For just one day, Beijing was a Covid-free city.
On Tuesday 9 June, local authorities reported that the last active Covid-19 case had been discharged from a local hospital. City health officials appeared without face masks at the daily press conference, to announce that there were no new cases and no suspected infections. Beijing, finally, seemed to breathe a little easier. The now-ubiquitous temperature checks, at the entrance to every office building, restaurant and hutong (alleyway), were dismantled. The Lama Temple and Beijing aquarium were open to the public for the first time since January and were immediately packed to capacity. It was a beautiful summers day bright blue skies and the sharp Beijing light that glints golden on the citys tower blocks.
On Wednesday 10 June, 52-year old Mr Tang feeling inexplicably cold and exhausted bicycled alone to a hospital for a checkup and tested positive for Covid-19. Beijings 56-day streak of no locally transmitted cases was broken, and all signs seemed to indicate that an outbreak had been quietly spreading through the city for weeks.
Two months of a slow crawl towards normal city life were reversed overnight. Beijing time travelled back to February. All residential compounds around Mr Tangs residence were put under strict lockdown, and the outbreaks origin was traced to the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale market, which supplies close to 80% of the citys fruit and vegetables.
The might of Chinas public health system, honed after public criticism of the early response to Wuhan, was brought to bear. Over 100,000 contacts were identified for testing, tracing and isolation, and thousands of samples taken from stalls around the market. Xinfadi was the perfect storm for an uncontrollable new wave. In the worst-case scenario, as the key hub for the citys food supply, it had first-degree connections to most restaurants, bars and community markets across Beijing. Expand that circle by one degree, and you had every delivery worker and every restaurant-goer as a potential vector for spread.
By 12 June, 36 cases linked to the Xinfadi market were discovered. Cases began to pop up elsewhere in the country, connected to Beijing. Chinas vice-premier called the situation grave, prompting fears of more sweeping lockdowns.
Relatively speaking, it was a small outbreak. By comparison, New York City reported 292 new cases on 12 June alone. Nevertheless, Beijing was put in what health officials called wartime mode to contain the virus, mobilising medical workers like troops against an insurgency. But who it felt like war for, in this case, was determined by social class and geographic proximity.
Many of the initial cluster of cases were working-class migrants: restaurant workers who lived in the same dormitory, seafood sellers, drivers. Thousands of frontline retail workers were tested over the next few days. Videos shared on WeChat showed many being made to wait shoulder-to-shoulder for hours in crowded stadiums and parks in the searing summer heat.
In exclusion zones around multiple Beijing markets, residential lockdowns and severed transport links were patrolled by battalions of hazmat-clad volunteers. But walk around the hutongs around Beijings Art Museum an area of upscale shops and restaurants and you could see that nothing was different: barbecue stalls spilled out into the street and raucous picnics continued with face masks around the chin.
A curious tension emerged between the need to project normality, and to show decisive action. Another full lockdown would be disastrous for Beijings economy, but so would an uncontrolled outbreak. For the citys service industries, this led to confusing mixed messages. Bars in some neighbourhoods were told to stay open as normal, then close, then open for a limited time contingent on testing, then close, all within hours.
For the rest of the city, a familiar mix of dread and powerlessness returned. Over 2 million tuned into the livestreams of the daily Covid-19 press conferences, with officials now wearing face masks again. Even the memes were melancholy a popular one featured a person marked Beijing, in full plate-mail armour like a medieval knight, who is then hit by a precise arrow, marked Xinfadi, right through the helmets eye socket. The shopping district of Sanlitun, which surely features the citys highest density of cafes per capita, took on a deserted look as bars and restaurants closed.
Beijing residents are used to the city changing suddenly before their eyes, but the pandemic and its lockdowns have produced a creeping feeling that something has been lost for good. Beijingers feel as if theyve emerged into a new city and started new lives. The particular liveliness associated with Beijing street life, exemplified by the word renao (), was the first thing to disappear in lockdown, and will likely be the last to return. The cornerstones of the citys renao: live music, nightclubs, cinemas, karaoke bars, lamb skewers around tiny plastic tables on the street are all closed until further notice.
Where a reopening seemed imminent a week ago, this resurgence has pushed that possibility out into a distant future. On 18 June, officials from Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that the outbreak was already under control, but the experience has already revived familiar fears that future plans are null and void, replaced by an endless present of doom-scrolling through social media for news and rumour.
A second wave opens the possibility of a third, and a fourth. In Beijing, a city that came so close to defeating the virus for good, that means whatever happens, we dont get to go back to the city we knew.
Krish Raghav is an illustrator and writer based in Beijing
With businesses continuing to struggle during the coronavirus pandemic, some companies are reopening with an added COVID-19 charge on the bill. Buzz60
Scott Krakower started getting the chills and sweats athis Long Island home in mid-April. He thought it was a cold, until he couldnt taste anything.
Once the coronavirus test came back positive, Krakower, amedical expert inchild and adolescent psychiatry,prepared himself for two weeks of misery. But now, almost three months later, he still gets those chills.He also has a cough, shortness of breath and trouble eating and swallowing.
Krakower, 40,is part of a growing group of COVID-19 patients who are suffering from its symptoms for weeks, and even months, after the standard recovery time.
Most people get the virus and after a few weeks their symptoms resolve, said Dr. Robert Glatter, emergency physician at Lenox hill Hospital in New York City. Were seeing a different spectrum where people dont recover, and they have symptoms from weeks to months.
Their symptoms arent severe enough to be hospitalized but not mild enough to resume normal life, forcing this group of people to endure the illness in limbo as they quarantine from friends, family and the outside world for months on end.
I kept thinking I was past the worst of it and then it got worse, said Krakower, unit chief ofpsychiatry atZucker Hillside Hospital inGlen Oaks, N.Y.Thats whats crazy.
Throughout his illness, he visited the emergency room and urgent care centers severaltimes. He was never sick enough to stay hospitalized, but his symptoms wouldnt get any better.
By week three, Krakower couldnt breathe, eat or talk as his throat swelled up. He spent the days coughing over the sink, sometimes spitting up blood, and the nights wrapped up in a blanket with the most intense chills of my life, something he will never forget. Quarantined in a bedroom at home, he could barely make it through FaceTime sessions with his wife, Heather, and his two young children.
I was scared, he said. I was worried I was going to lose them that they were going to lose me.
His future was uncertain until he was introduced to Glatter, who prescribed hima steroid that has shown promise in improving survival outcomes in COVID-19 patients.
Scott Krakower with his wife, Heather, and two kids.(Photo: Scott Krakower)
Dexamethasone, a common steroid used to treat inflammation, was found to cut deaths by up to one-third in a study of more than 6,000 severely ill patients, according to a team of researchers in England.
Once Krakower started to take the steroids on top of the inhaler, nebulizer, prednisone and over-the-counter medications he was already taking he noticed his violent cough start to die down.
While the steroids may have worked for Krakower, Glatter insists the same drug cocktail may notwork for everyone as eachpatient reacts to the coronavirus differently and therefore requires different medications to recover.
Krakower tested COVID-19 positive twice over the course of five and half weeks during his illness. Finally, by the sixth and seventh week, he tested negative twice. But his symptoms were still persistent.
Glatter said viral fragments or dead virus that are no longer infectious and don't show up on a real-timetest maystill triggersymptoms in the body.
"We're learning that these long-haulers are a population that often test negative. Some of these patients have never had a positive test," he said.
Glatter has patients diagnosed since early March who are still going to the hospital to seek treatment for their symptoms, most of which areongoing fatigue and muscle aches.
Window or aisle? Its the age-old travel question, and the Coronavirus may have settled it for you. Buzz60
Because these symptoms arent considered severe, Glatter says some doctors think they may be due to anxiety, or psychological and emotional stress.
Medical gaslighting does exist, and it has existed, and we really have to pay attention now that COVID-19 has created these long-haulers, he said. People who go through this for months get really anxious and frustrated and depressed and they don't know how long they can keep fighting."
Krakower is all too familiar with the feeling. He's finally reunited with his family, albeit sometimes in a mask and gloves,but he's far from who he used to be before COVID-19. A one-hour phone interview with USA TODAY left him weak and breathless.
The illness is both emotionally and physically draining, he said. When youve been sick like that for so long, its so physically taxing on you.
Contributing: Joshua Bote, USA TODAY. Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.
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The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, and the world has entered a new and dangerous phase in its spread, as daily infections rise above 150,000, the World Health Organizations director has warned this week.
Nearly half the new cases are in the Americas, with the US and Brazil between them accounting for more than a third of total infections and deaths. Brazil reached the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus cases on Friday.
Meanwhile other countries that appeared to have the virus under control, from South Korea to Germany, have reported fresh outbreaks or rising case numbers, raising fears of a second wave of infections.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was vital that the economic and social pressure to drop restrictions did not give the pandemic room to flourish.
Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and economies but the virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly and most people are still susceptible, he told a news briefing on Friday. We call on all countries and all people to exercise extreme vigilance.
Several US states, including Oklahoma where Donald Trump is set to hold his first campaign rally in months on Saturday, have reported their highest daily infection rates since the start of the pandemic.
Local public health officials have urged the campaign to reschedule the event for fear that close contact between attendees, who will not be obliged to wear face masks, could lead to more deaths.
Spiking case numbers are particularly noticeable across the south and west in states that loosened restrictions on business and daily life several weeks ago. Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Arizona saw record levels of new cases, the New York Times reported, and Texas became the sixth state to surpass 100,000 cases.
In Brazil, former health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta has claimed that the government has lost credibility over its coronavirus response. Mandetta was fired by rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro for defending physical distancing and lockdown measures.
The president described those steps as hysteria and dismissed the disease as a little flu; medical experts have detailed their despair at what they consider a calamitous response to the pandemic.
As the country spiralled into a full-blown outbreak, Mandettas replacement also quit and Bolsonaro then brought in an army general as a temporary replacement, who has named over a dozen military officers to senior posts.
Its disappointing. We doctors dont know much about war. And generals dont know much about health, Mandetta said in an interview with AFP news agency.
The last thing you want to do in an epidemic is lose the health ministrys credibility, because credibility is what gives you authority ... Its unfortunate they lost that credibility.
Even countries that have largely succeeded in suppressing the virus have reported new cases in recent days, a reminder of how difficult the disease is to bring under control.
New Zealand reported two fresh asymptomatic cases of Covid-19 in a couple who had returned to Auckland on a repatriation flight from India. Their baby, who was travelling with them, has been deemed too young for testing but may also be infected.
The countrys director-general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, said the couple were asymptomatic but the infection was detected during a routine testing programme.
Jacinta Ardern, the prime minister, had declared New Zealand Covid-free on 8 June, but that run was interrupted on 16 June when two British women, who were released early from mandatory hotel quarantine, tested positive.
The Australian state of Victoria has brought back some restrictions after recording 25 new cases in 24 hours, the biggest increase in two months.
The states premier, Daniel Andrews, said he was disappointed by the behaviour reported by health authorities, with large gatherings held at homes between families and friends despite orders to isolate. It is unacceptable that families anywhere in our state can, just because they want this to be over, pretend that it is. It is not over, he said.
Kyrgyzstan, which in May ended a state of emergency that included curfews and lockdowns, was also grappling with a fresh outbreak, Reuters reported.
The government announced it was shutting down public transport in the capital Bishkek and the routes between all of its provinces every weekend, as it reported nearly 200 new cases included the citys mayor and a member of parliament.
Neighbouring Kazakhstan, which has 25,000 confirmed cases, has introduced weekend restrictions, and shut shopping malls, parks and markets, saying hospitals in its two major cities were filled almost to capacity.
In parts of Europe however, plans for reopening are continuing. Spain is ending its state of emergency on Saturday, after 13 weeks and preparing to reopen its borders to European visitors.
However Pedro Snchez, the prime minister, warned there was no room for complacency as the country emerges into the new normality of post-pandemic life. Covid-19 has killed 28,315 people in Spain to date and infected 245,575.
He said the government was building up a strategic reserve of essential products to help Spains health system prepare for any future emergencies.
A cluster of mysterious deaths, some involving infants and children, is under scrutiny amid questions of whether the novel coronavirus lurked in California months before it was first detected. But eight weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a statewide hunt for undetected early COVID-19 deaths, the effort remains hobbled by bureaucracy and testing limits.
Among those awaiting answers is Maribeth Ortiz, whose adult son, Jeremiah DeLap, died Jan. 7 in Orange County while visiting his parents. He had been healthy, suffering on a Friday from what he thought was food poisoning, and found dead in bed the following Tuesday, drowned by fluid in his lungs.
China didnt announce its first COVID-19 death until four days later. But by DeLaps Feb. 1 funeral service, frightening stories of a deadly new virus in Wuhan dominated the news.
Everybody that knew him when they were talking to me after this all started would say, Do you think he died from that? Ortiz said.
And I said, I dont know.
She still doesnt.
Preserved samples of DeLaps lungs are among tissue from more than 40 California deaths waiting for a decision by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether to test for COVID-19. Orange County has nine of the cases, as does Los Angeles County. Kern County has identified two respiratory deaths that might suggest COVID-19, both of young women, one of whom died Dec. 21.
Interviews and internal documents show medical examiners in Shasta, Sacramento and Santa Clara counties, meanwhile, are scrutinizing the deaths of children and babies, amid growing recognition of COVID-19 infection rates in children who show mysterious inflammatory symptoms.
A positive finding in any of the cases could dramatically rewrite the narrative of COVID-19 in the United States.
Researchers tracking the virus genetic mutations peg its jump from an unknown animal host to humans as occurring in November. Chinas first documented illnesses began in early December.
It was well into March before most California coroners and medical examiners began to routinely test decedents who fell under their jurisdiction for COVID-19, using now-familiar nasal swab tests that must be done within days of death. Even then, testing is limited to a fraction of cases those who had symptoms of respiratory failure, traveled to China or died without witness.
Checking for missed cases of COVID-19 requires examining preserved tissue, a test available only through the CDC. It took months for CDC pathologists to realize the virus had already killed people in the United States in early February. At the time, U.S. health officials believed they could control the virus spread by monitoring international travelers and isolating a dozen known infected individuals in California and four other states.
DeLap, 39, worked as a house painter in Basalt, Colo., near the Aspen ski area. He returned to his inland Riverside County hometown for Christmas, and was at the home of his roommates parents in nearby Orange County on Jan. 3 when he became sick. He thought the cause was something he ate the night before. DeLap believed he was on the mend, even going for a walk Monday, but was worsening again Tuesday morning when he spoke to his mother.
He was having trouble breathing and I told him he should try and go to the urgent care, Ortiz said. He told me hed talk to me later and he went and [lay] down.
He was found dead in bed hours later, his lungs filled with fluid and his body still burning from fever.
The sudden January death of Jeremiah DeLap, 39, is among cases now considered for COVID-19 testing.
(Family photo)
The Orange County coroner ruled DeLaps death the result of severe acute lobar pneumonia, one lung so congested it had doubled in weight. But the coroner did not identify the organism infecting DeLap. The thought that it might have been the coronavirus haunted Ortiz as she heard story after story of similar deaths. DeLap was an organ donor, so four weeks ago Ortiz called the organization that received his tissue to ask if they will test it for COVID-19.
Unknown to Ortiz, the Orange County coroner harbored similar questions. DeLaps death is among nine cases from late December to March that the county has asked the California Department of Public Health to consider. The deceased range in age from 33 to 61, and include an elderly homeless man found in his RV and a young surfer who collapsed. Initial autopsies attributed their deaths to congested lungs, pneumonia or blood clots.
If the state agency agrees, the cases will be forwarded to the CDC for more review before preserved tissue is tested for COVID-19. Los Angeles Countys medical examiner has forwarded nine cases for review but county lawyers blocked the release of details. Tissue from a 10th Los Angeles death, a 17-year-old boy who died March 18, was sent two months ago to the CDC for COVID-19 testing. It came back last week positive for two other viruses: streptococcal pneumonia and human metapneumovirus.
After the CDC confirmed a Silicon Valley tech workers Feb. 6 death as the nations first known COVID-19 fatality, Newsom called on medical examiners statewide to hunt for missed cases extending back to mid-December.
But the CDC is limiting California a state of 39 million people to just eight to 10 cases a week. The state health department has stepped in as a gatekeeper between county morgues and the federal lab.
By the end of May, the state agency had forwarded only two cases to the CDC and had 40 other deaths under state review.
Such restrictions did not exist before the COVID-19 pandemic. They are new to Dr. Deirdre Amaro, the Shasta County sheriffs forensic pathologist who relies on the CDC lab for infectious disease workups when someone dies inexplicably in her rugged, deeply forested Northern California county.
Amaro was jolted this winter by the back-to-back deaths of two children, one an infant, and local accounts of other sick children. She called a Jan. 29 meeting with county health and hospital officials. She remembers someone in the room theorizing that it was a bad year for respiratory syncytial virus, usually referred to as RSV. It is a common childhood disease that seldom kills.
Since Ive been here ... we have never had sequential cases that are pediatric deaths. I do NOT want to practice forensic pathology in a setting where that is the norm, Amaro said. The emotional/psychological toll is too great.
She had already sent tissue from one of those pediatric deaths to the CDC for testing when the California health department set up hurdles. She has since sought virus testing for another pediatric death and is awaiting a decision on whether the CDC will accept the cases.
Early reports out of China and California suggested COVID-19 had very low infection rates among children.
What has emerged now, the experience weve had on the East Coast and in Europe has been markedly different, said Dr. Roberta Lynn DeBiasi, chief of the pediatric division at Childrens National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and a co-author of several studies on COVID-19 and children.
DeBiasi is among researchers who in May began documenting growing numbers of hospitalized children with COVID-19 and symptoms normally associated with an otherwise rare inflammatory illness called Kawasaki disease. Some had high fever, joint pain and rashes. Others had abdominal pain. An alarming number show organ failure and heart damage, DeBiasi said.
Amid those reports, a California health department physician called Amaro, who in addition to her own two deaths told her of others two infants sent from Shasta County to hospitals in Sacramento.
Dr. Chante Buntin, the state health department medical consultant, wrote to Sacramento Countys coroner expressing interest in infants and children who died with what might have been COVID-like symptoms, Kawasaki-like symptoms in California during the period of December to present.
Sacramento Countys coroner has sent a single case to the CDC for testing but would not provide further details.
California has no confirmed child deaths from COVID-19. The CDC in early April listed three suspected virus-related deaths of children nationwide, but has since not updated that information. The federal health agency has, however, alerted pediatricians to watch for signs of what it now calls multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C.
The California Department of Public Health did not answer questions about its hunt for child deaths, and gave only limited responses to broader questions about postmortem testing. The agency did provide an email exchange in which a state epidemiologist offered to intervene on a flood of requests from California medical examiners, health departments and pathologists seeking COVID-19 testing for both deceased adults and children.
Dr. Shua Chai told the CDC that California would narrow its criteria for testing the dead, based not on the questions arising in morgues, but to fit the number of cases the CDC lab would take.
The capacity will really help drive our prioritization, Chai said.
At first the federal agency said it could handle only three to four cases a week and that it could take as long as two months to send back results. On May 1, the head of the CDCs COVID-19 mortality team suggested the federal lab would take as many as 10 a week.
Im not saying this will be acceptable by my leadership, warned Dr. Sarah Reagan-Steiner, clinical lead on the CDCs COVID-19 mortality unit. There was no response to repeated questions sent to the CDC public affairs office over several months regarding postmortem testing.
The state Health Departments press office defended the states reliance on the CDC and the federal agencys 10-case weekly limit. Medical examiners in other states are not only testing many more dead, but using other methods such as postmortem testing for antibodies.
The state agencys press office said the CDC testing is highly specialized and requires careful validation.
Other types of testing may not provide results that are as reliable as CDC testing.
In Seattle, the King County medical examiner considers death itself as a reason to test on the spot for the virus with a nasal swab.
COVID-19 is so new as an infection, and it probably affects different people in different ways, associate Medical Examiner Dr. Sharon Yarid said. So anyone who dies basically had, you know, already some reason to be tested.
King County is scanning funeral homes for cases to test and checking blood serum from older cases for signs of COVID-19 antibodies. Family members have only to ask to have a death tested for the virus.
The liberal guidelines have led to the identification of 58 additional COVID-19 deaths, including young adults, and accounting for more than one out of 10 local deaths attributed to the virus. Thats nearly double the 29 coronavirus deaths identified under the more restrictive policies of the Los Angeles County medical examiner, though Los Angeles County has more than five times the number of COVID-19 cases. (The medical examiner handles only violent, sudden, or unusual deaths, which account for a relatively small percentage of overall COVID-19 deaths.)
Yet when it comes to testing preserved tissue, Yarid is also at the mercy of the CDC. She said she has asked the federal lab to evaluate a troubling Feb. 6 death. As of last week, Yarid said she had not received an answer.
Those frustrated by the hurdle in answering the question was it COVID-19? include family members of a man found dead on a Los Angeles bus bench in late January. The Los Angeles County medical examiner-coroners office classified the death as complications of alcohol abuse, though there was no sign of recent alcohol use.
The mans brother, who asked not to be named in order to preserve family privacy, said the medical examiner has refused repeated requests to test the body for COVID-19.
They have not, they havent really gotten off of that February, March, early April mindset that we live in an environment of testing scarcity, said the brother.
Los Angeles County supervisors cited such complaints this month in telling the medical examiners office to provide COVID-19 testing for families that ask for it. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner said the office is still working out a procedure.
Not all California medical examiners are seeking CDC testing for missed COVID-19 deaths.
So you found that there were several cases that were not identified early on ... what does that tell you? Ventura County Medical Examiner Dr. Christopher Young said. How does that add to where were at with dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic right now?
San Diego officials told The Times that a paper review of more than 700 deaths turned up none that met the states written criteria deaths from Dec. 17 to March 16, with signs of respiratory failure, fever or cough, or known exposure to COVID-19 or international travel.
San Mateo County, a part of Silicon Valley home to Californias earliest COVID-19 cases, identified one suspect death.
According to agency emails, a county pathologist checked the freezer for tissue to send to the CDC, and discovered the samples had been tossed, along with tissue from everyone else who died prior to March 11.
After spending 13 years at her school, MaST Community Charter in Northeast Philadelphia, Sophia Shaloka imagined the fall of her senior year would be the joyous culmination of growing up, laughing and learning with her classmates. But that was not to be. Its weird having such a large chapter of your life end on a random Thursday, said Sophia. When youre with people for so long, you expect a different ending. Still, there has been beauty in the pandemic. Sophia is the youngest of four children, and when quarantine was mandated, all of her siblings hunkered down at the familys home in Holmesburg. With both parents working from home and the kids all trying to work or complete schoolwork, life has been busy, and food disappears from the fridge much faster. A couple of us are in the dining room, and we have a couple people in their rooms, people just scattered everywhere, Sophia said. You almost have to rent out a desk. And then theres the extrovert challenge, the being in the house challenge. I go for walks with my mask, but it would be nice to interact with people outside of my family. Still, having everyone at home has made her family closer, for sure, with dinners together and nights by the fire pit. Were all that we have right now.
The coronavirus is crippling Tampa Bays live-music scene.
The owners of the Orpheum in Ybor City and Skippers Smokehouse in North Tampa all announced on Instagram Saturday that employees testing positive for the coronavirus or fears that staffers had been exposed to the virus forced them to temporarily shut down their venues.
Thats also why Crowbar announced it cancelled Saturdays grand re-opening in Ybor City.
The news comes after St. Petersburgs Jannus Live announced Tuesday that it temporarily shuttered three of its businesses around the outdoor concert venue the Pelican Pub, the Landing and Detroit Liquors after an employee member tested positive for COVID-19. That also meant postponing Friday nights Pirate Flag concert.
The owners of Crowbar, the Orpheum and Skippers used social media to tell their fans to stay away until further notice.
Meanwhile in Ybor City, hundreds walked around Saturday night without masks.
Nor did they wear them in bars, clubs and restaurants potentially violating Tampa Mayor Jane Castors order requiring residents who leave their homes to wear masks indoors if they cannot stay 6-feet apart. The measure took effect Friday.
On the other side of the bay, while protesters marched through downtown St. Petersburg, more patrons wore masks and sat outside.
The latest local closings comes on the heels of the states highest single-day report of positive tests, at 4,049 and the average age of those being diagnosed is getting younger.
The Orpheums owner said it closed because two employees tested positive for COVID-19. They last worked on June 13 and were asymptomatic. The entire staff was getting tested but there was no timeline yet for re-opening.
We believe we are doing the right thing in the interest of public health at this time, the owners of the Orpheum said on Instagram.
Crowbar owner Tom DeGeorge said he had hoped to be able to reopen Saturday after being closed since March. But when he learned that an employees was in contact with someone who tested positive, he said he called off the Road to Reopen event and told his entire staff to go get tested.
Were going to wait until we see these numbers going in a downward trend and then well reopen, DeGeorge said.
He lamented that, while in the waiting room to take his own test Saturday, he saw a video of a metal concert where the audience was in the mosh pit not practicing any social distancing.
He said its difficult for a responsible business to get back on track, when others are just doing whatever they want.
Skippers owners said on Instagram that they learned through contract tracing that a staffer may have been exposed to someone who tested positive. Theyve also been watching the coronavirus trends, and decided that closing was the most socially responsible thing to do.
A monetary amount, good times, delicious meals and tasty cocktails will never be more valuable than your life to us, they wrote. Therefore, we are erring on the side of extreme safety in this case.
View this post on Instagram
Urgent Update : : : Effective today and for the unforeseeable future, we are CLOSED. We will continue to post updates to social media as a reopen date becomes available. Why are we closing? : : : This morning, the Skipper's Smokehouse ownership and management have been notified that one of our employees was alerted through contact tracing that they may have been exposed to COVID-19 - this in addition to our carefully watching the numbers of positive cases and trends rise dramatically over the course of the past several days, we feel closing immediately is the most socially responsible thing for us to do to keep not only our staff but our patrons as safe as we possibly can. At this time, NONE of our staff have tested positive for COVID-19 - but, the contact trace alert is concerning to us. : : : What you can expect before we reopen? It will be required that ALL employees that work on site be tested for COVID-19 and be symptom free before returning to work. In addition to that, we will be performing extra deep cleaning processes during the closure and upon reopening. : : : We have worried this day would arrive for us and it has. There comes a time when being socially responsible and putting health, well being and safety above business as almost usual is the absolute right thing to do. A monetary amount, good times, delicious meals and tasty cocktails will never be more valuable than your life to us. Therefore, we are erring on the side of extreme safety in this case. : : : We are here to answer any questions or concerns our patrons might have - again, NO ONE has tested positive on our staff. If you have questions or concerns, you can contact us at cricket@skipperssmokehouse.com : : : We love you all so much. We appreciate just shy of four decades of your support. Now, we ask that those who disagree with this decision respect our choice to be socially responsible. Peace, Love, Good Health & Oysters
A post shared by (@skipperssmokehouse) on Jun 20, 2020 at 9:19am PDT
Other bay area businesses, such as Rollin Oats Market and Cafe and Noble Crust in St. Petersburg, have temporarily shut their doors, as well, after employees tested positive for the virus.
Before Castor dropped her mask order in Tampa, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman ordered that employees of all city businesses must wear masks.
In his Instagram post, Crowbars owner said:
I am extremely disappointed, but Id be much more disappointed with myself if I were to try and go forward in light of this new information, he wrote. Be safe out there, folks.
Times staff writers Divya Kumar and Josh Fiallo contributed to this report.
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Workplaces pose a high risk of triggering a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in Australia, which means people should continue to work from home as long as they can, a report from public policy thinktank the Grattan Institute says.
Published on Sunday evening, the report, Coming out of Covid-19 Lockdown: the Next Steps for Australian Health Care, says schools can safely remain open as long as policies are in place to reduce the risk of outbreaks.
It comes as Victoria announced it would extend its state of emergency for at least four more weeks and ramp up its police enforcement of lockdown rules after a spike in Covid-19 cases in recent days.
The rise also prompted neighbouring South Australia to reconsider its decision to reopen its border, while Queensland declared all of greater Melbourne a Covid-19 hotspot.
The report uses new modelling to suggest that reopening shops and workplaces heightens the risk of new infections, especially if people perceive the threat is over and ignore social distancing rules.
Workplaces should be reopened slowly, with as many people as possible continuing to work from home, the report says. Social distancing in workplaces is crucial and must continue to be incorporated into workplace reopening plans. Schools must be closed, and rigorous contact tracing implemented when a case is detected.
For millions of working parents, having their children at home from school is a significant burden, the report says.
It also disrupts the education of children, particularly already disadvantaged children and those preparing for exams, it says. It is a potential restriction to the spread of Covid-19 with substantial costs to society. The literature finds school closures has minimal effect on the transmission of coronavirus diseases, including Covid-19.
Once there are no longer any active cases, testing must remain a routine part of life, the report says, and current mandatory quarantining of international arrivals must also remain in place. However, it suggests quarantine exemptions could be made with other countries that also have no active Covid-19 cases.
While the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said Australia is pursuing a strategy of suppression and not elimination of the virus, the lead author of the Grattan report, health economist Stephen Duckett, said: Its really the states driving the public health response and theyre going for zero.
The report said states could only be confident of zero active cases once no new domestic transmissions had been recorded for several weeks.
If there are no local transmissions, governments can afford to allow all activity that would otherwise lead to new infections growing, the report said.
This may not amount to complete elimination, because travellers may enter with the disease, provided that they are quarantined, and care is taken to ensure that while in quarantine they do not infect anyone in the wider community. The elimination scenario is much less restrictive than the others. It would permit normal activity. A government can only afford to permit this much activity if it is confident that there really are no cases out in the community.
The report suggests people should only be permitted to move freely between states once this near elimination had been achieved.
It says the pandemic demonstrated a more effective, efficient and equitable health system is needed.
It would be a tragedy if lessons werent learned from the pandemic, the report says. We argue that Australia should not snap back to the old order, but rather that the changes that occurred during the pandemic should inform what happens during the recovery period and beyond.
Telehealth should become a central part of healthcare, and the government should address poor internet connectivity in rural and remote Australia as a priority, the report says.
In the new normal, health professionals and their patients need to assess when telehealth should be the preferred medium because of the nature of the problem, distance to be travelled, and other factors.
The pandemic had also exposed weaknesses in Australias disease-reporting system. Through the first few months of the crisis, there was no nationally coordinated approach to publicly releasing real-time data on confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths. This needed to be addressed to better respond to future crises, the Grattan Institute suggests.
The chair of the Australian Healthcare Reform Alliance, Jennifer Doggett, said many of the problems with the heath system that obstructed the response to Covid-19, including a lack of real-time disease reporting, poor oversight of the private hospital system and a lack of coordination between governments, were well known before the pandemic. Once Covid-19 subsides, Doggett said, governments must continue to listen to the experts.
One reason for the success of our Covid-19 response is that policies were informed by expert medical and scientific advice, she said. It would be great if governments paid the same attention to expert advice outside of a crisis situation.
While Australia appeared to have emerged from the initial stages of the pandemic relatively well compared with other countries, Doggett said the government must also reflect on the near misses.
Had Covid-19 arrived only a few weeks earlier in Australia, the peak risk period for community transmission would have coincided with the mass evacuations due to the bushfires, she said. This would have dramatically changed our capacity to contain the spread of the disease at this crucial early stage with potentially catastrophic consequences. Next time we might not be so fortunate.
Florida again broke its record for single-day coronavirus cases, adding 3,822 infections Friday and bringing the state total to 89,748 cases.
The state also recorded 43 new deaths and 200 additional hospitalizations. In Tampa Bay, Hillsborough and Pinellas County set new records for single-day recorded cases, adding 372 cases and 266 cases respectively.
In the past week, Florida has repeatedly hit new highs for single-day coronavirus cases. Friday was the 17th consecutive day with caseloads more than 1,000.
About a quarter of Floridas total coronavirus cases have been recorded since June 11, when the state had the highest single-day number of new cases since April.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the increasing number of coronavirus cases is because of expanded testing, especially to asymptomatic people and targeted populations who come in close contact with each other particularly farm workers.
About 1.5 million people have been tested statewide. DeSantis spokeswoman Helen Aguirre Ferr tweeted that the focus shouldnt be on the rising cases, but rather on Floridas preparedness and that the median age of people testing positive is younger.
More than 75 percent of Floridas adult ICU hospital beds are occupied, according to a WUSF analysis. More than 13,000 Florida residents and non-residents have been hospitalized because of the virus, and 3,197 people have died. Just over half of those deaths are tied to long-term care facilities, which will begin testing all staff every two weeks.
The number of average deaths per week has held steady with numbers from the start of the month. For the week ending June 18, there were 31 average deaths.
The Tampa Bay area added 864 cases Friday, 23 percent of the states daily total. There were also eight additional deaths, four in Hillsborough, two in Manatee and one each in Pinellas and Polk.
The new deaths include an 89-year-old Hillsborough woman, a 70-year-old Hillsborough man, a 74-year-old Hillsborough woman, an 80-year-old Hillsborough man, a 55-year-old Manatee man, a 68-year-old Manatee man, a 91-year-old Pinellas woman and a 73-year-old Polk man.
As of the latest counts, Hillsborough has 4,982 cases and 112 deaths; Pinellas has 3,153 cases and 114 deaths; Polk has 1,856 cases and 77 deaths; Manatee has 1,649 cases and 126 deaths; Pasco has 686 cases and 17 deaths; Citrus has 168 cases and 12 deaths; and Hernando has 158 cases and six deaths.
In countries that have mostly tamped down coronavirus, the U.S. numbers raise alarm.
It really does feel like the U.S. has given up, said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in an interview with the Washington Post.
According to the report, in countries where cases have come back, drastic measures have been taken to control the virus. In China, 150 new cases in Beijing led to sealed-off neighborhoods, mass testing and travel restrictions.
Wiles, the specialist from New Zealand, said the U.S. rollout has affected how she sees some of our top-regarded institutions.
Ive always thought of the CDC as a reliable and trusted source of information, she told the Post. Not anymore.
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But critics say that instead of tackling the crisis head-on -- perhaps with a reshuffle of his ministerial team; a shakeup of government policy; or the announcement of an inquiry -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson has engaged in a tactic of an altogether more Trumpian style. He has launched a culture war.
And while his government struggles in the face of the onslaught of Covid-19, Johnson announced the merger of two big government departments -- the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), which oversees the UK government's foreign policy, and the Department for International Development (DFID), which runs aid policy. The purpose: To fulfil a policy aim favored by the conservative right that foreign aid should be tied to the UK national interest.
Johnson's government is sitting on a thumping 80-seat majority. It could do anything it wants. Yet experts say the Prime Minister -- a former journalist who is an instinctive campaigner -- appears to be indulging in what amounts to a re-election effort four years before the date of the next poll. The mystery is -- why?
"His reflex is to go back to newspaper commentary and to write columns on statues, to seed stories in the press about trans issues, because that's a way of mobilizing his own base and to throw a hornet's nest at his opponents," Robert Saunders, a British political history expert at Queen Mary University of London, told CNN.
That base is considerably larger than it used to be, and includes many voters in areas that were formerly strongholds of the opposition Labour Party, like the former industrial towns of the English Midlands, Wales and northwest England. Many of those voters were drawn to Johnson by his straightforward electoral promise to "get Brexit done."
That promise was fulfilled when Britain officially left the European Union at the end of March, and the debate switched from an ideological "in or out" battle to the practicalities of trade and fishing rights. With Brexit largely resolved in the minds of the electorate, the Conservatives might be seeking a new way to "reinforce the impression that the Labour Party only stands for liberal, educated young people, and does not really have a sense of what is going on in middle England," said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
By stoking the divisions that emerged from Brexit, the Prime Minister's team "are hoping to keep the flame of polarization alive by generating other issues that are likely to trigger the same adversarial feelings," he added.
The polemicist
Johnson's dog-whistling added to the straightforward narrative of an island nation under siege, an effective distraction from more prosaic concerns like access to the single market. "A culture war is fundamentally about distraction," Saunders added. "You're trying to distract your opponent from issues that you don't want to talk about and move them onto issues that you do."
Pejorative language
Culture war issues are not just an instrumental technique "to shore up the base and expand it," Bale added. "Some people around Johnson literally believe this stuff and do think traditional British values are under threat from a 'cancel culture,' which they think is inimical to the traditions of this country."
Johnson announced the launch of a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which will also examine why white working-class boys fell behind in school. Downing Street policy chief Munira Mirza has reportedly been tasked with helping to set up it up.
The Prime Minister defended his aide in Parliament on Wednesday, saying he was a huge admirer of Mirza as she is "brilliant thinker about these issues."
Johnson said the new commission would learn "very fast" what changes needed to be made, according to PA news agency.
Encouraging majoritarian fears
"Johnson is a pound shop Trump, slightly more acceptable and less utterly crass," Christine Burns, a trans campaigner and author of "Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows," told CNN. "Just as Brexit emboldened people to be racist," to roll back on transgender rights at such a febrile moment "is not just emboldening people to be transphobic in their language, but also to use physical force," she warned.
The axing of the Department for International Development (DFiD) demonstrated Downing Street's preference for ideology over capacity, according to David Hudson, Professor of Politics and Development at the University of Birmingham.
"It is somewhat astonishing that it has happened right now in a middle of a pandemic [when] the government and civil service are massively stretched," Hudson told CNN. The merger, criticized by three former Prime Ministers, would lead to less transparency on how aid is spent and risks diluting DFID's poverty alleviation agenda, he said.
Johnson defended the move on Tuesday, saying: "for too long, frankly, UK overseas aid has been treated as some giant cashpoint in the sky that arrives without any reference to UK interests or to the values that the UK."
Will Johnson focus on governing rather than rule via press release as Britain's economy nosedives, the country faces "appalling levels of unemployment, and probably further waves of the pandemic?" Saunders asked.
There are one of two routes the UK could go, he added. The public's "patience for these stunts might diminish" and Johnson focusses on "talking about jobs, employment, and health policy," he said. "Or the stunts are going to have to become nastier and more divisive to hold the public's attention."
A worker administers a test to a passenger at a drive-through site to collect samples for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic testing in Leesburg, Virginia, May 20, 2020.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
One of the components of contact tracing programs public health experts deem critical to controlling the Covid-19 outbreak includes finding and testing close contacts of known positive cases.
In terms of Covid-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines a close contactas anyone whowas within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes starting two days before the onset of symptoms until the time the patient is isolated. For asymptomatic patients, or those who don't show symptoms, it would be anyone in contact with them two days before a positive specimen was collected, the CDC advises.
Family members under the same roof or close acquaintances usually fit the bill, public health and infectious disease experts say. However, coming into contact with the coronavirus can be much more nuanced, especially as large gatherings have resumed in cities across the nation where people from different regions might assemble in close proximity, increasing the risk of transmission.
"People like to think in terms of light switches of on and off, risk or no risk, but the truth is it's a dimmer switch," said Dr. Greg Poland, an infectious diseases expert and head of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group. "The more people you come into contact with, the higher the probability of coming in contact with someone who's infected."
Someone who attended a large gathering doesn't necessarily meet the general definition of a close contact, Dr.Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's emergencies program, said during a press conference at the agency's Geneva headquarters on June 8.
However, there may be situations where public health officials, out of an abundance of caution, could advise people to either quarantine or get tested, he said.
"There are any number of actions that could be taken, but by the strict definition of what risk is in the context of Covid-19, the riskiest situation to be in is to be in close proximity to a case, particularly a symptomatic case of Covid-19," Ryan said.
There are a number of high-risk situations that could increase your likelihood of Covid-19 transmission, experts say. Attending a large gathering for a prolonged period of time where people may not be wearing face coverings and are in close proximity would be considered higher risk.
Indoor gatherings with less air circulation are also considered higher risk than outdoor, experts say.
Context also has to be considered when attending mass gatherings, such as the nationwide protests for the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, where people could be chanting while not wearing masks,said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
Scientists know the coronavirus can spread through respiratory droplets that pass when an infected person coughs, sneezes or even breathes.The droplets of infected fluid can land on nearby surfaces like desks, tables or telephones and infect anyone who touches them.
"These are not just people sitting quietly outdoors listening to a Mozart concert. There is screaming, chanting, yelling. They're being sprayed with pepper spray and tear gas, all of which increase the transmission risk," Adalja said.
Adalja also said the 15 minute mark outlined by the CDC isn't necessarily a magic number and transmission can be possible in a shorter time frame, but the figure is typically used to determine where the most value would be derived during a contact tracing investigation, he said.
Where you live in the U.S. could also increase your risk as some states,likethoseintheWestandSouth, report record-breaking daily new cases figures.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to get tested if you attended an event where Covid-19 cases were increasing, especially if tests are easily accessible, said Dr. Preeti Malani, chief health officer and professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of Michigan.
Malani added that testing people at gatherings could also help public health experts determine what local transmission is like in the area. You should absolutely be tested if you went somewhere and begin developing common symptoms, like a cough, fever or shortness or breath, she said.
The best time to know whether you were infected with Covid-19 during an event would be several days after, Adalja said. Otherwise, you could still test positive, but it would take further examination to determine whether you were infected before or after a certain event.
"If you just get tested four days afterward, you could've still been incubating it, it's not necessarily you got it there, so you have to look at the timeline," he said.
Studies suggest that the virus can be undetectable within the first few days of infection, depending on the test.Research also shows that it can take anywhere from five to 12 days for people to show symptoms from thecoronavirus.
Ravina Kullar, an adjunct faculty member at the University of California Los Angeles and a member of the Infectious Disease Society of America, suggests anyone who attends a mass gathering or protest quarantine for a few days before getting a test.
"You need a high enough viral load for the test to pick it up and in those early days, one to two days, has been shown to not be that accurate," Kullar said.
