The days are getting shorter, the leaves are changing color, and the average number of new Covid-19 cases being reported across the United States is now double what it was in June, the latest figures showed Friday.
The U.S. is logging an average of more than 45,000 new infections per day and its trending upward, according to statistics compiled by NBC News.
The worrisome development comes a month after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading expert on infectious diseases, urged the nation to hunker down because the number of new coronavirus cases was likely to rise as summer gave way to fall and the flu season started.
And this week, Fauci said he will be celebrating Thanksgiving via Zoom with his three daughters to avoid infection.
We would love for them to come home for Thanksgiving, Fauci, who lives in Washington, D.C., said during a webinar. They have said themselves, Dad, you know youre a young, vigorous guy, but youre 79 years old.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump declared himself "healed" during a radio interview with Rush Limbaugh, and later the White House announced he would be doing an in-person event Saturdayfrom the Truman balcony, even though it's been just a week since the president was diagnosed with Covid-19.
Earlier, a White House spokesman hedged on whether Trump would attend a Saturday campaign rally in Florida.
Trump won't go unless hes medically cleared that he will not be able to transmit the virus, deputy press secretary Brian Morgenstern said Friday on MSNBC.
But later Friday, the Trump campaign announced the president would be heading to Sanford, Florida, on Monday for a campaign rally.
Sanford is where 17-year-old Black teenager Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012 by a neighborhood watchman named George Zimmerman, whose acquittal on murder charges sparked nationwide protests.
More than a dozen other Trump aides and allies have also come down with infections, along with four White House residence staffers. And many of these infections have been tied to a Sept. 26 event Trump held in the Rose Garden to introduce Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
"We had a super spreader event in the White House and it was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks," Fauci said Friday in a CBS Radio interview.
Dr. David Shulkin, Trumps former secretary of Veterans Affairs, said nobody really knows how infectious Trump is because there hasnt been enough information out there.
The recommendations are that it should be 10 days from the onset of the infection, but you have to know whether someones on symptom-relieving medication and whether they have symptoms when theyre off those medications, Shulkin told MSNBCs Stephanie Ruhle on Friday. But Stephanie, Im more worried, not about the president, but more worried about him putting people at risk at these rallies. We know that these rallies consist of people who dont social distance, who dont wear masks.
Since being sprung from the hospital, Trump has resumed downplaying the dangers of the virus that has killed 213,830 people and infected more than 7.6 million just in the U.S., and sowing doubt on the effectiveness of wearing masks and social distancing to slow the spread of the disease.
Trump also offended the loved ones of many Covid-19 victims by cavalierly declaring upon his release from Walter Read Medical Center "Don't be afraid of Covid" and quickly removing his mask when he returned to the White House.
Wary of antagonizing the president, Fauci has been pushing back carefully.
The examples of people not wanting to wear masks, or not believing that if you just go in a crowd you're not going to get infected or if you do get infected it's going to be meaningless because it's a trivial outbreak, Fauci said Thursday at a virtual University of California, Berkeley, forum. Well, how could it be a trivial outbreak if it's already killed 210,000 people in the United States and a million people worldwide?
This was two days after Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, contradicted Trumps resurrected false claim that the coronavirus was as deadly as the flu.
"You don't get a pandemic that kills a million people and it isn't even over yet with influenza," Fauci told NBC News Kate Snow.
Fauci over the summer survived a White House attempt to discredit him after he publicly countered Trumps false claims about the progress of the pandemic.
Corky Siemaszko is a senior writer for NBC News Digital.
The Jets announced on Friday morning that one of their players had tested positive for the coronavirus, sending a new shudder through the N.F.L., which is facing an outbreak that has affected at least three teams in recent weeks. But in the evening, the team said that the result was a false positive and that everyone on the team had tested negative, clearing the way for the Jets to play the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, as planned.
The conflicting results were a reminder of how tricky it has been for the league to navigate its season during a pandemic. As if playing the game Whack-a-Mole, the league has had to address issues popping up on and off the field across the country, including players and coaches ignoring safety protocols.
On Friday, the league felt compelled to remind teams that players and coaches would now face a 15-yard penalty if they approached a game official without wearing a mask.
After the false positive test, the Jets called off the teams workout, and said that all players had been sent home from the teams New Jersey training facility as a precaution. For most of Friday, the positive result threw into question whether the Jets would be able to play the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday and created a new headache for the N.F.L., which is already scrambling to adjust for outbreaks on two other teams.
Positive tests on the Patriots, Titans and other teams have deepened the challenge the league faces as it tries to complete a full schedule of games. On Thursday, the league postponed two more games, the latest in a series of cascading readjustments to its complicated matrix of a schedule in the wake of virus outbreaks involving the Tennessee Titans and the New England Patriots.
At the same time, the league is moving to tighten its oversight of teams, and threatening to punish organizations that do not abide by evolving virus protocols. The reminder to teams warning of penalties if their players and coaches approach referees came after the N.F.L. said it would use video surveillance to ensure that team employees were wearing proper protective equipment at team facilities.
The league also is investigating whether the Titans violated league rules by working out after the clubs facility was closed because of the outbreak in the locker room. If the team is found to be in violation, it could face penalties, including fines and the loss of draft picks. Tennessee could even be forced to forfeit a game.
On Thursday, the league announced that the Titans who have had the leagues worst outbreak, with nearly two dozen players, coaches and staff members testing positive would play the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern, instead of on Sunday. But even that plan was contingent on the teams not reporting any new positives. The Titans reported two additional positive tests in their organization on Thursday.
If Tennessee and Buffalo play on Tuesday, the Bills next game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, would be moved back three days from Thursday, Oct. 15.
The league had already postponed the Titans game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, scheduled for this past Sunday, by three weeks because of the Titans outbreak.
The league also on Thursday moved the Patriots-Denver Broncos game, scheduled for Sunday, to 5 p.m. Eastern on Monday, after Stephon Gilmore, New Englands star cornerback, was reported to have tested positive.
Last week, the Patriots Sunday game was moved to Monday because the teams quarterback, Cam Newton, had tested positive.
Unlike the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A. and several other leagues, the N.F.L. which had much bigger rosters and coaching staffs than most leagues chose not to resume its season in a restricted environment like the so-called bubbles used in basketball.
Instead, protocols were put in place to enforce physical distancing and other safety measures while the players and the teams staff members were together. But at the end of each day, all team personnel are allowed to return home, increasing their chances of being exposed to the virus.
Mark Schultz has been hit on both sides of this pandemic.
For six months it was his Oshkosh bar and restaurant, both of which are closed for now afterbeing hammered under state coronavirus restrictions.
Now it is Schultz himself, infected with COVID-19, lying in a hospital intensive care unit, laboring to breathe, unsure of when or whether he'll go home.
"I dont worry much about me, but I got a 10-year-old son and my fiance thats all I care about," he said through tears. "Myfamily is all at home. They are all worried about me. I dont want them to worry about me."
As he spoke by phone, he struggled with short breaths and was interruptedat timesby fits ofcoughs.
"I dont want them to go through this," he toldthe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel."Ihope I get to go home."
Schultz, 64, is the co-owner of Oblio's, a bar in Oshkosh that is beloved by a city that now has the highest rateof COVID-19 infection in the country, according to aNew York Times analysis.
At Oblio's, Schultz said he has three simple rules before people can belly up to the bar: Don't talk about politics. Don't talk about religion. And don't talk about someone's wife.
Now, as hereceives oxygen from a machine,Schultz says he has beenpushed to break thatfirst rule by President Donald Trump.
"I just want to punch him," Schultz said. "I always had to keep my politics to myself, but from where I'msitting now? Those days are over.
"Ishouldn'tbe here."
Trump, he said, should have been more upfront with the public from the beginning about the dangers of the coronavirus,should have acted quicker, promoted wearing face masks. If he had, Schultz believes, maybe the pandemicwould not have struck his community so hard, might not have wound up at his door.
Schultz says he started to feelsick last Friday, the same day the White House revealed Trump tested positive forCOVID-19.
On Monday, Trump told Americans"Don't be afraid of COVID."On Tuesday, Schultz checked into the hospital.
"Im just frustrated with the president the nonchalantnessof this virus," he said. "They should be afraid. It's nothing to mess with."
Schultz thinks it's likely he and his fiance, Sandy Ashenbrenner, caught the virus from his business partner. But he hopes, God willing, it hasn't been passed to his 10-year-old son, who hasn't received his test results yet.
"I couldnt breathe anymore," Schultz said about his decision to go to the hospital. "I couldnt breathe and I had a fever. I had aches and pains. I had headaches I never get headaches.
"Andthe tightness in my chest ..."
After arriving atthe hospital Tuesday,doctors told Schulzhe had developed double pneumonia, affecting both his lungs. He is now in anegative pressure ICU room receiving supplemental oxygen.
At times, Schultzlies on his stomach to help reduce his symptoms and blows into a machine to exercise his lungs. He tries to go without oxygen, but when he does, alarms attached to a blood oxygen monitor ring, then the tubes must go back into his nose.
He said he'sbarely slept in five days.
"I cough or I get the sweats and the chills," Schultz said Thursday. "I just get these hot flashes. I stay hot for hours, then last night when my oxygen thing went off, I couldnt get warm. I couldnt get enough covers on me."
Thursday was the worst night.
"I just can't sleep," he said Friday. "If you can't breathe, you can't sleep."
Schultz is on steroids, Tylenoland blood thinners.He said his oxygen has been more than doubled, and if he continues to need more, his doctor is going to try experimental treatment, including the Ebola drug Remdesivir and convalescent plasma therapy.
Schultz spoke to a Journal Sentinel reporter during what he called a "good spell coughinghard a few times but generally was able to chat.
"This lasts about an hour," he said. "Itcomes and goes and when it comes back, it hits you hard."
His blood oxygen level has at times dipped below 85% normal is at least 95% but generally, he's feeling the same, which he hopes, at least, is not bad news.
"Im just kind of floating along," Schultz said. "The doc says thats better than going the other way."
But Schultz is not sure he's going to leave the hospital. His voice shakes when he talks about his family being at home, worrying about him, but unable to see him.
Ashenbrenner, his fiance, has been battling COVID while their son attends school at home.
She said Friday she's feeling OKbut worried.
"My symptoms are nothing like what hes going through," she said. "Its very scary sometimes I talk to him and he seems a little better. Other times Im very worried hes not going to make it,"
Schultz isdocumenting his time in the hospital through a series of videos taken by phone and shared on YouTube. They're titled "Covid 19 ramblings of a pissed off Armenian."
The first begins with this message, aimed at Ashenbrenner:"Sandra Jean. I don't know if I'm going to make it."
He takes a few breaths.
"This s---- real. I want people to know that."
The videos are part diary and part therapy. Schulz airs his grievancesagainst the president and calls on viewers to support efforts to eliminate racial discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement. Especially, he calls on them to take the threat of the virus seriously.
"Youve gotta wear masks. You'vegottasocial distance. You'vegotta wash your hands. You've gotta sanitize. You have to follow the rules. They're very simple."
Schultz's newfound activism does not appear partisan just angry.
In March, he hosted an event for Axios co-founder and Oshkosh native Jim VandeHei for a taped interview with Donald Trump Jr. but stayed in the back.
"I wouldn't have done it for anyone else," he said of VandeHei. "I don't like playing politics."
Schultz backs Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' mask mandate but doesn't agree with his orderto require restaurants and bars like his to limit customers to 25% of their capacity. Schultz said business at both his bar and restaurant is down 60%.
"These people do not have a concept of running a business," he said. "Its unbelievably hard right now. ...You'retrying to keep people employed and now I got two places that are closed.
"These people are out of work right now. Theyve got families."
Schultz said Evers' orders are suggesting to the public that the problem is with the service industry: "They put too much blame on bars or restaurants."
But Schultz also wants people to follow the safety rules put forward by Evers and public health experts.
"You've got to follow their guidelines," he said. "People have to feel comfortable going out. I dont blame anybody for not going out.
"I kind of commend it its being safe."
You can find out who your legislators are and how to contact them here.
Contact Molly Beckat molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.
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Numerous people have tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a Sept. 26 event in the Rose Garden at the White House to announce President Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption
Numerous people have tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a Sept. 26 event in the Rose Garden at the White House to announce President Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
The White House's apparent failures to do thorough contact tracing after its coronavirus outbreak has led local health officers to take matters into their own hands.
The District of Columbia and nine neighboring jurisdictions are calling on White House staff and visitors who might be connected to the recent outbreak there to contact their local health departments.
"We recommend that if you have worked in the White House in the past two weeks, attended the Supreme Court announcement in the Rose Garden on Saturday, September 26, 2020, and/or have had close contact with others who work in those spaces or attended those events, you should get a test for COVID," the health officers wrote in a letter shared by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday morning.
The authors noted that this recommendation was made based on "our preliminary understanding that there has been limited contact tracing performed to date."
Thirty-seven White House staff and other contacts have tested positive, according to a website tracking the outbreak, citing public information such as media reports and tweets. Eleven of those positive cases are connected to the Amy Coney Barrett nomination event on Sept. 26 in the Rose Garden, according to the tracker, from which many attendees flew home to other states.
Emergency physician Leana Wen said that given the event was nearly two weeks ago it's likely the outbreak has already sparked other infections.
"We're not even talking about first-generation spread or second-generation spread, we're talking about third-generation spread," she said. In other words, those who were exposed at the Rose Garden could have infected others who have since infected still more people.
When it comes to tracking down all the contacts that might be connected to the White House outbreak, there are many daunting challenges, from the country's fractured public health system to the Trump administration's approach.
1. The White House is on federal land
There are reports of an increase in coronavirus tests in D.C., and some high case numbers in recent days, which has prompted concerns that the outbreak at the White House could be driving spread in the local area. It's difficult to know for sure if these things are connected.
But because the White House is federal property, the job of contact tracing an outbreak on its grounds doesn't fall to the District's public health staff, it falls to the White House Medical Unit.
The open letter comes after the mayor sent a formal request to the White House to coordinate the response to the outbreak on Tuesday. This week, the District's top health official, Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, did speak to White House staff, according to The Washington Post, but the District doesn't have the authority to do much more than to offer help.
2. Contact tracing across state lines is tricky
Because people came to the White House for the Rose Garden event from all over the country, the contact-tracing effort is extremely tricky.
Normally, during a case investigation, if someone mentions close contacts who are out of state, that person's local health department would notify the health department of that contact. That system has "lots of holes, lots of gaps," said Lindsay Wiley, health law professor at American University.
"Often what will happen with a major outbreak of a concerning infectious disease is actually the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] will get involved in coordinating. But that's optional it's what we call permissive authority."
But in this case, CDC's role seems to be limited.
3. CDC has again been sidelined by the White House
A CDC spokesperson told NPR there are two epidemiologists detailed to the White House but wouldn't say who they are or explain their roles. CDC sources said there was a team at the agency prepared to help with contact tracing but that it was not mobilized.
As new cases have emerged since President Trump's diagnosis, his administration has defended its handling of contact tracing. Deputy press secretary Brian Morgenstern told reporters Wednesday: "The White House medical unit with a CDC epidemiologist embedded in it does contact tracing for the positive cases that they handle the ones that they identify."
He added that they've already traced all the positive cases that have emerged so far and are standing by to do more.
It's not clear if staff and visitors who get tested at their doctor's offices or local health departments would be included in this White House effort. If not, those being contact-traced would represent only a small subset of those potentially at risk.
The Trump administration is also not even trying to trace contacts in the outbreak related to the Rose Garden event, The New York Times reported, arguing it took place more than 48 hours before the president's diagnosis, which is the CDC guideline for when to begin tracing contacts.
It's one instance of many during the pandemic that the White House has sidelined its own public health agency. Critics said not enlisting the CDC's help to investigate the outbreak thoroughly is a major misstep.
"I was shocked when I found out that there weren't extensive contact-tracing efforts underway because the White House right now is the epicenter of what is clearly a large outbreak that involves many jurisdictions across the country," Wen said.
Former CDC Director William Foege said it doesn't make sense that the agency's expertise has been ignored.
"Contact tracing is something CDC has done since the second world war, starting with contact tracing for syphilis they've developed techniques, they're very good at doing this," he told NPR. "So if the White House doesn't allow them to do this freely, then you have to conclude the White House is trying to hide something."
4. It's been nearly 2 weeks since the outbreak began
Contact tracing works best when it happens fast that way, people who've been exposed and may be infectious know to stay home and not go out into the community where they could infect other people.
That quarantine period for the coronavirus is 14 days thought to be the outer limit of the virus's incubation period. The Rose Garden event is almost outside of that window.
There are still reasons why it's worth the effort to trace secondary contacts of attendees, Wen said, even though it's late.
"We could prevent many clusters around the country if we act now," she said. "And if contact tracing is not done in this case, what is the message going to be to people around the country who may then be reluctant to answer calls from health departments doing contact tracing? If it's not good enough for the president, why should they participate in it?"
Health officials surveyed by NPR have noted that the public can be reluctant or scared to share information about their contacts and that has hindered efforts to curb the spread.
5. Community spread is happening practically everywhere
The true extent to which the White House outbreak has driven clusters around the country may never be known, especially because contact tracing wasn't done aggressively early on.
One reason is that community spread is happening all over the country. "It's likely that cases came out of [the Rose Garden] event because of the number of people who were all in the same place at the same time," said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "But it's difficult to address their exposure before they got there and after they got there."
When case numbers are high in a community, it makes it much harder to zero in on a particular event or contact that may have sparked infections.
"I think what draws people's attention to this particular event is how it shows what happens when you're not following the public health guidelines," Casalotti added, noting it's clear from photos of the Rose Garden event that social distancing and mask-wearing were not being practiced.
"Unfortunately, the spread here wasn't despite best efforts," she said. "It's clear that when we're not using social distancing, when we're not wearing masks or we're not following all of those protocols, it makes it much easier for the virus to take hold and spread."
Richard Harris and Pien Huang contributed to this report.
Editors note: The Salt Lake Tribune is providing free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter, sent to your inbox every weekday morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber.
With 1,343 new coronavirus cases reported on Friday, Utahs rate of new diagnoses continued to rise, and a record number of patients were hospitalized.
For the past week, the Utah Department of Health has tallied 1,148 new positive test results a day, on average continuing a streak of new record highs that began earlier this month.
Utahs death toll from the coronavirus rose to 505 on Friday, with four fatalities reported since Thursday:
Hospitalizations reached a new record high on Friday, with 243 Utah patients concurrently admitted, UDOH reported. On average, 207 patients have been receiving treatment in Utah hospitals each day for the past week, approaching the peak average of 211 patients hospitalized each day at the end of July.
In total, 4,220 patients have been hospitalized in Utah for COVID-19, up 53 from Thursday. There have been 552 hospitalizations reported in the past two weeks the most of any 14-day stretch since the pandemic began.
Utahs intensive care units were 71.8% occupied as of Friday, meeting the states goal of less than 85% occupancy.
At present, we are not at maximum levels at any of our locations, said Jess Gomez, spokesman for Intermountain Healthcare. But again those numbers fluctuate from day to day and hour to hour.
All of our facilities are seeing very high volumes, Gomez said.
In an online briefing Thursday, one of Intermountains doctors said the timing of this case surge before autumns chill strikes Utah bodes poorly for the coming weeks and months.
Im very concerned ... that we have the highest [case counts] in Utah that weve ever had and its like 70 degrees outside," said Dr. Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious diseases physician. "This is the time where we should have the lowest number of cases. We can be outside, we can enjoy peoples company. Ideally, this is the time where we should have driven this number down incredibly low with the anticipation of a spike in October, November, December. Thats the exact opposite of whats happened.
The weeklong total number of new cases rose for the second day in a row in Utah County, which has been the epicenter of Utahs recent spike in infections but seven-day case counts are below their peak about a week and a half ago.
Other areas of the state have more than made up for that decline, with Salt Lake, Davis, Wasatch and Tooele counties, as well as the Central and Southeast Utah health districts reporting their highest-ever weeklong numbers of new cases as of Friday.
Tooele County, which had avoided major outbreaks for most of the pandemic, this week exceeded 100 new cases in seven days, per 100,000 residents a rate federal health officials have called the red zone.
In fact, the states small-area case data shows that 94% of the states population is living in communities with incidence rates in the red zone during the past seven days. At the beginning of September, only about a quarter of Utahns were living in towns and neighborhoods with rates that high.
For the past week, 13.8% of all tests have come back positive a rate that has held steady for weeks, and that is high enough to suggest a large number of infected people are not being tested, state officials have said. Statewide, Utahs rate of positive tests has been above 5% since May 25, according to UDOH data.
There were 9,026 new test results reported on Friday, above the weeklong average of 7,924 new tests per day.
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Brittani Castle says she's a COVID-19 long-hauler. Since becoming infected with COVID-19 nearly three months ago, she continues to experience shortness of breath, digestive issues and a foggy memory symptoms that linger even though she's tested negative for the virus.
The Houston woman is out of work and has encountered problems collecting unemployment.
In the weekend edition of The Brief podcast, listen to why she says the coronavirus has come to dominate her life.
By: KDKA-TV News Staff
HARRISBURG (KDKA) For the third day in a row, Pennsylvania is reporting over 1,300 new cases of COVID-19.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health is reporting 1,380 new cases of Coronavirus and nine additional deaths.
The statewide total number of cases has risen to 169,308 since Thursdays report, according to the states data. On Thursday, the state reported 1,376 new cases and 1,309 on Wednesday.
The number of tests administered within the last seven days, between Oct. 2-8, is 211,544 with 7,805 positive cases, according to the Health Department. There were 34,228 test results reported to the department through 10 p.m. Thursday.
The Health Department says all 67 counties in Pennsylvania have had cases of COVID-19. Current patients are either in isolation at home or being treated at the hospital.
The statewide death toll has risen to 8,308 .
There are 1,999,765 patients across the state who have tested negative to date.
The state Health Department numbers show there are 23,717 resident cases of COVID-19 in nursing and personal care homes across Pennsylvania. Among employees, there are 5,252 diagnosed cases. That brings the entire total to 28,969 cases. Out of the total deaths across Pennsylvania, state officials say 5,548 have occurred in residents from nursing or personal care facilities.
Approximately 11,220 of the states total cases are in health care workers.
Currently, all 67 counties are in the green phase of reopening. However, restrictions are in place for bars, restaurants and large gatherings.
If you have concerns about the virus, you can check out the states COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring System Dashboard.
More information on the Coronavirus pandemic:
In this weeks podcast, Carl Cohn and his guests address one of the most challenging and hidden aspects of the pandemic: the mental health needs of students, and their teachers. Carl speaks with Dr. Jeannine Topalian, president of the California Association of School Psychologists, and Dr. Loretta Whitson, executive director of the California Association of School Counselors. Between them, their organizations represent over 17,000 professionals dedicated to the mental wellbeing of the states students.
In California the ratio of students to counselors is 622 to 1, below the national average of 464 to 1 and far shy of the National Association of School Counselors recommendation of 250 to 1. Carl and the two leaders discuss this lack of mental health resources in our schools, and the additional challenges posed by the pandemic. Delivering services to students is no easy feat in a remote learning environment, but Dr. Topalian and Dr. Whitson explain how their members hope to get it done.
With fifty years of service as a counselor, teacher, district superintendent, State Board of Education member, and executive director of the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, Cohn brings a deep understanding of the challenges school districts face as they regroup and reopen in the fall.
Looking for resources for addressing the mental health needs of students? Check out the following websites: t
Getting the Anaheim, Calif., complex running again is important for Disney because other areas of the company theatrical films, cruise vacations have also been severely disrupted by the pandemic and face a more strenuous recovery. Disneyland generated an estimated $3.8 billion in revenue last year, according to Michael Nathanson, a media analyst.
Last week, a frustrated Robert A. Iger, Disneys executive chairman, resigned from an economic task force set up by Mr. Newsom at the start of the pandemic. California wants theme parks to remain closed until the rate of new daily coronavirus cases in their counties falls below one per 100,000 people and the counties have a less than 2 percent positivity rate for tests what the governor has deemed minimal on a four-level scale for coronavirus risk. Theme park owners, including NBCUniversal and Six Flags, have pushed back on that standard as unrealistic, saying it will effectively keep them closed until a vaccine has been deployed.
Were going to be stubborn about it, Mr. Newsom said at a briefing on Wednesday, noting that he wanted a health-first approach. Theres no hurry putting out guidelines, he continued. Its very complex. These are like small cities.
Every other Disney resort has reopened, including those in Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
New coronavirus cases in Florida have dropped steadily since Disney World reopened in mid-July. Florida had about 11,800 new cases a day when Disneys theme parks unlocked their gates. A month into operations, the number was about 6,400. On Friday, Florida added 2,908 cases. The Orlando area has had an even sharper decline. Disney has said Floridians have made up about 50 percent of attendance since the reopening.
The data shows that we opened responsibly, Dr. Pamela Hymel, chief medical officer for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said by phone. We didnt cause a surge. In response to Mr. Newsoms comments, Dr. Hymel said, We absolutely reject the suggestion that reopening the Disneyland Resort is incompatible with a health first approach.
