Here’s what’s behind all those backlogged coronavirus cases across Texas – The Dallas Morning News

County health authorities across Texas are still sorting through a backlog of previously unreported coronavirus test results, shaking some local officials confidence in the numbers and leaving them to wonder whether they missed chances to slow the illness.

A statewide data dump led to giant daily case counts in some North Texas counties over the weekend, including Dallas County, where officials had to contend with more than 7,600 previously unknown positive cases in four days the majority of them backlogged from June and July.

Because local health officials didnt know about the cases until now, contact tracing hasnt been done on them. That could have serious implications, said Dr. Matt Richardson, Denton Countys director of public health.

We missed that opportunity because of the late report, which just allows the pandemic to grow, he said. Thats why we have a pandemic. Weve missed opportunities for containment and unfortunately that was out of our control.

Richardson said the county was uncomfortable with statewide data on tests and said it was frustrating that some inherent flaws with the states database are being exacerbated by the delays.

That just renders it less valuable, he said, adding that the data are still useful because they show what happened and provide demographic information.

The backlogged cases came to light after the state upgraded its reporting system Aug. 1 to better handle the high volume of daily test results.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the state health department took in fewer than 2,000 lab test results a day for a long list of conditions including measles, meningitis and some STDs. But as COVID-19 testing expanded and the state had to track positive and negative results the tracking system couldn't keep up, said Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services.

After the upgrade, which allowed the state to process more than 100,000 test results a day, the state cleared the backlog in the first week of August, Anton said.

But once those results were processed, the state spotted coding problems with test results the commercial Quest Diagnostics labs reported that prevented the state from importing its data.

That led to a backlog of 354,000 tests from Quest, Anton said.

Quest Diagnostics told KTVT-TV (Channel 11) that the state had changed servers without letting it know, so it didnt realize its results werent being received.

Coding issues also led to problems getting data from CHRISTUS Meditech, a lab for several hospitals, which had a backlog of about 95,000 test results, and then a backlog of about 59,000 test results from Walgreens pharmacies, Anton said.

By Sunday, each of the backlogs was resolved and test results were available to counties, she said. Now, the case sorting is in the hands of county health officials, who will have to determine whether the results are for cases they previously knew about or whether they are new, Anton said.

The perspective you need to have is that with COVID, there are hundreds of labs reporting now that were not previously reporting to public health, she said. For instance, Walgreens is not typically testing for infectious diseases, but for COVID, theyre doing testing. So they had a longer road ... to get set up to process the tests and then to have a report and then to get them into a format where they could send it to us.

The backlogs didn't cause delays in notifying patients of their test results.

However, they could breed skepticism in the numbers for people who already doubts about them, said Timothy Bray, director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research at UT Dallas. And for people, including business owners and school leaders, who rely on local daily case counts among other data to make decisions about operating safely, they may feel theyre flying blind, Bray said.

Collin County officials havent specified how many of their cases were part of the backlog, but after reporting more than 1,100 cases Friday and none Sunday, officials warned residents they had no confidence in the states data in a message posted on the countys dashboard Tuesday.

The Commissioners Court is 100% certain that the COVID-19 data being reported for Collin County is inaccurate, Collin County Judge Chris Hill wrote on Facebook.

Anton, the State Health Services Department spokeswoman, said that since Collin County chose to have the state take over its case management in June, the state has been providing the most complete data available each day.

As with all COVID-19 data, it is subject to change as more information comes in, she said.

Gov. Greg Abbott stood by the states data in an interview Wednesday with KXAS-TV (NBC 5).

We used a very robust system team that came in, that corrected all of the data metrics and now we have good accurate information flow, he said. There may be still another day or two while that information is leveled out. But by the time this week ends, we should have pretty accurate data.

He also stressed that the backlog issue affected only test result data.

The most important and accurate information that exists is the information about the people who are hospitalized because of COVID-19. That information has never been questioned, the governor told KXAS. That information is both the most accurate, and the most important information that we have.

In Dallas County, officials indicated that most of the more than 7,600 previously unknown cases came from tests done in July.

In Tarrant County, health officials said many of the 1,487 cases it reported Saturday were part of the backlog.

Within the last five days, Denton County received more than 7,000 previously unreported test results, and 893 were positive. Some of the lab results were performed a few days ago, but some come from May and June, officials said.

Richardson, Denton Countys public health director, said the county is investigating the backlogged cases to see whether there are duplicates and having contact tracers verify them.

He said the backlogged cases will be added to new daily case counts after theyre investigated and designated as active or recovered cases.

Candy Blair, Collin Countys public health director, said officials noticed the problem when they saw a sudden spike in the data last week. They reported 1,175 new cases Aug. 14 nearly 10 times the daily average in cases.

Public health directors in the region asked the state about the problem, and thats when they learned about the backlog, she said.

Now she wants to make sure people understand that cases havent spiked suddenly.

You dont want them to panic, she said. Thats the last thing we want to do is to look like our numbers have quadrupled or are 10 times the amount that they normally are.

Officials in other counties also expressed a need for calm.

People need to be patient and understanding, Tarrant County public health director Vinny Taneja said at Tuesdays county commissioners court. We are worried that what we dont know might come back and bite us, and [the backlog is] a prime example of things that have gone on and we had no idea that this was an issue.

Diana Cervantes, an infectious disease epidemiologist and an assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, said public health authorities have to put their emphasis on stopping transmission of the disease.

"That's your one goal; you want to focus on that," she said.

So health departments may make investigating new cases a priority over tracing old ones. Cervantes said that when departments have to sift through backlogged cases, theyre trying to determine whether any might be people in high-transmission settings and whether theres a chance to prevent an infectious person from spreading the virus.

"You need to be able to figure out is it even possible at this point to intervene?" she said.

Bray, the director of UT Dallas Institute for Urban Policy Research, said the backlog is a matter of critical public health and public policy concern, but it shouldnt change peoples behaviors in response to the pandemic.

We need to get to the bottom of it, he said. We need to make sure it doesnt happen again, but it doesnt reduce the need to be vigilant in public health and public safety measures.

And despite the unexpected jump in case counts, experts still see encouraging trends in the virus spread.

Dallas County has seen a significant drop in confirmed cases recently, in spite of the backlog, County Judge Clay Jenkins said Tuesday.

He also has noted less demand for tests in recent weeks.

It is quite understandable at this point that people would have concerns about computer programs, coding errors, contractors who did not mail things timely and other human errors around testing and reporting, Jenkins said in a written statement. However, the underlying science and the medical recommendations to you and the public are sound.

Dr. Philip Huang, the countys public health director, reported Tuesday that emergency-room visits have leveled off since their peak in June. The rate of positive tests from hospitals, though still high at 14%, also has declined recently.

He said people need to continue good public health practices.

We need to keep the physical distancing, washing of hands, staying home when you can, Huang said. All of these things are important, and they are showing to work. So just everyone needs to be vigilant. Dont let up.

Having trouble seeing this map? Click here.

Read this article:

Here's what's behind all those backlogged coronavirus cases across Texas - The Dallas Morning News

Older Children and the Coronavirus: A New Wrinkle in the Debate – The New York Times

A study by researchers in South Korea last month suggested that children between the ages of 10 and 19 spread the coronavirus more frequently than adults a widely reported finding that influenced the debate about the risks of reopening schools.

But additional data from the research team now calls that conclusion into question; its not clear who was infecting whom. The incident underscores the need to consider the preponderance of evidence, rather than any single study, when making decisions about childrens health or education, scientists said.

Some of the household members who appeared in the initial report to have been infected by older children in fact were exposed to the virus at the same time as the children. All of them may have been infected by contacts they shared.

The disclosure does not negate the overall message of that study, experts said: Children under age 10 do not spread the virus as much as adults do, and the ability to transmit seems to increase with age.

The most important point of the paper is that it clarifies the care with which we need to interpret individual studies, particularly of transmission of a virus where we know the dynamics are complex, said Dr. Alasdair Munro, clinical research fellow in pediatric infectious diseases at University Hospital Southampton in Britain.

The earlier study was not intended to demonstrate transmission from children to adults, only to describe contact tracing efforts in South Korea, said Dr. Young June Choe, assistant professor of social and preventive medicine at Hallym University College of Medicine and an author of both studies.

Most studies of childrens transmissibility have been observational and have not directly followed infected children as they spread the virus. The few studies to have done so are not directly comparable their methods, the policies regarding prevention, and the transmission levels in communities all vary widely.

Many studies have grouped together children of widely varying ages. Yet a 10-year-old is likely to be very different from a 20-year-old in terms of infection risk and transmission, as well as in type and level of social activity, Dr. Munro said.

The first study from South Korea did try to document transmission from children directly, but it grouped them in 10-year ranges. Tracing the contacts of 29 children aged 9 or younger, it found that the children were about half as likely as adults to spread the virus to others, consistent with other research.

But Dr. Choe and his colleagues reported an odd finding in the group of 124 children aged 10 to 19: They appeared significantly more likely than adults to spread the coronavirus. Experts told The Times at the time that the finding was likely to be a fluke.

The group of older children was not the same in both studies, but many appeared in both reports, Dr. Choe said. In the latest study, the researchers found only one undebatable case of transmission among older children, from a 16-year old girl, who had returned from Britain, to her 14-year-old sister.

The remaining 40 infected contacts of the older children could all be explained by a shared exposure.

The children with confirmed infections were isolated in hospitals or community treatment centers, and caregivers who had contact with them were required to wear masks, gloves, a full body suit and goggles. The low rate of transmission from older children observed here may not represent what happens in the real world.

The new report does suggest that older children are at least unlikely to transmit more than adults, said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, as had been originally claimed.

Theres no biological explanation for that, she said. It didnt make any sense to me. Over all, Dr. Dean added, Were not seeing a lot of real transmission from children.

But that may be because most studies have been too small to adequately distinguish between age groups, and because children have been kept at home, away from potential exposures.

Even if the risk of transmission from children is lower, they usually have contact with a great number of other people more so than the average adult. When schools reopen, these increased exposures create more opportunities to transmit the virus, which may counterbalance their lower propensity to transmit the virus.

Updated Aug. 19, 2020

The latest on how schools are navigating the pandemic.

Dr. Dean and other experts cautioned against interpreting the scientific evidence so far as saying that children under age 10 simply cannot spread the coronavirus.

But its not true to say that they do not transmit, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. You hear people say this, and its wrong.

All available evidence so far makes it clear that older children, particularly those closest to adulthood, may spread the virus as much as adults, he added.

Its indisputable that the highest risk of becoming infected and being detected as being infected is in older age groups, Dr. Hanage said. I think you have to be really careful before you decide to open high schools.

Conversations about reopening schools are complicated because so much depends on the level of community transmission and on socioeconomic factors, he and other experts said.

Schools can fuel the influenza viruss spread to a disproportionate degree, compared with restaurants, bars or places of worship. Children may drive those outbreaks, so closing schools during flu outbreaks makes sense, Dr. Hanage said.

But with the coronavirus, Dr. Hanage said, closing schools is not expected to provide more bang for the buck than closing other parts of society. Instead of reopening bars and restaurants along with schools, he said, schools should be prioritized, while bars and restaurants should be closed in order to reduce community transmission and make school reopenings possible.

Visit link:

Older Children and the Coronavirus: A New Wrinkle in the Debate - The New York Times

Potential Rising Income Streams and Equity Retirement Solutions – Dividend.com

Investors typically have different needs and tolerances for risk depending on their stage of life. During the accumulation years, youre likely more comfortable with risk in order to pursue aggressive growth. As you approach distribution age, your appetite for risk often diminishes in favor of more conservative sources of income.

A rising dividend strategy could meet the needs of both risk tolerances as it can provide the potential for higher total returns to achieve growth while supplying steady income if the investor elects not to reinvest them.

For example, a growth-oriented young investor who used the Diversified Stock Income Plan with a starting portfolio value of $500,000 could generate $12,000 annually toward retirement income by reinvesting dividends. An older, conservative investor whose portfolio is in distribution might opt not to reinvest the dividends in an uncertain future feeling that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Every individual must assess their comfort level with investment strategies and use a cost-benefit analysis to determine the approach thats right for them. Explore your options from mutual funds and ETFs to rising dividend portfolios, separately managed accounts and more but then commit to a well-thought-out, long-term plan. When it comes to investing, discipline pays dividends.

Original post:

Potential Rising Income Streams and Equity Retirement Solutions - Dividend.com

Millions of America’s working poor may lose out on key anti-poverty tax credit because of the pandemic – Chicago Reporter

The pandemic is driving American families to the edge, with tens of millions at risk of losing their homes and over 1 in 10 U.S. adults reporting their households didnt have enough to eat in the previous week.

While Congress debates extending unemployment benefits that expired on July 31 and other additional aid, theres an important program that already exists that could help struggling Americans get through the crisis however long it lasts. Known as the earned income tax credit, or EITC, it provides aid primarily to the working poor. In a typical year, it lifts more than 8.5 million people out of poverty, while improving the health and well-being of parents and children.

Since the credit depends on earned income, many families may be at risk of losing all or some of the benefit because so many were laid off as economies in many states shut down. Even as restaurants and other businesses reopen, its likely that many of those who lost their jobs will remain unemployed or underemployed for many months or longer.

Our own research shows changes to the structure of the U.S. economy, with the sharp growth of low-wage and unstable jobs, is weakening the EITCs effectiveness at fighting poverty.

Some lawmakers are trying to reform the EITC as part of the next coronavirus bailout to ensure it helps more Americans and make it more like a basic income guarantee. We believe doing so would not only ensure low-income Americans continue to have access to this vital tax credit during the pandemic, additional changes could also strengthen the program for years to come.

The earned income tax credit, which supplements earnings for many low- and moderate-income workers, has helped buffer economic hardship for single parents and other recipients since it was created in 1975.

Eligible taxpayers receive the credit after they file their taxes. And unlike a deduction, even those who didnt pay any income tax can receive the credit, which theyll get as part of their refund. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia also offer their own EITCs, typically based on the federal credit.

In 2019, taxpayers received about US$63 billion in credits through the federal EITC, making it the governments largest cash safety net program for working families with children. Recipients qualify for the credit based on how much money they earn and depending on their marital status and number of children. The benefit rises with each dollar earned until reaching a peak and then phasing out.

For example, in 2019, a single person earning $13,545 a year received $392, while a typical family of four with an annual income of $22,261 received roughly $2,951 which comes out to an extra $250 a month.

Put another way, a family with one child receives an average credit of 34 cents for every dollar of earned income, which rises to 40 cents for two and 45 cents for three or more children.

The tax credit has been tremendously successful. In 2018, the latest data available, the EITC lifted about 10.6 million people out of poverty and reduced its severity for another 17.5 million. And since its inception, it has reduced child poverty by 25%.

But the benefits extend well beyond providing struggling families with more income. Research shows the credit has helped improve the mental and physical health of mothers, improves perinatal health of mothers and their children, improves child development, reduces incidents of low birth weight among infants and improves childrens cognitive function.

It also enjoys strong bipartisan support because of its focus on encouraging and supporting working.

But the EITC only helps individuals able to find work, which becomes a bigger challenge in a pandemic or severe recession.

Our unpublished calculations from a national representative survey showed that about a fifth of the 25 million EITC beneficiaries in 2019 lost their jobs from March to April and over 16% remained unemployed in June, the latest data we have available. That means over 4 million working families could lose a large portion of their benefits in 2021, depending on a variety of factors.

While these problems are most obvious in a recession, theyve worsened over the past four decades as the labor market has changed.

The share of workers doing low-skill, low-wage work has jumped from 42% in 1980 to about 54% in 2016. And an increasing number of these jobs are in the precarious gig economy that doesnt provide stable incomes. That means workers are less likely to see a steady aid from the EITC because the maximum benefits are gained when working full time at minimum wage.

The EITCs also provides very little support to those without children. A nonpartisan think tank estimates that about 5.8 million adult workers without any children as dependents are taxed into poverty or impoverished further each year because their EITC is too small to offset their federal income and payroll taxes.

House Democrats are pushing to reform the EITC in the next coronavirus relief bill. Specifically, theyd like to tweak the credits phase-in so that workers receive more benefits for fewer hours worked, allowing those who lost their jobs and remained unemployed for the remainder of 2020 to maintain benefits similar to last year. They also would lower the minimum age for receiving the credit to 18 from 25 for certain vulnerable groups like those experiencing homeless.

Wed suggest also increasing the benefit for tax filers without children and lowering the minimum age for everyone so that the millions of young people graduating from high school and college into an economic recession can get additional support.

These reforms would not only help now but could also deepen the impact of the EITC by creating an income floor for more people as the economy changes, essentially creating something very much like a basic income guarantee. A key difference, however, is that most universal basic income proposals dont require recipients to work.

While we cannot fully predict how interactions between job losses and the tax and benefit system will play out, this moment presents an opportunity to test reforms that would benefit low-income working families for years and decades to come.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here is the original post:

Millions of America's working poor may lose out on key anti-poverty tax credit because of the pandemic - Chicago Reporter

Ive Witnessed the Decline of the Republican Party – The Atlantic

I grew up in a family of Democrats. My maternal grandfather, who had emigrated from Russia to escape czarist pogroms, moved to Minneapolis and became a labor leader, a member of the small kitchen cabinet that convinced Hubert Humphrey to enter politics and run for mayor of the city. My idols, growing up were giants of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, including Humphrey, Orville Freeman, Walter Mondale, Art Naftalin, and Donald Fraser.

I was a young student at the University of Minnesota before I talked to a Republican at length. Thats where I met Doug Head, the state attorney general. He was a thoughtful intellectual and, like the core of the Minnesota Republican Party, a moderate conservative, far more center than right. His emphasis on public service made a lasting impression, helping me understand that I could share a common commitment with people who disagreed with me on policy.

I came to Washington in 1969 on a congressional fellowship. Although I was working for Don Fraser, William Steiger, a young Republican representative from Wisconsin, soon became another mentor. Steiger loved the House and the congressional-fellowship program, and opened his door to me regularly to come and talk about politics, governance, and careers. He seemed destined for a major leadership role, before he died of a heart ailment at 40.

When I moved to the Senate for the second half of my fellowship in 1970, I was assigned to George McGovern. He had put together an informal committee to push for a vote to end the Vietnam War. I worked closely with Republicans, including Mark Hatfield, Charles Goodell, and Jacob Javits. The task was not easy for themafter all, they were directly challenging President Nixon. The work was sometimes intense. I saw, up close, a bitter confrontation over Vietnam between McGovern and Bob Dole. But later, I would watch them develop a working relationship to combat hunger, and then forge a close friendship that lasted four decades, until McGoverns death.

William J. Burns: Polarized politics has infected American diplomacy

Plenty of the Republicans I dealt with in the past were fierce partisans, including Dole and John Rhodes. But when pushed, they put country firstthat was the basis on which they could forge bonds across the aisle. I had strong relationships in years past with a number of Republicans currently in the Senate. But none of them have, in recent years, behaved in a fashion that would meet the values of the party of Domenici, Steiger, or Dole.

The country obviously needs a major change in its politics, a purging of the status quo. It faces challenges both societal and structural that go beyond Trump and the two parties. The United States must recover from the pandemic and rebuild its economy, while confronting head-on the issue of racism. But we cannot long operate as a democracy without two problem-solving parties that aim to compete for genuine majorities in the country.

Read the original post:

Ive Witnessed the Decline of the Republican Party - The Atlantic

Pyxis Tankers Announces Financial Results for the Three and Six Months Ended June 30, 2020 – GlobeNewswire

Maroussi, Greece, August 10, 2020 Pyxis Tankers Inc. (NASDAQ Cap Mkts: PXS), (the Company or Pyxis Tankers), a growth-oriented pure play product tanker company, today announced unaudited results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2020.

Summary

For the three months ended June 30, 2020, our Revenues, net were $5.5 million. For the same period, our time charter equivalent (TCE) revenues were $4.5 million, a decrease of approximately $1.0 million or 17.1% over the comparable period in 2019 primarily due to the reduction in fleet size as we sold our oldest MR in early 2020. However, our net loss decreased by $0.4 million to $1.2 million, from $1.6 million in the comparable period in 2019. For the second quarter 2020, loss per share (basic and diluted) was $0.06 and our Adjusted EBITDA was $1.1 million, which represented a decrease of $0.2 million over the comparable period in 2019. Please see Non-GAAP Measures and Definitions below.

Valentios Valentis, our Chairman and CEO commented:

The chartering environment for product tankers in the second quarter of 2020 was extremely volatility. The spot market for MRs experienced a brief spike during late April to early May, which was then followed by a rapid drop in rates until the recent stabilization of rates. The period market, albeit more stable, did encounter a material decline in activity during the quarter. The initially strong charter rates at the outset of the second quarter were primarily due to demand for floating storage of crude oil and refined petroleum products, the movement of a fair number of long-range tankers into dirty or crude trades and various arbitrage opportunities. Despite the start of a gradual but uneven economic recovery worldwide from the COVID-19 pandemic during the quarter, a drawdown of high existing product inventories has resulted in lower vessel demand. Consequently, we expect the product tanker sector to continue to experience significant volatility due to the uncertain recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, we have focused our employment strategy for our MRs on shorter-term, staggered time charters which has benefited the Company. In the second quarter of 2020, the average TCE for our MRs was over $14,800/day. As of August 6, 2020, we had booked 62% of available days for the third quarter of 2020, exclusive of charterers options, at an average rate of $15,125 for our MRs.

During this challenging period, we have continued to focus on the efficiencies of our operating platform, as fleet-wide daily operating expenses declined to less than $5,500 per vessel for the quarter. Total daily operational costs, which include vessel management fees and allocable G&A expenses, for our modern eco-efficient MRs were less than $8,000. In addition, we have improved our balance sheet liquidity by selling older tonnage and refinancing some of our bank debt on attractive terms.

Overall, we maintain a positive outlook about the long-term prospects for the product tanker sector. Solid global GDP growth is expected to return with rising demand for seaborne transportation of a broad range of petroleum products. In the meantime, the supply picture looks better due to the aging global fleet, continued low ordering of new tankers and significant delays in newbuild deliveries. We look forward to taking advantage of various opportunities as they may arise in order to enhance shareholder value.

Lastly, we would like to extend our gratitude to the crews on board our vessels and onshore personnel for their continued support and professionalism to provide high quality and reliable service to our customers particularly during this difficult period of the pandemic.

Results for the three months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020

For the three months ended June 30, 2020, we reported a net loss of $1.2 million, or $0.06 basic and diluted loss per share, compared to a net loss of $1.6 million, or $0.08 basic and diluted loss per share, for the same period in 2019. The daily TCE of $11,766 during the second quarter of 2020 was 2% higher than the relevant period in 2019, due to slightly higher rates, however, our Revenues, net during the three months ended June 30, 2020, were $5.5 million or $1.0 million lower than the comparable period in 2019. The decrease is mostly attributed to fewer available days and revenue contributed, as a result of the sale of the 2006 built MR, Pyxis Delta, in the first quarter of 2020. The sale of the vessel, also resulted in less vessel operating expenses by $0.7 million, lower depreciation by $0.3 million and less interest and finance costs, net by $0.3 million, following the repayment of the loan secured by Pyxis Delta, which more than offset the decline in Revenues, net and mitigated the loss for the three months ended June 30, 2020. Our Adjusted EBITDA was $1.1 million, representing a decrease of $0.2 million from $1.3 million for the same period in 2019.

Results for the six months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020

For the six months ended June 30, 2020, we reported a net loss of $2.4 million, or $0.11 basic and diluted loss per share, compared to a loss of $3.9 million over the comparable period in 2019. Stronger daily TCE of $11,844 and higher utilization of 89.3% during the six-month period ended June 30, 2020, compared to $11,096 and 87.3%, respectively, for the first half of 2019, resulted in an improvement in operating income to $0.1 million during the first half of 2020 compared to the operating loss of $1.0 million in the comparable period of 2019. Operating expenses, depreciation, management fees and interest and finance costs were lower as a result of the sale of Pyxis Delta and the prepayment of the associated loans, mitigating the loss in the period ended June 30, 2020.

Our Adjusted EBITDA was $2.4 million, an increase of $0.6 million from $1.8 million for the same period in 2019.

1 Subject to rounding; please see Non-GAAP Measures and Definitions below2 Pyxis Delta was sold on January 13, 2020, and has been excluded from the calculation for the six months ended June 30, 2020 (the vessel had been under TC employment for approximately 2 days in January 2020 when it was redelivered from charterers in order to be sold).

Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Results for the Three Months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020 (Amounts are presented in million U.S. dollars, rounded to the nearest one hundred thousand, except as otherwise noted)

Revenues, net: Revenues, net of $5.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $1.0 million, or 15.0%, from $6.5 million in the comparable period in 2019, as a result of less available days and revenue contribution following the sale of our oldest MR, Pyxis Delta, in the first quarter of 2020, partially offset by higher charter rates.

Voyage related costs and commissions: Voyage related costs and commissions of $1.0 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020 remained relatively stable over the comparable period in 2019.

Vessel operating expenses: Vessel operating expenses of $2.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a significant decrease of $0.7 million, or 20.6%, from $3.2 million in the comparable period in 2019 mainly attributed to the vessel sale.

General and administrative expenses: General and administrative expenses of $0.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of less than $0.1 million, or 12.3%, from the comparable period in 2019 due to timing of certain incurred costs.

Management fees: For the three months ended June 30, 2019, management fees paid to our ship manager, Pyxis Maritime Corp. (Maritime), an entity affiliated with our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Valentis, and to International Tanker Management Ltd. (ITM), our fleets technical manager, also decreased, as a result of one less vessel, by $0.1 million from $0.4 million in the comparable period of 2019.

Amortization of special survey costs: Amortization of special survey costs of less than $0.1 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of 30.4% compared to the same period in 2019, due to the write-off of the remaining unamortized balance associated with the sale of vessel.

Depreciation: Depreciation of $1.1 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $0.3 million or 19.8% compared to the three months ended June 30, 2019, due to fewer depreciable days for a five vessel fleet during the second quarter of 2020, compared to the depreciable days for a six vessel fleet during the second quarter of 2019.

Interest and finance costs, net: Interest and finance costs, net, of $1.2 million for the three months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $0.3 million, or 18.7%, from $1.5 million in the comparable period in 2019. The decrease was mainly attributed to the prepayment of the debt following the sale of Pyxis Delta and to the lower LIBOR rates paid on floating rate bank debt compared to the same period of 2019.

Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Results for the Six Months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020 (Amounts are presented in million U.S. dollars, rounded to the nearest one hundred thousand, except as otherwise noted)

Revenues, net: Revenues, net of $12.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $1.1 million, or 8.0%, from $13.2 million in the comparable period in 2019. The decrease in revenues, net during the six-month period ended June 30, 2020 was mostly attributed to the sale of the Pyxis Delta, on January 13, 2020, which resulted in the decrease of our total available days from 1,058 days during the six months ended June 30, 2019, to 898 days during the same period in 2020. Furthermore, the decrease in our revenues, net was also a function of lower spot chartering activity of our MRs during the six-month period ended June 30, 2020, compared to the same period in 2019, partially offset by higher rates.

Voyage related costs and commissions: Voyage related costs and commissions of $2.6 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $0.3 million, or 10.2%, from $2.9 million in the comparable period in 2019. For the six months ended June 30, 2020, our MRs were on spot charters for 29 days in total, compared to 48 days for the respective period in 2019. This lower spot chartering activity for our MRs contribute to less voyage costs as under spot charters, all voyage expenses are typically borne by us rather than the charterer. Furthermore, the decrease in revenues, net during the six-months ended June 30, 2020, resulted in lower broker commissions compared to the same period in 2019, contributing further to the decrease in voyage related costs and commissions.

Vessel operating expenses: Vessel operating expenses of $5.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a significant decrease of $1.2 million, or 18.3%, from $6.4 million in the comparable period in 2019. This is mainly attributed to the sale of Pyxis Delta.

General and administrative expenses: General and administrative expenses of $1.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a slight decrease of less than $0.1 million, or 6.2%, from the comparable period in 2019, due to improved cost efficiencies.

Management fees: For the six months ended June 30, 2020, management fees payable to Maritime and ITM of $0.8 million in the aggregate, represented a decrease of less than $0.1 million compared to the six months ended June 30, 2019, as a result of the vessel sale.

Amortization of special survey costs: Amortization of special survey costs of $0.1 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of 17.1%, compared to the same period in 2019 due to the write-off of the amortization of special survey costs for Pyxis Delta, after vessel sale.

Depreciation: Depreciation of $2.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $0.5 million compared to the same period in 2019, due to less depreciable days for a five vessel fleet in 2020 as compared with the depreciable days for a six vessel fleet for the same period in 2019.

Interest and finance costs, net: Interest and finance costs, net, of $2.5 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020, represented a decrease of $0.4 million, or 13.4%, from $2.9 million in the comparable period in 2019. The decrease was attributable to lower LIBOR rates paid on floating rate bank debt compared to the same period in 2019 and the prepayment of the associated outstanding loan of Pyxis Delta upon its sale. The total borrowings outstanding decreased to $51.7 million at June 30, 2020 from $61.2 million a year earlier.

Unaudited Interim Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive LossFor the three months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020(Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars, except for share and per share data)

Unaudited Interim Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive LossFor the six months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020(Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars, except for share and per share data)

Consolidated Balance SheetsAs of December 31, 2019 and June 30, 2020 (unaudited)(Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars, except for share and per share data)

Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Cash FlowsFor the six months ended June 30, 2019 and 2020(Expressed in thousands of U.S. dollars)

Liquidity, Debt and Capital Structure

Pursuant to our loan agreements, as of June 30, 2020, we were required to maintain minimum liquidity of $3.9 million including reserves for special surveys and dry dockings. Total cash and cash equivalents, including restricted cash, aggregated $3.9 million as of June 30, 2020.

Total funded debt (in thousands of U.S. dollars), net of deferred financing costs:

Our weighted average interest rate on our total funded debt for the six months ended June 30, 2020 was 8.1%.

On January 13, 2020, pursuant to the sale agreement that we entered into in late 2019, Pyxis Delta was delivered to her buyers. The total net proceeds from the sale of the vessel were approximately $13.2 million, $5.7 million of which was used to prepay the loan facility secured by Pyxis Delta and Pyxis Theta and $7.5 million for the repayment of our liabilities to Maritime and obligations to our trade creditors.

On April 3, 2020, we issued 71,007 restricted common shares to Maritime Investors Corp., a company related to Mr. Valentios Valentis, our chairman and chief executive officer, at the volume weighted average closing share price for the 10-day period immediately prior to the quarter end, related to the settlement of interest due under the second amendment to the Amended & Restated Promissory Note.

At June 30, 2020, we had a total of 21,491,475 common shares issued and outstanding of which Mr. Valentis beneficially owned 80.7%.

Non-GAAP Measures and Definitions

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) represents the sum of net income / (loss), interest and finance costs, depreciation and amortization and, if any, income taxes during a period. Adjusted EBITDA represents EBITDA before certain non-operating or non-recurring charges, such as vessel impairment charges, gain from debt extinguishment and stock compensation. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are not recognized measurements under U.S. GAAP.

EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA are presented in this press release as we believe that they provide investors with means of evaluating and understanding how our management evaluates operating performance. These non-GAAP measures have limitations as analytical tools, and should not be considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not reflect:

In addition, these non-GAAP measures do not have standardized meanings and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. The following table reconciles net loss, as reflected in the Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Loss to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA:

Daily TCE is a shipping industry performance measure of the average daily revenue performance of a vessel on a per voyage basis. Daily TCE is not calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. We utilize daily TCE because we believe it is a meaningful measure to compare period-to-period changes in our performance despite changes in the mix of charter types (i.e. spot charters, time charters and bareboat charters) under which our vessels may be employed between the periods. Our management also utilizes daily TCE to assist them in making decisions regarding employment of the vessels. We calculate daily TCE by dividing Revenues, net after deducting Voyage related costs and commissions, by operating days for the relevant period. Voyage related costs and commissions primarily consist of brokerage commissions, port, canal and fuel costs that are unique to a particular voyage, which would otherwise be paid by the charterer under a time charter contract.

Vessel operating expenses (Opex) per day are our vessel operating expenses for a vessel, which primarily consist of crew wages and related costs, insurance, lube oils, communications, spares and consumables, tonnage taxes as well as repairs and maintenance, divided by the ownership days in the applicable period.

We calculate utilization (Utilization) by dividing the number of operating days during a period by the number of available days during the same period. We use fleet utilization to measure our efficiency in finding suitable employment for our vessels and minimizing the amount of days that our vessels are off-hire for reasons other than scheduled repairs or repairs under guarantee, vessel upgrades, special surveys and intermediate dry-dockings or vessel positioning. Ownership days are the total number of days in a period during which we owned each of the vessels in our fleet. Available days are the number of ownership days in a period, less the aggregate number of days that our vessels were off-hire due to scheduled repairs or repairs under guarantee, vessel upgrades or special surveys and intermediate dry-dockings and the aggregate number of days that we spent positioning our vessels during the respective period for such repairs, upgrades and surveys. Operating days are the number of available days in a period, less the aggregate number of days that our vessels were off-hire or out of service due to any reason, including technical breakdowns and unforeseen circumstances.

EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and daily TCE are not recognized measures under U.S. GAAP and should not be regarded as substitutes for Revenues, net and Net income. Our presentation of EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and daily TCE does not imply, and should not be construed as an inference, that our future results will be unaffected by unusual or non-recurring items and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for a measure of performance prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

Recent Daily Fleet Data:

* Pyxis Delta was sold on January 13, 2020, and has been excluded from the calculations for the three and six months ended June 30, 2020 (the vessel had been under TC employment for approximately 2 days in January when it was re-delivered from charterers in order to be sold).

Subsequent Events

On July 1, 2020, the Company issued 68,410 of common shares at the volume weighted average closing share price for the 10 day period immediately prior to the quarter end related to the settlement of interest due under the second amendment to the Amended & Restated Promissory Note.

On July 8, 2020, Seventhone (the Companys subsidiary that owns the Pyxis Theta) entered into a new five year $15.3 million secured loan agreement, for the purpose of refinancing the outstanding indebtedness under the previous loan facility. The proceeds were used to prepay the outstanding indebtedness of $11.3 million in full as well as provide for working capital.

Conference Call and Webcast

We will host a conference call to discuss our results at 4:30 p.m., Eastern Time, on Monday, August 10, 2020.

Participants should dial into the call 10 minutes before the scheduled time using the following numbers: 1 (877) 553-9962 (US Toll Free Dial In), 0(808) 238-0669 (UK Toll Free Dial In) or +44 (0) 2071 928592 (Standard International Dial In). Please quote "Pyxis Tankers".

A telephonic replay of the conference call will be available until Monday, August 17, 2020, by dialing 1(866) 331-1332 (US Toll Free Dial In), 0(808) 238-0667 (UK Toll Free Dial In) or +44 (0) 3333 009785 (Standard International Dial In). The access code required for the replay is: 5478965#.

A live webcast of the conference call will be available through our website (http://www.pyxistankers.com) under our Events & Presentations page.

Webcast participants of the live conference call should register on the website approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the webcast and can also access it through the following link:

https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2402820/A0A878CB6684BA4A9DE320FAD1C9E970

An archived version of the webcast will be available on the website within approximately two hours of the completion of the call.

The information discussed on the conference call, or that can be accessed through, Pyxis Tankers Inc.s website is not incorporated into, and does not constitute part of this report.

About Pyxis Tankers Inc.

We own a modern fleet of five tankers engaged in seaborne transportation of refined petroleum products and other bulk liquids. We are focused on growing our fleet of medium range product tankers, which provide operational flexibility and enhanced earnings potential due to their eco features and modifications. Pyxis Tankers is positioned to opportunistically expand and maximize the value of its fleet due to competitive cost structure, strong customer relationships and an experienced management team, whose interests are aligned with those of its shareholders. For more information, visit: http://www.pyxistankers.com. The information discussed contained in, or that can be accessed through, Pyxis Tankers Inc.s website, is not incorporated into, and does not constitute part of this report.

Pyxis Tankers Fleet (as of August 6, 2020)

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 applicable securities laws. The words expected'', estimated, scheduled, could, should, anticipated, long-term, opportunities, potential, continue, likely, may, will, positioned, possible, believe, expand and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements. But the absence of such words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. All statements that are not statements of either historical or current facts, including among other things, our expected financial performance, expectations or objectives regarding future and market charter rate expectations and, in particular, the effects of COVID-19 on our financial condition and operations and the product tanker industry in general, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions, expectations and estimates of management of Pyxis Tankers Inc. (we, our or Pyxis) at the date the information is made, and is based on a number of assumptions and subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. Although we believe that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, those are not guarantees of our future performance and you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information because we cannot give any assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements and information address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated or implied in such information. Factors that might cause or contribute to such discrepancy include, but are not limited to, the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). The forward-looking statements and information contained in this presentation are made as of the date hereof. We do not undertake any obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except in accordance with U.S. federal securities laws and other applicable securities laws.

Company

Pyxis Tankers Inc.59 K. Karamanli StreetMaroussi 15125 Greeceinfo@pyxistankers.com

Visit our website at http://www.pyxistankers.com

Company Contact

Henry WilliamsChief Financial OfficerTel: +30 (210) 638 0200 / +1 (516) 455-0106Email: hwilliams@pyxistankers.com

Source: Pyxis Tankers Inc.

Read the original:

Pyxis Tankers Announces Financial Results for the Three and Six Months Ended June 30, 2020 - GlobeNewswire

Coronavirus live updates: 97,000 kids tested positive the last two weeks of July; college football faces decision time on fall season – USA TODAY

Dr. Larry Brilliant, known for his role in helping to eradicate smallpox, says we can defeat COVID-19 if we can get our wits about us. USA TODAY

As the U.S. reached another bleak milestone on Sunday,a glimmer of hope from New York: The Empire State reported its lowest positivityrate since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

New York, for weeks the epicenter of the U.S.outbreak,reportedthe rate the average number of positive results for every 100 tests hit a record low 0.78% on Saturday. That figure once reached nearly 47% in early April, although testing was much more limited at the time. The rate had been around 1% since early June.

Meanwhile, the U.S. hit 5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, just 17 days after reaching 4 million cases but experts agree the number of cases is actually much greater potentially 10 times higher than what's been reported,according to federal data.

The U.S. remains the most infected country, with about 25% of the worldwide cases.

Here are some significant developments:

Today's numbers:The U.S. has recorded more than 162,000 deaths and 5 million cases of COVID-19, according toJohns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 731,000 deaths and 19.8 million cases.

What we're reading:Without a national plan on how to best allocate hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 tests each day, there'snot enough capacity now to screen Americans who might unwittingly pass the virus to others.

Disney World reopened nearly a month ago, and most Disney theme parks around the globe have also reopened after closing due to the coronavirus pandemic.One that hasn't: Disneyland.

And it's unlikely that the Anaheim, California, park will reopen anytime soon. California leads the nation in coronavirus cases more than 550,000 on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins data and state officials aren't ready to let theme parks reopen.

Disneyland is waiting on guidance from state officials, and the company did not offer additional details.

Also in California, the state'stop public health official,Dr. Sonia Angell,resigned Sunday. Angell's departure comes as California announced a fix for a glitch that caused a lag in reporting coronavirus test results used to make decisions about reopening businesses and schools.

Curtis Tate

Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero tested positive for COVID-19, Guam'sgovernment said in a statement Monday.

Leon Guerrero said she had been in contact with a close relative who had tested positive and she later tested positive after experiencing symptoms. "I remain in good health despite exhibiting moderate symptoms of the virus,"Leon Guerrero added.

Pacific Daily News staff

Officials at theWuhan Institute of Virology shot down the claim that the new coronavirus originated at their lab before eventually spreading around the world as NBC News provided an inside look at the facility.

In the first report by a foreign news organization from inside the lab, NBC News met with scientists who said they have been unfairlyscapegoated as they continue to research the origins of the virus.

"Any person would inevitably feel very angry or misunderstood being subject to unwarranted or malicious accusations while carrying out research and related work in the fight against the virus,"Wang Yanyi, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, told NBC News.

President Donald Trump and other administration officials have claimed without evidence that the virus originated in the Wuhan facility. The lab is equipped to study coronaviruses and other dangerous diseases.Yuan Zhiming, vice director of the institute, told NBC News that it first receivedsamples of the viruson Dec. 30, but the news outlet could not verify the claim.

Fitted N95 masksare the most effective atfiltering respiratory droplets from the mask's wearer while neck fleeces offer little protection compared to others, a team of Duke University researchers found.

Using 14commonly available masks as well as a professional fit-tested N95 and apatch of mask material, the researchers set up an experiment using a laser light and camera to show how many respiratory droplets are emitted when a person wearing each kind of mask speaks for 10 seconds.

Each mask was tested 10 times, and the results show that in addition to fitted N95 masks, surgical and cotton masks are also most effective at filtering droplets. Knitted masks andbandannas, similar to neck fleeces, offered little protection.

After theMid-American Conference canceled its football season,college football finds itself in a confusing place.In conversations with more than a dozen college sports officials over the weekend, the witching hour has brought to campuses and college presidents a more clear-eyed reality about what they dont know related to COVID-19 and the potential liabilities surrounding a virus whose long-term impact on the body is unclear.

The problem is, nobody wants to be the one to say what the majority of college athletics now instinctively knows: Rushing to play football right now just isnt a very good idea.

ESPN reported thatthe Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting Sunday. While no decision was made,Big Ten presidents were ready to postpone their seasons and wanted to gauge whether top officials at schools in the other conferences would do the same, ESPN reported.

The overriding piece of this is its just not clearing up like we all hoped, said one athletics director, who spoke to USA TODAY Sportson the condition of anonymity. This is just too difficult for us to really believe that its right for us to go forward at the moment. It feels like were heading for a pause.

Dan Wolken

As three statesset records for new cases in a week and three othershad a record number of deaths, Americans are stillsearching for domestic vacation destinations that include places where COVID-19 case counts are rising, USA TODAY analyses show.

According to aUSA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data through late Sunday, new case records were set in Hawaii, Indiana and North Dakota while record numbers of deaths were reported in Arkansas, Nevada and West Virginia, and also Puerto Rico.

Yet an analysis of data from Trivago, a platform for searching and booking hotels, showsAmericans'intention to travel is beginning to tick up again.

Trivago measures hotel search volume, which reflects travel requests and booking queries based on users link clicks. Last months volume was off 73% from the same time in 2019. And while it'sbeen up and down for months, Florida remained the countrys most-searched domestic travel destination, followed by California and Nevada.

Dian Zhang, David Oliver and Mike Stucka

At least 97,000 children in the United States tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July alone, according toa new reportfrom the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Childrens Hospital Association.

All told, more than338,000 children have been infected since the pandemic began, according to data from the report,which relied on data from 49 states along with Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam.

Whether President Donald

announced an executive order Saturday that extends additional unemployment payments of up to $400 a week. Congress had approved payments of $600 a week at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak, but those benefits expired Aug. 1 and Congress has been unable to agree on an extension.

But under Trumps plan, the $400 a week requires a state to commit to providing $100.

Asked at a news conference how many governors had signed on to participate, Trump answered: If they dont, they dont. Thats up to them.

Trump expressed a different view on Sunday night, following a day of state officials questioning how they could afford even $100 per person in additional weekly payments. He told reporters as he returned to Washington that states could make application to have the federal government provide all or part of the $400 payments. Decisions would be made state by state, he said.

Brittany Goddards final semester at Howard University isnt the dream ending she imagined in Washington, D.C.

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the U.S. economy in March,she scrambled to pack up her belongings, lost her part-time job and had her study abroad plans upended.And with just weeks to go before the fall semester begins, shes worried about how shell pay the remaining balance of her tuition and fees roughly $9,000 since her financial aid wont cover it at the private school.

Its heartbreaking. Im a low-income student. I can't afford tuition, says Goddard,who created a GoFundMe page to raise money since her mother doesnt have the means to take out another Parent PLUS Loan, a federal student loan available to parents of dependent undergraduate students.

Millions of students across the country, like Goddard, face financial strains and health fears as they decide whether to return to colleges and universities this fall.

Jessica Menton

New York took another major step in its recovery Sunday when the state reported its lowest positivity rate since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the rate the average number of positive results for every 100 tests hit a record low 0.78% on Saturday.Both the state and New York City have been at some version of the final stage of reopening for at least 20 days, and Cuomo said the current number of ICU patients 131 was the state's lowest since March 16.

The St. Louis Cardinals, who have played a major league-low five games because of a coronavirus outbreak in their ranks, won't get back on the field until at least Thursday.

MLB has postponed their three-game seriesagainst the Pittsburgh Pirates, which was supposed to start Monday, meaning the Cardinals will go at least15 days between games and will have just 46 days to play the remaining 55 games on the schedule.

The Cardinals have had at least nine players and seven staff members test positive for COVID-19, and manager Mike Shildt said that has led to a "few visits to the ER." St. Louis has had 15 games suspended.

Jesse Yomtov

New Zealand marked 100 days with a local transmission of COVID-19 on Sunday, the country's Ministry of Health said.

Achieving 100 days without community transmission is a significant milestone, however, as we all know, we cant afford to be complacent, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said.

We have seen overseas how quickly the virus can re-emerge and spread in places where it was previously under control, and we need to be prepared to quickly stamp out any future cases in New Zealand, he said.

There are still 23 active cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation facilities, the Ministry's news release said.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

The U.S. hit 5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 Sunday, just17 days after reaching 4 million cases.The nation now has about 25% of cases reported worldwide.

Last week, President Donald Trump once again said the U.S. has the virus "under control," describing his administration's response to the pandemic as "incredible" in aninterview with Axios aired Aug. 3 on HBO. This despite an average daily death toll hovering around 1,000, with almost 60,000 new cases being reported daily.Alabama has just hit 100,000 cases. South Carolina is 540 shy and Virgina is 811 short. Texas is about closing in on500,000.

Trump's recurring theme has been to blame the high number of cases in the U.S.on the high rate of testing. Ominous hospitalization and death rates, however, are not a function of testing.

Khrysgiana Pineda and Mike Stucka

Several students and staff members at Atlanta-area schools that drew attention for crowding and scarce use of masks have tested positive for the coronavirus after the first week of classes, and now one of those schools is going online.

North Paudling High School west of Atlanta will switch to digital learning at least for Monday and Tuesday as its facilities are sanitized after nine students and staff members tested positive for the virus the first week of in-person classes.North Paulding had made headlines soon after students returned to school Aug. 3 when photos posted on social media showed hallways crowded with students, many of them not wearing masks.

And after only one week of school, more than 250 students and teachers from one Georgia school district will be asked to quarantine for two weeks after several teachers and students tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Cherokee County School District's website.

Doug Stanglin and Joel Shannon

On Facebook:There's still a lot unknown about the coronavirus. But what we do know, we're sharing with you.Join our Facebook group,Coronavirus Watch,to receive daily updates in your feed and chat with others in the community about COVID-19.

In your inbox:Stay up-to-date with the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic from the USA TODAY Network.Sign up for thedailyCoronavirus Watchnewsletter here.

Tips for coping:Every Saturday and Tuesday we'll be in your inbox, offering you a virtual hug and a little bit of solace in these difficult times.Sign up forStaying Apart, Togetherhere.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/10/coronavirus-live-updates-trump-executive-actions-us-5-million-cases/3331751001/

Continued here:

Coronavirus live updates: 97,000 kids tested positive the last two weeks of July; college football faces decision time on fall season - USA TODAY

Brazil Reaches Milestone of More Than 100,000 Covid-19 Deaths and 3 Million Cases – The New York Times

At 5 million cases, the U.S. has passed another coronavirus milestone.

While politicians wrangled over a pandemic relief package and schools struggled over whether to open their doors to students, the United States passed another milestone on Saturday: more than five million known coronavirus infections.

No other country has reported as many cases. Brazil ranks second, with more than three million, and India is third with two million. (In cases per capita, the United States ranks eighth, between Oman and Peru.)

The data, from a New York Times database, is based on reports of known cases from federal, state and local officials. Public health experts have warned that the actual number of people infected is far greater.

Cases are trending upward in seven states, as well as in Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and decreasing in 17, according to The Times database. In the past week, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida had the most new cases relative to population.

The United States reported its millionth case on April 28, more than three months after the first reported case. The country passed two million cases on June 10, three million on July 7 and four million on July 23.

The United States now tests roughly 720,000 people a day, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.

The number of new coronavirus cases daily peaked on July 16, with 75,697. It has been slowly tapering off since then, to a seven-day average of around 54,000 per day.

At least 161,000 people have died since the pandemic began. The seven-day average daily death toll is hovering around 1,000. That is down from a peak of more than 2,200 on a single day in mid-April, when bigger cities like New York and Seattle were hit the hardest. (The most deadly single day was April 15, with 2,752.)

But the seven-day average daily death toll is now significantly higher than it was in early July, when it was around 500. Cases have surged since then particularly in the Sun Belt states and in communities where officials moved quickly to reopen. Many of the places with the most cases per capita have been smaller cities and rural communities in the South and the Midwest.

President Trump took executive action on Saturday to circumvent Congress and try to extend an array of federal pandemic relief, resorting to a legally dubious set of edicts whose impact was unclear, as negotiations over an economic recovery package appeared on the brink of collapse.

It was not clear what authority Mr. Trump had to act on his own on the measures or what immediate effect, if any, they would have, given that Congress controls federal spending. But his decision to sign the measures billed as a federal eviction ban, a payroll tax suspension, and relief for student borrowers and the unemployed reflected the failure of two weeks of talks between White House officials and top congressional Democrats to strike a deal on a broad relief plan as crucial benefits have expired with no resolution in sight.

Mr. Trumps move also illustrated the heightened concern of a president staring down re-election in the middle of a historic recession and a pandemic, and determined to show voters that he was doing something to address the crises. But despite Mr. Trumps assertions on Saturday that his actions will take care of this entire situation, the orders also leave a number of critical bipartisan funding proposals unaddressed, including providing assistance to small businesses, billions of dollars to schools ahead of the new school year, aid to states and cities and a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks to Americans.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have chosen to hold this vital assistance hostage, Mr. Trump said, savaging the two top Democrats during a news conference at his private golf club in New Jersey, his second in two days. A few dozen club guests were in attendance, and the president appeared to revel in their laughter at his jokes denouncing his political rivals.

Brazil surpasses 100,000 virus deaths a month earlier than health officials predicted.

Five months after its first case of Covid-19, Brazil on Saturday passed the bleak milestones of 100,000 deaths and three million cases, according to a New York Times database.

President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied the severity of Brazils coronavirus crisis even as the death count has risen more quickly than the government anticipated.

Mr. Bolsonaros refusal to support social distancing measures pushed two health ministers out, leaving the countrys response to the virus to be led by a general with no experience in public health.

The ministry has yet to reach an agreement with city and state officials, who have been scrambling to respond with varying levels of success, on how to combat the pandemic.

In early March, officials at Brazils Ministry of Health predicted the virus would kill at least 100,000 of the countrys citizens. But they estimated that number would only be reached in September, said Julio Croda, who then headed the ministrys department overseeing immunization and transmissible diseases.

The presidency wouldnt believe in these numbers, he said. Its one month ahead of schedule because the social distancing measures fell.

Since June, Brazil has frequently reported more than 1,000 new deaths a day, as the number of new infections and deaths plateaued at a high level. Dr. Croda believes the country will continue on this trajectory for some weeks, adding tens of thousands of deaths to its toll in the coming months.

The numbers, he believes, will eventually fall as they have begun to do in severely hit states such as Amazonas when a large number of Brazilians acquire immunity to the virus.

But that has nothing to do with the government, Dr. Croda said. It is a consequence of tragedy.

The usual parental worries about college-bound children whether they will be happy, or productive, or find a suitable major leading to a stable career are getting sidelined this fall by one overwhelming concern: With coronavirus cases spiking in many parts of the country, will students be safe at school?

More than a quarter of U.S. colleges plan to begin fall instruction fully or mostly online, but many are still opening up their dorms. And at many schools, upperclassmen are returning to off-campus apartments, or fraternity or sorority houses. That leaves parents with the choice of forcing their 20-year-olds to stay home against their will, or allowing them to leave and join their friends, knowing the infection data may not be in their favor.

This is a situation where you have to pray for the best and be ready for the worst, said Kelly Hutchison, a retired firefighter and single father in Chicago whose daughter, Katelyn, is a student at Ithaca College.

Some parents are still debating whether their child should take the year off entirely. For schools on the semester system, tuition bills for thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, are due this month. But up until those due dates, colleges are trying to be flexible. In many cases, you can defer admission, or you can take an academic leave, and theyll allow you to come back, said Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Taking such a break, however, may not be realistic, said Jill Schwitzgebel, a college counselor in Celebration, Fla. What is your child going to do with a gap year? she said. Getting a job is tough. Flying overseas is not happening.

Other updates from around the U.S.:

Princeton announced Friday that all undergraduate classes would be held online during the fall semester. In a statement, the universitys president said that the pandemic prevents a genuinely meaningful on-campus experience for undergraduates. On Monday, the university also said it would cut tuition by 10 percent for all undergraduates during the 2020-21 school year.

Johns Hopkins University made a similar announcement on Thursday, moving to remote learning and reducing undergraduate tuition by 10 percent for the fall term.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California released guidance on Friday for colleges and universities that plan to reopen. For schools in counties that are flagged by the state for elevated transmission for three consecutive days, the guidance would prohibit indoor classes. Many of the campuses of California State University, the nations largest four-year public university system, have already committed to remote learning for the fall.

On Thursday, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst backtracked on a previous plan to let students enrolled in online classes live on campus. Just weeks before the semester is scheduled to begin, the university said only a small subset of students enrolled in essential face-to-face classes would be allowed into dorms and dining halls.

Officials at Harvard said on Thursday that they planned to allow up to 40 percent of undergraduates, including the entire freshman class, to return to campus for the fall, but that all instruction would be delivered online. The university has not offered discounted tuition.

At least nine killed in a fire at a makeshift virus clinic in India.

At least nine people were killed after a fire broke out on Sunday at a hotel in southern India that was being used as a makeshift Covid-19 facility, officials said.

The fire, in the city of Vijayawada, occurred at the Swarna Palace hotel, which was being used to shelter and treat patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The police attributed the accident to a short circuit in an air-conditioner on the ground floor. After the blaze broke out early Sunday morning, panicked patients jumped from balconies on the upper floors and several were injured, according to local media outlets.

After most of Indias coronavirus restrictions were lifted in recent weeks, infections have surged, leading some states to move patients into hotels and other makeshift health facilities. As of Sunday, Indias health ministry had reported more than two million total infections and nearly 45,000 deaths.

Tens of thousands of motorcyclists swarmed the streets of Sturgis, S.D., on Saturday for an annual rally despite objections from residents and with little regard for the coronavirus.

The herds of people driving recreational vehicles, bikes and classic cars overran every street in town, making no effort to keep six feet apart. Few masks could be seen, and free bandannas being passed out were mostly folded, or wrapped around peoples heads.

With temperatures in the low 80s and not much cloud cover, many people crowded under shopping tents where Screw Covid shirts were sold, seeking shade.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a 10-day affair that began Friday, is expected to attract roughly 250,000 enthusiasts this year about half the number who attended last year, but a figure that puts it on track to be among the countrys largest public gatherings since the first coronavirus cases emerged.

South Dakota is one of several states that did not impose a lockdown, and state officials have not required residents to wear masks.

Health experts say the coronavirus is less likely to spread outdoors, especially when people wear masks and socially distance. But large gatherings like the motorcycle rally also increase the number of visitors inside restaurants and stores.

A few businesses in Sturgis put up signs limiting the number of customers who could enter, but most did not.

Over the past week, South Dakota has reported an average of 87 coronavirus cases per day. At least two new virus deaths and 106 new cases were reported on Saturday.

Parents in the U.S. are suing schools, demanding they teach children in person.

Two parents sued the school board and health department in Franklin County, Ohio, this week demanding that their sons high school provide in-person classes to start the school year later this month. The lawsuit claims that remote learning, which the district plans to provide to all students until at least Sept. 21, does not meet their sons educational needs.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in other parts of the country, including Springfield, Mo., where three families are demanding five days a week of in-person classes, and California, where more than a dozen parents are seeking to overturn an order by Gov. Gavin Newsom that prevents schools from immediately reopening classrooms in most of the state.

Parents of private school students in Maryland also sued this week to block a Montgomery County order requiring private schools to teach remotely. The order was rescinded on Friday after a battle of authority between the county and the governor.

Distance learning has been proved to be largely ineffective, said Rex Elliott, the lawyer representing the Ohio parents suing the Upper Arlington Board of Education and the Franklin County Health Department. That is devastating to their educational growth in the face of a virus that, in this age group, simply is not a dangerous or lethal concern.

Public health experts continue to debate the evidence over how easily children contract or spread the virus. It is also unclear how often they develop a rare inflammatory condition that has been linked to Covid-19.

Hundreds of children in America, most of them previously healthy, have experienced an inflammatory syndrome associated with Covid-19, and most became so ill that they needed intensive care, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The syndrome, which can be deadly, has rattled parents and education officials as schools across the United States struggle with the prospect of reopening in the fall and the coronavirus continues its spread.

The researchers said that from early March to late July, the C.D.C. received reports of 570 young people ranging from infants to age 20 who met the definition of the new condition, called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children or MIS-C. The reports came from health departments in 40 states, as well as New York City and Washington, D.C.

The patients were disproportionately people of color, echoing a pattern in adults who have been struck by the respiratory disease caused by the virus. About 40 percent were Hispanic or Latino, 33 percent were Black and 13 percent were white, the report said. The median age was 8. About 25 percent of the patients had obesity before becoming sick.

MIS-C was first recognized in May as a condition linked to Covid-19 that appears to occur in children and young people who often had not developed any of the respiratory symptoms that are the primary way the virus attacks adults.

The syndrome, which can include a fever, rash, pinkeye, stomach distress, confusion, bluish lips, muscle weakness, racing heart rate and cardiac shock, appears to emerge days or weeks after the initial viral infection, and experts believe it may be the result of a revved-up immune system response to defeating the viruss first assault.

The C.D.C. reported that about two-thirds of the patients had no previous underlying medical conditions, and most experienced complications that involved four or more organ systems, especially the heart. Ten died. Nearly two-thirds were admitted to intensive care units for a median of five days.

The blockaded Gaza Strip might be among the few places in the world where no cases of community transmission of the coronavirus have been recorded a phenomenon attributed to the coastal enclaves isolation as well as to swift measures taken by its militant Hamas rulers.

But the pandemic has not left Gaza untouched.

Citing a need to combat the virus, the authorities that control Gazas borders have imposed new restrictions on movement outside the territory. That has exacerbated an already challenging situation for Palestinians who say they urgently need to travel to Israel and the West Bank.

Updated August 6, 2020

In March, fearing an outbreak in Gaza, the Hamas authorities ordered all travelers returning to the territory by way of Israel and Egypt to enter quarantine facilities for three weeks. They could not leave quarantine until they had passed two virus tests.

The system seems to have succeeded. All 78 known infections in the territory were detected at quarantine facilities.

Still, experts did not rule out the possibility of the pandemic penetrating into the areas densely populated cities and towns.

All it takes is one small mistake, said Gerald Rockenschaub, the head of the World Health Organizations mission to the Palestinians. Theres no guarantee the virus wont get inside.

Mr. Rockenschaub warned that Gaza lacked the resources to deal with a widespread outbreak, noting that medical institutions had only about 100 adult ventilators, most of which were already in use.

Low-wage and unemployed workers find themselves in limbo as stimulus measures expire.

Before the coronavirus hobbled the U.S. economy, many low-wage workers were already struggling to make ends meet.

After mass layoffs and a deep recession followed in the early months of the pandemic, millions of workers found themselves faced with evictions, late car payments, and crushing medical bills. For many, the main solace through the worst months of the crisis was a broad range of stimulus measures, including $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits.

But with those measures expiring, and no clear indication of whether new ones will replace them, many unemployed workers now find themselves in limbo, struggling to find work in an economy that remains significantly weakened.

Eviction moratoriums are expiring or have expired in much of the country, and a report released Friday warned that 30 million to 40 million tenants risk losing their homes in the coming months. The Paycheck Protection Program, which helped thousands of small businesses to retain workers, also ends this week.

Research from the last recession found that when unemployment benefits ran out, people cut their spending on food, medicine and other necessities, suggesting they were able to do little to prepare for the drop in income.

While wealthier families may be able to draw on savings to get by until Congress strikes a deal to prolong the stimulus, lower-income households face serious long-term consequences from even a temporary lapse in income. An eviction can make it hard to rent in the future. Having a car repossessed can make it hard to find another job. And for children, periods of hunger, homelessness and stress can have long-term effects on development and learning.

While the U.S. economy has slowly added back some jobs that vanished at the beginning of the pandemic, the unemployment rate still stands at over 10 percent. For those who may not return to work for some time, the loss of protections has only added to uncertainty about the future.

Heres how to regulate indoor air when summer weather coincides with a pandemic.

Even as the virus continues to spread widely, and public health officials have urged people to move activities outside as much as possible, the summer heat still tends to demand a great deal of time spent indoors.

For those who regularly share home or office spaces with others for extended periods, this may raise questions about indoor air quality. A growing number of scientists are convinced that significant virus transmission can occur through the air indoors, and that poor ventilation magnifies the risk. But the options available for increasing airflow or filtering out are not all created equal.

Experts have a few recommendations.

If the temperature outside is tolerable, consider opening a few windows to let outdoor air in.

The more outside air you have, the more you dilute the virus, said Jose-Luis Jimenez, an aerosol scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In hotter climates, some air-conditioners can be used safely if they cool and circulate both outdoor and indoor air. But be wary of certain models that only recirculate the air inside.

Those looking to be especially cautious may consider using air filters. But as with air-conditioners, to derive any real benefit consumers should look to those that meet specifications to filter out virus particles that are far smaller than other airborne particles like dust or pollen.

Above all, experts caution that airflow patterns are difficult to predict. The best way to prevent spreading the virus inside may be to avoid holding indoor gatherings altogether.

The political parties in Belgium miss another deadline to form a government, and virus cases are increasing.

Even a pandemic could not bring Belgiums fractious political parties together.

Party leaders blew through a Saturday afternoon deadline to form a new government, more than a year and a half after the last one collapsed. The country has been operating with an emergency minority coalition throughout the coronavirus epidemic.

But the crisis has exposed the weaknesses in a bureaucratic political system it has among the highest Covid-19 death rates in the world. Belgium has nine health ministers who answer to six parliaments. Officials have acknowledged being slow to respond to the outbreak as they haggled over who was responsible for what.

Making ambitious change to the political system or taking up an aggressive economic stimulus package would most likely require a full-fledged majority government, something that has eluded Belgium since December 2018. Leaders of the two largest parties the conservative Flemish separatist party known as the N-VA and the French-speaking Socialists are seeking a majority coalition with smaller parties.

But party leaders said Saturday that they were unable to meet the deadline set by King Philippe, the Belgian head of state. The king extended the deadline, once again, to Aug. 17.

The country is polarized along regional and linguistic lines, making governing perpetually difficult. This is now the longest period without a formal government in Belgian history.

I hope to form a government as soon as possible, said Paul Magnette, the head of the French-speaking Socialists. Our country needs it to effectively combat the epidemic, which sadly is rising again.

New Yorkers, by and large, have adhered to rules mandating social distancing and mask wearing. The diligence has helped keep the coronavirus under control in the city even as outbreaks have raged across the United States, primarily in the South and the West.

As the summer wears on, however, mounting reports of parties, concerts and other social events, like a recent rave under the Kosciuszko Bridge, are raising fears that New Yorks hard-earned stability may be tenuous.

Over the last few weeks, videos and photos posted on social media have shown densely packed, mask-free crowds.

Its illegal, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at a recent news conference, referring to the partying. It not only violates public health, but it violates human decency.

The images contrast sharply with the memories of a brutal spring in New York that left tens of thousands dead, disproportionately ravaging low-income communities and neighborhoods with high numbers of Black and Latino people.

See the original post:

Brazil Reaches Milestone of More Than 100,000 Covid-19 Deaths and 3 Million Cases - The New York Times

August 9 update: The latest on the coronavirus and Maine – Bangor Daily News

Another 17 cases of the new coronavirus have been detected in Maine, health officials said Sunday.

Sundays report brings the total coronavirus cases in Maine to 4,042. Of those, 3,625 have been confirmed positive, while 417 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

No new deaths were reported Sunday, leaving the statewide death toll at 125. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.

Heres a roundup of the latest news on the coronavirus and its impact in Maine:

The wedding industry has become a nearly billion-dollar part of Maines economy, supporting everything from venues, hotels and rental businesses, to caterers, photographers and DJs as Maine has become an increasingly popular destination wedding location. Though most people planning weddings have rescheduled their events for 2021, a dramatically smaller 2020 season puts many of the businesses that support that industry in jeopardy. Emily Burnham, BDN

President Donald Trump on Saturday bypassed the nations lawmakers as he claimed the authority to defer payroll taxes and replace an expired unemployment benefit with a lower amount after negotiations with Congress on a new coronavirus rescue package collapsed. Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

The Postal Service already was facing questions over how it would handle the expected spike of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, but several operational changes imposed by its new leader have led to mail backlogs across the United States as rumors of additional cutbacks swirl, fueling worries about the November vote. Anthony Izaguirre and Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

With confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. hitting 5 million Sunday, by far the highest of any country, the failure of the most powerful nation in the world to contain the scourge has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe. Nicole Winfield and Lisa Marie Pane, The Associated Press

As the new academic year arrives, school systems across the United States are struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Roman Catholic educators have an extra challenge trying to forestall a relentless wave of closures of their schools that has no end in sight. David Crary, The Associated Press

As of Sunday afternoon, the coronavirus has sickened 5,024,088 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 162,707 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.

Here is the original post:

August 9 update: The latest on the coronavirus and Maine - Bangor Daily News

Looking Beyond The Coronavirus Numbers As Plans Are Put In Place For Returning To School, Restaurants Face Restrictions – CBS Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) Every day during this pandemic is marked by the release of the latest number of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

For Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, it is his first thought every morning.

Its such an important factor of how we can function as a community. So I know if those numbers continue to rise as they did in late June early July we have to shut things down. We have to impede peoples activities. . So the lower we keep those numbers like we got in May and June means we can open up more of our economy and kids can go about school activities that are coming up and sports.

Each area school district is needing to make decisions on how to bring students back to education.

Fitzgerald is concerned bringing everyone back together could result in an increase of numbers but he adds, If the kids and the teachers and staff are all wearing their masks and keeping physical distance , and follow the protocol that the district and buildings lay out for people Im sure we can do this safely, Fitzgerald said.

Im sure were going to see Dr. Bogen and her team monitoring this very closely, case investigations, contact tracing, and if there is an outbreak in a building or in a certain school district, Im sure shes going to want to go out and go in and take action with respect to that, rather than shut down the whole system is there is only a hot spot in one area.

KDKAs John Shumway reports:

Fitzgerald says the issue of people congregating has moved from the bars restaurants and social halls to peoples homes. We had people having graduation parties or had a birthday or anniversary whatever now youre going together with extended family and who knows where theyve been.

As for the cries from the restaurant industry, Weve got to do more take out and outdoor dining because the one activity that I know they would like to see is inherently risky.

Asked if he could foresee restaurants being allowed to expand the number of people they seat the County Executive says this:

Its going to be challenging and the reason is its an activity thats inherently risky and inherently potential for spread. Number one you are inside, number two you are close together, and number three not wearing a mask. While eating, youre not wearing your mask. And youre eating, your drinking, youre talking, youre spitting, its a tough environment.

While the restaurant owners are going to Harrisburg to try and get the state to lift restrictions, Fitzgerald says he will follow the lead of Health Department Director Dr. Debra Bogen.

Dr. Bogen put in restrictions on the restaurants before the state and he says theyll make a decision about whether to follow the states lead or remain more strict when the time comes.

The numbers of new cases have settled into a reporting pattern of being lower over the weekend and climbing in the early part of the week. Fitzgerald says, Wed like to see the numbers continue to come down but what I think weve seen is a higher level of cooperation. I think people are taking it more seriously. Again the challenge is going to be when the schools open and all these kids come into to school the students staff cooperating to keep those numbers low.

Fitzgerald worries about the mental health of the community, Absolutely. Because this is something that has impacted not just every individual but every activity that we do, school, work going to church. Family reuniions weddings you could go on.

And there is no end in sight, until we have a vaccine we are going to continue to live with this uncertainty.

Read more:

Looking Beyond The Coronavirus Numbers As Plans Are Put In Place For Returning To School, Restaurants Face Restrictions - CBS Pittsburgh

Black and Hispanic children are impacted more severely by coronavirus, research shows – CNN

A report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday found that Black and Hispanic children are more likely to be hospitalized due to coronavirus than White children. The CDC examined hospitalization records from 14 states and found 576 Covid-19 cases among children who needed hospitalization from March through July 25.

The report found Hispanic children were hospitalized for coronavirus at the highest rate, 16.4 per 100,000 people, followed by Black children at 10.5 per 100,000. In contrast, White children were hospitalized at a rate of 2.1 per 100,000.

The CDC also reported higher rates of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, in these populations. Of 570 cases of MIS-C reported to the CDC by July 29, more than 74% were in Black and Hispanic children.

A study released this week out of Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, found that coronavirus rates are similarly higher among Black and Hispanic children and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

The study examined 1,000 patients tested at a Children's National Covid-19 testing site and found that just 7.3% of White children tested positive for coronavirus, in contrast to 30% of Black children and 46.4% of Hispanic children. Three times as many Black children as White children reported exposure to coronavirus.

Implications for reopening schools

Schools around the nation are currently making decisions about whether children will return to classrooms for in-person classes. A Georgia school district which reopened this week was forced to quarantine at least 260 students and eight teachers after multiple members of the school community tested positive for Covid-19.

While children do experience severe illness from Covid-19 less often than adults, children who are hospitalized need the intensive care unit as often as adults do, at a rate of about one in three, according to the CDC.

Dr. Khalilah Gates, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital told CNN Saturday that the CDC research gives us new information about the virus' impact on children that can help us make informed decisions about opening schools. "We can't back off of testing, and we do have to have more rapid testing," Gates added.

The CDC report on MIS-C noted that 64% of the children with MIS-C required intensive care, and 10 children died.

Health experts have called for additional research into the impact of coronavirus on children, especially that which would help understand the factors driving stark racial inequities.

What's driving these disparities?

Experts say that social determinants of health have led to increased rates of underlying health conditions, like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension in minority communities, placing many at greater risk for coronavirus complications.

Structural conditions also play a role. Rashawn Ray, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow with the Brookings Institution, recently noted that social distancing is a privilege that people of color, who often live in densely populated areas, are not afforded. He said discrimination is "baked into" our society.

People of color are also less likely to have access to healthy food options, recreational spaces and health care.

Health experts have urged action toward addressing the disparities, while acknowledging that fixing them will require a decades-long commitment. A good place to start, says the nation's leading infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, is with increased testing and access to health care in minority communities.

In a Friday conversation with the Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute , Fauci said the disparities brought to light by the pandemic are "unacceptable," and may jolt our society into action.

Read more:

Black and Hispanic children are impacted more severely by coronavirus, research shows - CNN

Why the Coronavirus Is More Likely to Superspread Than the Flu – The New York Times

For a spiky sphere just 120 nanometers wide, the coronavirus can be a remarkably cosmopolitan traveler.

Spewed from the nose or mouth, it can rocket across a room and splatter onto surfaces; it can waft into poorly ventilated spaces and linger in the air for hours. At its most intrepid, the virus can spread from a single individual to dozens of others, perhaps even a hundred or more at once, proliferating through packed crowds in what is called a superspreading event.

Such scenarios, which have been traced to call centers, meat processing facilities, weddings and more, have helped propel a pandemic that, in the span of eight months, has reached nearly every corner of the globe. And yet, while some people seem particularly apt to spread the coronavirus, others barely pass it on.

Theres this small percentage of people who appear to infect a lot of people, said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a physician and mathematical modeling expert who studies infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Estimates vary from population to population, but they consistently show a striking skew: Between 10 and 20 percent of coronavirus cases may seed 80 percent of new infections. Other respiratory diseases, like the flu, are far more egalitarian in their spread.

Figuring out what drives coronavirus superspreading events could be key to stopping them, and expediting an end to the pandemic. Thats the million dollar question, said Ayesha Mahmud, who studies infectious disease dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley.

In a paper posted Friday to the website medRxiv that has not yet been through peer review, Dr. Schiffer and his colleagues reported that coronavirus superspreading events were most likely to happen at the intersection where bad timing and poor placement collide: a person who has reached the point in their infection when they are shedding large amounts of virus, and are doing so in a setting where there are plenty of other people around to catch it.

According to a model built by Dr. Schiffers team, the riskiest window for such transmission may be extremely brief a one- to two-day period in the week or so after a person is infected, when coronavirus levels are at their highest.

The virus can still spread outside this window, and individuals outside it should not let up on measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing, Dr. Schiffer said. But the longer an infection drags on, the less likely a person is to be contagious an idea that might help experts advise when to end self-isolation, or how to allocate resources to those most in need, said Dr. Mahmud, who was not involved in the study.

Catching and containing a person at their most infectious is another matter, however. Some people stricken with the coronavirus start to feel unwell within a couple days, whereas others take weeks, and many never end up experiencing symptoms. The length of the so-called incubation period, which spans the time between infection and the onset of symptoms, can be so variable that some people who catch the virus fall ill before the person who gave it to them does. That rarely happens with the flu, which reliably rouses a spate of symptoms within a couple days of infection.

If the coronavirus reaches a peak in the body before symptoms appear if symptoms appear at all that increase might be very tough to identify without frequent and proactive testing. Symptom-free spikes in virus load appear to happen very often, which really distorts our ability to tell when somebody is contagious, Dr. Schiffer said. That, in turn, makes it all too easy for people to obliviously shed the pathogen.

It really is about opportunity, said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease ecologist at Georgetown University who was not involved in the study. These processes really come together when you are not only infected, but you also dont know youre infected because you dont feel crummy. Some of these unwitting coronavirus chauffeurs, emboldened to go out in public, may end up causing a superspreading event that sends the pathogen blazing through a new population.

This confluence of factors a person in the wrong place at the wrong point in their infection sets the stage for explosive transmission, Dr. Bansal said.

The teams model also pointed to another important variable: the remarkable resilience of the coronavirus when it is aloft.

A growing body of evidence now suggests that the coronavirus can be airborne in crowded, poorly ventilated indoor environments, where it may encounter many people at once. The virus also travels in larger, heavier droplets, but these quickly fall to the ground after they are expelled from the airway and do not have the same reach or longevity as their smaller counterparts. Dr. Schiffer said he thought the coronavirus might be more amenable to superspreading than flu viruses because it is better at persisting in contagious clouds, which can ferry pathogens over relatively long distances.

Its a spatial phenomenon, he said. People further away from the transmitter may be more likely to be infected.

Updated August 6, 2020

Since the start of the pandemic, many comparisons have been drawn between Covid-19 and the flu, both of which are diseases caused by viruses that attack the respiratory tract. But plenty of differences exist, and in many ways the coronavirus is more formidable. This study adds yet another layer to how its different from influenza, said Olivia Prosper, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who uses mathematical models to study infectious diseases but was not involved in the study. Its not just about how sick it makes you, but also its ability to transmit.

Moreover, certain people may be predisposed to be more generous transmitters of the coronavirus, although the details are still a mystery, Dr. Schiffer said.

But when a superspreading event occurs, it likely has more to do with the circumstances than with a single persons biology, Dr. Schiffer said. Even someone carrying a lot of the coronavirus can stave off mass transmission by avoiding large groups, thus depriving the germ of conduits to travel.

A superspreading event is a function of what somebodys viral load is and if theyre in a crowded space, he said. If those are the two levers, you can control the crowding bit.

Both Dr. Mahmud and Dr. Prosper noted that not everyone has the means to practice physical distancing. Some people work essential jobs in packed environments, for instance, and are left more vulnerable to the consequences of superspreading events.

That makes it all the more important for those who can participate in control measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing to remain vigilant about their behavior, Dr. Mahmud said.

Thats what we should be doing, she said. Not just to protect ourselves, but to protect others.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

Originally posted here:

Why the Coronavirus Is More Likely to Superspread Than the Flu - The New York Times

Hours of Talks on U.S. Coronavirus Relief End With No Deal – The New York Times

The report, published on Wednesday by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and 1Vandaag, a current-affairs show, focused on a retirement home where in June almost an entire ward of patients was infected.

Despite wearing face masks continuously except for lunch breaks, 18 staff members were also infected. When a newly installed air-ventilation system was inspected, the health authorities found large quantities of the virus on the mesh covering air intake and extraction units and in its filters.

There is simply no other explanation possible, this is how everybody there got infected, all at the same time, through aerosols, said Maurice de Hond, a data specialist who has long criticized the Dutch health authorities for ignoring spread through aerosols. We need to realize this before autumn comes and more people will gather indoors.

It is unclear why the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has kept its findings secret, but it did tacitly adjust the guidelines for ventilation, according to De Volkskrant. Three days after the report was released internally, the organization started publicly advising to avoid recirculation of air in spaces where several people are present, and refresh the air as often as possible.

Reporting was contributed by Maria Abi-Habib, Geneva Abdul, Hannah Beech, Emily Bobrow, Keith Bradsher, Luke Broadwater, Emma Bubola, Julia Calderone, Benedict Carey, Niraj Chokshi, Emily Cochrane, Patricia Cohen, Melissa Eddy, Thomas Erdbrink, Jacey Fortin, Sheera Frenkel, Maggie Haberman, Mike Ives, Cecilia Kang, Annie Karni, David Leonhardt, Patrick J. Lyons, Tiffany May, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Constant Mheut, Sarah Mervosh, Saw Nang, Richard C. Paddock, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Pranshu Verma, Neil Vigdor, Sui-Lee Wee, Katherine J. Wu, Ceylan Yeginsu, Elaine Yu and Karen Zraick.

Continued here:

Hours of Talks on U.S. Coronavirus Relief End With No Deal - The New York Times

Japan’s coronavirus fatigue is fueling defiance in Tokyo, even as the case count rises – CNN

"Yes, we should listen to the government," Sato said. "But we all have our own situations, we cannot always swallow whatever the government says. We cannot survive without working, we cannot stop going out altogether."

This increasing sense of dissatisfaction with the government's response to the virus comes as Japan appears to be on the brink of another major Covid-19 outbreak. For the past 12 days, the Health Ministry has recorded more than 900 daily infections and Friday marked a new daily high of 1,601 new cases nationwide.

To date, the country has confirmed more than 46,000 cases since the pandemic began, more than half of which have been identified since July. At least 1,062 people have died.

Many of those cases are in Tokyo, the world's most populous city, where fears persist that an untraceable outbreak could quickly spiral out of control. For most of May and June, Tokyo managed to contain the number of new cases to fewer than 100 each day. But cases have steadily increased since then, hitting a single-day high of 472 new infections on August 1. To date, more than 15,000 cases of Covid-19 have been identified in the Japanese capital.

No new state of emergency

Authorities in Tokyo are convinced that many of the city's infections are happening when people go out at night, so they have requested restaurants and bars that serve alcohol to close at 10 p.m. to mitigate the risk of contracting the virus indoors.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday he would not call for a state of emergency despite the fact that more infections are being identified now than during the first state of emergency in April, which lasted for nearly seven weeks.

"The situation is very different from that time," he said. "We are not in a situation where a state of emergency needs to be issued immediately, but we will keep close eyes on it with a high sense of alert."

But critics like 21-year-old university student Soma IIzuka accuse Abe of shying away from leadership at a time when it's needed most.

"He should not think only about pushing the economy," Ilzuka said. "If he (Abe) wants to keep the infection low and kick start the economy, it is necessary to provide compensation (for people stuck at home)."

People like Sato and Ilzuka say leaders need to either do more to focus on people's livelihoods and personal happiness -- or abandon half-measures and go all-in on a lockdown.

Many also argue the government is incredibly out of touch, pointing to a plan to spend $16 billion on travel subsidies to revive the tourism industry -- at a time when cities across the country are struggling with a rising number of infections.

Business owners under pressure

Those in the hospitality industry now face a tough choice: buck the government's 10 p.m. closure request to stay alive -- a potential health risk to customers and staff -- or follow the official advice and eat the loss in sales, even if it proves fatal to the business.

Tokuharu Hirayama has kept his restaurant open throughout the pandemic. But the losses have been devastating. Sales slumped 95% in April compared to March, and though things bounced back slightly, business was down again in July. Hiryama was forced to furlough most of his employees, and some days he works the store alone, making deliveries on the side to help cover costs.

Hirayama is going to comply with the 10 p.m. request, he said, essentially due to peer pressure: neighboring restaurants and bars are doing so.

"Around here, people are very sensitive as to what others around them are thinking," he said. "I didn't think it would be worth it to put up a fight."

Kozo Hasegawa, however, isn't abiding.

Hasegawa is the founder and CEO of Global-Dining, which owns about 40 restaurants and stores in Japan. He's known in the industry as a risk-taking restauranteur and is widely admired for giving his employees a lot of freedom and autonomy -- and then encouraging then to go independent once they gain experience at his company.

Hasegawa said the pandemic has been a "catastrophe" for his business, which only survived because it was in good enough shape to receive a government loan to stay afloat.

Like many other business owners, Hasegawa said he has applied to several loan programs that state-affiliated and private financial institutions offered as part of the government's economic relief package.

He doesn't think the new government regulations to close at 10 p.m. are fair. The virus is not any more infectious from 10 p.m. to midnight, when the bar would have closed, Hasegawa said, so why not let customers decide?

"Luckily or unluckily, I was born a rebel," he said. "I don't like that in Japanese culture, they expect you to obey ... we have a brain to think (for ourselves)," said Hasegawa, who plans to keep his restaurant open until midnight.

Living with the virus

Hasegawa's comments on obedience refer to a Japanese cultural norm known as jishuku, which translates to self-restraint. The belief is that ostentatious behavior is in poor taste during a time of national crisis, and it's a mantra that was repeatedly used after the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster.

While Japanese culture may have a reputation as rule-abiding to the point of inflexible, it's important not to paint the entire society with such a broad brush, according to Kyle Cleveland, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo.

"We should be cautious about overgeneralizing from this, and kind of defining culture in an orientalist kind of way in which we're thinking that there's something really qualitatively different about Japan compared to other Asian countries," he said.

"If you look at countries like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand they also have relatively low case rates, as does Japan. The common characteristic that these various societies have is that they follow the rules. The rules govern societies."

Cleveland doesn't believe that this apparent defiance and anger with the government proves that jishuku is suddenly losing its place in Japanese culture. Rather, he says it may just be that people are evolving to live with the virus and are more willing to accept the risks it poses.

"It's not like jishuku existed a month ago, now it doesn't," he said. "(People) are still practicing social distancing and they're wearing masks and things like this, but they're realizing that they have to have a balance between financial obligations and also just quality of life and so as a result they're starting to get out into the society."

CNN's Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report.

See the original post:

Japan's coronavirus fatigue is fueling defiance in Tokyo, even as the case count rises - CNN

Nation hits 5 million coronavirus cases with few signs of slowing – NBC News

As the U.S. surpassed 5 million coronavirus cases this weekend, the milestone was met with little fanfare as some school districts planned to reopen and thousands descended on Sturgis, South Dakota, for the world's largest annual gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts.

There were more than 160,000 deaths in the country as of Saturday, according to NBC News figures. No other nation has approached the United States' infection figures, with Brazil reporting more than half the American numbers: 2,962,442.

The new highs will not likely mark a plateau or peak if the nation continues to face the virus without a cohesive national strategy on mask-wearing and social distancing, said Dr. Gabe Kelen of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

"There just doesnt seem to be enough will in enough parts of the country to deal with this the way other countries have," said Kelen, director of Johns Hopkins' Department of Emergency Medicine. "We have politicized it tremendously. And a large number of people are in disbelieving mode or fatigued by the idea of staying put."

On Saturday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot criticized people who packed the city's waterfront without observing social distancing. "Don't make us take steps backwards," she tweeted.

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

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered the Department of Water and Power to turn off utilities at party houses that repeatedly flout the rules after a woman was fatally shot at a large gathering at a mansion.

"These large parties are unsafe and can cost Angelenos their lives," Garcetti said at a news conference Wednesday.

In Thousand Oaks, California, a pastor vowed to open his church to 1,500 congregants Sunday in violation of a court order to stay shut.

California has the most cases in the nation553,851but the state with the most deaths remains New York, with 33,583.

Florida had the second-highest number of cases: 526,577.

President Donald Trump promised economic relief Saturday when he signed executive orders to defer payroll taxes through the end of the year for those earning less than $100,000 a year and provide federally enhanced unemployment benefits of $400 through Jan. 31.

Kelen said it's possible the pandemic could slow as fall approaches, and there's evidence that older Americans are taking mask-wearing and social distancing more seriously than younger people.

"Theres a little bit of a glimmer that some of the most vulnerable are managing the threat," he said.

What's more, he said, the rapid development of vaccines is reason for optimism.

"That works psychologically," Kelen said. "It certainly gives us hope that somewhere around the corner were going to have a vaccine."

At this rate, however, it will take about 40 days to reach another milestone in the U.S.: 200,000 deaths.

"Before the year closes out, were almost sure to see 200,000," Kelen said. "Is the worst behind us? If its slightly better than the worst, thats still godawful."

Dennis Romero writes for NBC News and is based in Los Angeles.

Read the original:

Nation hits 5 million coronavirus cases with few signs of slowing - NBC News

What you need to know about coronavirus Monday, Aug. 10 – KING5.com

Find developments on the COVID-19 pandemic and the plan for recovery in the U.S. and Washington state.

Where cases stand in Washington

The United States' failure to contain the spread of the coronavirus has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe, as the world's most powerful country surpassed a global record of 5 million confirmed infections on Sunday, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

As Axios reports, former Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb has sent out a warning, saying that the death toll will "definitely" reach between 200,000 and 300,000 by the end of this year.

New guidelines for fitness centers and gyms will go into effect Monday in Washington state. As part of the updated guidelines, gyms and fitness facilities will need to nearly triple the minimum distance required for patrons exercising indoors, except for those practicing certain team sports.

The new COVID-19 guidance issued by Gov. Jay Inslee for counties in Phase 2 or 3 of reopening increases the requirement of six feet of distance between patrons to 300-square-feet, which is just over 17 feet of space.

Read more from the original source:

What you need to know about coronavirus Monday, Aug. 10 - KING5.com

COVID-19 Daily Update 8-9-2020 – West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

The West Virginia Department of Health andHuman Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on August 9,2020, there have been 322,914 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 7,694 totalcases and 139 deaths.

DHHRhas confirmed the deaths of eight individuals from Mercer County from thePrinceton Health Care Center. Thosewho died include an 80-year old female, an 87-year old female, an 86-year oldfemale, a 79-year old female, a 91-year old male, a 78-year old female, an 89-yearold female, and a 76-year old male. Weare deeply saddened by the passing of these eight West Virginians, said Bill J.Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary. Our condolences are extended to these familiesduring their time of grief.

Thedeaths occurred over the course of the last few weeks but were not reported inan official capacity due to personnel changes at the Mercer County HealthDepartment. A total of 11 individuals have died from the Princeton Health CareCenter; three of these deaths were previously reported by DHHR.

In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.

CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (29/0), Berkeley (669/27), Boone(101/0), Braxton (8/0), Brooke (63/1), Cabell (391/9), Calhoun (6/0), Clay(18/0), Doddridge (6/0), Fayette (148/0), Gilmer (16/0), Grant (120/1),Greenbrier (93/0), Hampshire (76/0), Hancock (108/4), Hardy (57/1), Harrison(218/3), Jackson (162/0), Jefferson (287/7), Kanawha (922/13), Lewis (28/1),Lincoln (87/0), Logan (228/0), Marion (187/4), Marshall (127/4), Mason (56/0),McDowell (61/1), Mercer (196/0), Mineral (119/2), Mingo (171/2), Monongalia(922/17), Monroe (20/1), Morgan (27/1), Nicholas (36/1), Ohio (265/3),Pendleton (39/1), Pleasants (12/1), Pocahontas (40/1), Preston (104/21), Putnam(194/1), Raleigh (246/7), Randolph (205/5), Ritchie (3/0), Roane (15/0),Summers (11/0), Taylor (55/1), Tucker (10/0), Tyler (13/0), Upshur (37/3),Wayne (206/2), Webster (4/0), Wetzel (42/0), Wirt (6/0), Wood (235/12), Wyoming(31/0).

As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Lincoln County in this report.

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. Visitthe dashboard at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.

On July 24,2020, Gov. Jim Justice announced that DHHR, the agency in charge of reportingthe number of COVID-19 cases will transition from providing twice-daily updatesto one report every 24 hours. This becameeffective August 1, 2020.

Visit link:

COVID-19 Daily Update 8-9-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Coronavirus updates: Trump’s executive order on unemployment could take months to implement; hundreds quarantining in Ga. school district – USA TODAY

The orders Trump signed would provide an extra $400 in unemployment benefits, suspend some student loan payments and protect renters from eviction. Wochit

After weeks of stalled congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus stimulus package,President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders Saturday evening as the U.S. was approaching 5 million cases of COVID-19.

Trump, repeatedly referring to the coronavirus as the "China virus," said the orders would provide an additional $400 per week in unemployment benefits, suspend payments on some student loans through the end of the year and protect renters from being evicted from their homes.

"We're coming back very strong. We're doing well with the virus," Trump said, even as the U.S. was leading nations worldwide in confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 and confirmed an additional 50,000 new cases Friday.

Top Democrats criticized the move and unemployment experts were left confused about how it might be implemented, speculating it could take months for states to figure it out.

Meanwhile, South Dakota was hosting one of the largest events since the beginning of the pandemicthe Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an event that is set toattract 250,000 people over the next 10 days, even as experts warn a spike in cases could overwhelm the rural health care system.

Communities of color are dying at higher rates from the novel coronavirus than white Americans. Here's how structural inequities play a role. USA TODAY

Here are some significant developments:

Today's numbers:The U.S. has recorded more than 162,000 deaths and 4.9 million cases of COVID-19, according toJohns Hopkins University. Worldwide, there have been more than 723,000 deaths and 19.4 million cases.

What we're reading: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tested positive, then negative for COVID-19. Thatunderscores how not all tests work the same way, nor do they alwaysprovide identical results. Even the same testtaken twicecan show contradictory outcomes. Here's answers to common questions on the subject.

Our live blog is being updated throughout the day. Refresh for the latest news, and get updates in your inbox withThe Daily Briefing.

Speaking from his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump said his orders would provide an additional $400 per week in unemployment benefits, which is $200 less than the supplemental benefit that expired at the end of July.

Trump said he also would suspend payments on some student loans through the end of the year, protect renters from being evicted from their homes, and instruct employers to defer certain payroll taxes through the end of the year for Americans who earn less than $100,000 annually.

Trump said he decided to act on his own and order the benefits after two weeks of negotiations with congressional Democrats collapsed without an agreement on a new coronavirus relief package.

David Jackson and Michael Collins

Although Trump signed an order to provideenhanced unemployment benefits to millions of out-of-work Americans, its unclear if he has the authority to do so by executive order while side-stepping Congress. And it could take months for states to implement.

He directed the use of funds from FEMAs Disaster Relief Fund, which would be capped at $44 billion, creating confusion among unemployment experts. The move could potentially bypass approval from Congress, some lawyers say, but it also leaves the door open to other challenges.

This is an administrative nightmare, saidMichele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, a think tank that advocates for labor and employment legislation.

States are going to have to set up a new program aside from regular unemployment insurance. It could take months for states to implement this. ... This is just a false promise to the American people.

Read more about the challenges

Jessica Menton

Brazil surpassed a grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Saturday night, and five months after the first reported case the country has not shown signs of crushing the disease.

The nation of 210 million people has been reporting an average of more than 1,000 daily deaths from the pandemic since late May and reported 905 for the latest 24-hour period.

The Health Ministry said there had been a total of 3,012,412 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus death and infection tolls second only to the United States. And as in many nations, experts believe that both numbers are severe undercounts due to insufficient testing.

After only one week of school, more than 250 students and teachers from one Georgia school district will be quarantined for two weeks after several teachers and students tested positive for COVID-19, according to the district's website.

Cherokee County School District,north of Atlanta, is sharing regularupdates on coronavirus cases in its schools on its website. The district has more than 42,000 students.

As of Friday, at least 11 students, ranging in age from first to 12th grade, and two staff members, from variouselementary, middle and high schools, have tested positive for coronavirus, prompting the quarantine order for almost 250 students and staff. The students will receive online instruction during the period.

In a letter to families on Friday, Superintendent Dr. BrianHightower said that the trend of students and staff testing positive every day "will continue as we operate schools during a pandemic." He called on students and staff to use face mask at school.

Doug Stanglin

The Mid-American Conference, facing significant financial losses without the ability to play more than a handful of non-conference games against Power Five opponents this season, became the first Football Bowl Subdivision conference to cancel its fall season on Saturday, a person with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league had not yet made an announcement.

MAC schools have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, as the majority of their revenues for athletics come from university subsidies and student fees. Central Michigan and Akron have dropped multiple sports already, and Bowling Green reversed its decision to shut down the baseball program only after a grassroots fundraising effort.

Besides a small slice ofTVrevenue, MAC schools depend on money fromfootball game guarantees, which amount to appearance fees to play big conference schools. MAC schools stood to make $10.5 million alone this season from non-conference games against the Big Ten.

But with the SEC and notably the Big Ten deciding to play only within their conference,MAC's only Power Five games were Buffalo at Kansas State, Ball State at Iowa State, Miami at Pitt, Ohio at Boston College and Western Michigan at Notre Dame.

Dan Wolken

Nearly five months after the coronavirus pandemic shut down the cruise industry, more than 12,000 crew members remainon ships in U.S. waters, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. That's down from more than 70,000 in May.

There are 57 cruise ships moored, at anchor or underway near or arriving at aU.S. port with about 12,084 crew members, said Lt. Cmdr.Brittany Panetta, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard.Thatincludes209 Americans who are spread out among 37 of the ships, the Coast Guard said.

But as of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it knew of 53 U.S. crew members on 22 cruise ships in U.S. waters. Despite the discrepancy in numbers,it's unclear how many of those crew members are actually stuck vs. working.

Akash Dookhun, a Celebrity Cruises crew member from Mauritius, an island nation in southeastern Africa, told USA TODAY he has not set foot on dry land since he was on a port call in New Zealand in early March. And he doesn't know when he'll stand on solid ground again. Read more here.

Morgan Hines

Prevalence of depression among college students increased since the pandemic caused the closure of campuses this spring compared to fall 2019, according to a survey of 18,000 college students published by the Healthy Minds Network on July 9. And of the nearly 42% of students who sought mental health care during the pandemic, 60% said it was either much more or somewhat more difficult to access care.

Mental health among young people has been worsening for years. A 2019 analysis of teens reported 13% of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 said in 2017 they had experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year, up from 8%in 2007.

Elinor Aspegren

The federal government has allocated more than $9 billion to develop and manufacture candidate vaccines, and more than $2.5 billion more has been earmarked for vials to store the vaccines, syringes to deliver them, and on efforts to ramp up manufacturing and capacity.

The largest sums have gone to pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and a collaboration between Sanofi and GSK, as well as biotech firms Moderna and Novavax all of which have candidate vaccines being tested in people.

To save time,the companies have been running trials simultaneously that they usually run in sequence.Moderna, for instance, hasn't yet published its Phase 2 trial results, but is already in larger-scale Phase 3 trials, beginning tests last week of its candidate vaccine in 15,000 volunteers. Phase 3 trials started this summer are expected to return results this fall, with the timing depending on how quickly they can find volunteers.

If any of these approaches prove safe and effective, it could transform vaccine development worldwide, allowing faster attack strategies against dangerous viruses that may emerge in the future, as well as those that mutate rapidly, like the flu.

Karen Weintraub and Elizabeth Weise

A 21-year-old from Florida is warning of potential long-term virus complications after his mild case turned nearly fatal.Two weeks afterSpencer Rollyson tested negativeand returned to work, he started suffering from an array of symptoms.His fever eventually reached 103.4 degrees and Rollyson fell unconscious in the middle of a June 15 telehealth appointment.

Doctors diagnosed Rollyson with multi-organ failure withheart failure, acute respiratory failure, and severe sepsis with septic shock. "I thought I was going to die. I was literally sitting in the hospital like, Im going to die,' " Rollyson recalled.

It's yet another puzzling example of how the virus can damage the body in unpredictable ways. For example, two German studiespublished last week found heart abnormalities in COVID-19 patients months after they had recovered from the disease

Rick Neale, Florida Today

One of the largest events since the beginning of the pandemic has begun in South Dakota:More than 250,000 people are expected at the iconic Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.That's scaled down from previous years, where about half a million people have descended on the city ofabout 7,000 for an eventthathas developed a reputation asan anything-goes festival.

While the 80-year tradition isn't as raucous as it once was, festivalgoers will be largely free of social distancing restrictions common elsewhere in the country during this year's 10-day festival. Masks are encouraged, but not required.

About 54% of Americans fear they may lose their job due to the coronavirus outbreak, Harris Poll data shows. Overall, nearly half expect their personal finances to be generally worse off in the coming months.

There are two economies in the pandemic, Gerzema said. In general, older, wealthy Americans who are white are typically more confident that theyll prosper. But the ones really feeling the pain are younger, lower income Americans and minorities.

The labor-market recovery has reached a critical juncture, economists say, with millions of workers at risk of prolonged unemployment just as emergency unemployment benefits expire.

Jessica Menton

The Crow Tribe in Montana has ordered its members to lock down for two weeks as tribal leaders moved to slow a sharp spike in coronavirus cases and deaths on yet another reservation in the country.

Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 across the country, with major outbreaks from Arizona to South Dakota triggering similar lockdowns. The Navajo Nation that covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah has tallied 468 confirmed deaths from the virus and has ordered another lockdown this weekend.In Montana, Native Americans make up 7% of residents but have seen 15% of confirmed virus cases and 36% of deaths as of July 26, the state says.

Crow Tribe Chairman Alvin Not Afraid said the lockdown, which began Friday, is necessary because a stay-at-home order in effect since mid-March has been ineffective.

Big Horn County, where the 3,500-square-mile reservation is located, is on pace to record more confirmed virus cases in August than the previous two months combined. The county reported 85 new cases during the first week of August, compared to 249 in July and 44 in June. Seven of its 12 confirmed virus deaths have been recorded in the past 10 days. The figures include cases on the reservation but the tribe doesnt publicly release case counts.

Associated Press

Two sobering government reports released Friday showed that racial disparities inthe U.S. coronavirus epidemic extend to children.

One of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports looked at children with COVID-19 who needed hospitalization. Hispanic children were hospitalized at a rate eight times higher than white kids, and Black children were hospitalized at a rate five times higher, it found.

The second report examined cases of a rare virus-associated syndrome in kids. It found that nearly three-quarters of the children with the syndrome were either Hispanic or Black, well above their representation in the general population.

The hospitalization rate for Hispanic children was about 16.4 per 100,000. The rate for Black children was 10.5 per 100,000, and for white kids it was 2.1 per 100,000.

As with adults, many of the hospitalized children had existing health problems, including obesity, chronic lung conditions and in the case of infants preterm birth.

Associated Press

A Georgia high school dropped its five-daysuspension forat least onestudent who posteda photo of crowded hallways showing students without face masks.

Hannah Watters, 15,tweeted Fridaythat she was no longer suspended fromNorth Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia. She told the Associated Press that her principal called her mother, apologized, and completely removed her punishment, leaving her surprised and very grateful.

The 30,000-student suburban Atlantaschool district resumed classes Monday with 70% of students returning for in-person instruction five days a week. It receivednational attention this week when the images of the crowded hallways showed students in clusters without face coverings. She said that shewas then suspended for five days for violating rules on students posting school images on social media.BuzzFeed News reportedthat asecond, unnamed, studentwas also suspended.

Wyatte Grantham-Phillips

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced FridaythatNew York schools will be able to open for in-person instruction this fall, leaving the ultimate decision on reopening up to local authorities.

Cuomo said the infection ratesdue to COVID-19 are low enough so the districts can begin to reopen next month.Friday's decision is meant to be a preliminary one, as the first day of school is still a month away.Each district had to submit their own plans to reopen that are being reviewed by the state Health Department.

The nation's largest school district, New York City, is expected to start classes Sept. 10. The district plans to allowstudents to choose either online learning or a hybrid plan with as many as three days of in-person instruction.

Sophie Grosserode and Joseph Spector, New York State Team

On Facebook:There's still a lot unknown about the coronavirus. But what we do know, we're sharing with you.Join our Facebook group,Coronavirus Watch,to receive daily updates in your feed and chat with others in the community about COVID-19.

In your inbox:Stay up-to-date with the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic from the USA TODAY Network.Sign up for thedailyCoronavirus Watchnewsletter here.

Tips for coping:Every Saturday and Tuesday we'll be in your inbox, offering you a virtual hug and a little bit of solace in these difficult times.Sign up forStaying Apart, Togetherhere.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/08/coronavirus-updates-saturday-sturgis-bike-rally-trump-executive-orders/3321929001/

Excerpt from:

Coronavirus updates: Trump's executive order on unemployment could take months to implement; hundreds quarantining in Ga. school district - USA TODAY

Farm Workers Harvest Crops With Few Protections From The Coronavirus : Shots – Health News – NPR

With the coronavirus spreading, farms try to keep workers like these in Greenfield, Calif. safe through physical distancing and other measures but advocates for laborers say protections are often not adequate. Brent Stirton/Getty Images hide caption

With the coronavirus spreading, farms try to keep workers like these in Greenfield, Calif. safe through physical distancing and other measures but advocates for laborers say protections are often not adequate.

It's a busy time for the tomato-producing farms in eastern Tennessee. Farms have staffed up with hundreds of workers, most of whom are Latino. Some live locally. Others are migrant workers who travel from farm to farm, chasing the summer growing seasons. Still others come from Mexico or Central America on temporary agricultural visas to work at certain farms.

But, this year, the season is taking place under a cloud of coronavirus worries that, for these agricultural workers, hit close to home.

"Almost every part of the process for picking tomatoes needs to be considered in light of COVID-19," says Ken Silver, an associate professor of environmental health at East Tennessee State University, who studies migrant worker health on Tennessee tomato farms.

After all, the workers live in close quarters, sleeping in bunk beds, and sharing bathrooms and kitchens. They ride crowded buses to fields and often work in groups. And even though farm employees are deemed essential workers, they often don't have health insurance or paid sick leave.

Farms have already reported outbreaks among hundreds of workers in states that include California, Washington, Florida and Michigan. And yet, the federal government has not established any enforceable rules either to protect farmworkers from the coronavirus or to instruct employers what to do when their workers get sick. While migrant worker advocacy groups say this allows farms to take advantage of their workers and increase their risk of exposure to the coronavirus, farms say they're doing what they can to protect workers with the limited resources they have, while also getting their crops harvested.

The situation certainly isn't clear-cut, says Alexis Guild, director of health policy and programs at the advocacy group, Farmworker Justice.

"I do think some employers are putting in necessary protections," Guild says. But she has heard of workers who, after testing positive for COVID-19, were still required to work or were sent back to their countries an economic threat that creates a strong incentive for workers not to report mild symptoms. "I think it's hard to generalize. It really varies employer by employer."

Leaving it up to the farms

In June, 10 temporary workers out of about 80 at the Jones & Church Farms in Unicoi County, Tenn., tested positive for the coronavirus. Another farm in that county had 38 workers test positive around the same time.

"This was the scariest thing that could happen," says Renea Jones Rogers, the farm's food safety director.

Nationally, there have been at least 3,600 cases of farmworkers testing positive for COVID-19, according to media reports gathered by the National Center for Farmworker Health.

Add to this that farm employers and workers alike acknowledge that even the most basic interventions to stop transmission social distancing and mask-wearing often aren't feasible, especially in the hot temperatures.

Farm laborers arrive for their shift in Greenfield, California, April 28, 2020. Traveling to the fields in crowded buses is one risk among others that workers often face daily. Brent Stirton/Getty Images hide caption

Saul, 52, is a temporary farmworker who has traveled from Mexico to Virginia every year since 1996 to harvest tobacco. In a WhatsApp message interview, he said masks are uncomfortable on the job because he is working outdoors, writing in Spanish, "En el trabajo es incmodo porque trabajamos al intemperie." (Kaiser Health News is not publishing Saul's last name so that he won't be identified by his employer.)

Saul said he does worry about the coronavirus, but because he lives at his job on the farm, he feels safe.

When he arrived in the U.S. in April, the farm provided him with information about the pandemic, masks and hand sanitizer, he said. Nobody takes his temperature, but he works in a crew of eight, lives with only three other workers and nobody on the farm has yet been diagnosed with COVID-19.

In Tennessee, the Jones & Church Farms put its own worker safety protocols in place at the beginning of the season. These included increasing sanitation, taking daily temperature readings and keeping workers in groups so they live and work with the same people.

After the 10 workers tested positive for COVID-19, the farm kept them all in the same housing unit and away from the other workers but those who were asymptomatic also kept working in the fields, though they were able to stay away from others on the job, says Jones Rogers.

In June, 10 of about 80 temporary workers at Jones & Church Farms in Unicoi County, Tenn., tested positive for COVID-19. Nationally, at least 3,600 positive cases have been reported among farmworkers. Victoria Knight/ KHN hide caption

While the Department of Labor has not offered enforceable federal safety standards for COVID-19, it did collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to publish a set of voluntary, agriculture-specific guidelines. Those were released in June, just days after Jones & Church became aware of the farm's outbreak.

Much of what had already been done at Jones & Church, though, tracked closely with those recommendations, which also suggested that workers be screened every day for COVID-19 symptoms and that those who become sick be given their own space to recover apart from others.

Other suggestions in the CDC and Labor Department directive, geared more toward indoor food-processing factories such as tomato-packing plants, included installing plastic shields if 6 feet of distance isn't possible between workers, putting in hand-washing stations and providing personal protective equipment or cloth face coverings.

Advocates say these guidelines are sound, in theory. Their glaring flaw is that they are voluntary.

"We don't believe that the health and safety of workers should be left to the good will of employers," says Mara Perales Sanchez, communications coordinator for Centro de Los Derechos del Migrante, an advocacy group with offices in both Mexico and the U.S.

A Department of Labor spokesperson offered a different take. "Employers are and will continue to be responsible for providing a workplace free of known health and safety hazards," the spokesperson says, adding that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's preexisting general-safety standards and CDC guidelines are used to determine workplace safety violations. OSHA is an agency within the Labor Department.

Farm industry groups are apprehensive of any increased federal regulation.

"I don't think OSHA would be able to have some sort of mandatory regulation that wouldn't disadvantage some farmers," says Allison Crittenden, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Farms have already put many COVID-19 protections in place, she says, "and if these actions are taking place in a voluntary way, we don't see that we need to have a mandatory requirement."

Difficulties in accessing health care

Migrant farmworkers, despite occupying an essential link in the country's food supply chain, often aren't provided with workplace benefits like health insurance or paid sick leave.

Saul, the Virginia tobacco farmworker, says he didn't believe he has any health insurance. If he gets sick, he would need to tell his farm employer, who would then have to drive him to the doctor. The closest city to the farm is 15 miles away. Who is responsible for these costs the worker or the farm depends on individual circumstances.

Many farms employ mostly Latino workers, and CDC data illustrates that it's much more likely for Hispanic or Latino people to be infected, hospitalized or die from COVID complications than white people. Experts also warn that because the COVID pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color, it could widen preexisting health disparities.

Fresh Harvest farm laborers harvest romaine lettuce on a machine with heavy plastic dividers that separate workers from each other in Greenfield, California, April 27, 2020. Brent Stirton/Getty Images hide caption

Also, seeking a doctor's care can feel risky for migrant farmworkers. Workers who are undocumented may worry about being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while workers who have green cards may be concerned about the Trump administration's "public charge rule." This controversial rule weighs immigrants' use of public programs, including health care, against their applications for citizenship. However, the federal government has said seeking treatment for COVID-19 wouldn't fall under the rule.

And while contact tracing is important to stop the spread of COVID-19 among farmworkers, many health departments don't have translators on staff who can speak Spanish or Indigenous Central American languages, nor has there been a systematic nationwide tracking of farmworker outbreaks thus far, as has been done with long-term care facilities outbreaks.

So "it's really hard to get a grasp on how many farmworkers specifically are testing positive," says Guild with Farmworker Justice.

That could be an issue for tracing outbreaks, especially as the harvesting season ramps up for certain crops and farms bolster their workforces.

At the end of July, almost 90 additional temporary workers arrived at Jones & Church Farms to help harvest tomatoes through October, says Jones Rogers. Though the 10 workers who had COVID-19 have recovered, she says she's scared that if more get the disease, there won't be enough housing to keep sick workers separate from others or enough healthy workers to harvest the crops.

"Tomatoes don't wait until everyone is feeling good to be harvested," says Jones Rogers.

Reporter Carmen Heredia Rodriguez and Katie Saviano provided Spanish translation assistance for this story.

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

More:

Farm Workers Harvest Crops With Few Protections From The Coronavirus : Shots - Health News - NPR

Global deaths surpass 700,000; Vietnam reports further rise of infections – CNBC

Wed, Aug 5 20207:48 AM EDT

A woman leaves a cosmetics store in Hanoi, Vietnam on July 6, 2020.

Nhac Nguyen | AFP | Getty Images

Vietnam's health ministry reported a further 41 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, according to Reuters, taking the country's total number of infections up to 713.

Almost all of the new cases were linked to the central tourism hot spot of Danang, where on July 25 the Southeast Asian country detected its first locally transmitted infections in more than three months.

To date, eight people in Vietnam have died as a result of the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Sam Meredith

Wed, Aug 5 20207:28 AM EDT

More than 700,000 people have now died as a result of the coronavirus, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

To date, over 18.5 million Covid-19 infections have been reported worldwide, with 701,085 related fatalities.

The U.S., which has recorded the world's worst virus outbreak, has reported more than 156,000 deaths, with Brazil accounting for over 95,000 and Mexico third-highest with 48,000. Sam Meredith

Wed, Aug 5 20203:44 AM EDT

Students wearing face masks wait in line to have body temperatures checked at entrance of a school on June 15, 2020 in Hong Kong, China.

Hong Fan | China News Service | Getty Images

Some countries may choose to reopen schools because closures are "disruptive" and don't help "that much" in terms of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, said Benjamin Cowling, a professor from The University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health.

Cowling acknowledged there are arguments for and against reopening educational institutions. "The pros are that children get their education, the parents don't need to stay home and look after them. It helps society, helps the economy," he told CNBC on Wednesday. But that poses a risk to the teachers, especially the older adults with underlying conditions.

"We have to come up with a list of measures that are sustainable for the next six months, including some social distancing measures," he said. "I'm not sure that school closures has that much effect on Covid transmission. At the same time, it's a very disruptive measure."

"Maybe some places in the world will choose to reopen schools for those reasons because it doesn't help that much and is very a costly intervention for society," Cowling said. Abigail Ng

Wed, Aug 5 202012:46 AM EDT

A graphic is seen showing the areas of Melbourne that will be required to go into lock down as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews speak to the media on July 07, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia.

Darrian Traynor | Getty Images

The state of Victoria in Australia recorded a record high of 725 new cases on Wednesday as it prepared to shut much of its economy to contain a second wave of infection.

Victoria state, the second-most populous in Australia, also reported a record daily death toll of 15, local media reported.

The state government in Victoria has imposed a night curfew and tightened movement restrictions in greater Melbourne on Sunday. It also ordered most businesses to close from Wednesday night.

Victoria accounts for nearly two-thirds of Australia's 19,500 cases, according to Reuters. Huileng Tan

Tue, Aug 4 20206:38 PM EDT

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced he would extend the state's phase two reopening, including a statewide mask mandate, for at least another 21 days, according to a press release from his office.

Bars in the state can only operate for curbside takeout or delivery servicesand crowds can't grow to more than 50 people, according to the order.The state first moved into phase two reopening in the beginning of June.

According to a White House report Monday, Louisiana is in the red zone for cases, indicating more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the last week, Edwards said in a statement.

"We may be seeing fewer new cases but there still is a lot of Covid statewide. We now have ticked above 50,000 active confirmed cases, which means there is more Covid in our state than ever before. We need deeper, sustained gains," Edwards said in a statement. Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Aug 4 20206:27 PM EDT

Novavax announced its potential vaccine to prevent Covid-19 generated a promising immune response in an early-stage clinical trial.

The phase one trial included 131 healthy participants between ages 18 and 59 at two sites in Australia.The vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe is necessary to build immunity to the virus, and killer T-cells, the company said.

Novavax said the vaccine was well tolerated with no serious adverse events reported. Most patients reported tenderness and pain at the injection site after the first dose, with some patients also reporting headaches, fatigue or muscle aches. Only one participant in the trial experienced a mild fever after a second dose, the company said.Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Tue, Aug 4 20205:06 PM EDT

American Airlinesis offering its pilots leaves of absence of up to three years as well as alternating schedules and other options, the latest attempt to reduce the chances of involuntary cuts to its pilot ranks.

American last month warned 25,000 employeesthat their jobs are at risk when federal aid terms expire on Oct. 1. That number included about 2,500 pilots at the carrier, around 17% of its total. American and its competitors including United, Delta and Southwesthave offered voluntary options to try to limit or eliminate the need for forced job cuts.

In addition to leaves of absence, American also offered pilots schedules that would alternate between paid and unpaid months, when they wouldn't fly. It is also offering early retirements to pilots with 10 or more years of seniority.Leslie Josephs

Tue, Aug 4 20204:26 PM EDT

Residents of Imperial County, California, line up in front of a bookkeeping shop in Calexico to fill out unemployment claim forms.

Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images

California is underreporting its single-day increases in positive coronavirus cases due to issueswith its electronic laboratory reporting system, the California Department of Public Health said in an issued warning. California reported a drop in additional cases on Sunday to 5,739 and an even steeper drop to 4,526 on Monday, the lowest level the state has reported since the end of May, according to the department's data dashboard.

While the warning doesn't disclose how many days have been affected by the under reporting or by how many cases, it draws into question the accuracy of Gov. Gavin Newsom's announcement Monday indicating the state was seeing "early good signs" due to a drop in its positivity rate, or the percentage of tests that come back positive.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services, said during a press briefing that the agency is "working hard and immediately to reach out to the labs that we work with to get accurate information." He said the reporting delay would "absolutely" impact the state's seven-day positivity rate and the state will continue to update the rate on a daily basis.Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Aug 4 20203:13 PM EDT

World number two Raphael Nadal is pulling out of the U.S. Open after citing concerns over coronavirus.

The U.S. Open defending champion told fans on Twitter: "After many thoughts I have decided not to play this year's US Open. The situation is very complicated worldwide, the COVID-19 cases are increasing, it looks like we still don't have control of it."

He added: "All my respects to the USTA, the US Open organisers and the ATP for trying to put the event together for the players and the fans around the world through TV."

Nadal said, "This is a decision I never wanted to take but I have decided to follow my heart this time and for the time being I rather not travel." The U.S. Open is scheduled to take place later this month.Riya Bhattacharjee

Tue, Aug 4 20202:48 PM EDT

Flu-shot manufacturers said they plan to ship a record number of almost 200 million vaccine doses to the U.S. as the country continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, CNBC's Meg Tirrell and Harriet Taylor report. This would be up almost 15% from last season.

"Though we don't yet have a vaccine for Covid, we do have a tool to prevent influenza," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Fewer than half of American adults and around 60% of children receive the flu shot each year, according to CDC data. Public health experts hope to increase the amount this year to lessen how many people will rely on hospital beds and ventilators.

While public health experts said it's possible we will have a less severe flu season because of coronavirus precautions like masks and social distancing, experts also said it could potentially be detrimental if patients have both the flu and coronavirus at the same time. Suzanne Blake

Tue, Aug 4 20202:41 PM EDT

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, New York City's top health official who led the city's response to its coronavirus outbreak, has resigned from her post as commissioner of the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Her resignation comesafter months of discord with the mayor's office and the city's police department.She will be replaced by Dr. Dave Chokshi as commissioner, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a press briefing.

Tensions between Barbot and de Blasio were reported in May when the mayor gave the city's contact tracing program, a key tool used to track down and isolate positive cases and contain the virus' spread, to the city's public hospital system rather than the health department.

"As I shared with the Mayor, your world-class skills are what make this agency so respected around the globe. Your experience and guidance have been the beacon leading this city through this historic pandemic and that to successfully brace against the inevitable second wave, your talents must be better leveraged alongside that of our sister agencies," Barbot wrote in a statement to the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene employees. Noah Higgins-Dunn

Tue, Aug 4 20202:25 PM EDT

Comcast-owned NBCUniversal began a round of long-expected layoffs. The cuts come as the company has grappled with the impact of coronavirus closures and is in the midst of shifting its media strategy to be more focused on streaming.

The subsidiary has 35,000 full-time employees, and reductions are expected to affect less than 10% of that staff.

Cuts at the parks are tied to the coronavirus pandemic, while layoffs at the other entertainment divisions, which include broadcast networks and cable channels, are related to the reorganization of its business.Sarah Whitten

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

Tue, Aug 4 20202:09 PM EDT

Uber will let office employees work remotely through June, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees.The move isn't mandated, so workers are allowed to return to offices if they open before then.

Uber joinsGooglein extending its remote-work timeline through next June.

Most tech companies have either announced the bulk of employees can work from home until the end of 2020, or haven't finalized a date. But Uber's and Google's delays could be the start of more companies shifting their return date even later as Covid-19 cases continue to spread across the U.S. Jessica Bursztynsky

Tue, Aug 4 202012:43 PM EDT

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to reporters during a news conference on Democrats' demand for an extension of eviction protections in the next coronavirus disease (Covid-19) aid bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 22, 2020.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Days after extra unemployment benefits and a federal eviction moratorium expired, Congress is struggling to find common ground on a fifth coronavirus relief bill.

Democratic leaders and Trump administration officials are set to meet Tuesday to hash out differences in goals for an aid package. The negotiators have talked during much of the last eight days, but have made little tangible progress.

The sides have moved toward agreement on issues including direct payments to Americans and loans to small businesses. They remain far apart on how to structure extension of the lapsed $600-per-week unemployment insurance boost, along with aid to state and local governments, and assistance for food, rent and mortgages.

It looks unlikely Congress will strike a deal this week. Still, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "We're finally moving in the right direction."Jacob Pramuk

Tue, Aug 4 20202:25 PM EDT

Comcast-owned NBCUniversal began a round of long-expected layoffs. The cuts come as the company has grappled with the impact of coronavirus closures and is in the midst of shifting its media strategy to be more focused on streaming.

The subsidiary has 35,000 full-time employees, and reductions are expected to affect less than 10% of that staff.

Cuts at the parks are tied to the coronavirus pandemic, while layoffs at the other entertainment divisions, which include broadcast networks and cable channels, are related to the reorganization of its business.Sarah Whitten

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

Tue, Aug 4 202011:42 AM EDT

The National Institutes of Health is starting two trials for an experimental antibody drug to see if it can work as a safe and effective treatment in Covid-19 patients.

The trials, called ACTIV-2 and ACTIV-3, will look atEli Lilly's experimental treatment known as LY-CoV555, which is being developed in partnership with Canadian biotech AbCellera. The first trial will test the treatment on people with mild to moderate Covid-19 symptoms who have not been hospitalized, while the second trial will look at patients who have been hospitalized.

The announcement comes a day after Eli Lilly said it began phase three trial testing to see whether the treatment can prevent the spread of coronavirus in residents and staff at nursing homes. Eli Lilly's drug is part of a class of treatments known as monoclonal antibodies, which are made to act as immune cells.Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Tue, Aug 4 202011:38 AM EDT

Google debutednew features for the Google Assistant that should help families who are learning from home due to the continued spread of the coronavirus.

One new option is called Family Bell, and it can be used to remind you when your at-home school day starts, when a virtual class begins or when it's time for homework. All you have to do is say, "Hey Google, create a family bell," from your iPhone, Android phone, Google Nest Hub or a Google Nest smart speaker.

Google is also expanding its broadcast option, now letting you call specific rooms sort of like an in-home intercom instead of all Google smart devices at once. And, if you own a Google Home Hub, you can say "Hey Google, start the school day" and it will start playing school background noises, like the sounds of students shuffling through lockers.Todd Haselton

Tue, Aug 4 20209:50 AM EDT

Booking.com will layoff up to 25% of its global workforceas the pandemic continues to hinder travel demand.Booking Holdings, Booking.com's parent company, will finalize its plans and tell affected employees starting in September, according to a filing.

Booking Holdings is also the parent company of other online travel companies like Kayak and Priceline, but the layoffs will only affect Booking.com. Booking.com itself employs over 17,000 employees, a company spokeswoman told CNBC.

"The Covid-19 crisis has devastated the travel industry, and we continue to feel the impact as travel volumes remain significantly reduced," the spokeswoman said. "While we have done much to save as many jobs as possible, we believe we must restructure our organization to match our expectation of the future of travel."

Shares of Booking Holdings were down less than a percent in early trading. The company's shares are down 19.65% percent year to date.Jessica Bursztynsky

Tue, Aug 4 20209:33 AM EDT

U.S. stocks openedslightly loweras lawmakers struggle to make inroads on a new coronavirus stimulus package, reports CNBC's Fred Imbert.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22 points, or 0.1%. The S&P 500 dipped 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite was down less than 0.1%.Melodie Warner

Tue, Aug 4 20209:24 AM EDT

The Radio City Rockettes perform onstage during the Christmas Spectacular Starring The Radio City Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Steven Ferdman | Getty Images

Madison Square Garden Entertainment announced the annual Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes has been canceled for 2020 because of the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are disappointed for everyone involved with the show, as well as for the many fans who make the Christmas Spectacular a cherished part of their holiday tradition," the entertainment company said in a statement.

The 90-minute holiday show was scheduled to run November 6 through January 3. First performed in 1933, the Christmas Spectacular includes more than 140 performers.

Read the rest here:

Global deaths surpass 700,000; Vietnam reports further rise of infections - CNBC