June 29 coronavirus news

Major League Baseball revealed Monday a sampling of the unique on-field rules and procedures teams will adhere to starting this week. Players and staff are required to report to their teams this Wednesday.

Here are some of the guidelines:

New non-traditional rules will be in place when the season starts including the addition of a designated hitter in the National League and placing a runner on second base at the start of each teams’ extra-inning frame.

Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based entertainment company and one of the largest circus companies in the world, has announced it will file for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US, according to a statement on the company’s website.

As part of their restructuring plans, the troupe plans to fire about 3,480 previously furloughed employees following the halt in revenue caused by the government-mandated shutdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company says it currently employs “4,000 people, including 1,300 artists, who originate from nearly 50 countries” on its official website.

Cirque du Soleil has also received $300 million in new funding in an effort to "support a successful restart, provide relief for Cirque du Soleil's affected employees and partners, and assume certain of the company's outstanding liabilities," the statement said.

The company also hopes to raise at least $20 million from its largest backers through a "stalking horse" bid.

A combination of two HIV drugs did not help hospitalized patients better recover from coronavirus infections, UK researchers reported Monday. 

The combination of lopinavir and ritonavir is being tested by several groups, but preliminary results from a large, ongoing UK study called the Recovery trial found the antiviral drugs did not help patients hospitalized for treatment for Covid-19.

How the study worked: The Recovery trial team had randomly assigned about 1,600 patients to get the combination, and compared them to 3,400 patients who got the usual care alone.

“There was no significant difference in the primary endpoint of 28-day mortality,” the team wrote on the Recovery website. About 22% of patients who got the two drugs died, compared to 21% of those who did not.

“There was also no evidence of beneficial effects on the risk of progression to mechanical ventilation or length of hospital stay,” the team added.

“Today, the trial Steering Committee concluded that there is no beneficial effect of lopinavir-ritonavir in patients hospitalized with Covid-19 and closed randomization to that treatment arm," they said.

What the study found: The results held among different subgroups of patients.

The same study has found that hydroxychloroquine did not help coronavirus patients and found that the steroid dexamethasone did help. 

Jacksonville, Florida, will not be closing its beaches for the Fourth of July holiday, Nikki Kimbleton, the city's spokesperson, announced on Monday. 

Kimbleton said the city will still hold their annual Fourth of July fireworks display this year. The city will offer six different locations for people to watch the fireworks so that social distancing guidelines will remain in place. 

What happened today: The city announced earlier today that it will adopt a mandatory face mask requirement for public and indoor locations.

CNN’s Miguel Marquez was granted rare access into a hospital in Houston that has been treating Covid-19 patients. 

Texas is among at least 10 states that are seeing a 50% or more rise in coronavirus cases compared to the previous week. Cases in Texas have jumped from about 2,000 a day to 5,000 a day.

If the current Texas trajectory continues, officials fear Houston could be the hardest-hit city in the US with numbers rivaling those in Brazil.

Here’s what the CNN team saw: 

In a letter circulated Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she has extended remote voting for the House chamber through Aug. 18 due to the pandemic.

The House of Representatives passed a rules change back in May to allow lawmakers to vote remotely. The change allowed the chamber to operate remotely for the first time in its more than 200-year history.

Classroom interaction between a teacher and students could lead to Covid-19 transmission, according to a small study by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers published Monday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The report details a case where a teacher infected with Covid-19 may have infected students after returning to the classroom while still experiencing symptoms. The teacher first had symptoms, including a headache, sore throat and fatigue, while traveling in Europe in late February. The teacher returned to school while still experiencing symptoms and taught 16 classes of 30 or less students. After the teacher’s Covid-19 test came back positive on March 1, all students were told to quarantine at home. Once the quarantine was over, 21 students from the teacher’s classes took part in the research. The students had a median age of 17.

Ten of the teacher’s classes were described as “interactive” classes, in which the teacher walked around and spoke directly with students. Out of five students who had been in “interactive” classes, two had antibody test results that suggested they had been infected. One of those students experienced symptoms for nine days, include muscle aches, runny nose and cough and the other student had no symptoms. Two other students from the five in the “interactive” classes had no serological evidence that suggested they had been infected in the past, but they had reported mild symptoms – one had fever and headache that lasted one day, and another had a runny nose that lasted one day.

Of the 16 students who participated in the non-interactive classes – where the teacher sat mostly in one location and had limited close interaction with students — seven reported symptoms, including sore throat, headache, runny nose and muscle pain. But antibody tests found no evidence of a previous Covid-19 infection. 

The authors note there are limitations to the research, including a low number of participants and the possibility that students may have been exposed to Covid-19 somewhere other than the classroom. Also, blood samples may have been collected too soon for students to have developed antibodies to the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization is sending a team to China to better understand how coronavirus started, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing on Monday.

“We will be sending a team next week to China to prepare for that,” he said.  

Tedros said he hopes the visit will lead to “understanding how the virus started and what we can do for the future to prepare.” 

Jacksonville, Florida, announced on Monday it will be adopting a mandatory face mask requirement for public and indoor locations, according to a tweet from the city. 

The order is expected to go into effect at 5 p.m. ET today. 

The city joins other parts of the state including Palm Beach County which approved a motion last week to require all residents to wear face masks in public places when social distancing is not possible. Hillsborough, Orange and Miami-Dade counties also approved similar mandates.

Florida is among at least 10 states that are seeing a 50% or more increase in Covid-19 cases compared to the previous week.

Read the tweet: