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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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Another Soda Tax Bill Dies. Another Win for Big Soda.

SACRAMENTO — A rogue industry. A gun to our head. Extortion.

This story also ran on San Francisco Chronicle. It can be republished for free.

That’s how infuriated lawmakers described soft drink companies — and what they pulled off in 2018 when they scored a legislative deal that bars California’s cities and counties from imposing taxes on sugary drinks.

Yet, despite its tarnished reputation, the deep-pocketed industry continues to exert its political influence in the nation’s most populous state, spending millions of dollars on politically connected lobbyists and doling out campaign contributions to nearly every state lawmaker.

The result? Bills long opposed by Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo and other beverage companies continue to flounder. Just two weeks ago, a measure that would have undone the 2018 deal that lawmakers so vehemently protested was shelved without a hearing.

“Big Soda is a very powerful lobby,” said Eric Batch, vice president of advocacy at the American Heart Association, which has petitioned lawmakers nationwide to crack down on sugar-laden drinks that health advocates say contribute to diabetes, obesity and other costly medical conditions.

“They’ve spent a lot of money in California to stop groups like ours from passing good policy,” Batch added. “And they’ve been doing it for a long time.”

In the past four years, soft drink companies spent about $5.9 million lobbying California lawmakers and giving to their campaigns or favorite charities. A California Healthline analysis of campaign finance records from Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2020, found that the American Beverage Association, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have given to nearly every state officeholder — from Gov. Gavin Newsom to roughly five-sixths of the 120-member legislature.

The American Beverage Association declined an interview request to discuss its political giving and this year’s bill that would have upended the soda tax moratorium it helped orchestrate. Coca-Cola and Pepsi did not return requests seeking comment.

In 2018, the industry spent $8.9 million to boost a statewide ballot measure sponsored by the California Business Roundtable that would have made it more difficult for cities and counties to levy taxes — not just taxes on sugary drinks — by requiring them to be approved by two-thirds of voters instead of a simple majority. Fearful that local governments could face a higher voting threshold for taxes and fees that would fund libraries, public safety and other services, lawmakers at the time said they had no choice but to negotiate with the industry.

In a deal that several lawmakers described as “extortion” and a “Sophie’s Choice,” the legislature agreed to pass a bill banning new local taxes on sugary drinks until Jan. 1, 2031, if the industry and other supporters dropped the ballot measure. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown, who had dined with industry executives several weeks before, signed the bill.

The California deal was a coup for Big Soda, which doesn’t appear to have paid a political price: Legislation that would have imposed a state tax on sugary drinks died a year later, as did a bill that would have required health warning labels on sugary drinks and another that would have banned sodas in grocery store checkout aisles.

This year’s bill, which would have reinstated cities and counties’ ability to put soda taxes before voters, is all but dead.

“They’re gaming the political system,” said Assembly member Adrin Nazarian (D-North Hollywood), the author of AB 1163. Nazarian said he hopes to revive the measure before April 30, the deadline for policy committees to hear legislation for the year.

“It’s one thing for us to make a bad policy decision once,” he said. “It’s another thing to give a signal to all the industries that will then utilize this loophole against us. How many more times are we going to be doing this?”

Public health advocates point to such taxes as a way to cut consumption of soda, sports drinks, fruit juices and other sweet beverages, citing studies that show the more they cost, the less people buy them. On average, a can of soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar, nearly the entire recommended daily amount for someone who eats 2,000 calories a day. Some energy drinks contain twice that.

Four California cities — Albany, Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco — had soda taxes in place before the 2018 legislative deal that were allowed to remain. Boulder, Colorado; Philadelphia; Seattle; and the Navajo Nation also have soda taxes, with proposals under consideration in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

The revenue stream from the taxes could help fund financially strapped public health departments depleted by the covid pandemic, health advocates say.

For example, last year San Francisco directed $1.6 million of its soda tax revenue to local programs that feed residents affected by school closures and job losses. Seattle tapped its soda tax revenue to give grocery vouchers to its hardest-hit residents.

Nazarian said he expected his attempt to undo the soda tax moratorium to be an uphill battle, but he is frustrated the bill was denied even one hearing.

Nazarian, like lawmakers before him, is butting up against a strong anti-tax environment in U.S. politics, said Tatiana Andreyeva, director of economic initiatives at the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. So, while more than 40 countries have imposed national taxes on sugary drinks — including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Portugal and South Africa — national and state efforts have stalled here.

There’s also the political might of the soda industry.

“Look at how much money they spend fighting all these bills that have been proposed,” said Andreyeva, who has studied the soda industry since 2007. “We have seen dozens and dozens of bills at the state and local level. There’s always a lot of opposition by the industry. They are well-funded, they will organize and it’s very hard.”

In California, soft drink companies spent $4.4 million in the past four years lobbying lawmakers and state officials, treating them to dinners and sporting events. They hired veteran political firms staffed by former government employees who know how the Capitol works and often already have relationships with lawmakers and their aides.

For instance, until earlier this year the American Beverage Association had Fredericka McGee on its payroll as its top California lobbyist. She had worked for five Assembly speakers. Now, McGee is chief of staff to Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, a former state legislator who in 2018 was the chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, which oversaw the deal banning new local soda taxes.

In addition to lobbying, the industry spent just over $1.5 million on contributions to lawmakers, including big checks written to charities on their behalf.

The largest contributions flowed to the lawmakers with the most influence.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola gave a total of $25,000 to charities in the name of Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, according to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which tracks the donations, known as “behested payments.” That’s on top of the $35,900 Rendon collected in his campaign account from the industry over the past four years.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins cashed $26,000 in campaign checks from Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and accepted a $5,000 donation to one of her charities from Coke’s bottling plant in her San Diego district.

In an emailed statement, Rendon described the issue of sugary drinks as complex and said he co-authored legislation in 2015 that would have imposed a tax on distributors of sugary drinks. It died in committee.

“I want us to do something to reduce the consumption of sweetened beverages,” Rendon said. “These bills have been hard to pass, but I think it’s simplistic to pin it on contributions.”

Atkins did not comment on Big Soda’s political power but said in an emailed statement she would review Nazarian’s bill “on its merits” if it comes before the Senate.

Nazarian’s bill is on hold in the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee, led by Autumn Burke (D-Inglewood). A spokesperson for Burke did not return calls and emails requesting comment.

Burke also received money from soda companies, collecting about $22,000 from Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the American Beverage Association from 2017 through 2020.

Public health groups aren’t willing to admit defeat and are mobilizing a grassroots effort to get a hearing for Nazarian’s bill. They say California must address the disproportionate health effects of sugary drinks on Black and Latino communities, which covid-19 only exacerbated.

“If the members of the legislature were looking at data and using data as the decision-making criteria for whether we should allow a ban on local taxes to be lifted, they would have to support that,” said Michael Dimock, president of Roots of Change, a program of the Public Health Institute. “But they are not looking at the data. Something else is influencing them.”

Elizabeth Lucas of KHN contributed to this report.

Methodology

How California Healthline compiled data about soda companies’ political spending

Among the ways soft drink companies exert influence on the political process are contributing money to campaigns; hiring lobbyists; plying elected officials with drinks, meals and event tickets; and making charitable contributions on the behalf of lawmakers.

Using the California secretary of state’s website, California Healthline downloaded campaign contributions made by the American Beverage Association PAC, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo — the three largest contributors from Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2020.

To track lobbying, we created a spreadsheet of expenses reported on lobbying disclosure forms, also available on the secretary of state’s website, by the American Beverage Association, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. We found details about how much the industry paid lobbying firms and which lawmakers, or members of their staff, accepted gifts.

To find how much these entities gave in charitable contributions, California Healthline pulled data on “behested payments” from the California Fair Political Practices Commission website. These are payments special interests can make to a charity or organization on behalf of a lawmaker. Sometimes, a few of these payments also show up on lobbying forms. We compared the behested payments with the lobbying reports to ensure we did not double-count money.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/live-covid-19-updates-the-latest-globally/

Live Covid-19 Updates: The Latest Globally

Here’s what you need to know:

Dr. Scott W. Altas, an adviser to President Trump.Credit…Erin Scott for The New York Times

As the coronavirus pandemic erupted this spring, two professors at Stanford University — Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Scott W. Altas — bonded over a shared concern that lockdowns were creating economic and societal devastation.

Now Dr. Atlas is President Trump’s science adviser, a powerful force inside the White House. And Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three authors of the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, a scientific treatise that calls for allowing the coronavirus to spread in order to achieve “herd immunity” — the point at which enough people have been infected to stall transmission of the pathogen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and leading experts have recently concluded, using different scientific methods, that as many as 90 percent of Americans are still vulnerable to infection.

While Dr. Atlas and administration officials have denied advocating the herd immunity approach, they have praised the ideas in the declaration. The message is aligned with Mr. Trump’s vocal opposition to lockdowns on the campaign trail, even as the country grapples with renewed surges of the virus.

The central proposition, supported by some 40,000 signatories, is that to contain the coronavirus, people “who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal” while those at high risk are protected from infection.

Under that scenario, younger Americans should return to workplaces, schools, shops and restaurants, while older Americans would remain cloistered from the virus as it spreads, recipients of such services as grocery deliveries and medical care.

It argues that eventually so many younger Americans will have been exposed, and presumably will have developed some immunity, that the virus will not be able to maintain its hold on the communities.

The manifesto does not contain details on how the strategy would work in practice, nor do its authors have expertise in implementing public health programs. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, dismissed the declaration as unscientific, dangerous and “total nonsense,” as well as unethical, particularly for multigenerational families and communities of color.

The idea has alarmed and angered other public health researchers. On Wednesday, about 80 published a manifesto of their own, the John Snow Memorandum (named after a legendary epidemiologist), saying that this approach would endanger one-third of the U.S. population who have conditions that put them at high risk from severe Covid-19, and result in perhaps a half-million deaths.

“I think it’s wrong, I think it’s unsafe, I think it invites people to act in ways that have the potential to do an enormous amount of harm,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, an infectious disease expert at Harvard University and one of the signatories to the Snow memo. “You don’t roll out disease — you roll out vaccination.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.Credit…Pool photo by Graeme Jennings

President Trump attacked Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, in a conference call on Monday with campaign aides, calling the doctor a “disaster” and saying, “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.”

He continued his criticism of Dr. Fauci, the overwhelmingly popular director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, after landing in Arizona for the first of two scheduled rallies in the state, which is experiencing a rise in coronavirus cases.

Speaking to reporters after deplaning Air Force One, Mr. Trump called Dr. Fauci “a very nice man” but complained that he “loves being on television” and has made “a lot of bad calls.” Asked why he didn’t fire Dr. Fauci, Mr. Trump said, “He’s been there for about 350 years. I don’t want to hurt him.”

Dr.Tony Fauci says we don’t allow him to do television, and yet I saw him last night on @60Minutes, and he seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late, great, Bob Hope. All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions. He said “no masks & let China in”. Also, Bad arm!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020

At a campaign rally on Monday in Arizona, where polls show that the president is trailing Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump also faulted the news media for excessive coverage of the coronavirus.

“They’re getting tired of the pandemic, aren’t they?” Mr. Trump said in Prescott, in central Arizona. “You turn on CNN. That’s all they cover. Covid, Covid, pandemic, Covid, Covid.”

The attack on Dr. Fauci comes as the United States has seen more coronavirus cases — over 8 million — and more deaths — nearly 220,000 — than any other nation in the world. The president’s advisers have tried to get him to lay off the infectious diseases specialist, who remains popular.

Dr. Fauci pushed back against complaints that he had flip-flopped over the use of masks, saying that admitting a mistake after examining further data shows honesty.

The conflict began Sunday night on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” when Dr. Fauci said it was “absolutely” no surprise that President Trump got sick with the coronavirus, given his lax attitude toward social distancing guidance.

“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation: crowded, no separation between people and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Dr. Fauci said in the CBS interview. He was referring to an event at the White House in September to announce the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

“When I saw that on TV, I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, nothing good can come out of that — that’s got to be a problem,’” Dr. Fauci said. “Sure enough, it turned out to be a super-spreader event.”

Numerous people who attended the event later tested positive for the coronavirus, including the president.

Dr. Fauci, who has often been at odds with the president, sharpened his stance against an ad run by Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign that appeared to show the doctor praising the president’s handling of the coronavirus. Dr. Fauci said his words were taken out of context, and that their use in the ad was inappropriate because he never endorses candidates.

“I got really ticked off,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s attacks on Dr. Fauci led Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee to become the latest Republican to distance himself from the president. “Dr. Fauci is one of our country’s most distinguished public servants,” said Mr. Alexander, who is retiring this year. “He has served six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we’d have fewer cases of Covid-19, and it would be safer to go back to school and back to work and out to eat.”

The National Academy of Medicine honored Dr. Fauci on Monday with the academy’s first Presidential Citation for Exemplary Leadership, citing his “distinguished service as a trusted adviser to six U.S. presidents during public health crises” and “steady leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

In his acceptance speech, Dr. Fauci said that to inspire public trust and confidence in vaccines, people needed to hear consistent messages from the government, not conflicting ones.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is advising residents against non-essential out-of-state travel.Credit…Noah K. Murray/Associated Press

Coronavirus cases in New Jersey, an early epicenter of the pandemic, are on the rise again, doubling over the last month to an average of more than 900 new positive tests a day, a worrisome reversal of fortune for a state that had driven transmission rates to some of the nation’s lowest levels.

After an outbreak several weeks ago in a heavily Orthodox Jewish town near the Jersey Shore, cases are now rising in counties across the state, driven, officials say, by indoor gatherings.

The state’s health commissioner has said there are signs of “widespread community spread” for the first time since New Jersey successfully slowed the spread of a virus that has claimed the lives of more than 16,000 residents. A small, densely packed state, New Jersey has the highest virus fatality rate in the country.

Gov. Philip D. Murphy said Monday that residents should refrain from all but necessary out-of-state travel.

“The numbers are up,” Mr. Murphy said. “They’re up — up and down the state.”

Under a quarantine policy adopted by New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, New Jersey now exceeds the threshold — an average of 10 cases for every 100,000 residents for seven days — used to determine which states should be included in the travel advisory. Thirty-eight other states are on the list.

The uptick comes as other parts of the Northeast and states across the country are confronting similar surges of infections and hospitalizations as the pandemic stretches into its eighth month, with a death toll that now exceeds 219,000, according to a New York Times database.

Mr. Murphy, who has been conservative in allowing the state to reopen, said he would consider targeted shutdowns to curb the spread, as Connecticut and New York have done, but he suggested that would not cure the problem.

Ireland will increase coronavirus restrictions in response to a new surge of infections.Credit…Paul Faith/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Countries across Europe announced new restrictions on Monday in an effort to halt a strong second wave of the virus, as the global tally of cases passed 40 million. Cases have been detected in nearly every country around the world, and at least 1.1 million people have died.

Officials are desperate to avoid a second economically damaging blanket lockdown, and are instead seeking to tighten restrictions in a more precise fashion. Here’s the latest.

Ireland will be imposing its highest level of restrictions starting on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Michael Martin announced on Monday. Nonessential businesses will be mandated to close, restaurants and pubs will be limited to takeout, and people will not be allowed to travel more than five kilometers (three miles) from their homes. Schools and construction sites will remain open, however, the public broadcaster RTE reported. The restrictions, which will remain in effect for six weeks, come after the country set new daily case records four times in the past week. “If we pull together over the next six weeks we will be able to celebrate Christmas in a meaningful way,” Mr. Martin said.

In Spain, the region of Navarre announced on Monday the country’s most drastic regional measures yet to contain the second wave. As of Thursday, Navarre will stop its residents from leaving their region except for work or emergency reasons. It will also close for 15 days its bars and restaurants, and force all shops, sports venues and other establishments to close by 9 p.m. The measures come after Navarre reported an average of 945 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the past 14 days, three times the national average.

Austria, which reported 1,121 daily cases of the virus on Monday, announced new limits on the number of people who could meet privately starting Friday: six indoors and 12 outdoors. The country has reported nearly 10,000 cases in the past week, more than at any time in March, when the government imposed a nationwide lockdown. The restrictions were lifted over the summer as numbers dropped and the country sought to attract tourists, an important source of income for the alpine nation.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced that mayors will have the power to close streets or squares where people tend to gather after 9 p.m., while restaurants, bars and pubs will be allowed to serve seated customers — up to six per table — until midnight. Drinking outside of restaurants or bars will be permitted only until 6 p.m., and gaming and betting halls will close at 9 p.m. Italy has so far fared better than its European counterparts, but infections have been rising in recent weeks, with a record 11,705 new cases reported on Sunday.

France imposed a nightly curfew in nine cities, including Paris, over the weekend, and asked people throughout the country to limit gatherings to six people to halt an alarming spike in cases. On Monday, the office of President Emmanuel Macron announced that the first lady, Brigitte Macron, was in quarantine after being exposed to someone who had tested positive. Ms. Macron has not shown any symptoms, the office said in a statement.

Slovenia’s government declared a 30-day state of emergency after cases of the virus more than doubled in the past week, Reuters reported. The government will ban movement between regions that have been most affected by the pandemic and introduce a nightly curfew beginning at 9 p.m. starting Monday, Interior Minister Ales Hojs said at a news conference. Mr. Hojs said that all public and religious events would be banned, and that the number of people allowed to gather would be reduced to six from 10. Slovenia has reported 4,845 coronavirus cases in the past week, a spike from 2,255 cases the week before.

Britain has reported an average of nearly 17,000 new cases a day over the past week, according to a New York Times database, with almost a thousand new daily cases in Wales.

Wales will enter a national lockdown starting Friday night, the country’s first minister, Mark Drakeford, announced on Monday. The “firebreak” lockdown, which will last until Nov. 9, will require residents to remain at home and force pubs, restaurants and nonessential shops to close. Mr. Drakeford said “there are no easy choices in front of us” and called the lockdown “our best chance of regaining control of the virus” and avoiding strain on the National Health Service.

About 2.3 million of the 3.1 million people in Wales were already living under local lockdowns. and the country has effectively shut its borders to travel from other parts of Britain.

And officials in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, announced that schools, theaters and indoor dining will be closed for at least two weeks, and that masks will become mandatory in all public spaces. The city reported on Sunday that the virus rate over the previous 14 days had exceeded three cases per 1,000 residents, a red line for imposing stricter rules. After keeping the virus largely in check during the initial months of the pandemic, Romania has seen cases triple over the past month. While the schools will switch to online learning, there is deep concern that many students lack tablets and other necessary materials.

A patient enrolled in Pfizer’s vaccine clinical trial at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.Credit…University of Maryland School of Medicine, via Associated Press

As the Trump administration has pressed publicly for top-speed development and approval of a coronavirus vaccine, while researchers and public health experts warned of the dangers of rushing the process, the idea of getting the vaccine as soon as it is available is losing appeal for many Americans, especially Black Americans, recent surveys show.

In a STAT-Harris poll of about 2,000 people, conducted Oct. 7-10 and published Monday, 58 percent of respondents said they would get vaccinated right away, down from 69 percent who said the same in August.

The decline was twice as steep among Black respondents: just 43 percent said in October that they would get the vaccine, down from 65 percent in August.

Rob Jekielek, managing director of The Harris Poll, which has been asking the question throughout the pandemic, said two news events appeared to have played a role in the falloff: the back-and-forth between the Food and Drug Administration and the White House over vaccine guidelines, and President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis and treatment.

“The politicization of the process is having a huge negative effect, especially with Black Americans,” he said in an interview.

Pew Research Center polls that framed a question on the issue somewhat differently also found growing hesitation over a vaccine: About 51 percent of adult respondents said in September that they would definitely or probably get a vaccine if one were available, down from 72 percent who said the same in May. The surveys included more than 10,000 respondents and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.

“It’s pretty clear the public is concerned about the pace of the vaccine approval process and have outstanding questions about safety,” said Alec Tyson, associate director of Pew Research.

Polls conducted for CNN by the market research firm SSRS asked, “If a vaccine to prevent coronavirus infection were widely available at a low cost, would you, personally, try to get that vaccine, or not?” Sixty-six percent of respondents said yes in May; just 51 percent did in October. The polls’ margin of error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

And in an ABC News/Ipsos poll last month, 64 percent of respondents said they would take a “safe and effective coronavirus vaccine,” down from 74 percent in May. Those polls had a margin of error of 4.9 points.

Claudia Balderas, 51, attended the first in-person Mass in almost four months at Saint Bartholomew Roman Catholic Church in the Queens in early July. Catholic leaders are upset with restrictions by Gov. Cuomo again limiting attendance in areas where coronavirus is surging.Credit…Jessie Wardarski/Associated Press

Over the last two weeks, Catholic leaders in New York have voiced their deep disapproval with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over his decision to sharply limit attendance at houses of worship in areas that are seeing a surge of new coronavirus cases.

The governor’s decision was largely aimed at trying to rein in congregants in Orthodox Jewish synagogues in New York City and in Orange and Rockland Counties, where some members have flouted social distancing and mask regulations.

But it also affected other houses of worship, including about two dozen parishes in the diocese covering Queens and Brooklyn, where Catholic officials have sued Mr. Cuomo in federal court, insisting that they have been abiding by the rules and should not be punished.

“We’ve gone above and beyond what they have recommended and mandated,” said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference. “So if there’s an animus, it’s coming from his end, not our end.”

Leaders of the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Archdiocese of New York have also criticized the restrictions, which have closed nonessential businesses and limited occupancy in so-called red zones to 25 percent of building capacity or a mere 10 people, whichever is lower.

“To have all of the steps we’ve taken be ignored, and to face the prospect of indefinite unreasonable restrictions placed upon our churches is just not fair!” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan wrote in a blog post last week. “Why are churches being singled out? Why especially are those houses of worship that have been exemplary, strict and successful in heeding all warnings, being shut down again?”

A public school in Brooklyn this month. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York planned to reimpose restrictions on schools in neighborhoods where coronavirus cases were on the rise.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For months, as New York City struggled to start part-time, in-person classes, fear grew that its 1,800 public schools would become vectors of coronavirus infection.

But nearly three weeks into the in-person school year, early data from the city’s first effort at targeted testing has shown the opposite: a surprisingly small number of positive test results.

Out of 15,111 staff members and students tested randomly by the school system in the first week of its testing regimen, the city has gotten back results for 10,676. There were only 18 positives: 13 staff members and five students.

And when officials put mobile testing units at schools near Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods that have had new outbreaks, only four positive cases turned up — out of more than 3,300 tests conducted since the last week of September.

New York City is facing fears of a second wave of the virus brought on by localized spikes in Brooklyn and Queens, which have required new shutdown restrictions that included the closure of more than 120 public schools as a precaution.

On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that city continued to see a “leveling off” in those areas and officials had seen “particular progress” in central Queens, the mayor said. But he did not provide data for those areas.

Across the city, the seven-day average positivity rate was at 1.62 percent, the mayor said. When he first announced an uptick in cases about three weeks ago, the positivity rate was 1.38 percent.

Shortly afterward on Monday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that data in different hot spot areas across the state where he had imposed restrictions by zones would continue to be reviewed, and that the state would “announce changes to the zones” on Wednesday. Zone sizes could be made larger or smaller, he said, adding that “we have total flexibility in these zones.”

Statewide, the daily positivity rate was 1.21 percent, he said, while the “red zones,” which have the most severe restrictions in place, had a positivity rate of 3.31 percent. Hospitalizations statewide, which have been steadily increasing in recent weeks, are 934.

But for now, at least, New York City’s sprawling system of public schools, the nation’s largest, is an unexpected bright spot as the city tries to recover from a pandemic that has killed more than 20,000 people and severely weakened its economy.

In September, New York became the first big urban district to reopen schools for in-person learning.

Roughly half of the city’s students have opted for hybrid learning, where they are in the building some days, but not others. The approach has enabled the city to keep class sizes small.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.Credit…Daniel Kim/The Sacramento Bee, via Associated Press

California will have its own independent panel of experts review any federally approved coronavirus vaccines before they are administered to residents, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday.

“Of course we won’t take anyone’s word for it,” he said in a news briefing. He emphasized that the “second set of eyes” on potential vaccines is part of California’s broader efforts to make sure that vaccines get equitably distributed to communities that are most vulnerable.

While Mr. Newsom acknowledged that the vaccine approval process has been politicized, he said, “It doesn’t matter who the next president is, we’re going to maintain our vigilance.”

The announcement came after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that his state would also review vaccines approved by the federal government — although Mr. Cuomo tied the move to doubts raised when President Trump suggested that he would reject tougher F.D.A. guidelines. “Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion,” Mr. Cuomo said in late September.

On Sunday, Mr. Cuomo, as head of the bipartisan National Governors Association, posed additional questions about how the Trump administration will ensure that states are able to get and distribute vaccines.

Mr. Newsom said that his state is working with the federal government on its vaccination plans, but that experts from California’s prestigious academic and health care institutions are helping to figure out expected logistical challenges. They include where to store vaccines that must be kept cold, how to notify people about when to get their second shots and how to guarantee that rural communities have access to vaccines.

Mr. Newsom cautioned against being “overly exuberant” about the prospect of widespread vaccination; he said that won’t happen until next year. “This vaccine will move at the speed of trust,” he said.

California’s new case rates have stayed relatively low, even as the state has expanded testing and gradually lifted restrictions on businesses. Still, the governor implored residents not to let their guard down as the holidays approach.

In rural Wisconsin, many restaurants will be limited to ten indoor patrons.Credit…Bing Guan/Reuters

A judge in Wisconsin, the site of the one of the worst outbreaks of a resurgent coronavirus, has upheld an executive order by Gov. Tony Evers that limits public gatherings to 25 percent of a building or room’s capacity.

“This critically important ruling will help us prevent the spread of this virus by restoring limits on public gatherings,” said the governor’s office in a statement. “This crisis is urgent. Wisconsinites, stay home.”

The ruling means in rural Wisconsin, many restaurants, taverns, and supper clubs with no maximum capacity set by local authorities will be limited to ten patrons dining-in at a time, according to the Tavern League of Wisconsin, which requested a temporary injunction on Emergency Order #3 from the circuit court judge.

The state has reported more than 22,500 new coronavirus cases in the last week, according to a New York Times database, putting Wisconsin behind only North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana in terms of new infections per capita.

The Tavern League, which sued for relief against the executive order, represents about 5,000 small businesses, according to Scott Stenger, who heads the league’s government affairs outreach. “We don’t take suing anybody lightly, let alone the governor of our state,” Mr. Stenger said. “It’s not something we’d do before.”

Mr. Stenger said the league had not been consulted ahead of time about the emergency order, and did not have an opportunity to help craft regulations that might better help eateries and bars across the rural parts of the state stay open while still taking precautions to protect their customers.

The issue is especially acute in rural areas of Wisconsin, where there are often no set capacity limits for restaurants and taverns. By default, those businesses will be limited to ten patrons.

Without economic assistance from the state, or from Congress, Mr. Stenger said that more of his members will likely go out of business.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, center, at his swearing-in as deputy prime minister in Warsaw on Oct. 6. Credit…Radek Pietruszka/EPA, via Shutterstock

Poland’s deputy prime minister and de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is going into quarantine after learning that he had been in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus, a government spokesman said, adding that Mr. Kaczynski, who is 71, “feels well and will continue performing his duties from home.”

Mr. Kaczynski did not wear a mask when he handed out an award at a ceremony last week, and briefly took off his mask when he was sworn in as deputy prime minister on Oct. 6.

Poland largely resisted the first wave of the pandemic with an early lockdown that began in March. But after it reopened all its schools for in-person instruction in early September, case counts started climbing, and the country is now battling a major surge of infections and hospitalizations. Poland has reported 49,950 new cases in the last seven days, according to a New York Times database, and 175,766 in all, with more than 3,500 Covid-19-related deaths.

With hospital beds filling up, there is particular concern about the damage that the virus could sow in Poland, which has a relatively weak health care system and one of the lowest ratios of doctors and nurses to residents in the European Union.

To deal with the surge, the government is transforming the national stadium in Warsaw into a field hospital. The health minister, Adam Niedzielski, said on Monday that temporary Covid-19 hospitals would also be set up in other major cities, and that he was in discussions with private hospitals about making more beds available. Mr. Niedzielski warned that if the virus continued to spread at its current pace, the country could soon be facing as many as 20,000 new cases a day.

In other developments around the world:

Restrictions on nonessential travel between the United States, Canada and Mexico will be extended until Nov. 21, Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, announced on Monday. “We are working closely with Mexico & Canada to identify safe criteria to ease the restrictions in the future & support our border communities,” Mr. Wolf wrote on Twitter. In the past seven days, Canada has reported 16,284 cases, which works out to 44 per 100,000 people; Mexico, 33,724 cases, or 27 per 100,000; and the U.S., 396,305 cases, or 119 per 100,000.

Officials in Melbourne, Australia, announced some easing of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, allowing residents to travel up to 25 kilometers from their homes and up to 10 people from two households to socialize outdoors. Dan Andrews, the premier of the state of Victoria, drew a contrast between the situation there and in Britain, where there have been fewer restrictions despite a surge in cases. “Back in August and at our peak, we reported 725 daily cases. At the same time, the U.K. recorded 891,” he said in a statement. “Today, as Victoria records two new cases, the U.K. hit 16,171. And as we continue easing our restrictions, they are being forced to increase theirs.”

Twenty-five crew members aboard a livestock carrier docked at a port in Western Australia have tested positive for the coronavirus. The ship, the Al Messilah, has 52 crew members, and the authorities warned that further positive test results were possible.

Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland has tested negative for coronavirus, her office said on Monday. She left a European Union summit in Brussels prematurely on Friday because she had come in contact with people who later tested positive. “The prime minister will continue her self-isolation and she will be tested again on Monday,” the office said in a statement. Ms. Marin’s voluntary quarantine will end if the second test result proves negative, her office added.

South Africa’s health minister, Dr. Zwelini Mkhize, said that he and his wife, Dr. May Mkhize, had tested positive for the coronavirus and that he was optimistic that they would “fully recover.” Dr. Mkhize was tested on Saturday after showing mild symptoms, and both he and his wife are in quarantine at home. South Africa, which has recorded at least 703,000 cases of the coronavirus, has largely reopened its economy.

— Monika Pronczuk, Yan Zhuang and Monica Mark

CVS plans to hire workers ahead of expected increases in coronavirus and flu cases this fall and winter.Credit…Brian Snyder/Reuters

CVS Health announced on Monday that it planned to hire 15,000 workers to prepare for expected increases in coronavirus and flu cases in the United States during the fall and winter months.

More than 10,000 of the new roles will be full-time and part-time licensed pharmacy technicians at CVS Pharmacy locations to help administer Covid-19 tests, process prescriptions and dispense medications.

“Additional team members typically are needed every flu season,” Lisa Bisaccia, chief human resources officer of CVS Health, said in a statement. “However, we’re estimating a much greater need for trained pharmacy technicians this year given the continued presence of Covid-19 in our communities.”

The additional hires may also help the company distribute a Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available, if federal officials permit pharmacy technicians to administer it.

In March, CVS Health announced plans to fill 50,000 jobs across the country, the “most ambitious hiring drive in the company’s history,” it said at the time. The company has more than 4,000 drive-through coronavirus testing sites across the United States.

Separately, Target said on Monday that it would pay a fourth bonus to its employees who work in stores, distribution centers and staff and employee contact centers, as the pandemic continues and the retailer’s sales have soared this year.

More than 350,000 workers will receive $200 by early November, Target said.

Sapna Maheshwari contributed reporting.

Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both said that operating revenue in the three months through September had fallen nearly 80 percent compared with last year.Credit…Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

More than a million people passed through airport checkpoints on Sunday, the first time the Transportation Security Administration has screened that many people since mid-March.

While that represents a symbolic milestone for the travel industry, U.S. airlines are still losing billions of dollars a month as they brace for much weaker demand for tickets this winter. The number of people screened by the T.S.A. on Sunday was down about 60 percent compared with the same day a year ago.

Last week, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both said that operating revenue in the three months through September had fallen nearly 80 percent compared with last year. That period spanned much of the summer, which is typically the busiest season for airlines. Corporate travel typically sustains them in the fall, but many large businesses have been cautious about returning to normal operations and have told their employees to work from home until next July.

The steep decline in travel has forced airlines to cut to the bone, tweaking every part of the business as they hope to capitalize on what little demand remains. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are expected to release similarly dismal third-quarter financial results this week.

#covid #World

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years

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Daily Coronavirus Cases Peak Once Again As Lockdown Measures Lift

New coronavirus cases reported each day in the U.S. are reaching levels unseen since the initial height of the pandemic as states are lifting economically devastating shutdown measures meant to avert the spread of infections.

New cases have topped 30,000 each day this week and are on track to surpass the peak of daily infections last seen in mid-April.

Infections began to fall last month as states imposed restrictive social distancing measures and ordered millions of Americans to stay home, but the efforts wrought havoc on the economy. Nearly 21 million people were unemployed as of last week after businesses were forced to close their doors.

But unlike other regions — namely Europe, where cases have continued to decline amid those efforts — the U.S. has seen infectious surge once more as bars, churches and summer camps reopen around the country. President Donald Trump and many Republican officials have urged the country to jump-start the economy despite concerns from public health officials who have warned that the first wave of the pandemic is far from over.

More than 2.3 million people in the U.S. have now been infected with the virus and nearly 122,000 have died. And at least 20 states are seeing infection rates rise, with many setting daily records again and again.

On Wednesday, California reported more than 7,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period, a new record. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) urged residents to “be more vigilant” as the virus spreads but noted the state’s hospital system had prepared for such an outcome during the initial stay-at-home order.

“We are confident in our capacity, in the short run, to meet the needs of those most in need in the state of California,” he said.

Other officials had a more dire outlook. In Texas, one of the first states to reopen, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said the surge was a “massive outbreak” and warned that hospitals would need to prepare for a shortage in hospital capacity.

“Our #COVID19 numbers are moving in the wrong direction,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner wrote on Twitter. He told the city council Wednesday that Houston’s intensive-care units were at 97% capacity, with more than one-quarter of patients infected with the coronavirus.

Several states have considered imposing orders mandating that people wear masks outside. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) did so this week, saying the move was “about saving lives,” and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) followed suit, delaying reopening measures for at least three weeks.

The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut went a step further, announcing a travel advisory for visitors from a handful of states that have “significant community spread.” Those travelers will be required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in the tri-state area.

“A lot of people come into this region and they could literally bring the infection with them,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said Wednesday. “It wouldn’t be malicious or malevolent, but it would still be real.”

A HuffPost Guide To Coronavirus

Calling all HuffPost superfans!

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#Blogger #Coronavirus #COVID-19 pandemic #Daily Coronavirus Cases Peak Once Again As Lockdown Measure

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paulbenedictblog · 4 years

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%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Cnn news Coronavirus updates: South Korea reports no new local cases for 1st time in months

Cnn news

A plague of the original coronavirus has now killed higher than 233,000 of us worldwide.

Over 3.2 million of us across the globe had been identified with COVID-19, the illness precipitated by the current respiratory virus, basically based on recordsdata compiled by the Center for Programs Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The staunch numbers are believed to be a lot greater on account of testing shortages, many unreported circumstances and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their worldwide locations' outbreaks.

For the reason that major circumstances were detected in China in December, the US has develop into the worst-affected country, with higher than 1 million identified circumstances and as a minimal 63,001 deaths.

This day's greatest tendencies:

California's Orange County beaches must shut after photos of crowds

Kamala Harris proclaims guidelines for job force to fight racial, ethnic disparities

USNS Comfort leaves NYC

Right here is how the news is developing this day. All cases Eastern. Please refresh this page for updates.

9: 05 p.m.: Chicago to carry virtual high faculty graduation

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot equipped your complete city will consume phase in a virtual graduation ceremony in mid-June. The ceremony can hang a graduation deal with from none a form of than city icon Oprah Winfrey.

The ceremony is intended to honor public colleges, but additionally charter and non-public colleges.

"The cases we reside in are historic and pleasing, forcing us all to consume a deep detect at who we're as a of us and our affirm on this planet," Lightfoot said in a assertion. "No one is aware of this greater than Oprah, and I be half of all of Chicago in looking forward to listening to the recordsdata she’ll be sharing with our not doubtless kids as they consume this unforgettable next step on their lifestyles’s trail."

The tournament, which doesn't yet hang a date, will characteristic "speeches, performances, and a broad selection of ideas that can characteristic pupil achievements and experiences."

Chicago Public Colleges closed on March 17 and ought to be closed at some stage in the relaxation of the faculty year.

Tune into ABC at 1 p.m. ET and ABC News Dwell at 4 p.m. ET every weekday for particular protection of the radical coronavirus with the fleshy ABC News personnel, including the most fresh news, context and diagnosis.

6: 50 p.m.: American, Delta, United to require face coverings

Three extra major American airways will require passengers to put on face masks at some stage in flights.

American Airlines, Delta and United equipped on Thursday that one and all prospects will be required to put on face coverings beginning in Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably.

The pass follows the same announcements from JetBlue and Frontier.

Delta and United will require face coverings beginning Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 4. American will require face masks on flights beginning Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 11.

JetBlue and Frontier will inaugurate requiring face masks at some stage in trail on Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 4 and Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 8, respectively.

This week, Democratic lawmakers known as for federal action to mandate that one and all air vacationers put on masks.

5: 15 p.m.: CityMD has accomplished hundreds of antibody tests already

Merely two days into its initiative to supply antibody testing, CityMD has already accomplished 19,000 tests, basically based on the chain of scurry-in clinics.

"We did higher than 19,000 in the principle two days and we remain very busy on the web sites," Pleasure Lee-Calio, director of public relatives and communications for Summit Scientific Group, said in a assertion. "We invent no longer dwell up for any testing skill concerns right now. Wait cases are longer than long-established excellent now, but we’re doing our best doubtless to deal with the strains transferring while declaring social and physical distancing."

CityMD has higher than 100 areas in Unusual York and Unusual Jersey.

The health supplier equipped Tuesday it will provide an antibody take a look at to come to a decision if sufferers had COVID-19, whether or no longer they skilled signs. The tests cost $55, but are covered by most insurers, basically based on CityMD.

Unusual York and Unusual Jersey hang proven to be the epicenter of COVID-19 circumstances, with higher than 400,000 combined confirmed circumstances in the states and over 30,000 deaths -- about half of the total nationwide.

5 p.m.: Connecticut nonessential firms can beginning Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 20

In Connecticut, nonessential firms can reopen Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 20, Gov. Ned Lamont equipped Thursday.

That will encompass hair and nail salons, outdoors-best doubtless restaurant seating and outdoors museums and zoos.

4: 10 p.m.: California's Orange County beaches must shut after photos of crowds

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered beaches in sunny Orange County to shut temporarily on Thursday, after too many of us flocked to the sand over the weekend.

The "images we noticed on the beaches were disturbing," Newsom said. "Each person noticed these images and we're all pondering that. ... That's what indirectly led to this decision."

"If we are in a position to receive this excellent, we are in a position to reopen very rapidly," he added.

California has 48,917 of us identified with coronavirus, while as a minimal 1,982 of us hang died.

3: 10 p.m.: West Virginia on brink of reopening

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice says he is changing his "destroy-at-dwelling" relate with a "safer-at-dwelling" relate on Monday, Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 4, which inspires, but doesn't require, West Virginians to destroy at dwelling.

The present relate says drinking areas can beginning for outdoors dining provider and elective medical procedures can resume.

Public gatherings with higher than 35 of us are prohibited.

Churches remain very crucial and would possibly destroy beginning but of us ought to follow social distancing

Itsy-bitsy firms can operate if there aren't any higher than 10 employees. The firms must hang restricted buyer contact and defend social distancing and hygiene practices.

Nail salons, hair salons and barber retailers can beginning if they drag away time between appointments for excellent cleansing and disinfecting. Potentialities must dwell up for his or her appointment in their cars.

2: 25 p.m.: Kamala Harris proclaims guidelines for job force to fight racial, ethnic disparities

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on Thursday equipped current guidelines -- the COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Assignment Force Act -- to form a role force to fight the vogue minorities are being impacted by the coronavirus.

"Folk of coloration are being infected and death from coronavirus at unprecedented charges," Harris said in a assertion. "Right here is in phase on account of power lack of receive admission to to health care, bias in our health care system, systematic boundaries to equal pay and housing, and environmental injustice. It is main that the federal government proactively work to excellent historic wrongs which hang led to racial inequities for generations."

The guidelines would require the job force experts and government officers to "form recordsdata-driven solutions to federal agencies about directing crucial sources—love testing kits, testing offers, and personal preserving equipment (PPE)—to communities with racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and demise charges."

It additionally objectives to lengthen the work of such a role force previous the current coronavirus pandemic by setting up a permanent presence, "to proceed to identify and deal with racial and ethnic disparities in our health care system and toughen future infectious illness response."

The guidelines has the backing of a vary of high Senate Democrats, including 5 of Harris' ancient 2020 presidential opponents -- Sens. Cory Booker, Michael Bennet, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

1: 55 p.m.: Russia's top minister tests certain for COVID-19

Russia Top Minister Mikhail Mishustin says he has tested certain for the coronavirus and ought to drag into self-isolation.

Mishustin made the announcement at some stage in a televised video briefing with President Vladimir Putin.

Mishustin said he intended to remain fervent with colleagues, but asked Putin to nominate Deputy Top Minister Andrey Belousov as appearing top minister.

"The federal government will proceed to work as long-established," Mishustin said. "I contrivance to be in full of life contact by phone and video-conference with my colleagues, and additionally with you."

Putin said he hoped Mishustin would proceed to be in a position to work and consume phase in decisions, adding that getting the coronavirus can also "happen to somebody."

1: 25 p.m.: USNS Comfort leaves NYC

The Navy ship USNS Comfort left Unusual York Metropolis's harbor Thursday afternoon to return to Norfolk, Virginia.

The USNS Comfort handled 182 sufferers at some stage in its one month in Unusual York.

The ship "used to be on the inaugurate tasked with offering care to non-COVID sufferers, bringing the principle aboard on April 1," the Navy said in a assertion this week. "It rapidly became apparent that in relate to be of again to town, USNS Comfort wanted to manage with all sufferers, no topic their COVID contrivance. On April 6, the USNS COMFORT began accepting COVID-certain sufferers."

"I factor in Comfort no longer best doubtless introduced comfort but additionally saved lives," Unusual York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a briefing final week.

12: 50 p.m.: UK is 'previous the destroy,' Boris Johnson says

The United Kingdom is "previous the destroy of this illness," Top Minister Boris Johnson equipped Thursday, as he anchored the each day Downing Boulevard briefing for the principle time in weeks.

"We are on the downward slope," said Johnson, who used to be identified with the coronavirus and handled in the health heart.

"I'll be beginning off a complete contrivance next week on receive the financial system transferring, to receive kids again to faculty and how we are in a position to trail to work and form work in the affirm of enterprise safer," Johnson said.

Fatalities in the U.Ample. has climbed to over 26,000. The U.Ample. now has the third-highest demise toll, on the again of the U.S. and Italy.

12: 20 p.m.: Unusual York forming a 'tracing navy'

In Unusual York affirm, 306 lives were lost to the virus on Wednesday, including 19 in nursing houses, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.

All over the affirm, 4,681 of us tested certain on Wednesday.

Unusual York is now forming a "tracing navy" -- led by ancient Unusual York Metropolis mayor and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg -- to recruit and put collectively of us to work as contact tracers, said Cuomo.

"We need the correct system that we are in a position to deserve to receive Unusual York beginning and to defend Unusual Yorkers," Cuomo said, "but this would possibly presumably additionally be a laboratory to put collectively the correct system" to share with a form of states.

Within the intervening time, Cuomo equipped that Unusual York Metropolis subways will shut from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. at some stage in the pandemic in relate to disinfect trains and stations.

The governor said conditions on the subway hang "rapid deteriorated." Even supposing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority "stepped" as a lot as trim trains and buses every 72 hours -- which Cuomo known as " endeavor" -- he wired that the disinfecting must ramp up on account of the virus can reside on a floor for hours and even days.

"It is best to disinfect every affirm that a hand can also contact on the subway car," Cuomo said. "It is a broad endeavor that we now hang never accomplished sooner than."

11: 35 a.m.: Alabama beaches to reopen Thursday night

Alabama beaches will reopen Thursday night as the affirm's current "safer at dwelling" relate goes into invent.

With the current principles, no higher than 10 of us will be in a group on the seaside. Beachgoers must destroy 6 toes a long way flung from of us outdoor their family.

Pools are additionally reopening with the current principles. Those at pools must follow the same principles as the seaside.

"Our beaches will be beginning - offering of us abide by social distancing & the gatherings guidelines," Gov. Kay Ivey tweeted. "I have confidence the of us of AL to follow personal accountability while having fun with the Gulf."

The present "safer at dwelling" relate enforces social distancing as some of us return to work, Ivey said.

"The risk of #COVID19 isn’t over. We’re quiet seeing the virus spread," she cautioned. "You’re urged to put on face coverings round of us from a form of households whenever you enable your procure dwelling. Please proceed excellent hand washing & a form of appropriate, frequent-sense hygiene."

10: 50 a.m.: Intelligence Community analyzing origins of the outbreak

The U.S. Intelligence Community has the same opinion with the "wide scientific consensus" that COVID-19 wasn't man-made or genetically modified, basically based on a assertion Thursday.

Nonetheless, the Intelligence Community says it is persevering with to "pretty" concept "whether the outbreak began by means of contact with infected animals or if it used to be the dwell results of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."

"As we invent in all crises, the Community’s experts acknowledge by surging sources and producing main intelligence on concerns very crucial to U.S. nationwide security," the assertion added.

10: 25 a.m.: NYC distributing free face coverings at busy parks

In Unusual York Metropolis, free face coverings are being disbursed at high-trafficked parks and onerous-hit communities, Mayor Invoice de Blasio said Thursday.

The mayor additionally said he's assigning city workers to patrol parks and public areas to put in force social distancing.

De Blasio known because it a "very appropriate day" as he equipped the most fresh numbers.

Of of us tested citywide Tuesday, 22% were certain -- down from 23% on Monday.

There were 129 of us admitted to hospitals with coronavirus signs on Tuesday, down from 136 on Monday.

And 705 sufferers were in ICUs on Tuesday, down from 734 on Monday.

As the pandemic continues, Unusual York Metropolis is planning to triple testing skill at community web sites, de Blasio said.

Town for the time being has 11 testing web sites, and by the week of Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 18, town plans to hang 30 web sites.

The mayor said there'll be 14,000 tests conducted this week, but by the week of Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 18 town hopes to reach 43,000 per week.

9: 42 a.m.: Europe remains 'in the grip' of coronavirus pandemic, WHO says

The World Neatly being Organization's European director warned Thursday that the continent remains "in the grip" of the coronavirus pandemic, whilst many countries inaugurate lifting lockdowns and enjoyable a form of restrictive measures.

"The European contrivance accounts for 46% of circumstances and 63% of deaths globally," Dr. Hans Kluge said at some stage in a press conference in Geneva. "The contrivance remains very a lot in the grip of this pandemic."

Out of the 44 countries in the WHO Europe's contrivance which hang enacted coronavirus-associated restrictions, Kluge said 21 hang already begun easing these measures and one other 11 intend to invent so in the impending days.

Kluge infamous that social distancing measures hang helped lower the chance of current COVID-19 circumstances in the contrivance, saying, "We must display screen this certain vogue very carefully."

But he said France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom quiet hang high caseloads while Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine hang all considered will increase in circumstances.

"This virus is unforgiving. We must remain vigilant, persevere and be patient, ready to ramp up measures as and when wanted," Kluge said. "COVID-19 is no longer going away anytime rapidly."

8: 49 a.m.: Japan plans to lengthen affirm of emergency

Eastern Top Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday he plans to lengthen the country's affirm of emergency, which is slated to crawl out next week.

"I factor in this would possibly presumably be no longer easy to return to our long-established each day lives after Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 7," Abe told reporters. "We must put a query to an endurance crawl to a certain extent."

Abe said he'll consult with experts to come to a decision how long the declaration ought to be prolonged to curb the country's coronavirus outbreak.

Japan reported higher than 200 current confirmed circumstances of COVID-19 overnight, bringing the nationwide tally to almost 14,000.

7: 50 a.m.: Likely COVID-19 treatment reveals 'glimmer of hope,' researcher says

Scientists are optimistic a pair of doable treatment for COVID-19.

A U.S. government-subsidized scientific trial of the antiviral medication remdesivir began on Feb. 21 and entails higher than 1,000 sufferers around the sphere. Sixty-eight web sites hang joined the scrutinize -- 47 in the US and 21 in countries in Europe and Asia. Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has played a number one role -- the faculty and an affiliated health heart enrolled 103 sufferers, higher than any a form of institution on this planet.

Preliminary recordsdata from the trial reveals hospitalized sufferers with stepped forward COVID-19 and lung involvement who got the drug recovered sooner than the same sufferers who got a placebo.

"Having regarded after sufferers for eight weeks now with many colleagues working onerous, we had been getting sufferers greater but we wish to search out a drugs that helps sufferers receive greater extra rapid, receive them dwelling to their households and form extra room for a form of sufferers," Dr. Aneesh Mehta, an infectious ailments skilled at Emory University who is leading the trial there, told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Thursday on "Perfect Morning The United States."

"I mediate now we hang the principle glimmer of hope of something that would possibly invent that," he added.

Mehta infamous that just about all antiviral medications are inclined to work greater earlier at some stage in illness, so his personnel would additionally love to supply remdesivir to sufferers with milder circumstances.

"It is miles an intravenous treatment so can best doubtless be given in the health heart," he added, "but we're planning to supply this treatment as early as that you would possibly presumably mediate to as many sufferers that qualify."

Mehta said his personnel is now wanting at a form of medications to be archaic in aggregate with remdesivir.

"We deserve to search out out how remdesivir works for sufferers, who it works best doubtless in and what extra medications or therapies are wanted to toughen the final outcome," he said. "All sufferers are a form of, so we deserve to make certain that we're tailoring their treatment to what their needs are."

What to perceive about coronavirus:

How it began and defend your self: Coronavirus explained

What to invent ought to you hang signs: Coronavirus signs

Tracking the spread in the U.S. and worldwide: Coronavirus blueprint

7: 12 a.m.: China reports no current deaths

China reported no current deaths from the radical coronavirus on Thursday morning and lawful four current confirmed circumstances of COVID-19 over the previous 24 hours, all introduced from outdoor the country.

China has been testing and quarantining of us coming into the country from in a foreign places country. Imported circumstances of COVID-19 yarn for pretty lots of China's current circumstances.

China's National Neatly being Commission said Thursday that 619 of us remain hospitalized with COVID-19, including 41 in serious situation.

For the reason that current virus emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan again in December, the country has reported 82,862 confirmed circumstances of COVID-19 and 4,633 deaths.

6: 04 a.m.: Russia reports document spike in current circumstances

The chance of of us identified with the radical coronavirus illness in Russia surpassed 100,000 on Thursday, while the demise toll topped 1,000.

Russia's coronavirus response headquarters on Thursday morning reported a document each day spike of 7,099 current confirmed circumstances of COVID-19, bringing the tally to 106,498. The demise toll from the illness now stands at 1,073, after 101 current fatalities were reported over the previous 24 hours -- the 2d day in a row that Russia has recorded over 100 deaths from COVID-19.

Moscow quiet has the bulk of the country's reported infections, with 3,093 current circumstances and 65 extra deaths were confirmed in the capital on Thursday morning, basically based on the coronavirus response headquarters.

Fundamental of Russia has been on lockdown since leisurely March, with residents ordered to destroy dwelling and best doubtless very crucial firms last beginning, including banks, grocery stores and pharmacies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin prolonged the lockdown except Would possibly perchance presumably well presumably 11 on Tuesday and asked his government to put collectively a contrivance to slowly reopen the country.

3: 57 a.m.: South Korea reports no current local circumstances for 1st time since February

South Korea reported no current locally transmitted circumstances of the radical coronavirus on Thursday for the principle time since Feb. 18.

Four current circumstances of COVID-19 were confirmed over the previous 24 hours, but all were imported from in a foreign places country, basically based on the South Korean Centers for Illness Preserve watch over and Prevention.

The country's first confirmed case of COVID-19 used to be reported on Jan. 20. Since then, as a minimal 10,765 of us had been identified with the illness, of which 9,059 hang recovered and 247 hang died.

South Korean authorities remain pondering the chance of current outbreaks and hang urged the general public to deal with strict social distancing guidelines as the nation enters an prolonged public vacation that began Thursday.

ABC News' Jamie Aranoff, Dee Carden, Matt Fuhrman, Will Gretsky, Invoice Hutchinson, Aaron Katersky, Kelly McCarthy, Patrick Reevell, Joseph Simonetti, Tanya Stukalova and Alisa Wiersema contributed to this document.

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go-redgirl · 4 years

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Featured Articles in Internal Medicine

IN THE NEWS

5 viruses more dangerous than the new coronavirus

John Murphy, MDLinx | February 14, 2020

The novel coronavirus—officially called COVID-19—is bad news. It was officially identified as a new virus only about a month ago, but it has already infected 80,413 people and killed 2,708 worldwide (as of this writing). Different sources estimate the mortality rate for COVID-19 at roughly 2% to 3%—but that could change as the virus rages on.

Of course, the world has been through other outbreaks that were much, much worse. For instance, the Spanish Flu of 1918 infected an estimated 500 million people and killed at least 50 million worldwide.

Now, weighing the impact of one virus against another isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. All sorts of variables are involved, including the mode of transmission, host defense mechanisms, virus infectivity—even the weather plays a factor. Still, it’s informative to put the current danger into some sort of perspective.

To that end, let’s look at five other viruses that, in their own ways, are more dangerous than COVID-19.

Hepatitis

Viral hepatitis caused an annual 1.34 million deaths worldwide in 2015. While deaths due to other infectious diseases have declined, deaths due to viral hepatitis have actually increased—by 22%—since 2000, according to a WHO report.

Although five types of hepatitis exist—including hepatitis A, D, and E—hepatitis B and C are responsible for 96% of all hepatitis-related deaths. Most of these deaths are due to chronic liver disease and primary liver cancer.

Approximately 325 million people, or 4.4% of the world’s population, have viral hepatitis. And 1.75 million new infections of hepatitis C alone occur each year.

Despite a vaccine for hepatitis B and effective antivirals for hepatitis C, few people with viral hepatitis get a diagnosis because of limited access to affordable hepatitis testing. (Only 9% of people with hepatitis B and 20% with hepatitis C have received a diagnosis, according to the WHO.) Consequently, treatment reaches only a small fraction of those infected.

MERS

COVID-19 isn’t the only coronavirus in town these days. Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is caused by a rare but deadly coronavirus mostly found in Saudi Arabia.

Since it was first identified in 2012, MERS has infected 2,499 people and caused 861 deaths globally, according to the WHO. Clearly, that’s just a fraction of the numbers reported for COVID-19, but the difference is in the mortality rate. MERS has had a mortality rate as high as 37.2% compared with the current estimated mortality rate of 2% to 3% for COVID-19.

Like COVID-19, infection from MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) shows symptoms of fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Unlike COVID-19, MERS-CoV infection often stems from camels.

“Although most human cases of MERS-CoV infections have been attributed to human-to-human infections in health care settings, current scientific evidence suggests that dromedary camels are a major reservoir host for MERS-CoV and an animal source of MERS infection in humans,” the WHO warned.

No vaccine or specific treatment is currently available for MERS-CoV, but some are in development.

Ebola

Right now, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is fighting the world’s second-largest Ebola epidemic on record. As of this writing, 2,249 people have died and 3,432 have been infected since the outbreak was declared in August 2018, according to the WHO.

Ebola is rare, but it has a high mortality rate of about 50% (although that rate has ranged from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks). The 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa was the largest Ebola epidemic to occur: 28,610 people were infected and 11,308 died.

No proven treatment has been able to stop the virus, but a number of blood, immunological, and drug therapies are in development. Experimental vaccines have been shown to help control the spread of Ebola outbreaks in Guinea and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

HIV/AIDS

At the end of 2018, approximately 37.9 million people worldwide were living with HIV. In the same year, 770,000 people died from HIV-related causes and 1.7 million people were newly infected.

Since the virus was first discovered, more than 32 million people worldwide have died as a result of HIV, according to the WHO. Although it continues to be a major global public health issue, “HIV infection has become a manageable chronic health condition, enabling people living with HIV to lead long and healthy lives,” the organization noted.

For instance, 62% of adults and 54% of children living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries are now receiving antiretroviral therapy, which has become the primary treatment for the virus.

More good news: New HIV infections fell by 37% and HIV-related deaths dropped by 45% between 2000 and 2018, with an estimated 13.6 million lives saved due to antiretroviral therapy. “This achievement was the result of great efforts by national HIV programmes supported by civil society and international development partners,” according to the WHO.

Despite the good news, now is not the time to become complacent. Of the estimated 1.1 million Americans living with HIV in the US, about 14% (or 1 in 7) of them don’t know it and need to be tested. Meanwhile, more than 38,000 new HIV infections occur in the United States each year.

Influenza

While COVID-19 has caused a great deal of fear and concern, there’s a more widespread and more deadly virus going around—the flu. Worldwide, the flu causes about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 deaths each year, according to the latest estimate.

In the United States, at least 22 million people have gotten the flu in the 2019-2020 season so far and 12,000 have died from it—including at least 78 children—according to the most recent report from the CDC.

While there’s no treatment or yearly vaccine for COVID-19 like there is for the flu, COVID-19 has warranted a high level of caution and extensive containment procedures. If seasonal flu were given as much regard, fewer people would likely die from it, experts say.

“Which virus truly is a threat? It is the one we are all familiar with and the one people tend to not be afraid of,” said vaccine and infectious disease immunologist Steven Szczepanek, PhD, MS, assistant professor, Pathobiology and Veterinary Science, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

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dailykhaleej · 4 years

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COVID-19 causes blood clots harming organs from brain to toes

This undated electron microscope picture made accessible by the U.S. Nationwide Institutes of Well being in February 2020 reveals the Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, yellow, rising from the floor of cells, pink, cultured within the lab. Also called 2019-nCoV, the virus causes COVID-19. The pattern was remoted from a affected person within the U.S. On Thursday, March 5, 2020, Tennessee’s Division of Well being Commissioner Lisa Piercey confirmed the state’s first case of the brand new coronavirus. (NIAID-RML through AP) Picture Credit score: AP

One other menace from the lung virus that causes COVID-19 has emerged which will trigger swift, typically deadly harm: blood clots.

Docs around the globe are noting a raft of clotting-related problems – from benign pores and skin lesions on the toes typically known as “Covid toe” to life-threatening strokes and blood-vessel blockages. Ominously, if harmful clots go untreated, they might manifest days to months after respiratory signs have resolved.

The clotting phenomenon is “probably the most important thing that’s emerged over the last perhaps month or two,” mentioned Mitchell Levy, chief of pulmonary essential care and sleep medication on the Warren Albert Faculty of Drugs at Brown College in Windfall, Rhode Island.

It is common for infections to elevate the chance of clotting. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, brought on by a novel pressure of influenza that killed some 50 million folks worldwide, was additionally linked to downstream harm from clots that would finish lives dramatically.

Viruses together with HIV, dengue and Ebola are all identified to make blood cells susceptible to clumping. The professional-clotting impact could also be much more pronounced in sufferers with the coronavirus.

“There’s one thing about this virus that is exaggerated that to the nth diploma. We’re seeing clotting in a method on this sickness that we now have not seen previously.

– Mitchell Levy, chief of pulmonary essential care and sleep medication on the Warren Albert Faculty of Drugs at Brown College

“There’s something about this virus that’s exaggerated that to the nth degree,” mentioned Levy, who can also be medical director of the medical intensive care unit at Rhode Island Hospital. “We’re seeing clotting in a way in this illness that we have not seen in the past.”

The issue is seen in clots – docs name them thrombi – that type in sufferers’ arterial catheters and filters used to assist failing kidneys. Extra pernicious are the clots that impede blood movement within the lungs, inflicting problem respiratory.

Speedy deterioration

These are most likely what’s inflicting sufferers who in any other case seem effectively to abruptly “fall off the ledge” and develop extreme blood-oxygen deficiency, mentioned Margaret Pisani, an affiliate professor of medication on the Yale College Faculty of Drugs in New Haven, Connecticut.

Clotting problems in COVID-19 sufferers have been famous by researchers in China in February, however their gravity has since turn out to be clearer. Whereas docs had thought the overwhelming majority of lung harm was due to viral pneumonia, they’re now wanting extra intently at clotting.

30%

of severely in poor health COVID-19 sufferers suffered a so-called pulmonary embolism – a probably lethal blockage in one of many arteries of the lungs.

“When you look at autopsies now, we are seeing things that we didn’t expect,” mentioned Anthony Fauci, the director of the Nationwide Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses who’s on the forefront of the US pandemic response. Clumps of platelets inside blood vessels, or microthrombi, are most likely why Covid sufferers can “rapidly and dramatically deteriorate,” he mentioned in an interview with CNN final week.

Separate research from France and the Netherlands discovered that as many as 30 per cent of severely in poor health COVID-19 sufferers suffered a so-called pulmonary embolism – a probably lethal blockage in one of many arteries of the lungs. These typically happen when bits of blood clots from veins deep within the legs journey to the lungs. By comparability, the prevalence of pulmonary embolism was 1.three per cent in critically in poor health sufferers with out COVID-19, one examine discovered.

Cardiac arrest

If untreated, massive arterial lung clots can put overwhelming pressure on the guts, inflicting cardiac arrest. Even tiny clots within the capillaries of lung tissue might interrupt blood movement, undermining makes an attempt to assist oxygenate sufferers with ventilators, mentioned Edwin van Beek, chair of medical radiology on the College of Edinburgh’s Queen’s Medical Analysis Institute.

Within the early 1990s, Van Beek helped develop the D-dimer blood check that is used around the globe to monitor clot formation in sufferers, together with these with COVID-19, and to dose them with heparin and different anticoagulant drugs.

Untreated pulmonary embolism is deadly in a single in three circumstances, and can recur in one other third, he mentioned. In three per cent to 7 per cent of sufferers, it should trigger pulmonary hypertension, one other harmful complication that may trigger fatigue and shortness of breath.

Scarred lungs and clotting-related issues could also be a lingering legacy of the pandemic, Van Beek mentioned. COVID-19 survivors who’ve subsequent problem respiratory, particularly on exertion, would possibly mistakenly imagine it is a recurrence of coronavirus an infection, when it might really be a “reactivation of the whole clotting problem.”

“I expect to see more of this as we come out of the pandemic,” he mentioned. Sufferers and docs alike will not be conscious of the dangers or the potential want for therapy.

Coagulation might happen due to harm to cells lining blood vessels that outcomes from each the viral an infection and the immune system’s inflammation-causing response, mentioned Jean Connors, a Harvard Medical Faculty hematologist.

“The outcome isn’t affected if you’re treated appropriately,” she mentioned. However “it’s possible that people are dying from undiagnosed pulmonary emboli.”

Organ harm

Clots might type in different elements of the physique, probably damaging important organs together with the guts, kidneys, liver, bowel, and different tissues.

5 circumstances of stroke have been handled in Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Well being System over a two-week interval by way of early April, docs reported within the New England Journal of Drugs final week. The sufferers, who all had the coronavirus and have been youthful than 50, have been handled for large-vessel blockages.

It is a uncommon complication amplified by the “sheer numbers of infected patients,” Connors mentioned. New York Metropolis has reported about 170,000 COVID-19 circumstances, together with roughly 43,000 hospitalisations.

Some docs are beginning to see COVID as much less of a typical respiratory illness, and extra of 1 that entails harmful clotting. That is fairly horrifying while you consider it, as a result of we did not know what we’re up towards till we have been in a later stage.

– Frank Rasulo, head of neuro essential care at Spedali Civili College Hospital in Brescia

Puzzling, enlightening

Such findings are “puzzling” on one hand, “but on the other hand are enlightening” as a result of they will inform higher methods to deal with sufferers, mentioned Fauci, the NIAID chief.

In Italy, the primary European nation gripped by the pandemic, it was after COVID-19 sufferers died from acute pulmonary emboli and different clotting-related occasions that docs moved to inflammation-blocking therapies, equivalent to tocilizumab, offered by Roche Holding AG as Actemra, mentioned Frank Rasulo, a head of neuro essential care at Spedali Civili College Hospital in Brescia.

Some docs are beginning to see COVID as much less of a typical respiratory illness, and extra of 1 that entails harmful clotting, mentioned Rasulo, who can also be an affiliate professor of anesthesia and intensive care. “That’s quite frightening when you think of it, because we didn’t know what we’re up against until we were in a later stage.”

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sylviajackson5 · 4 years

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compare-wp10 · 4 years

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Coronavirus New York: Black, Hispanic people at higher COVID-19 risk

In New York state, the black and Hispanic populations are at higher risk of dying from coronavirus, preliminary data shows New York State Team Published 2:02 PM EDT Apr 8, 2020 ALBANY, N.Y. – New data show about 18% of novel coronavirus deaths in New York, excluding New York City, were black people and 14% were Hispanic people, revealing the virus is disproportionately killing people of color. In contrast to the newly reported death data, black people account for about 9% of the state's population outside New York City, and Hispanic people account for 11%. Health officials noted the new data is preliminary, representing 90% of the coronavirus death information on race and ethnicity outside New York City. It will be updated as the information becomes available. Details of the racial and ethnic disparities came after data revealed the majority of New York’s more than 5,489 deaths due to coronavirus were among men, and 86% of all deaths were among people who had underlying illnesses, such as hypertension and diabetes. Wednesday's coronavirus news: Get the latest updates with our live blog More: Black people are overwhelmingly dying from coronavirus in cities across the US New York started to release more details about coronavirus cases just hours after a USA TODAY Network article on Friday sourced experts who said the state should release as many details as possible to help the public understand the virus and their risks. More: New data on New York coronavirus deaths: Most had these underlying illnesses; 61% were men What New York's race, ethnicity data show Outside New York City, 62% of the deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, were white people, who represent about 75% of the population, the new data show. Asian people accounted for 4% of the COVID-19 deaths, which is the same as their population percentage outside New York City. In New York City, the data reflected 63% of the deaths, meaning it is more difficult to draw conclusions about the risk factors. The data for New York City showed 34% of COVID-19 deaths were Hispanic people, who represent 29% of the city population. Black people represented 28% of COVID-19 deaths and 22% of the city population, the data show. Asian people represented 7% of COVID-19 deaths and 14% of the city population, the data show. More: Mental health services adapt, predict possible post-coronavirus crisis Why racial information about coronavirus deaths is important Melissa DeRosa, secretary to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, gives an update on the coronavirus response during a press conference at the state Capitol on March 26, 2020. Mike Groll, Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo State Sens. Zellnor Myrie, D-Brooklyn, and Jamaal Bailey, D-Bronx, on Tuesday urged state and New York City officials to release the data detailing the racial disparities of the COVID-19 crisis. “The novel coronavirus has been called a ‘great equalizer,’” the senators wrote in a joint letter to state and city officials. “While it is true that anyone can contract the virus and this crisis reaches all of us in some way, it is absolutely not true that the harm it causes is distributed equally," the senators wrote. "On the contrary, it is clear that COVID-19 is hurting most the ones with the least,” they added. Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker on Tuesday addressed reports from other states that show data on COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, is hitting communities of color hardest. "One of the challenges is that some of the communities have challenges with their health in general," Zucker said. "They’re more apt to have some of the challenges with asthma and so anytime anyone who has underlying medical conditions ends up with this virus, or any other virus, it puts them more at risk," he added. Public health experts have expanded on the heightened threat that many diseases, including COVID-19, pose among marginalized communities. “The virus is an equal-opportunity crisis … but the impact and the burden of it is not going to be shared equally,’’ Dr. Ashwin Vasan, a public health expert and assistant professor at Columbia University in New York City said to USA TODAY. “Like most things in society, it's going to be regressive. It's going to be felt disproportionately by the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized, and obviously that falls down in this country on communities of color," he added. What other states are reporting about race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 Odette Addison and her son David, 16, a junior at Thornton High School check out a laptop April 1, 2020 at Holmes Elementary School in Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon City School District faculty members distributed laptops to students in need for electronic learning during the coronavirus pandemic. Tania Savayan/The Journal News While the federal government faces pressure to release more national COVID-19 information, some states have already begun revealing reams of data. The COVID Tracking Project website, for instance, is collecting data from the states. It noted Monday that nine states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, were releasing racial demographic data. Illinois, for example, reported that 3,607 of its confirmed COVID-19 cases were black people, state data show. That's nearly 30% of the state's cases, despite the fact only about 15% of its population is black or African American, U.S. Census data show. More: New York will keep businesses, schools closed through April 29 Further, 129 of Illinois' coronavirus deaths, or 42%, were black people, the data shows. In New Jersey, state officials reported information on the race of those who died for the first time Monday. Of the statewide deaths, 60% were white, 24% black, 5% Asian and 11% other, the USA TODAY Network reported. In contrast, about 15% of New Jersey's population is black, U.S. Census data show. Seeking a federal response on coronavirus data reporting President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Washington. Alex Brandon, AP President Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a White House briefing Tuesday that African Americans were being hit hard by the coronavirus, representing a "tremendous challenge" for the nation, according to the president. "We want to find the reason to it," Trump said, adding that national data on race and coronavirus cases should be available later this week. ReNika Moore, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Project, addressed the lack of national COVID-19 racial data in a statement to USA TODAY Network New York. People wear masks during the coronavirus pandemic as they walk in the intersection of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue, Tuesday, April 7, 2020 in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) Mark Lennihan, AP "The impact of the pandemic has pulled back the covers to clearly demonstrate our country’s racial inequities, including health care disparities, among black communities," Moore said. "To effectively fight this pandemic and support black and brown communities, a COVID-19 response must address the pervasive racial injustices at the federal, state and local level – this includes collecting and reporting accurate data on rates of infection and outcomes by race," she added. Addressing findings in the early COVID-19 racial data, the National Women's Law Center noted women of color are disproportionately represented within front-line and low-paid workforces bearing the brunt of the pandemic, including food service, home care, child care, and grocery store staff. "As a country, we can’t enable inequitable systems and then feign shock that death rates are higher in communities of color," Dorianne Mason, director of health equity at the center, said in a statement. More: Coronavirus in New York: Check our interactive map of cases and deaths by county Deborah Barfield Berry contributed to this report David Robinson is the state health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York. Follow him on Twitter: @DrobinsonLoHud Published 2:02 PM EDT Apr 8, 2020

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dailynewswebsite · 4 years

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Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson shares the five things he's obsessing over in quarantine

The Guardian

Steve Dalkowski: the life and thriller of baseball’s flame-throwing what-if

Many imagine the lefthander was the quickest pitcher to ever take the mound. However his profession – and life – went off the rails earlier than he may make an impactSteve Dalkowski, a profession minor-leaguer who very nicely may have been the quickest (and wildest) pitcher in baseball historical past, died in April on the age of 80 from problems from Covid-19. And but, partly due to one lacking element, his legend lives on, maybe for ever. A ebook and a documentary – each of which have been within the works nicely earlier than Dalkowski’s demise – have been launched since Dalkowski, who had alcohol-related dementia, died in his residence city, New Britain, Connecticut, the place he grew to become a phenomenon greater than 60 years in the past.Each the ebook, Dalko: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Quickest Pitcher, and the documentary, Far From House: The Steve Dalkowski Story, fastidiously try and make clear, and even dispel, lots of the myths which have surfaced about Dalkowski over time. These days, all the pieces in sports activities is quantified down to every pitch, or play, and loads of video exists. It was not all the time that method. Tom Chiappetta, the Connecticut native who took 30 years to assemble the documentary, has been unable to uncover movie of Dalkowski pitching in a sport. “That is the final time we’re going to have an American sports activities legend to speak about,” Brian Vikander, the pitching coach who wrote the ebook with Invoice Dembski and Alex Thomas, tells the Guardian. “Nevertheless it additionally talks to the foibles that every one of us as people have.” Certainly, a lot about Dalkowski is legend. A whole bunch of newspaper obituaries have been written about Dalkowski, however Vikander says most contained errors. Chiappetta, who “barely scratched the floor” along with his documentary, says that Dalkowski’s “legend continues. One cause why is that individuals can’t get sufficient about his life.” This a lot we all know: Dalkowski, a lefthander, was 5ft 10in and 170lb, not a very intimidating mound presence. However he was astonishingly quick and wild, with 1,324 strikeouts – and 1,236 bases on balls – over 956 innings pitched from 1957 to 1965. He had 262 strikeouts and 262 walks over 170 innings for the Class C Stockton Ports in 1960. His four-seam fastball, known as his “radio pitch” as a result of batters may hear it however not see it, was virtually unhittable … when it streaked over residence plate. However simply as many pitches sailed over batters’ heads, even into the stands. It was stated he as soon as hit a fan ready in line for a scorching canine. He was identified for throwing pure warmth, however there was no method again then to quantify simply how briskly he threw. Folks swear he threw 110 miles an hour, perhaps even quicker. (New York Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman holds the documented file: 105.eight mph.) “That’s a part of the mystique, for positive,” Chiappetta stated. “They only didn’t have the expertise again then to show it.” Though a number of rudimentary makes an attempt have been made to measure the pace of his pitches, Dalkowski ended his professional profession almost a decade earlier than a radar gun was first used for Nolan Ryan, the Corridor of Fame pitcher. And Dalkowski’s profession had peaked within the spring of 1963. That was when Dalkowski, all however sure to earn a spot with the Baltimore Orioles, felt a pop in his left elbow, probably a torn ligament, although his harm was by no means recognized. (The pitcher Tommy John underwent groundbreaking reconstructive elbow surgical procedure in 1974, which is routinely used to right such accidents now.) The director and screenwriter Ron Shelton, a former Orioles’ farmhand, stated he based mostly the quick, wild and immature character “Nuke” LaLoosh, performed by Tim Robbins, on Dalkowski within the basic 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham. However there was a vital distinction of their tales. Bull Durham ends with LaLoosh within the huge leagues, a prospect polished by laborious classes realized within the minors. However Dalkowski by no means pitched in a regular-season sport at increased than the Triple-A degree. He was an alcoholic, and his life, like his radio pitch, spun uncontrolled. And that grew to become a part of his legend, too. Sports activities in these days weren’t as scientific as now. There have been no pitch counts to nurture a pitcher’s arm. Dalkowski as soon as threw 283 pitches in a single sport – 120 is taken into account extreme these days. Managers usually had him heat up, and cool down, by tiring him out first. “Pitchers have been anticipated to pitch 9 innings again then – ‘Come on! Be a person!’” Vikander stated. Far much less time was spent on mechanics, even on technique on how one can strategy batters. For instance, Vikander stated half of all hitters then as now take the primary pitch, so Dalkowski might need benefitted from merely bearing right down to throw, say, a curveball for a first-pitch strike. “There was data there that would have executed issues for Steve,” Vikander stated. Although Dalkowski did briefly have a stable father-son-type relationship with Earl Weaver, who would later change into the Orioles’ legendary supervisor, just about no consideration was paid again then to an athlete’s psychological state, particularly to those that struggled with excessive expectations. “He wasn’t arrange psychologically to deal with that,” Vikander stated of Dalkowski’s fame. Chiappetta stated, “He had no teaching. No baseball teaching, no life teaching, no teaching of something. If he’d be coming by way of baseball now, it’s a complete totally different world.” Dalkowski took odd jobs after he left baseball , disappearing altogether from household and buddies, generally sleeping in alleys, subsequent to, or in, rubbish cans. He was discovered alone, raveled, in a laundromat in California on Christmas Eve 1992. He did, nevertheless, have a bit of scrap paper with the cellphone variety of a former teammate, Frank Zupo, and his life would change for the higher due to assist he obtained from his sister, Pat, and the Baseball Help Workforce, amongst many others. “I’m ashamed of simply happening the drain, and I don’t have to try this to cease this Mickey Mouse ingesting stuff to get my act collectively,” Dalkowski stated in an interview with Chiappetta earlier in 1992 that’s included within the documentary. He added: “You already know who I damage essentially the most? God bless her soul – my sister. I cry about it at night time. It’s too unhealthy. I had all the pieces on the platter. I simply dumped it in the bathroom, and I assume I flushed it.” The happier a part of his story is that Dalkowski spent the final 26 years of his life at an elder-care facility in New Britain, the place he grew to become considerably of a celeb for being a neighborhood child who grew to become a minor-leaguer with dazzling potential – potential being the operative phrase. “He bought 26 years of his life again,” Chiappetta stated. “That’s lots longer than he performed baseball.” The seek for data continues, partially as a result of Dalkowski by no means made it to the massive leagues, the place data might be extra simply discovered. Plus, Dalkowski stopped pitching 55 years in the past. “We’re in search of guys who performed ‘D’ [level] ball with him in 1957,” Vikander says. Early response to the ebook, Vikander stated, has been “stellar,” which makes him hopeful that extra details about him might be discovered and despatched to the ebook’s web site. Chiappetta is satisfied there may be previous movie – someplace – of Dalko pitching. “The story simply sort of continues,” Chiappetta says. If a movie clip does floor, maybe from a dusty attic, it could be attainable to measure the pace of Dalkowski’s frighteningly quick, four-seam fastball. If we all know for positive that he threw lower than, say, 105.eight mph, his legend would absolutely diminish.However, then once more, what if the clip reveals that Dalko threw a lot quicker?

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/modern-familys-jesse-tyler-ferguson-shares-the-five-things-hes-obsessing-over-in-quarantine/ via https://growthnews.in

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Iowa tops NYT’s national list of COVID-19 hot spots | News, Sports, Jobs

Photo by Perry Beeman/Iowa Capital Dispatch Iowa State University students were back on campus Aug. 22 with some wearing masks, and some not.

Iowa had the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 in the nation over the past seven days, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper’s latest analysis showed Iowa with 220 cases per 100,000 people, well above North Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama and South Dakota among the hot spots.

Iowa was among 14 states that saw increases in their per capita COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks, the New York Times reported Friday.

Five of the states listed are in the Midwest: Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Minnesota. The others were Hawaii, North Carolina, Connecticut, Maine and Vermont.

Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois and Indiana had steady per capita rates of COVID-19 the past 14 days.

The Times reported that as of 11:39 a.m. Friday, Iowa had recorded 62,075 COVID-19 cases and 1,091 deaths since the pandemic started.

On Thursday, Iowa had at least 14 coronavirus deaths and 2,620 new cases, the newspaper found. The state has averaged 993 new cases per day, several times higher than at many other stretches since spring. That’s an increase of 123 percent in the average from two weeks ago, the Times reported.

The Times reported sharp increases in cases in Story County, home of Iowa State University; Johnson County, where the University of Iowa is located; Webster County, where a prison in Fort Dodge has had outbreaks; Lee County in southeast Iowa; and Marion County, which includes Knoxville.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds closed bars and similar facilities late Thursday in six counties — Black Hawk, Dallas, Johnson, Linn, Polk and Story — noting that university parties and other gatherings sans masks had been one factor in the spread of the virus. Her action brought immediate protests from owners of bars who said thousands of jobs could be lost, along with some businesses.

At her news conference Thursday, Reynolds noted that she would take additional action if students merely move the parties to private locations, but she didn’t elaborate.

State epidemiologist Caitlin Pedati on Thursday said the state would begin disclosing positive and negative antigen tests for COVID-19, per U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations.

The Iowa Department of Public Health reported 860 positive coronavirus tests on Thursday. The state’s numbers have regularly disagreed with the Times, which includes suspected cases in addition to lab results.

At least 70 percent of Iowans who have died of the virus had pre-existing conditions, the state reported.

Iowa tops NYT’s national list of COVID-19 hot spots

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Five states removed from NY’s travel advisory | News, Sports, Jobs

By SYDNEY SCHAEFER

Watertown Daily Times

Five states have been removed from New York’s mandatory travel advisory, but Guam has been added to the fluctuating list, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Tuesday.

Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Maryland and Montana have been removed from the ever-changing list, but Guam now meets the metrics to qualify for the 14-day quarantine mandate.

“New Yorkers made enormous sacrifices to get our numbers as low as they are today, and we don’t want to give up an inch of that hard-earned progress. That’s why these travel advisory precautions are so important,” Cuomo said in a prepared statement on Tuesday. “While it’s good news that five states have been removed from the travel advisory, the list remains far too long as America continues to struggle with COVID-19.”

Cuomo and fellow Democratic Govs. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and Ned M. Lamont of Connecticut imposed a tri-state order at midnight June 25 mandating a 14-day self-quarantine for travelers who arrive in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut from states with more than a 10% positive coronavirus test rate, or a positive test rating higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day average. Weekly calculations are completed Monday nights and the list is updated Tuesday morning.

There are now 28 states — just over half the country — on the travel advisory list, as well as Guam, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The updated list of states is as follows: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Cuomo also announced Tuesday that New York’s rate of positive coronavirus tests is below 1% for the 18th day in a row. Of the 67,255 test results reported to the state Monday, 629, or 0.94%, were returned positive.

The additional 629 positive test results brings the statewide total to 430,774. New virus cases were reported in 42 of the state’s 62 counties.

Two New Yorkers died of COVID-19 on Monday, matching the state’s previous low. No deaths were reported in New York City on Monday.

The state has seen 25,297 COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic began in March.

Also on Monday, the State Liquor Authority and State Police task force visited 1,024 establishments in New York City and Long Island, and observed two of them — one in Brooklyn and the other in Queens — were not in compliance with the state’s coronavirus-related requirements.

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Coronavirus Live Updates: New Cases Are Increasing in U.S.

With states beginning to allow varying degrees of economic reopening, large protests against police brutality being held in dozens of cities and warmer weather inviting people outside, forecasters tracking the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States are approaching a difficult juncture.

While the portrait of the country overall has improved significantly in recent weeks, epidemiologists have cautioned that different states are likely to experience very different challenges now in measuring and controlling the virus’s spread.

According to data compiled by The New York Times, more than a third of states are still seeing new infections increasing. But as many of them move ahead with reopening plans, their outcomes may depend on factors like how stressed their health care systems have been and how far they are along the curve.

In some relatively large states such as North Carolina and Arizona, increased testing suggests that infections are still climbing quickly and may spike further as more people venture out.

In another group are states that have achieved modest declines in new cases, but where the sheer number of people already infected remains the main source of concern. Even as states such as Maryland or Connecticut have seen small declines in new infections, both still have alarmingly high counts per capita, which have taxed health care systems for weeks.

The fear for states in the second category is that with scores of people already infected, recent declines could be quickly erased through increased social contact in the months ahead, threatening health care systems anew.

In Corpus Christi, the oil and gas and vacation town on the southeastern coast of Texas, it can be tough to find people who have experienced the coronavirus’s devastation, or even know someone who has. But people hit with job losses or business closures? They are everywhere.

Theresa Thompson has been furloughed from her position as a catering and events manager at a Holiday Inn. Richard Lomax has seen sales fall by more than 90 percent at the two restaurants his family owns. Brett Oetting, chief executive of the tourism office, has been working with countless businesses struggling to navigate the economic collapse.

None of them knows anyone local who has been sickened by the virus.

In corners of the United States facing financial ruin, but where the coronavirus hasn’t arrived in full, a New York Times analysis of economic and infection data helps explain why some see reopening as long overdue. The sharp disconnect between extreme economic pain and limited health impact presents local officials and businesses with difficult choices, even after Friday’s encouraging jobs report suggested more of the country was returning to work.

“In the first two weeks when they said this was coming, I was like, ‘Let’s all stay in, hunker down, and if we all do this, that can help while we figure out what is going on,’” said Stephanie Anderson, a real estate agent in Satellite Beach, Fla.

But since “places here aren’t producing mass death,” she said, “don’t tell me I can’t open my business in a responsible manner.”

Some business owners and workers in these communities have embraced reopening because of their firsthand experiences. Many are angry or confused. Others plead for caution. But most agree the virus has not posed the local public health threat that so many were expecting — even while acknowledging that things could get worse and the numbers would most likely already be higher with more testing.

Here are some other recent developments on the economic impact of the pandemic:

Brazil’s government on Friday removed comprehensive numbers on coronavirus cases and deaths from the Health Ministry’s website, claiming without offering evidence that state officials had been reporting inflated figures to secure more federal funding.

Carlos Wizard, a businessman recently appointed by President Jair Bolsonaro to a top job in the ministry, told the O Globo newspaper on Friday that the government suspects state officials have been including deaths from other causes in the coronavirus tallies they report to the federal government.

“Local officials, driven purely by a desire to get more funding for their cities, labeled everyone as Covid,” Wizard said. “We’re reviewing those deaths.”

The accusation outraged public health experts. Several noted that Brazil has a sophisticated health surveillance system and that there is a broad consensus among epidemiologists that a lack of testing worldwide has resulted in a gross undercount of deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Mr. Bolsonaro has come under withering criticism at home and abroad for his cavalier handling of the pandemic. He has sabotaged quarantine guidelines issued at the state level, calling them ruinous for economic growth. On Friday, he threatened to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization, which has urged countries with increasing outbreaks to adopt social distancing guidelines.

As of Saturday, Brazil had more than 650,000 confirmed cases, second only to the United States, and more than 35,000 deaths. In recent days, Brazil has led the world in the number of new deaths reported each day.

The National Council of Health Secretaries, which represents municipal health officials, called Mr. Wizard’s accusation outrageous.

“This authoritarian, insensitive, inhumane and unethical attempt to erase people who have died from Covid-19 will fail,” the council said. “We are not mercenaries of death.”

As the country’s caseload exploded in recent weeks, Mr. Bolsonaro fired his health minister and replaced him with a doctor who lasted less than a month on the job.

Since mid-May, the health ministry has been led by an active duty general with no medical experience, and military officers have stepped into several top jobs as career health officials resigned.

In Australia, huge crowds turned out in Sydney, Melbourne and many other communities in support of the Black Lives Matter movement calling for an end to systemic racism and Aboriginal deaths in police custody.

The health minister in Britain urged residents not to gather for demonstrations in London, Manchester and Birmingham. But large crowds appeared — despite the cold weather, the rain and warnings by the police that mass gatherings would violate the rule that only six people from different households could gather outside during the pandemic.

In Paris, the authorities barred people from gathering in front of the United States Embassy, but thousands protested there anyway in the late afternoon, as well as near the Eiffel Tower, echoing a protest earlier this week that drew nearly 20,000 people in memory of Adama Traoré, a Frenchman who died in police custody in 2016.

And in the German cities of Berlin and Cologne, thousands responded to social media calls to take to the streets to honor Mr. Floyd. The protests came after a week of demonstrations in cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt.

Fury against racism and police brutality has also brought crowds into the streets of Belgium, Canada, Sweden and Zimbabwe. In other parts of the world:

Art Basel, the centerpiece of the European art market calendar, is canceled. The 50th anniversary edition of the event in Basel, Switzerland, was to feature more than 250 international galleries and had already been postponed.

Saudi Arabia reimposed a curfew in the Red Sea city of Jeddah from 3 p.m. to 6 a.m. for two weeks starting on Saturday, halted prayers in the city’s mosques and suspended work in offices because of a rise in the spread of the coronavirus, the state news agency SPA reported.

Russia on Saturday reported 8,855 new cases of the coronavirus, pushing the total number of infections to 458,689, and 197 deaths in the past 24 hours. The nationwide death toll has reached 5,725.

The weekend ahead of New York City’s start of gradual reopening Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reported 35 new coronavirus deaths statewide, a drop of seven from the day before and the lowest daily total in the last two months.

“This is really, really good news compared to where we were,” Mr. Cuomo said Saturday during his daily briefing in Albany. “This is a big sigh of relief.”

Under Phase 1 of reopening, set to begin Monday, retail stores will be allowed to open for curbside or in-store pickup, and nonessential construction and manufacturing can resume, returning as many as 400,000 people to the work force.

“You want to talk about a turnaround — this one, my friends, is going to go in the history books,” Mr. Cuomo said. “There is no state in the United States that has gone from where we were to where we are.”

Mr. Cuomo also announced he was expanding the occupancy guidelines for houses of worship, which could now admit up to 25 percent of the building’s occupancy. It is unclear if the measure applies statewide or only in locations that have reached Phase 2. All regions of the state except New York City are in the first or second phase of reopening.

Across the Hudson River, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey announced 60 new virus-related deaths Saturday via social media, bringing the state’s toll to 12,106. The figure was a drop from the 79 new deaths reported the previous day. He also reported 606 new confirmed positive cases, totaling 163,893 cases in the state.

While New York City’s shutdown has successfully flattened the number of infections, a study has found that the economic cost could have been reduced by a third or more by strategically choosing neighborhoods to close, calibrating the risk of infection for local residents and workers with the impact on local jobs.

When the coronavirus arrived in Japan, people did what they normally do: They put on masks.

Face coverings are nothing new there. During flu and hay fever seasons, trains are crowded with commuters half-hidden behind white surgical masks. Employees with colds, worried about the stigma of missing work, throw one on and soldier into the office.

Japan has reported more than 17,000 infections and just over 900 deaths, while the United States, with a population roughly two and a half times as large, has topped 1.9 million cases and is approaching 110,000 deaths.

“Japan, I think a lot of people agree, kind of did everything wrong, with poor social distancing, karaoke bars still open and public transit packed near the zone where the worst outbreaks were happening,” Jeremy Howard, a researcher at the University of San Francisco who has studied the use of masks, said of the country’s early response. “But the one thing that Japan did right was masks.”

During the pandemic, scientists have found a correlation between high levels of mask-wearing — whether as a matter of culture or policy — and success in containing the virus.

“I think there is definitely evidence coming out of Covid that Japan, as well as other countries which practice mask-wearing, tend to do much better in flattening the curve,” said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale.

For the first time in three months there is a scent of economic optimism in the air. Employers added millions of jobs to their payrolls in May, and the jobless rate fell, a big surprise to forecasters who expected further losses. Businesses are reopening, and the rate of coronavirus deaths has edged down. The Trump administration has begun pointing to what are likely to be impressive growth numbers as the economy starts to pull out of its deep hole.

All of that is good news. But there are clear signs that the collapse of economic activity has set in motion problems that will play out over many months, or maybe many years. If not contained, they could cause human misery on a mass scale and create lasting scars for families.

The fabric of the economy has been ripped, with damage done to millions of interconnections — between workers and employers, companies and their suppliers, borrowers and lenders. Both the historical evidence from severe economic crises and the data available today point to enormous delayed effects.

While the government can’t wave a wand and bring back industries that are semi-permanently shuttered, it can act — and has acted — to try to keep demand for goods and services at pre-crisis levels. That, in turn, can smooth the path for other sectors to grow so that there is not a prolonged depression of jobs, income and investment, with a resulting reduction in the economy’s long-term potential.

In the U.K., Prince William volunteers to help amid coronavirus .

Prince William counts as one among thousands of British volunteers assisting on a crisis helpline during the coronavirus lockdown, Kensington Palace announced in a message marking the end of Volunteers’ Week.

“I’m going to share a little secret with you guys, but I’m actually on the platform volunteering,” Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, said during a video call in which he and his wife, Catherine Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, thanked volunteers for their work.

In a statement, Kensington Palace said the Duke has been volunteering for Shout85258, the country’s first 24/7 crisis text line, which the couple launched in 2019 with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

“The Duke is one of more than 2000 Crisis Volunteers who are trained to support anyone, anytime, whatever their crisis may be,” the palace said. “Last month, the Duke and Duchess marked the service’s first anniversary by speaking to five Shout volunteers via video call.”

More than 300,000 text conversations have taken place between volunteers and people needing mental health support, The Associated Press reported. More than half of the people texting are under 25 years of age.

In the full eight minute video that the palace shared on social media, Ms. Middleton noted that although the coronavirus pandemic has been “such pressure for everybody,” communities have pulled together and people have stepped up to volunteer.

There have been at least 284,800 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Britain, according to the British public health authorities. At least 40,000 people have died from the virus.

How the coronavirus might affect pregnant women and newborns has been a major concern since the outbreaks began. A new report in the medical journal JAMA has both reassuring and worrisome findings, with caveats that there is limited data and still much unknown.

So far, compared to the general population, pregnant women do not seem to have an increased risk of severe illness if they contract the virus, the report said. Of 147 pregnant women with Covid-19 in China, 8 percent had severe disease and 1 percent had critical illness — rates that were actually lower than those in the rest of the population, where 14 percent had severe disease and 6 percent were critically ill. In New York City, a report on 43 pregnant women with Covid-19 found that their rates of severe disease were similar to those in other adults.

But whether the infection can cause birth defects, miscarriage, premature birth or stillbirth is not yet known. Newborns have become infected, but it’s not clear whether they contracted the virus before, during or after birth, or if breastfeeding can transmit the virus.

Even so, the report says that for women who are wondering whether this is a safe time to conceive, “based on limited data, there does not seem to be a compelling reason to recommend delaying pregnancy.”

For years, Gildo Negri visited schools to share his stories about blowing up bridges and cutting electrical wires to sabotage Nazis and fascists during World War II. In January, the 89-year-old made another visit, leaving his nursing home outside Milan to help students plant trees in honor of Italians deported to concentration camps.

But at the end of February, as Europe’s first outbreak of the coronavirus spread through Mr. Negri’s nursing home, it fatally infected him, too.

The virus, which is so lethal to the old, has hastened the departure of these last witnesses and forced the cancellation of commemorations. It has also created an opportunity for rising political forces who seek to recast the history of the last century in order to play a greater role in remaking the present one.

Throughout Europe, radical right-wing parties with histories of Holocaust denial, Mussolini infatuation and fascist motifs have gained traction in recent years.

Much of the attention to the toll Covid-19 has taken on older adults has rightly focused on long-term care facilities. Their residents and employees account for almost 40 percent of the nation’s deaths, according to an updated New York Times analysis.

But far more Americans — nearly six million, by one estimate — rely on paid home care than live-in nursing homes and assisted living combined. And both workers and clients have cause for worry.

Even more than nursing home employees, home care workers are poorly paid hourly workers and often lack health insurance; half rely on some form of public assistance. Not only do many home care workers serve several clients each week, but to piece together a living they may simultaneously work for several agencies or for nursing homes, or hold outside jobs.

Those conditions increase infection risks, and not only for their frail older clients. Almost a third of home care workers, a heavily female work force, are themselves over 55, and most are black or Hispanic, groups that have proved particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.

Personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., has proved hard to acquire, however. With hospitals and nursing homes scrambling for supplies, “this was the forgotten sector,” said Dr. Nathan Stall, a geriatrician at the University of Toronto.

“Home care workers are probably unknowingly involved in the transmission of Covid-19, especially when they’re not equipped with sufficient P.P.E.,” he added.

When the country was under lockdown, at least the rules were mostly clear. Essential workers ventured out; everyone else sheltered in.

Now states are lifting restrictions, but detailed guidance about navigating the minutiae of everyday life is still hard to come by — and anyway, there’s never going to be a ready solution to every problematic circumstance you may encounter.

As you tiptoe toward normalization — whatever that is, given these times — try to follow three precautions: avoid contact, confinement and crowds. And make realistic choices.

Contact

You need to continue with social distancing precautions. That means wearing masks, washing hands well and often, and keeping a six-foot distance from one another. No hugs, no handshakes.

Any 15-minute face-to-face conversation between people who are within six feet of one another constitutes close contact, said Dr. Muge Cevik, an expert on infectious diseases and virology at University of Saint Andrews School of Medicine in Scotland.

Confinement

Indoor activities in confined enclosed spaces, even large ones, are more conducive to spreading the virus than events held outside, especially if the air inside the building is being recirculated or the windows don’t open.

Crowds

Large groups are risky, even outdoors. They mean more people, more contacts — and more potential sources of infection.

Choices

People at high risk for developing severe disease if they become infected with the coronavirus — including those 65 and over, residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities, people with compromised immune systems, chronic lung or kidney disease, heart conditions or severe obesity — will want to take the greatest of precautions.

But young healthy adults and children should also consider the protection of people around them, including family members, colleagues or friends who are vulnerable, said Dr. Barbara Taylor, an infectious disease specialist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Reporting was contributed by Aimee Ortiz, Neil Irwin, Andrea Salcedo, Zach Montague, Michael H. Keller, Steve Eder, Karl Russell, Denise Grady, Ernesto Londoño, Letícia Casado, Jason Horowitz, Damien Cave, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Iliana Magra, Ceylan Yeginsu, Elian Peltier, Yonette Joseph, Roni Rabin, Eduardo Porter, Patricia Cohen, Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni, Leticia Casado, Ben Casselman and Paula Span.

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