tighter regulations that reinforce current health practices as well as introducing improved ones. Our current tactics for stopping the spread wont be enough.

Roy would like to see aggressive mandates on strict mask use for anyone leaving home. This virus sheds like crazy, he says. Masking can do an incredible amount in breaking transmission. I think anything that can promote the use of masking, to stop the production of aerosols in the environment, would be helpful.

Brosseau, however, says that though masks can limit the spread of larger particles, they are less helpful for smaller ones, especially if they fit only loosely. I wish we would stop relying on the idea that face coverings are going to solve everything and help flatten the curve, she says. Its magical thinkingits not going to happen. For masks to really make a difference, they would need to be worn all the time, even around family.

Brosseau does believe the evidence is trending toward the conclusion that airborne transmission is the primary and possibly most important mode of transmission for SARS-CoV-2. She says, I think the amount of time and effort devoted to sanitizing every single surface over and over and over again has been a huge waste of time. We dont need to worry so much about cleaning every single surface we touch. Instead, the focus should be on other factors, like where we spend our time.

One of the biggest questions we still have about covid-19 is how much of a viral load is needed to cause infection. The answer changes if we think it is aerosols that we need to worry about. Smaller particles wont carry as large a viral load as bigger ones, but because they can linger in the air for much longer, it may not mattertheyll build up in larger concentrations and get distributed more widely the longer an infected person is around to expel aerosolized virus.

The more people you have coming in and out of an indoor space, the more likely it is that someone who is infected will show up. The longer those infected individuals spend in that space, the higher the concentration of virus in the air over time. This is particularly bad news for spaces where people congregate for hours on end, like restaurants, bars, offices, classrooms, and churches.

Airborne transmission doesnt necessarily mean these places must stay closed (although that would be ideal). But wiping down surfaces with disinfectant, and having everyone wear masks, wont be enough. To safely reopen, these spots will not just need to reduce the number of people allowed inside at any given moment; they will also need to reduce the amount of time those people spend there. Increasing social distancing beyond six feet would also help keep people safer.

Ventilation needs to be a higher priority too. This is going to be a big problem for older buildings that usually have worse ventilation systems, and areas with a lot of those might need to remain closed for much longer. The impact ofasymptomatic spread(transmission by people who dont feel ill) andsuperspreadersonly compounds the problem even further. Butresearchconducted by the US Department of Homeland Security has shown that in the presence of UV light, aerosolized particles of the size the Tulane researchers studied would disappear in less than a minute.A number of businesseshave begun deploying UV-armed robots to disinfect hospital rooms, shopping malls, stores, public transit stations, and more.

For many places, considerable delays in economic reopening might ultimately be the price of getting the virus under control. Otherwise the kind of thing that happened when a single open bar in Michiganled to an outbreak of more than 170 new casescould become commonplace.

Heading into the fall, "the implications are profoundbut not that hard to grasp," says Donald Milton, an aerobiology expert at the University of Maryland and one of the authors who spearheaded the letter to WHO. "We need to subsidize bars and restaurants to stay closed. We need to increase ventilation where we can and start making as widespread as possible use of air sanitation with upper-room germicidal UV and maybe far UV in those places that must be open, like elementary schools. We need to stagger hours of starting work and keep density on public transport low, or open windows. And we need to wear masks."

This post has been updated with additional comments from Donald Milton.

Original post:

If the coronavirus is really airborne, we might be fighting it the wrong way - MIT Technology Review

How dangerous is the virus?

There are three parameters to understand in order to assess the magnitude of the risk posed by this novel coronavirus:

The attack rate or transmissibility (how rapidly the disease spreads) of a virus is indicated by its reproductive number (Ro, pronounced R-nought or r-zero), which represents the average number of people to which a single infected person will transmit the virus.

WHO's estimated (on Jan. 23) Ro to be between 1.4 and 2.5. [13]

Other studies have estimated a Ro between 3.6 and 4.0, and between 2.24 to 3.58. [23].

Preliminary studies had estimated Ro to be between 1.5 and 3.5. [5][6][7]

An outbreak with a reproductive number of below 1 will gradually disappear.

For comparison, the Ro for the common flu is 1.3 and for SARS it was 2.0.

See full details: Coronavirus Fatality Rate

The novel coronavirus' case fatality rate has been estimated at around 2%, in the WHO press conference held on January 29, 2020 [16] . However, it noted that, without knowing how many were infected, it was too early to be able to put a percentage on the mortality rate figure.

A prior estimate [9] had put that number at 3%.

Fatality rate can change as a virus can mutate, according to epidemiologists.

For comparison, the case fatality rate for SARS was 10%, and for MERS 34%.

See full details: COVID-19 Coronavirus Incubation Period

Symptoms of COVID-19 may appear in as few as 2 days or as long as 14 (estimated ranges vary from 2-10 days, 2-14 days, and 10-14 days, see details), during which the virus is contagious but the patient does not display any symptom (asymptomatic transmission).

See latest findings: Age, Sex, Demographics of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths

According to early estimates by China's National Health Commission (NHC), about 80% of those who died were over the age of 60 and 75% of them hadpre-existing health conditions such as cardiovascular diseases anddiabetes.[24]

According to the WHO Situation Report no. 7 issued on Jan. 27:

A study of 138 hospitalized patients with NCIP found that the median age was 56 years (interquartile range, 42-68; range, 22-92 years) and 75 (54.3%) were men.[25]

The WHO, in its Myth busters FAQs, addresses the question: "Does the new coronavirus affect older people, or are younger people also susceptible?" by answering that:

As of Jan. 29, according to French authorities, the conditions of the two earliest Paris cases had worsened and the patients were being treated in intensive care, according to French authorities. The patients have been described as a young couple aged 30 and 31 years old, both Chinese citizens from Wuhan who were asymptomatic when they arrived in Paris on January 18 [19].

The NHC reported the details of the first 17 deaths up to 24 pm on January 22, 2020. The deaths included 13 males and 4 females. The median age of the deaths was 75 (range 48-89) years.[21]

See full details: WHO coronavirus updates

On January 30, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a Global Public Health Emergency.

For more information from the WHO regarding novel coronavirus: WHO page on Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Read the rest here:

Coronavirus Update (Live): 11,845,377 Cases and 543,553 ...

Find developments on Washington's coronavirus outbreak and the state's plan for recovery.

Monday, July 13:

3% of frontline UW Medicine workers tested have COVID-19 antibodies

About 3% of frontline UW Medicine workers showed prevalence for previous COVID-19 infection during a round of recent antibody tests.

UW Medicine says this prevalence rate is lower than the general public indicating there is not a significantly higher risk of coronavirus among frontline workers versus the general population.

The first round of antibody tests focused on staff at Harborview Medical Center, UW Medical Center, Airlift Northwest and UW neighborhood clinics who have direct exposure to COVID-19 patients. UW Medicine plans to administer a second round of antibody tests to workers in regular inpatient units and a third round of tests to other staff.

Inslee requests extension of National Guard mission

Citing the coronavirus pandemic, Gov. Jay Inslee sent a letter to the Trump administration today requesting an extension of federal authority and funding for Washington National Guard employment.

The letter reads, in part:

"As the number of positive COVID-19 cases continues to climb in our state, it is clear that help from the Washington National Guard remains essential through the end of the year ... Currently, more than 1,000 Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen are assisting with critical missions that keep our food banks operational and our neighbors fed. They are critical to our efforts to slow the spread of the virus by supporting COVID-mapping missions, assembling test kits, and operating community-based test sites. Additionally, uniquely skilled National Guard planners are assisting my COVID-19 food security team and other state agencies to ensure that we meet the health and welfare needs of Washingtonians through our phased re-opening plan."

Paid parking enforcement resumes in Seattle

On-street paid parking and parking enforcement resumed in Seattle on Monday.

Paid parking and limited parking enforcement were suspended in April in response to Gov. Jay Inslee's "Stay Home, Stay Health" order.

With King County's transition to Phase 2 of the state's reopening plan and more businesses reopening, "reliable access at the curb for customers is critical for recovery," SDOT posted.

Parking will be 50 cents per hour in all areas, the minimum rate allowed according to city code. That rate will remain for at least a month while SDOT reviews data related to parking activity and occupancy in business districts.

Enforcement of free, hourly parking will resume as well.

People younger than 40 accounts for almost three-quarters of King County cases in past two weeks

King Countys top public health official says COVID-19 isnt going away soon, so people need to learn to make protecting each others health part of daily life. Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer for Public Health - Seattle & King County, said Friday that people need to understand the long-term nature of COVID-19.

King County saw an average of 118 new cases per day during the week ending July 9. Thats nearly triple the daily average for the week ending June 9.

Duchin says people younger than 40 accounts for almost three-quarters of King County cases during the past two weeks.

New coronavirus cases, deaths reported

There were 1,438 new coronavirus cases and 14 new deaths reported Sunday in Washington.

These totals represent new cases and deaths for two days. The Washington State Department of Health did not report new cases Saturday as the system was down for maintenance.

There are now 40,656 total confirmed cases and 1,438 deaths statewide.

Read the rest here:

Coronavirus updates: 3% of frontline UW Medicine workers tested have antibodies - KING5.com

CHICAGO Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned restaurants, bars and other spots popular among younger Chicagoans to protect patrons from coronavirus or else they risk a crackdown.

The city has seen a rise in cases of COVID-19 among people ages 18-29, which has been concerning, Lightfoot said during a Monday press conference. Officials have said the uptick is due to to a number of reasons, including the fact young people are gathering in groups and at businesses without social distancing or face coverings.

Because of that, the city is looking at where these folks congregate, Lightfoot said.

Thats why were having a lot of conversations with bars, restaurants, other places of entertainment, Lightfoot said. And if we dont see progress, were gonna take some specific steps.

But my hope, always, is to educate people into compliance. We need to make sure that we are continuing to be diligent.

RELATED: Young Adults Now Make Up Most Of Chicagos New Coronavirus Cases, Citys Health Chief Says

Lightfoot said the city is not yet at the level of shutting down such businesses but they are pushing restaurants, bars, gyms and other places where young people gather to follow the citys rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus and emphasize that patrons should take public health rules seriously.

Im not gonna take anything off the table. I dont think were at that point [of closing again] just yet, but I am deeply concerned because we are starting to see this uptick , Lightfoot said. The case rate, the daily accumulation of cases, is something Im definitely concerned about.

And were not gonna hesitate to take the steps that are necessary if we continue to see a rise in that number.

While people age 19-29 are now making up most of Chicagos new coronavirus cases, people 30-39 have also been seeing more coronavirus cases, Lightfoot said.

The uptick among young people has been seen throughout the city, but its been particularly prominent in the Lincoln Park and New City community areas, Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said Friday.

Arwady and Lightfoot said the rise has possibly come because younger people feel invincible and arent taken precautions like wearing face coverings and practicing social distancing.

Theres been a fair bit of spread in informal settings, like people gathering for house parties or going to businesses where requirements like social distancing arent well-enforced, Arwady said.

But young people still face risks from coronavirus, Lightfoot said.

If youre young, its still coming for you, Lightfoot said

And Arwady said the city is worried young people could transmit the virus to older Chicagoans, who are at higher risk of severe complications or death from coronavirus.

At the start of July, Lightfoot vowed tocrack down on bars and other businesses that arent following rulesfor keeping people safe amid the pandemic. That came after Block Club reported on bars reopening in Wrigleyville, where large crowds of young peopledrank and gathered on the sidewalks and at some establishments without wearing masks or practicing social distancing.

Block Club Chicagos coronavirus coverage is free for all readers. Block Club is an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom.

Subscribe to Block Club Chicago. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicagos neighborhoods.

Already subscribe?Click hereto support Block Clubwith a tax-deductible donation.

Visit link:

City Will Crack Down On Bars, Gyms If Rise In Coronavirus Cases Among Young Chicagoans Continues, Lightfoot Says - Block Club Chicago

As the British authorities ease confinement restrictions but continue to fear new waves of infections, they have announced that nursing home residents will be tested for the virus monthly, with staff members tested weekly.

Mr. Johnsons government also pledged 600 million pounds, or $749 million, in support of the countrys nursing homes in May, in addition to 3.2 billion $4 billion to local governments for key public services like nursing-home facilities.

After months of waiting for a steep drop in cases that never came, many local governments have started reopening their buildings. But the business of assessing properties, paying fines and running Americas cities looks little like it did before the pandemic.

In Aurora, Ill., City Hall was set to open just three days a week, with the first hour each day set aside for older residents. In Detroits partly reopened municipal center, appointments were recommended, employees were being tested for the virus and workers were no longer accepting cash payments. And in Dayton, Ohio, where City Hall had been closed since March 18, it was set to reopen this week with hand-sanitizing stations and security guards performing temperature checks.

Even with their front doors unlocked, cities were not exactly encouraging visitors. Officials in Buffalo, who also planned to reopen, said residents with a temperature over 100.4 degrees would not be allowed inside. Detroit officials planned to offer curbside service. Daytons news release announcing its reopening included an explicit suggestion to not come:

The City of Dayton is encouraging customers to continue conducting business with the city remotely and electronically, as physical distancing standards are practiced at city facilities and many employees continue to work from home, the statement said.

All four of the large U.S. airlines have agreed to terms for loans from the federal government under the March stimulus bill, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines signed letters of intent under that law, known as the CARES Act, Treasury said. Last week, the department announced that American Airlines had agreed to a five-year $4.75 billion loan.

Read the original post:

Coronavirus Live Updates: Testing Demand in U.S. Soars, Creating a New Crisis - The New York Times

The federal government will pay the vaccine maker Novavax $1.6 billion to expedite the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Its the largest deal to date from Operation Warp Speed, the sprawling federal effort to make coronavirus vaccines and treatments available to the American public as quickly as possible.

The deal would pay for Novavax to produce 100 million doses of its new vaccine by the beginning of next year if the vaccine is shown to be effective in clinical trials. Thats a significant bet on Novavax, a Maryland company that has never brought a product to market.

With this deal, the federal government has now invested nearly $4 billion in companies pursuing vaccines, but has provided little information about how Operation Warp Speed is spending money, which agencies the funding is coming from or how decisions are being made.

That money has gone to six companies with varying track records and, in many cases, promising but untested technologies. British drugmaker AstraZeneca has received $1.2 billion in federal assistance for its vaccine, which uses a harmless virus to provoke an immune response. Moderna Therapeutics, which has received more than $500 million, also has never brought a product to market and is using a genetic technology that is valued for its speed but has never led to a successful human vaccine.

Some say the administrations strategy backing a variety of approaches, including some that are cutting-edge but may not work is the best way to move quickly in the middle of a deadly pandemic. But critics say the public deserves to know more about how taxpayer money is being spent at this critical moment.

Its a black box, said Peter Maybarduk, the director of the global access to medicines program at Public Citizen, a public interest group. This could be one of the most important medical technologies of our time, and we know very little about how that money is being spent, and what conditions are being placed on it.

Officials have given varying estimates of how many treatments and vaccines are part of Operation Warp Speed, and have declined to give the full list of which companies are participating. Congress has appropriated nearly $10 billion to support development of a coronavirus treatment or vaccine, but Trump administration officials have said that billions more could ultimately be spent, without providing additional details. A flurry of contracts with vaccine and drug manufacturers were recently made public, but the documents were heavily redacted and provided little information about the arrangements with the companies.

Operation Warp Speed leaders analyze all possible therapeutics and vaccine partners, select the most promising candidates, and then follow standard protocol on contract awards and spending, said Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at the department of health and human services. While these experts are moving quickly and focused on safety, were putting a lot of effort into assuring transparency while not tangling them up in constant media inquiries.

In an interview on Sunday, Novavaxs president and chief executive, Stanley C. Erck, initially said he was not sure where in the government the $1.6 billion was coming from. A Novavax spokeswoman later said the money was coming from a collaboration between the Health and Human Services Department and the Defense Department.

Adding Novavaxs candidate to Operation Warp Speeds diverse portfolio of vaccines increases the odds that we will have a safe, effective vaccine as soon as the end of this year, Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, said in a statement.

Until now, new vaccines have taken years to develop, and many vaccines fail in clinical trials when they turn out to be ineffective or to cause serious side effects. Many experts have said the aggressive timelines set by companies and government officials for a coronavirus vaccine are overly optimistic.

Mr. Erck said Novavaxs coronavirus vaccine uses the same technology as its other experimental vaccines, such as one for the flu, that have been tested in late-stage clinical trials. Novavax has recently brought in senior executives from established manufacturers like AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, he said.

The risk theyre taking is that a company like ours which doesnt have a pipeline of already commercialized products can we get to the big leagues and scale up? he said. And I think theyre placing the bet that we can.

The U.S. investment comes after an international group, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, awarded up to $388 million to Novavax in May to make its coronavirus vaccine available globally.

Several vaccine experts said Novavaxs vaccine would help diversify the federal portfolio by including another candidate that uses a protein-based vaccine that has worked against other pathogens, like hepatitis B. The Novavax vaccine uses microscopic particles that carry fragments of the coronavirus, prompting the bodys immune system to respond. Sanofi, which has received nearly $31 million in government funding, is also developing a vaccine that is based on viral proteins.

This is a sort of diversification from other approaches, which makes a certain amount of sense, said John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. You dont want all of your eggs in one basket.

Mr. Erck said the deal with the United States would allow Novavax to begin manufacturing the vaccines before the company concludes late-stage clinical trials, expected by the end of the year. The company would ensure that 100 million doses enough for 50 million people to receive an initial shot and a booster are delivered by the first quarter of 2021, if its coronavirus vaccine is proved safe and effective. In June, Novavax secured a $60 million contract from the Defense Department to guarantee the delivery of 10 million doses to vaccinate American troops for the coronavirus.

Novavax began early-stage safety trials in Australia in May, and the company has said it expects to make the results available this month. It said it planned to begin so-called Phase 3 efficacy trials by the fall of this year and could release interim data by the end of 2020.

Through its deal with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, Novavax is also setting up manufacturing in other sites around the world, including in Europe and Asia, to serve populations outside the United States. The company is using its own facilities to scale up manufacturing and will also contract with outside companies, Mr. Erck said.

He and others have noted that more than one vaccine will need to succeed in order to vaccinate the entire world. Right now, we need and want everybodys to work, he said.

Noah Weiland contributed reporting.

More here:

Novavax Gets $1.6 Billion for Coronavirus Vaccine From Operation Warp Speed - The New York Times

She looked to her husband for help. He immediately called an ambulance -- and Briones was admitted at a hospital in South Texas, where she stayed for almost a month to recover from what she came to learn was Covid-19. She described contracting the virus as the worst experience she's ever had.

"It's just a horrible experience to go through," she told CNN, through tears. "I wish upon no one to go through it."

Briones is one of thousands of people who identify as Latinx who have suffered from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the US, many Latinos say they are growing more concerned for their lives and their community.

Texas border communities hit hard

In Texas' Hidalgo County -- where 92.5% of the county's 860,000 residents identify as Latinx -- data shows just how hard Covid-19 has hit the Latinx community.

"Several months ago, I warned of a potential tsunami if we did not take this more seriously," Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Corez said in a news release. "The tsunami is here."

County officials have said in notifications to residents in the past few weeks that hospitals have reached capacity. Residents are strongly encouraged to stay home, as health care facilities race to add more ICU beds in anticipation for more people with complications from the virus.

The South Texas Medical System in Weslaco -- which is also near the border -- converted conference rooms and shelf spaces to ICU areas as it continues to see an influx of coronavirus patients. They also set up a tent to handle any overflow patients, where they can treat up to 20 additional patients on top of the other areas inside the emergency department.

Wesley Robinson, the assistant chief nursing officer of the South Texas Health System, told CNN the medical system "began seeing patients arrive on July 1, by July 3 they were incredibly sick -- now we're at the point where we've reached well over 100% capacity."

Some experts point to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's decision to prematurely reopen the state's economy as a reason why the virus spread so quickly.

"And that is because at the time that the (Trump) administration insisted on opening the economy where they weren't prepared," Dr. Joseph B. McCormick, an epidemiologist at the Brownsville campus of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told CNN. "We didn't fit any of the criteria that were recommended when the economy was open."

McCormick said Texas was doing a "pretty good job until everybody decided it was time to reopen the economy."

"And we were not prepared to do that because we didn't have the wherewithal to do the contact tracing," he added. "We didn't have testing to be able to do this."

McCormick emphasized how Covid-19 doesn't just affect someone when they've tested positive -- the virus can have longlasting effects on a person.

'Frontline troops' more at risk

Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, told CNN he's seen his own employees and their families suffer from Covid-19. Even some of his own family members have tested positive for the virus, he said.

The organization, one of the largest and oldest Hispanic organizations, has been working to help its members combat the effects of the virus. The latest effort included asking Abbott to mandate masks in public spaces across the state, a move he made this month.

"The Latino workforce is the essential frontline troops," Garcia said. "They're the ones that are picking the vegetables that we have. They're the ones that are working at the meat packing plants to make sure that you have a steak at your table. They're the ones that are working in the construction areas to make sure our freeways stay open and clear. They're the ones that are the truck drivers. They're the ones that the grocery stores."

Because Latino workers "can't work from home and they're getting sick," he said. "They're out."

He said he's worried about the longterm effects this will have on the community.

"From a health perspective, we're seeing many grandparents and parents pass away, hospitals bursting at the seams in Houston. They've already reached capacity," he said. "This requires immediate federal and state intervention. It can not be done by a nonprofit organization like LULAC. It's going to require a community wide effort."

Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation, a national Latino organization that supports Hispanic families and communities, said Latinos are "dying at a higher rate because we have no other choice."

A lack of access to adequate health care

"And that means they don't get the health care primary checkups they need to detect illnesses, and then those illnesses, ultimately with this pandemic, can be more than a serious health challenge, they can become deadly," he said.

According to McCormick, many Latino workers in these essential jobs are also less likely to visit a doctor for a multitude of reasons, including a lack of health insurance or lack of time. But the community also has a high percentage of people with underlying conditions, McCormick said, noting diabetes in Hispanics is especially "quite high."

Dr. Rojelio Mejia, an infectious disease scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, said morbidities -- like diabetes, smoking, obesity and high blood pressure -- which are prevalent in Latinx communities, contribute to the challenges with Covid-19.

"Just looking at the population itself, there's a higher percentage of people who have more comorbidities," Mejia told CNN. "And then when they get, if they get exposed, they get infected, they can have a worse outcome than someone who doesn't have these morbidities or is not a Latino person and they have relatively good health."

For San Antonio native Beverly Barboza-Guerrero, visiting the doctor after being diagnosed with coronavirus in early June didn't really help.

She had followed all proper protocols, but after a social-distanced trip to South Padre Island, she began feeling the symptoms. She visited the emergency room twice, but had no luck getting advice from doctors to help her feel better.

"I mean, we try to think back, like, what did we do wrong?" the 30-year-old told CNN, recalling her symptoms. She said she felt 10 times worse than when she had the flu in November.

"It just felt like I couldn't breathe in," she said. "It felt like if I go to sleep, like I'm not going to wake up. Like, it just felt, it felt ugly," she said. "(One day) I woke up and I told my wife, I need to go to the hospital. There's something not right. I need to go to the hospital. I really cannot breathe."

The ER doctor, she said, told her to "to just take Tylenol and just make sure you're resting, you know, make sure you're quarantining."

Another issue people are encountering, especially in Latinx communities, is false negatives for Covid-19.

In response to the surge in coronavirus cases in these hotspots, including south Texas, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday the launch of new testing sites in three hotspots -- Jacksonville, Florida; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Edinburg, Texas.

Briones said she hopes people make the effort to stay home and educate themselves about the virus.

"You need to do it, you know," she said, "because I have a feeling it's going to be for a long while, we're going to be like this."

Excerpt from:

Latinx residents fear the toll coronavirus is taking on their lives and community - CNN

More than 40 coronavirus cases in Saline are linked to a Fourth of July party.

The Washtenaw County Health Department has identified 43 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 66 exposed contacts from a house party July 2-3 in the Saline area, according to a news release. The exposed contacts do not count immediate family members from the same household.

Most of the confirmed cases are in people ages 15-25, according to the health department.

The health department is asking anyone who attended the gathering or knows they were exposed to self-quarantine for 14 days and monitor themselves for symptoms.

An investigation into the outbreak is ongoing, according to the health department. The gathering has led to exposure at retail stores, restaurants, businesses, canoe liveries, clubs, camps, athletic teams, and a retirement community.

There are also at least two northern Michigan exposures, an out-of-state exposure, and one neighboring county exposure, according to the health department. However, public exposures outside the initial gathering are currently considered low-risk exposures.

This is a very clear example of how quickly this virus spreads and how many people can be impacted in a very short amount of time, Jimena Loveluck, health officer with Washtenaw County Health Department, said in a news release. We cannot hope to accomplish our goal of containing COVID-19 and preventing additional cases, hospitalizations and deaths without full community support and cooperation.

More:

13 coronavirus cases linked to Playhouse strip club in Romulus

2 more coronavirus positive cases linked to Royal Oak sports bar

The Saline Fourth of July outbreak isn't the only recent outbreak tied to a large gathering.

The Health Department of Northwest Michigan is advising attendees of a large Fourth of July celebration at Torch Lake Sandbar to monitor themselves for symptoms after several people have tested positive.

The department asks anyone who attended the party to monitor themselves for symptoms and seek testing if symptoms develop and self-quarantine for 14 days.

An outbreak at an East Lansing bar made national news after more than 150 people got sick.

Harper's Restaurant and Brew Pub has led to 158 confirmed coronavirus cases as of July 2. Of the 158 reported, 131 reported they went to the bar at some point between June 12-June 30.

The outbreak at the bar led to cases reported across the state in Ingham, Wayne, Oakland, Clinton, St. Clair, Isabella, Macomb, Livingston, Ottawa, Eaton, Shiawassee, Kalamazoo, Manistee, Berrien, and Calhoun counties.

Meredith Spelbring is a news intern with the Detroit Free Press. Reach her at mspelbring@freepress.com or on Twitter @mere0415.

Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/13/saline-fourth-july-party-coronavirus-outbreak/5427368002/

Continued here:

Fourth of July house party in Washtenaw Co. tied to 43 coronavirus cases - Detroit Free Press

Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, wears a protective mask while arriving for a news conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, July 8, 2020.

David Kawa | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CNBC is looking at how countries around the world have tackled Covid-19. By talking to a wide range of experts, as well as everyday citizens, we're taking stock of what's gone well and what hasn't. So far, there have been more than 10 million cases worldwide of Covid-19 and more than 500,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The United States has reported more than 3 million cases and more than 130,000 deaths, the most of any country. Canada, the first country in our series, has confirmed more than 105,000 cases with more than 8,000 deaths.

Hospital preparedness

Many of Canada's leading hospitals were generally prepared for an influx of Covid-19. There were initial concerns about a lack of personal protective equipment back in April, but the country quickly ramped up production. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted that Canadian companies are producing so much PPE to fight Covid-19 that the country is almost at the point of being self-sufficient.

"We did really quickly retool our manufacturing supply chain," said Zayna Khayat, a health strategist at Toronto-based SE Health and an adjunct professor of health sector strategy at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. "We never had domestic capacity for things like masks, gowns and vents, so it's been good to see us get there."

A man waves a Canadian flag as first responders parade down hospital row in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in a salute to healthcare workers on April 19, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Cole Burston | AFP | Getty Images

"Covid-19 is ongoing, but so far the hospitals have never gotten that saturated," added Dr. Zain Chagla, an associate professor at McMaster University and an infectious disease physician. Even in cities with the most Covid-19 cases, like Toronto, doctors are reporting that the situation doesn't mirror Italy, where hospitals were overwhelmed and couldn't maintain the standard of care.

The cult of Bonnie Henry

Dr. Bonnie Henry, a physician and the provincial health officer of British Columbia, has become a kind of folk hero in Canada during the crisis. "She stands out for really clear messaging and her empathy. When she announced the first death in Canada, she was overcome with emotion," said Andre Picard, a health columnist for The Globe and Mail.

British Columbia Minister of Health Adrian Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, speak to the media on the novel coronavirus in Vancouver, British Columbia, January 31, 2020.

Don Mackinnon | AFP | Getty Images

Henry has become such a figurehead that when a Vancouver-based shoe company learned that she was a fan, they put out a limited-edition release of shoes to honor her.

Public health experts note that it's important to have a spokesperson who can regularly speak to people about the pandemic in a consistent way. Henry, at least so far, has all the qualities that public health departments typically look for in a public face. Many people find her soft voice to be comforting, and she's taken time to remind Canadians to be good to each other and to come together in the face of a unified threat. She typically ends her calls and presentations with a trademark line:"This is our time to be kind, to be calm and to be safe."

Most important, her communication style seems to be working. British Columbia could have experienced a major outbreak, given that a large chunk of its population travels back and forth to China. But public health experts note that it's been manageable. Thus far, there have been a little more than 3,000 reported Covid-19 cases and less than 200 deaths in the province. "If you look at British Columbia, with its population of millions of people, the fact that they came out relatively unscathed from Covid-19 is a huge testament to her leadership," said Chagla.

The bravery of Canada's providers

Healthcare workers cheer as Toronto first responders parade down hospital row in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in a salute to healthcare workers on April 19, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Cole Burston | AFP | Getty Images

Similarly to other countries, Canada has seen hundreds of its medical providers get sick with Covid-19. Ontario, in particular, is reporting rising cases among heath-care workers. Doctors and nurses have spoken out to the local press referring to the situation as scary and alarming, but many are continuing to treat patients despite the risks. Some workers in long-term care facilities have died from the virus.

"It's the job, we go in," said Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist and professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, when asked about the contribution of the country's health-care workers.

"There are so many stories of courage and kindness on the front lines," added Dr. Andrew Boozary, an assistant professor of public health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

People enjoy drinks and food at Amsterdam Brewhouse's patio, as the provincial phase 2 of reopening from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions begins in Toronto, Ontario, Canada June 24, 2020.

Carlos Osorio | Reuters

Experts say that Canada's economic relief package -- and its safety net in general -- is more robust than what the U.S. has offered.

Canadian residents may apply for up to $2,000 in direct monthly payments for a four-month period. That program was open to those who had lost their job or couldn't work because of Covid-19, but has now been expanded to those who earn up to $1,000 per month.

Similarly to the U.S., there were delays with the system, at least initially, but most of the experts agreed that the program has done a lot to support those impacted by the pandemic.

"I am not an economist but the federal transfer program seems to have kept our economy going along OK," said Fisman, the Toronto epidemiologist . "As provinces have controlled their epidemics they have started making new jobs (and) I do think there is a renewed sense of needing to onshore some manufacturing."

"We did a good job ensuring that people had enough financial means to live through lockdowns," added Tazim Virani, an assistant clinical professor at McMaster University. All in, the relief will provide $27 billion in direct support to Canada's citizens and its businesses.

Clear-ish communication

"I think we're a culture of followers," said Picard, "but we need clear rules to follow, at least in public spaces."

The messaging has been "wishy-washy" added Picard. Some blame the fact that Canada's health system functions at a provincial level, rather than at a national level, so guidelines differ across the country.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau removes his face mask as he visits the Big Rig Brewery, which utilizes the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy given to businesses affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Kanata, Ontario, Canada June 26, 2020.

Patrick Doyle | Reuters

Yoni Freedhoff, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, said that regions are setting their own guidelines on wearing masks. In certain areas, these are mandatory where social distancing can't be maintained, and in others mask wearing is advised but not enforced. Some public health experts feels this policy makes sense, because there aren't active Covid-19 outbreaks across the country, but others say there should be consistent rules everywhere.

Travel restrictions

Canada issued a travel ban on March 20 for visitors from the U.S. Since then, thousands have been turned away at the border, particularly those traveling for nonessential reasons. That ban is set to continue until July 21, but it isn't a total ban. Health-care workers are still able to move between the two countries, as well as foreign workers and people with immediate family in Canada visiting for nondiscretionary reasons.

The government has been stricter in recent months about travel, and is now advising against any nonessential trips, but some Canadians feel that the restrictions should have come sooner than mid-March. "We didn't close borders quickly enough," noted Freedhoff, the family medicine physician.

Trucks traverse the Ambassador Bridge, a main trade route linking Canada and the United States, as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions remain in place, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada July 5, 2020.

Carlos Osorio | Reuters

Fisman, the epidemiologist, agrees that the federal government could get tougher on enforcing the border. But he notes that it's very difficult to restrict movement from the U.S., as people usually find ways to get places when they want to. In addition, the economies of Canada and the U.S. are extremely intertwined. All in, he believes the travel restrictions came at about the right time, given what was known at that stage.

Nursing homes

Canada's health-care system is publicly funded, so care is covered by tax dollars. But the long-term care system relies on a mix of public and private payments, and some people are paying out of pocket. The Commonwealth Fund, a global health research nonprofit, reports that out-of-pocket payments still represent about 15% of overall health spending, and much of that was spent on nonhospital institutions including long-term care homes.

50 crosses have appeared on the side lawn of the Camilla Care Community nursing home on Hurontario at the Queensway. 50 of their residents have died there due to a COVID outbreak.

Richard Lautens | Toronto Star | Getty Images

"It exposed a longstanding problem in that sector," said Picard, the columnist. "It's not a system and it's not properly funded, and there's both poor pay and chronic staffing problems."

Many of the deaths in Canada have been residents of nursing homes. By mid-April, that population alone represented more than half of the overall fatalities, and horrifying reportscirculated about abandoned, desperately ill patients. Most of the experts agreed that this is an opportunity for Canadians to reevaluate how they take care of their aging residents.

"It's been damning," said Boozary. "We have come out of this as a country knowing that we have failed the residents of our long-term care homes." Boozary said that he hopes that Canada emerges from the epidemic with a much better strategy for how to fund care for elderly residents, as well as how to staff facilities.

Migrant workers and inmates

Similarly to the U.S., the pandemic has disproportionately affected Canada's most vulnerable residents.

Some provinces reported outbreaks in prisons, and about 600 migrant workers tested positive on a farm in Canada after arriving in the country in the spring. The government has restricted travel, but it did allow foreign workers to come into the country before picking and growing season. Some workers told CNNearlier this month that the quarantine was poorly handled, and employers put them in risky situations.

"The most recent blowup here has been around miserable treatment of migrant farm workers, who are housed in dormitories and have had big Covid outbreaks," said Fisman. According to Fisman, government health officials could be doing a lot more to protect these workers, including to separate them and stop them working if they start experiencing symptoms.

Masks and testing in Ontario

Women get their nails done, as the provincial phase 2 of reopening from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions begins in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on June 24, 2020.

Carlos Osorio | Reuters

Ontario, a province in Canada, reported a drop in daily tests throughout April, despite seeing an uptick in deaths. That proved to be a worrying trend. In May, news broke that more than 55 million N95 masks stockpiled by Ontario had expired, which raised yet more questions about the readiness to tackle the pandemic.

"There were clearly organizational and political issues," said Fisman.

Overall in Canada, just two provinces -- Ontario and Quebec -- have accounted for more than 90% of the country's Covid-19 cases.

We asked every expert we spoke to for their score out of 10 (1 is the extremely poor and 10 is ideal). It's an extremely subjective measurement, but the average across all of them is 6.5. Some provinces, like British Columbia, scored far higher than others, including Quebec and Ontario.

As Picard put it, many Canadians took heart that the response was better than the U.S. across a variety of fronts, but they recognized that the country was "no Australia."

Read the rest here:

How Canada is fighting Covid-19: Ramping up PPE production, travel ban from the U.S. and Bonnie Henry - CNBC

One evening last week, after making one of his most consequential decisions yet in Texas response to the coronavirus, Gov. Greg Abbott settled in for his pandemic routine: a rapid-fire round of local TV interviews from his campaigns satellite studio in Austin.

In the hours since hed issued a statewide mask mandate, Abbott had taken a familiar shellacking from both sides of the aisle: the Democrats who had wanted the mask requirement weeks earlier, and some Republicans who had not wanted it at all.

An anchor with KIII in Corpus Christi offered a measure of sympathy.

Governor, I must tell you I wouldnt trade jobs with you for anything, he said, drawing chuckles from Abbott.

You articulate it well, Abbott later said. I get it from both sides.

Four months of unprecedented emergency have forced the cautious, measured governor into a leadership test like no other. While he has steered the state through major crises before Hurricane Harvey, multiple mass shootings no other has required the sustained, high-stakes decision-making that this one has, leaving Abbott with countless, constant choices that have immediate impact on millions of Texans. Abbott is leaning hard on his executive power and a small circle of advisers as the biennial Legislature remains on the sidelines.

If the virus has presented a leadership test, Abbotts metrics are getting worse. COVID-19 has already killed at least 3,013 Texans and is spreading rapidly, infecting new people and filling hospitals with the sick. Hospitals are beginning to get overwhelmed. Despite an early reopening, the states economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate in double digits and budgets facing major shortfalls. Even by the metrics Abbott has said he is focused on the percentage of COVID-19 patients who require hospitalization, and the share of tests coming back positive Texas is headed in an alarming direction. While Texas at first fared better than many other states, it is now a national hotspot.

For most of the pandemic, Abbott has been met with persistent criticism from Democrats and a small but vocal faction of his GOP, but lately his Republican skeptics have begun to grow in number.

Critics point to ever-changing, sometimes serially confusing top-down guidance. Facing down a public health emergency, the governor has more than once reversed himself, making virus mitigation decisions that some say came too late and others say should not have been made at all.

Abbotts defenders praise him for remaining characteristically calm during a dark hour for the state. Democrats plead with him to act on the advice of public health experts, many of whom urge further shutdown of the economy, and to allow local leaders to issue stricter guidelines than the statewide regulations. A growing group in his own party questions both his choices and his authority to make them.

Politically, Abbott who does not face re-election until 2022 has little to fear on his own. But he sits atop a Texas GOP that has plenty to worry about in November, with polls showing Joe Biden in striking distance of President Donald Trump and Democrats making a massive push farther down the ballot.

Abbott entered the pandemic with plenty of political capital as the states most popular Republican leader. While Abbott maintained a generally high approval rating during the first few months of the pandemic, his rating fell seven percentage points from April to June in University of Texas polling.

The second-term governor, who often seems reluctant to take political risks, is forging his legacy through a crisis that he is singularly positioned to address. With the Legislature out of session, and after he limited the power of the states mayors and county judges, Abbott has almost complete authority to make critical decisions about the states response. That means he owns the decisions that lead to lost jobs and lost lives.

The summer will prove a critical chapter: Can he change the states course, or will it careen further toward disaster?

Theres so much at stake here weve got to get it right. We dont have a whole lot of time, said state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, a nurse and leader in the states minority party. And I dont believe the governor has shown the leadership we need. I realize its a tough job, but the buck stops with him. The Legislature is not in session. Hes the one thats running the ship.

In a public health crisis, government at all levels has a role to play: federal health agencies issuing guidance; states wrangling data; mayors and city councils communicating with their constituencies.

But Abbott came to the public health crisis with an already-tense relationship with local leaders. The GOP-dominated state government he heads clashes routinely with Democratic leaders in the states biggest cities and counties, over issues ranging from property taxes to paid sick leave requirements. As the coronavirus began to spread in China and then to Europe, the governor was bickering with Austins leaders about people experiencing homelessness.

Still, in March, as cases of the new coronavirus began to pop up in Texas cities, Abbott was uncharacteristically deferential to local officials.

Amid calls for a statewide stay-at-home order, a spokesman for the governor said in mid-March that cities and counties have done a very good job of doing what is right for their municipalities.Abbott ordered the states bars and restaurants to close, but resisted calls for a more comprehensive directive that Texans stay at home, insisting local officials have the authority to implement more strict standards. I would applaud them for doing so.

By the end of the month, though, with case counts surpassing 3,000 and states across the country battering down, Abbott finally took statewide action: He ordered Texans to remain in place except for essential activities like grocery shopping.

Was this the stay-at-home order Democrats and health experts had been agitating for? He didnt call it that.

Asked to clarify, the governor dithered, using language that experts said confused the public and undermined the seriousness of the situation.

Well candidly, when people talk in terms of shelter in place, what shelter in place really means as a term of art, would mean that wherever you may be at a particular time, you need to take shelter immediately right there. Whether you are at your home or some other location or in a roadside ditch, wherever you may be, youre supposed to take shelter because of something like a tornado would be coming. ... This is not a stay-at-home strategy. A stay-at-home strategy would mean that you have to stay at home, you cannot leave home under any circumstances, he told reporters.

Whatever it was called, experts agree it helped deter the spread of the virus. During the month of April, cases were on a steady but manageable rise, with Texas typically adding fewer than 1,000 new cases each day. Other mitigation measures, like barring elective medical procedures, kept hospitals freed up for a crush of patients that didn't materialize at the time. Abbott mostly steered clear of the culture wars that emerged, leaving Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to defend a ban on nearly all abortions.

But many in Abbotts own party were growing restless. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was making national headlines for telling Fox News there are more important things than living. The president had said he wanted the economy opened up and raring to go by Easter.

No sooner had Abbott shut the state down than he began to talk about reopening. He named a strike force of business leaders to advise him on his reopening plan, along with a group of medical advisers including Dr. John Zerwas, the executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas System, state health Commissioner John Hellerstedt and Mark McClellan, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Abbott announced businesses would reopen in phases starting May 1, with the second phase coming as early as May 18 if all went well.

We need to see two weeks of data to confirm no flare-up of COVID-19, he said.

He also laid out tough enforcement measures fines of up to $1,000, jail sentences of up to 180 days.

Experts praised Abbotts plan for its promise to open businesses slowly, in measured phases. But they noted that unlike in some states, there were few specific health metrics that controlled further reopenings. Experts warned that the pandemic could spiral out of control.

Just hours after he had promised a measured approach, the governor hinted to a Houston TV station that he might allow more businesses to reopen even before the May 18 date some experts had cautioned was too early.

On the evening of April 30, with restaurants and malls set to reopen the next day, Texas reported its highest death toll yet: 50 people. But Abbott remained cautiously optimistic, pointing to two key metrics hospitalization rate, the share of COVID-19 patients who required hospital care; and positivity rate, the percentage of coronavirus tests that showed presence of the virus which remained in a manageable range. The governor had made clear from the start that cases would rise when the state reopened; his goal was not to prevent all spread, but to open slowly enough that hospitals could care for all the people who fell ill.

As Democrats and public health experts warned he was moving too fast, many in Abbotts own party urged him to move yet more quickly. Restaurants were open in limited capacity, but not bars or hair salons. What was the difference, critics demanded, between a waiter serving a meal and a bartender pouring a cocktail? Two hardline conservative lawmakers got haircuts at an illegally open salon in Houston, daring the governor to insist on the penalties hed warned about. In Dallas, a salon owner named Shelley Luther earned praise from Fox News, hundreds of thousands in donations from like-minded shutdown skeptics and a weeklong jail term after she repeatedly defied court orders to close her business until state law permitted her to open.

The governor backpedaled rapidly. He revised his coronavirus executive orders so that violators could not be forced to serve jail time. His team contacted Luther not to order her to close, but to seek her advice on how salons could open safely and soon. Abbott said salons could reopen May 8, more than a week before his target date for phase two. The slow reopening he promised had begun to speed up already and the penalties that were supposed to ensure compliance were beginning to disappear.

Heeding Luthers example, and watching their own bottom lines plummet amid the shutdown, bar owners started to wonder about their own strategy.

This one lady did it, and she got a lot of attention and now all the salons are open, bar owner Emil Bragdon told the Tribune in May. Is that something we have to do? Because if we have to do that, we'll do it.

The economic advisors on Abbotts strike force began to press for bars to open, too. After a substantial amount of conversation with medical advisors, Abbotts team agreed that the bars could open so long as they followed social distancing protocols, Zerwas recalled.

It would prove to be a major misstep one Abbott said he regrets.

Young people crowded into bars, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was slow to enforce regulations or yank licenses. Cases began to rise among young people. Weeks later, with cases surging, Abbott shut the bars back down.

Clearly what happened is the bars, when they opened, did not comply. In hindsight, it wouldve been quite a challenge for them to comply, Zerwas said. We took a leap of faith on that.

Meanwhile, Abbotts tentative truce with local leaders was eroding, and the usual antagonism reemerged.

As Texas remains a hotspot for the virus, local leaders are pleading with him to either order more shutdowns or allow them to do it for their own communities.

Even some fellow Republicans, like Lubbock Mayor Dan Pope, have criticized Abbott for tying their hands with his statewide order. In an interview, Pope acknowledged it has been a little tough to keep up with the states evolving rules. But, Pope said, "we're in unprecedented times."

"I know how difficult COVID-19 has been locally and I can only imagine how difficult it is at the state level," Pope said, describing his citys relationship with the state as very strong at this point.

Clay Jenkins, the Democratic county judge in Dallas, said when he was navigating fears of an Ebola outbreak in 2014, he was in touch with former Gov. Rick Perry cellphone to cellphone at least once every day. This emergency has been different from any other hes weathered, Jenkins said, because the virus became politicized.

In this public health emergency, local officials have been left to guess at Abbotts intentions. Jenkins said he hasnt spoken to Abbott in more than a month.

Nowhere has the friction between state and local leaders been more visible than on the issue of masks.

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending masks in April, Abbott encouraged Texans to wear masks, but often appeared in public without wearing one himself. And when Abbott allowed businesses to reopen May 1, he stripped local leaders like mayors and county judges of the ability to mandate stronger restrictions, including the wearing of masks. His statewide standards were not a floor but a ceiling.

Local leaders in big cities like Houston and Dallas began to chafe under the states firm hand, agitating to impose the mask requirements that public health experts call essential. Abbott made it clear mask mandates would not be acceptable and the Texas attorney general threatened lawsuits against cities and counties that passed them.

We strongly recommend that everyone wear a mask, Abbott said in May. However, its not a mandate. And well make clear that no jurisdiction can impose any type of penalty or fine for anyone not wearing a mask.

That push and pull continued for weeks as case counts began to surge following the Memorial Day Weekend. The virus began to spread more rapidly in Texas than ever before, a trend Abbott attributed in part to young people gathering at the bars he had opened. For weeks, the governor remained optimistic, pointing to hospitals abundant capacity to serve the sick even as their ranks began to grow exponentially.

In June, with the virus rocketing through San Antonio, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff tried a workaround: Instead of ordering residents to wear masks, he required businesses to require them.

To the surprise of local officials, Abbott praised Wolff. He finally figured that out, Abbott said.

The riddle of the mask mandate earned Abbott immediate criticism: Either the governor had been intentionally misleading or confusing to the point of negligence, allowing local leaders to stumble in the dark for weeks.

I thought, my God, its not a scavenger hunt, Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, said of the mask order. Have you listened to the physicians who said that masks help? If you did, then you wouldve announced this yourself much earlier. You dont hide important facts about protecting peoples health.

That same week, Abbott acknowledged that the virus was spreading at an unacceptable rate. Days later he paused the states reopening process, closed bars again, and told Texans theres never a reason for you to have to leave your home.

Still, he left open the restaurants many Texans were leaving their homes for. And that weekend he appeared before a gathering of hundreds at a Dallas church. Another featured guest: Mike Pence, the vice president.

The next week, Abbott reversed himself again: Under mounting political pressure, and watching the exponential rise of case counts, Abbott issued a mask order for most of the state. Accompanying it was the fine after a warning that he had previously prohibited local officials from issuing.

To public health experts, and to many of the governors critics on the left, it was the right decision, but it had come far too late.

Jenkins, who was the first in the state to issue a stay-at-home mandate for his county, said he expects that pattern to repeat itself.

The crush of new cases and the continual unfortunate bad news that were getting every day will force the governor to listen to the doctors recommendations, Jenkins said. The key thing is how fast will that happen? Because every day that we wait is more damage to our economy, more people getting sick, and the longer its gonna take to pull out of the tail spin.

While some Republican state lawmakers have become more vocal against Abbotts response, the governor still has defenders in the Legislature.

We have a Governor who uses facts, not fear, to drive decision-making, and thats never been a more critical leadership attribute than during this challenging season, state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, told The Texas Tribune.

But some conservatives question Abbotts authority to issue sweeping disaster orders. At least six county GOPs have censured him for his handling of the pandemic, including those in Montgomery and Denton Counties, two of the partys biggest strongholds. Many of those resolutions have called for delegates to the state GOP convention to consider a broader censure of the governor a striking but largely symbolic move.

Republican lawmakers have begun to agitate for more say in the states response, with some pushing for a special session of the Legislature to consider coronavirus responses.

"It should not be the sole responsibility of one person to manage all of the issues related to a disaster that has no end in sight, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, wrote last week.

Patrick Svitek contributed reporting.

Disclosure: The University of Texas System and Rice University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Read more:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's leadership tested by coronavirus - The Texas Tribune

As COVID-19 continued to ravage the nation and the world, President Donald Trump wore a mask in public Saturday for the first time. In other news, Disney began reopening its Florida resorts even as that state continued to report high numbers of cases.

The Washington state Department of Health did not report new numbers on Saturday as its system was down for maintenance; an update is expected Sunday afternoon.

Throughout Sunday, 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 Saturday can be found here, and all our coronavirus coverage can be found here.

The following graphic includes the most recent numbers from the Washington State Department of Health, released Friday afternoon.

Washington health officials confirmed 1,438 additional coronavirus cases over the weekend, including 14 more deaths.

Thestate Department of Health'sdata system was shut down for maintenance on Saturday, so this data is for Friday and Saturday, and is current as of 11:59 p.m. Saturday.

The update brings the states totals to 40,656 cases and 1,438 deaths, meaning about 3.5% of people diagnosed in Washington have died,according to the state Department of Health (DOH).

So far, 686,005 tests for the novel coronavirus have been conducted in the state, per DOH. Of those, 5.9% have come back positive since testing began slightly higher than the percentage of positive tests in the past week, whichthe state reportsis at 5.2%.

Overall deaths are concentrated in King County, Washington's most populous county, where DOH has confirmed 11,866 diagnoses and 637 deaths.

Scott Greenstone

Andrea Dragnas pre-pandemic pastime of scouting new makeup colors at Sephora has given way to a new, more socially distant ritual: trying on lipstick, eye shadow and blush through the webcam on her phone.

Its easy and surprisingly accurate, she says, and most importantly, doesnt require setting foot in a store. Its the perfect way to shop in the days of COVID, said Dragna, 40, who ordered nearly $300 worth of cosmetics last weekend after a virtual try-on session.

The coronavirus pandemic is reshaping the way Americans shop. Stores are reopening but being reoriented to avoid interaction: Fitting rooms are taped off, sample counters are closed and product testers have been put away.

Thats set off a scramble to re-create an integral part of the shopping experience, allowing people to virtually try on clothing, shoes, cosmetics, eyeglasses, even a new haircut or eyebrow shape, on their smartphones and computers. If consumers are presented with an authentic representation of themselves, analysts say, they are more likely to buy and less likely to make a return. But privacy experts warn the technology could also form a pipeline to valuable personal and biometric information.

Read more here.

The Washington Post

Mountlake Terrace, a city of 21,338 north of Seattle, plans to mail two masks to every address in the citys ZIP code.

Using CARES Act funding from the federal government, the city will mail cloth masks to roughly 9,700 addresses in Mountlake Terrace, meaning business addresses will receive them as well, according to the citys Community Relations Director, Virginia Olsen. The masks cost almost $40,000, and mailing them to every address using a local distributor will cost $8,500, Olsen wrote in an email.

The city hopes the mailing will go out by the end of the month, Olsen said.

Separately, the city received 8,000 free masks from Snohomish County, which the city has been giving away at food banks and at Edmonds School District schools.

Scott Greenstone

Protective face coverings wont be out of sight when Major League Baseball resumes in less than two weeks. Some players and coaches are planning to wear them on the field.

MLBs safety protocols require masks in clubhouses to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and coaches and managers are required to wear them in dugouts, but theyre optional on the field. Some are going to wear them during games as well.

Read more here.

Topofficials in Houston are calling for the city to lock back down as areahospitals strain to accommodate the onslaught of patients sick with the newcoronavirus.

HoustonMayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, both Democrats,said this weekend that a stay-at-home order is needed for Americas fourthlargest city to cope with the surge of COVID-19 cases.

Thecall comes after a week in which Texas continued to break records for confirmedCOVID-19 cases and deaths linked to the disease. State health officialsreported 8,196 new cases Sunday, another 80 deaths and a total of 10,410 peoplehospitalized due to the virus.

Thetrue number of cases is likely far higher because many people have not beentested, and studies suggest people can be infected and not feel sick.

The decision over a lockdown, however, rests with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott who has resisted this step, saying it should be a last resort.

Read the full story.

Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says the country will immediately return to a ban on the sale of alcohol to reduce the volume of trauma patients so that hospitals have more beds open to treat COVID-19 patients.

Confronted by surging hospitalizations due to the coronavirus, South Africa is also reinstating a night curfew to reduce traffic accidents and made it mandatory for all residents to wear face masks when in public.

Ramaphosa said, in a nationally televised address Sunday night, that top health officials warn of impending shortages of hospital beds and medical oxygen as South Africa reaches a peak of COVID-19 cases, expected between the end of July and September. He said some hospitals have had to turn away patients because all their beds are full.

Read more about the decision here.

The Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) First and second class midshipmen will begin to return to the Naval Academy in Annapolis in about a week under a staggered plan.

The midshipmens return will start on or about July 20, Naval Academy spokeswoman Cmdr. Alana Garas told the Capital Gazette on Friday. The fall semester will feature in-person and online classes.

Students will be tested for the coronavirus when they return to campus. Their movements will be restricted for 14 days, and they will undergo another test at the end of that period.

Garas said midshipmen will be six feet apart and wear masks during classes. Tents will soon be set up on campus to expand the space where students can eat their meals.

Click here to read the full story.

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) The federal Bureau of Prisons said Sunday that a staff member involved in preparing for the first federal executions in nearly two decades has tested positive for coronavirus.

The Justice Department said the development will not mean an additional delay in the governments timetable, already stalled by a federal court, because the worker had not been in the execution chamber and had not come into contact with anyone on the specialized team sent to the prison to handle the execution.

The agency made the disclosure in court filings in response to lawsuits that have sought to halt executions scheduled to resume Monday.

Click here to read the full story.

Michael Balsamo, The Associated Press

Floridahas broken the record for a single-day increase in COVID-19 cases in a singlestate.

Health officials reported 15,300 new cases in Florida on Sunday.

The last state to report a single-day record in cases was California, which reported 11,694 just this past Wednesday.

The totalnumber of cases has now reached 269,811 in Florida, where bars, restaurants and gyms began reopening in May.

The staggering increase in cases in one day comes as more testing in Florida is underway.

The state reported Sunday that 99,003 more tests were conducted. The latest for positive cases in Florida cases was 11.25%, according to the Florida Department of Health.

Forty-fiveadditional deaths were posted by the state Sunday, bringing the death toll to4,242.

With 104 nonresident deaths included, the toll is 4,346.

Read the full story.

Orlando Sentinel

The push in New York to tame the nations deadliest outbreak in the spring could offer a blueprint for other states now swamped by the disease.

It could also soon come in handy for leaders in New York as the region prepares for a potential second wave of infection.

As coronavirus rages in the South and West, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-New York, warned Friday it would eventually rear up again in his state.

A widely cited University of Washington model doesnt project spikes at least through its Nov. 1 time frame in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, whose Democratic governors have coordinated on traveler quarantines and, earlier, some shutdown policies. But that doesnt mean the densely populated tri-state area is in the clear.

We expect the virus to return in all of those states, said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the universitys Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The question is one of timing.

Cuomo has offered advice, ventilators, masks, gowns and medicine to states dealing with spikes in cases and hospitalizations and, in some places, rising deaths.

At the same time, the Democratic governor has ordered travelers from more than a dozen states to quarantine for 14 days, while urging New Yorkers not to let up on wearing masks or social distancing.

Others are preparing, too.

Mount Sinai Hospital expanded from 94 intensive-care beds to 235 and converted an atrium and lobby into wards for less-critical patients at the height of the crisis. Now, its developing a coronavirus playbook of sorts, so clinicians will have how-tos immediately at hand, said Dr. Roopa Kohli-Seth, who oversees intensive care.

Read the full story.

Associated Press

Public health experts warn that a one-size-fits-all to reopening schools could drive coronavirus infection and death rates higher.

Theyre urging a more cautious approach ahead of the next academic year, as the Trump administration seeks to pressure schools to resume in-person education.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, whose guidance the Trump administration has cited to support its demands, says the goal is for all students to be physically present in school. But it says school districts need to be flexible, consult with public health authorities and be ready to pivot as virus activity waxes and wanes.

It is not that the American Academy of Pediatrics thinks this is a done deal because we have put out guidance, said Dr. Nicholas Beers, a member of the academys school health council. But what we do know is that we need to have a more realistic dialogue about the implications of virtual learning on the future of children. We have left whole swaths of society behind, whether its because they have limited access to a computer, or broadband internet, or because of other challenges that online education cant address.

President Donald Trump has threatened federal funding cuts for districts that dont fully reopen.

While most funding typically comes from state and local sources, experts say schools will need more federal funding, not less, to reopen safely.

Masks, extra cleaning supplies or janitors, additional classroom space, mental health support for students and staff traumatized by the pandemic are among potential costs. And with more parents out of work, more children will qualify for federally funded school lunches.

Read the full story.

Associated Press

The cruise ship industry is facing an array of challenges during the coronavirus pandemic as it tries to ensure vessels worldwide remain operable.

Sincemid-March, only a small handful of the worlds 400-or-so cruise ships have beenable to accept passengers all on hyperlocal itineraries. A few dozen aresailing the world with purpose, repatriating crew members from every corner ofthe globe.

Therest are sitting idle, unable to sail commercially for the foreseeable future. (Inthe U.S., the industry has agreed not to resume businessat least untilSept. 15. Princess Cruises, Holland America Lines and Carnival Cruises in Maycanceled their remaining Alaska cruises from Seattle for the season.)

But idlingthrough the pandemic present huge issues for cruise ship companies, from findinga place to park vessels and dealing with mechanical issues to hurricane risks andregulatory hurdles.

Theexpense is staggering. In a recent SEC filing, Carnival whose nine brandscomprise the worlds largest cruise company indicated that its ongoing shipand administrations expenses would amount to$250 million a month once allits ships are on pause.

With the company saying its unable to predict when cruises resume, thats a long-term line item on a balance sheet that logged $4.4 billion in losses in the second quarter alone.

Read the full story.

Bloomberg

Read the rest here:

Coronavirus daily news updates, July 12: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world - Seattle Times

Ultraviolet light has been used to stop pathogens in their tracks for decades. But does it work against SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic?

The short answer is yes. But it takes the right kind of UV in the right dosage, a complex operation that is best administered by trained professionals. In other words, many at-home UV-light devices claiming to kill SARS-CoV-2 likely aren't a safe bet.

UV radiation can be classified into three types based on wavelength: UVA, UVB and UVC. Nearly all the UV radiation that reaches Earth is UVA, because most of UVB and all of UVC light is absorbed by the ozone layer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it's UVC, which has the shortest wavelength and the highest energy, that can act as a disinfectant.

Related: What is ultraviolet light?

"UVC has been used for years, it's not new," Indermeet Kohli, a physicist who studies photomedicine in dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, told Live Science. UVC at a specific wavelength, 254 nanometers, has been successfully used to inactivate H1N1 influenza and other coronaviruses, such as severe acute respiratory virus (SARS-CoV) and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), she said. A study published June 26 to the preprint database medRxiv from Kohli's colleagues awaiting peer review now confirms that UVC also eliminates SARS-CoV-2.

UVC-254 works because this wavelength causes lesions in DNA and RNA. Enough exposure to UVC-254 damages the DNA and RNA so that they can't replicate, effectively killing or inactivating a microorganism or virus.

"The data that backs up this technology, the ease of use, and the non-contact nature" of UVC make it a valuable tool amid the pandemic, Kohli said. But responsible, accurate use is critical. UVC's DNA-damaging capabilities make it extremely dangerous to human skin and eyes, Kohli said. She cautioned that UVC disinfection technologies should primarily be left to medical facilities and evaluated for safety and efficacy by teams with expertise in photomedicine and photobiology.

When it comes to a-home UVC lamps, their ability to damage skin and eyes isn't the only danger, Dr. Jacob Scott, a research physician in the Department of Translational Hematology and Oncology Research at Cleveland Clinic, said. These devices also have low quality control, which means there's no guarantee that you're actually eliminating the pathogen, he said.

"UVC does kill the virus, period, but the issue is you have to get enough dose," Scott told Live Science. "Particularly, for N95 masks, which are porous, it takes a pretty big dose" of UVC-254 nm to eliminate SARS-CoV-2. This kind of accuracy isn't possible with at-home devices.

In hospitals, the geometry of the room, shadowing, timing and the type of material or object being disinfected are all accounted for when experts determine the right dosage of UVC needed to kill pathogens. But that kind of "quality assurance is really hard out in the world, out in the wild," Scott said. At-home devices don't offer that kind of precision, so using them could offer a false assurance that SARS-CoV-2 has been eliminated when it hasn't, he noted. "Having something you think is clean, but it's not, is worse than something that you know is dirty" because it affects your behavior toward that object, he said.

Both Kohli and Scott and their teams are working to make UVC disinfection of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as face masks and N95 respirators, more efficient. Kohli's group advises hospitals and vendors repurposing existing UVC equipment for N95 respirator decontamination. Scott's group developed a machine that can be used by smaller medical facilities and a software program that helps users factor in the geometry of the disinfection room so that staff can deliver the most effective dose of UVC.

There are ongoing conversations in the field about installing UVC units in ceilings to decontaminate circulating air, Kohli said. And others are researching another wavelength of UVC called UVC-222 or Far-UVC, which may not damage human cells, she added. But that will require more research, Kohli said. Still, it's clear that "used accurately and responsibly, UVC has enormous potential."

Originally published on Live Science.

Read more from the original source:

Does UV light kill the new coronavirus? - Live Science

When coronavirus first hit in March, the freelance production manager paid about $30 for a three-month premium subscription on the dating app Hinge -- and he figured he'd just keep swiping until that ended.

Like many, the 29-year-old used dating apps like Hinge as a way to connect with others, especially since making in-person connections had become nearly impossible with Covid-19 shutdowns. He went on one Facetime date -- the girl, he said, seemed like she was "just going through her matches ... like on a spreadsheet."

But on May 29, he had plans to meet up with a different match -- this time in person. A 28-year-old nurse named Brooke, with whom he would hike Runyon Canyon -- Los Angeles' picturesque, influencer-ridden trail.

It was in the middle of their approximately three-mile hike, when the two decided they felt comfortable enough to remove their face masks, that he knew this was different. Their guards were down, or as he described it, "all caution (regarding coronavirus) was thrown to the wind."

Now, less than one month and many dates later, they split most of their time between his West Hollywood apartment and hers in Long Beach. He's done what many initially considered impossible with social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders:

He found love during a global pandemic.

"This is truly two people finding their soulmate during the most unlikely of times," he told CNN in a phone interview. "We're thinking about eloping to Vegas if the chapels open."

While this may sound extreme, many formerly single people -- and dating experts -- say the pandemic has actually helped people find their matches more easily.

"Because we have this dedicated time to find love, there are no distractions -- you're not a bar looking at people around you or looking at your drink. Everyone's more present and they are more conscious about the way they are showing up to these virtual or real-life dates."

Xu and podcast co-host Julie Krafchick, who are based in San Francisco, said they've noticed an overall change for the better in terms of the dating landscape over the past few months.

"Consider this a reset," Xu said. "Even though we're losing magic of that first date -- the first kiss, first touch -- we're forced to think about how we can reinvent dating."

The 'fail fast mentality'

Dating has never been -- and never will be -- perfect. Before the pandemic, Xu and Krafchick answered questions on their podcast such as "Do Millennials even want to find love?" and "Is monogamy dead?"

"We can't have amnesia that dating wasn't perfect before," Krafchick said. "Part of the reason we created the podcast in the first place was to answer the question, 'What the f**k is wrong with modern dating?'"

The biggest challenge for the singles out there before the pandemic, Krafchick said, was that many spent a lot of time in relationship limbo.

"No one wanted to say they were excited about someone," she said. "No one wanted to define the relationship."

Now, however, the pandemic has led to what Krafchick described as the "fail fast mentality."

"People are starting to feel it's better to fail fast than be in this constant state of equilibrium," she said. "Like, let's either get it off the ground or end it."

The podcast hosts have heard countless stories during these past few months of people who have successfully found love, and people who have felt more encouraged by their dating experiences even if their quarantine relationships didn't work out.

"Coming out of quarantine, everyone has a really strong feeling of a yes or no," Xu said.

Many have also taken this time in quarantine to self reflect, which has helped pave the way to finding healthier relationships.

"I think this time has given people a lot of clarity into what they want in life," Krafchick said. "It's shown life is short and at the end of the day, relationships are what matters most. A lot of people have used this time to do self work, especially in the dark middle period of quarantine, where it didn't feel like there was any way to meet someone."

Virtual dates have also made people throw their old notions of dating out of the window, as they are forced to get creative. For example, "there are 'Zootie' calls now," Xu explained. "Zoom booty calls."

'A whole other dimension of consent'

With this uncharted era of dating also comes new conversations around consent: Do you feel safe meeting in person during a pandemic? Do you agree to wearing masks on the first date? Do you feel comfortable being less than 6 feet apart?

Jessica Gerhardt, a Santa Monica, California, native, and her new partner -- they have not labeled the relationship yet -- waited three months before they decided to meet in person for the first time last week.

The two, who had mutual friends in the music scene, began talking after he "slid into her DMs" on Instagram. Before they met up, he researched and looked into data about social distancing, Gerhardt said.

"We both consented to hug when we first met," the 30-year-old told CNN. "There's a whole other dimension of consent during this pandemic. Under normal circumstances, of course I'd want to hug -- but it was helpful to have that conversation before and nice to know if we don't do something it's not necessarily a sign of 'Oh, I'm not attracted or interested, but I'm trying to be considerate of your safety and vice versa.'"

The lack of touching before meeting, Gerhardt said, made her feel like the two were cultivating "deeper intimacy" as they got to know each other.

They ended up going on a social distance walk in her neighborhood while both wore face masks. At the end of their walking date, he asked whether he could use her bathroom before he drove home.

"He came inside, and we both took off our masks after I asked, 'Do you feel comfortable being maskless?' and he said, 'I feel comfortable.' It was a nice surprise," she said. "We ended up feeling comfortable enough to also hold hands and cuddle. It was really sweet."

While they do not have plans to move in together any time soon, Gerhardt said he has now joined her quarantine pod, which includes her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend.

Learning each other's values early on

How people have acted during this time has helped provide a window into their beliefs, which for some singles has helped narrow down their pool of potential matches.

For example, on dating apps, many have said they have encountered photos of people holding "Black Lives Matter" signs at protests on their profiles. Others said they've seen people sporting face masks in their pictures, to highlight the fact that they are following social distancing guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to curb the spread of the virus.

"With the Black Lives Matter movement, Covid, and everything else that's been going on, it's been causing people to have way deeper conversations," Krafchick said. "You can really quickly realize who has same values as you and who would be a better long-term partner. (Talking about) those things can really help you understand someone a lot better on a deeper level and get you past those basic dating questions."

Liz Dwyer, who lives in LA, fell for a guy named Demis Courquet-Lesaulnier, who she has been messaging on Instagram since before the pandemic. He lives in Paris, and they had plans -- pre-coronavirus -- to meet abroad. Now, that plan has been put on hold.

But that hasn't slowed their relationship down at all. In fact, it's sped things up. Dwyer said she's gotten closer to her now-boyfriend these past few months virtually, thanks to many of the current events they discuss.

"We have completely different cultural backgrounds," the writer and editor told CNN. "I'm American, he's French. I'm Black, he's White. We had to get to know each other -- not just on the 'I think you're good looking' and 'you're cute too' conversation."

"He was open to understanding what was happening in terms of racism," she said.

Without the pandemic, she doesn't know what their relationship would look like today.

"I don't know what the future holds," she added, "but no matter what, the experience has changed me for the better."

Finding your 'apocalypse partner'

Ronni Morgan, 32, and her partner Adriane (AJ) Johnson, 41, met on the HER app -- a dating app for queer people -- on March 23.

They started by texting, having FaceTime dates and watching Netflix together virtually, with Morgan in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Johnson in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

When they finally reached a point where they felt safe enough to start planning an in-person meeting, they found an AirBnB in between their two locations that they considered secluded and off-the-beaten path.

From the beginning, Morgan said, the two were "on the same page about how to handle the pandemic."

"We have both taken it very seriously," Morgan told CNN. "I don't think we would've made it this far otherwise."

When they finally did meet, on June 26, Morgan said their weekend together "legitimately was like a lesbian romance novel, complete with a fireplace, velvety red blanket and epic thunderstorm."

"When we did finally get to meet in person, we were already so deeply connected there was no question of what the chemistry would be like," she told CNN.

Their relationship is still a long-distance one -- but Morgan said there's no doubt in her mind that she's found her "apocalypse partner," aka the person to ride out the pandemic with.

"There's this meme that talks about how dating in 2020 is about choosing your apocalypse partner wisely and honestly I couldn't agree more," Morgan said. "I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, there's no one I'd rather be braving the new world with than AJ."

"I never imagined I'd meet the love of my life during a global pandemic but here we are," Morgan wrote in a post sharing their story on Facebook.

"Anything is possible."

Meeting at the virtual bar

Back in March, Krafchick and Xu decided to bring their community of listeners together in a Facebook group they called "Love in the Time of Corona by the Dateable Podcast." They said they felt it was important for people to feel less alone as quarantine began.

So far, the group has amassed more than 500 members -- who all actively utilize the group to share their experiences with dating in comments, over virtual happy hours, and, sometimes even with the two hosts as guests on their show.

Thursday afternoon, a "Dateable"-hosted virtual happy hour was in full swing, with about 20 people from across the United States -- some returning faces, others new to the hangout -- hopping on a video chat on Facebook.

Group members could check out different Facebook rooms, including: "The Bar," where Krafchick and Xu kicked off the afternoon with intros. Then, some stayed behind to play a game of "Would You Rather?" with dating-themed questions.

"Would you rather date someone who is in a lot of debt but donates to charity on a regular basis," Xu asked the group, "or someone who has no debt, but doesn't donate to charities?"

Others joined the "Playtime" room, where they participated in dating-themed trivia. And some joined a new "room" called the "Dance Floor," where one member taught a dance class.

Original post:

Love in the time of coronavirus: Couples share how they found matches in the middle of a pandemic - CNN

Since effectively securing the Democratic nomination in April, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has focused his low-profile campaign on hammering President Trumps handling of the coronavirus epidemic. We rounded up some inaccurate claims in his recent remarks.

What Mr. Biden Said

Theres a study out of Columbia University and a disease control center up there. They pointed out that if he had listened to me and others and acted just one week earlier to deal with this virus, thered be 36,000 fewer people dead. in an interview in May on the radio program The Breakfast Club

This is misleading. A study by infectious disease modelers at Columbia University did find that about 36,000 deaths could have been prevented through early May had social distancing measures been enacted by March 8, rather than in mid-March. But there is no record of Mr. Biden urging adoption of those measures before March 8, nor does Mr. Trump have the power to compel their nationwide enforcement.

The study estimated the combined effects of all intervention practices including mask wearing, travel restrictions, business and school closings and shelter-in-place orders as they were varyingly applied and complied with over time on a county-by-county basis, said Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and a co-author of the study.

Mr. Biden has a point that Mr. Trump, far from promoting social distancing measures or lockdowns, was playing down the severity of the virus in early March. But while the presidential pulpit might have incentivized governors and mayors to act quicker, Mr. Trump lacks the authority to impose and enforce quarantine and isolation measures in states and cities. (As early as mid-February, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had spoken of the need to mitigate the spread through social distancing and nonpharmaceutical interventions at a community level.)

Mr. Biden had warned in an op-ed in late January that the case number was likely to grow. He also criticized Mr. Trumps previous proposals to cut funding to health agencies, promoted international cooperation and vowed to uphold science and harness expertise. He made similar points in interviews, town hall events and debates in February, but he did not suggest locking down cities or limiting social gatherings. A campaign spokesman argued that Mr. Bidens urging Mr. Trump to let the experts speak included the health officials recommendations of social distancing.

It was not until March 12, when Mr. Bidens campaign released its plan to combat the coronavirus, that he urged the C.D.C. to provide more clarity in issuing guidance on social distancing.

That was a day after Mr. Trump addressed the nation and promised guidelines on school closures, social distancing and reducing large gatherings, which were released on March 16.

What Mr. Biden Said

Forty percent of the money that was supposed to go to small businesses did not go to small businesses. It went to large businesses. in a town hall event in June

This is misleading. Mr. Biden was referring to the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers forgivable loans to cover payroll costs.

Data through June 20 showed that the relief program had approved more than 4.6 million loans totaling $514.9 billion. Of those, loans of over $1 million represented 35.1 percent of the funding and 1.7 percent of the number of loans. But loan size does not directly correlate to business size.

While the term small business may conjure up images of a locally run mom-and-pop shop, the government generally defines the term as companies with fewer than 500 employees, though that can vary across industries by average annual receipts and number of employees.

Companies that meet the definition, as well as some nonprofits and some larger food and accommodation businesses, are all eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program. Because of this expansive eligibility criteria, some high-priced law firms, lobbying firms, private schools, luxury hotels and restaurant chains qualified for and took out millions of dollars in loans.

But of the tens of thousands of companies that received over $1 million in loans, many were likely to adhere to the colloquial understanding of a small business like a local craft brewery in Philadelphia, an artisanal cowboy boot company in El Paso, an independent bookstore in San Francisco and a family-owned third-generation florist in Boston.

Survey data also undercuts the suggestion that small businesses had been crowded out by large ones: about three-quarters of small businesses had requested assistance from the lending program and about 72.4 percent had received funding through June 27. Moreover, when the program first expired and before it was extended on June 30, it had more than $130 billion still in its coffers.

What Mr. Biden Said

Without a uniform plan and guidance from the federal government that state and local leaders can use to inform their reopening plans, this is going to continue to be worse than it wouldve been otherwise. in remarks in July

This is exaggerated. Though they were nonbinding and criticized by some as vague, the White House did release guidelines in mid-April about opening up American again.

The guidelines recommended states and regions meet certain criteria including a downward trajectory of cases or positive rates for 14 days, increasing testing and contact tracing capacity, and the ability toindependently supply personal protective equipment and medical equipment before they move through three phases of reopening.

Of the 30 states that had planned to begin reopening in early May, most had failed to meet those guidelines.

The Biden campaign also pointed to reporting in May from The Associated Press that said the Trump administration had suppressed detailed reopening guidance from the C.D.C., but that guidance was revised and eventually released later that month.

Mr. Biden is right that messaging about the guidelines has been far from uniform. Officials in the Trump administration have stressed the importance of the guidelines, but also noted in recent weeks, even as virus cases have been surging, that reopening plans and timelines were up to states. Mr. Trump himself has actively encouraged states to open in spite of the guidelines.

What Mr. Biden Said

The N.A.A.C.P. has endorsed me every time Ive run. I mean, come on, take a look at the record. in the May interview on The Breakfast Club

False. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People cannot and does not endorse political candidates at any level, the president and chief executive of the organization said in a statement.

Mr. Biden was imprecisely referring to the largely high marks he received from the N.A.A.C.P. in its voter information guides throughout his career, ranging from 60 percent in 1995 to 1996 to 100 percent in three congressional terms.

Mr. Biden later acknowledged that his claim was a mistake and said that he had overwhelming support from the African-American community my whole career.

Based on scattered polling data throughout Mr. Bidens long electoral history, his claim of overwhelming support from Black voters is generally true. The Wilmington News Journal reported that Mr. Biden won 65 percent of Black voters in 1972, his first Senate race. Polling in March 1984, before his re-election bid, also showed him leading his opponent among Black voters. More than 80 percent of Black voters backed Mr. Biden in 1990 and 1996, and more than 97 percent in his last Senate race in 2008, according to exit polling data provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. Black primary voters in South Carolina powered him to a crucial victory this year en route to securing the presidential nomination.

What Mr. Biden Said

Ive been against Keystone from the beginning. in a May interview on CNBC

This is exaggerated. Whether Mr. Biden privately opposed the Keystone XL pipeline project from the beginning, he rarely spoke about it publicly as vice president and did not really stake out a position.

The pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Nebraska, was first proposed in the summer of 2008 and attracted fierce opposition from environmental groups and others during the Obama administration.

A first proposal for the pipeline was rejected by President Barack Obama in January 2012, reasoning that a deadline set by Congress did not leave his administration time to do a thorough environmental assessment. Mr. Obama said that the decision was not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, and left the door open for a revised application.

Mr. Biden, responding to a question about Keystone on Twitter that month, said a permit could possibly be revisited, but it would need thorough study.

In March of that year, Mr. Obama voiced support for the southern leg of the Keystone pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico to Cushing, Okla. A month later, Mr. Biden was again asked in an interview about the initial rejection of the entire pipeline.

It hadnt gone through the process, he said. There is a process to make sure it can be environmentally sound.

A year later, an environmental activist wrote a blog post claiming that Mr. Biden had told her he opposed the pipeline but said I am in the minority. The vice presidents office declined to verify the account but noted that Mr. Biden had made his views known on this issue and his views havent changed, Politico reported.

Ben Casselman contributed reporting.

Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.

Follow this link:

Fact-Checking Biden on the Coronavirus and His Own Record - The New York Times

It might be the next best thing to a coronavirus vaccine.

Scientists have devised a way to use the antibody-rich blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors for an upper-arm injection that they say could inoculate people against the virus for months.

Using technology thats been proven effective in preventing other diseases such as hepatitis A, the injections would be administered to high-risk healthcare workers, nursing home patients, or even at public drive-through sites potentially protecting millions of lives, the doctors and other experts say.

The two scientists who spearheaded the proposal an 83-year-old shingles researcher and his counterpart, an HIV gene therapy expert have garnered widespread support from leading blood and immunology specialists, including those at the center of the nations COVID-19 plasma research.

But the idea exists only on paper. Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal, and pharmaceutical companies even acknowledging the likely efficacy of the plan have declined to design or manufacture the shots, according to a Times investigation. The lack of interest in launching development of immunity shots comes amid heightened scrutiny of the federal governments sluggish pandemic response.

There is little disagreement that the idea holds promise; the dispute is over the timing. Federal health officials and industry groups say the development of plasma-based therapies should focus on treating people who are already sick, not on preventing infections in those who are still healthy.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said an upper-arm injection that would function like a vaccine is a very attractive concept.

However, he said, scientists should first demonstrate that the coronavirus antibodies that are currently delivered to patients intravenously in hospital wards across the country actually work. Once you show the efficacy, then the obvious next step is to convert it into an intramuscular shot.

But scientists who question the delay argue that the immunity shots are easy to scale up and should enter clinical trials immediately. They say that until theres a vaccine, the shots offer the only plausible method for preventing potentially millions of infections at a critical moment in the pandemic.

Beyond being a lost opportunity, this is a real head-scratcher, said Dr. Michael Joyner, a Mayo Clinic researcher who leads a program sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration to capitalize on coronavirus antibodies from COVID-19 survivors. It seems obvious.

The use of so-called convalescent plasma has already become widespread. More than 28,000 patients have already received the IV treatment, and preliminary data suggest that the method is safe. Researchers are also looking at whether the IV drip products would prevent new infections from taking root.

The antibodies in plasma can be concentrated and delivered to patients through a type of drug called immune globulin, or IG, which can be given through either an IV drip or a shot. IG shots have for decades been used to prevent an array of diseases; the IG shot that prevents hepatitis A was first licensed in 1944. They are available to treat patients who have recently been exposed to hepatitis B, tetanus, varicella and rabies.

Yet for the coronavirus, manufacturers are only developing an intravenous solution of IG.

Joyner told The Times that 600 COVID-19 survivors donating their plasma each day could, depending on donation volumes and concentrations, generate up to 5,000 IG shots. With millions of probable survivors in the United States, he said, capacity isnt a problem.

Plasma companies said theyve focused their efforts on an intervention for the sickest patients. Grifols, for example, said it has not developed a shot because it is pursuing a federally supported IV formula to treat patients already infected with a serious case of COVID-19, but the company acknowledged that an antibody injection would be a good choice for prevention.

Advocates for the immunity shots say businesses are reluctant to invest in a product that could soon be replaced by a vaccine, so the government should offer financial incentives to offset that risk. Billions of federal dollars are already being spent on vaccine research through Operation Warp Speed, and funding for an IG shot that could serve as a bridge to a vaccine would come with a relatively modest price tag, they say.

Antibodies are the most precious resource on the planet right now, next to air. We have the industry, the technology, and the know-how to produce a proven product, said Patrick Schmidt, the chief executive of FFF Enterprises, a major distributor of IG products in the United States.

The amount of money and resources going into a vaccine, with no guarantee it will work this could have saved lives by now.

::

The proposal for an injection approach to coronavirus prevention came from an immunization researcher who drew his inspiration from history.

Dr. Michael Oxman knew that, even during the 1918 flu pandemic, the blood of recovered patients appeared to help treat others. Since then, convalescent plasma has been used to fight measles and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, among other diseases.

Like other doctors, Oxman surmised that, for a limited time, the blood coursing through the veins of coronavirus survivors probably contains immune-rich antibodies that could prevent or help treat an infection.

On March 27, he and Dr. John Zaia, the director of City of Hopes Center for Gene Therapy, submitted a proposal to the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, urging the rollout of IG shots for first responders and members of other high-risk groups.

The agency granted $12.5 million to Grifols and $14.5 million to Emergent BioSolutions to produce plasma-based COVID-19 medicines in IV form drips, among more than 50 different biomedical partnerships to fight the pandemic. But the immunity shot proposal was rejected.

The pair followed up with a detailed proposal to conduct a clinical trial at UC San Diego. They believed injectable 5-milliliter vials of IG could be given quickly by minimally trained healthcare workers, offering at least two months of immunity to doctors and nurses, as well as residents of nursing homes, college dormitories and military submarines.

The submission was backed by four other infectious disease researchers and statisticians, but it was also rejected, records show.

A spokeswoman for BARDA told The Times that the agency had received thousands of submissions, and that while we are interested in the potential of [IG] for treatment and prevention, we are focused intently on treatments for hospitalized patients to save lives.

The strategy baffled Oxman and Zaia, who said the IG shots are a far more efficient delivery system that can potentially reach many more people.

Whats more, prophylactic shots would probably require far fewer antibodies than IV treatments, Joyner said. With IG shots, plasma donations could possibly go twice or even five times as far, he said.

If a second wave of the virus were to arrive before an effective vaccine, that stockpile would be all the more essential.

Oxman started focusing his attention on the key players in the industry the manufacturers who dominate the development of plasma drugs. He held weekly phone calls with Schmidt, the distributor; together, the two tried to persuade seven companies to produce the shots themselves and bring them to health agencies for testing. They were unsuccessful.

Takeda and CSL Behring, two large companies who co-lead the new CoVIg-19 Plasma Alliance to develop an IG product for IV drips, said their efforts are trained on the sickest. The IV formula represents the fastest path to reach patients, assuming the trial is successful, said Julie Kim, the head of the plasma-derived therapies business unit at Takeda.

Financial calculations may be another factor for companies. Intravenous plasma products are traditionally the main economic driver for the industry, supply experts said, in part because vaccines have replaced many short-term immunity shots over the years. The money-making antibodies are also far more diluted in intravenous drugs than in injectable ones, which boosts profit margins.

They charge a fortune off of intravenous drugs in the hospital. They dont want to devote the manufacturing plant to something that wont make oodles of money, said one infectious disease expert, who has advocated for coronavirus IG shots but asked not to be publicly identified.

Researchers also said industry executives have little incentive to produce the immunity shots for the coronavirus, given the possibility that a longer-lasting vaccine could replace it within a year.

Representatives for CSL, Takeda and Grifols all challenged that assertion.

The choice of one delivery method or another has no connection with the potential financial or pricing implications, a Grifols spokesman told The Times.

Throughout May, researchers and doctors at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Duke and four University of California schools sent a barrage of letters to dozens of lawmakers. They held virtual meetings with health policy directors on Capitol Hill, but say they have heard no follow-up to date.

Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the chair of the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project, said he spoke to FDA officials who told him they do not instruct companies on what to produce. Casadevall told The Times that the leaders of the national project were very supportive of the need to develop an IG shot rapidly and that he believed it would be very helpful in stemming the epidemic.

Joyner, of the Mayo Clinic, said there are probably 10 million to 20 million people in the U.S. carrying coronavirus antibodies and the number keeps climbing. If just 2% of them were to donate a standard 800 milliliters of plasma on three separate occasions, their plasma alone could generate millions of IG shots for high-risk Americans.

At a hot-spot meatpacking plant, or at a mobile unit in the parking lot outside a mall trust me, you can get the plasma, Joyner said. This is not a biological problem nor a technology problem. Its a back-of-the-envelope intelligence problem.

The antibody injections, for now, do not appear to be a high priority for the government or the industry.

Grifols, on April 28 the same day that the U.S. topped 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases made a major product announcement that would expand its leadership in disease treatment with immunoglobulins.

The product was a new vial for IG shots to treat rabies.

Read more from the original source:

An injection may block COVID-19, but feds have failed to act - Los Angeles Times