In peak allergy season, sneezing and runny noses are widespread across the U.S. Fortunately, they're not common symptoms of COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes. Wochit
York County had 37 new cases of COVID-19 as of noon Friday, pushing the total to 3,269 since the outbreak began, the state Health Department reported.
There was one new death reported in the county, pushing the death toll to 118.
Statewide, there were 835 additional cases of COVID-19, increasing the total to 131,991. There were 20 new deaths in Pennsylvania and the toll now sits at 7,655. Of that, 5,175 have occurred in nursing homes or personal care facilities.
More: Northeastern confirms intermediate school staffer has COVID-19
More: South Western confirms COVID-19 case at high school
More: After first COVID-19 cases, school officials say opening was the right move
This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. (NIAID/TNS)(Photo: NIAID, TNS)
There have been 1,488,835 patients in the state who have tested negative for COVID-19, 45,835 of whom reside in York County.
Nearly 81% of all individuals who have tested positive have recovered, health officials said.
Most of the patients hospitalized are age 65 or older, and most of the deaths have occurred in patients 65 or older.
In nursing and personal care homes, there are 20,937 resident cases of COVID-19, and 4,458 cases among employees, for a total of 25,395. Approximately 9,526 of the total cases are in health care workers.
Ron Musselman can be reached at rmusselman@yorkdispatch.com or via Twitter at @ronmusselman8.
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As our state deals with the spread of covid-19 in the midst of a global outbreak, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will publish five things you need to know each week. Well be publishing these round-ups in English, Spanish and Marshallese. You can read our full coverage at nwaonline.com/coronavirus/. Coronavirus coverage pertaining to crucial public health information will be available for all readers.
Arkansas has confirmed 58,745 total cases of covid-19 since the pandemic began, according to data posted Aug. 28. State health officials also have reported 739 total deaths and 52,665 recoveries.
Despite a change in federal recommendations for testing, Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Aug. 26 encouraged Arkansans to get tested if they have been exposed to the virus, even if they dont have symptoms.
After school started for most districts Aug. 24, several reported they had to quarantine staff after exposure to the virus. Hutchinson announced Aug. 26 that the state is sending out 70,000 face shields to schools across the state one for every school employee.
The state on Aug. 22 reported a record number of deaths at 22. In recent days, officials have reported fewer new cases and reduced numbers of tests.
State officials said Aug. 21 that they had completed testing within Arkansas prison system. On Aug. 26, they announced that there were zero positive cases at the Cummins and Ouachita River Correctional units, where there had previously been significant outbreaks.
SPANISH: https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/aug/28/cinco-hechos-importantes-sobre/
Marshallese: https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/aug/28/lalem-men-ko-kwoj-aikuj-jela-kon-covid/
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., on August 28, 2020, there have been 419,401 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 9,824 total cases and 202 deaths.
DHHRhas confirmed the deaths of a 93-year old female fromLogan County, an 82-year old female from Logan County, and a 77-year old malefrom Cabell County. We mourn with all families suffering theloss of loved ones during this horrible pandemic, said Bill J. Crouch, DHHRCabinet Secretary.
CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour(33), Berkeley (788), Boone (134), Braxton (9), Brooke (86), Cabell (509),Calhoun (9), Clay (20), Doddridge (6), Fayette (235), Gilmer (18), Grant (140),Greenbrier (103), Hampshire (91), Hancock (118), Hardy (71), Harrison (262),Jackson (200), Jefferson (347), Kanawha (1,338), Lewis (32), Lincoln (112),Logan (471), Marion (215), Marshall (133), Mason (102), McDowell (71), Mercer(290), Mineral (144), Mingo (229), Monongalia (1,083), Monroe (95), Morgan(37), Nicholas (47), Ohio (289), Pendleton (44), Pleasants (14), Pocahontas(42), Preston (138), Putnam (265), Raleigh (340), Randolph (221), Ritchie (5),Roane (26), Summers (19), Taylor (104), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (43),Wayne (242), Webster (7), Wetzel (45), Wirt (7), Wood (305), Wyoming (64).
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of WirtCounty in this report.
Pleasevisit the dashboard located at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
The US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to another antigen test this week, bringing the total to four.
Compared to the most commonly used type of coronavirus test in the country -- molecular diagnostic tests, also called PCR tests -- antigen tests don't need complicated chemicals, viral transport media or RNA extraction kits. They don't necessarily require appointments at specialized labs, highly trained technicians, or certain machines. And they can provide an answer in minutes, rather than hours or days.
Problems with any one of these critical PCR test components have led to bottlenecks for the entire process since the start of the pandemic, frustrating patients, doctors and public health experts alike.
Antigen tests work a little differently. "The PCR molecular tests actually test for the virus' genetic material and the antigen test is testing for one of the viral proteins, so a piece of the virus," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, managing director for pandemic response, preparedness and prevention at the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dr. Robert Murphy, a professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University and the executive director of the Institute for Global Health, is a fan.
"The antigen tests are not PCR and can never be as sensitive as one of those, however, they are much faster -- approximately 15 minutes -- and don't require the PCR supply-chain of reagents which is also problematic. The cost is lower because the test is much more simple," he explained.
And unlike the first three antigen tests approved, the newest antigen test to join their growing ranks, BinaxNOW, is "the first COVID-19 diagnostic test that a health care provider can perform without an analyzer, meaning that test results can be read directly from the testing card," according to the FDA.
Abbott, the manufacturer of the test, said in a news release the new test returns a result in 10 minutes. It's about the size of a credit card and will cost around $5. The company said it's planning to ship tens of millions of tests in September, ramping to 50 million tests a month at the beginning of October.
'A disruptive innovation'
When antigen tests finally arrive in great enough numbers on US shores -- which should happen within the next three months, according to the experts -- it could be a turning point in the pandemic for the country, a step on the road back to normalcy.
"Before people go back to work, before they go back to school, before they go to an event, they're going to be able to test themselves," said Murphy. "The tests are going to be cheap. You could do it every day... And it's going to be a game changer."
"We estimate that we need about 5 million tests a week for the continuing lab-based diagnostic [test] and about 25 million a week for asymptomatic surveillance testing. And so it's the antigen test, because they are a low cost, fast, and some of the recent ones highly accurate and convenient. So that combination really is what we need to get the scale we need, and the turnaround," he said.
A question of accuracy
While the antigen tests are not as accurate as the PCR tests, they are getting much better. "There are four on the market as of today," said Murphy, noting that they range in sensitivity -- their ability to identify true positive cases -- between 84% and almost 98% of the time, with three of the four hovering around a respectable 97%.
But to some, giving quick results more than makes up for any shortfall in sensitivity.
"If you wait a week [for your result], you almost might as well not have bothered to do it, because you've infected all these people. It kind of defeats the whole purpose of having the test done. Whereas if you could pick up 80% of the people in 15 minutes, and just keep testing and testing, that will have a bigger public health effect than some really super test that takes one or two weeks to get the results back," said Murphy.
Said Quick, "The first thing you want to do in any pandemic is to find the sick. The other thing you want to do is to keep the rest of the health system open. And when you don't have a fast test to separate who's got the virus and who doesn't, that's when you actually get transmission in health facilities."
He said he's "a little bit dumbfounded" that it has taken the country this long to get these rapid tests, which are in widespread use in countries like South Korea and India. "These recent tests have been game changers. And so we're seeing the power and the potential of innovation," he said, adding that part of pandemic preparation is having these tools ready "to go on the marching path."
Other experts aren't convinced the tradeoff between accuracy and speed is worth it.
"I'm very concerned about the hype over the last 24 hours about a new test from Abbott. It's come out that this particular test is cheap, it's quick and it's effective. Let me just be really clear about this: I would not want to use this test on someone with clinical disease," Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said on CNN Friday.
Osterholm compares it to the rapid flu test, which "achieves about 50 to 70% positivity among those with influenza" and which he doesn't recommend using. "I see no reason why this is going to be different. So, this new heralded testing is a little bit smoke and mirrors," he said. He also notes that only 102 people were sampled in the material Abbot submitted to the FDA to get the EUA.
Osterholm said he's concerned that the country will also see "a big drop in the number of positives" if the test only picks up 50-70% of cases, creating a false rate of infection. "So even that is a challenge this week in how it is being touted in the public," he said.
Ramping up testing
And just over a week ago, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced it was invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) -- a Cold war-era law that gives the president the emergency authority to direct private companies to prioritize orders from the federal government -- to get fast coronavirus tests from two other suppliers, Becton Dickinson and Quidel, to roughly 14,000 certified nursing home in the US.
"It's about ramping up all the tests... And that's just the first seven of dozens. And so, we expect the testing capacity to increase radically by the end of the year... It's kind of like Operation Warp Speed with the vaccines. It's going like gangbusters," he said.
'Don't use the test to get complacent'
And testing has been trending down a bit. The rolling daily average actually dropped to 611,382 on August 23 from its peak of approximately 822,000 tests on July 29, according to the COVID Tracking project.
The change to the CDC guidelines was quickly denounced by public health experts, who say more, not less, testing is needed.
"As some of you know, the CDC posted on its website recommendations on quarantine, and on testing, that are frankly not scientifically supportable, and this was done apparently at the behest of people in Washington," former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said during a Thursday news briefing.
He called the changes "dangerous."
Quick agreed that surveillance testing is of utmost importance, and antigen testing as at the forefront of that effort. "It's absolutely vital because what it'll do is let us identify those who are carrying the virus -- about 20% are asymptomatic, 30, 40, 50 even in some cases -- so we can get them out of circulation, we can trace their contacts," he said.
Yet despite Quick's enthusiasm about antigen testing, he has one big caveat: "What's really important is that people don't use the test to get complacent, because the tests aren't going to do anything to change the virus," he said. "And so the personal protective habits need to keep up, in terms of masks and handwashing and distancing and avoiding crowded indoor places."
In other words, we may still have miles to go before we reach the land of normalcy.
By: Explained Desk | Pune | Published: August 25, 2020 7:51:02 amResidents wearing masks to curb the spread of the coronavirus walk on a Beijing street on Monday, August 24. (AP Photo: Ng Han Guan)
Coronavirus vaccine tracker: While Russia is facing criticism for approving a novel Coronavirus vaccine without completing all the mandatory tests, it has now emerged that China has already begun injecting its people with a vaccine which is still under development. The vaccine in question, being developed by state-owned Sinopharm, is currently undergoing phase-3 trials in the United Arab Emirates. But senior Chinese health official revealed on state television that it was already being administered to people since July 22 under emergency use authorisation.
A report in The Washington Post said the head of Chinas Coronavirus vaccine development programme, Zheng Zongwei had acknowledged on state television that medical workers and some government workers were being given this vaccine since July 22, and that it was likely to be given to many more people in the coming months.
In order to prevent the disease spread in the fall and winter, we are considering a moderate expansion in the programme The purpose would be to first build and immunity barrier among special groups in the population, Zheng is reported to have said.
This vaccine is different from the one that has been approved for use only on the soldiers of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army. That vaccine, developed b CanSino Biologics in collaboration with Academy of Military Medical Sciences, was approved for limited use in the last week of June. There is no information on the number of people who have already been injected with that vaccine.
Sinopharm vaccine, therefore, is the first vaccine to be authorised for use on general public, though only on special groups right now.
AstraZeneca says no talks with US government for emergency use authorisation of its vaccine ahead of Presidential election
Pharma major AstraZeneca has said it had not held any talks with the United States government on emergency use authorisation for its novel Coronavirus vaccine before the Presidential elections on November 3.
A report in the Financial Times on Sunday had claimed that the Donald Trump administration had decided to grant emergency use authorisation to the AstraZeneca vaccine, being developed in collaboration with the Oxford University, ahead of the elections. Trump is seeking a re-election.
It would be premature to speculate on that possibility, the pharmaceutical company said in a statement, according to a news report in The Politico.
On Saturday, Trump had accused the deep state within the Food and Drug Administration, the drug regulator in the United States, for deliberately delaying the approval to a novel Coronavirus vaccine to sabotage his re-election chances. In the past, he has suggested that it was possible that a vaccine would become a reality before the elections.
Hunt for Coronavirus vaccine: The story so far
(As on August 20; source: WHO Coronavirus vaccine landscape of August 20, 2020)
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On Feb. 26, 175 executives at the biotech company Biogen gathered at a Boston hotel for the first night of a conference. At the time, the coronavirus seemed a faraway problem, limited mostly to China.
But the virus was right there at the conference, spreading from person to person. A new study suggests that the meeting turned into a superspreading event, seeding infections that would affect tens of thousands of people across the United States and in countries as far as Singapore and Australia.
The study, which the authors posted online on Tuesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal, gives an unprecedented look at how far the coronavirus can spread given the right opportunities.
Its a really valuable study, said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a physician and mathematical modeling expert who studies infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and was not involved in the research.
Dr. Schiffer said that the new genetic evidence fit well with what epidemiologists and disease modelers have been learning about the coronavirus. The Biogen conference, he said, was just one of many similar events that amplified and spread the virus in its early months. I dont think its a fluke at all, he said.
The results came out of a project that began in early March at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T., a research center specializing in large-scale genome sequencing. As a wave of Covid-19 patients crashed into Massachusetts General Hospital, the Broad researchers analyzed the genetic material of the viruses infecting the patients cells. The scientists also looked at samples from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which ran tests around Boston at homeless shelters and nursing homes. All told, the scientists analyzed the viral genomes of 772 people with Covid-19 between January and May.
The researchers then compared all of these genomes to trace where each virus came from. When a virus replicates, its descendants inherit its genetic material. If a random mutation pops up in one of its genes, it will also get passed down to later descendants. The vast majority of such mutations dont change how the virus behaves. But researchers can use them to track the spread of an epidemic.
Its kind of like a fingerprint we can use to follow viruses around, said Bronwyn MacInnis, a genomic epidemiologist at the Broad Institute.
The first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Boston turned up on Jan. 29. The patient had traveled from Wuhan, China, and his virus carried distinctive mutations found in Wuhan. But Dr. MacInnis and her colleagues didnt find any other viruses in Boston from later months with the same genetic fingerprint. Its likely that the patients isolation prevented the virus from spreading.
But as February rolled on, the researchers determined, at least 80 other people arrived in Boston with the virus. Undiagnosed, they spread it to others.
Most of the viral lineages in Boston have a genetic fingerprint linking them to earlier cases in Europe, the study found. Some travelers brought the virus directly from Europe in February and March, whereas others may have picked up the European lineage elsewhere in the northeastern United States.
Dr. MacInnis and her colleagues took a detailed look at a few key places to see how the virus swept through the city. At Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, they found that coronaviruses in patients did not share many of the same mutations. That was a relief, because it meant that the hospital was not a breeding ground where a single virus could spread quickly from patient to patient.
But thats exactly what happened in a skilled nursing home where 85 percent of patients and 37 percent of the staff were infected. The researchers identified three different virus lineages in the home, but one of them accounted for 90 percent of the infections.
Such superspreading events are a hallmark of the coronavirus. When an infected person shows up in the right place generally inside, with poor ventilation and close contact with other people the virus can infect a lot of people in very little time. These unfortunate events dont happen often, and so most people who get infected with the coronavirus dont pass it on to anyone else.
The virus that raged through the nursing home didnt spread beyond its walls, as far as Dr. MacInnis and her colleagues could tell. But when the virus showed up at the Biogen conference, the story turned out very differently.
The researchers were able to sequence 28 viral genomes from people at the meeting. All of them shared the same mutation, called C2416T. The only known samples with that mutation from before the Biogen event came from two people in France on Feb. 29.
Updated August 24, 2020
Its possible that a single person came to the meeting from Europe carrying the C2416T mutation. Its also possible that the virus carrying this mutation had already been in Boston for a week or two, and someone brought it into the meeting.
As the attendees spent hours together in close quarters, in poorly ventilated rooms, without wearing masks, the virus thrived. While replicating inside the cells of one meeting attendee, the virus gained a second mutation, called G26233T. Everyone who was subsequently infected by that person carried the double-mutant virus.
From the meeting, the researchers concluded, this lineage spread into the surrounding community. In a Boston homeless shelter, for example, researchers found 51 viral samples with the C2416T mutation, and 54 with both mutations.
We had no idea it would be associated with the conference, Dr. MacInnis said. It came as a complete surprise.
The researchers estimated that roughly 20,000 people in the Boston area could have acquired the conference virus.
New York saw a similar pattern, according to Matthew Maurano, a computational biologist at N.Y.U. Langone Health. After many viral strains arrived from Europe in February, a few came to dominate the city. A lot of lineages die off, and some spread enormously, Dr. Maurano said.
The Boston double-mutant spread particularly far. Researchers identified this lineage in samples collected later in Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan. Overseas, it turned up in Europe, Asia and Australia.
Dr. Jacob Lemieux, a co-author of the new study and an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, said it was impossible at the moment to determine how many people acquired the virus in the months after the Biogen conference. But it would be in the tens of thousands.
Six months after the conference, Dr. MacInnis said that it should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks life can return to an unmasked version of normal before the virus is brought under control.
One bad decision can affect a lot of people, she said. And the ones who suffer the most from that reality are the most vulnerable among us.
Volunteer Ekebar Emet, a 21-year-old student, publicizes epidemic prevention measures in Urumqi in northwest China's Xinjiang region on Aug. 3. His messaging reaches an estimated 78 households each day. Zhao Ge/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images hide caption
Volunteer Ekebar Emet, a 21-year-old student, publicizes epidemic prevention measures in Urumqi in northwest China's Xinjiang region on Aug. 3. His messaging reaches an estimated 78 households each day.
Across China, life has largely returned to normal. Domestic travel is picking back up as a coronavirus pandemic brought under control recedes from memory. Businesses and factories have reopened.
Except in Xinjiang. A sweeping, western region nearly four times the size of California, Xinjiang remains largely cut off from the rest of the country and its some 22 million residents under heavy lockdown, an effort officials say is needed to contain a cluster of more than 800 officially diagnosed cases.
In mid-July, officials declared a "wartime mode" for the region. Community officials continue to go door to door, sealing doors with paper strips, tape and in some cases metal bars, to prevent residents from leaving their homes.
The region has effectively been penned off from the rest of the country, meaning scant information about the lockdown has emerged. In July, Xinjiang's train stations were closed, intercity bus routes canceled, and centralized quarantine imposed on residents returning to the region.
"It has been more than a week since we last had a case, but that does not mean we should relax," said Tang Shan, a Communist Party official who oversees Xinjiang's Ganquanbao district, an industrial zone just outside the region's capital of Urumqi. "We still ask our residents and the society at large, including our government organs, to work together in order to maintain the success we have achieved so far."
The monthlong lockdown has angered residents, thousands of whom took to social media this week to complain about what they said are heavy-handed quarantine and testing policies out of sync with the severity of the outbreak. The region's last new COVID-19 case was diagnosed on Aug. 17.
"The government has used an ax where a scalpel was needed," said a 21-year-old resident of Urumqi, where the vast majority of cases have occurred. He asked to remain anonymous because of potential legal retribution for talking to foreign media. "I just want government officials to refrain from lazy policymaking and combat the outbreak with scientific, reasonable measures."
Xinjiang is home to about 11 million Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic minority. Since 2017, local authorities with backing from the country's leader, Xi Jinping, have extralegally detained or imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other historically Muslim ethnic minorities. Those not detained live under heavy government surveillance and a web of restrictions that forbid most religious activities and travel.
Xinjiang's police state has mobilized over the last month to contain the latest coronavirus outbreak. Urumqi residents told NPR that they had been given mandatory tests for the coronavirus as many as three times in the last month and their temperature taken by local officials three times a day.
This past weekend, frustration from Xinjiang residents spilled over to social media, as the hashtag "Xinjiang refugees" briefly began trending on China's Twitter-like platform, Weibo. Most of the posts were soon deleted, and several accounts suspended. Videos shared on the platform by frustrated residents show Xinjiang residents cuffed to window bars and balcony railings outside their homes, a punishment for violating home quarantine rules.
"I want to strongly emphasize to everyone to now open your front door. Those who are discovered [outside their homes] by neighborhood officials will be reported to the nearest police station," read a warning sent to a chat group of residents in Urumqi's Tianshan district, according to screenshots sent to NPR by one of the group's participants.
The policy is similar to strict lockdown policies adopted for weeks at a time in other Chinese cities such as Wuhan and in coastal Zhejiang province during the height of the epidemic. To feed trapped residents, community officials and volunteers rallied to deliver daily essentials to each household several times a week.
With comparatively less-developed community services, residents in Xinjiang said they have been left hungry in their own homes. One woman in Kashgar, a former Silk Road oasis town, said she had been sealed into her house with a random assortment of groceries sent by community officials once a week usually basic vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and cabbage.
Four Uighur residents NPR spoke to said they had also been forced to drink a brown, herbal Chinese traditional medicine packaged by a company called Beijing Donghuayuan Medical. China's state news agency has said asymptomatic cases in Xinjiang were given an "herbal concoction" to prevent symptoms from appearing and that participation in traditional Chinese medicine treatment had "reached one hundred percent" in Xinjiang, though there is no medical evidence proving its efficacy against the virus.
On Monday, the regional government softened its lockdown policy slightly, allowing residents living in compounds with no cases to leave their homes so long as they are wearing a mask.
To further quell public outrage this week, state media also published the mobile phone numbers for about a dozen senior officials and party members at the provincial and city level, encouraging irate residents to reach out directly with recommendations.
"There has been an endless queue of complaints coming in," said Ye Hailong, a county-level Urumqi official.
On Monday, the Xinjiang regional government softened its stance and said it would allow residents without diagnosed cases in their compounds to leave their homes.
But when asked when Xinjiang's "wartime mode" would be entirely lifted, officials declined to offer a specific date. "Our lockdown policies have to follow the timeline of the epidemic and when the epidemic ends," said Chen Xinjian, an Urumqi district official.
Amy Cheng contributed research from Beijing.
EMS medics with the Houston Fire Department move a patient with Covid-19 symptoms onto a stretcher before transporting him to a hospital on August 14, 2020 in Houston, Texas.
John Moore | Getty Images
White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci warned members of Congress in late June that the U.S. might report more than 100,000 daily new cases of the virus "if this does not turn around."
But months later, Fauci's worst fears have not come to pass as daily new caseshave steadily fallen across much of the U.S. While testing has declined in recent weeks, the number of new cases is falling faster than testing rates, indicating that at least some of the drop is real.
Epidemiologists credit a more unified health message in the U.S. that has more people following social distancing rules. They also say that keeping some businesses closed has helped slow the outbreak. And President Donald Trump started endorsingmasks in late July, bringing the White House in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after months of resistance.
The number of daily new cases in the U.S. peaked on July 22 at about 70,000 new infections and have steadily fallen to about 42,600 per day, based on a seven-day average, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The percent of all tests coming back positive has also steadily fallen, from a high of 8.5% in late July to 6.2% this week, according to Hopkins data. That, along with the four weeks of sustained decline and the falling number of Covid-19 hospitalizations, has epidemiologists feeling more confident that the U.S. is finally getting a grip on its outbreak.
"The current plan wearing a mask, watching your distance, washing your hands, supplemented by smart testing, according to the state plans, surge testing and extreme technical assistance by CDC as well as our craft teams continues to yield results," Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir told reporters on a conference call last week.
But the country remains in a delicate spot, according toepidemiologists from some of the hardest-hit states in the country Florida, Texas and Arizona.While new cases are falling by at least 5% in 31 states, they are still rising by at least as much in more than a dozen states, based on a seven-day average, according to Hopkins data.
In Texas, new cases are down from an average of about 10,400 on July 22 to about 5,500. While irregularities in the state data led some local health officials and epidemiologists to question the data,Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, said the state data is "with a grain of salt, looking good."
She added that the Texas Gov. Greg Abbott'sJuly2 mask mandate "certainly" helped reduce the spread as well as the closing of bars, "because we know that those were spreading infection." Triosi, however, said that as the number of new cases continues to drop and as society reopens that people may experience "pandemic fatigue" and begin to disregard some guidelines.
"What we're really concerned about are schools opening, Labor Day weekend and pandemic fatigue,"she said. "We were all tired of this five months ago. Now we're really tired, so if people see the number of cases come down, they might think it's OK to do things that are a little bit riskier."
"I would not be surprised if we see an uptick after Labor Day," she added.
In Florida, the daily average number of new cases has fallen from about 11,100 on July 22 to about 3,900 this week. Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, attributed much of the drop to changing behavior across the state, prompted by news coverage and effective public health messaging.
"I think it kind of got to people that opening up didn't mean going back to normal," she said. "I think it got very much in the public eye that we weren't where we needed to be and that we had to take better control."
Prins echoed Troisi's concern that as new cases continue to fall, people might get comfortable and ease up on their commitment to the public health guidance.
"My concern is that we'll have people kind of falling away from this perception of threat as our cases decline and that we could wind up with a little bit of a roller coaster," she said.
However, she added that Florida and many other Sun Belt states hit hard by the virus this summer have an advantage over the northern parts of the country: comparatively warmer weather. Various studies have shown that the virus spreads more easily in crowded, indoor, poorly ventilated environments. Officials, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, have warned that colder weather could present a new challenge as outdoor dining and gatherings become more difficult.
Arizona has reported an average ofabout 650 new cases per day over the past week, down from about 2,750 on July 22, according to Hopkins data. Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association and former director of theArizonaDepartment of Health Services, attributed the drop to "three core things."
First, he said, Gov. Doug Ducey "finally" allowed towns, cities and counties to implement their own mask mandates in mid-June. Before that, Ducey had prevented local officials from implementing their own face mask requirements.
"We definitely know that was a huge factor," Humble said.
He added that the following week, Ducey ordered the closure of bars and nightclubs, which he said was another major cause in reversing the direction of the outbreak.
The third factor that could be driving the drop is that enough of the population might have been infected earlier in the outbreak, giving the virus "a harder time finding new hosts," he said. Particularly hard-hit parts of Arizona might be benefiting from some level of herd immunity, he said, adding that not nearly enough of the population has been infected to actually halt the spread of the virus.
"Arizona adopted the Swedish model," he said. "We threw our hands up and said, 'alright, let's get it.' That's what happened. And we did it. And a lot of people died. And a lot of people recovered. And those people are now protected."
Humble added that he's nervous about the weeks and months ahead, both for the country and for Arizona. He said that under the governor's plan, bars and nightclubs could reopen as soon as this week in some communities. But he said he's not satisfied with the state's plan to ensure compliance with capacity restrictions and other requirements.
He said that if bars and clubs reopen without a proper enforcement mechanism, it could lead to a major resurgence and "June 2.0."
"When the bars and nightclubs open with no mitigation measures in place because there was no compliance, who's going to suffer from that? The parents and the kids who could have benefited from in-person instruction," he said, "because it's going to move the metrics up, and then kids are going to have to go back online and in-person instruction won't be an option anymore."
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield warned last week that while cases are falling nationally, driven by the former hot spots, there are some worrying signs in the middle of the country.
"We're starting to see some of the cases now in the red zone areas are falling, but if you look at those states that are in what we call the yellow zone, between 5% and 10%, they're not falling, so middle America right now is getting stuck," Redfieldsaid in an interview with Dr.Howard Bauchnerof the Journal of the American Medical Association. "This is why it's so important for middle America to recognize the mitigation steps that we talked about, about masks, about social distancing, hand washing, closing bars, being smart about crowds."
He said cases are not rising substantially in the region, but the fact that cases appear to be plateauing could be cause for concern, especially as the country enters the colder months of the year and seasonal influenza spreads. Redfield has repeatedly warned that the confluence of a major flu outbreak along with the Covid-19 pandemic could overwhelm hospitals and cause preventable deaths. He encouraged Americans to get this year's flu vaccine as soon as it's available to mitigate the risk of an overwhelming flu season.
"We don't need to have a third wave in the heartland right now," he said. "We need to prevent that particularly as we're coming to the fall."
CNBC's Nate Rattner contributed to this report.
Another Mainer has died as health officials on Wednesday reported 24 new coronavirus cases in the state.
Wednesdays report brings the total coronavirus cases in Maine to 4,389. Of those, 3,942 have been confirmed positive, while 447 were classified as probable cases, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The agency revised Tuesdays cumulative total to 4,365, down from 4,368, meaning there was an increase of 21 over the previous days report, state data show. As the Maine CDC continues to investigate previously reported cases, some are determined to have not been the coronavirus, or coronavirus cases not involving Mainers. Those are removed from the states cumulative total.
New cases were reported in Androscoggin (2), Aroostook (1), Cumberland (1), Kennebec (1), Penobscot (1), Piscataquis (1), Somerset (1) and York (12) counties, state data show. Information about where the other cases were detected wasnt immediately available Wednesday.
The latest death involved a woman in her 80s from York County, bringing the statewide death toll to 132. Information about that case wasnt immediately available. Nearly all deaths have been in Mainers over age 60.
Maine CDC spokesperson Robert Long said Wednesday that 85 cases have now been linked to the Aug. 7 wedding and reception in Millinocket. That includes six cases from an outbreak at the Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison and 18 cases from an outbreak at the York County Jail in Alfred.
Of those cases, 32 are considered primary, 33 secondary infections and 20 tertiary infections, Long said.
No new outbreak investigations have been opened since Tuesday, he said.
So far, 412 Mainers have been hospitalized at some point with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Of those, eight people are currently hospitalized, with five in critical care and one on a ventilator.
Meanwhile, 34 more people have recovered from the coronavirus, bringing total recoveries to 3,818. That means there are 439 active and probable cases in the state, which is down from 453 on Tuesday.
A majority of the cases 2,475 have been in Mainers under age 50, while more cases have been reported in women than men, according to the Maine CDC.
As of Wednesday, there have been 244,755 negative test results out of 250,331 overall. Just under 2.2 percent of all tests have come back positive, Maine CDC data show.
The coronavirus has hit hardest in Cumberland County, where 2,167 cases have been reported and where the bulk of virus deaths 70 have been concentrated. It is one of four counties the others are Androscoggin, Penobscot and York, with 596, 221 and 768 cases, respectively where community transmission has been confirmed, according to the Maine CDC.
There are two criteria for establishing community transmission: at least 10 confirmed cases and that at least 25 percent of those are not connected to either known cases or travel. That second condition has not yet been satisfied in other counties.
Other cases have been reported in Aroostook (38), Franklin (48), Hancock (46), Kennebec (183), Knox (29), Lincoln (35), Oxford (59), Piscataquis (8), Sagadahoc (59), Somerset (47), Waldo (69) and Washington (15) counties. Information about where another case was detected wasnt immediately available Wednesday.
As of Wednesday morning, the coronavirus has sickened 5,781,834 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 178,578 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.
The praise those moves won DeWine nationally was reflected in his standing in the state, too. In a late June Quinnipiac University poll, 75% of Ohioans approved of how DeWine was handling his job -- including 81%(!) of Democrats, 76% of independents and 74% of Republicans.
In short: if there was a governor you would think would be immune from an impeachment attempt, it would be DeWine.
Or not.
State Rep. John Becker, the leader of the impeachment effort, insisted to the Plain-Dealer that he was not simply trying to score political points or draw media attention with the impeachment gambit. "If this was (about) a matter of principle and people hearing my voice, I'd send out a letter to the editor, or maybe a House resolution," he said. "No -- impeachment is the intention."
But whether DeWine actually has to worry about being impeached -- he doesn't -- is sort of beside the point here. What matters is that DeWine's handling of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has won him plaudits from coast to coast, has so angered a part of the Republican base in his state that a trio of lawmakers from his own party have decided to try to do something about it.
Taken together, what these episodes highlight is how President Donald Trump -- and the ways in which he has politicized public health matters like mask-wearing and social distancing -- are influencing the way that some (many?) Republicans think.
Trump rode to office on voter revulsion with the so-called "establishment" of both parties; his campaign was as much about tearing down the status quo within the Republican Party as in the Democratic Party. And even when he got into the White House, Trump kept up that outsider thinking -- promulgating a series of ill-defined conspiracy theories that all suggested the establishment -- or, in Trump's words, the "deep state" -- were out to get him and all those who think like him.
It's no wonder, then, that as the coronavirus pandemic brought America to its knees -- economically and socially -- over the spring and now well into the summer -- that many Republicans, particularly those who most closely identify with Trump, view attempts by their state governments to slow the spread of the disease with deep suspicion.
Suspicion is an insidious monster; once unleashed, it's hard to contain; it seeps into every nook and cranny of your consciousness. And so you start to see mask-wearing not as a proven (and medically sound) way to slow the spread of Covid-19 but as an unnecessary imposition on your rights. And closures/limitations on restaurants and bars as the government meddling in the private sector.
What all of this fails to acknowledge is that the challenges posed by the coronavirus are unlike any we -- or our politicians -- have faced in more than a century. These are unique times and the same old conspiracy-driven thinking not only doesn't apply but makes government efforts to get the virus under control that much more difficult.
