Dr. Sarah Hasan says last week more than 4,000 people called, texted and emailed with questions.
HOUSTON As the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine enters Phase 3 of testing, two Houston clinics need your help.
"This is what we call medical heroes," said Dr. Sarah Hasan, a recruitment lead with DM Clinical in Tomball.
Thirty thousand people will receive the vaccine in the next phase. Houston is one of 87 locations across the country where the vaccine will be tested. The Texas Center for Drug Development is looking for about 1,000 volunteers to receive the vaccine.
"The interest we're seeing right now is on a whole different level," Hasan said. "Everybody wants to do their part so we can get back to normal."
Last week, Hasan said the clinic had more than 4,000 people call, text and email with questions and to apply.
"One of the most common questions is, 'Am I guinea pig? (And) Is this experimental?'" said Hasan. "Of course it's a totally valid question. This is not a live vaccine, so you cannot contract coronavirus from this vaccine itself."
Hasan said prior phases of testing focus on safety and side effects. This phase will figure out how effective it is.
"If everything works out the way we hope,and we don't get any unpredictable potholes and bumps in the road, we should know as we get into the mid- to late fall, early winter, but probably late fall weather we have candidates that really are safe and effective," said infectious disease expert Dr. Tony Fauci.
If you're 18 and older you're eligible to apply.
"All demographics, all races, it's a broad net we're casting out there," said Hasan.
Only folks with active cancers or autoimmune disorders would not qualify. If you're interested apply at www.houstonfightscovid.com.
"You can receive up to $2,000 to participate in this study," said Hasan.
Researchers will call you within 24 hours of applying to go over your medical history and determine if you qualify for the next steps.
"The part in the lab has already been done, but what we need now is the community to come together," said Hasan.
Great news if you watch TV with an antenna
KHOU has just upgraded its technology. If you were unable to receive KHOU with your antenna in the past, try again on channel 11.11. You may have to rescan your channels for it to work if thats the case, weve got some instructions at KHOU.com/antenna. If you already see KHOU on 11.1, you may now ALSO see it on 11.11 its the exact same programming. Were really excited to be able to bring our KHOU 11 News, CBS shows and sports, Wheel of Fortune, Ellenand Great Day Houston to more homes around the area. If youre still having trouble, please contact us here and well try to get you set up.
LUBBOCK, Texas KAMC Weekend Meteorologist Lance Blocker was selected to participate in a COVID-19 vaccine test trial being developed by Moderna and sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Blocker, a Georgia native was among 110 Americans selected for the test trials back in late March. Blocker was given two doses of the MRNA-1273 vaccine and also received a small financial stipend.
I fully trust these folks, said Blocker. These are the smartest people in the world working on this thing.
Blocker said he has had heavy fatigue and mild shortness of breath as side effects.
When I was given the opportunity to participate in this, it was really a no brainer because if theres a risk, they already know about it, said Blocker.
Researchers said the MRNA 1273 vaccine showed promising data with the 110 participants. Because the vaccine produces essential antibodies and is safe for humans, Moderna plans to expand the test trials to 30,000 Americans by the end of summer 2020.
At least two North Texas research facilities will begin widespread trials of the vaccine created by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna next week.
DALLAS, Texas The race to establish a successful COVID-19 vaccine is heating up and North Texans can now play a role.
At least two North Texas research facilities will begin widespread trials of the vaccine created by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc. next Monday.
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine published results of the first phase of the experimental vaccine trial, which found "the vaccine-induced immune responses in all participants with no trial-limiting safety concerns."
In that study, 45 participants were involved.
Volunteers developed the same levels of neutralizing antibodies in their bloodstream as those who had survived COVID-19.
There have been side effects, however. More than half of the original participants reported flu-like reactions like headache, fatigue, chills, fever, and pain at the injection site. And that early test only included younger adults, which is why more tests are needed for other parts of the population.
A 30,000-person study starting on July 27 will prove if the results can be seen on a larger scale.
Wake Research in Dallas and The Fort Worth office of Benchmark Research will be participating and is now looking for volunteers.
Dr. Denis Tarakjian of Wake Research said the phase I results show that hope is on the horizon.
"They're very, very encouraging," Tarakjian said. "Our job now is to get more patients involved in the study."
Tarakjian is based out of San Diego and is a key researcher for Wake.
He told WFAA that his firm is looking for participants who are over 18 and preferably frontline workers. That includes cops, first responders, medical workers, pharmacists, grocery store employees and transit and airline employees.
"We're looking for participants who are facing a high risk of exposure to COVID-19," Tarakjian said.
Those with underlying medical conditions or over the age of 65 are also a key demographic needed considering the earlier results focused on just younger people.
"We want to have a complete age spectrum of patients," Tarakjian said.
Half of the participants tested will be given a placebo or control for the study.
The others will be given two dosages in 28-day intervals, Tarakjian said.
If you live in Dallas, you can enroll by texting "COVID" to 972-573-9490 or by going to www.covidstudies.org.
More on WFAA:
This photo illustration show a syringe referring to the vaccine for fighting the coronavirus ... [+] (Covid-19), with a representation of the virus in the background, photographed In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 15, 2020. The Brazilian government announced agreements with the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, and with the Chinese company Sinovac and continues with the tests of the vaccine against Coronavirus (COVID-19) here in Brazil and may have its registration released in June 2021. (Photo Illustration by Allan Carvalho/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Let me start by making one thing clear: at the time of this writing, we don't have a scientifically validated vaccine for Covid-19. But more than 150 vaccines are being developed around the world, and many of them are already in advanced stages of testing.
So we'll have a vaccine soon, likely in a matter of months. And everyone should take it. I know I will.
Today Im going to try to de-mystify vaccines a bit, in the hope that this might help people feel more comfortable with them.
Before explaining what a vaccine actually is, let me point out that vaccines are probably the single greatest medical advance in the history of human civilization. Vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives: prior to vaccines, people lived in fear of diseases like smallpox, which killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone. Thanks to the vaccine, we eradicated smallpox from the entire world in 1980. Polio is another dreaded disease that killed or permanently injured millions, until the 1950s, when Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Salk, and Alfred Sabin invented vaccines that protected against it. Today, no one in the U.S. or Europe worries about polio, and it too has nearly been eradicated worldwide.
What exactly is a vaccine? Its a pretty simple concept. Our immune system has the remarkable ability to remember pathogens that weve been exposed to. So once youve been infected with some viruses or bacteria, you acquire immunity to those diseases that may last the rest of your life. A vaccine is basically a way to teach the immune system to recognize a pathogen without actually making you sick.
The simplest way to do this (conceptually) is to take a batch of viruses or bacteria, kill them so theyre harmless, and then just inject them into a person. The immune system then sees the proteins in the dead pathogens (because the proteins are still floating around), and it learns all it needs to know from these. Later on, if a live virus infects that person, her immune system will say aha, I know you! and will quickly surround and destroy the invaders.
Simple as it sounds, there are many complications with this process. One is that its often very hard to isolate and grow enough of the virus (or bacteria) for large-scale production. The viruses then need to be isolated, killed, and purified, which can be complicated and costly. For Covid-19, though, any cost is worth it.
Another, much newer way to make vaccines uses modern molecular technology to make RNA. Theres no need to isolate or grow the virus at all! This is how Modernas new mRNA vaccine works (see their whitepaper here).
The mRNA vaccine relies on the fact that we already know which protein in the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the most important one. Its called the spike protein, so Ill just call it Spike. Spike is what attaches to human cells and lets the virus infect them. We also know the sequence of the Spike gene: the sequence of the entire SARS-CoV-2 virus was released in early January, and weve now sequenced thousands of these viruses.
An mRNA vaccine simply uses the RNA itself, rather than dead viruses. Today we can synthesize RNA in large quantities, so if you take some of this RNA and inject it into a person, what happens? Well, our own cells will translate this RNA to produce the Spike protein. All by itself, the protein cannot possibly cause an infection. Its analogous to having a motor without a car: you cant go anywhere without the whole package.
But heres the good part: our immune system will recognize Spike anyway, even without the virus, and it will remember this invader. So the RNA vaccine is, in theory at least, even safer than traditional vaccines, because live pathogens are never used in the production process. (Before the anti-vaxxers jump on me here, let me emphasize that traditional vaccines are incredibly safe.)
This is just one example: there are 23 vaccines already in human trials, and over 150 in development, using mRNA, proteins, and other approaches.
There are other ingredients in vaccines too: preservatives and adjuvants. Anti-vaxxers like to read vaccine ingredients and then claim that all sorts of harmful stuff is in there, but their claims are mostly just gross ignorance. Preservatives are there to prevent the growth of things like bacteria, so they make vaccines safer. And adjuvants like aluminum salts (the most common adjuvant) are ingredients that enhance the effectiveness of vaccines, meaning you can use a lower dose. Aluminum salts have a very long safety record.
So why dont people trust vaccines? Largely because the anti-vaccine movement has spent years spreading misinformation and fear, and it is already pronouncing strong opposition to any coronavirus vaccine, regardless of the evidence. TheNew York Timesreported this weekthat mistrust of future coronavirus vaccines could imperil public health, especially in the United States. Polls have shown that large proportions of Americans say they won't take a vaccine even when it's available, which is, frankly, kind of crazy. (It didnt help when tennis player Novak Djokovic expressed doubts about whether hed be willing to take any future coronavirus vaccine.) Last month, NIHs Anthony Fauci said that the general anti-science, anti-authority, anti-vaccine feeling in the U.S. may seriously undermine the effectiveness of any future vaccine. Of course, this could change once we really do have a vaccine, and we should all hope it does. But the anti-vaxxers never let up.
It also doesn't help build trust when the Trump administration calls their vaccine program "Operation Warp Speed." This might have sounded exciting to some sci-fi fans in the White House, but to many people it sounds more like a devil-may-care approach that emphasizes speed over safety.
So how do we establish trust in the new vaccines, which are probably coming just a few months from now? One way to reassure people is to publish all the numbers from the vaccine trials. Ajust-published study in NEJMon the Moderna vaccine (the RNA vaccine) provides exactly these numbers, and they look very good in terms of both safety and effectiveness.
In that study, all 45 participants had a robust antibody responsea stronger response, in fact, than in many people whod been infected with the virus itself. There were some side effects, including fever and chills, but all were graded as mild or moderate. The scientists looked at 3 different dosage levels, and the side effects were greatest in the highest dosebut the antibody response was perfectly adequate in the lower dosage levels. So the next phase of testing, already under way, is using the lower dosages.
This was a phase 1 study, but it's very encouraging. If these results hold up in a large groupa question that is being tested now, in a phase 3 studywe'll have a working vaccine.
And if you want to know more about this trial, you can read about it at the public NIH site, ClinicalTrials.gov.
Many if not all of the vaccines being developed in Europe and the U.S. are going through the same kind of scrutiny, and well be able to see the results of those tests too. This is how we generate trust in the results: share them openly. Im very re-assured by what Ive seen so far.
The bottom line: vaccines work, and our methods for testing them are rigorous and thorough. With a little luck, the world will have multiple Covid-19 vaccines by the end of 2020. Once we have enough people vaccinated, our long nightmare with the coronavirus pandemic will come to an end.
Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus
The reason is simple: the US is experiencing a surge in cases, with states such as Florida, Texas and California reporting thousands of new confirmed cases in recent weeks.
Adm. Brett Giroir, an official on the White House coronavirus task force, said on Monday there was "no question we are having a surge right now."
But while President Donald Trump, his allies and some Republican governors have pointed to increased testing as the reason, others have rightly pointed out that hospitalizations are not the result of testing, as testing does not send people to the hospital.
Only a serious illness like Covid-19 would do that.
"As rates of testing increase, we also are seeing increases in three other key indicators that suggest we are seeing a real increase in Covid infections," said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Infectious Diseases Division at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. She cited hospitalization rates, positivity rates, and deaths, which are now increasing in 26 states.
Here's how the coronavirus is affecting hospitals in areas where it is spreading.
Hospitalizations in Florida
There are more than 9,500 people hospitalized in Florida and least 53 hospitals in 27 counties said they had no more beds in their ICUs, according to AHCA data.
Statewide, ICU bed availability stands at 15.98% -- that's "available adult ICU beds," according to AHCA data. On Monday, the available ICU bed count was 18.1%.
For comparison, in New York City, where the pandemic first took hold in the US, officials reported a positivity rate of just 2%.
Hospitalizations in California
California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order on March 18.
Less than a month later, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said residents had "bent the curve," and the state started to phase out the early stages of its reopening plan in May.
Now, Los Angeles County has surpassed its record for daily hospitalizations for the fourth time in just the past week alone, according to Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director.
Statewide, hospitalization rates and those in the intensive care unit are again reaching highs with increases of 1.9% and 0.7% respectively, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).
Meanwhile, California's positivity rate over the past two weeks stands at 7.5%, which is slightly under the state's goal of remaining below 8%, according to CDPH data. More than 6.5 million tests have been performed to date.
"We opened up too soon," Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at the University of California Los Angeles, told CNN. "We didn't have the virus totally under control."
California is fast approaching New York in total number of confirmed cases, and at this rate, could easily surpass New York to have the highest number of confirmed cases in the US.
"Whatever is done, states experiencing these increases in severe illness and with health care facilities under siege need help and a plan B, because plan A, reopening with lukewarm or no adherence to masks or social distancing clearly did not work," Marrazzo said.
Hospitalizations in Texas
Hospitals in Texas are facing an unprecedented wave of hospitalizations -- it is the only state in the US currently with more than 10,000 hospitalizations.
While that number is still comparably low to the record 18,825 hospitalized in New York during the peak of the pandemic, there are fears it could potentially be matched or surpassed at its current rate.
On Monday, President Trump acknowledged that the state, along with Florida, was dealing with a "flare up" in cases.
It's not the second wave -- it's the first
Officials and experts have long warned the public about bracing for a second wave, but the first wave has not truly ended and the spread of the virus has not even remotely been contained, some experts say.
"Some places never experienced an end of a first wave -- certainly in the South, we never really got below a baseline level since April," Marrazzo said. "A real second wave to me would be if someplace that has truly controlled spread, like New York or Connecticut, had another surge."
Marrazzo believes that the surge in hospitalizations can be attributed to one simple thing: The uncontrolled and sustained spread of infection in the community. Until the spread of the virus is contained, the rate of hospitalizations will continue to remain high.
"None of those currently experiencing these worrisome trends ever fulfilled the criteria laid out by the task force, which included a sustained downtrend in the percent positive tests for at least 2 weeks," Marrazzo said.
At least 27 states in the US have paused or rolled back their reopening plans due to the rising rates of infections. The math is simple: more infections will lead to more hospitalizations.
CNN's Ryan Browne, Erica Henry, Randi Kaye, Jason Kravarik, Christina Maxouris, Sarah Moon, Jenn Selva, Sara Sidner, Naomi Thomas, Ben Tinker and Holly Yan contributed to this report.
There is no coronavirus vaccine. Medications for COVID-19 are still being tested. Across the U.S., states that once acted as if the pandemic was going away are setting new daily records for infections, hospitalizations and deaths. There is one proved tool that has helped other countries stem the pandemic.But in the U.S. it is severely underused; the Trump administration tried to cut financing for it from the latest pandemic relief bill, reports this week say. And it often meets resistance from the people it is intended to help. The tool is called contact tracing.
The tracing approach is built on a simple idea: When someone tests positive for the new coronavirus or becomes sick with COVID-19, you find all the people the infected person came into contact with, because they, too, may be infected. Then you help them quarantine for two weeksalmost everyone who becomes sick will show symptoms within 14 daysso they do not accidentally spread the virus any further. The goal is to stop the chain of transmission, says Emily Gurley, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who has created afree online course to train contact tracers.
Contact tracing is a tried-and-true method that epidemiologists have been using for decades to tackle everything from foodborne illnesses to sexually transmitted diseases, as well as recent outbreaks of SARS and Ebola. Its a great tool for bringing an epidemic into the suppression or containment phase, says special pathogens expert Syra Madad of NYC Health + Hospitals, which leads New York CitysTest & Trace Corps contact-tracing program.
Large-scale contact-tracing programs in places such as South Korea and Germany have been instrumental in suppressing the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Within days of detecting its first case on January 20,South Korea created an emergency response committee that quickly developed wide-scale virus testing, followed by an extensive scaling up of the nations network of contact tracers. Germany similarly committed resources to mobilizing a tracing workforce. Inbothcountries, cases have dropped dramatically.
By contrast, tracing efforts lag in the U.S., where COVID-19 cases hit record highs in mid-July and which leads the world with more than 3.7 million infections and more than 140,000 deaths. The country has no national strategy for contact tracing, says Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). Instead the federal government has said to states, do as you wish, she adds. According to news reports, this weekthe White House moved to block $25 billion for tracing and testing in the latest pandemic relief bill being considered by Congress, contending that states already have funding.
Yet many states do not have the money to start large tracing programs. In fact, state public health departments across the U.S. were drastically underfunded even before the pandemic. Since 2008, local health departments have lost close to 25 percent of their employees.
The result is a patchwork of programs with insufficient money and uneven implementation. NACCHO estimates that, given national levels of confirmed cases, the nation needs at least100,000 contact tracers. And that number would cost local, state, territorial, Native American and federal public health agencies at least $3.7 billion. So far, however, no federal dollars have been specifically allocated to contact tracing or to any federal contact tracing programs, Casalotti says.
A look at some individual states makes it clear that the workforce has not reached the scale required in several places. For instance, Arkansas recently announced plans to hire350 new contact tracers, which would bring its total to about 900. But based on the number of current cases, the state actually needs 3,722 tracers, according to acontact-tracing-workforce estimator developed by the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University. In Florida, where the pandemic is surging terribly, the same estimator calculates that 291 tracers per 100,000 residents are needed. Yet as of early July, the state had onlyseven per 100,000. And cases of COVID-19 surged in Texas, even as contact tracers working for the Texas Department of State Health Services were taken off the job.
Some states and local governments have increased operations. Massachusetts has launched a large effort, and New York and Washington State have also mobilized strong programs, says Margaret Bourdeaux, a physician and research director of global public policy at Harvard Medical School. In California, San Francisco has called up city employees, such as librarians, to join its tracing workforce.
Yet making contact-tracing programs successful means more than just boots on the ground. Tracers are trained to help people think through who they might have been in contact with. Though numerous phone apps now aid in identifying potential contacts, technology cant solve the problem of convincing someone they should pick up the phone when a contact tracer calls, says Mary Gray, a social scientist at Microsoft Research, who also has affiliations with Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington. It is the reason we are failingbecause we keep searching for something else we can buy or put into place. We have not conceded how deeply human this process is.
Contact tracing is built on trust. The first call from a tracer is the beginning of a relationship, Gurley says. Its not just explaining what someone needs to do; its also explaining why. From there, the contact tracer will follow up every day to make sure the contact is getting the support that person needs to maintain self-isolation. Contact tracers have to be good at building rapport, Gurley says.
The U.S.s divisive political climate can make this process challenging. The systemic racism that has disproportionately affected people in minority groups with the virus may also make them more hesitant to disclose their personal information, Madad says. With all the political rhetoric about immigration, people in [immigrant] communities may be afraid to talk.
Elizabeth Perez is bilingual in Spanish and English and works as a contact tracer in San Francisco. She mostly speaks with people in the Latino community, and she says that doing so in Spanish can help her build trust. Ramss Escobedo, who works in the same program, says that sometimes individuals worry about the information being collected. Occasionally, reluctant people give out incorrect phone numbers, and the team has to do some detective work to track down potential infected cases.
New York Citys program has approached this problem by recruiting contact tracers with diverse backgrounds from within local communities, Madad says. More than half of the contact tracers in her program are from the hardest-hit zip codes. Theyre part of that community, she says.
One of the biggest challenges is misinformation being disseminated on social media. BuzzFeed News reports that Facebook posts and YouTube videos spreading hoaxes and lies about contact tracers have received hundreds of thousands of views. Some of these posts compare tracers to Nazi secret police and falsely say they take people to internment camps. Others suggest they should be greeted with guns. Contact tracers report they have faced death threats.
The next action that comes after a tracer has identified a potential infected persongetting that individual to adhere to quarantinehas proved exceptionally difficult in the U.S. For stopping the spread of a virus, however, isolation is absolutely key. You can do the contact tracing all you want. But if youre not also providing these support services people need to isolate, it wont work, Madad says. No one is going to quarantine for 14 days if that means losing a job and income or abandoning caregiving.
That fact is why the availability of services to support people in quarantine, such as housing, childcare, income or meal services, can make or break a contact-tracing program, Madad adds. For example,South Korea transformed existing public and private facilities into temporary isolation wards and has ensured that people quarantined via contact tracing receive a twice-daily check in from a public health worker, as well as deliveries of food and other necessities.
In the U.S., these kinds of resources have not been offered, by and large. New York City has set up quarantine hotels where people can go, and so have a few other localities. But efforts such as these are not widespread, and they are not enough tomeet the needs of every community.
At this point in the pandemic, that shortfall is a desperate problem, according to Harvards Bourdeaux. We are looking into the abyss, she says. Contact tracing at the large scale that is needed might seem overwhelming, but what other choice do we have? Bourdeaux asks. You cant have an economy, you cant have open schools, you cant have normal life if the epidemic is raging and uncontrolled. Until we have effective medications and a vaccine, she says, testing, contact tracing and quarantine are the most effective plague stoppers in existence.
Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on July 21,2020, there have been 239,341 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 5,161 total cases and 101 deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the death of a 67-year oldfemale from Cabell County. Our sincere sympathy is extended to thisfamily for their loss, said Bill J. Crouch, Cabinet Secretary of DHHR.
In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.
CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (26/0), Berkeley (549/19), Boone(58/0), Braxton (7/0), Brooke (38/1), Cabell (218/7), Calhoun (5/0), Clay(17/0), Fayette (100/0), Gilmer (13/0), Grant (25/1), Greenbrier (80/0),Hampshire (51/0), Hancock (61/4), Hardy (49/1), Harrison (141/1), Jackson(149/0), Jefferson (269/5), Kanawha (534/12), Lewis (24/1), Lincoln (30/0),Logan (47/0), Marion (136/4), Marshall (82/1), Mason (30/0), McDowell (11/0),Mercer (74/0), Mineral (76/2), Mingo (60/2), Monongalia (748/15), Monroe(16/1), Morgan (21/1), Nicholas (22/1), Ohio (179/0), Pendleton (19/1),Pleasants (5/1), Pocahontas (38/1), Preston (92/22), Putnam (115/1), Raleigh(108/3), Randolph (200/2), Ritchie (3/0), Roane (12/0), Summers (2/0), Taylor(29/1), Tucker (7/0), Tyler (10/0), Upshur (31/2), Wayne (160/2), Webster(2/0), Wetzel (41/0), Wirt (6/0), Wood (203/9), Wyoming (8/0).
As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is thecase of Cabell and Fayette counties in this report.
Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR.
Please visit thedashboard at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.
Find developments on the coronavirus pandemic and the plan for recovery in the U.S. and Washington state.
Where cases stand in Washington:
Several high school sports, including football, will not take place this fall in Washington state.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association moved football, volleyball, girls soccer, and boys 1B/2B soccer to the spring.
The director of the association called it a "tough and unprecedented decision."
It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better," President Trump said about the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday.
He encouraged Americans to wear masks when social distancing is not possible, Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact."
The NFL Players Association says 95 players are known to have tested positive for the coronavirus.
That number is up from 72 in the unions last report on July 10.
On Monday, the NFLPA and the NFL reached agreement on COVID-19 testing as rookies begin reporting to training camps.
UW Medicine said a coronavirus vaccine its developing has shown promising results in mice and monkeys during pre-clinical studies.
The experimental vaccine induced a strong immune response after a single dose and immunity increased over time, Dr. Deborah Fuller, professor of microbiology, said Monday.
Reported coronavirus cases vastly underestimate the true number of infections, U.S. government data published Tuesday suggest, echoing results from a smaller study last month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study says true COVID-19 rates were more than 10 times higher than reported cases in most U.S. regions from late March to early May.
The Kent School District has announced that schools will begin the 2020-21 school year with remote learning.
The district looked at data from a staff and family survey, as well as guidance from health officials and the districts Back to School Task Force in making the decision to start remotely for the upcoming school year.
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Some teams have begun testing rookies for COVID-19. Veterans soon will follow.
Ninety-five players have tested positive for coronavirus as of today and before league-wide testing results are known. Thats according to the NFLPA website.
Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, Rams center Brian Allen, Broncos pass rusher Von Miller and Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth are among the players who are known to have had COVID-19.
The NFLPA also had an update on the infectious disease emergency response plans submitted by each team. Eight teams have IDER plans approved by the NFLPA, and 24 are under review.
The NFLPA must approve a teams IDER plan before more than 20 players are allowed in the team facility. NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills and joint infectious disease experts already have OKd the 32 plans.
