Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has moved here.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta hosted a global town hall on Thursday evening answering your questions about what the future holds for the fight against Covid-19.
The hosts discussed the latest news about the pandemic as global cases surpass 17 million, including more than 667,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Guests on the show included US President Donald Trump’s coronavirus testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir and White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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The Australian state of Victoria reported 672 new coronavirus cases and eight deaths on Friday, according to the state’s premier Daniel Andrews.
The total number of infections in Victoria, the second-most populous state in Australia, now stands at 10,577, with 112 deaths, according to Andrews.
Door knocking campaign: Andrews said he has no announcements to make about harsher lockdowns but he would not rule out more frequent door knocking to check if people are staying at home.
More than 130 people – one in four of those who’ve tested positive – were caught defying stay-at-home orders, according to the Premier.
Authorities have increased manpower to crack down on isolation dodgers, with 34 teams of officers deployed to knock on the doors of infected individuals.
“Both public health experts from the Victorian team and those on a national level will spend the next day or two looking at the data at the six-week point, the halfway point of the stay-at-home orders that we put in place,” Andrews said. “That analysis will happen today and tomorrow, and then we’ll have more to say.”
Though Friday’s figures are slightly lower than the previous day, Andrew said that it is “almost impossible” to see Victoria’s economy open up any time soon.
Mexico will participate in the phase 3 trial of a Covid-19 vaccine from the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Pasteur’s Mexico branch, according to Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Sanofi’s Mexico branch confirmed to CNN that Mexico would be a part of its phase 3 trial.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said further details would be provided later.
“Our main goal is that Mexico takes part in many protocols for phase three as soon as possible. This is the first one, and it’s great news for Mexico,” the statement said.
The foreign minister also clarified that the deal is with the company’s Mexico branch, not France. “The agreement is not with France; it’s with Sanofi,” Ebrard said. “We’ve worked a lot with Sanofi in Mexico. Sanofi was vital in 2009 [with] the influenza vaccine.”
China recorded 127 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the National Health Commission said on Friday morning.
That marks the third consecutive day that the country has reported over 100 new infections.
Among the new cases, 123 were locally transmitted, with 112 confirmed in the far western region of Xinjiang and the rest in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
The country also recorded a further 11 asymptomatic infections on Thursday.
The Buffalo Bills have sent their rookies home from the team’s facility following five positive Covid-19 tests in the last week, both NFL Network and ESPN reported Thursday.
“As we were informed by medical experts as training camp opened, we expected to have positive tests for COVID,” the Bills said in a statement posted on its website and on Twitter on Thursday.
“With 5 since the beginning of the testing period last Tuesday, we decided to take a disciplined, proactive, and preventative approach to hopefully eliminate additional cases within our team,” the statement said.
Some background: Testing has been a key component in bringing players back. As players enter camp, they will be tested. Players have to have two negative tests within 72 hours in order to participate in training camp.
Thereafter, the union and the league have agreed to test each player daily for at least the first two weeks of training camp, eventually moving to an every-other-day schedule once a team maintains a 5% positivity rate.
Those tests will be conducted by the company BioReference Laboratories.
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested it is impossible to know whether the US is nearing the end of the pandemic or still in the early stages, and that the outcome depends very much on Americans’ behavior going forward.
“It’s impossible to predict because when we were looking at the increase and then going down, if it had gone all the way down to baseline… then you could say ‘if we hold tight, we may be in the 7th or 8th inning,’” Fauci said, when asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper where the US currently sits on the arc.
“But that didn’t happen,” he added.
Fauci went on to say the length of the pandemic will depend on how well Americans wear masks, socially distance and adhere to other actions that can slow and stop the virus’s spread.
“The thing we need to do is we need to put out all the stops to get it down to baseline and to keep it there by doing the things that we’ve been talking about, and that I’ve been talking about consistently,” he said.
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With millions of parents preparing for the upcoming academic year under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci said “we should try as best as we possibly can to get the children back to school.”
Fauci instructed parents to be vigilant because of the varying levels of the infections across the country. This advice from the nation’s top infectious disease doctor comes hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida advocated for parents to be able to choose either in-person or distance learning as districts in the state weigh their options for the upcoming school year.
Florida is one of the states that has recorded a spike in Covid-19 cases.
“So if you have a level of virus that really is very, very low, then you could likely proceed with impunity, depending on the local situation, with getting the child back to school with no restrictions. If you’re in an area where there is some virus involved, the local authorities may do things like try to modify the school situation,” Fauci added.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to a claim from the head of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s multi-billion effort to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, that a coronavirus vaccine could be 90% effective.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called this claim from Moncef Slaoui “a very optimistic estimate,” he said tonight on CNN’s global coronavirus town hall.
Some context: In his first television interview, Slaoui said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the vaccine was about 90% effective.
Slaoui spoke Thursday with CNN while touring a Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial site in Savannah, Georgia. He’s a former GlaxoSmithKline executive who began his position with Operation Warp Speed in May.
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“It shouldn’t be acceptable” that the US is so backlogged on coronavirus testing, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services said during CNN’s coronavirus town hall.
He tried to defend the state of testing in the US after large testing companies such as Quest Diagnostics reported it can take seven days or more to run tests and get results back to people.
“Nationally, about 25% of tests are point-of-care so that’s about 15 minutes. Another 25% are done in local hospitals … That’s generally a quick turnaround,” Giroir said.
But he conceded there is a backlog that’s rendering some coronavirus testing practically useless.
“Where we really talk about it is the big commercial labs and there’s no question they’ve been strained, and Quest has been strained more than the other commercial labs,” he said.
“Our data right now, and this is the worst week, is that 56%, are back within three days, 76% are back within five days,” he added.
Pooling samples from four or five people can speed things up and save resources, Giroir said.
“I’ve said and I’ve said before — I want the perfect test. I want it to be perfectly sensitive and specific and back within 15 minutes. That’s why we’re really working towards more point-of-care but again it is a work in progress, because of the tremendous demand,” Giroir said.
By September, Giroir said he expects half of all tests in the US to be point-of-care tests, but he warned, “You can’t test your way out of this.” People must also use masks, avoid crowds and avoid being indoors with others, he said.
Mexico’s health ministry reported 7,730 new Covid-19 cases Thursday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 416,179.
The country also reported 639 new fatalities from the virus, bringing its death toll to 46,000.
Some context: Mexico holds the fourth highest number of coronavirus deaths worldwide, just behind the UK which has 46,084 deaths.
Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said that by September, half of all Covid-19 tests will be new “point of care” coronavirus tests that promise rapid results.
Giroir said that data shows that right now across the US, 56% of tests are “back within three days, 76% are back within five days.”
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The coronavirus pandemic continues to have deleterious effects across the US as every corner of society struggles to cope.
Here are the latest headlines on the pandemic:
Arizona is in a better spot today than it was several weeks ago, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said in a news conference today.
“We are headed in the right direction,” Ducey said. Covid-19-like illnesses in the emergency room, intensive care and hospital bed usage, ventilator usage and the percentage of positive test are all trending down, he added.
The latest numbers: There has been a downward trend in Covid-19 cases since early July, Ducey said. Last week, Arizona averaged 2,533 new Covid-19 case per day and had a positivity rate of 11%. For comparison, Arizona had 5,439 new Covid-19 cases on June 29, according to the Arizona coronavirus dashboard.
Arizona has a total of 170,798 Covid-19-like cases and a total of 3,626 deaths, Ducey said
According to Arizona’s coronavirus dashboard, the state reported 2,525 new Covid-19 cases and 172 new deaths on Thursday.
Note: These numbers were released by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the Arizona Department of Health Services, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
A coronavirus outbreak has been confirmed at four Costco locations in the Bay Area, according to a statement from Santa Clara County.
A total of 31 cases have been confirmed within the past two weeks at four Costco stores in Gilroy, Mountain View, San Jose, and Sunnyvale. The number of confirmed infections at each store ranged from four to 13.
The county began an investigation at these locations after an outbreak was reported at various Costco locations, according to the statement.
Clusters of the virus have not been confirmed at any other Costco locations in Santa Clara County, according to the statement.
The county is working closely with Costco to protect the safety of workers and customers at each location.
“This includes assisting Costco in identifying close contacts and advising on appropriate disinfection measures, ensuring that appropriate testing protocols are being followed, as well as measures to prevent workplace transmission,” the county said.
By the numbers: As of Thursday, Santa Clara County has a total of 9,731 confirmed cases and 190 deaths.
House members are complying with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandate during tonight’s votes.
Republicans all appear to be wearing masks, although a couple members, including Rep. Jim Jordan, have worn them incorrectly, under their noses.
Jordan could be seen bumping elbows with another member and greeting colleagues on the floor before leaving after casting his vote.
The UK government announced new restrictions in Northern England “to stop the spread of Covid-19.”
“This is in response to an increasing trend in the number of cases per 100,000 people in the area,” a release from the government read on Thursday.
People in the following areas will not be allowed to “mix with other households (apart from those in their support bubbles) in private homes or gardens” after data showed that “transmission among households is a key infection pathway in the area,” the government said.
The new measures apply to the areas of:
The new rules allow people from these neighborhoods to still go to bars and pubs, but “two households should not go to hospitality together.”
“The spread is largely due to households meeting and not abiding to social distancing. So from midnight tonight, people from different households will not be allowed to meet each other indoors in these areas,” UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in the release.
The UK recorded its highest daily rise in Covid-19 cases in more than a month Thursday, according to data from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
The DHSC reported 846 new coronavirus cases, the highest rise since June 28 when there were 901 new infections. There were also 38 deaths reported Thursday, compared to 36 deaths on June 28, DHSC data shows.
The government also announced lifting of restrictions in other local areas, such as in Oadby and Wigston, and on Aug. 3, restaurants, cafes, bars and hairdressers in Leicester City can reopen.
The government also urged anyone celebrating Eid al-Adha this weekend to “follow the new rules and protect the ones they love.”
Argentina reported its highest daily death count from Covid-19 Thursday, according to its health ministry.
The ministry reported 153 new deaths, its highest increase since the outbreak began. Argentina’s death toll from the virus is 3,441.
Argentina also reported 5,938 new Covid-19 cases, bringing its total to 185,373.
Some context: Argentina has the sixth highest number of cases in the Latin America region, behind Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Brazil, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The University System of Maryland (USM), which includes 12 institutions and three regional higher education centers, is making Covid-19 testing mandatory for all on-campus students and employees.
Anyone returning in-person to a USM institution now has to be tested for Covid-19 within 14 days prior to arriving and will need to provide university officials with confirmation of a negative test result, according to a release from the university system.
Some of the universities will be conducting this testing on their own as students and employees arrive on campus, while others are beginning the fall semester imminently, within 14 days of the new guidance issued today.
Anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 prior to arrival will not be allowed on campus, and will only be allowed back after a required period of isolation has been met, per public health guidelines, the release said.
A San Diego gym that was shut down after operating in defiance of the county’s health order to close last week has experienced an outbreak of coronavirus.
According to the San Diego Health and Human Services Department, The Gym in Pacific Beach defied health orders and remained open despite an order to close indoor operations to prevent spread of coronavirus. The business was sent a letter last Thursday and told to close immediately, but it didn’t shut until days later on Monday, county health officials said.
While it wasn’t clear how many cases were linked to the gym, county health officials said an outbreak is considered three or more cases from different households stemming from a specific location.
According to San Diego Health Officer Wilma Wooten, any business or entity that violates the order faces a misdemeanor and a fine of $1,000 dollars.
County officials said they need to step up contact tracing efforts and crack down on egregious violators. They’ve issued multiple letters to local businesses, including gyms and restaurants.
The facility did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.
San Diego County has reported a total of 28,287 Covid-19 cases and 552 deaths.
At least 124 new cases of coronavirus were reported in Hawaii on Thursday.
That’s a 14% increase over the previous record high set Wednesday and is the state’s fifth record day in the past week.
Government officials in Hawaii are considering rolling back part of their reopening plans to respond to the surge. Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said Wednesday he wanted to close all bars on the island of Oahu for three weeks because some recent Covid-19 clusters have been traced to bars.
The proposal is awaiting Gov. David Ige’s approval.
