CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

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Data map reveals the 23% of US counties that are currently seeing an uncontrollable growth in COVID-19 - as new model predicts Phoenix alone could see 28,000 new infections a DAY by July 18
By Emily Crane
Published: 09:37 EDT, 25 June 2020 | Updated: 16:42 EDT, 25 June 2020

• Data map, compiled by spatial analytics company Esri, shows 23% of US counties are seeing an uncontrollable growth in new COVID-19 infections
• Of the 3,141 counties across the country, 745 are currently experiencing an epidemic outbreak and 1,232 are seeing spreading trends, according to the data map
• Infections across the US have been surging for more than a week after trending down for over six weeks
• New coronavirus infections and hospitalizations have been spiking to record levels in states like Arizona, Texas, California and Florida
• As cases continue to rise, forecast models from the PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia predict infections in Phoenix will rise to a staggering 28,000 new cases a day by July 18
• Trump has repeatedly said the number of cases is going up due to what he describes as 'great testing'
• Public health officials, however, say it only accounts for some of the increases as people continue to relax social distancing measures and states slowly reopen
• Data from the White House's taskforce team shows cases are surging in states like Arizona and Texas
• In California, cases have surged nearly 70 percent in just two days. The state reported over 7,100 new cases on Wednesday, up from 4,230 on Sunday
• Los Angeles County now has the most cases of all US counties with more than 85,000 confirmed infections
• Florida's single-day count surged to 5,500 on Wednesday - a 25% jump from the record of 4,049 on June 20
• In Texas, hospitalizations have doubled and new cases have tripled in two weeks

Twenty three percent of counties across the United States are now seeing an uncontrollable growth in new COVID-19 infections, according to a data map - as model projections show Phoenix could see 28,000 new cases a day by July 18.

A color-coded data map, compiled by spatial analytics company Esri, shows how the US is faring in terms of infections by tracking the number of new COVID-19 cases on a county level.

Updated data from Thursday shows that large parts of the South and Southwest are showing an 'epidemic trend' or 'spreading trend' for new coronavirus infections.

The 'epidemic' trend is described as an uncontrolled spread, while 'spreading' indicates an outbreak that could still be controlled if preventative measures are taken.

Of the 3,141 counties across the country, 745 are currently experiencing an epidemic outbreak and 1,232 are seeing spreading trends, according to the data map. Nearly 670 counties are currently seeing a controlled trend in new coronavirus cases.

According to the map, the entire state of Arizona is seeing either epidemic or spreading trends.



A color-coded data map, compiled by spatial analytics company Esri, shows that 23 percent of counties across the US are now seeing an uncontrollable growth in new COVID-19 infections. According to the map, the entire state of Arizona is seeing either epidemic or spreading trends


The majority of counties in states like Florida, California, Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are seeing similar trends.

About half the counties in Texas are currently seeing epidemic and spreading trends in new infections.

Infections across the US have been surging for more than a week after trending down for over six weeks. Currently, the US has recorded more than 2.3 million coronavirus cases and more than 121,000 Americans have died from the virus.

New cases and hospitalizations have been spiking to record levels in states like Arizona, Texas, California and Florida. Los Angeles County now has the most cases of all US counties with more than 85,000 confirmed infections.

As cases continue to rise, forecast models from the PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia predict infections in Phoenix will rise to a staggering 28,000 new cases a day by July 18.

That forecast is far worst than the daily cases epicenter New York City saw in mid-April.

In Houston, daily infections are forecast to increase to more than 4,500 in the same time frame. Miami could see cases surge to more than 2,800 in the next three weeks.

Researchers from the PolicyLab have warned that there is a risk Montgomery, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Las Vegas, Nevada; and South Carolina could risk a similar resurgence.

Data shows that the current levels in those cities is similar to where parts of Arizona, Texas and Florida were just a few weeks ago.

The forecasts, however, show that many counties across the country are starting to see stabilizing cases. States like Oregon, Louisiana, North Carolina and California are showing improving four-week forecasts, according to researchers.

It is not yet clear how much of this stabilization in risk for resurgence is related to masking policies or increased personal vigilance in distancing and hygiene practices as people have observed what is happening in other parts of the country, the researchers say.


PHOENIX FORECAST: As cases continue to rise, forecast models from the PolicyLab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia predict infections in Phoenix (above) will rise to a staggering 28,000 new cases a day by July 18


HOUSTON FORECAST: In Houston, daily infections are forecast to increase to more than 4,500 in the same time frame



MIAMI FORECAST: Miami could see cases surge to more than 2,800 in the next three weeks


David Rubin, the director of the PolicyLab, said the current forecasts may be an indication some states need to halt or scale back their reopenings.

'We've reached a point in communities throughout Arizona, Texas and Florida where the epidemic is accelerating at an alarming pace and may quickly overwhelm local health care systems -signaling a need to pause reopening plans,' Rubin said.

'For those other areas of rising concern in our model that have forecasts similar to those of Arizona just a few weeks ago, we would encourage local leaders to view our projections as an early warning system and enact swift response measures to prevent further widespread community transmission.'

The current coronavirus surge has sent infections to dire new levels across the South and West with hospital administrators and health experts warning on Wednesday that politicians and a tired-of-being-cooped-up public are letting a disaster unfold.

While newly confirmed infections have been declining steadily in early hot spots like New York and New Jersey, several other states set single-day records this week, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. Some of them also broke hospitalization records, as did North Carolina and South Carolina.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the number of cases is going up due to what he describes as 'great testing'. Public health officials, however, say it only accounts for some of the increases as people continue to relax social distancing measures and states slowly reopen.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the threat of coronavirus and, at an event in Phoenix on Tuesday, said it was 'going away'.

His comments are at odds with an internal document, compiled by the White House's taskforce team and obtained by NBC News, that shows cases are surging in states like Arizona and Texas.

The document, which was released the same day Trump held the event in Arizona, showed that Phoenix was on a list of 10 cities with increasing cases.

According to that data, Phoenix had the highest number of new cases, 13,169, compared to the previous seven days. It was a surge of 149 percent.

Texas cities accounted for five of the 10 on the list. Palestine, which is south-east of Dallas, saw a 5,000 percent increase in cases. Meanwhile, Lakeland in Florida saw cases surge by 136 percent, according to the data.



CALIFORNIA: In California, cases have surged nearly 70 percent in just two days. The state reported over 7,100 new cases on Wednesday, up from 4,230 on Sunday


CALIFORNIA HOSPITALS: Hospitalizations have also reached record highs across the state in the past week


TEXAS CASES: Rapidly worsening coronavirus numbers in Texas continue to reach bleak new milestones with the state recording more than 5,550 new cases in a single day


TEXAS HOSPITAL: In Texas, which began lifting its shutdowns on May 1, hospitalizations have doubled and new cases have tripled in two weeks


TEXAS DEATHS: The state recorded an additional 29 deaths on Wednesday compared to the record 58 on May 15

In California, cases have surged nearly 70 percent in just two days. The state reported over 7,100 new cases on Wednesday, up from 4,230 on Sunday.

Hospitalizations have also reached record highs across the state with about 1,500 suspected or confirmed patients requiring intensive care.

While Governor Gavin Newsom said part of the rise was due to testing, much is the result of people failing to engage in safe practices when gathering with friends and family, or visiting newly reopened businesses.

Los Angeles County now has the most cases of all US counties with more than 85,000 confirmed infections. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday urged residents to stay home and wear masks while out in public.

More than 20 members of a single Los Angeles family have tested positive for COVID-19 that resulted in the 60-year-old patriarch dying. The family insist they didn't attend or host any large gatherings and believe it spread due to one or two family members visiting the home.

Florida's single-day count surged to 5,500 on Wednesday - a 25 percent jump from the record of 4,049 on June 20.

In Texas, which began lifting its shutdowns on May 1, hospitalizations have doubled and new cases have tripled in two weeks.

Rapidly worsening coronavirus numbers in Texas continue to reach bleak new milestones with the state recording more than 5,550 new cases in a single day.

Hospitalizations in Texas have again hit record numbers, leading the largest pediatric hospital in the US to begin treating adult patients in Houston.

In Arizona, emergency rooms are seeing about 1,200 suspected COVID-19 patients a day, compared with around 500 a month ago. If the trends continue, hospitals will probably exceed capacity within the next several weeks,according to Dr Joseph Gerald, a University of Arizona public health policy professor.

'We are in deep trouble,' Gerald said as he urged the state to impose new restrictions on businesses, which Governor Doug Ducey has refused to do.

Dr Peter Hotez, an infectious-disease expert at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, said he worries that states will squander what time they have to head off a much larger crisis.

'We're still talking about subtlety, still arguing whether or not we should wear masks, and still not understanding that a vaccine is not going to rescue us,' he said.


FLORIDA: Florida recorded a record high 5,508 new cases (left) on Wednesday, up from the previous record of 4,049 on June 20.



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Forty four new deaths (right)were recorded across the state on Wednesday


ARIZONA CASES: Arizona reported 1,795 new cases on Tuesday, down from the record 3,591 new infections a day earlier


ARIZONA HOSPITALS: The number of people admitted to Arizona hospitals with COVID-19 or suspected of having coronavirus on Tuesday was at 2,200


ARIZONA DEATHS: Arizona recorded 79 new deaths on Tuesday - compared to the 67 deaths recorded on May 8


The Texas governor initially barred local officials from fining or penalizing anyone for not wearing a mask as the state reopened. After cases began spiking, Abbott said last week that cities and counties could allow businesses to require masks.

More than a dozen US states and some major cities have face-covering rules. California Governor Gavin Newsom last week told residents to wear masks at nearly all times outside the home. Newsom has said he will withhold pandemic-related funding from local governments that brush off state requirements on masks and other anti-virus measures in response to the soaring numbers.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Tuesday ordered residents to wear face masks in public and Nevada's Governor Steve Sisolak said residents will have to wear masks or face coverings out in public beginning Friday.

It comes as health officials warn coronavirus cases are climbing rapidly among young adults in a number of states where bars, stores and restaurants have reopened - a disturbing generational shift that not only puts them in greater peril than many realize but poses an even bigger danger to older people who cross their paths.

In states like Florida, Texas and Arizona, young people have started going out again, many without masks, in what health experts see as irresponsible behavior.

'The virus hasn't changed. We have changed our behaviors,' said Ali Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. 'Younger people are more likely to be out and taking a risk.'

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that almost as soon as states began reopening people 18 to 49 years old quickly became the age bracket most likely to be diagnosed with new cases.

Although every age group saw an increase in cases during the first week in June, the numbers shot up fastest among 18- to 49-year-olds. For the week ending June 7, there were 43 new cases per 100,000 people in that age bracket, compared with 28 cases per 100,000 people over 65.

In Florida, young people ages 15 to 34 now make up 31 percent of all cases, up from 25 percent in early June. Last week, more than 8,000 new cases were reported in that age group, compared with about 2,000 among people 55 to 64 years old.


Just over 820 Americans died from coronavirus on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll to more than 121,000. It is the highest number of daily deaths recorded in the past week after fatality rates started declining nationwide

New cases in the US have been surging for more than a week after trending down for over six weeks. Nearly 35,000 new cases were reported on Tuesday, which is down from the record 36,000 infections that were logged on April 24

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U.S. coronavirus death toll edges toward 125,000 and cases rise by nearly 40,000 in the largest single-day increase since the pandemic started as infections in Texas, Florida and Arizona surge
By Rachel Sharp
Published: 02:14 EDT, 26 June 2020 | Updated: 03:12 EDT, 26 June 2020

• A staggering 124,410 Americans have died from coronavirus
• Infections rose across the US by at least 39,818 on Thursday, marking the worst day confirmed new daily cases since the virus hit the U.S.
• The new daily record inched past the previous record of 36,426 on April 24 when the pandemic was thought to have reached its peak
• Cases and hospitalizations have surged in states in the South and West
• Governors of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Florida all announced they were putting their state reopenings on pause Thursday
• Texas recorded yet another bleak milestone, as it beat its own record for new daily infections for the third day running, reaching almost 6,000 cases
• Hospitalizations climbed to 4,739 patients - a new record for a 14th day in a row
• Arizona put reopening plans on hold as another 3,056 daily infections were announced and a record 2,453 patients were hospitalized
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there are no plans to move into the third and final reopening phase after 5,004 new infections were recorded in a single day

The US coronavirus death toll has edged toward the 125,000 mark and cases have risen by nearly 40,000 in the largest single-day increase seen since the pandemic began.

A staggering 124,410 Americans have been killed by the virus as of midnight Thursday, up from a death toll of 121,979 recorded just 24 hours earlier.

Infections rose across the US by at least 39,818 on Thursday, marking the worst day since the virus first hit the U.S.

The new daily record inched past the previous record of 36,426 cases back on April 24 - which was then believed to be the peak of the pandemic - and topped the tally of 36,000 recorded Wednesday by almost 4,000.

Infections in several states that rushed to ease lockdowns early on have surged with Texas, Florida and Arizona among the states to set single-day case records in the last week.

With fears mounting that the nation is headed for a second wave of the deadly outbreak, governors of several states announced they were putting the brakes on their reopening plans.

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Florida all pledged to pause their reopenings as the pandemic has shifted to the West and South of America, while the former virus epicenter New York continues to see cases and deaths decline.

Texas recorded yet another bleak milestone Thursday, as it beat its own record for new daily infections for the third day running, reaching almost 6,000 cases.

The state reported 5,996 new cases in a single day, up from 5,551 and 5,489 in the previous two days.

More than 17,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the last three days alone and its rolling average has skyrocketed by a staggering 340 percent since Memorial Day.

Another 47 people were killed by the virus in a single day, marking the highest daily death toll since May 20 and inching closer to the state's previous deadliest day when 58 people died on May 14.

The number of hospitalizations climbed to 4,739 patients Thursday, surpassing the 4,389 patients the previous day and setting a new record for a 14th consecutive day.

Statewide, the number of patients has more than doubled in two weeks.

Fears are growing that the state's hospitals will buckle under the strain, leading the largest pediatric hospital in the country to start treating adult patients in Houston to help free up beds.

Meanwhile, the Texas Medical Center in Houston announced it had filled all of its 1,330 ICU beds on Thursday, with 374 taken up by coronavirus patients.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Thursday he is pausing the state's aggressive reopening as it battles the rise in cases.

This includes halting elective surgeries in order to protect hospital space in the Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio areas.

'We are focused on strategies that slow the spread of this virus while also allowing Texans to continue earning a paycheck to support their families,' Abbott said in a statement.

'The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,' Abbott said.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey also announced that further efforts to reopen the state are being put on hold as cases surge.

On Thursday, the state health department recorded another 3,056 daily infections Wednesday, the fourth day in a week where cases have topped 3,000.

A record 2,453 patients were hospitalized including 611 in intensive care beds and a record 415 on ventilators.

'Not going to sugarcoat this... we expect our numbers to be worse next week and the week after... this is Arizona's time of challenge,' Ducey said Thursday.

He urged residents to stay home to slow the spread of the virus and to wear face masks if they must leave the house.

New Mexico, sandwiched between Texas and Arizona, is also putting its reopening on pause, as Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said: 'We're on hold.'

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis backpedaled on his previous assertions that he would not let up on reopening plans when he said there are no plans to move into the third and final reopening phase.

'We are where we are,' DeSantis said during a press conference in Tampa Thursday.

'I didn't say we're going to go on to the next phase, you know, we've done a step-by-step approach and it was an approach that's been reflective of the unique situation of each area.'

His comments came as Florida reported 5,004 new infections in a single day Thursday - a day after its one-day record of 5,508 reported on Wednesday.

Cases and hospitalizations also continue to surge in California, with the state reporting 5,349 new cases on Thursday.

Hospitalizations have also reached record highs across the state with 4,240 patients, of which 1,306 require intensive care.

While Governor Gavin Newsom said part of the rise was due to testing, much is the result of people failing to engage in safe practices when gathering with friends and family, or visiting newly reopened businesses.

Mississippi also saw its daily count of confirmed cases reach record highs twice this week.

'It's not a joke. Really bad things are going to happen,' said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi's health officer.

With the South and West witnessing surges in cases as a sign the pandemic is far from over for America, the White House coronavirus task force is planning to hold its first news briefing in almost two months on Friday.

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Coronavirus updates: Texas reports record-high new cases, pauses reopening; calls grow for Disney World to stay closed
Grace Hauck
Published 11:13 p.m. ET June 25, 2020

Coronavirus cases are trending upward in about half of U.S. states, and several have reported record-breaking daily new case counts this week, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But the true number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. is likely ten times the number of reported cases, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday.

While some states are pushing ahead to the next phase of reopening, Texas hit pause on its reopening plan Thursday and suspended elective surgeries in the state's largest counties. The state reported record-high new daily coronavirus cases on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when it also broke it record for hospitalizations for the 14th day in a row.

Alabama and Missouri also reported record-high daily increases Thursday, according to the respective health departments.

Here are the most significant developments of the day:

• Breaking from earlier guidance, the CDC said Thursday that pregnant women may be at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared with non-pregnant women.
• More than 1 million dead people received coronavirus stimulus checks from the federal government after the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service failed to use death records when distributing the first three batches of direct cash payments to Americans, a government watchdog agency reported Thursday.
• Last week, 1.48 million workers filed first time claims for unemployment insurance, the Labor Department said Thursday. That latest round of applications means a staggering 47.1 million Americans have made initial jobless benefits claims in just 14 weeks.

Calls grow for Disney World to delay reopening as cases spike in Florida

Groups representing workers and actors at Walt Disney World are calling for the theme park to delay its planned July 11 reopening as coronavirus cases surge in Florida.

On Thursday, the Actors Equity Association, which represents about 600 professional actors at Disney World, cited Disneyland's postponed reopening in California in calling for the same at the Florida parks. Disneyland said late Wednesday that the park would not reopen as planned on July 17.

"If Disneyland has postponed, it is unclear how Walt Disney World can responsibly move toward reopening when coronavirus cases are much worse in Florida," said Mary McColl, the actors group's executive director, in a statement.

Andrea Finger, a spokesperson for Walt Disney World, said the park's reopening timeline has not changed.

– Curtis Tate

Thousands crowd British beaches, ignoring social distancing

Three beach towns on England's southern coast declared a "major incident" Thursday after thousands defied coronavirus social-distancing rules and flocked to the shore on what has been the hottest day of the year in the United Kingdom so far, with temperatures in the low 90s.

"We are absolutely appalled at the scenes witnessed on our beaches, particularly at Bournemouth and Sandbanks, in the last 24-48 hours," Vikki Slade, leader of the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council said in a statement on their website. "The irresponsible behaviour and actions of so many people is just shocking and our services are stretched to the absolute hilt trying to keep everyone safe."

The decision to declare a "major incident," as Slade said, gives additional powers to local authorities and emergency services to tackle the issue. She said they are also "deploying additional resources to provide increased patrols in the vicinity to help tackle any issues of anti-social behavior and other offenses being committed."

– Morgan Hines

Pregnant women at higher risk for hospitalization

Breaking from earlier guidance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that pregnant women may be at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared with non-pregnant women.

The good news is that pregnant women who are infected with COVID-19 aren't at any greater risk of death than women who aren't pregnant, according to the CDC.

The worse news is that infected pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized and are at increased risk for ICU admission and to require mechanical ventilation, according to a CDC study of thousands of women in the U.S. from January to June.

Among women with COVID-19, about 32% of pregnant women were reported to have been hospitalized compared with about 6% of nonpregnant women, the study found.

It's possible, but not known, that the higher hospitalization rate might be due to doctor's overall concerns for the health of pregnant women, so they could be more likely to admit them to a hospital, CDC officials said.

– Elizabeth Weise and Grace Hauck


CDC urges Americans to stay 'vigilant' on 4th of July holiday

Health officials are asking Americans to socially distance this Independence Day, saying that they are "concerned" about the surge in coronavirus cases after the U.S. on Wednesday saw its highest daily number of new cases in months.

Those numbers only represent about 1 in every 10 cases, said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a press conference Thursday.

While "we’re still in the first wave," Redfield said the pandemic today looks markedly different from the outbreak two or three months ago, when many deaths were among older people and those with underlying medical conditions.

"For the Fourth of July, which is a family event, we want to emphasize that it’s really important that we get back to being vigilant as our collective commitment ... to protect vulnerable friends, family community."

– Elizabeth Weise and Grace Hauck

1.48M workers file for unemployment

Fewer Americans are seeking unemployment benefits, but the number who need help remains high as the country haltingly reopens its economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, 1.48 million workers filed first time claims for unemployment insurance, the Labor Department said Thursday. That latest round of applications means a staggering 47.1 million Americans have made initial jobless benefits claims in just 14 weeks.

Initial jobless claims are the nation's most reliable gauge of layoffs, and in an investors note Oxford Economics said the latest numbers "paint a picture of a job market in turmoil. Initial claims fell only slightly from last week, reminding us that layoffs in some areas remain widespread.''

– Charisse Jones

Over 1 million dead people received coronavirus stimulus checks

More than 1 million dead people received coronavirus stimulus checks from the federal government after the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service failed to use death records when distributing the first three batches of direct cash payments to Americans, a government watchdog agency reported Thursday.

As a result, nearly 1.1 million payments totaling nearly $1.4 billion were distributed to dead people as of April 30.

Reports of dead people getting stimulus payments surfaced in April when the IRS began making direct deposits of up to $1,200 into taxpayers’ bank accounts. The payments were authorized under a new $2.2 trillion recovery package, known as the CARES Act, designed to help the economy recover from the catastrophic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Treasury Department announced last month that people who received a stimulus payment on behalf of someone who is deceased should return the money immediately.

– Michael Collins

Texas halts reopening plan, suspends elective surgery

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday halted the states reopening plan and suspended elective surgeries in its largest counties in order to expand hospital bed availability for COVID-19 patients.

The state broke its record for hospitalizations for the 13th day in a row and reported 5,551 new cases Wednesday, state health officials reported.

The state is in Phase 3 of Abbott’s plan to reopen, which allowed restaurants to increase occupancy levels to 75% and most businesses to move to 50% occupancy. Abbott declined to roll back those orders.

"The last thing we want to do as a state is go backward and close down businesses,” Abbott said. “This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business.”

The surgery order goes into effect Friday and will require all hospitals in the four designated counties to postpone surgeries and procedures that are not immediately life threatening. The governor can add or discard counties included under the executive order as surges may arise or dissipate within the state.

– Nicole Cobler, Austin American-Statesman

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Trump Ignores Virus Spike as U.S. Cases Surge to Record Level
Josh Wingrove (Bloomberg)
4 hrs ago

President Donald Trump has paid little heed to a resurgence in U.S. coronavirus cases -- which on Thursday hit a record level -- announcing no new steps to curb the outbreak and continuing with a normal schedule of meetings and travel as hospitals fill with sick patients.

Trump hasn’t asked Americans to change their daily routines, and top administration officials say there will be no repeat of the lockdowns that collapsed the U.S. economy in March. When Trump travels or stands close to other officials, he doesn’t wear a mask, a precaution urged by health officials.

State health departments reported more than 37,000 new cases on Thursday, led by Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, surpassing the 36,188 peak from April 24.

Trump, in a Twitter post late Thursday, said coronavirus deaths were “way down” and suggested that the American mortality rate was one of the lowest in the world.

But the unrelenting coronavirus onslaught could prevent the kind of economic rebound he has been promising by year’s end and further damage his standing in polls that show Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, ahead nationally and in key swing states. A mounting death toll adds to Trump’s re-election concerns as new modeling predicts the virus will kill 180,000 Americans by October.

Officials have downplayed the resurgence, saying it remains contained to about a dozen states and that deaths haven’t begun to climb.

“We’re going to see these things,” top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on Thursday, referring to the growing number of cases. “But the economy is not going to be closed down again.”

Many governors on the front lines of the crisis -- including those in red states -- are acting far more aggressively than Trump. Texas on Thursday halted its phased reopening as Republican Governor Greg Abbott warned of a new sharp wave of the virus.

“The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said in a statement.

The surge is particularly acute in the Sunbelt states that were among the first to ease social distancing requirements imposed to slow the spread of the virus.

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday in Ohio that the administration is working closely with those states, but emphasized “in some 38 states across the country, cases are stable or even declining.”

“While you see in the news over the past week or so we have rising cases and outbreaks in several Southern states, I want to assure you that our task force and our entire administration is working continuously with leaders in those states to respond,” Pence said, adding that he’ll soon travel to Texas and Arizona to meet with officials there.

The vice president and and other members of the coronavirus task force, which hasn’t held a briefing since April 27, will meet with reporters on Friday at the Health and Human Services Department, the White House said.

On Sunday, Pence will speak to the press along with Abbott and the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Deborah Birx, according to an official familiar with the plans. Birx hasn’t spoken to reporters at the White House since May 29.

Texas, Florida Records

Florida and Texas each hit records for cases Wednesday, with health officials in Houston saying its hospitals are nearly at capacity. Arizona, at the same time, reached a peak in hospitalizations. In California, which also saw an all-time high for new infections, the Walt Disney Co. delayed the reopening of its theme parks indefinitely, while Nevada’s governor ordered everyone to wear masks in public as some of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas made them a condition of entry.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut set quarantines for incoming travelers from U.S. hot zones, and North Carolina put its reopening on ice for three weeks.

The White House says its virus task force is continuing to meet and consult with governors. Trump administration officials insist they’re not trying to diminish the threat posed by the virus.

“We obviously are concerned,” Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Thursday in a conference call with reporters. “We may have a lag in what we see in hospitalizations and deaths because that can lag by three or four weeks, but I’m asking people to recognize we’re in a different situation today than we were in March or April.”

The Trump administration said more cases are being detected now than in earlier months when the country had less testing capacity. They said that’s reflected in data showing a lower median age for those infected and a lower mortality rate.

That argument doesn’t appear to be winning over Americans. Fox News polls released Thursday show Biden leading Trump -- in some cases within the margin of error -- in key states where caronavirus cases are rising. The former vice president had a nine point advantage in Florida, a one-point lead in Texas and a two-point advantage in North Carolina and Georgia.

When Trump comments on the coronavirus, it’s usually in order to blame China for the U.S. outbreak or compliment his government’s response.

Trump on Testing

“We have cases because you test. Deaths are down,” Trump said at a shipbuilding plant in Marinette, Wisconsin, on Thursday. He later added: “It came from China, and it hit 188 countries -- not good, not good.”

While expanded testing can identify cases of the disease that otherwise might not come to health authorities’ attention, the percentage of tests coming back positive is rising in several states, indicating the virus is spreading through their communities.

There have been more than 2.4 million cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. and at least 122,000 Americans have died so far, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

White House aides said that Trump has been trying to remind the public that the virus came from China by repeatedly referring to it as the “Kung Flu,” a slur that groups fighting discrimination say may lead to racist acts against Asian Americans.

In his behavior, the president is seeking to show the country returning to normal. He held a rally at an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last week and didn’t require attendees to wear masks. Trump continued his practice of not wearing one.

The president visited Arizona this week without a mask, speaking in a packed church where nearly every attendee followed his lead, as the state faces one of the sharper U.S. outbreaks.

On Thursday, the president traveled to Wisconsin, where he’s touring the shipbuilding facility and participated in a Fox News town hall.

Convention Move

Trump moved the August Republican convention from North Carolina to Florida so he’d be allowed to have a celebration free of restrictions, but that state is now seeing cases soar.

Trump and his administration have been pressing governors to quickly reopen their economies. The president and his supporters have spent the week largely focusing on the economic reopening, and criticizing violent protests over police brutality and racism.

Trump has promised a vaccine will be ready soon, with a caveat.

“I don’t even like to talk about that, because it’s fading away,” Trump said of the virus last week in a Fox News interview. “It’s going to fade away, but having a vaccine would be really nice and that’s going to happen.”

The rising U.S. case totals are causing alarm among U.S. allies. Europe is weighing restricting Americans from entering its countries, while the U.S. and Canada have jointly extended a de facto border closure until July.

In testimony to Congress earlier in the week, several top health officials indicated they’ve had little contact with Trump recently. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir said they haven’t spoken to Trump about the virus in about two and a half weeks. Fauci called the virus situation a “mixed bag,” with some states doing better than others.

Trump has continued to tout a swift cure and economic rebound -- and even an end to the pandemic without treatments. But he also predicts that treatments and vaccines are coming quickly, as he did Wednesday during a White House visit with Polish President Andrzej Duda.

“I think you’re going to have a big surprise -- a beautiful surprise, sooner than anybody would think,” Trump said.

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Trump says the coronavirus is 'going away.' His own task force disagrees.
New internal data obtained by NBC News show the White House is closely tracking big virus spikes around the nation.
By Jonathan Allen
June 25, 2020, 3:06 PM EDT / Updated June 25, 2020, 5:21 PM EDT


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump keeps spinning a tale about COVID-19 that is at odds with his own administration's disease experts and data compiled by his own coronavirus task force, which was obtained exclusively by NBC News.

In Trump's telling, the deadly pandemic isn't really a serious threat to the public and rising infection rates are simply due to increased testing. "It's going away," he said Tuesday at an event in Phoenix.

But on the same day, the coronavirus task force produced an internal document showing that Phoenix had the highest number of new cases among the 10 metropolitan regions where the week-over-week change in infection rates spiked the most. Arizona's biggest city had recorded 13,169 new cases over the previous seven days, accounting for a jump of 149.2 percent over the previous week's infection rate.

The task force records also show that big surges have been recorded in Texas — around San Antonio, Houston, Corpus Christi, Lubbock and College Station — and in other population centers across the U.S., from counties in the Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa regions of Florida to Atlanta's Fulton County, Joplin, Missouri's Newton County, and California's San Joaquin Valley.

Local officials have already made it clear that cases are spiking, and on Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas paused the reopening plans around the state to deal with what he called an "explosion" of virus infections. But the nonpublic documents show that the White House task force has been tracking the same outbreaks on its own, and they comport with public warnings issued by administration pandemic experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who have been sidelined by the White House.

Together, the data obtained by NBC News provide numerical ballast that support the concerns of Fauci and outside experts who say failure to defend properly against the disease will lead to more infections and a higher death toll. In most cases, the new hot spots are in states and counties where officials, including Abbott, eased back on stay-at-home restrictions as the president pressed them to reopen commerce in recent weeks.

The reopening has coincided with an overall increase in infection rates in the U.S. and a measurable drop in Trump's political standing. Democratic challenger Joe Biden holds a 10-point lead over Trump in the Real Clear Politics average of national surveys following a spate of reports showing a gap of 8 to 14 percentage points in the last few days. Likewise, state by state polls show Trump trailing in key battlegrounds, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that only 37 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the pandemic crisis.

The fear of a bigger surge in infections and deaths has left Trump more isolated as a cheerleader for reversing social distancing, mask ordinances and stay-at-home restrictions.

One chart prepared Wednesday for senior leadership of federal agencies working on the coronavirus response showed a weekly positive test rate of 7 percent for the seven days ending in June. That chart, marked "sensitive but unclassified" and "for official use only," demonstrates an uptick over the seven-day averages from late May and early June when the numbers were sliding.

Based on data collected from hospital, commercial and public health labs across the country, it also shows a rate even higher than the 5.9 percent recorded by Johns Hopkins University in the seven days ending on June 21. NBC News' count of daily deaths from coronavirus shows an increase in just the last few days, including 830 new deaths reported between Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

A separate chart shows both infection rates and deaths rising in recent days more dramatically.

The mixed signals — Trump playing down the pandemic while experts and data point to a resurgence — have left state and local officials in a quandary about how to protect their citizens.

"We want to make sure that everyone reinforces the best safe practices of wearing a mask, hand sanitization, maintaining safe distance, but importantly, because the spread is so rampant right now, there’s never a reason for you to have to leave your home," Abbott told KBTX-TV in Bryan this week.

And yet in Joplin, the biggest city near the convergence of the Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas borders, the City Council voted "no" Wednesday night on a face-covering ordinance that would have required people over the age of 6 to wear masks outside their homes. Public health officials are still trying to figure out ways to reduce the spread of the virus without the proposed rule, according to KOAM-TV.

Trump has emphasized his efforts to acquire and distribute supplies to fight the pandemic over social distancing and other public behavior methods of controlling its spread. And in recent weeks he has talked less and less about the health risks, ending his daily public briefings and resuming campaign rallies and official events that are political in nature.

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LA mayor urges residents to stay home as coronavirus cases spike
By Luke Money
Jun 25, 2020 Updated 11 hrs ago 0

LOS ANGELES — Amid record-setting spikes in newly confirmed coronavirus infections, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti urged Angelenos to continue staying home as much as possible — even as the region’s economy gradually emerges from its pandemic-induced coma.

During a briefing Wednesday, Garcetti shared four major takeaways: “One, COVID-19 is still here. Two, COVID-19 is still dangerous. Three, we’re adding more testing to make sure that we can find COVID-19 where it lives. And, four, we must continue to take precautions to keep our city and our people safe.

“That’s why wearing a face covering, that’s why practicing physical distancing, washing our hands and, yes, still, as painful as it might feel, staying at home whenever we can is our best defense,” he said.

Starting Thursday, Garcetti said, Los Angeles would dramatically ramp up capacity at its COVID-19 test sites, from 7,700 to 13,700 tests per day, to meet increased demand.

The announcement comes on the heels of news that many have been unable to book testing appointments, particularly following massive protests against police brutality that prompted health officials to urge demonstrators to get screened.

There have been nearly 90,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 3,200 deaths in L.A. County.

That total caseload has been fueled by significant spikes of late — including several days in which the county reported more than 2,000 new infections.

Health officials have repeatedly said that case counts would rise as more businesses and public spaces reopened, and California set back-to-back records this week in terms of daily reported coronavirus cases.

The state shattered a daily record for new cases Monday, reporting more than 6,000 infections for the first time. That number surged even higher Tuesday, when 6,652 new cases were reported.

The state reported 4,629 new cases Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Times’ coronavirus tracker — pushing its cumulative total past 196,000. More than 5,700 Californians have died from COVID-19, including 98 on Wednesday.

“While you may be done with COVID, COVID is not done with us,” Garcetti said.

Cumulative case counts are only part of the equation. Health officials have said other metrics — such as the number of patients who require hospitalization — help paint a more complete picture of the coronavirus outbreak.

However, there are warning signs there, too. While L.A. County saw an average of 62 fewer hospitalized patients daily for confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 between the week of Memorial Day and last week, Riverside County saw an average daily increase of 85 patients; San Bernardino County, 70; Ventura County, 33; and Orange County, 32, according to a Times analysis.

Orange County also reported 26 COVID-19 deaths Wednesday — its most in a single day. Officials noted that not all of those people died on that particular day. The recently reported fatalities date from as far back as May 9, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency.

A review of death certificates resulted in the confirmation of 26 new deaths, the agency reported in a Twitter post offering “our sincere sympathies for the lives lost to this virus, no matter the day.”

Despite the increase in confirmed infections, elected and health officials have not indicated they plan to reimpose the kind of restrictions that shuttered and battered California’s economy.

That’s not to say drastic action is off the table, though. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered all Californians to wear face coverings while in public or high-risk settings — a move he said was aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus and helping keep the state’s reopening plans on track.

However, the move has been met with resistance and derision in some corners of the state. Some residents and elected officials have pledged not to follow the order, and some law enforcement agencies have said they will not enforce it.

Newsom warned Wednesday that counties that fail to abide by the state’s COVID-19 guidelines, including the face-covering mandate, could lose state funding targeting the coronavirus outbreak.

“There are some that have made rhetorical comments about not giving a damn, flouting any consideration of supporting the broader health directives coming out of the state of California,” Newsom said. “That’s exactly why I look forward to signing this budget that will afford me a little bit of leverage in that conversation and I think that’s the appropriate next step.”

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How Arizona'lost control of the epidemic'
Jeremy Duda, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Chelsea Janes, The Washington Post
Published 7:53 pm EDT, Thursday, June 25, 2020

PHOENIX - A drive-up testing site equipped for several hundred people in West Phoenix was swarmed on Saturday by about 1,000 people, leaving some baking in their cars for hours.

A nearby testing station has already reached capacity for this weekend, appointments vanishing within minutes. Hospitals are filling up. Restaurants are again shutting down, more than a month after Arizona reopened its economy under the mantra "Return Stronger."

Arizona has emerged as an epicenter of the early summer's coronavirus crisis as the outbreak has metastasized, flaring across new parts of the country and, notably, infecting more young people.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is recording as many as 2,000 cases a day, "eclipsing the New York City boroughs even on their worst days," warned a Wednesday brief by disease trackers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which observed, "Arizona has lost control of the epidemic."

But physicians, public health experts, advocates and local officials say the crisis was predictable in Arizona, where local ordinances requiring masks were verboten until Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, reversed course last week. State leaders did not take the necessary precautions or model safe behavior, these observers maintain, even in the face of compelling evidence and repeated pleas from authoritative voices.

"We have failed on so many levels," said Dana Marie Kennedy, the Arizona director of AARP, who said her organization has yet to receive a response to four letters outlining concerns to the governor. She is working on a fifth.

Neither the governor's office nor the state health department responded to requests for comment.

At critical junctures, blunders by top officials undermined faith in the data purportedly driving decision-making, according to experts monitoring Arizona's response. And when forbearance was most required, as the state began to reopen despite continued community transmission, an abrupt and uniform approach - without transparent benchmarks or latitude for stricken areas to hold back - led large parts of the public to believe the pandemic was over.

And now, Arizona is facing more per capita cases than recorded by any country in Europe or even by hard-hit Brazil. Among states with at least 20 people hospitalized for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, no state has seen its rate of hospitalizations increase more rapidly since Memorial Day.

This week, Arizona reported not just a record single-day increase in new cases - with Tuesday's tally reaching 3,591 - but also record use of inpatient beds and ventilators for suspected and confirmed cases. Public health experts warn that hospitals could be stretched so thin they may have to begin triaging patients by mid-July.

Soon, the only option might be "crisis standards of care," said Will Humble, a former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. "If you're in a bed, normally they'll keep you for a few days, but they're going to send you home with oxygen."

Ducey, speaking to reporters Thursday, said hospitals are "likely to hit surge capacity very soon."

"This virus is everywhere," the governor said.

The situation in Arizona - as President Donald Trump this week paid his second visit in as many months to the state, which could be a battleground in November - has exemplified the march of the virus across the Sun Belt, where it has also thrashed Florida and Texas, creating conditions as dire as at any point during the pandemic. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, on Thursday paused his state's reopening and ordered hospitals in four counties to postpone elective surgeries.

Physicians fear there is now less buy-in from a public weary of restrictions and polarized by a highly partisan response to the health crisis. In Southern states, some epidemiologists also are cautioning about what they are calling a "reverse summer effect," with warm weather - once thought to interrupt the spread of the virus - driving residents into indoor spaces with recycled air.

"My level of frustration is high," the AARP's Kennedy said. "We could have stopped this."

The last time she met with Ducey was March 11, Kennedy said, when she stood by his side as he declared a health emergency and promised to safeguard nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. He has failed to follow through on those efforts, she argued, saying testing of facility staffers has remained inadequate and equipment needs have gone unmet. Cara Christ, Ducey's health director, has been absent as well, Kennedy said, pulling out of plans for a virtual town hall meeting with AARP members in April.

Now, a crisis that crashed down first on the state's elderly population is increasingly taking hold among younger people.

The mean age of Arizonans killed by covid-19 fell from 78 on April 27 to 69 on June 14, according to data processed by a modeling team made up of experts at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. The average age of patients testing positive for the virus dropped from 51 on April 5 to 39 by mid-June. While older individuals are known to be at greater risk from the virus, Arizona has three times as many positive tests among people age 20 to 44 as it does in any other age bracket, according to state data.

The state's cases began rising dramatically about May 25, 10 days after Ducey allowed the state's stay-at-home order to expire, said Joe Gerald, an associate professor and public health researcher at the University of Arizona who is part of the academic team providing models to the state health department.

Ross Goldberg, president of the Arizona Medical Association, said that "people thought it was back to normal times."

That mistaken view has persisted, even as new cases mount.

"I have to see somebody sick, directly related to me or close to me, in order for it to become like reality," said Joshua Kwiatkowski, strolling this week at an open-air shopping center in Tempe, Ariz. "So it hasn't really, I guess, sank in."

Kwiatkowski said he was not inclined to wear a mask unless required to do so - unless, as he put it, "an Uber driver is feeling some type of way or a store makes you wear it."

Requirements designed to stanch the spread of the virus have expanded since Ducey changed course last week and allowed local governments to impose stricter rules on masks than the recommendations issued by the state. A petition urging him to mandate face coverings statewide gained signatures from more than 1,000 medical professionals. Ducey also shifted his stance toward businesses, directing them to develop policies in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had previously only been recommended.

"There will be enforcement, and they will be held accountable," the governor said.

Numerous cities responded immediately with mask ordinances and emergency proclamations, including Scottsdale, where a tony neighborhood of bars and high-end boutiques had come to epitomize disregard for social distancing guidelines still technically in effect but largely unenforced. Photos and videos of packed businesses accumulated on social media as Ducey and other officials - frequently appearing themselves without masks - insisted most people were behaving responsibly.

The area, known as Old Town Scottsdale and ordinarily packed even on a weekday, fell quiet this week after the wave of new restrictions unleashed by Ducey's about-face. Most businesses had only a smattering of customers, while some bars and restaurants had already closed their doors for the evening, despite banners hanging from their facades welcoming customers.

Still, resistance to health precautions remains pronounced. At an anti-mask rally Wednesday, a member of the Scottsdale City Council, Republican Guy Phillips, shouted the dying words of George Floyd - "I can't breathe" - before ripping off his mask, enlisting a rallying cry of the nationwide protests against racial injustice to inveigh against face coverings that reduce airborne transmission of tiny droplets. Hours later, he issued an apology "to anyone who became offended."

Phillips, who did not respond to an email seeking further comment, runs an air-conditioning business, and, according to his council biography, is a member of the Better Business Bureau, the Arizona Small Business Association and the North Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, among other business groups.

At virtually every stage of the state's pandemic response, the interests of business have held sway, said Nathan Laufer, the founder of the Heart and Vascular Center of Arizona, a medical practice with locations in Phoenix and nearby counties, and a former director of the state medical association.

Ducey is a former chief executive of Cold Stone Creamery. The head of the state's restaurant association, Steve Chucri, is also a Republican supervisor in Maricopa County. He did not respond to requests for comment.

"It's fine to be pro-business, but you have to be pro-citizen first," Laufer said. The governor, in belatedly handing local authorities more control, is "playing catch-up," he added, "but it's too little, too late."

Some residents noted that the Republican governor was following his party's standard-bearer. "Hindsight's 20/20, but yeah, it was a little late," said Greg Cahill, loading his car with groceries outside a Costco at Phoenix's Christown Spectrum mall. "I think he was a little slow. But he's a conservative man and he wanted to do what Trump said."

"It's scary," the 58-year-old said of the rising cases.

Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist affiliated with the University of Arizona and George Mason University, said the seeds of the crisis were planted in early May.

Protests were mounting at the state capitol over Ducey's stay-at-home order. Lawmakers in his party were pledging to invalidate it. County sheriffs were refusing to enforce it.

And Trump, who was urging governors to jump-start their economies, was coming to Arizona to tour a Honeywell plant and to convene a discussion about issues facing Native Americans.

The day before the president's visit, Ducey announced plans to accelerate the reopening of his state's economy, lifting restrictions on salons and barbershops and allowing restaurants to resume dine-in service. A chart displaying the number of new cases, which did not show the 14-day decline recommended by White House guidelines, "really doesn't tell you much," Ducey said at his May 4 news conference.

That evening, the state ended its partnership with the university modeling team whose projections plainly showed a rising caseload in Arizona. It was resumed following an outcry.

Two days later, top health officials acknowledged having changed the testing count to include viral tests confirming an infection and serology tests determining the presence of coronavirus antibodies - a move with the potential to artificially lower the positivity rate touted by Ducey at his May 4 briefing.

"This is a good trajectory for Arizona," he affirmed at the time.

Ducey's original order reopening the state - and preventing local officials from setting their own rules despite mounting evidence about the benefits of masks and social distancing - was in keeping with a top-down approach to governance that critics say has characterized his tenure. In 2017, he signed a bill approved by the Republican-controlled legislature that allowed any state legislator to direct the Arizona attorney general to investigate a local regulation for a possible violation of state law. Consequences included potentially losing revenue from the state.

"The biggest challenge has been Governor Ducey tying the hands of mayors and county health departments," said Regina Romero, the Democratic mayor of Tucson, who said she weighed an emergency proclamation mandating masks in mid-March but was advised against it by her city attorney. Her city's budget is about $566 million, Romero said, more than a fifth of which comes from the state.

"There's a real threat with money involved," the mayor said.

Limited resources have also hampered the ability of the hardest-hit counties to conduct thorough contact tracing. Maricopa County shifted in the early weeks of the pandemic to what it called a "mediated" approach in which all sickened people are interviewed but are then made responsible for notifying their own contacts.

A spokesman for the county health department, Ron Coleman, confirmed this week the limited approach is still in use, even as cases soar.

Hugh Lytle, chief executive of Equality Health, said the willingness of people in Phoenix to wait for hours to be tested at the drive-in site organized by his medical group over the weekend has been a wake-up call.

State officials are taking note, he said, of the "overwhelming level of fear and anxiety that's causing people to say it's worth sitting in my car for a couple hours."

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Houston Facing ‘Apocalyptic’ July 4 Holiday as Virus Surges
Joe Carroll (Bloomberg)
June 25, 2020

Houston’s Covid-19 outbreak is accelerating at an exponential pace that will swamp the fourth-largest U.S. city’s medical infrastructure by the Independence Day holiday, less than two weeks away, a leading disease specialist warned.

Even as Houston-area intensive-care wards approach full capacity, the worst is yet to come because of “the huge amount of transmission going on in our community,” Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said in an interview Thursday.

Current trends in Harris County, which includes Houston, indicate the caseload will triple or quadruple by mid-July, Hotez said, citing modeling by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab. Such a scenario would be “apocalyptic,” he said. “We can’t go there.”

Hotez’s remarks came a day after the Texas Medical Center warned the Houston region’s intensive-care capacity was quickly filling up and would soon force medical authorities to convert other facilities to ad hoc Covid-19 wards. Harris County officials said they are prepared to reopen a field hospital at a professional football stadium if so-called surge capacity shows signs of strain.

The trajectory of new cases is “going vertical,” Hotez said. “That’s what epidemic diseases classically do.”
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Some states pause reopening as virus cases near record high
By JENNIFER PELTZ and CARLA K. JOHNSON
today

The coronavirus crisis deepened in Arizona on Thursday, and the governor of Texas began to backtrack after making one of the most aggressive pushes in the nation to reopen, as the daily number of confirmed cases across the U.S. closed in on the peak reached during the dark days of late April.

While greatly expanded testing probably accounts for some of the increase, experts say other measures indicate the virus is making a comeback. Daily deaths, hospitalizations and the percentage of tests that are coming back positive also have been rising over the past few weeks in parts of the country, mostly in the South and West.

In Arizona, 23% of tests conducted over the past seven days have been positive, nearly triple the national average, and a record 415 patients were on ventilators. Mississippi saw its daily count of confirmed cases reach record highs twice this week.

“It’s not a joke. Really bad things are going to happen,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s health officer.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas put off lifting any more restrictions and reimposed a ban on elective surgeries in some places to preserve hospital space after the number of patients statewide more than doubled in two weeks. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona also said further efforts to reopen are on hold as cases surge. Sandwiched between the two, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, worried about rising numbers and the risks posed by her neighbors, declaring, “We’re on hold.”

“The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said.

The U.S. reported 34,500 COVID-19 cases Wednesday, slightly fewer than the day before but still near the high of 36,400 reached April 24, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The daily average has climbed by more than 50% over the past two weeks, an Associated Press analysis found. The true numbers are probably much higher because of limited testing and other factors.

Whether the rise in cases translates into an equally dire surge in deaths across the U.S. will depend on a number of factors, experts said, most crucially whether government officials make the right decisions. Deaths per day nationwide are around 600 after peaking at about 2,200 in mid-April.

“It is possible, if we play our cards badly and make a lot of mistakes, to get back to that level. But if we are smart, there’s no reason to get to 2,200 deaths a day,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute.

The nation’s daily death toll has actually dropped markedly over the past few weeks even as cases climbed, a phenomenon experts said may reflect the advent of treatments, better efforts to prevent infections at nursing homes and a rising proportion of cases among younger people, who are more likely than their elders to survive a bout with COVID-19.

“This is still serious,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but “we’re in a different situation today than we were in March or April.”

Several states set single-day case records this week, including Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. Florida reported over 5,000 new cases for a second day in a row.

Mississippi’s Dobbs blamed a failure to wear masks and observe other social-distancing practices.

“I’m afraid it’s going to take some kind of catastrophe for people to pay attention,” he said. “We are giving away those hard-fought gains for silly stuff.”

Tom Rohlk, a 62-year-old grocery store worker from Overland Park, Kansas, complained that young people sometimes act as if they don’t care: “It seems like it’s time to party.”

The U.S. has greatly ramped up testing in the past few months, and it is now presumably finding many less-serious cases that would have gone undetected earlier in the outbreak, when testing was limited and often focused on sicker people.

But there are other more clear-cut warning signs, including a rising number of deaths per day in states such as Arizona and Alabama.

The numbers “continue to go in the wrong direction,” Ducey said. “We can expect our numbers will be worse next week and the week after.”

The number of confirmed infections, in itself, is a poor measure of the outbreak. CDC officials, relying on blood tests, estimated Thursday that 20 million Americans have been infected. That is about 6% percent of the population and roughly 10 times the 2.3 million confirmed cases.

Officials have long known that many cases have been missed because of testing gaps and a lack of symptoms in some infected people.

Worldwide, over 9.5 million people have been confirmed infected, and nearly a half-million have died, including over 124,000 in the U.S., the world’s highest toll, by Johns Hopkins’ count.

While some states impose new restrictions or pause their reopenings, some businesses also are backing off. Disney delayed its mid-July reopening of Disneyland.

As politicians try to strike a balance between public health and the economy, the government reported that the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week declined slightly to 1.48 million, indicating layoffs are slowing but still painfully high.

Elsewhere around the world, Paris’ Eiffel Tower reopened to visitors after its longest peacetime closure: 104 days.

With hospitals overwhelmed in New Delhi, Indian troops provided care in railroad cars converted to medical wards.

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Covid-19 may cause brain complications in some, say doctors
Stroke and psychosis found in small study of patients highlight need for research
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Fri 26 Jun 2020 03.26 EDT | First published on Thu 25 Jun 2020 18.30 EDT

Brain complications, including stroke and psychosis, have been linked to Covid-19 in a study that raises concerns about the potentially extensive impact of the disease in some patients.

The study is small and based on doctors’ observations, so cannot provide a clear overall picture about the rate of such complications. However, medical experts say the findings highlight the need to investigate the possible effects of Covid-19 in the brain and studies to explore potential treatments.

“There have been growing reports of an association between Covid-19 infection and possible neurological or psychiatric complications, but until now these have typically been limited to studies of 10 patients or fewer,” said Benedict Michael, the lead author of the study, from the University of Liverpool. “Ours is the first nationwide study of neurological complications associated with Covid-19, but it is important to note that it is focused on cases that are severe enough to require hospitalisation.”

Scientists said the findings were an important snapshot of potential complications, but should be treated with caution as it is not possible to draw any conclusions from the data about the prevalence of such complications.

The study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, focused on patients treated in UK hospitals during the exponential phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in April. Michael and colleagues asked specialist doctors to report clinical details of Covid-19 patients, who were experiencing a range of neurological and psychiatric complications that were potentially linked to the disease.

Of the 125 cases reported in detail, the most common brain complication observed was stroke, which was reported in 77 patients. Of these, 57 patients had a stroke caused by a blood clot in the brain, known as an ischaemic stroke, nine patients had a stroke caused by a brain haemorrhage, and one patient had a stroke caused by inflammation in the blood vessels of the brain. Previously, Covid-19 has been found, in some patients, to cause severe inflammation and blood clots in the lungs and elsewhere in the body.

A further 39 patients showed signs of confusion or changes in behaviour reflecting an altered mental state, with seven of these having inflammation of the brain, medically termed encephalitis. The remaining 23 patients with an altered mental state were diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, including psychosis, a dementia-like syndrome and mood disorders. Although most psychiatric diagnoses were recorded as new, the researchers say they cannot exclude the possibility that these were undiagnosed before the patient developed Covid-19.

Michael Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “This report describes often striking cases of neurological and psychiatric illness as being sometimes associated with severe Covid-19 in hospitalised patients. It reminds us that Covid-19 is more than a respiratory infection and that we need to consider its link to a variety of other illnesses.”

However, he added, further research was needed to rule out the possibility that the illnesses were simply co-occurring with Covid-19 rather than caused by it. “At present people in the general population should not worry too much about these possibly associated illnesses as they are probably relatively rare in those who become infected with this coronavirus,” he said.

Dame prof Til Wykes, vice dean psychology and systems sciences at King’s College London, said that there was an awareness that there have been mental health problems associated with the pandemic, due to indirect impacts of the virus. “We thought that these problems would just be increases in anxiety and depression but clearly there is a possibility that a small number of people may experience a first episode of psychosis following hospitalisation with severe Covid-19 – 8% of the total cases reported in this paper,” she said.

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CDC Head Estimates U.S. Coronavirus Cases Might be 10 Times Higher Than Data Show
By Alice Park
June 25, 2020 3:17 PM EDT

In a press briefing on June 25, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that the current official count of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may actually be a drastic underestimate.

Redfield said the new, much-higher estimate, is based on growing data from antibody testing, which picks up the presence of immune cells that react to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. People will test positive for antibodies to the virus if they have been infected—whether or not they ever got sick or even developed symptoms.

Previously, testing was focused only on those with symptoms. But because so many who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 could either have mild disease or not know they were infected at all, Redfield said, current information on the burden of cases is an underestimate. “The traditional approach of looking for symptomatic illness, and diagnoses obviously under estimated the total number of infections,” Redfield said. “Now that serology tests are available, which test for antibodies, the estimates we have right now show about 10 times more people have antibodies in the jurisdictions tested than had documented infections.”

That fact may also be contributing to the recent downward trend in the average age of people being diagnosed, since, as Redfield noted, those people were likely not being diagnosed in the past—younger people are less likely to experience the severe symptoms that bring them to the attention of the health care system, where the early cases were documented. Now that testing is more widely available in the community, it’s becoming clear that more people are currently infected or have recovered from COVID-19 than was previously believed.

On the press call, the CDC also announced changes to its definitions of people at high risk of COVID-19; it now includes those with asthma, dementia and a history of stroke, as well as people who are pregnant. The absolute risk of infection for these groups is still low, but compared to those without these conditions, the risk is worth noting. Based on new data, the CDC also updated its list of underlying medical conditions that could make people more vulnerable to COVID-19 to now include obesity and type 2 diabetes, conditions that are both common in the U.S. population, including among younger people.

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CDC adds 3 new coronavirus symptoms to list
Madeline Farber
Published 17 hours ago

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) appears to have recently added three new symptoms of the novel coronavirus to its ongoing list.

Congestion or runny nose, nausea, and diarrhea were added, joining the federal agency's list that already included fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell and sore throat.

“This list does not include all possible symptoms. CDC will continue to update this list as we learn more about COVID-19,” per the CDC.

The new symptoms were quietly added, with one news outlet reporting that the changes were made on May 13.

The CDC made a similar change in April when officials added six additional symptoms to the list. At the time, these new changes included chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and new loss of taste or smell.

When the pandemic first began, fever, cough, and shortness of breath were reported to be the most common signs of a COVID-19 infection.

Symptoms can range from mild to severe, with most people beginning to experience them two to 14 days following exposure to the novel virus, or SARS-CoV-2.

“Older adults and people who have severe underlying medical conditions like heart or lung disease or diabetes seem to be at higher risk for developing more serious complications from COVID-19 illness,” the CDC warns, noting that “emergency warning signs” for COVID-19 typically include trouble breathing, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, new confusion, inability to wake or stay awake, and bluish lips or face.

“If someone is showing any of these signs, seek emergency medical care immediately,” per the CDC.

To date, there have been more than 9.4 million worldwide cases of the novel coronavirus, according to data from John Hopkins University. The U.S. alone has seen more than 2.3 million cases and at least 121,996 virus-related deaths.

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(fair use applies)

Do you have coronavirus ‘caution fatigue’?
Madeline Farber
Published 13 hours ago

When it comes to adhering to the recommended safety precautions to protect against the novel coronavirus, such as wearing a face mask and practicing social distancing, are you as diligent as you were at the start of the pandemic? If you’ve been feeling a bit fast and loose with the rules lately, you may be experiencing so-called “caution fatigue.”

“In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an influx of media attention on helping people comply with quarantine safety guidelines. I've observed a phenomenon called 'caution fatigue' — caution fatigue is low motivation or energy to observe safety information,” Jacqueline Gollan, the associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who coined the term, told Fox News.

“It occurs when we become desensitized to stress and warnings, and then outweigh the valid risks of injury for the benefits of a reward such as human connection, exercise, or the outdoors. The burden of cautious behavior, especially if prolonged, can seem unnecessary and thus people become vulnerable to suggestions to bend safety rules,” she continued.

But caution fatigue can be dangerous, especially as COVID-19 still presents a very real risk, with neither a vaccine to protect against it nor an effective treatment at this time. What’s more, cases are surging across the country, with the U.S hitting an all-time high on Wednesday in new daily coronavirus cases. Florida, Texas and California are among the most hard-hit.

Florida, for instance, saw a record number of cases on Tuesday, according to a report from the state Department of Health.

In Texas, new COVID-19 infections broke 5,000 for the first time on Tuesday, just a week after they first surpassed 4,000 in a single day. The spike has since prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to pause the Lone Star State’s reopening plans, he announced on Thursday.

In California, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Wednesday urged residents to stay home amid a sharp spike in coronavirus cases as businesses continue to reopen.

Fast-paced reopenings in some states may also give some people a false sense of security and further contribute to caution fatigue. Indeed, as Gollan noted, this phenomenon occurs when “we become desensitized to warnings or experience mental or physical fatigue from observing the safety guidelines."

“We outweigh the risks of our situation for other goals, health benefits of connection, and normal routine. It can make people vulnerable to suggestions to bend COVID-19 safety guidelines,” she said. “We initially may have been fearful, but as we start to gain control we become more confident to confront situations that may have scared us. As a result, as the pandemic continues, some of us have adjusted and started to underestimate the actual threat, ignore situational hazards, and don’t take COVID-19 risks as seriously.”

Speaking to Fox News, Dr. Collin Reiff, a psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, likened caution fatigue to swimming in the ocean.

“People go swimming in the ocean, a potentially dangerous place, and don't take flotation devices with them. If you don’t see anyone drown, you feel fine doing it,” he said.

“But if we hear that 100,000 people died [while swimming in the ocean], and 180,000 could drown by October, you would see more people wearing a flotation device,” he said, referring to a recent report that U.S. coronavirus deaths are projected to reach 180,000 by the beginning of October unless the majority of people start wearing face masks.

Reiff also hypothesized that cognitive dissonance might play a part in those who find themselves having a more lax attitude toward recommended safety precautions.

“I think some of it is fatigue, but I think another part of it is that a lot of people haven't been [as directly] impacted” by the novel coronavirus, he said, noting that the virus had a more direct impact on those living in cities that were hit hard at the start of the pandemic, such as New York City and Philadelphia.

“It may not be so much fatigue but their experience with COVID — [the precautions] are not convenient for me any longer," he said, adding that this an instance of cognitive dissonance or a situation in which someone experiences conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.

“People are tired of COVID. A lot of people at the beginning of this experience had an adjustment disorder because of acute stress. But now that the stressor is being removed, there’s less anxiety around this, which is dangerous in a way because it’s still very much alive and real," he continued. “We all want to believe things are getting better, but that’s not necessarily consistent with reality. People don't want to believe the numbers because it’s an inconvenient truth."
How to offset caution fatigue

If you’re experiencing caution fatigue, is there anything you can do about it? Yes, said Gollan, who offered tips to combat it.

“There are different ways to improve your motivation or energy to comply with safety guidelines,” she said.

First, “update yourself with credible safety information provided by medical professionals,” she said, adding people should ensure they are reading “credible news sources,” recommending to "change up the source of your news so it continues to catch your attention.”

Staying physically active is also helpful, she said.

Gollan explained, “Take care of your body, exercise regularly, get quality sleep, eat healthily, avoid mood-changing drugs and over-using alcohol, [and] avoid high-risk behaviors. Call your doctor if you feel unwell, [or] cannot sleep."
As US coronavirus cases continue to spike, when will it be safe to see high-risk loved ones?Video

Next, “Assume more social responsibility or an altruistic approach,” she advised. “More we-thinking and less me-thinking. Improving social fitness. See if you can find alternative ways of socializing and getting support.”

Seeking emotional outlets could be of benefit as well.

“Set goals of enjoyment and mastery, express gratitude, use positive humor, learn to stabilize your emotions and increase your integrity,” said Gollan. “Call your doctor for consultation if you feel depressed or anxious.”

Another tip: Try “short coping statements, [such as], ‘This is very hard right now, but I will make it through.’”

“What can you tell yourself that adds understanding, caring, and nurturance? What actions can you take to protect yourself right now?” she added.

Gollan also advised those experiencing caution fatigue to seek “positive religious or spiritual coping,” such as faith-based experts or online resources. “Rekindle your hope that things will change, try to forgive others and self.”

“Seeking to reduce stress exhaustion and your exposure to other risk situations,” such as overusing alcohol or being in hot weather, she said. “See if you can learn from your stress: How does it help me grow, change, and find new solutions?”

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Heliobas Disciple said:

Covid-19 may cause brain complications in some, say doctors

Stroke and psychosis found in small study of patients highlight need for research

www.theguardian.com

(fair use applies)

Covid-19 may cause brain complications in some, say doctors
Stroke and psychosis found in small study of patients highlight need for research
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Fri 26 Jun 2020 03.26 EDT | First published on Thu 25 Jun 2020 18.30 EDT

Brain complications, including stroke and psychosis, have been linked to Covid-19 in a study that raises concerns about the potentially extensive impact of the disease in some patients.

The study is small and based on doctors’ observations, so cannot provide a clear overall picture about the rate of such complications. However, medical experts say the findings highlight the need to investigate the possible effects of Covid-19 in the brain and studies to explore potential treatments.

“There have been growing reports of an association between Covid-19 infection and possible neurological or psychiatric complications, but until now these have typically been limited to studies of 10 patients or fewer,” said Benedict Michael, the lead author of the study, from the University of Liverpool. “Ours is the first nationwide study of neurological complications associated with Covid-19, but it is important to note that it is focused on cases that are severe enough to require hospitalisation.”

Scientists said the findings were an important snapshot of potential complications, but should be treated with caution as it is not possible to draw any conclusions from the data about the prevalence of such complications.

The study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, focused on patients treated in UK hospitals during the exponential phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in April. Michael and colleagues asked specialist doctors to report clinical details of Covid-19 patients, who were experiencing a range of neurological and psychiatric complications that were potentially linked to the disease.

Of the 125 cases reported in detail, the most common brain complication observed was stroke, which was reported in 77 patients. Of these, 57 patients had a stroke caused by a blood clot in the brain, known as an ischaemic stroke, nine patients had a stroke caused by a brain haemorrhage, and one patient had a stroke caused by inflammation in the blood vessels of the brain. Previously, Covid-19 has been found, in some patients, to cause severe inflammation and blood clots in the lungs and elsewhere in the body.

A further 39 patients showed signs of confusion or changes in behaviour reflecting an altered mental state, with seven of these having inflammation of the brain, medically termed encephalitis. The remaining 23 patients with an altered mental state were diagnosed with psychiatric conditions, including psychosis, a dementia-like syndrome and mood disorders. Although most psychiatric diagnoses were recorded as new, the researchers say they cannot exclude the possibility that these were undiagnosed before the patient developed Covid-19.

Michael Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “This report describes often striking cases of neurological and psychiatric illness as being sometimes associated with severe Covid-19 in hospitalised patients. It reminds us that Covid-19 is more than a respiratory infection and that we need to consider its link to a variety of other illnesses.”

However, he added, further research was needed to rule out the possibility that the illnesses were simply co-occurring with Covid-19 rather than caused by it. “At present people in the general population should not worry too much about these possibly associated illnesses as they are probably relatively rare in those who become infected with this coronavirus,” he said.

Dame prof Til Wykes, vice dean psychology and systems sciences at King’s College London, said that there was an awareness that there have been mental health problems associated with the pandemic, due to indirect impacts of the virus. “We thought that these problems would just be increases in anxiety and depression but clearly there is a possibility that a small number of people may experience a first episode of psychosis following hospitalisation with severe Covid-19 – 8% of the total cases reported in this paper,” she said.

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Click to expand...

Is there some connection between the virus and the riots? People really seemed to start going crazy right about that time. Pretty woo, I know

abby normal said:

Is there some connection between the virus and the riots? People really seemed to start going crazy right about that time. Pretty woo, I know

Click to expand...

One "woo" theory regarding behavior says the sun isn't blocking rays that it used to and those rays are making people on earth agitated and angry.
Crypto viewers say we are up for a round of a new virus, worse than Covid.

THE MOST ASTONISHING PREDICTIVE PROGRAMMING EVER:
QUANTUM DOT LUCIFERASE TATOOS! MARK OF THE BEAST!

a cartoon from Netflix,
Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters
on getting the SmartMark and it's free

video 15:15 min - Jun 11, 2020
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riWavdFPtP0&feature=youtu.be



The episode is called: The New Normal
from Season 2, aired September 7, 2018

but notice the difference on the people
before they get the smartmarkand afterwards

abby normal said:

Is there some connection between the virus and the riots? People really seemed to start going crazy right about that time. Pretty woo, I know

Click to expand...

That is something that a lot of open minded folks ponder.

EndGameWW3

@EndGameWW3

Mexico passes 25,000 dead; treasury secretary diagnosed with COVID-19 https://abc7.com/health/mexico-surpasses-25000-covid-19-deaths/6270988/… via
@abc7

The Intel Crab Retweeted



Steve Herman

@W7VOA
·
22m

Announcement just now from the
@WhiteHouse
that
@POTUS
this weekend "will no longer be traveling to" Bedminster, New Jersey.

Steve Herman

@W7VOA
·
2m

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut issued travel advisories requiring visitors from states with high #coronavirus infection rates to quarantine for 14 days.
@POTUS
visited #Arizona, a #COVID19 hot spot, on Tuesday.

danielboon said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1276542017233981440

View: https://twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1276542017233981440

Click to expand...

Yup. Just had to go out boozin'

Florida has almost 9000 new cases today!

BREAKING NEWS Massachusetts Coronavirus: 8,013 deaths, 108,070 total cases Massachusetts Coronavirus: 8,013 deaths, 108,070 total cases 50 new deaths up from yesterday

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg5E0c5YIGE
38:14 min
International increases


Dr. John Campbell
Jun 26, 2020

COVID -19, Global Update, June Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Chad, Central African Republic, (IRC) Women make up less than 30 per cent of confirmed cases Women significantly more likely to be carers or health workers Globally women make up about 49 per cent of confirmed cases (WHO) Major increase in rates of female genital mutilation Increased numbers of forced marriages https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-he... https://www.who.int/reproductivehealt...

IRC data https://www.rescue.org/press-release/... Feb – March 2020, 50% decrease in reports in Bangladesh and 30% in Tanzania Iraq, nearly two months without a reported case For every 3 months of lockdown, there will be an additional 15 million cases of gender-based violence IRC team in Kenya reports a 20% increase El Salvador, IRC partners report a 70% increase among women seeking services. https://www.theguardian.com/world/liv...

Austria Ischgl Highest seroprevalence ever shown in a study 42.4% antibody positive 15% had previously tested positive, so 85 percent did not notice or had dismissed symptoms as a cold.

Greater Lisbon Increase in cases Some parts of the city will be locked down again, 29 June – 12 July Leave home only to buy essential goods such as food or medication, and to travel to and from work.

US Cases, + 34,700 + 36,358 = 2, 398,491 Deaths, 122,238 Late-April peak was 36,400 new cases per day CDC, deaths reaching 150,000 in next month https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-... Hotspots Washington State Utah Arizona Texas Arkansas Alabama Florida North Carolina South Carolina Florida Cases, + 5,500 Rapid transmission in 18 – 34 years California 29% increase in hospitalizations in 2 weeks Texas Pausing any further phases to reopen Recent increase in positive Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations North Carolina Masks mandated People can be charged with trespassing if they refuse to leave a business and don't have a mask on War on plastic Sea ‘fatbergs’ - made up of face masks, gloves and wipes, clogging up sewer systems in the US after they were flushed

UK New cases + 3,612 Downward trend has now flattened (ONS community antigen survey) 5% of population = 3,300,000 Deaths, 43,314 Pubs, cafes and restaurants can apply for pavement trading licences Makeshift stalls, tables, umbrellas, barriers and heaters if granted Local authorities Ministers, plan al fresco Brixton riots, 22 police injured Packed beaches in Dorset 10m antibody tests 1 in 7 London 1 in 20 UK Quarter of patients transferred to the NHS Test and Trace system could not be reached to provide contacts. 6,923 cases transferred to the contact tracing system in the week 1,791 (25.9%) could not be reached by the manual tracing scheme 30,286 (81%) of people identified as close contacts of positive Covid-19 cases were reached and told to self-isolate

Israel Eases restrictions at end of May Surge in new coronavirus cases Shin Bet has started tracing again

India Cases, + 16,922 = 473,105 New Delhi, cases, + 3,788 = 70,390 Viral clusters Coronavirus survey, taking health details from New Delhi’s 29 million Plan to test all symptomatic by 6 July Police to enforce physical distancing Containment zones Drones to ensure strict perimeter control

Iraq Cases + 2,500 = 39,139 Deaths + 107 = 1,437 Hospitals across the country have been overwhelmed over the last week

NZ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-he... Expect about 12 cases per week from returners Should be able to contain these

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfH-taJ-IzM
19:32 min
103 - Tom Inglesby Returns to Answer Your COVID-19 Questions
•Jun 26, 2020

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Why has the US had a harder time with the virus than Europe? Why does contact tracing seem to be working in some places but not others? Does it make sense to wear face coverings outside? Can COVID-19 be killed in the freezer? Can I get COVID-19 from a pool? What about in an elevator? Dr. Tom Inglesby of the Center for Health Security and Dr. Josh Sharfstein address your questions submitted to publichealthquestion@jhu.edu

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1lQmP7ub0
58:38 min
War Room Pandemic Ep 251 - Hands Up Don't Shoot
6 hours ago


Bannon WarRoom - Citizens of the American Republic
Raheem Kassam, Jack Maxey, and Greg Manz are joined by Ryan Girdusky to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as the protestors in DC continue to drive to remove statues. Curtis Ellis calls in to discuss the latest on China. Andrew Surabian calls in to discuss the latest on tech censorship.

________________________

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzp1I-Lk0hc
58:29 min
War Room Pandemic Ep 252 - No Fighting in the War Room
•Streamed live 5 hours ago


Bannon WarRoom - Citizens of the American Republic

Raheem Kassam, Jack Maxey, and Greg Manz are joined by Ryan Girdusky and Jack Posobiec to discuss the latest on the coronavirus pandemic as the gang debates how to respond to the insurrection taking place in America. Calling in is Dr. Paolo Zanotto to discuss the latest on therapeutics out of Brazil.