Airports, office buildings, warehouses and restaurant chains are rushing to install new safety measures like fever-scanning cameras and infrared temperature-sensing guns. But the American Civil Liberties Union warned on Tuesday against using the tools to screen people for possible coronavirus symptoms, saying the devices were often inaccurate, ineffective and intrusive.

In a new report, Temperature Screening and Civil Liberties During an Epidemic, the A.C.L.U. said that such technologies could give people a false sense of security, potentially leading them to be less vigilant about health measures like wearing masks or social distancing. The group also cautioned that the push for widespread temperature scans during the pandemic could usher in permanent new forms of surveillance and social control.

The organizations advisory reflects a wider tension in the United States over concerns about reopening the economy at a time when the virus is still spreading undetected in various regions of country.

In particular, the report said that infrared temperature-sensing guns can be unreliable partly because they gauge skin temperature, in contrast to oral thermometers, which calculate core body temperature. The guns provide a superficial measure, the report noted, that can vary if a person is sunburned, is sweating or has just come in from outside.

Similarly, the report said that many free-standing thermal cameras, which gauge a persons temperature at a distance, can be inaccurate, finicky and may need to be frequently recalibrated.

Even if the temperature-scanning tools were more accurate, however, the A.C.L.U. said they could miss many people who were infected with the coronavirus but not running a fever.

Nobody should imagine that blanketing our public spaces with thermal sensors is going to serve as any kind of effective automated Covid detection network, Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the A.C.L.U., wrote in the report, or that this technology is likely to contribute significantly to stemming the spread of the virus.

To meet surging demand from factories, warehouses and office buildings, technology makers haven been rushing to market a range of thermal cameras as coronavirus fever-screening tools. Companies have been encouraged to do so by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency said in April that it would temporarily allow device makers to market thermal cameras, which have not been vetted by federal health regulators, for temperature checks in places like warehouses and factories.

But IPVM, an independent site that tests surveillance cameras, reported this year that numerous makers of temperature scanners had overstated their accuracy or made false claims. Among other things, the site identified systems that automatically adjusted peoples temperatures to put them in the normal range or that failed to detect high fevers. The site also found companies that were marketing heat-sensing tools designed simply to detect the presence of humans, or for fire detection, as fever-screening devices.

A core issue is there are no independent tests of thermal camera performance, IPVM said in a recent overview of the technology. This has allowed manufacturers to tout products meant for body/fire detection as a fever solution, or falsely claim pinpoint accuracy at long distances.

In its report, the A.C.L.U. recommended that public health experts study the effectiveness of temperature-scanning technologies to determine if the trade-offs are worth it. Otherwise, the group said, the fever-screening systems should not be deployed.

Read this article:

A.C.L.U. Warns Against Fever-Screening Tools for Coronavirus - The New York Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci told senators "it is without a doubt that there will be infections" in the fall and warned of more deaths without adequate response. USA TODAY

MILWAUKEE The new coronavirus has spread like wildfire, killed and spared people of all ages and all health conditions, baffled doctors, defied guidance and conventional wisdom, and produced an unprecedented array of symptoms.

There's never been a virus like it.

"This gets into every major biological process in our cells," said Nevan J. Krogan, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied HIV, Ebola, Zika, dengue and other viruses over the past 13 years.

"At the molecular level, it's something we've never seen before, and then look at what it does to the body the long list of symptoms we've never seen that before."

As Americans debate the reopening of businesses, bars, schools and other aspects of everydaylife, it's important to understandthe virus weare up against andwhy it has sown so muchsuffering and confusion.

At first, the virus was thought to be mostlya risk to older adults and people with chronic illnesses; its primary point of attack, the lungs. Then 30- and 40-years-olds with the virus began dying of strokes. Recently,a small number of infected childrenhave died of a mysterious illness resembling Kawasaki disease.

'Like a war': Pfizer head of vaccines talks finding a treatment for coronavirus

Symptoms of COVID-19 range from fever, coughing and shortness of breath tothe lossof smell and taste andthe angry red swelling that has come to be known as "COVID toes."Studies have found that damage fromSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19,isn't limited to the lungs; itcan includethe heart, liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal systemand bowels.

To understand avirus' "motivation" why it does what it does keep in mind that it is aparasite. Itlives inside its humanor animal hosttaking what it needs at the expense ofthehost.

As long as itfinds hosts withoutimmunity, and as long as its ownmutations do not weakenits ability to spread and multiply,the virusthrives.

Key benchmarks of a virus are how widely it spreads and how deadly it is to those it infects.

In the five months since it was first identified in Wuhan, China, SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 4.5 million people across the globe, killing more than 300,000.

"The thing that strikes me about the clinical aspect is the shear amount of transmissibility," said Megan Freeman, a virologist and specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

"There are very few viruses that are more contagious than this one," agreed Mark Schleiss, an investigator for the Institute of Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota.

A single COVID-19 patient spreads the diseaseto a median of 5.7 people, making it twice as contagiousasthe 1918 Spanish flu, according to areport in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

A death crisis in New Jersey: How one mortician races to keep up with COVID-19

The rateof infection in the U.S.whatexperts are referring towhen they talkabout "flattening the curve" has slowed. Even so, thenation is still averaging about 1,000 COVID-19 deaths a day, roughly twice the number of deaths from 9/11 every week.

Thousands of theworld's best scientists have worked with remarkable speed seeking to understand the new coronavirus. They deciphered its genetic code in barely a week and have produced scores of papers suggesting possible treatments and vaccines.

"The canvas we call COVID-19 was blank 16 weeks ago," said Gregory Poland, director of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group. "We've filled in a lot of dots, but we have so much more to go."

"We don't understand HIV that well in my opinion," Krogan said, "and we've been studying that for decades."

Scientistsknow somebut not all of the reasons the new coronavirusspreads so easily. Freeman points to several factors, including one thatdistinguishes SARS-CoV-2from the virus it closely resembles, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

SARS attacks the lower respiratory system, whose job it is to pullin air from the upper respiratory system.

SARS-CoV-2, however, attacks the upper respiratory system, the pathway that allows air to travelin and out of the lungs aswe breathe. The upperairway is also the system involved when we cough.

The upper respiratory system offers a more efficient means of spreading, Freeman said.

"That's why it is more transmissible. ... When this emerged probably there was some mutation that adapted it to use the upper airway, and the upper airway has made it very successful."

A seconddifference between SARS and SARS-CoV-2involvesthebond that allows viral cells to attach to human cells andinfect them. With both viruses, this bond forms between theSpike Protein on the virus and a regiononthe outside of the human cell called the ACE-2 receptor.

Both viruses usethis bond to enter cells,but the bond is much stronger with the new coronavirus than it was with SARS. That is why many of the potential treatments so far are designed tounderminethat bond.

"You always want to target the Achilles' heel of the virus, something the virus does not have the luxury of changing too much" explained Maria Elena Bottazzi, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicineand co-developer of a potential SARS vaccine that is going to be tested on SARS-CoV-2.

Althoughpublic health leaders compared the new coronavirus to seasonal flu early on, coronaviruses have a special feature that separates them from other viruses likeflu. Theyhave their ownproofreading system that helps limit mistakes in theirgenetic code known as mutations.

"Flu viruses make six and a half times more mistakes than coronaviruses do," Freemansaid.

Even as the spread of the virus slows in the United States, some researchers fear what will happen if major outbreaks hitpoorer, densely populated cities in Africa.

"Look at the problems we've had," Poland warned. "Now amplify that through areas that have civil wars, that have corruption, that have scarce resources. That's a humanitarian disaster in the making."

The virus' skill at spreading poses one challenge; what it does inside the human body poses another.

Much of what scientists have learned so far about the new coronavirus suggests that it is aremarkabledestroyer at both the micro and macro levels, decimatingindividual cells andentireorgans.

At the molecular level, the virus disrupts some of the mostfundamental functions of life: cell division; the systemcells use to talk with one another; and their abilitytomake proteins.

The proteins ourbodies make help uscarry out almost every human action from eating and walkingto breathing and thinking.

Once a person ingests the new coronavirus, it enters the lungs and directly infects the air sacs, the microscopic workhorses that take in the air we breathe. In serious cases, the air sacs fillwith fluid, leaving less and less room for oxygen. This is a feature of what is known asCOVID-19 pneumonia.

The pneumoniacan lead to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, a severe breathing condition that deprivesthe vital organs of oxygen.

A healthy blood oxygen level is usually between 95% and 100%. Below 90% is low. Some COVID-19 patients have been found to have blood oxygen levels below 65%.

As the air sacs are infected and damaged, this triggersthe immune system, which can lead to a dangerous condition calleda cytokine storm. In a cytokine storm, the immune system goes into overdrive andwinds up killing both healthy and diseased cells.

One of the most subtle and deadlyoffshoots of low blood oxygen is a condition called silent hypoxia.

As described by emergency room doctor Richard Levitan in a commentary inThe New York Times, silenthypoxia allows patients to develop low blood oxygen levels without realizing the problem until it dips intodangerous territory. Theybreathe faster to compensate for the lack of oxygenbut are unaware they arebreathing faster.

Levitan suggested that people can bypass long waits for coronavirustests,usinga simple devicecalleda pulse oximeteras an early warning system for detecting COVID-19 pneumonia.The device, which fits over your finger, measures blood oxygen levels, and can be boughtat pharmacies without prescription for about $30.

Unfortunately, SARS-CoV-2 does not restrictits damage to the lungs.

The virus also causes blood clots, which haveled to people in their 30s and 40s dying from strokes.

And then there are the recent cases in New York and Paris of childrenwith COVID-19 who develop symptoms closely resemblingKawasaki disease. The diseasebegins with a rash and fever, inflames blood vessels, andeventually can damage the coronary arteries that deliver blood to the heart.

"What is it about COVID-19 that it produces Kawasaki disease?" said Schleiss, at the University of Minnesota, who estimates he has seen more than 1,000 Kawasaki cases in his medical career.

"I don't think SARS-CoV-2 is a cause of Kawasaki disease, but it is the cause of something very similar."

Every few weeks, SARS-CoV-2 seems to reveal new and disturbing oddities.

A recent studyfrom China published in the journal JAMA Network Open, reported finding the new coronavirus in the semen of six of 38 infected men, raising concern that it may be possible to transmit the virus through sexual contact.

The virus also hasbeen found in patientstool samples and untreated wastewater. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that standard methods atwastewater treatment plants should be effectiveenough to protect workers.

Such discoveries, however, raisefundamental questions, as we try to return toour old lives. Have we yet determined all of the ways the virus can spread from one person to another? Are there activities that may poserisks we have not anticipated?

At the University of California, San Francisco, Krogan said it will be important to examine the genetic scripts of both those who suffer severe cases of COVID-19and those who getmild or no disease at all.

"There are 30-year-olds and some of them are asymptomatic and others are on respirators. What the hell is that all about?"

Follow Mark Johnson on Twitter: @majohnso

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/05/18/coronavirus-symptoms-lung-damage-why-covid-19-virus-is-so-contagious/5206229002/

Read this article:

'Something we've never seen before': Scientists still trying to understand baffling, unpredictable coronavirus - USA TODAY

Medical examiners and coroners are the last stop for investigating unexpected deaths, including those who may have died of COVID-19. In April, the Cook County Medical Examiner opened a surge center to handle overflow from Chicago-area hospital morgues. Charles Rex Arbogast/AP hide caption

Medical examiners and coroners are the last stop for investigating unexpected deaths, including those who may have died of COVID-19. In April, the Cook County Medical Examiner opened a surge center to handle overflow from Chicago-area hospital morgues.

As the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded, all eyes have been on the medical workers and public health disease detectives fighting on the front lines and sometimes giving their lives to bring the coronavirus under control.

But as efforts to test for the coronavirus and trace cases continues, medical examiners and coroners play a vital if often unsung role. These "last responders" are typically called on to investigate and determine the causes of deaths that are unexpected or unnatural, including deaths that occur at home.

In the early days of the outbreak, a scarcity of tests often hampered their efforts. Now, as that equipment gradually becomes more widely available, these professionals may be able to fill in answers about how people died and if those deaths were related to the coronavirus. And these confirmed cases can also help investigators trace contacts who may also be infected.

Those changes won't happen at once or uniformly across the country, experts predict. In addition, an increase in postmortem testing is likely to put coroners and medical examiners in the middle of a debate heating up about the true number of COVID-19 casualties.

Determining how many people the virus has killed is an ongoing bone of contention. Some defenders of the Trump administration's response charge that death estimates are inflated, often because they include people who were presumed to have died of the disease but not tested for it. Administration critics counter that the chaotic rollout of testing and treatment led to thousands of needless deaths that aren't represented in the official death toll.

Even now, months after the emergence of COVID-19 in the United States, the availability of test kits and testing materials, such as nasal swabs, remains inadequate in many places. Public health experts agree that broad-based testing is critical for people to safely emerge from lockdown and for businesses and other institutions to safely reopen.

"Some localities are prioritizing testing sick people over dead people, and that's probably a good decision if they have limited testing available," says Dr. Sally Aiken, the medical examiner for Spokane County, Washington, who is also president of the National Association of Medical Examiners.

As availability increases, however, stepping up postmortem COVID-19 testing could uncover important clues about the spread of the virus, experts say.

During the pandemic, many sick people have stayed at home and died there rather than seeking help at hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

In April in New York City, for example, a reported 200 residents died at home each day, compared with 20 such deaths before the pandemic, a spokesperson for the city's medical examiner told WNYC, the local public radio station.

Tests were not possible in many of those instances. But with more tests, such cases are now getting attention.

"Most of the ones we test are the individuals who die at home," says Gary Watts, the coroner in Richland County, S.C., who is president of the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners.

If family or friends say the person had symptoms consistent with COVID-19, the coroner's office will typically do a nasal swab to test for the virus, he says. If the test is positive and the office can determine the cause of death without an autopsy, one will generally not be performed.

Coroners and medical examiners have similar responsibilities but their backgrounds are often different. Coroners are typically elected officials who may or may not have a medical degree. Medical examiners are typically medical doctors and may have a specialty in forensic pathology.

Like Watts, Dr. Kent Harshbarger, the coroner for Montgomery County, Ohio, which includes the city of Dayton, says his office now has enough tests to determine if COVID-19 was involved in suspect deaths, unlike during the pandemic's early days.

With more postmortem testing, "you can do better contact tracing," he says.

A few medical examiners and coroners are now stepping up testing significantly, performing tests on all the bodies that are brought in, says Aiken.

"They're surprised at some of the people who are positive," including suicides and car accidents, she says.

One reason for increasing testing is to protect the staff who are handling the bodies, says Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in the San Francisco area and CEO of PathologyExpert.

If a body at the morgue is positive for COVID-19, "you want to avoid doing an autopsy unless it's absolutely necessary," Melinek says, because of the risk of becoming exposed to the virus through aerosolized particles or blood. Plus, she noted, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends against performing autopsies in COVID-19 deaths.

Even if coroners and medical examiners aren't doing extensive nasal-swab testing on the recently deceased, they can provide vital information later on, some note.

It's standard practice to take blood samples from patients who are sent to the morgue, and coroners and medical examiners typically keep blood samples on hand for up to a year. Testing those blood samples for antibodies to the coronavirus, which would indicate a prior infection, could give public health experts a clearer sense of when the virus arrived in the United States and the extent of its spread.

It won't identify every undiagnosed infection, since antibodies don't show up until one to three weeks after infection occurs, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People may die before then. Still, postmortem antibody testing could provide useful information, experts say.

"If we can figure out when [the virus] arrived in the U.S., we can figure out a lot more about how this virus came through and was undetected," Melinek says.

Going forward, as public health experts and politicians contemplate decisions about reopening the country for business and the possibility of a resurgence of the virus, the more concrete information available the better, experts say.

"Postmortem testing is helpful and important when it is balanced by the logistical feasibility of doing it," says Lorna Thorpe, a professor of epidemiology at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. "When politics enters this space, it's nice to have confirmed cases so that it can't be critiqued."

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Follow this link:

Coronavirus Testing For The Dead? It Can Help Reveal The Scope Of The Pandemic : Shots - Health News - NPR

Social-distancing measures are likely to make big wedding celebrations essentially impossible for the rest of this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that Americans cancel gatherings of more than 10 people for organizations that serve higher-risk populations, and many states have imposed limits on the number of people who can gather for any sort of party or event.

Read: A guide to staying safe as states reopen

Dave Grossman, who lives in New York City, was supposed to get married in April at an old luxury hotel 25 miles outside the citybut in early March, New York State officials directed residents to cancel any gatherings of more than 50 people. Grossman and his fiance initially rescheduled their wedding for August, but then the venue announced it was closing for the remainder of the year. Now theyre not sure when, or where, theyll get married.

Grossman, 44, and his fiance, 40, both had a specific vision for what they wanted their wedding day to look like. Watching their dream crumble before their eyes, Grossman said, has been devastating: This was supposed to be the most exciting timelike, Were getting married soon! Instead, its all stress. Naturally, though, the idea of a smaller, more low-key wedding is now starting to look more and more appealing to the pair.

When the coronavirus first hit, Kristen Maxwell Cooper, the editor in chief of the wedding website The Knot, initially saw a lot of couples push their ceremonies to later this year. But the pandemic has become a more prolonged ordeal than many of those couples expected at firstso some are turning to what Maxwell Cooper and her team at The Knot have dubbed mini-monies, for miniature ceremonies. Small enough to comply with size limits on gatherings and also to responsibly practice social distancing, these are pared-down, minimalist events with usually around 10 peoplejust their family, maybe, she said. Some or all of the ceremony may be virtual. They may have a virtual officiant or something like that. Maxwell Cooper added that most of the couples shes seen opt for the mini-mony still plan to have a bigger celebration later on, after restrictions have lifted.

Read: We need to stop trying to replicate the life we had

Amy Jones, a wedding planner in Connecticut, told me that a few of her clients whose weddings were planned for spring and summer 2020 have chucked their original plans for a big event and gone the mini-mony route. This is especially true of those who want to get married on the sooner side so they can start a family. But more common, as Jones and other people who work in wedding-adjacent industries told me, are the clients who are (perhaps optimistically) rescheduling their weddings for the same weekend next year. As a result, scores of weddings that were supposed to take place in 2020 have been moved to 2021, and they land on the calendar on top of the weddings that were already planned for 2021 before the coronavirus arrived.

See the rest here:

The Pandemics Long-Lasting Effects on Weddings - The Atlantic

Britains government promised 100,000 daily tests. It delivered, but at a cost.

On May 1, a visibly relieved Matt Hancock announced that the British government had exceeded its target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day. As health secretary, Mr. Hancock had set the goal after enduring intense criticism for the countrys lagging coronavirus testing program.

He called the milestone an incredible achievement.

But leaked documents and interviews with doctors, lab directors and other experts show that the push to hit the April 30 deadline and arguably salvage Mr. Hancocks career placed a huge strain on public laboratories and exposed other problems that are now slowing efforts to further expand coronavirus testing.

Days before the deadline, some hospitals in England were given 48 hours to rapidly expand testing to thousands of health care workers and patients, even though they were not exhibiting any symptoms of the virus, the documents show.

At the same time, public labs across the country raced through limited supplies of the chemical reagents needed to carry out a flood of tests after the government promised to replenish their supplies. Two weeks later, some labs still havent received the stocks they need, forcing some to reduce the number of new tests they can process, several lab managers said.

Britain has recorded the most coronavirus deaths of any country in Europe, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative government have come under mounting criticism for an often-inconsistent response to the pandemic, especially on testing.

The pandemic is battering U.S.-China relations, raising fears of a new Cold War.

Evil. Lunacy. Shameless. Sick and twisted. China has hit back at American criticism of its handling of the coronavirus pandemic with an outpouring of vitriol as acrid as anything seen in decades.

The bitter recriminations have plunged relations between China and the United States to a nadir, with warnings in both countries that the bad blood threatens to draw them into a new kind of Cold War.

At about the same time, China, citing the urgency of the pandemic, demanded that the United States promptly pay its delinquent United Nations assessments, which by some calculations now exceed $2 billion. China, the second-biggest financial contributor to the U.N. budget behind the United States, fully paid on May 1. The United States responded by saying it customarily pays assessments at years end and that China was eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis.

The cycle of tit-for-tat statements and actions is solidifying longstanding suspicions in Beijing that the United States and its allies are bent on stifling Chinas rise as a global economic, diplomatic and military power.

Hard-liners are calling on Beijing to be more defiant, emboldened by the Trump administrations efforts to blame China for the rising death toll in the United States. Moderates are warning that Beijings strident responses could backfire, isolating the country when it most needs export markets and diplomatic partners to revive its economy and regain international credibility.

Now, the clash with the United States over the pandemic is fanning broader tensions on trade, espionage and other fronts disputes that could intensify as President Trump makes his contest with Beijing a theme of his re-election campaign.

Our Southeast Asia bureau chief describes parenting through the pandemic.

Hannah Beech, the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, is based in Bangkok and covers conflict and natural disasters in about a dozen countries. Among them is Myanmar, where she has reported on the militarys campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting the Rohingya Muslim minority. In the course of her reporting in the region, she has met children whose parents killed themselves as suicide bombers and others who watched as soldiers bayoneted their relatives.

I didnt want to be that parent, the one who talks about how when I was a child I had to walk uphill both ways, in the snow, just to get to school.

For one thing, I spent some of my childhood in Bangkok, where I now live with my husband and two sons. There is no snow in Bangkok and not much uphill.

So when my boys, ages 10 and 12, ask me at dinner what I did on a reporting trip going away again, as they call it I often hesitate.

Well, Mama interviewed women who were raped when they were trying to flee their homes, doesnt seem quite right for the dinner table. Or, Well, Mama put Mentholatum under her nose because it makes death smell a little less bad.

But I dont want to coddle them either. My husband and I ensure that the kids eat what we eat, even if its okra. We make them read The Times.

I find myself, too often, comparing them, in their privileged bubble of international school and summer camp in Maine, to the boy I met in a refugee camp or the girl with the big eyes who lost her parents in one of Southeast Asias drumbeat of disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, landslides, floods, plane crashes, bombings.

Brazils health minister stepped down after less than a month.

Brazils health minister, Nelson Teich, announced on Friday that he was stepping down less than a month after taking the job, after clashing with President Jair Bolsonaro over the presidents refusal to embrace social distancing and quarantines.

While governors and mayors in much of the country have urged Brazilians to stay home as much as possible, Mr. Bolsonaro has implored them to go out and work, arguing that an economic unraveling would be more damaging to the country than the virus. This week he classified beauty salons and gyms as essential businesses that should remain open.

Brazil has recorded more than 200,000 confirmed infections and over 14,000 deaths, and those figures, among the highest in the world, are rising sharply. Experts say the numbers grossly undercount the toll extent of the epidemic because Brazil has limited testing capacity.

Officially, Brazil is recording more than 800 deaths per day, second only to the United States.

During a news conference Friday afternoon, Mr. Teich did not provide a reason for his resignation.

Life is made up of choices, and today I chose to leave, he said. I didnt accept the job for the position itself. I accepted it because I thought I could help the country and its people.

A replacement had not been announced as of Friday afternoon. It was unclear whether Mr. Bolsonaro intended to appoint a new minister with medical expertise. The second-highest ranking official at the ministry, Eduardo Pazuello, is an active-duty Army general who has been in the job a few weeks.

Germany enters recession as its economy, Europes largest, grinds to a halt.

The German economy suffered its worst contraction since the 2008 global financial crisis, shrinking by 2.2 percent in the January-March period from the previous quarter as the shutdown of activity to halt the spread of the coronavirus pummeled growth. Those figures, combined with a revision downward to the economic growth tally for the end of 2019, mean that Germany has entered a recession.

The German government, which reported the data on Friday, said the biggest hit came in March and will probably be worse in April, when consumer spending, capital investment and exports a major driver of growth in Germany fell off a cliff.

Things will get worse before they get better, Carsten Brzeski, the chief eurozone economist at ING, said in a note to clients.

While the worst of the pandemic is beginning to ease, with Germany and other countries slowly easing their lockdowns, Germanys contraction was a reminder that even if the virus dissipates, the economic fallout could put pressure on the European and global economy for months or years. Germany is not only Europes largest economy, it is one of the most dynamic in the world.

Germany and its neighbors are spending hundreds of billions of euros in fiscal measures to stem the damage, and economists say more stimulus will be needed. Still, the huge fiscal support that Germany has provided to businesses and individuals, equal to around 30 percent of gross domestic product, could allow it to exit the economic crisis earlier and stronger than most other countries, Mr. Brzeski wrote.

Nations led by women offer lessons in handling an unprecedented crisis.

And like several other countries that have done well in handling the pandemic, they are led by women.

These successes may not prove anything intrinsic about womens leadership, but could, experts say, offer valuable lessons about crisis management.

For starters, the presence of a female leader can signal that a country has more inclusive political institutions and values. That bodes well for a handling a crisis: Taking information from diverse sources and having the humility to listen to outsiders are crucial for successful pandemic response, Devi Sridhar, the Chair of Global Health at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, wrote in the British Medical Journal.

Ms. Merkels government, for example, considered epidemiological models, the input of medical providers and the success of South Koreas efforts. By contrast, governments in many countries with high death tolls have relied primarily on their own advisers, with few channels for dissent or outside views.

President Trumps refusal to wear a mask aligns with a common view that a strong leader exhibits a swaggering notion of masculinity projecting power, acting aggressively and showing no fear.

Women, however powerful, often have to avoid such behaviors or risk being seen as unfeminine, said Alice Evans, a sociologist at Kings College London.

Male leaders can overcome gendered expectations. But it may be less politically costly for women to adopt cautious, defensive policies because it does not violate perceived gender norms.

Ms. Ardern, after imposing a strict lockdown, addressed New Zealand via a casual Facebook Live from her home. She expressed empathy for the anxious and offering rueful apologies to those startled by the emergency cellphone alert that announced the lockdown order.

Filmmakers are working again in Iceland and Australia. Heres how.

Baltasar Kormakur, the Icelandic director best known in the United States for Everest and Contraband, turned to a color-coded armband system to get his Netflix sci-fi series Katla back into production in Reykjavik after the coronavirus shut it down in mid-March.

The producer Lucas Foster made the difficult and expensive decision to isolate his entire cast and crew in a small town in Australia to make a reimagined horror film based on the Stephen King short story Children of the Corn.

The two filmmakers are among the few who have found their way back into production amid a pandemic. Everyone wants to know how they did it.

Mr. Kormakur uses armbands to keep groups of people apart: Those wearing yellow can be near the camera; the actors, and the makeup and costume professionals wear black and spent most of their prep time in a cordoned-off area of the set; and the producers, script supervisors and visual effects people wear red and are sequestered near the monitors. A lucky few have blue armbands, giving them access to all areas of the set.

This way we could monitor each other, he said. Its hard with crews. People have a tendency to roam, and its easy to lose control of it.

On Mr. Fosters set, the cast and crew were required to fill out wellness questionnaires at the beginning and end of each day. Temperatures were checked. Surfaces were sanitized.

During one particularly challenging sequence shot at night, the actors were dressed in neoprene suits both to keep them warm and to offer them another level of protection when they came in close contact during the scene.

Ty, a British rapper known for a lyrically thoughtful, musically polyglot approach to hip-hop and for serving as a bridge between generations of British rap, died on May 7 in London. He was 47.

His death was announced on a GoFundMe page that had been established by a family friend, Diane Laidlaw, while he was hospitalized with complications of the coronavirus. He was placed in a medically induced coma, woke from it and later died of pneumonia.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, just before the early flickers of the rap-adjacent genre known as grime presaged a sound and scene with a firm British identity, Ty was among the most adventurous British M.C.s a wordplay-focused scene-builder indebted to American movements like the Native Tongues and the New York underground. Though he received critical acclaim, including a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in 2004, he often expressed his frustrations with how the more commercial strains of hip-hop tended to shut out unconventional voices.

Ty didnt fit neatly into any hip-hop archetypes, in England or anywhere else. I hate the word alternative, he told The Independent in 2008. I hate the word off-key, I hate the word jazzy and I hate the word laid-back. Im not a laid-back person.

But even though he was difficult to neatly categorize, Ty was widely respected for his relaxed but complex storytelling. Charlie Sloth, the British hip-hop D.J. and radio host, called him a true foundation of UK rap in a Twitter tribute.

Chinas economy, now a bellwether, shows hints of recovery. Can it last?

Many countries have been watching Chinas economic performance closely because it is several months ahead of the rest of the world in coping with the virus, which has sickened more than 4.4 million people and killed more than 300,000. The Chinese economy shrank in the first three months of this year for the first time since Mao Zedong died in 1976.

Factories caught up on orders that they had struggled to fill earlier this year, when the coronavirus pandemic raced across the country. The countrys industrial production was up 3.9 percent from April of last year, better than most economists expected. Production had been down 1.1 percent in March from a year earlier and had plunged in February, when the virus outbreak was at its worst in China.

But shopping and fixed asset investment stayed weak. Retail sales were down 7.5 percent in April compared to a year earlier, marginally worse than economists expectations.

We should be aware that given the continuous spread of the epidemic abroad, the stability and recovery of the national economy is still faced with multiple challenges, said Liu Aihua, the director general of the agencys department of comprehensive statistics.

Strong exports kept factories busy last month. Many factories were catching up on orders placed while Chinese cities were locked down. But orders for further exports have stalled, according to surveys of purchasing managers.

Despite the progress, tens of millions of migrant workers are unemployed. Many white-collar workers have suffered pay cuts. Weak consumption has some economists wondering how long China can sustain an economic rebound.

For Britains unlikely national hero, The first step was the hardest.

Tom Moore is charming, droll and confoundingly energetic. At age 99, he was mowing the lawn and driving his car. When he broke his hip 18 months ago, he bought a treadmill to speed his rehabilitation.

Hannah Ingram-Moore, his daughter, said she knew her dad was a good story, but nothing could have prepared them for the media whirlwind that has swept Mr. Moore, a decorated World War II veteran, to superstardom.

He has become a one-man fund-raising powerhouse for Britains National Health Service, a national symbol of British pluck and an all-around hero all by doing 100 laps of an 82-foot walk on the brick patio next to his garden in Marston Moretaine, a tranquil village an hour north of London.

The first step was the hardest, he said in an interview conducted by video link. After that, I got into the swing of it and kept on going.

It was his daughter who suggested posting a charity challenge online to try to raise 1,000, about $1,220, for the N.H.S.

He did a bit better than that.

Before long, news outlets from multiple continents were broadcasting pictures of Captain Tom ambling with his walker, military medals gleaming on his blue blazer. With deaths mounting and the economy crumbling, he was an antidote to a time with no actual antidotes.

Mr. Moore, who turned 100 on April 30, raised 32.8 million.

He drew a direct line from the beleaguered health workers of today to the soldiers of his generation.

In the war, we were fighting on the front line and the general public was standing behind us, Mr. Moore said. In this instance, the doctors and nurses and all the medical people, theyre the front line.

Sweden stayed open while much of Europe was shut. New numbers show the toll.

Swedens coronavirus outbreak has been far deadlier than those of its neighbors, but the country is still better off than many others that enforced strict lockdowns.

By late March, nearly every country in Europe had closed schools and businesses, restricted travel, and ordered citizens to stay home. But one stood out for its decision to stay open: Sweden.

The New York Times measured the impact of the pandemic in Sweden by comparing the total number of people who have died in recent months to the average over the past several years. The totals include deaths from Covid-19, as well as those from other causes, including people who could not be treated or decided not to seek treatment.

In Stockholm, where the virus spread through migrant communities, more than twice the usual number of people died last month. That increase far surpasses the rise in deaths in American cities like Boston and Chicago, and approaches the increase seen in Paris.

Across Sweden, almost 30 percent more people died during the epidemic than is normal this time of year, an increase similar to that of the United States and far higher than the small increases seen in its neighboring countries. While Sweden is the largest country in Scandinavia, all have strong public health care systems and low health inequality across the population.

Its not a very flattering comparison for Sweden, which has such a great public health system, said Andrew Noymer, a demographer at the University of California at Irvine. Theres no reason Sweden should be doing worse than Norway, Denmark and Finland.

Slovenia becomes the first country in Europe to declare its epidemic over.

Slovenia became the first European country to declare an end to its national coronavirus epidemic on Friday, easing border crossings into the small Alpine country for residents of the European Union and announcing that classes in some schools and day care centers would resume as early as Monday.

Its a success, and we did it together, Jelko Kacin, a government spokesman, said at a daily televised briefing on Friday.

The spread of the coronavirus in Slovenia is under control and there is no longer a need for extraordinary restrictions, the government said in a statement, but added that preventive measures such as social distancing and wearing masks in closed spaces would remain in place for the population of some two million.

Slovenia moved quickly and early to introduce measures to stem the spread of the virus, with the government declaring a nationwide epidemic on March 12 and imposing tight restrictions on movement around the country as the disease ravaged neighboring Italy. The public has largely abided by the tough rules and the number of deaths and confirmed infections from the virus has remained comparatively low.

With the new announcement, citizens of E.U. countries can now freely cross into Slovenia at designated border crossings, the government said. But citizens outside the bloc will have a 14-day quarantine period after entry.

Earlier this month, the government began easing restrictions and lifted the ban on movement within the country. Last week, cafes, shops and museums reopened and public transportation resumed. Cultural events in theaters and concert halls will remain suspended at least until the end of the month.

But throughout the crisis, the right-wing government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa has faced criticism, with the opposition accusing him of exploiting the pandemic to silence critics, including the nations public broadcaster, and empower police.

Forget soda and snacks. These vending machines are selling the new essentials: Masks.

As public life begins again in Germany, face masks have become an essential accessory, required in schools, in museums, on public transportation and in most businesses.

Now a number of the countrys ubiquitous vending machines Germany has nearly 580,000 are being restocked to provide easy access to masks.

At least six leading vending machine operators are now offering masks and disinfectants in their machines.

We recognized early on that there is a real need to obtain the most important hygiene articles quickly and easily in order to actively counteract the spread of the coronavirus, Manuela Zimmermann, the head of Selecta Germany, a large operator that will restock 500 of its machines to carry masks and disinfectants. Our machines are there, where the people are.

A mask is 2 euros ($2.17) at a Selecta machine.

Holger Ballwanz, the director of a vending machine company in Berlin, has taken the idea one step further, introducing a tiny vending machine designed to just sell one item face masks.

His company Flavura, which typically specializes in coffee vending machines, came up with a design he calls the Maskomat, which he says is easier to set up and maintain and takes up less space than a traditional vending machine.

Imagine I get to the barber and realize Ive forgotten my mask in the office, he said in a telephone interview. A barber could have one of those in the shop.

Read more:

U.S. and China Trade Coronavirus Accusations, Sparking Fears of a New Cold War - The New York Times

In explaining his cautious optimism about Texas response to the novel coronavirus, Gov. Greg Abbott has often homed in on one cheery-sounding figure: the number of Texans he says have recovered from the virus, which, he boasts, tops that of almost every other state.

The Texas figure, which stands at 28,371, is not an actual tally of the patients no longer experiencing any symptoms, but instead an estimate based on a string of assumptions about the virus longevity. And its difficult to say where Texas really ranks in recoveries, in part because many states, including most of the countrys most populous California, Florida and Pennsylvania do not report the number at all. PolitiFact Texas recently rated Abbotts claim about Texas high ranking half-true.

Some states dont report how many patients have recovered because it simply isnt feasible to track everyone who tested positive for the virus, and there are too many conflicting methods for estimating the count.

And experts say recovery estimates mean little: There is no cure for the new coronavirus, so the number of recoveries best reflects how many people have fallen ill from the virus in a given state the more infections, the more recoveries.

At a press conference Monday, Abbott made a slightly different claim, reporting that with the help of our hospitals, our recovery rate is one of the best in the country. PolitiFact found earlier this month that Texas ranked 16th for recovery rate among states that are reporting recoveries. A spokesman for the governor did not return a request for comment about his source for the claim.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses clinical criteria to determine when a person is recovered enough to stop self-isolating: either a negative coronavirus test, or improvement in respiratory symptoms and fever over a period of several days.

Texas calculates its recovery total by splitting surviving patients into two groups: an estimated 20% who require hospitalization and an estimated 80% who do not. Texas considers the surviving patients who required hospitalization recovered after 32 days and those who did not require hospitalization recovered after 14 days.

Its working with the tools you have and the knowledge that you have, said Angela Clendenin, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at Texas A&M University School of Public Health. The formulas are sound. They make logical sense. But at the same time, knowing that that's probably the closest we can get to an estimate doesnt always mean its going to be highly accurate.

Many coronavirus patients are never tested because they are asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic. As many as tens of thousands may not be captured in the states figures, Clendenin said.

And the 14-day recovery assumption may be off base, with some patients reporting long-term health impacts. How to classify the people who experience lasting respiratory issues as a result of the virus?

Other states calculate the number differently or not at all.

It would take a lot of resources to track status on each individual daily until they recovered, said Will Finn, a spokesman for the state of Washington. Because of that, the state is not able to track recoveries, he said.

A spokesperson for Floridas health department said some states and countries measure a case as recovered when a person has had COVID-19 for more than 14 days, while others [rely] upon hospital discharge data neither of which completely capture recovery of the full COVID positive population.

Michigan, for example, includes patients who are alive 30 days after the onset of the illness.

If states are using different criteria, then comparisons are not meaningful, said Shelley Payne, a professor of medical education at the University of Texas at Austin. Tracking the number of new infections and the rate of infections is more important, Payne said.

White House guidelines do not identify recovered patients as a metric states should consider when weighing how fully to reopen, and Abbott hasnt identified it as one either. But the recovery total he boasts about does factor into another important metric for the state: its hospitalization rate.

Abbott has said he uses the hospitalization rate to determine how much to reopen the states economy. The hospitalization rate is calculated using the estimated total of recovered patients.

That rate, which the state reports has been decreasing, is calculated by dividing the number of people who are hospitalized by the number of active cases, a figure arrived at by subtracting the estimated recoveries from total confirmed cases. That means the important metric is based on the states recovery estimate.

Abbott has also boasted that the states estimate of recovered COVID-19 patients has surpassed the number of patients with active COVID-19 cases. But that is only logical, because the number of estimated recovered patients accumulates over time. It would require a spike in cases for the number of active COVID-19 patients to overtake the total number of patients who have recovered over a period of more than two months.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin 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:

Does Texas really rank high in coronavirus recoveries? - The Texas Tribune

"When the hoarding started, my 30-day supply was in back order," said Thebarge. "The scenario really scared me, what would happen to me if I couldn't get HCQ?"

While the US seems to hold sway with its ally India in obtaining the finished product, there's a bigger issue earlier in the supply chain.

India gets around 68% of its raw materials -- known as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) -- from China. Any disruption in that supply chain can create a major problem, especially during a pandemic.

As scientists and pharmaceutical companies race to find an effective treatment and vaccine for Covid-19, there are fears the current vulnerabilities in the supply chain could expose the US -- and other countries -- to drug shortages, just when they need them most.

The US has pledged to "Buy American" drugs going forward, and Indian plans to ramp up its own API production, but will they be able to replace supplies from China during this pandemic -- or even the next?

Karan Singh, managing director of Indian pharmaceutical company ACG Worldwide, says the government realized its huge population was never going to be able to afford imported patented drugs, and needed to find a solution.

Indian companies excelled in reverse engineering big-name drugs and launched copycat versions -- legally. But it wasn't only India that wanted these products, and in the mid-1980s, regulatory changes opened up the US market more open to cheap copycat drugs, too.

Naturally, the pharmaceutical giants, which had invested millions of dollars in creating new drugs, pushed back, and in 1995 the World Trade Organization (WTO) introduced an agreement giving drug patents 20 years' protection -- and companies were given 10 years to comply.

The WTO conceded that member states could grant licenses to manufacturers to make generic versions of patented medicines needed to protect public health.

Now that company is working to reverse engineer three drugs being tested to fight Covid-19 -- Remdesivir, Favipiravir and Baloxavir. "Twenty years later we are again in the forefront here in India with regards to medicines necessary to combat Covid-19," said Dr Yusuf Hamied, chairman of Cipla.

Still, overcoming challenges from intellectual property rights is only half the story.

"(When) China shut down because of Covid-19, we got desperate," said Vinay Pinto, executive director at Wallace Pharma, one of the country's leading manufacturers of HCQ.

"We are still facing a lot of difficulty in getting imports from China," PC Mishra, director of India's Directorate General of Foreign Trade said in late April. "If we compare March 2020 and 2019, imports from China are down by 40%."

Jayasree Iyer, the executive director of Access to Medicine Foundation, a non-profit that analyzes pharmaceutical industries, says there is also a fear among pharma companies that they "may not have enough stocked-up APIs for their next set of commitments."

India used to have a thriving bulk drug and API industry, but when import restrictions were lifted in the early 1990s, its generic drug manufacturers began getting raw materials from China, where some APIs can cost up to 30% less, according to the CII-KPMG report.

"Large incentives were given by the Chinese government to Chinese pharmaceutical companies to set up large API plants," said Singh of ACG Worldwide. "Because of the sheer size and scale of these facilities they were able to leverage economies of scale to drive cost down."

There are now more than 7,000 API manufacturers in China compared to around 1,500 plants in India, where big players like Sun Pharma and Cipla are a rarity, according to the CII-KPMG report.

This is not the first time India's pharma sector has been affected by a slowdown in China.

After that, the Indian government explored the idea of building Mega Pharma Parks to produce APIs but the project was reportedly shelved due to a lack of financial assistance.

However, the most recent supply shortages have caused a rethink.

On March 21, the Indian government revived plans for Bulk Pharma Parks as part of a $1.3 billion package to boost domestic production of bulk drugs and exports.

It includes establishing three bulk drug parks with common infrastructure facilities and a production-linked incentive scheme to promote domestic production of 53 critical key starting materials, drug intermediates and APIs.

"This is a much-needed step, but we will have to see how it's implemented at state level. In the past we have faced immense challenges for environmental clearances or accessing finance," said Dr Kamal Vashi, Vice President of Mangalam Drugs and Organics, one of India's API manufacturing companies.

The United States, too, has recognized the need to become more self-sufficient.

Speaking about Trump's "Buy American" executive order, he said that after this pandemic, the American government would source essential medicines, medical supplies and equipment only from American companies.

The push to reduce the US's reliance on other countries for drugs has gained bipartisan support.

"India is the source of 24.5% of generic drugs sold in the US," she said. "This appears to suggest that we don't need to worry about generics coming from China. In fact, India is dramatically dependent on China for raw materials and chemical intermediates that are used to make active pharmaceutical ingredients."

In short, the US will only not be reliant on China if it cuts ties with India, too.

Nicole Longo, public affairs director at pharmaceutical lobbying group PhRMA, says US plans to move all pharmaceutical manufacturing onshore vastly "underestimate the significant time, resources and other feasibility challenges and complexities involved."

"They also ignore the strength of a robust and geographically diverse global supply chain," she added.

Indian pharmaceutical companies say it will take time to build up their API production capacity -- and reduce their reliance on China.

"Covid-19 has been an eye opener," said Dinesh Dua, Chairman of Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council (Pharmexcil). "The government has done more in the past few weeks than what it has done in the past few years. But even if we start now, it will take us at least 10 years to end our dependency on China."

Philippe Andre, who audits pharmaceutical companies' manufacturing practices in China, endorses a more collaborative approach. "The solution would have to be international, through some sort of system where the producer countries would have to ensure they have sufficient capacity to continue supplying the world during a crisis," he said.

For now, India appears to have little choice but to rely on China for the majority of its APIs -- and the US to rely on India for the majority of its drugs. The true test of that supply chain will will come when -- or perhaps if -- scientists find a treatment or vaccine for Covid-19.

See the article here:

The coronavirus exposed the US' reliance on India for generic drugs. But that supply chain is ultimately controlled by China - CNN

WALLINGFORD, Pa. (CBS) Pennsylvania health officials are placing a focus on nursing homes, who have bear the brunt of COVID-19 cases. Now, the state is announcing new steps to prevent further outbreaks.

For more than a month, Donna Osowski was a resident at ManorCare Health Services in Wallingford.

The 68-year-old was recovering from a stroke, needing physical therapy to walk. She went into the facility as the pandemic began to flare up.

Credit: CBS3

They were putting me into another room and I said, Oh, am I going in by myself? And she said, No, youre going in with another woman, but she only has a 99 fever,' Osowski said. I said, What? Thats one of the symptoms.

Well, they put me in this room by myself, then they bring her down. Shes coughing a lot. I said you people are really kidding me, Osowski said.

Download The New And Improved CBS Philly App!

State data shows the number of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities approaches 75% of all deaths in some counties.

Osowski, a grandmother to nine boys, says staff members continued to place COVID-19 positive residents in her room. She eventually contracted the virus herself.

I was completely healthy when I went in there, Osowski said.

Pennsylvania officials have been faulted by family members of nursing home residents for a lack of preparedness to contain the virus.

CBS3 questioned state leaders if enough had been done to assist nursing homes.

Thats a very difficult question, obviously, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Director Randy Padfield said. The challenge is that no two nursing homes or long-term care facilities are created equally. So trying to generalize against a number of them is very difficult. Theyre all prepared to different degrees.

Pennsylvania COVID-19 Cases Top 63,000, Death Toll Climbs To 4,500

ManorCare Wallingfords parent company released the following statement, reading in part: We have taken significant additional precautions to minimize risk to patients and employees and have had systems and processes in place to help reduce the risks associated with the novel coronavirus We are in very close communication with our medical director, clinical support team, and local and state health officials about the appropriate steps to serve the best interests of our patients, employees and visitors.

Read the full statement below.

Meanwhile, the state is ramping up testing for residents and staff of nursing facilities to gauge the full toll the virus has taken.

Follow this link:

Delaware County Woman Claims She Contracted Coronavirus After Nursing Home Staff Placed Positive Patients In Her Room - CBS Philly

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday granted emergency clearance for a coronavirus testing kit that will enable individuals to take a nasal sample at home and send it to a laboratory for diagnostic testing, the second such approval it has made.

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the agencys Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement that the new test not only provides increased patient access to tests, but also protects others from potential exposure. Health care workers can risk infection when they administer diagnostic tests.

The kit, made by Everlywell, will contain a swab for individuals to use to take a sample from inside the nostrils, and a tube filled with a saline solution to put it in for sending to one of two private lab companies: Fulgent Therapeutics or Assurance Scientific Laboratories. The company plans to partner with additional laboratories.

Some public health researchers have warned that at-home nasal swab tests can be less accurate than the specimen collection performed by health care providers, which involves inserting a long nasal swab through the nose into the back of the throat.

Christina Song, an Everlywell spokeswoman, said consumers will first take an online screening survey to determine whether they meet federal guidelines for the test. The survey will be reviewed quickly by health care providers affiliated with PWNHealth, the companys telemedicine partner. If a consumer qualifies for the test, one will be shipped out immediately.

From the moment that you hit the order button, to the moment that you get the test results on your phone or device, that process is designed to take three to five days, Ms. Song said.

The test kits will be available later this month, according to Ms. Song, and will cost $135.

In announcing its authorization for the Everlywell testing kit, the F.D.A. said the company had leveraged data from studies supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UnitedHealth Group to show that the specimens would stay stable during shipping.

Everlywell makes a variety of products that individuals can buy online or in stores, among them at-home test kits for diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases and high cholesterol.

Some of the companys products, such as those purporting to test for food sensitivities, have come under criticism. Everlywell was also one of several businesses that drew attention from members of Congress in March for entering the market for coronavirus test kits in March without F.D.A. approval.

Everlywell, which had promoted its at-home kit as a consumer product, said in a statement at the time that it had not sold any of the kits to consumers, but was providing the test materials at cost to hospitals and health care organizations who can commit to providing the test for free to their workers and patients.

The F.D.A.s announcement on Saturday follows other recent emergency use authorizations for coronavirus testing kits that also permit individuals to take samples at home. One, sold by LabCorp, also uses a nasal swab to collect a sample, which is then sent to the lab. The other, developed by a Rutgers University laboratory, called RUCDR Infinite Biologics, in partnership with Spectrum Solutions and Accurate Diagnostic Labs, is for collecting a saliva sample.

See the original post:

F.D.A. Clears Another Coronavirus Testing Kit for Use at Home - The New York Times

The day before I got sick, I ran three miles, walked 10 more, then raced up the stairs to my fifth-floor apartment as always, slinging laundry with me as I went.

The next day, April 17, I became one of the thousands of New Yorkers to fall ill with Covid-19. I havent felt the same since.

If you live in New York City, you know what this virus can do. In just under two months, an estimated 24,000 New Yorkers have died. Thats more than twice the number of people we lost to homicide over the past 20 years.

Now I worry for Americans elsewhere. When I see photographs of crowds packing into a newly reopened big-box store in Arkansas or scores of people jammed into a Colorado restaurant without masks, its clear too many Americans still dont grasp the power of this disease.

The second day I was sick, I woke up to what felt like hot tar buried deep in my chest. I could not get a deep breath unless I was on all fours. Im healthy. Im a runner. Im 33 years old.

In the emergency room an hour later, I sat on a hospital bed, alone and terrified, my finger hooked to a pulse-oxygen machine. To my right lay a man who could barely speak but coughed constantly. To my left was an older man who said that he had been sick for a month and had a pacemaker. He kept apologizing to the doctors for making so much trouble, and thanking them for taking such good care of him. I cant stop thinking about him even now.

Finally, Dr. Audrey Tan walked toward me, her kind eyes meeting mine from behind a mask, goggles and a face shield. Any asthma? she asked. Do you smoke? Any pre-existing conditions? No, no, none, I replied. Dr. Tan smiled, then shook her head, almost imperceptibly. I wish I could do something for you, she said.

I am one of the lucky ones. I never needed a ventilator. I survived. But 27 days later, I still have lingering pneumonia. I use two inhalers, twice a day. I cant walk more than a few blocks without stopping.

I want Americans to understand that this virus is making otherwise young, healthy people very, very sick. I want them to know, this is no flu.

Even healthy New Yorkers in their 20s have been hospitalized. At least 13 children in New York state have died from Covid-19, according to health department data. My friends 29-year-old boyfriend was even sicker than I was and at one point could barely walk across their living room.

Maybe you dont live in a big city. Maybe you dont know anybody who is sick. Maybe you think we are crazy for living in New York. Thats fine. You dont have to live like us or vote like us. But please learn from us. Please take this virus seriously.

When I was at my sickest, I could barely talk on the phone. Id like to say that I caught up on some reading, but I didnt. Im a newswoman, but I couldnt look at the news.

Instead, I closed my eyes and saw myself running along the New York waterfront, healthy and whole, all 8.5 million of my neighbors by my side. I pictured myself doing the things I havent gotten to do yet, like getting married, buying a house, becoming a mother, owning a dog.

I stared at the wall of photographs beside my living room window and promised the people in them over and over again that we would see each other soon.

I watched movies, dozens of them. I rediscovered Air Force One and fantasized about what it would be like if Harrison Ford were actually president right now. I stayed up late at night doing breathing exercises and streaming episodes of Longmire, a show about a Wyoming sheriff in which the good guys always win.

One thing I learned is how startlingly little care or advice is available to the millions of Americans managing symptoms at home.

In Germany, the government sends teams of medical workers to do house calls. Here in the United States, where primary care is an afterthought, the only place most people suffering from Covid-19 can get in-person care is the emergency room. Thats a real problem given that it is a disease that can lead to months of serious symptoms and turn from mild to deadly in a matter of hours.

The best care I received came from my friends. Fred, an emergency room resident treating patients at a New York hospital, called me on his bike ride to work, constantly checking in and asking about my symptoms. Chelsea, my college roommate and a physician assistant, has largely managed my recovery from pneumonia. Zoe, my childhood friend and a nurse, taught me how to use a pulse oximeter and later, the asthma inhaler I now use.

Through them, I became an amateur expert. This is the advice they gave me. Heres what Im telling my family and my friends: If you can, get an oximeter, a magical little device that measures your pulse and blood oxygen level from your fingertip. If you become sick and your oxygen dips below 95 or you have trouble breathing, go to the emergency room. Dont wait.

If you have chest symptoms, assume you may have pneumonia and call a doctor or go to the E.R. Sleep on your stomach, since much of your lungs is actually in your back. If your oxygen is stable, change positions every hour. Do breathing exercises, a lot of them. The one that seemed to work best for me was pioneered by nurses in the British health system and shared by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series.

Nearly a month later, Im still sleeping on my stomach and still cant go for a run. But I will be able to do those things, and much more. For now, every conversation with an old friend brings a new rush of love. Every sunny day feels like the first time I saw the ocean as a child and wanted to leap right in.

Many of my neighbors didnt make it. I know because I heard the ambulances come for them late at night. The reports from the citys heroic E.M.T. force suggest that for many of these New Yorkers, it was already too late.

Why are more people dying of this disease in the United States than in anywhere else in the world? Because we live in a broken country, with a broken health care system. Because even though people of all races and backgrounds are suffering, the disease in the United States has hit black and brown and Indigenous people the hardest, and we are seen as expendable.

I wonder how many people have died not necessarily because of the virus but because this country failed them and left them to fend for themselves. That is the grief for me now, that is the guilt and the rage.

As I began to recover, others died.

There was Idris Bey, 60, a U.S. Marine and New York City Fire Department E.M.T. instructor who received a medal for his actions after the Sept. 11 attack.

There was Rana Zoe Mungin, 30, a New York City social studies teacher whose family said she died after struggling to get care in Brooklyn.

There was Valentina Blackhorse, 28, a beautiful young Arizona woman who dreamed of leading the Navajo Nation.

Theirs were the faces I saw when I lay on my stomach at night, laboring for every deep breath, praying for them and for me. Those are the Americans I think about every time I walk outside now in my tidy Brooklyn neighborhood, stepping slowly into the warming spring sun amid a crush of blooming lilacs and small children whizzing blissfully by on their scooters.

I hope the coronavirus never comes to your town. But if it does, I will pray for you, too.

See original here:

Coronavirus Is Making Young People Very Sick. I Was One of Them. - The New York Times

Top 50 metropolitan destinations

outside New York City

Miami-

Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

Top 50 metropolitan destinations

outside New York City

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

Top 50 metropolitan destinations

outside New York City

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

Top 50 metropolitan destinations

outside New York City

Miami-

Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

By The New York TimesArrows are sized by the proportion of requests for that destination.

New York City has long been a cheek-to-jowl town with cramped apartments and determined strivers. But starting in March, as the coronavirus outbreak here began, parts of the city emptied out, with many leaving from New York's wealthiest neighborhoods. Mail-forwarding requests show where a number of them went. Some abandoned the Upper West Side for sunny Miami. Others left Gramercy Park for New Jersey. Some left Brooklyn apartments for California.

In March, the United States Post Office received 56,000 mail-forwarding requests from New York City, more than double the monthly average. In April, the number of requests went up to 81,000, twice the number from a year earlier. Sixty percent of those new requests were for destinations outside the city.

By The New York TimesSource: U.S. Postal Service

The empty feeling is the most pronounced in Manhattan. In April, a little more than half of those requests for destinations outside New York City originated in Manhattan, led by neighborhoods on the Upper West and Upper East Sides.

The data from neighborhoods that saw the most requests mirrors cell phone data showing that the city's wealthiest areas saw the most movement.

Right after Covid hit, everyone just blasted out of here, Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal said of the Upper West Side. You could walk just in the middle of Columbus Avenue. And I often did.

Miles of normally cramped streets are empty, and garbage collection is lower in those neighborhoods than in recent years. In Times Square, you can practically hear the hum of electronic signs glowing above empty sidewalks.

Many New Yorkers who fled their homes in the city moved to nearby areas in Long Island, New Jersey and upstate New York.

The Hamptons are a summer

home destination for many

New York City residents.

The Hamptons are a summer

home destination for many

New York City residents.

The Hamptons are a summer

home destination for many

New York City residents.

By The New York TimesSource: U.S. Postal Service

In most locations, the United States Postal Service allows individuals and families who normally get mail at a given location to temporarily forward their mail somewhere new, for up to a year.

Now, mail that used to go to Hells Kitchen in Manhattan is going to Maine and Connecticut. Lower East Side letters are being rerouted to Florida and Pennsylvania. Packages meant for Park Slope, Brooklyn, are going to Texas and Rhode Island.

New York City

region excluding

the city

32% of requests

Miami-

Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

N.Y.C. region

excluding

the city

32% of

requests

Miami-

Ft. Lauderdale-

W. Palm Beach

N.Y.C. region

outside the city

Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

New York City

region excluding

the city

32% of requests

Miami-

Fort Lauderdale-

West Palm Beach

By The New York TimesSource: U.S. Postal Service

After being laid off from his job as a theater stage hand, Kurt Gardner, his wife and their young daughter left their crowded two-bedroom apartment in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn for the familys three-bedroom summer home in eastern Suffolk County, on Long Island.

Mr. Gardner, 50, said he hears about friends in the city who have to wait outside an hour for Trader Joes. The Gardners now live near a well-stocked supermarket with practically no lines. Theyre surrounded by open space, and their daughter doesnt have to worry about socially distancing at Prospect Park, he said.

As for their mail, it comes maybe once a week, Mr. Gardner said. He and his wife filed mail-forwarding requests in mid-March, but he said much of his mail from March never arrived.

Brooklyn had the second-highest number of mail-forwarding requests, which were concentrated in neighborhoods like Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights.

Mail-forwarding requests

by ZIP code in April

Mail-forwarding

requests by ZIP

code in April

By The New York TimesSource: U.S. Postal Service

Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, including many areas where essential workers live, tended to have far fewer mail-forwarding requests. Roman Suarez works for a union in New York City and travels on weekends doing stand-up comedy. He was in Texas when his boss in New York called to say things were shutting down. I immediately rushed home, said Mr. Suarez, 42, who lives in the Bronx. He picks up medication and groceries for about three dozen family members who live nearby. I just stayed and made myself available for my family, he said.

His neighbors, many of whom work for the city, or in health care, stayed too, he said. His neighborhood, just east of the Bronx Zoo, had fewer than a quarter as many mail-forwarding requests as the Upper East or Upper West Sides.

My father was a cab driver. My mom was a hairdresser, so I understood service to your community, Mr. Suarez said. He recalled living through other challenging times in the city, from Hurricane Gloria in 1985 to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001. Whenever New York goes through stuff, the best thing to do is just be there.

Metropolitan area

Mail-forwarding requests

New York-Newark-Jersey City

16,041

Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach

1,830

Philadelphia

1,456

Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.

1,456

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria

1,298

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim

1,131

Boston-Cambridge-Newton

1,092

Kingston, N.Y.

963

Atlanta

710

Torrington, Conn.

Read more:

Where New Yorkers Moved to Escape Coronavirus - The New York Times

Then-President Obama and then-President-elect Donald Trump shake hands during a transition planning meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in November of 2016. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Then-President Obama and then-President-elect Donald Trump shake hands during a transition planning meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in November of 2016.

With Joe Biden on the ballot, so is the legacy of Barack Obama, and it appears we're about to see a throwdown between the last president and the current one and their polar opposite worldviews.

Amid criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump has been falsely laying blame on Obama for leaving the "cupboard bare" when it comes to the national stockpile of emergency medical supplies and equipment.

And lately, Trump and conservatives have been running with allegations of potentially criminal activity by Obama administration officials for their handling of surveillance that later led to the investigation and guilty plea of Michael Flynn, Trump's three-week national security adviser. (The Department of Justice now wants to drop its case against Flynn.)

In the past week, Trump has tweeted "Obamagate" (on its own, as a retweet or as a hashtag) 18 times. Three times, he's tweeted simply "Obamagate!" with nothing else.

Neither Trump nor White House officials have been able to identify a specific crime, but it sure helps fire up the base.

Obama, for his part, seemed to reply with one word of his own Thursday: "Vote."

And then, on Saturday, he had more words during two virtual commencement addresses.

"[T]his pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many folks in charge know what they're doing," Obama told graduates of historically black colleges and universities. "A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge."

Then, when speaking to graduating high school students, he said: "Do what you think is right. Doing what feels good, what's convenient, what's easy that's how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grownups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way which is why things are so screwed up."

Wow.

And a week earlier, when talking to former officials from his administration, leaked audio revealed that Obama called Trump's handling of the coronavirus an "absolute chaotic disaster" and an example of what happens when a "what's in it for me" mindset "is operationalized in our government."

Pressed about Obama's remarks Sunday, Trump said he hadn't heard them, but noted, "Look, he was an incompetent president, that's all I can say, grossly incompetent."

Welcome to the 2020 presidential campaign. Reelections are always a referendum on the sitting president. But with Biden, Obama's vice president, at the top of the Democratic ticket, it's somewhat of a referendum on Obama, too.

And there's reason for Trump to want or even need to try and take Obama down a few pegs. Currently, Obama is among the most popular politicians in the country and one of the highest-polling political figures (besides his wife, Michelle.)

It's a clear and stark choice offered up to voters and one Trump seems to want front and center. He even tweeted at Republican Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, who says he wants to hold hearings on the Flynn case, to call Obama to testify.

"Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it," Trump tweeted. "No more Mr. Nice Guy."

Graham responded, telling reporters he thinks that would "be a bad precedent" to compel a former president to testify and would "open up a can of worms."

"I understand President Trump's frustration," Graham said, before warning, "but be careful what you wish for. Just be careful what you wish for."

1. Coronavirus death toll approaches 90,000: About 90,000 people are now confirmed to have died from COVID-19 in the United States, and though new cases are slowing, the country is still on pace for 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus before the end of the month.

That slowing of new cases is good news, but with two-thirds of states significantly relaxing stay-at-home restrictions, experts are concerned about a potential resurgence.

"We're seeing a decline; undoubtedly, that is something good to see," Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, told The New York Times. "But what we are also seeing is a lot of places right on the edge of controlling the disease."

Another good sign, though: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted on Sunday that his state now has "more testing capacity than New Yorkers are using." And he wants not only symptomatic New Yorkers to get tested, but also those who "have been in contact with someone with COVID." That's a first step in what experts say is one of the most important things to do to try and contain the virus test as many people, including those without symptoms, as often as possible.

President Trump and Vice President Pence look on as a video plays of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo giving a press conference in April. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

President Trump and Vice President Pence look on as a video plays of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo giving a press conference in April.

2. Will the Senate make a push for another relief package? Health versus the economy has been the tension since the beginning of the lockdowns. Unemployment has hit almost 15%, the highest since the Great Depression. And as deaths spiked in April, 20 million jobs were lost. Congress has passed four relief packages; the Democratic-led House has passed another, but Senate Republicans and the White House have balked at a fifth major package. "We have not yet felt the urgency of acting immediately," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last week.

On Tuesday, there could be more clarity on the state of the economy and what more the administration is planning to do to support people and the economy in the coming weeks when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell appear before the Senate Banking Committee, as required by the CARES Act.

3. Watching for fallout from inspectors general firings: The firing of the State Department's inspector general, Steve Linick announced on a Friday night, which is where bad news goes to be buried in Washington is raising more questions than answers. Linick is the fourth inspector general the Trump administration has sought to remove in the past six weeks. A Democratic congressional aide told NPR's Michele Kelemen that Linick was looking into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's conduct.

The move triggered Republican Sens. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Chuck Grassley to question Trump's motives. Romney said the move "chills" the IGs' essential independence and called the moves "a threat to accountable democracy." Collins said Trump had not provided "the kind of justification for the removal ... required" by law. Grassley pointed out that "written reasons" are "required" and that "A general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient." But what does the Republican Senate do to maintain the accountability that they say Trump is threatening or not abiding by? So far, during the Trump presidency, it's done little to hold him in check.

4. Senate Republicans move ahead with Hunter Biden probe: On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee will vote on a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies. That's a company that worked with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which hired Biden's son Hunter to sit on its board. Republican senators are looking into whether Blue Star "sought to leverage Hunter Biden's membership on the board of directors for Burisma." Call it the impeachment backlash.

With Romney signaling he will vote in favor of the subpoena, it is expected to pass, NPR's Philip Ewing and Claudia Grisales report.

5. Supreme Court opinions Monday: The Supreme Court is expected to issue opinions Monday. We are keeping an eye out for an LGBTQ employment discrimination case, as well as whether the court thinks the Trump administration acted lawfully in shutting down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. When the DACA case was argued last fall, the court's conservative majority appeared it would go along with the Trump administration. Both of these decisions could be released at any time in the next few weeks.

"After much reflection, I've concluded that circumstances don't lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate."

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan announcing via Twitter the end of his short-lived Libertarian bid for the presidency. There was much Democratic hand-wringing that Amash could cost Biden votes, especially in Michigan.

Read the original:

5 Things To Watch This Week In Politics And Coronavirus - NPR

There is a checkpoint as you enter the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where I am being treated for cancer of the prostate and lymph nodes. With all but two sets of doors to the building locked shut, patients are corralled into an area roped off from the rest of the first-floor lobby. You are required to show your orange Hopkins patient identification card and proof that you have an appointment.

Questions are asked. Questions that have become the norm in the new normal. Have you had a cough? Have you visited New York or New Jersey in the last 14 days?

Your temperature is taken. You are given a checkpoint security bracelet which you wrap around your wrist. You are instructed to not deviate from the floor-taped path assigned to your appointment location. You are urged not to share an elevator. That last instruction is really not necessary. No one wants to share a hospital elevator in the age of coronavirus.

The anxiety of the nurses manning these checkpoints is often palpable. Decked out with face mask, full face shield and full protective gown, a nurse checking me in was so overwrought, she began to cry as she asked, Are you having any trouble breathing?

In the parking garage for the Kimmel Center, you notice many cars with their drivers still inside. Just sitting there, checking their phones, probably filling out crosswords and solving Sudoku puzzles.

At first glance, this seems somewhat peculiar. Then, you realize these are the loved ones of those receiving radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Visitors are not allowed in the hospital in the age of coronavirus.

So, patients sit by themselves in the waiting room. They fidget in light blue leather chairs measured six feet apart. Frightened eyes peering out over face masks, they have the look of lost souls. I know this look. I saw it on my father during one of his last hospital stays years ago.

From his bed, he gazed up at me and begged, Please take me home. I could not.

But at least I was there with him. The patients in the waiting room of the Kimmel Center are isolated, some feeling abandoned. Its understandable. In many cases, some cancer treatments are now considered as elective.

My urologist gave me my first round of androgen deprivation injections and my oncologist said he would administer the second round. But the states stay-at-home order left that in limbo, and I wasnt sure how Id get my shot.

You really should not be at a hospital right now, my urologist told me.

Do you think my cancer knows that? I replied.

This is your choice in the age of coronavirus. Risk exposure or dont treat the cancer.

It was a nurse named Ann who came to my aid and volunteered to administer my shot. She has a young child at home, a girl. Anns career now comes with a new peril. The risks she brings home from her work weigh heavily on her. You can see this in her face. She is tired. Her voice is quiet. Nurse Ann admits that a visit to her hairstylist would be nice. When I thanked her for coming to my aid, she dutifully replied that she was only doing her job.

Nearly all the nurses and technicians Ive met have been more than patient and kind. For me, the catheter changes, M.R.I.s, CT scans and fiber optic cameras shoved in places the human body did not intend have been a series of compounded indignities and humiliations. Nurses and technicians take such things in stride. They offer support and comfort.

Anyone who has had an M.R.I. scan knows they make significant noise. They bang. They buzz. They clang. You are given ear plugs. You are given headphones. You are offered a choice of music. The intention being that these will drown out the clatter. They dont.

As a renowned music snob, I asked the nurse at my most recent scan, for something other than smooth jazz. What would you like to hear? she asked. Charles Mingus. Five minutes later I was listening to Mingus elegy to the beloved saxophonist Lester Young, Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat, a sentimental favorite. It was a small thing. Small things mean a great deal these days.

More than your doctors, nurses and technicians have your health, your life, in their hands. They are decent, hard-working, well-meaning and caring hands.

This should not be a revelation. In the age of coronavirus, one hears heroic stories every day. It hit home, hard, for me, when I had to go to the hospital. Two hours at there is nerve wracking. I leave each visit emotionally exhausted.

Nurses shifts are 12 hours, day after day. It is amazing what you learn to live with. Though I imagine we all have a breaking point.

In a few days I start radiation therapy. There will be permanent tattoos on my stomach and legs marking where the beams are to be targeted. The X-rays (hopefully) kill the cancer. They will also compromise my immune system. A cold will now be much easier to catch. A cold that can quickly escalate to pneumonia. Covid-19? Well

Radiation five days a week for eight weeks. Forty trips to the hospital in the age of coronavirus.

As I said, it is amazing what you learn to live with.

Richard Goggin is a television creative director.

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

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

View original post here:

My Cancer Doesnt Care About the Coronavirus - The New York Times

World Health Organization (WHO) Chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan on January 12, 2020 in Geneva.

FABRICE COFFRINI | AFP via Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic may continue into the latter half of the decade, a senior global health official has warned, as the death toll of the virus approaches the grim milestone of 300,000.

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization's chief scientist, told the Financial Times' Global Boardroom webinar on Wednesday: "I would say in a four to five-year timeframe, we could be looking at controlling this."

Swaminathan said a vaccine appeared to be the "best way out" at present but warned there were lots of "ifs and buts" about its safety, production and equitable distribution.

The development of an effective vaccine and successful confinement measures were both among the factors that would ultimately determine the pandemic's duration, she added, the FT reported.

To date, more than 4.3 million people have contracted the Covid-19 infection, with 297,465 deaths worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

A global public health crisis has meant countries have effectively had to shut down, with many world leaders imposing stringent restrictions on the daily lives of billions of people.

The lockdown measures, which vary in their application but broadly include school closures, bans on public gatherings and social distancing, are expected to result in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In recent weeks, some countries have sought to gradually relax restrictions, allowing some shops and factories to reopen.

People wear a protective mask due to the pandemic of the new coronavirus (Covid-19), this Thursday morning, on Avenida Paulista, in the central region of the city of Sao Paulo.

Fabio Vieira | FotoRua | NurPhoto via Getty Images

However, the emergence of new Covid-19 cases in South Korea and China has exacerbated concerns about the potential for a second wave of infections.

The International Energy Agency on Thursday estimated that the number of people living under some form of confinement measures at the end of May would drop to 2.8 billion people worldwide, down from a recent peak of 4 billion.

At a separate media briefing, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, said at the organization's Geneva headquarters on Wednesday that the coronavirus "may never go away."

When asked to address Swaminathan's comments earlier in the day, Ryan said no one would be able to accurately predict when the disease might disappear.

He added that trying to control the virus would require a "massive effort," even if a vaccine is found.

Excerpt from:

WHO warns it could take up to 5 years before the coronavirus pandemic is under control - CNBC

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 290,000 people worldwide.

More than 4.2 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 1.3 million diagnosed cases and at least 81,805 deaths.

Today's biggest developments:

Here's how the news is developing today. All times Eastern. Please refresh this page for updates.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released new guidelines for the reopening of industries like offices that cannot telework, malls for curbside pickup and outdoor museums.

Before reopening, Newsom said all facilities are required to: "perform a detailed risk assessment and implement a site-specific protection plan"; apply physical distancing rules; start disinfection protocols; implement control measures and screenings; and train employees on how to limit the spread and how to screen themselves for symptoms.

A lone pedestrian passes by Madame Tussauds wax museum on the largely empty Hollywood Boulevard as shutdown orders continue in California due to the coronavirus pandemic, May 11, 2020, in Los Angeles.

When all these steps are finished, businesses can post that checklist to show customers and employees that they're open, according to the state.

In Los Angeles County,officials are recommending another three months for the stay-at-home order, reported ABC Los Angeles station KABC. Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, said Tuesday that the order will be extended"with all certainty"unless there's a "dramatic change to the virus and tools at hand," KABC reported.

California has over 69,000 cases of COVID-19 and 2,847 people in the state have died.

Customers wait for their order outside at the Park Bench Cafe, May 12, 2020, in Huntington Beach, Calif. California restaurants waiting for permission to reopen have been preparing for the "new normal" in the age of the coronavirus.

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Live at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for special coverage of the novel coronavirus with the full ABC News team, including the latest news, context and analysis.

New York state is investigating approximately 100 cases of thePediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19, aninflammatory syndrome which has features that overlap with Kawasaki disease.

Playground equipment is taped off, March 30, 2020, in the Old Bethpage hamlet of Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York.

Three young people in New York state have died: a 5-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman, Gov. Andrew Cuomosaid Tuesday.

"This is a truly disturbing situation and I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned," Cuomo said. "If we have this issue in New York, it's probably in other states and probably hasn't been diagnosed yet in other states because, again, these children don't present the usual COVID symptoms."

The governor urged parents to monitor their children for these symptoms:

Those with tickets to New York City Broadway shows that were scheduled through Sept. 6 can now get refunds and exchanges, the Broadway League announced Tuesday.

Broadway went dark on March 12 -- and will stay dark until further notice.

Broadway stands closed and empty in Times Square, May 4, 2020, in New York City, during the coronavirus pandemic.

In New York City, the latest tracking progress indicators are mixed, but show progress.

A MTA worker cleans subway trains at a station, May 7, 2020, in New York City.

On May 10, there were51 people admitted to New York City hospitals for suspected COVID-19 -- down from 55 admissions on May 9.

There were 550 patients in intensive care units on May 10, a slight increase from 537 patients on May 9.

And of those tested citywide, 14% were positive on May 10. Of those tested on May 9, 13% were positive.

New York City has 52 confirmed cases of thePediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19, aninflammatory syndrome which has features that overlap with Kawasaki disease.

NYPD officers hand out free face masks on May 11, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Out of the city's 52 cases, 25 tested positive for COVID-19 and 22 others had antibodies, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

One fatality has been reported, the mayor said. Tenmore cases are pending.

Howard Zucker, commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, said last week that "most children with COVID-19 only experience mild symptoms, but in some, a dangerous inflammatory syndrome can develop."

De Blasio on Tuesday urged parents to call their pediatrician immediately if their child has symptoms including persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain and vomiting.

"We want people not to hesitate here," the mayor said. "The quicker the parent reports it in ... the more chance of protecting the child."

Buckingham Palace will not open to the public this summer due to the challenges of social distancing,The Royal Collection Trust said.

Cyclists rest in front of Buckingham palace, May 8, 2020, in London.

Frogmore House and Clarence House will also not open in August.

Those who booked tickets will be refunded.

A fire that broke out in a Saint Petersburg hospital early Tuesday killed five coronavirus patients, according to Russian state media.

Four of the patients were attached to ventilators in the intensive care unit of St. George hospital when the blaze erupted, while the fifth patient was on a ventilator in a neighboring ward, state media reported. The identities of the deceased were not immediately known, and the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Preliminary reports suggested an overheated ventilator had short-circuited and caught fire.

Russian emergency workers attend the scene of a fire at St. George Hospital in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on May 12, 2020. Russian state media reported that the blaze killed five coronavirus patients who had been put on ventilators at the hospital.

A source who worked closely with the hospital before it began treating coronavirus patients and wished to remain anonymous confirmed to ABC News what state media has reported on the incident.

A local emergency official told ABC News that firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze.

Russia's investigative committee announced it has launched a criminal investigation into the incident.

The proportion of deaths occurring in care homes in England and Wales that involved the novel coronavirus is increasing, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics.

"In the most recent days, the proportion of deaths occurring in care homes has accounted for 40.4% of all deaths involving COVID-19," the report states.

The latest data was from deaths registered in the week ending May 1. The proportion was up from 35.7% the previous week.

"Although we expect numbers of deaths to increase as more are registered," the report states, "it currently appears that deaths per day are decreasing."

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly has been hospitalized after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

"Yes, I've gotten sick. I'm being treated," Peskov was quoted as telling Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

In this file photo taken on June 15, 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to the media after his annual televised call-in show as his press secretary Dmitry Peskov (right) smiles in Moscow, Russia. Peskov told state media on May 12, 2020, that he is hospitalized after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

Peskov said he last met face-to-face with Putin a month ago and has since been communicating with him only by telephone or video call.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin also tested positive for the novel coronavirus last week and is still being treated for it in the hospital. Nonetheless, he chaired a cabinet meeting via video last week.

New data shows that the novel coronavirus was present in Ohio as early as January, according to Dr. Amy Acton, director of the state's health department.

Acton revealed the new data during Monday's coronavirus briefing, explaining that antibody testing now shows at least five COVID-19 cases in five Ohio counties have a date of symptom onset in January. The earliest one dates back to Jan. 7.

Previous data showed an onset of symptoms as early as February.

The Ohio Department of Health is investigating these cases and looking to see whether they are linked to any recent travel, according to Acton.

As more antibody testing is conducted, Acton said health officials will learn more about how long the virus has been circulating in the Midwestern U.S. state. As of Monday, the state had reported a total of 24,777 cases of COVID-19 with 1,357 deaths and 4,413 hospitalizations, according to Columbus ABC affiliate WSYX.

Meanwhile, retail stories across Ohio were allowed to reopen Tuesday so long as they adhere to the state's guidelines for social distancing.

Bars, restaurants, beauty salons and barber shops will be allowed to reopen across Italy this month rather than having to wait till June.

Regional governors got their way on Monday when Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte dropped his plan to keep restaurants and hair salons closed until June 1 and instead moved up their reopening to May 18. A list of coronavirus-related safety precautions for those businesses will be issued later this week.

While some Italian provinces move ahead with reopening businesses earlier than originally planned by the central government, Conte still has the power to overrule policy decisions made by governors if the number of COVID-19 cases start to climb again. Monday marked the first day that Italy's nationwide total of patients in intensive care units fell to under 1,000.

A young hairdresser and a customer wearing face masks and gloves to protect against the coronavirus in a salon in Brixen, Italy, Monday, May 11, 2020. The northern Italian province of South Tyrol is moving ahead of policies by the central government, reopening restaurants and shops closed during the coronavirus crisis earlier than planned by Rome.

Once the hardest-hit country in Europe, Italy was the first nation in the world to impose a nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Italy began to slowly lift the strict lockdown by easing some restrictions.

Italy's Civil Protection Agency recorded the country's lowest daily death toll from COVID-19 on Sunday. The single-day rise of new infections also fell below 1,000 for the first time since early March.

Italy is one of the worst-affection nations in the world in the pandemic, with more than 219,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and at least 30,739 deaths.

Russia reported more than 10,000 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday for the 10th day in a row, as the country emerges as a new hot spot in the coronavirus pandemic.

There were 10,899 new cases and 107 new deaths confirmed in Russia over the past 24 hours, according to the country's coronavirus response headquarters.

A man wearing a face mask walks at Savyolovskaya metro station in Moscow, Russia, on May 12, 2020, on the first day of mandatory use of masks and gloves on Moscow public transportation amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest daily tally is down from Monday's record of 11,656 new infections.

So far, Russia has reported a total of 232,243 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the second-largest national tally in the world, behind the United States. Russia also has one of the world's fastest rates of new infections in the coronavirus pandemic, second only to the U.S.

The Seoul metropolitan government is ramping up its efforts to trace clubgoers at risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.

A police task force team of over 8,500 members are combing through mobile phone records, credit card bills and even surveillance footage to identify individuals who recently visited reopened clubs and bars in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon, after 21 new cases of COVID-19 linked to the area were confirmed on Tuesday.

So far, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted a total of 102 confirmed cases tied to individuals who were at Itaewon bars or nightclubs that reopened after anti-virus measures were relaxed or who had come in contact with those who were. Authorities have since shut down more than 2,100 nightclubs, hostess bars and discos in the South Korean capital.

Quarantine workers spray disinfectant at a nightclub in the Itaewon district of Seoul, South Korea, on May 12, 2020, amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

Seoul police have secured a list from mobile operators of 10,905 customers who were present in the Itaewon area for over 30 minutes between April 24 and May 6 and sent text messages asking the owners of those mobile phones to get tested for COVID-19. Police also tracked the credit card transactions of 494 people out of about 1,000 who paid tabs at the clubs and bars currently under investigation there.

"Messages have already been sent to everyone and will be sent once more this afternoon," Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said in a press briefing Tuesday. "Those who have received the messages should visit the nearby health center or screening clinic soon for the testing."

Some 10,300 people tied to the Itaewon area have been tested for COVID-19 so far. Many of the individuals are in their 20s and 30s.

South Korea has begun to gradually ease its strict social-distancing measures that were put in place to curb the spread of the virus. Last week, people resumed their daily routines while museums, libraries and other public facilities reopened under the relaxed rules. The number of new cases reported in the country have stayed low for weeks, but the sudden spike among the younger generation has raised concerns that the quarantine measures may have been lifted too soon.

People wait in line to be tested for COVID-19 at a testing station in the nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul, South Korea, on May 12, 2020. Seoul authorities are using mobile phone data to trace nightclub visitors as they try to tackle a coronavirus cluster, they said, promising anonymity to those being tested due to the stigma surrounding homosexuality, as the Itaewon area caters to a large LGBT community.

City health authorities have said that all testing will be free for those who come forward and no questions will be asked. But a number of clubgoers are still reluctant to get tested for fear of being stigmatized, as the Itaewon area caters to a large LGBT community.

"This is not a matter of being gay or not. This is a problem that arose unexpectedly to all young people," David Kim, an LGBT activist at the Sinnaneun Center in Seoul, told ABC News. "No one expected an outbreak. Even the government said it's OK to reopen the clubs after a two month break. It's just sad that we are being targeted by conservative media and social opinions as if we are the villains."

South Korea once had the largest outbreak outside China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged, but the country quickly implemented an extensive "trace, test and treat" strategy. A total of 10,936 people across the nation have been diagnosed with COVID-19, of which 9,670 have recovered and 258 have died, according to South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wuhan, the Chinese city that was ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic, plans to test its entire population for the novel coronavirus after a cluster of new cases emerged.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an emergency notice on Monday announcing a "10 Day Battle" to ramp up its ability to conduct nucleic acid tests on the city's 11 million residents. Each district must submit a detailed plan by Tuesday on how they will test their respective communities, according to an official leaflet which has been circulated on social media and carried by state-run media.

The document did not state a timeline for the completion of the testing drive itself.

Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei province, reported its first cluster of coronavirus infections on Monday in over a month, stoking fears of a second wave. The five new locally transmitted cases arose from a previously asymptomatic patient who then spread the virus to four others in their residential compound, according to the official state-run Xinhua News Agency.

A worker wearing a face mask checks passengers' body temperatures as well as a health code on their cellphones before they take a taxi after arriving at Hankou railway station in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, on May 12, 2020. China reported no new locally-transmitted infections of the novel coronavirus on May 12, after two consecutive days of double-digit increases, including a new cluster over the weekend in Wuhan which fueled fears of a second wave of infections.

China's National Health Commission said Tuesday morning that no new cases had been reported in Hubei province over the past 24 hours.

Wuhan was the first city in the world to go under a coronavirus-related lockdown after the newly identified virus was thought to have first emerged there in December. The lockdown was lifted last month and life in the city has slowly been returning to normal. Last week, Chinese authorities decided to downgrade the entire country from high- to low-risk for the novel coronavirus as the number of new infections continued to hover just above zero and no new deaths had been reported for several consecutive days.

But Wuhan's Dongxihu district raised its risk level from low to medium after a new locally-transmitted case was confirmed there over the weekend, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Chinese mainland has reported 82,919 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,633 deaths. There are still 115 people with the disease in hospitals, according to the National Health Commission.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will maintain a physical distance from each other in the immediate future, a senior administration official told ABC News.

The decision was made in consultation with the medical unit at the White House, the official said. The change comes after two aides on the White House campus, including Pence's press secretary, tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Sources had told ABC News earlier that there were discussions over the weekend about keeping the president and vice president separated, but no decision on that had been made until now. It's unlikely the two will be attending meetings together unless necessary, sources said.

U.S. President Donald Trump turns to Vice President Mike Pence as they depart following a coronavirus response news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 27, 2020.

Pence spent all of Monday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he maintains his ceremonial office and where most of his staff have offices, a senior administration official told ABC News.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is part of the White House campus and situated adjacent to the White House building itself. Pence did not go to the White House at all on Monday, the official said.

While in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Pence followed the guidelines for critical infrastructure workers laid out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the official told ABC News. The vice president qualifies as a critical infrastructure worker because he's a key member of a government entity that works to provide public health access, among other critical functions, according to the official.

Those guidelines call for people to take their temperature before going into work, monitor for any symptoms, wear a mask at all times in the workplace for 14 days after last exposure to an infected individual, maintain a six-foot distance from others and practice social distancing at work as much as possible, as well as disinfect and clean workspaces regularly.

Follow this link:

Coronavirus updates: 'Disturbing situation' with COVID-associated illness, Cuomo says - ABC News

Engineers work on a potential vaccine for the coronavirus at a Beijing lab. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Engineers work on a potential vaccine for the coronavirus at a Beijing lab.

Most health experts agree that the need for a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is clear.

"To return to a semblance of previous normality, the development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is an absolute necessity" is how a perspective in Science magazine puts it.

So it's hardly surprising that, around the world, anticipation is high. With more than 100 coronavirus vaccines under development, researchers are reasonably confident that at least one will be successful. Skeptics, and there are some, remind us that optimism about an AIDS vaccine was once high, and 40 years later there is no vaccine.

Still, even if experts today are right that a vaccine for COVID-19 will be easier to develop than an AIDS vaccine, estimates for when it will be widely available vary. Here are some of the vaccine-related questions being raised and what we know at this point.

Is the timeline for COVID-19 faster than for previous vaccines?

President Trump has offered perhaps the most optimistic estimate. He said he expects the United States to have a vaccine by the end of 2020.

So far, it does seem as though the vaccine will be developed faster than ever before in vaccine history. It took more than two decades to come up with a successful polio vaccine. Federal health officials suggest a COVID-19 vaccine may be ready in a tenth of that time.

But there are only some things that you can fast-track, and others, not so much. And even though the Food and Drug Administration is going to be evaluating the various stages of testing with great speed in this case, certain standards must be met: First, you have to prove that a vaccine is safe. Then you need to prove that it generates the immune response you want. And then you need to find out if it actually prevents people from getting sick if they're exposed to the virus.

How would researchers know they have developed a vaccine that works?

Vaccine studies present researchers with a conundrum: You want people to be exposed to the disease being targeted because you need to know if your vaccine is working, and yet in another sense you don't want them being exposed because you don't want them to get sick.

The way you know that the vaccine is effective is that you give a vaccine to one group of people and another group gets a sham injection that doesn't contain the vaccine being tested. Then you see if the vaccinated group is protected.

So how are they going to get exposed to, in this case, the novel coronavirus? Well, if there's a lot of virus circulating in the population, that's one way.

Another possibility that people have talked about is intentionally infecting volunteers with the virus and then seeing if a candidate vaccine prevents them from getting sick. That way you know for sure that the volunteer testers have been exposed and can be confident the vaccine works if that person does not get sick. Such studies, known as challenge trials, are ethically fraught, since you are deliberately infecting volunteers with a potentially lethal virus for which there is no cure.

The alternative to challenge trials is to vaccinate enough people so that you can be confident that some fraction of them will be exposed to the virus. The number you need to vaccinate depends on how prevalent the coronavirus is in the area where the vaccine is being tested. You then compare the vaccinated group with another group that received a sham vaccine to look for efficacy.

Once a vaccine has been developed, how does the manufacturing process work?

"The requirement to scale up to the kinds of numbers we're talking about within the short time-frame that we're speaking about would be an extraordinary effort," says Emilio Emini, who has been working on vaccines for decades and now leads the HIV program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which is a funder of NPR and of this blog).

Making billions of doses of vaccine is a herculean task.

The tools that you need for manufacturing one vary considerably depending on the kind of vaccine you're making, but in many cases, you need something called a bioreactor a giant tank that allows the organisms that are actually spewing out the vaccine of interest to grow.

Sometimes you could be talking about a 20,000-gallon bioreactor, and you're not going to go down to your local hardware store and pick one of those up. So that's one issue. There's specialty equipment that has to be made.

In addition to the big stuff, there are smaller things to take into consideration, such as medical-grade glass.

"You have to put a product into a sterile vial or syringe, and there's only so much of that glass to go around," says Fred Porter, senior vice president for technical operations at Adrenas Therapeutics. "If we're thinking about billions of doses to be able to deliver vaccines around the world, that becomes a significant bottleneck."

Is making a vaccine available globally important?

Definitely.

Seth Berkley, CEO of an organization called Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, believes you can't roll out a vaccine one country at a time.

"We're not going to be safe as a world unless everywhere is safe," he says. "So even if we had parts of the world that would have low spread or no spread, if you had large reservoirs of the virus in other places, of course you have a risk of reintroduction."

With more than 100 vaccines in development around the world, is it safe to say the majority of them are never going to become viable candidates?

Yes.

They may not succeed for a variety of reasons. They may not work, or they work but are too hard to manufacture. At this stage of development, many are expected to fail. That's just the nature of vaccine trials.

Is it possible that we don't get just one vaccine but that multiple vaccines are developed that might work even in somewhat different ways?

It seems likely because there are multiple approaches to making vaccines that have advantages and disadvantages. Some are tried and true and have worked for other viral illnesses. Some you can make much faster, but it's unclear that they'll be as effective. Experts such as Emilio Emini believe the parallel development of multiple vaccines is a good thing.

"It's my perspective that this is going to require more than one successful vaccine," he says. "It's going to require at least several, if not more, that are successfully developed in parallel so that the scope of what will be needed can be satisfied."

Will the coronavirus vaccine be like the annual flu vaccine in that it changes every year because the virus changes every year, or will it be more like the measles or the polio vaccine, which is fixed?

Unfortunately, right now the answer is unclear. There is some indication that this virus doesn't change very rapidly, so if you find a vaccine that works against it, it may work in perpetuity. But researchers also don't know how long immunity to this virus lasts, so we may need to get booster shots not a different shot every year but a booster of the same shot to make the vaccine actually work for multiple years.

How hopeful should we be that there will be a vaccine that works and that we can get our hands on by next year?

Several companies, governments and foundations are betting billions of dollars that it will be possible.

Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer for Johnson & Johnson, says he's optimistic because of his company's recent experience making vaccines for other viral diseases.

"We have done it with Zika, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), Ebola," he says. "We know what we do. And if we plug a new virus into that system, we are pretty sure we can get to a vaccine."

That said, vaccine people will tell you that every time you start working on a vaccine for a new virus, you don't know what the hurdles will be. There's a lot of work that needs to be done before we know for sure whether those bets will pay off.

Read the original:

Coronavirus Vaccine FAQs: How Is It Being Developed? When Will It Be Ready? : Goats and Soda - NPR

The onset of five Covid-19 cases in five separate counties in Ohio happened as early as January, state Health Director Dr. Amy Acton has said, citing results of antibody testing.

"I think we'll see a lot more of this. I also think there are a lot of deaths and coroner reports yet to be seen, so I think as time goes on, we will learn more and more about history with this virus," Acton said Monday.

Those milestones, which the White House recommended in mid-April, include a downward trajectory in virus cases for 14 days and a robust testing program in place for at-risk health care workers.

"If some areas, cities, states or what have you jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks," Fauci told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions.

Also, a vast majority of poll's respondents were "afraid" or "concerned" (35% and 46%, respectively) about the potential for a second wave of Covid-19 cases this year, while 18% were not concerned. Those two questions in the multi-topic poll -- conducted by phone Thursday through Sunday, with 1,112 adult Americans -- had a margin of error of +/- 3.7%.

Don't expect a vaccine for the upcoming school year, Fauci says

Some other developments from Tuesday's Senate panel hearing:

School reopenings will vary from region to region because "dynamics of the outbreak are different in different regions," Fauci said.

The nation's actual death toll is likely higher than reported, Fauci said. He cited New York City, where the health care system was overwhelmed. "There may have been people who died at home (in that city) who did have ... Covid who are not counted as Covid because they never really got to the hospital."

The US should have the capacity to produce, distribute and apply "at least 40 (million) to 50 million tests per month" by September, said Adm. Dr. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Number of inflammatory illnesses in NY children rises to around 100

New York health officials are now investigating about 100 cases of an inflammatory illness in children that might be related to Covid-19, up from 73 last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.

Three youths -- a teenager and a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old -- have died of the inflammatory illness, officials have said.

The state has said many of the children tested positive for Covid-19 or had its antibodies, but that they did not present with typical symptoms for the coronavirus disease. So health officials are investigating whether coronavirus presents a danger to children not previously understood.

The plurality of cases -- 29% -- involved children ages 5 to 9. About 28% of the patients were between 10 and 14, according to the state.

Leaders push forward with reopening

By late this week, 48 states will have relaxed at least some measures as the country moves toward reopening -- but heavy debate remains around whether it's safe to begin carving a path to normalcy just yet.

Experts and public health officials have for weeks warned a premature release of measures could drive the US death toll up by thousands.

But business owners and some local officials across the country have demanded stay-at-home orders be lifted to avoid a crash of the economy -- amid an already unprecedented amount of unemployment claims in many states.

In California, where the governor created guidelines last week for regions to meet before beginning to move forward toward reopening, officials in San Diego said their city is ready to go back to business.

"I admire the governor and the work that he's been doing but I think the standard he set last week, to not allow businesses to reopen unless the counties have gone two weeks without any deaths, is unrealistic in any urban county," San Diego Supervisor Greg Cox said. "We certainly want to work with him in a cooperative vein but we need to have standards that are attainable."

In Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards announced he will lift the state's stay-at-home order Friday, adding the state would be moving into phase one of its reopening plan.

Restaurants, casinos, churches, hair salons and gyms are some of the businesses that can open with restrictions during that first phase, but are limited to 25% occupancy and must practice social distancing.

CNN's Jeremy Herb, Lauren Fox, Arman Azad, Amanda Watts, Jacqueline Howard, Jennifer Henderson, Alexandra Meeks, Andy Rose and Sara Sidner contributed to this report.

See original here:

Fauci warns again about the US reopening as more evidence emerges of virus's early spread - CNN

1. Coronavirus Live News: Updates and Analysis  The New York Times
2. Anthony Fauci's quiet coronavirus rebellion  CNN
3. 6 takeaways from the surreal Senate hearing on coronavirus - STAT  STAT
4. NFL games could be the perfect storm for spreading coronavirus even without fans, Dr. Fauci warns  CNN
5. Senate Hearing Recap: Reopening Amid The Coronavirus  NPR
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Go here to see the original:

Coronavirus Live News: Updates and Analysis - The New York Times

About 100 children in N.Y. are suspected of having a rare illness tied to the virus.

New York State health officials are investigating about 100 cases of a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that afflicts children and appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday.

More than half of the states pediatric inflammatory syndrome cases 57 percent involved children ages 5 to 14.

Earlier the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 52 cases of the syndrome had been reported in New York City, with 10 potential cases also being evaluated.

The dead included a 5-year-old boy, who died last week in New York City; a 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl, Mr. Cuomo said.

This is a truly disturbing situation, Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing. And I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be.

The governors announcement came as he reported 195 more virus-related deaths in the state, an increase from Mondays total but the second consecutive day that the toll was under 200.

The pediatric illness began to appear in the region in recent weeks, and doctors and researchers are still investigating how and why it affects children.

Connecticut reported its first cases of the syndrome on Monday. As of Tuesday, six children in the state were being treated for the ailment, officials said.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced three of the Connecticut cases at a briefing on Monday.

I think right now its a very, very tiny risk of infection, he said. It was not really ever detected in Asia, which, I dont quite know what that implies.

Three other children were being treated for the syndrome at the Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford, a spokeswoman, Monica Buchanan, said on Tuesday. Two of the three were confirmed to have the illness, Ms. Buchanan said.

As of Monday, health officials in New Jersey said they were investigating eight potential cases of the syndrome.

With New York making steady progress in its battle against the virus and three upstate regions poised to start a gradual reopening by this weekend, Mr. Cuomo on Tuesday reiterated the importance of federal aid as the state charts its recovery.

The number of people hospitalized in New York continued to decrease, Mr. Cuomo said, one of the key metrics that officials are monitoring in assessing whether the outbreaks severity is waning.

The number of new daily hospitalizations has fallen close to where it was on March 19, just before Mr. Cuomo issued executive orders shutting down much of the state.

Were making real progress, theres no doubt, Mr. Cuomo said. But theres also no doubt that its no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant.

While sounding that warning, Mr. Cuomo urged lawmakers in Washington to give state and local governments whose budgets have been ravaged by the pandemic the financial help they need to rebound.

To get this economy up and running, were going to need an intelligent stimulus bill, Mr. Cuomo said.

New York state needs an estimated $61 billion in federal support to avoid enacting 20 percent cuts to schools, local governments and hospitals, Mr. Cuomo said.

He also said it would be impossible for New York to resume business as normal without the money it needs to develop a sophisticated testing and contact tracing apparatus.

It is unclear whether Congress will give Mr. Cuomo the help he is seeking. Like President Trump, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, said he last month that he did not support what he has labeled a blue state bailout.

Mr. Cuomo called Mr. McConnells characterization one of the really dumb ideas of all time.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey began outlining plans on Tuesday for the testing and contact tracing that he said would be critical to reopening the states battered economy.

Still, Mr. Murphy made the case that New Jersey which, along with New York, has been an epicenter of the pandemic is currently the state most affected by the coronavirus outbreak. New Jersey, he said, had overtaken New York and Connecticut in the rate of new infections and deaths.

There are still thousands in our hospitals, and sadly an untold number more will perish, the governor said, while noting that the number of hospitalizations, deaths and new cases had plunged since the states peak in mid-April.

To continue to beat back the outbreak, New Jersey officials said they planned to test up to 20,000 people a day by the end of the month. The state would also be sending out hundreds of contact tracers to determine who has had a close interaction with a sick person, Mr. Murphy said.

Mr. Murphy said the goal in New Jersey was to recruit a racially diverse group of contact tracers who can speak various languages and identify with the communities in which they will work. The pay is about $25 an hour, he said.

The drop in the number of new coronavirus cases means that the state can consider a limited reopening, Mr. Murphy said, but he warned impatient residents about the risks of loosening restrictions too soon. After closing parks and golf courses in early April, the state reopened them on May 2; the governor did not say which businesses other places may open next.

Also on Tuesday, Mr. Murphy announced 198 new deaths 139 more than were reported the day before for a total of 9,508. About half of those fatalities were of residents of nursing homes. The daily report of new deaths in New Jersey may include deaths that occurred weeks ago and were only recently confirmed.

Those numbers dont lie, Mr. Murphy said. We are still the most impacted state in America.

The puzzle of how to revive New York Citys tourist trade is so vexing that city officials are pulling together a group of industry experts and one of the biggest names on Broadway to try to solve it.

On Tuesday, the citys tourism agency, NYC & Company, said it was establishing the Coalition for NYC Hospitality & Tourism Recovery. Among the groups leaders: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor who created the musical Hamilton.

The coalitions task is to come up with a plan for wooing people back to the city once it starts to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, a chapter that appears to be months off at least after the Broadway League said on Tuesday that its members were canceling shows through Sept 6.

It is time to consider how we can begin to reopen our doors and safely reconnect with our city and with each other, and with the visitors who will one day again flock to New York, said Charles Flateman, NYC & Companys chairman and executive vice president of the Shubert Organization.

Joining Mr. Flatemen and Mr. Miranda at the groups helm are Ellen Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, which recently announced a number of layoffs; Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum in Harlems director and chief curator; the restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Peter Ward, the president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council.

Before the pandemic struck, NYC & Company was forecasting an 11th straight year of increased tourism. In 2019, the city had more than 66 million visitors who generated about $70 billion of economic activity that supported 400,000 jobs, according to the agencys estimates.

Together, we will create a next act for our city, Mr. Miranda said in a statement.

Mr. de Blasio on Tuesday announced an expansion of coronavirus testing and tracing across New York City, but he warned again that a limited reopening of the city was weeks away at best.

Twelve new testing sites will be set up in the next three weeks in a push to double the public hospital systems testing capacity, the mayor said at his daily news briefing. The city was also training 535 contact tracers, with a goal of having 2,500 in the field by early June.

Still, the city, the pandemics U.S. epicenter, has met just four of the seven criteria required to start to reopen, Mr. Cuomo said on Monday while announcing that three upstate regions had achieved all of the necessary benchmarks.

Mr. de Blasio has said he is closely monitoring three measures in weighing the citys progress toward reopening: the number of new virus infections; the number of infected patients in intensive care units; and the percentage of residents testing positive for the virus.

Clearly, these indicators are not getting us the kind of answers we need to change our restrictions in May, the mayor said. Youve got to have 10 days to two weeks of consistent, downward motion. We havent had that in a sustained way at all.

As Connecticut continues to respond to a virus outbreak that has killed more than 3,000 people in the state, Gov. Ned Lamont said on Tuesday that he was replacing the public health commissioner, Renee Coleman-Mitchell.

Mr. Lamont did not provide a reason for the change, only saying that he had appointed the commissioner of the states Department of Social Services, Deidre Gifford, to act as Ms. Coleman-Mitchells replacement.

In a statement, Mr. Lamont said that Ms. Coleman-Mitchells service over the last year has been a great deal of help, particularly in the face of the global Covid-19 pandemic that has brought disruption to many throughout the world.

Ms. Coleman-Mitchell began her tenure in April 2019. Though she appeared at Mr. Lamonts daily news briefings in early April, she has been absent from them in recent weeks.

The coronavirus outbreak has brought much of life in New York to a halt and there is no clear end in sight. But there are also moments that offer a sliver of strength, hope, humor or some other type of relief: a joke from a stranger on line at the supermarket; a favor from a friend down the block; a great meal ordered from a restaurant we want to survive; trivia night via Zoom with the bar down the street.

Wed like to hear about your moments, the ones that are helping you through these dark times. A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.

Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, Michael Gold, Patrick McGeehan, Jesse McKinley and Azi Paybarah.

Read the original here:

About 100 N.Y. Children Treated for Illness Tied to Virus: Live Updates - The New York Times

The video featured 20-ish people plotting how to attack a boss. (It was in an area known as "upper black rock spire" in the game.) It was an intricate plan, with all sorts of coordinated moves being worked out and even a guy calculating the group's chances of survival. (It was "32.33, uh, repeating of course" if you were wondering. You weren't.)

The plotting went on for an extended period of time -- right up until one of the players yelled, "Time's up. Let's do this. Leeeeeerrrroy Jenkins!!!!" and sprinted into the room to battle the boss. ("Leroy Jenkins" was his screen name in the game.) They all followed him because, well, what the hell else were they going to do?

The "Leroy Jenkins" video has become the stuff of absolute legend on the internet -- as almost every piece of the video has been transformed into an internet meme of some sort.

What, you are wondering at this point, doesany of that have to do with the coronavirus -- and the way in which governors are reopening their states?

A lot, actually. In fact, "Leroy Jenkins" is the perfect way to understand how we got to a place where 48 of the 50 states will be at least partially reopened by May 17 despite the fact that very few of them have met the federal guidelines for reopening.

Once Leroy -- er, I mean Kemp -- had run through that reopening doorway, the other governors had no choice but to follow.

Because the political pressure to do so -- once Kemp had broken the seal -- became even more intense. And faced with growing protests and economic numbers that hadn't been so bad since the Great Depression, governors rushed to reopen their states, plans, plots and federal guidelines be damned.

Read the original:

How we 'Leeeeroy Jenkins'-ed the coronavirus reopening - CNN