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Alaska on Friday reported one new death and 97 new cases of COVID-19, according to the Department of Health and Social Services COVID-19 dashboard.
The person who died was an Anchorage woman in her forties. Forty-three Alaskans have died with COVID-19 since the pandemic began here in March. The states death rate is among the lowest in the U.S.
Statewide as of Friday, 40 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 while four other hospital patients were awaiting test results, according to state data. Of Alaskas 153 intensive care unit beds, 83 were in use statewide.
Active cases of COVID-19 among Alaska residents increased from 3,830 on Thursday to 3,918 on Friday. Another 704 active cases were reported among nonresidents.
Of the new cases, it wasnt clear how many patients were showing symptoms of the virus when they tested positive.
Of the 89 new cases of COVID-19 involving residents, 35 were in Anchorage; 27 were in Fairbanks; five were in North Pole; one was in Delta Junction; four were in Palmer; five were in Wasilla; two were in Utqiagvik; one was in Douglas; and four were in Juneau.
Among communities smaller than 1,000 not identified to protect confidentiality, there was one in the northern Kenai Peninsula, one was in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area; one was in the Nome Census Area; one was in the combined Bristol Bay and Lake and Peninsula boroughs; and one was in the Kusilvak Census Area.
Of the eight nonresident cases, three were in Anchorage, one was in Eagle River; three were in Fairbanks and one was in an unknown part of the state.
The states testing positivity rate as of Friday was 1.82% over a seven-day rolling average.
[Because of a high volume of comments requiring moderation, we are temporarily disabling comments on many of our articles so editors can focus on the coronavirus crisis and other coverage. We invite you to write a letter to the editor or reach out directly if youd like to communicate with us about a particular article. Thanks.]
Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo/Slate. Photo by Ljupco/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
This is an entry in Viral Studies, a Slate series in which we break down recent viral articles andmost importantlytheir caveats.
The recent mass gathering in South Dakota for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally seemed like the perfect recipe for what epidemiologists call a superspreading event. Beginning Aug. 7, an estimated 460,000 attendees from all over country descended on the small town of Sturgis for a 10-day event filled with indoor and outdoor events such as concerts and drag racing.
Now a new working paper by economist Dhaval Dave and colleagues is making headlines with their estimate that the Sturgis rally led to a shocking 266,796 new cases in the U.S. over a four-week period, which would account for a staggering 19 percent of newly confirmed cases in the U.S. in that time. They estimate the economic cost of these cases at $12.2 billion, based on previous estimates of the statistical cost of treating a COVID-19 patient.
Not surprisingly, the internet lit up with we told you so! headlines and social media shaming and blaming. The huge figures immediately hit the confirmation bias button in many peoples brains. But hold up. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of these findings, and the 266,796 number itself should raise serious believability alarm bells.
Modeling infection transmission dynamics is hard, as we have seen by the less than stellar performance of many predictive COVID-19 models thus far. (Remember back in April, when the IHME model from the University of Washington predicted zero U.S. deaths in July?) Pandemic spread is difficult both to predict and to explain after the factlike trying to explain the direction and intensity of current wildfires in the West. While some underlying factors do predict spread, there is a high degree of randomness, and small disturbances (like winds) can cause huge variation across time and space. Many outcomes that social scientists typically study, like income, are more stable and not as susceptible to these butterfly effects that threaten the validity of certain research designs.
The Sturgis study essentially tries to re-create a randomized experiment by comparing the COVID-19 trends in counties that rallygoers traveled from with counties that apparently dont have as many motorcycle enthusiasts. The authors estimate the source of inflow into Sturgis during the rally based on the home location of nonresident cellphone pings. They use a difference-in-difference approach, calculating whether the change in case trends for a county that sent many people to Sturgis was larger compared with a county that sent none. They looked at how cumulative case numbers changed between June 6 and Sept. 2.
While this approach may sound sensible, it relies on strong assumptions that rarely hold in the real world. For one thing, there are many other differences between counties full of bike rally fans versus those with none, and therein lies the challenge of creating a good counterfactual for the implied experimenthow to compare trends in counties that are different on many geographic, social, and economic dimensions? The parallel trends assumption assumes that every county was on a similar trajectory and the only difference was the number of attendees sent to the Sturgis rally. When this parallel trends assumption is violated, the resulting estimates are not just off by a littlethey can be completely wrong. This type of modeling is risky, and the burden of proof for the believability of the assumptions very high.
More critically, the paper assumes the noise in COVID-19 cases from different counties averages out over time and thus comparing the trends is valid. We all probably know by now that epidemic curves are not so predictable and are heavily dependent on the luck of floating wildfire embers, so to speak. This approach may work for changes in the uptake of state benefits or other outcomes traditionally analyzed by difference-in-difference designs, but not for outcomes that are serially correlated, like wildfires or epidemics. Thus, this ideathat even if the parallel trends assumption held, differences in COVID-19 cases across counties are fully attributable to the rallyis a strong ask.
Somewhere between zero and 450,000 infections would not have been asheadline-grabbing.
Having estimated such a large number of additional infections due to the Sturgis rally from aggregate data, the authors should have wondered if such high levels of transmission were epidemiologically feasible over the short time frame. But as computational social scientist Rex Douglass details in this Twitter thread, the paper doesnt provide a model of infectious disease transmissiona pretty major oversight. Basically, the authors dont outline what transmission on this scale would have to look like to reach 266,796 infectionsfor example, X percentage of attendees arriving infected across the 10 days, Y percent transmitting the virus to Z new people, etc. Given the staggered arrivals (traffic flow data show that about 50,000 showed up per day) and incubation period (roughly five days), it seems likely that those infected at arrival could only have infected on average one or two new generations of infections during the rally itself. Even with a bleak assumption that 1 percent of attendees arrived already infectious (spread over 10 days) yet well enough to ride motorcycles to South Dakota, and all of them were superspreaders, passing their infection along to another 10 people, back-of-the-envelope math makes it hard to get in the ballpark of this number of infections that could have happened at the rally.
Of course, the study measures new cases in home counties, so perhaps thats when the transmission really explodes. Lets recall this was a motorcycle rally, so many attendees almost certainly didnt fly home as soon as possible. High numbers of people came from California, Nevada, and Florida, so we can assume the return trip home took at least a few days for those heading home directly. The lure of the open road in August after months of worldwide lockdown may have even induced many riders to take a meandering path home. In short, it is a stretch to believe that so many infected riders could have gotten home in the short time frame required to infect others, incubate, get tested, and have these infections show up in county statistics by Sept. 2, just two weeks after the conclusion of the rally. In theory, the authors could have used the cellphone ping data to incorporate this variation in return times and routes, but they dont mention doing so in the paper.
Since attendees hardly had time to attend the rally, get infected, and then bike home and infect others, the fact that rates in large sending counties are higher than those for non-sending countries strongly suggests that these differences in trends were in the works anyway due to local transmission dynamics, and not a direct result of the rally. As Ashish Jha, a physician and the dean of Brown Universitys School of Public Health, pointed out on Twitter, the raw data show no spikes in counties where the authors say the rally attendees came from, increasing the mystery of where the 266,796 cases could have taken place.
If thinking through the required transmission dynamics doesnt raise your alarm bells, consider this: The papers results show that the significant increase in transmission was only evident after Aug. 26. That makes senseit would be consistent with a lag time for infections from the beginning of the rally. Nonetheless, the authors state that their estimate of the total number of cases, 266,796, represents 19 percent of the 1.4 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States between August 2nd 2020 and September 2nd. (Italics mine.) In reality, these extra cases must have occurred in the second half of the month, meaning these estimates would account for a staggering 45 percent of U.S. cases over those two weeks. This simply doesnt seem plausible.
The 266,796 number also overstates the precision of the estimates in the paper even if the model is taken at face value. The confidence intervals for the high inflow counties seem to include zero (meaning the authors cant say with statistical confidence that there was any difference in infections across counties due to the rally). No standard errors (measures of the variability around the estimate) are provided for the main regression results, and many of the p-values for key results are not statistically significant at conventional levels. So even if one believes the design and assumptions, the results are very noisy and subject to caveats that dont merit the broadcasting of the highly specific 266,796 figure with confidence, though I imagine that somewhere between zero and 450,000 infections would not have been as headline-grabbing.
None of this means that the rally was probably harmless. Common sense would tell us that such a large event with close contact was risky and did increase transmission. The papers estimates for the rise in cases in Meade County, South Dakota, the site of the rally, reports a more plausible increase of between 177 and 195 cases, consistent with raw data.* Given the huge inflow to this specific location along with increased testing for the event, a bump was not surprising. Contact tracing reports have identified cases and deaths linked to the event, but in the range of hundreds.
More broadly, while its important for us to understand factors driving COVID-19 transmission, the methodological challenges to identifying these effects at the aggregate level are difficult to overcome. Improved contact tracing and surveys at the individual level are the best way to gain insights into transmission dynamics. (At Dear Pandemic, a COVID-19 science communication effort I run with colleagues, we unfortunately spend much of our time explaining and correcting such misleading statistics.) The authors of this study have used the same study design to estimate the effects of other mass gatherings including the BLM protests and Trumps June Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally. Each paper has given some part of the political spectrum something they might want to hear but has done very little to illuminate the actual risks of COVID-19 transmission at these events. Exaggerated headlines and cherry-picking of results for I told you so media moments can dangerously undermine the long-term integrity of the sciencesomething we can little afford right now.
Correction, Sept. 11, 2020: This article originally and erroneously questioned the papers estimates for Meade County based on a data error. The Meade County estimates are in fact in a range consistent with raw county data.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
When Covid-19 hit China in January, the Ministry of Education postponed the start of spring semester to late April. That closure separated children from their friends and their broader community network, and seems to have had an impact on their mental well-being.
Researchers from Anhui Medical University got results back from surveys for 1,241 students who were in grades 4 through 8, and in junior high. The kids lived in Chizhou, Anhui Province, an area that did not have a large number of Covid-19 cases.
Nearly 25% of the students reported depressive symptoms in May, when only about 19% did in November. Suicide attempts more than doubled -- at 6.4% in May compared to the 3% who made suicide attempts in November. There were no similar increases seen in reports of children who reported feeling an increase anxiety.
Researchers hope school leaders will use this research to prepare the necessary mental health services to help children as they return to school following the lockdowns.
Benefits of in-person school outweigh virus risks
As states grappled with how to safely reopen schools earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics led a push for students to be physically present in classrooms rather than continue in remote learning for the sake of their well-being.
""The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation," the group said.
What it looked like when schools reopened
More students and teachers tested positive for Covid-19, some schools were forced to suddenly change plans, while others opted to delay the start of the school year giving educators more time to prepare for in-person classes.
"What we do know is children have a harder time social distancing. And we can't put a whole bunch of them in a classroom with a teacher right now," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in an August briefing announcing a delay.
"Other states that have tried to open this new school year are now having to close. We don't want to start and stop. That may be more difficult on our children," he said.
Schools across the country have reported system outages, cyberattacks and other issues that prompted some districts to postpone the first day of class.
If you're experiencing a suicidal crisis, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text the Crisis Text line by texting HOME to 741741 to get help.
CNN's Nicole Chavez, Christina Maxouris and Alicia Lee contributed to this story.
Nantucket has experienced a spike in COVID-19 cases and is seeing community spread among tradespeople working in construction, landscaping, and cleaning who are sharing transportation to workplaces, officials from the town and Nantucket Cottage Hospital said Friday.
Seven new cases of the coronavirus were reported Wednesday, and another seven were reported Thursday, for a total of 77 cases in the town, according to a statement Friday from Select Board Chairwoman Dawn Hill Holdgate.
These are the highest number of cases in a short period of time that we have so far seen in Nantucket, Holdgate said. While this is not an unanticipated situation, due to the nature of the coronavirus, we can expect episodic growth in the number of cases over the next 10-14 days.
Of those 14 new cases, a dozen were among Nantucket residents, and most of those residents worked in construction, carpentry, landscaping, painting, or cleaning, according to a separate statement Friday from Roberto Santamaria, the towns health and human services director, and Gary Shaw, the president of Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
The towns Select Board and Board of Health will hold an emergency meeting at 10 a.m. Monday to consider placing restrictions on some of those trades, Holdgate said. The town will also increase visits and health inspections at construction and landscaping sites, she said.
The town is closing Tom Nevers Park from dusk to dawn and may close other town-owned recreational spaces during those hours, Holdgate said. Police will patrol those areas and ask anyone visiting during those hours to leave, she said.
Holdgate said the evidence of community spread in Nantucket shows that we have regressed in our mission to quell the spread of COVID.
Santamaria and Shaw asked that anyone contacted by a contact tracer answer their questions thoroughly and truthfully, cooperate with the case investigation, and comply with all isolation and quarantine procedures.
Contact tracing is among the strongest tools we have to prevent the spread of the virus in our population, they said.
Officials encouraged Nantucket residents to wear a face mask when in public, observe social distancing practices, and avoid large gatherings.
Lets all cheer for the Patriots on Sunday, but we ask you to do so with your immediate families rather than gathering in large groups or parties to watch the game, Santamaria and Shaw said.
Holdgate acknowledged that residents are being asked to make uncomfortable sacrifices for the sake of public health.
Right now, we need stamina and commitment. Its hard! she said. The consequences are worse. We have seen too many illegal gatherings in certain public places. The lax behavior of a few people has caused restrictions due to this current surge.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.
Tyler Amburgey, 29, is being remembered as a loving husband, father, hockey player and coach.
DALLAS Some youth hockey players and fans are mourning the loss of a beloved coach in North Texas.
Tyler Amburgey, 29, died on Aug. 29. His wife, speaking publicly about the tragedy for the first time this week, said he tested positive with COVID-19 at the time of his death.
It started out like originally like with him getting like call like normal cold symptoms, said Aimee Amburgey.
Tyler experienced advancing stages of illness over a period of three days, according to his wife. The first night was nausea, then sleeplessness and wheezing. Shortness of breath, congestion and feeling rundown followed.
Amburgey said her husband canceled his hockey practice. Some of his youth players had already been testing positive with the virus.
Body aches and migraines came. By day three, Amburgey said her husband finally got some rest.
While the couples young daughter, Riley, went out for swim lessons, Amburgey found her husband unresponsive in bed.
I ended up calling 911, she said.
A neighbor helped perform CPR. It was too late.
Amburgey said the medical examiner told her Tyler was positive for COVID-19 at the time of his death. Amburgey said, sleeping pills her husband took for rest didnt help. She said with COVID, the medicine compromised Tylers oxygen levels.
He was a great guy, and loving husband and a loving father, said Amburgey.
Tyler Amburgeys former hockey team, The Peoria Rivermen, is planning a memorial service for him Saturday, Sept. 12.
Aimee Amburgey said she knows her husband wanted so much for his family and his youth players.
"I just want him to be remembered for more than just a person that passed away from COVID, said Amburgey.
With 112 new coronavirus cases reported on campus in just three days, Brigham Young University in Provo appears to be driving a rise in cases in Utah County, which has the worst infection rates in the state.
Were really attributing this to ... a certain, a young adult population: 15- to 24-year-olds. Its really both public school being back in session as well as having university students being back [in] classes as well as being back in the community and comingling together, said Aislynn Tolman-Hill, spokeswoman for the Utah County Health Department.
Statewide, coronavirus cases spiked on Friday, with 656 new infections, the Utah Department of Health reported. But the rise may be tied to reporting delays due to Mondays Labor Day holiday and Tuesdays windstorm in northern Utah, health officials said.
A third of those newly reported cases were from Utah County. And BYU on Friday reported 258 cases since Aug. 28 among the 43,000 students and employees on campus for fall term. Thats up from the 146 cases the school reported on Wednesday, making it the most infected campus in Utah, and the campus with the fastest spread.
In Utah County, Tolman-Hill said, there is kind of a I dont know if you want to call it a counterculture or not that is kind of a Were back in school, end of summer, celebrate, live it up attitude. A Were young, well be fine kind of thing.
By contrast, there have been 182 cases reported since Aug. 15 at the University of Utahs campus of 62,000; 67 cases as of Sept. 7 on Utah Valley Universitys campus of about 23,000; and 96 during fall term at Utah State University, which enrolled about 28,000 students in 2019.
Meanwhile, Utah County on Friday posted its biggest single-day increase, with 219 new infections reported. For the past seven days, the county has averaged 155 new cases per day the most of any county in the state, including Salt Lake County, which has close to twice as many people.
Provo and Orem account for the largest share of the new cases, reporting three of every five of the countys new cases in the past three days, despite making up about a third of the countys population, according to county health data.
Health officials acknowledged that the spread in Utah County is unique. Were not seeing the same numbers in other areas of the state where there are major universities, Tolman-Hill said.
Multiple cases have been linked to two businesses that organize dance parties in Utah County, Tolman-Hill said. Utah Country Dance has been hosting Country Dance Provo twice a week. Although Tolman-Hill said health officials had seen photos of events where people werent wearing masks, the venues manager said masks had been required since Provo implemented a mask order.
Before that, they were checking guests' temperatures at the door, said manager Miguel Guzman, who said he was surprised to learn of cases tied to the dance nights. No one else has contacted us about it, he said.
Meanwhile, the organization Young/Dumb has been hosting weekly dance parties that have elicited criticism on social media. After a dance party last month, the company posted video of crowds of people dancing, nary a mask in sight, with the caption: Young/Dumb: 1 Karens: 0.
The group planned to host a Mask-Querade party Friday night in Orem, where unlike Provo there is no mask mandate. Nonetheless, the organization advised some sort of face covering.
Wear a masquerade mask or decorate a safety mask, the advertisement suggested. Traditional masquerade masks do not cover the mouth. The companys owner did not respond to The Salt Lake Tribunes requests for comment.
Tolman-Hill said she did not know the number of cases tied to the dance parties, but she said contact tracers have definitively linked multiple cases to them.
There absolutely have been multiple cases linked to those parties I would say clusters which is absolutely concerning to us, she said. We know that there are additional people out there that have been exposed.
As the number of infected patients age 15 to 24 has shot up about 50 percent since Sept. 1, parties in Utah County have prompted rebuke from BYU as well as the governor.
Brigham Young University ... is taking significant efforts of mandating mask wearing on campus, yet off campus some of the students have been conducting themselves in very close quarters with no masks and no social distancing, Gov. Gary Herbert said in a press conference this week.
BYU officials tweeted that they were "concerned w/ reports & videos circulating about off-campus activities.
Behavior this weekend could make or break our ability to remain on campus, school officials wrote, though they did not identify a case count that would trigger a return to online-only classes.
Theres not a specific threshold, but rather a variety of factors that would impact the ability to maintain an on-campus experience. This includes disease prevalence on & off campus, local hospital capacity and BYUs capacity to isolate or quarantine those living on-campus.
Although the countys new cases are concentrated around BYU, most of the communities in the county are posting case numbers that are higher, per population, than the state as a whole. At least 595,000 of the countys 636,000 residents live in communities with infection rates above the statewide average of 12.4 daily new cases per 100,000 people, according to county data for the past three days.
There are 384,000 people in Utah County communities with more than 20 new cases per 100,000 residents, and 176,000 in towns with a rate of over 30 new cases per 100,000. Sewage monitoring also has detected rising levels of the virus in Payson, Spanish Fork, Springville, Orem and Lehi.
Utah County is kind of where a lot of the anti-mask movements have been happening, so I think there might be kind of a culture of denial that this is a serious problem, said Grace Brown, a BYU freshman. She was finishing her last day of quarantine in a designated isolation dorm on campus, after she contracted the virus during her first week at school.
BYU has quarantine space for about 5% of the 5,600 students living with roommates in dorms, said university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins.
Brown said she thought she was being careful, avoiding big parties and meeting with friends only in small groups. But the virus can cross degrees of separation quickly; Brown got tested after learning that a friend of a friend had tested positive, and a woman in her hall had gone to another party where someone else was infected.
Even if it was just small social gatherings, that is most likely where I got it, Brown said.
Before going into quarantine and developing a fever and aches, Brown said she noticed that students werent 100% diligent about mask wearing.
In the dorm buildings, technically youre required to wear them in the hallways and common areas, but I dont see very many people doing that, she said. And in other social gatherings, I dont see people wearing masks or social distancing.
It is hard to move to a university as a freshman, meet people and make friends from behind a mask, Brown acknowledged especially if youre the only person wearing one. But now, she said, shell be masking up even in small groups.
Its not that difficult, its not that uncomfortable, she said.
Not necessarily a trend
Statewide, Fridays growth in cases is the largest daily net increase we have reported since late July," state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn said in a news release. We are looking closely at the numbers, and want to reiterate, as we have throughout this response, that one day of data does not necessarily indicate a trend, she said.
... Many testing locations were closed Monday for Labor Day and Tuesday due to the windstorm," Dunn also noted. "Its possible people who would have been tested Monday and Tuesday waited until later in the week to be tested, resulting in an increase in the number of positive cases identified today.
For the past seven days, Utah has averaged 403 new positive test results per day, the health department said, noting that is below the previous Fridays 409-case average.
Gov. Gary Herbert had said he wanted the state average to get below 400 new cases per day by Sept. 1, a goal Utah met in mid-August but surpassed again last week.
Utahs death toll from the coronavirus stood at 431 on Friday, with one fatality reported since Thursday a Salt Lake County man, older than 85, who was not hospitalized when he died.
Hospitalizations were up slightly on Friday, with 123 Utah patients concurrently admitted, UDOH reported. On average, 119 patients have been receiving treatment in Utah hospitals each day for the past week.
In total, 3,288 patients have been hospitalized in Utah for COVID-19, up 15 from Thursday.
There were 4,041 new test results reported on Friday, about on par with the weeklong average of 4,013 new tests per day. The rate of tests with positive results was at 9% on Friday, down slightly from Thursdays 9.1%. Dunn has said a 3% positivity rate would indicate the virus is under control, but statewide, Utahs rate of positive tests has been above 5% since May 25, according to UDOH data.
Since public schools began opening on Aug. 13, there have been 34 outbreaks in schools, affecting 156 patients, with five new outbreaks and eight new cases reported in the past day.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 201 patients infected in 45 school outbreaks, with a median age of 17. Nine of those patients have been hospitalized; none has died.
Of 56,675 Utahns who have tested positive for COVID-19, 48,021 are considered recovered that is, they have survived for at least three weeks after being diagnosed.
The aging population has been particularly at risk since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted earlier this year. Natalie Mazzullo, University of Nevada, Reno Extension healthy-aging specialist, has been helping to create a safe and engaging environment for homebound seniors in Nevada.
Mazzullo serves as an action team member for the states Nevada COVID-19 Aging Network Rapid Response Team, known as Nevada CAN. She is a member of both the social service action team and the food and medication action team. Nevada CAN is focused on maintaining the quality of life for the 454,221 homebound elders in Nevada. Keeping elders safe from exposure to the virus, while ensuring they are well-supplied, have access to medical and social services, and remain free from isolation are the top priorities.
I am honored to be part of the Nevada CAN action teams to assist Nevadas elders with social engagement, and food and medication, Mazzullo said. As a result of Nevada CAN and the efforts of so many compassionate and caring professionals and volunteers, Nevada elders have had the opportunity to become connected with much-needed services.
As part of the action teams response, Mazzullo helped to coordinate Extensions support to provide information on where elders in need could access food in Nevadas rural communities. In addition, Extension county educators helped to identify volunteers to assist with food delivery, including volunteers from Extensions 4-H Youth Development Program.
Year-round, Mazzullo and Extensions healthy-aging team assist in the successful development of action plans that promote access and appeal around nutrition and physical activity that is uniquely tailored to the needs of communities where elders live and congregate. Since April, Extensions healthy-aging team has worked to ensure that some of the most vulnerable and needy elders still have access to resources and activities to aid in their well-being, despite the ongoing pandemic. The team has:
Mazzullo also serves as the assistant director for the Sanford Center for Agings Nevada Geriatric Education Center at the University. In that capacity, she provides educational offerings for health professionals and eldercare partners. In October 2019, she was appointed by Gov. Steve Sisolak to the Governors Commission on Aging. The mission of theCommission is to facilitate and enhance the quality of life and services for allNevadaseniors in partnership with theAgingand Disability Services Division and other entities.
Mazzullo sits on various other committees, including the Aging and Disability Services Divisions Caregiver Conference Planning Committee and Three Squares Senior Hunger Program Steering Committee. She also provides direct oversight for the Nevada Healthy Aging Alliance, currently focusing on SNAP-funded nutrition; physical activity; and policy, systems and environmental initiatives.
For more information on Extension's programs to promote healthy aging, email Natalie Mazzullo.
SCHOOLS IN ORANGE COUNTIES TO MOVE TO REMOTE INSTRUCTIONCiting rising case numbers during his Friday COVID-19 briefing, Gov. Justice announced that, going forward, schools in counties designated as orange in the West Virginia Department of Educations official 5 p.m. Saturday update of theCounty Alert Mapwill stop in-person instruction and move to a full-remote learning model.
We've got to continue to work together as West Virginians because our numbers are going the wrong way, Gov. Justice said. We've got to continue to try to protect the health and the safety of all West Virginians. And, in my opinion, it is not safe, with our numbers trending the way they are, to continue to go to school if were in orange.
Athletic and extracurricular activities will be limited to conditioning only when a county is orange. No sport-specific or contact practices will be permitted. Marching band activities must be limited to outdoors only. Instruments are permitted only when students are stationary and distanced in pods. The WVSSAC will release additional guidance documents soon.
A mid-week color status change from green or yellow to orange, as reported on theDHHR Dashboard, would not immediately trigger these restrictions. Countywide restrictions under an orange designation only take effect if a county is classified as orange on the WVDEs official Saturday map update.
These restrictions will only be lifted if and when a county reaches green or yellow status in a subsequent official Saturday map update.
Mid-week color status only comes into play if a county reaches a red designation. If a county reaches red status, all in-person activities are halted immediately, regardless of the day of the week.
The change comes as a result of increases in several categories of COVID-19 numbers.Additionally, West Virginiasstatewide rate of COVID-19 transmission also known as Rt increased Friday afternoon to 1.42; the highest and worst such rate in the country.
Weve all got to step up our level of concern, Gov. Justice said. To just tell it like it is, we've got to get afraid again. Weve gotten complacent.
If we don't watch out, it'll come home to some families tomorrow, Gov. Justice continued. Those families are full of real people. They have names. Theyre West Virginians. All of us have got to take responsibility.
Many companies are working to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but one key player in Irving is focusing on another part of the public health response: how to deliver those hundreds of millions of doses as soon as theyre available.
McKesson Corp., which relocated its corporate headquarters from San Francisco last year, recently was named a central distributor for the vaccines and related supplies.
The company will be reimbursed $178 million from the government to build new distribution centers and beef up existing distribution systems. When it delivers the vaccine to providers aiming to inoculate most Americans, McKesson could bring in another $238 million, one analyst conservatively projected.
The numbers are relatively small for a company whose revenue topped $231 billion in fiscal 2020 more than AT&T and Exxon Mobil over the past year. Still, the stakes are enormous because of the personal and economic destruction of the coronavirus, along with the politics over the public health crisis.
Yet one analyst isnt worried about the risk for McKesson. The nations largest pharmaceutical distributor delivers about 1 in 3 prescription drugs in North America, and its been down this road before.
In 2009 and 2010, it distributed over 126 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine. That effort was considered a success despite some problems with manufacturers creating enough vaccines in the early months.
This is what McKesson does, and this is what theyve been doing forever, said Jonathan Palmer, senior health care analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. A lot of work is being done behind the scenes to build the capacity to make this happen. Its just a question of when and how.
McKesson has not said much about its plans except to make clear its not driving the train.
The government will direct all of the administration of the vaccine, Britt Vitalone, McKessons chief financial officer, said during an investor call on Wednesday. They will also direct the vaccines that will be distributed in the program, and it will be the governments decision if they choose to bring other distributors into the process.
Vitalone was asked about the differences with the COVID-19 effort, including the expected volume and pricing of the vaccines. He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was taking a similar approach.
But its still fairly early in the process, Vitalone said. There are still some things that are unknown. And if you draw in a correlation, I would just say the operational approach is similar, but thats all that we can really disclose at this time.
At least eight vaccines are expected to enter late-stage development this year, and an effort to speed up the process has created controversy. President Donald Trump has suggested that a vaccine could arrive by Election Day, but CEOs for nine major drug companies pushed back this week.
They said they would not seek regulatory approval before the safety and efficacy of the vaccines were established. It was an extraordinary statement intended to bolster public confidence amid Trumps rush to a breakthrough.
The coronavirus has caused over 190,000 deaths in the United States, and the economic damage has been severe and widespread. Every aspect of the vaccine response will be in the spotlight, including distribution.
Its a daunting prospect to vaccinate the entire country with a two-dose vaccine, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University. "No matter how well we do with preparedness, unforeseen obstacles are going to emerge. Using companies that are already familiar with the supply chain, like McKesson, is one way to minimize the difficulties.
The partnership with McKesson is a very favorable development, said Adalja, who focuses on infectious disease and pandemics.
McKesson and two chief rivals, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health, account for about 90% of the market. Acquisitions have been a big part of McKessons growth strategy, and the company spent almost $16 billion on deals over the past decade.
The giant distributors' scale allows them to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers, which is important in a mature business with low margins. McKessons adjusted operating margins have averaged 1.7% for the last 10 years, Morningstar analyst Soo Romanoff wrote in an August report. Yet he raised his valuation on the stock because distributors are faring better than others in health care.
Providers have been pressed to rely on their supply chain partners to navigate the operating challenges during the pandemic, Romanoff wrote.
McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health are often in the news because of opioid-related lawsuits. In its latest annual report, McKesson said it was a defendant in over 3,000 legal proceedings related to opioids. In the past two years, it spent $383 million on opioid-related expenses, and the big payout is still to come.
Almost a year ago, state attorneys general outlined a framework for a global settlement. It called for $18 billion to be paid over 18 years by the three major distributors. McKessons share would be $6.9 billion, according to its annual report.
In Wednesdays call, when Vitalone was asked for an update, he said he couldnt provide new information: I think the focus has really been on the pandemic, Vitalone said.
Some vaccines require cold storage, which complicates distribution. And its not clear which groups will get treatment first and which distribution points will be used.
Ultimately, several hundred million doses are expected to be shipped in the U.S., and tracking and registering the activity will be crucial.
We havent seen anything like this in modern history, and everybodys going to look at the U.S. distribution system for lessons, said Adalja of Johns Hopkins. The stakes are very high to get this right.
AstraZeneca halts a vaccine trial to investigate a participants illness.
The pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca halted global trials of its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday because of a serious and unexpected adverse reaction in a participant, the company said.
The trials halt, which was first reported by Stat News, will allow the British-Swedish company to conduct a safety review. How long the hold will last is unclear.
In a statement, the company described the halt as a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.
In large trials like the ones AstraZeneca is overseeing, the company said, participants do sometimes become sick by chance, but such illnesses must be independently reviewed to check this carefully.
The company said it was working to expedite the review of the single event to minimize any potential impact on the trial timeline and that it was committed to the safety of our participants and the highest standards of conduct in our trials.
A person familiar with the situation, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the participant had been enrolled in a Phase 2/3 trial based in the United Kingdom. The individual also said that a volunteer in the U.K. trial had been found to have transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. However, the timing of this diagnosis, and whether it was directly linked to AstraZenecas vaccine, is unclear.
AstraZenecas vaccine, known as AZD1222, relies on a chimpanzee adenovirus that has been modified to carry coronavirus genes and deliver them into human cells. Although the adenovirus is generally thought to be harmless, the coronavirus components of the vaccine are intended to incite a protective immune response that would be roused again should the actual coronavirus try to infect a vaccinated individual.
Adenoviruses, however, can sometimes trigger their own immune responses, which could harm the patient without generating the intended form of protection.
AstraZenecas vaccine is currently in Phase 2/3 trials in England and India, and in Phase 3 trials in Brazil, South Africa and more than 60 sites in the United States. The company intended for its U.S. enrollment to reach 30,000.
AstraZeneca is one of three companies whose vaccines are in late-stage clinical trials in the United States.
Britain, seeing a sudden spike in new cases, will ban most gatherings of more than six people beginning next week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce on Wednesday.
We need to act now to stop the virus spreading. So we are simplifying and strengthening the rules on social contact making them easier to understand and for the police to enforce, Mr. Johnson said in a statement on Tuesday.
The new measure, which will be subject to fines beginning at 100 pounds, will apply to both indoor and outdoor gatherings, including parks. It is not expected to apply to workplaces, weddings, funerals or team sports.
A surge in cases this week and confusion over the current rules prompted the new measure, which is expected to take effect on Monday. About 3,000 new cases were reported on both Sunday and Monday of this week, the highest daily figures since May. About 2,500 more new cases were reported on Tuesday.
The current rules allow up to 30 people for certain types of gatherings, sowing confusion and making it difficult for officials to enforce.
In an interview with Sky News on Wednesday morning, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that the new rules would not be implemented until Monday because people needed time to read them.
Every single person in the country needs to know what they are so we can together keep a grip on the virus, he said.
Mr. Hancok was asked by Sky News whether the decision by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to halt global trials of its coronavirus vaccine would set back the vaccine development process.
Not necessarily, he said. It depends on what they find when they do the investigation.
There have been 41,586 deaths and at least 352,500 confirmed cases in the United Kingdom as of Wednesday morning, according to government data.
In other developments around the world:
On the Greek island of Lesbos, a fire forced thousands of migrants to flee a camp where they had been living under a coronavirus lockdown, The Associated Press reported early Wednesday, citing the local authorities. The restrictions were imposed last week on the Moria camp after a 40-year-old asylum seeker tested positive for the virus.
Chinas biggest air show, originally planned for November in the southern city of Zhuhai, has been canceled because of the pandemic, its organizer said on Wednesday. The cancellation of the biennial China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition follows that of Britains Farnborough Airshow in July and comes amid a steep downturn in the industry.
Indias Health Ministry said on Tuesday that it planned to open classrooms for high school students on a voluntary basis, and only with their parents approval, starting from Sept. 21. The vast majority of schoolchildren will continue to study online. The Taj Mahal will also open for tourism on Sept. 21, with access restricted to 5,000 people per day. India has more than 4.3 million cases overall and reported nearly 90,000 new infections on Tuesday.
Ontario, Canadas most populous province, said on Tuesday that it would take a four-week pause before it considers loosening restrictions or allowing further economic reopening. Taking a pause in further reopening will help avoid broad-scale closures and shutdowns, said Christine Elliott, Ontarios health minister. Schools across the province began reopening on Tuesday. Ms. Elliott acknowledged that schools would most likely become vectors for the virus, and said that the provinces top priority was protecting them from transmission in the community. Ontario has reported more than 43,000 coronavirus cases, according to a Times database, including 852 in the past week.
The director of the Tour de France tested positive and will quarantine for a week, the race reported on Tuesday. The director, Christian Prudhomme, had not been in direct contact with any riders, the race said, and no riders tested positive. The race started as usual on Tuesday morning. Four support staff members also tested positive. The race had said that teams would be ejected from the Tour if two members tested positive, but each of the four were from different teams. European news media reported that Mr. Prudhomme was asymptomatic. The Tour is entering its second week of three racing around France. Despite virus concerns, large crowds have turned up to watch.
Amid a surge in new cases, Turkey is requiring masks to be worn in all public places, including offices, factories and open-air spaces such as parks and beaches. The country is also reinstating limits on public transportation after images of jam-packed minibuses began circulating on social media and fights over masks broke out between drivers and passengers.
The United Nations refugee agency announced the first confirmed cases of the virus among Syrians in refugee camps in Jordan. UNHCR Jordan said that two Syrians in the Azraq camp had tested positive and were transferred to an isolation site near the Dead Sea, and that their contacts were being tested and quarantined. The camp is home to more than 36,000 people, more than 60 percent of whom are children. There are more than 650,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, with most living in cities, not inside camps.
Despite a steady decline in daily cases and deaths, Egypt surpassed the 100,000 mark for total known virus cases on Tuesday. The Arab worlds most populous country, with over 100 million people, Egypt endured a partial lockdown between March and June that included a nighttime curfew; the closure of airports, restaurants and cafes; and the suspension of prayers at all places of worship. But life on the streets has been returning to normal, with most of those restrictions lifted.
Nine drugmakers pledge to thoroughly vet any coronavirus vaccine.
Nine drug companies issued a joint pledge on Tuesday that they would stand with science and not put forward a vaccine until it had been thoroughly vetted for safety and efficacy.
The companies did not rule out seeking an emergency authorization of their vaccines, but promised that any potential coronavirus vaccine would be decided based on large, high quality clinical trials and that the companies would follow guidance from regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.
We believe this pledge will help ensure public confidence in the rigorous scientific and regulatory process by which Covid-19 vaccines are evaluated and may ultimately be approved, the companies said.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed that a vaccine could be available before Election Day, Nov. 3, heightening fears that his administration is politicizing the race by scientists to develop a vaccine and potentially undermining public trust in any vaccine approved.
Well have the vaccine soon, maybe before a special date, the president said on Monday. You know what date Im talking about.
Three of the companies that signed the pledge are testing their candidate vaccines in late-stage clinical trials in the United States: Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. But only Pfizer has said that it could apply to the F.D.A. for emergency approval as early as October, while the other two have said they hope to have a vaccine by the end of the year.
Late last week, Moncef Slaoui, the top scientist on Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to quickly bring a vaccine to market, warned in an interview with National Public Radio that the chance of successful vaccine results by October was very, very low.
In the nine companies statement on Tuesday, they did not mention Mr. Trump, saying only that they have a united commitment to uphold the integrity of the scientific process.
The other six companies that signed the pledge were BioNTech, which is a development partner in Pfizers vaccine; GlaxoSmithKline; Johnson & Johnson; Merck; Novavax; and Sanofi. Plans for the pledge were first made public on Friday.
For millions of American schoolchildren, particularly in the Northeast, the Tuesday after Labor Day traditionally signals the end of summer vacation and a return to their classrooms. But this year, instead of boarding buses and lugging backpacks, most of those students are opening their laptops at home as schools commence the fall term virtually amid the pandemic.
Classes started Tuesday in some of the nations largest districts, including Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Baltimore, along with many suburbs of Washington, D.C. But almost all began the year remotely, with some still hoping to hold classes in-person several weeks from now.
In New York City, the nations largest district, teachers and staff members returned to schools on Tuesday, but the citys 1.1 million students wont arrive until Sept. 21 10 days later than initially planned. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the shift a week ago after many educators said classrooms would not be ready to reopen this week.
In other parts of the country, including several states in the South and Midwest, schools have been open for more than a month now, resulting in a series of student quarantines and temporary shutdowns in some districts. Others seem to have reopened without major outbreaks although reporting is uneven, making cases difficult to track.
While some educators spent the summer break seeking improved online instruction, concerns have grown over the academic impact of the pandemic, which has widened racial and economic achievement gaps. In Texas, more than 100,000 children never participated in remote learning assignments last spring, according to an analysis of state data by The Dallas Morning News, and 19,000 students dropped out of contact with teachers entirely.
Several large districts in Texas that opened remotely on Tuesday have said they plan to shift to some form of in-person instruction in the coming months, if case numbers allow.
For some districts, technical glitches are also hampering instruction. The Virginia Beach school districts first day got off to a rocky start on Tuesday as an internet outage left students and parents unable to access online classes. This outage is affecting schools up and down the East Coast, the district announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday morning.
Some JPMorgan Chase employees and customers misused federal virus aid, a memo shows.
Some JPMorgan Chase employees and customers misused federal coronavirus aid money, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.
The memo, which was sent by the banks operating committee on Tuesday, said that officials had found instances of customers misusing Paycheck Protection Program loans, unemployment benefits and other government programs.
The committee, a group of senior leaders that includes its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, as well as its chief risk officer and its general counsel, did not describe any specific misconduct by employees, but it said that, in general, some of the activities officials had identified could be illegal.
We are doing all we can to identify those instances, and cooperate with law enforcement where appropriate, they wrote.
Banks played a central role in distributing much of the $2.2 trillion in aid created by the federal government under the CARES Act to help Americans deal with the economic effects of the coronavirus. They were in charge of vetting businesses seeking aid money, and they also had a hand in distributing unemployment benefits that included an extra $600 a week in federal funds.
There was never a hope of keeping fraudsters away from the money entirely, and many lenders are scrutinizing customers activities. Some determined criminals created fake businesses to take advantage of the forgivable loans offered by the Paycheck Protection Program, while others got funds using stolen identities. JPMorgan, the countrys largest bank, handed out more than $29 billion in P.P.P. loans, the most by any lender.
It is not clear how widespread the misconduct among JPMorgans employees and customers had been or how it compared with other banks.
News of the memo was reported earlier by Bloomberg.
Senate Republicans plan to move forward with a scaled-back stimulus package.
As senators returned to Washington on Tuesday, their leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, announced that the Senate would vote to advance a scaled-back stimulus plan, which is expected to reinstate lapsed federal unemployment benefits at $300 per week half their previous level and allocate $105 billion for schools and funds for testing and the Postal Service, according to Republican aides familiar with the discussions.
The plan is an effort to intensify pressure on Democratic leaders, who want to fully restore the $600 unemployment benefits and have refused to consider any measure below $2.2 trillion.
It does not contain every idea our party likes, Mr. McConnell said in a statement. I am confident Democrats will feel the same. Yet Republicans believe the many serious differences between our two parties should not stand in the way of agreeing where we can agree and making law that helps our nation.
He added, I will make sure every Senate Democrat who has said theyd like to reach an agreement gets the opportunity to walk the walk.
The Republicans bill would carry a price tag of $500 billion to $700 billion, far less than the $3.4 trillion measure Democrats passed in the House and smaller than the $1 trillion measure Senate Republicans introduced in July. A procedural vote advancing the legislation could come as early as this week, Mr. McConnell said. Democrats are likely to block it.
In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, rejected the proposal, declaring it laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support.
This emaciated bill is only intended to help vulnerable Republican senators by giving them a check the box vote to maintain the appearance that theyre not held hostage by their extreme right-wing that doesnt want to spend a nickel to help people, the two Democrats said.
Caught maskless in Indonesia? You may have to play dead.
Some offenders caught without a mask were required to lie down in a coffin. Others were ordered to sit in the back of a hearse.
As Indonesias coronavirus caseload surges past 200,000, some officials are finding creative ways to drive home the message that wearing a mask is necessary to prevent new infections.
In East Jakarta, the authorities punished several people with time in a coffin.
The coffin is a symbol to remind people not to underestimate the coronavirus, said Budhy Novian, head of East Jakartas public order agency. Its our effort to convey the message to the people: the Covid-19 number is high and it causes death.
But officials halted the practice after critics pointed out that onlookers were violating social distancing rules by crowding around to gawk and take photos.
Indonesia, the worlds fourth most populous country, passed 200,000 reported cases on Tuesday. New cases have been averaging more than 3,000 a day for two weeks, according to a New York Times database, and the death toll of 8,230 is the highest in East Asia.
Indonesia has one of the lowest rates of testing in the world, and its positivity rate is nearly 14 percent, slightly higher than Swedens and well above the 5 percent that the World Health Organization has given as a rough benchmark for relaxing social distancing measures. (A rising positivity rate can point to an uncontrolled outbreak; it can also indicate that not enough testing is occurring.)
Some independent experts suspect that Indonesias actual number of cases is many times higher than 200,000.
President Joko Widodo who first admitted withholding information about the virus to prevent panic, and later said the public must learn to live with it now says that protecting public health is the nations highest priority.
The key to our economy, for the economy to be good, is good health, he said this week. This means that our focus is still, number one, on health.
In Jakarta, the capital, officials erected a coffin-themed monument last week to highlight the rising death toll and remind people to follow coronavirus protocols.
Flouting the requirement to wear a mask in public in Jakarta is punishable by a fine of up to $67 for repeat offenders, a substantial sum for many residents.
In a South Jakarta neighborhood, local authorities recently drove a pickup truck through the streets carrying a coffin, flanked by people dressed as medical personnel. An officer called out over a loudspeaker that anyone caught without a mask would be required to spend five minutes inside.
In East Java Provinces Probolinggo Regency, an area hit hard by the virus, the authorities offered violators a choice of punishments, including sitting in a hearse next to a coffin, doing push-ups or cleaning streets, said Ugas Irwanto, the security coordinator for the regencys Covid-19 task force.
So far, he said, about 75 people had been caught and punished. Some were too scared to sit in the hearse, he said, and chose to pick up a broom instead.
Trump returns to a familiar theme: denouncing virus restrictions.
As the presidential campaign entered the post-Labor Day sprint to the finish line, President Trump returned to a familiar theme this week: minimizing the threat posed by the virus, sometimes in ways that contradict the advice of federal health authorities.
Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to insist that New York City must stop the Shutdown now and then to claim that virus restrictions in other states were only being done to hurt the economy prior to the most important election, perhaps, in our history.
A day earlier he criticized a reporter for wearing a mask at a White House news conference, despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that everyone should wear a mask in public settings and when around people who dont live in your household.
And at an outdoor gathering on Tuesday in North Carolina with a large crowd, where many of his supporters did not wear masks, he accused Joseph R. Biden Jr., again, of undermining scientists with anti-vaccine rhetoric because he has raised questions about whether Mr. Trump was rushing a vaccine out to help his political chances in November.
It was part of a familiar pattern for Mr. Trump, who back in March began pushing for states to reopen by Easter, on April 12. (More than 160,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the United States since Easter, according to a New York Times database.) In mid-April Mr. Trump sided with protesters who were chafing at virus restrictions, calling to LIBERATE several states including Minnesota and Virginia, which both saw cases rise in subsequent weeks. And in June he held an in-person campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., which local health officials said likely contributed to more cases there.
The outbreak in the United States is one of the worst in the world: it has the most reported total cases, more 6.3 million, and the most reported deaths, more than 189,000, according to a New York Times database. And it has lagged other wealthy nations when it has come to taming the virus.
When many parts of the country were reeling from the virus in the spring, West Virginia was enviably quiet. It was the last of the 50 states to have a confirmed case, and its daily tallies of new cases remained low, topping 100 only once before July. But as summer comes to an end, the states fortunes have changed significantly for the worse.
Cases started climbing in July and, after a brief dip in late August, have been shooting upward since. The state announced more cases in the seven-day period ending Monday than in any other week of the pandemic.
And on one important front, Gov. Jim Justice warned at a news briefing on Tuesday, West Virginia is now worse off than any other state in the country: the number of new infections that researchers estimate are arising from each single case, a measure of spread called Rt.
We have told you a million times, were the oldest state, the most vulnerable state, the state with the most illnesses, the state with the most breathing problems, Mr. Justice said, apparently referring to research that shows West Virginias population is at particularly high risk of serious illness. We have also told you to wear your mask. And there are still some who are not wearing their mask.
After reopening for in-person instruction last month, West Virginia University announced on Monday that nearly all classes at its Morgantown campus would move online for the next two and a half weeks, because the number of confirmed cases on campus has spiked upward. The university has suspended 29 students after reports surfaced of large fraternity parties held over the holiday weekend in violation of quarantine orders.
The surrounding county has one of the worst outbreaks in the state, and is one of nine counties where elementary and secondary schools are beginning this year with entirely remote learning.
Dr. Clay Marsh, the governors coronavirus czar and the vice president for health sciences at W.V.U., said the surge was almost inevitable. Covid found its way to West Virginia, just like it found its way to every place in the world, he said in an interview.
The state has been aggressive in many ways, he said, closing its schools before New York State did, ordering universal testing at nursing homes in May and imposing a statewide mask mandate in early July.
But the virus chiseled away nonetheless: showing up in nursing homes, churches and prisons; traveling in with vacationers; and spreading quickly at newly reopened bars and restaurants.
Dr. Marsh said he was especially concerned about the foothold the virus appears to have gained in some coal-mining counties in the south of the state, where health care resources are fewer and conditions like black lung are prevalent. The sources of outbreaks in these smaller communities are less clear than in college towns, making them harder to combat.
We have done well, but we are seeing the vagaries of Covid-19, Dr. Marsh said. I dont think anybody escapes it.
Elsewhere in the U.S.:
As part of a move by New York City to promote compliance with the states 14-day quarantine requirement for many travelers, the citys sheriff, Joseph Fucito, said Tuesday that in late August his office began stopping buses before they arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Officials are boarding the buses and asking passengers to fill out the states required travel form with their contact information and quarantine plans. Under consideration was an expansion of the operation to buses that enter the city through places other than the Port Authority Bus Terminal, he said.
