(KTIV) -- There were 508 new, confirmed COVID-19 cases Saturday,according to the state's dashboard,which brings the state's total number of cases to 30,938
No additional deaths were reported within this time frame, leaving the state's death toll at 721 as of Saturday.
There were also 201 more recoveries reported for a total of 24,585.
As of Friday, the total number of hospitalizations in Iowa is 134, which is 12 less than Friday. Of those hospitalizations, 40 were in the ICU.
In Iowa, 6,169 new tests were given for a total of more than 328,128 people that have been tested for COVID-19.
(WETM) Chemung County Executive Christopher Moss says that summer travel is definitely having an effect on the increase in COVID-19 cases in the Southern Tier.
COVID-19 cases in the Southern Tier reached its highest mark since May 27 with 21 new cases between the eight counties in a single day.
Sixteen of those new cases were reported in Broome County where 47 new cases have been confirmed since June 20. Only two new cases were reported between Chemung, Steuben, and Schuyler.
Were keeping a close eye on the numbers and watching for clusters or spikes with a commonality. The increase in positives across the country for states that arentimposing the same types of precautions New York State hasis definitely having an effect on our numbers due to Summer travel. Weve also seen a substantial increase in local complaints involving mask and social distancing violations across the Chemung County.
Seventy-three new cases have been reported in the region over the last seven days.
The number of new cases per 100K in the Southern Tier has also more than doubled in recent days, matching the levels reported in early June.
Comparatively, the Southern Tier remains one of the best regions in the Empire State with the second-lowest percentage of positive tests per day on a 7 day rolling average and for new cases per 100K, also on a rolling average. The regions Gross New Hospitalizations per 100K is the best in New York.
As a whole, New York State reported 726 new cases, surging the total number of known cases in the state over 396,000. Eleven more deaths were also reported by the Governors office, brining the state death toll to 24,896.
On a positive note, the number of hospitalizations, new patients admitted, and intubations decreased in the state with only 190 ICU patients, two more than yesterday.
New Yorkers bent the curve of this deadly virus by being smart and taking proper precautions throughout this pandemic, and thats reflected in yesterdays low hospitalizations and rate of positive tests,Governor Cuomo said.However, our actions today determine our numbers tomorrow, and as we move through this holiday weekend, I strongly urge everyone to closely follow state guidance on safe practices and local governments to enforce that guidance. Being New York tough means being New York smart: wear a mask, wash your hands and practice social distancing.
Todays data is summarized briefly below:
Of the 62,403 tests conducted in New York State yesterday, 726, or 1.16 percent, were positive. Each regions percentage of positive tests over the last three days is as follows:
The Governor also confirmed 726 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 396,598 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 396,598 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
The Southern Tier remains in phase four of the Governors reopening plan.
TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR)reports as of 5:00 p.m., on July 2, 2020, there have been 178,238 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 3,053 total cases and 93 deaths.
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.
CASES PER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour(15/0), Berkeley (443/18), Boone (20/0), Braxton (3/0), Brooke (8/1), Cabell(136/6), Calhoun (2/0), Clay (10/0), Fayette (67/0), Gilmer (13/0), Grant(15/1), Greenbrier (60/0), Hampshire (42/0), Hancock (20/3), Hardy (44/1),Harrison (66/0), Jackson (143/0), Jefferson (229/5), Kanawha (324/9), Lewis (19/1),Lincoln (8/0), Logan (25/0), Marion (60/3), Marshall (40/1), Mason (19/0),McDowell (6/0), Mercer (45/0), Mineral (55/2), Mingo (19/3), Monongalia(179/14), Monroe (13/1), Morgan (19/1), Nicholas (11/1), Ohio (99/1), Pendleton(12/1), Pleasants (4/1), Pocahontas (27/1), Preston (67/15), Putnam (59/1),Raleigh (53/1), Randolph (161/1), Ritchie (2/0), Roane (11/0), Summers (2/0),Taylor (15/1), Tucker (6/0), Tyler (4/0), Upshur (20/1), Wayne (114/1), Wetzel(10/0), Wirt (4/0), Wood (94/8), Wyoming (7/0).
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 the case of Boone, Greenbrier, and Mingo counties in this report.
Please visit thedashboard at www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.
Freedom from Covid-19.
"It feels amazing," Avery told CNN. "After knowing what all I've been through, it's still kind of hard to wrap my mind around. But I'm very thankful and grateful that I'm still here."
Avery, who turns 24 on July 4, recently returned home after spending 76 days in a Kansas hospital -- many of them sedated and on a ventilator -- battling the novel coronavirus.
"I'm going to be at home, safe and sound with my family," said Avery, a barber from Kansas City, Missouri, when asked how he would celebrate his birthday and Independence Day. "There will be plenty of other birthdays, I'm sure, down the line where I can make up for this one."
"You're just as at risk as anybody else," Avery said. "You can be the healthiest person on Earth, and you still risk your life every time you carelessly go out here and act like it's not real."
"It's very real," he said. "I was almost taken away from my family."
'It felt like someone was choking me'
By the time Avery arrived at Menorah Medical Center in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 6, he says he had what felt like every Covid-19 symptom, including chills, high fever and body aches. But what worried him most was his shortness of breath.
"Even if I was to take a deep breath it felt like someone was choking me," he said.
"I was definitely thinking that something bad was about to happen," Avery said. "I immediately thought of my son. I immediately thought of my family."
Avery says he remembers very little of what came next. Once he arrived at the hospital, Avery remembers getting out of his car and into a wheelchair. He has a faint memory of being wheeled into the intensive care unit.
"I don't want to say I started to panic," he said, "but I was definitely scared. That's not a normal patient room. That's where you're critically ill."
Before getting sick, Avery had taken precautions to ensure his family's safety amid a lockdown, like making sure there was enough food.
"But I can't say that I took it as serious as I needed to," he said. "I didn't think it was as serious as it is."
'Older people were getting this virus'
"My take on it was that older people were getting this virus and they were more susceptible as far as getting really sick from it," Willetta Avery said.
"To hear my son was going through this was very, very terrifying," she said, adding that things "got real" when she learned her son needed a ventilator.
"And not knowing much about ventilators ... it scared me to know that he was going to have to be on one of those," she said. "That's when the seriousness of his illness just kind of slapped me in the face."
Willetta Avery remembers getting a call from the hospital at 4:30 a.m. on April 11.
"They were basically telling us Shakell was maxed out on ventilation support, that there was not much else they could do," she said.
The hospital finally allowed her to see her son.
"It was as if I would be seeing him for the last time," she said.
Avery's doctors at Menorah Medical Center collaborated with physicians at Research Medical Center in Kansas City -- both are part of the HCA Healthcare system -- to treat him with convalescent plasma.
'I beat Covid-19'
After Shakell came to, he still had trouble fighting the virus.
"Being independent, you're used to doing everything on your own," he said.
But he needed help getting up and going to the bathroom. He couldn't speak or walk. He also struggled with depression in the hospital, particularly when his family would come visit him at a tent the hospital set up outside his window.
"It was a great moment at the time being, but as soon as they left I went right back down," he said. "It was really tough being away from my girlfriend. It was tough being away from my son, my mom, my siblings."
Avery eventually started to improve and he came off the ventilator. He started physical therapy and was sent to a full rehabilitation center, where he was discharged late last month.
Shakell returned to Menorah Medical Center with his family on Tuesday to thank staff for helping him.
"I was more than grateful," Avery said. "I could have said 'thank you' an infinite amount of times, and it wouldn't have matched the intensity of how grateful I was."
Avery has a message for young people, and he says that he wants to be "as blunt as possible."
"Every time you carelessly step out your door -- no mask or no empathy for anyone else's life -- you're counting your days," he said.
"My advice would simply be to try not to be selfish, but as selfless as possible," he said. "Because you're not just hurting yourself."
Studies of remdesivir the most promising drug shown to treat COVID-19 so far will soon enter a new phase of research, even before analysis is completed on the current phase of study.
It's a sign that work to find the right combination of drugs to treat the coronavirus has accelerated as cases are surging in many U.S. states.
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"It's very intense work, a nonstop process," said Dr. Andre Kalil, the principal investigator for the ongoing remdesivir trial, which is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In May, his research team published data that showed the drug reduced patients' time in the hospital by about four days, from 15, on average, to 11.
It did not appear to lower deaths from COVID-19, though. It is clear that remdesivir will not be enough on its own any comprehensive treatment for the coronavirus will require a cocktail of medicines.
This past week, Kalil and his colleagues finished enrolling more than 1,000 patients to test the effect of combining remdesivir, an antiviral, with a pill called baricitinib, an anti-inflammatory, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.
Preliminary findings from that phase of the study are expected within the month. While researchers work to analyze those results, they will simultaneously move forward with a separate round of studies, testing the impact of remdesivir plus another medication.
Kalil, who is also an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, declined to disclose the name of the drug before the study launches. However, Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, previously said it will be tested in combination with another rheumatoid arthritis drug called tocilizumab, sold as Actemra.
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Kalil told NBC News that an effective COVID-19 drug combination may eventually include three or four medications, targeting not only the virus itself, but also the immune system's hyperinflammatory response to the infection.
Another key therapeutic is convalescent plasma. Demand for the antibody-rich blood product from COVID-19 patients who have recovered has been high, with an estimated 25,000 patients already transfused in the United States, Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee during a hearing Thursday.
That included as many as 1,000 COVID-19 patients in a single day this past week, said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of Johns Hopkins' department of molecular microbiology and immunology. He also serves as the lead investigator for two studies on convalescent plasma at Johns Hopkins.
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That research so far, he said, has shown convalescent plasma to be safe. Doctors have reported anecdotal success, but clinical trials to determine whether convalescent plasma is indeed effective are ongoing. Early indicators "are encouraging," Casadevall said.
As part of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government is building a cache of the plasma, which can be frozen and stored for up to a year.
"We are investing in a collection of convalescent plasma," Disbrow told the Senate subcommittee. He added there is also investment in neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, which are virus-fighting antibodies produced in a lab, and hyperimmune globulin, which is a concentrated form of antibodies.
"BARDA is involved in discussions with American Red Cross and America's Blood Centers about the possibility of ramping up collection of COVID-19 convalescent plasma," a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson wrote in an email. "Although there are no set numbers on how much convalescent plasma should or could be collected, BARDA and these blood collection organizations have discussed collecting enough plasma not only to meet the immediate needs of hospitalized patients and collect for the production of hyperimmune globulin products but also potentially to create an inventory or stockpile of frozen convalescent plasma if there is sufficient supply."
"There is a need for plasma in this country. If you have had COVID, please donate."
Monoclonal antibody treatments are unlikely to be available until this fall, according to Casadevall. For now, people who have recovered from COVID-19 are encouraged to donate their plasma to help others.
"There is a need for plasma in this country. If you have had COVID, please donate," he said.
Meanwhile, clinical trial results from the University of Oxford in England have suggested a common steroid called dexamethasone can reduce deaths among the sickest patients by a third. The findings from the Recovery trial were published on a preprint server called medRxiv, and have not been peer-reviewed.
Scientists are also working to produce remdesivir in a more user-friendly form. It's currently administered through an IV, but Gilead Sciences has begun studying an inhaled version of the drug.
That "could potentially allow for easier administration outside the hospital, at earlier stages of disease," Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day wrote in a letter on the company's website. "That could have significant implications in helping to stem the tide of the pandemic."
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) The Tennessee Department of Health reported 49,768 confirmed cases and 372 probable cases of COVID-19 in the state on Saturday, an increase of 1,428 total cases since Friday.
The health department also announced 612 confirmed deaths, 2,860 hospitalizations, and 30,043 recoveries. More than 878,000 coronavirus tests have been administered.
On Friday,TDH reported48,344 confirmed cases and 608 confirmed deaths.
Twenty-eight new cases were reported in our area: 12 in Greene County, 7 in Washington County, 8 in Sullivan County, 1 in Hawkins County, 1 in Carter County, and 5 in Johnson County.
TDH reported 20 new recoveries in our area.
There are now 128 active cases in Northeast Tennessee, up from 120 on Thursday based on TDH data.
The following data was reported for local counties:
Carter 57 cases / 1 death / 46 recoveriesGreene 101 cases / 2 deaths / 69 recoveriesHawkins 56 cases / 2 deaths / 42 recoveriesJohnson 44 cases / 29 recoveriesSullivan 116 cases / 2 deaths / 83 recoveriesUnicoi 55 cases / 53 recoveriesWashington 149 cases / 115 recoveries
Active cases by county:
Carter 10Greene 30Hawkins 12Johnson 15Sullivan 31Unicoi 2Washington 34
Continuing coverageof the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Two U.S. research groups have reported finding nearly 300 cases of an alarming apparent side effect of Covid-19 in children, a condition called multisystem inflammation syndrome, or MIS-C. While researchers have previously reported on the condition, the papers mark the first attempt to measure how frequently the side effect occurs and how it affects children who develop it.
The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, describe children who develop severe inflammation affecting multiple organ systems after having had Covid-19, sometimes between two and four weeks after the infection. The majority of the children were previously healthy.
In one of the studies, led by researchers at Boston Childrens Hospital, 80% of the children who developed the condition required intensive care, 20% required mechanical ventilation, and four children, or 2%, died. In the second study, from researchers from New York state, a similar percentage of 99 children who developed the syndrome required ICU care and two children died. In both studies, many of the children developed cardiovascular and clotting problems and many had gastrointestinal symptoms. A high proportion also had skin rashes.
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Ours were really sick kids, said Adrienne Randolph, an ICU physician at Boston Childrens Hospital and senior author on one of the papers, which was based on reports from 26 states.
Manish Patel, from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Covid-19 response team, said the message to parents is they should be on the lookout for fever and rash in children who have recently had Covid-19.
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I think being a little vigilant is important, said Patel, who is an author on Randolphs paper. Fever, rash and I think especially in the setting of areas where you have a lot of coronavirus infections, SARS-CoV-2 infections have a lower threshold for seeking care, I would say.
On the whole, children appear to contract SARS-CoV-2 less often than adults and have a milder course of disease when they do.
But in late April, doctors in London alerted the world to the possibility that some children who had Covid-19 appeared to go on to develop something that looked like Kawasakis disease, an inflammatory condition that can attack the heart. KD, as it is called, is generally seen in children under the age of 5. Shortly thereafter, doctors in New York began to report cases as well.
In mid-May, the CDC asked doctors across the country to be on the lookout for cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
The nearly 300 cases identified in these two studies share some similarities with KD, but there are also differences. Few of the children are under the age of 5. The average age of children in the larger study was 8; 42% of the children in the New York cohort were aged 6 to 12.
Another difference: While KD disproportionately affects children of Asian descent, MIS-C cases in the New York cohort were of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, the researchers reported.
Among our patients, predominantly from the New York Metropolitan Region, 40% were Black and 36% were Hispanic. This may be a reflection of the well-documented elevated incidence of SARS CoV-2 infection among black and Hispanic communities, they wrote.
The New York group estimated that the majority of MIS-C cases occurred about one month after the peak of Covid-19 cases in the state. They estimated that between March 1 and May 10, two of every 100,000 people under the 21 years of age who had laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 virus developed MIS-C in the state. The infection rate in people under the age of 21 years was 322 in 100,000 over that period.
An editorial written by Michael Levin, from the department of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, said there have been roughly 1,000 pediatric cases of the condition reported worldwide to date. He suggested more are likely going unrecorded, because case definitions require evidence of prior Covid-19 infection.
There is concern that children meeting current diagnostic criteria for MIS-C are the tip of the iceberg, and a bigger problem may be lurking below the waterline, Levin wrote.
This article was updated to include information from the New York state study.
Donald Trump has said he believes the coronavirus will just disappear, as the US recorded 52,000 new cases on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins figures, a new all-time daily high.
Eight states had reported new single-day highs of freshly diagnosed cases on Tuesday, when the national daily total for new cases sat at just over 44,000, a record until the new figure emerged. The spike followed a warning by the public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci that the US is going in the wrong direction and infections could more than double, to reach 100,000 cases a day.
By Thursday morning, infections were rising in up to 40 states, and 14 states had reported overnight experiencing record daily highs. About 40% of the US is now changing course on reopening.
In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, Trump was asked whether he really believes, as he has stated previously, that the virus will simply disappear.
I do. I do, he said. Yeah sure. At some point. And I think were going to have a vaccine very soon too.
Trump added: Were headed back in a very strong fashion And I think were going to be very good with the coronavirus,. I think that at some point thats going to sort of just disappear. I hope.
Trump has faced fierce criticism for downplaying the risks of the virus, and for his refusal to promote simple safety measures such as wearing a mask. Asked about this on Wednesday, he said he thinks masks are good but said he does not believe making masks mandatory across the country was necessary.
Officials in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas announced single-day-high case numbers for Tuesday. The Covid Tracking Project said that the USs seven-day average for new daily cases has doubled since 13 June, and that hospitalizations jumped by the highest number since 21 April.
The European Union confirmed on Tuesday it would bar Americans from non-essential travel.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, excoriated Trump for his continued defense of the administrations slow and chaotic response to the outbreak, saying at a press briefing: The buck stops on the presidents desk.
Cuomo said: He was in denial. He has been denying what every health expert in America has been saying. Come clean with the American people. At least have the courage to admit what everybody else already knows: you were wrong.
Cuomo went on to implore states to reject the presidents rhetoric and listen to the science, making a play on Trumps former time as a reality TV host.
Denying reality does not defeat reality. He has lived in denial, and he has been denying the scientific facts since day one, he said. Reality wins and reality won, and now the country is suffering because of the president.
A number of states have been forced to roll back reopening efforts. In California, the governor ordered the closure of all recently reopened bars on Wednesday, and halted indoor operations of restaurants, movie theaters, museums and zoos across the majority of the state following a surge in coronavirus cases.
Arizonas governor, Doug Ducey, abruptly ordered bars, gyms, movie theaters and water parks to shut down this week, as the state became one of the worst hit in the US.
In Texas, elective surgeries in some counties were abandoned, as the state grapples with more than 6,500 people hospitalized from Covid-19.
Meanwhile, several Texas bar owners filed a $10m federal lawsuit against state governor Greg Abbott, in an attempt to void his executive order shutting down bars for a second time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the new details on the extent of the crisis emerged, Trump launched a series of attacks on Joe Biden, CNN, the New York Times, US senator Elizabeth Warren and MSNBC.
In tweets, Trump said that Biden was corrupt, suggested again that people damaging federal statues and monuments could spend more than 10 years in prison, and again used the racist term Pocahontas as he criticized a plan by Warren to rename US military bases named after Confederate figures. Warren has claimed to have Native American ancestry.
Amid his frenzy of internet use, Trump also retweeted a post from himself, made a day earlier, which read: THE LONE WARRIOR! and lauded the conservative channel Fox News for having bested its rivals in TV ratings, adding: Thank you President Trump.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin gestures toward Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, as they appear before a House Committee on Financial Services hearing on oversight of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve pandemic response, on Tuesday in Washington. Bill O'Leary/AP hide caption
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin gestures toward Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, as they appear before a House Committee on Financial Services hearing on oversight of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve pandemic response, on Tuesday in Washington.
House members unanimously passed an extension of the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program, aimed at helping small businesses weather the COVID-19 pandemic. The voice vote came a day after the Senate approved the measure.
The PPP had expired Tuesday at midnight. If President Trump signs the extension, the program will operate through Aug. 8.
The program was created as part of the original $3 trillion package of economic pandemic relief measures that passed Congress in March. The forgivable loans, doled out by the Small Business Administration, are meant to help small businesses keep employees on the payroll despite lockdowns and a general downturn in business as a result of the coronavirus.
There was a scramble to claim the first round, amounting to $349 billion, which was exhausted in just 13 days. A second round of $310 billion has not been fully spent.
On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested the remaining $140 billion in loans under the program could be repurposed to aid restaurants, hotels and other industries hit hardest by the pandemic.
The extension passed by Congress is aimed at keeping the spigot open while lawmakers mull reworking the program.
