August 17 coronavirus news

Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield speaks to media during a press conference at the Ministry of Health on August 17, in Wellington, New Zealand. 

New Zealand confirmed 13 new cases of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said on Tuesday.

All of the new cases were locally transmitted. Twelve of the cases were linked to existing coronavirus patients, and the 13th case remains under investigation – though it’s believed to be connected to the same cluster as the others.

That brings the country’s total number of coronavirus infections to 1,293. Of these, 90 are active.

Racing to contain a new outbreak: The fresh outbreak of cases emerged last week, ending New Zealand’s enviable run of more than 100 days without any locally transmitted infections. The new cluster has prompted New Zealand to extend a lockdown on its most populous city, Auckland, as authorities scramble to trace the source of the outbreak.

Since authorities began conducting contact tracing last Tuesday, they have identified 1,880 close contacts, most of whom are now self-isolating and have either been tested or are waiting for a test.

New Zealand has processed more than 100,000 tests in the past five days alone, Minister of Health Chris Hipkins said today.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday that the country’s election would be delayed by four weeks, to October 17, due to concern over the spread of coronavirus.

People protest the government's quarantine policies to contain Covid-19 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Monday, August 17.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Argentina on Monday to protest against the government of President Alberto Fernandez. 

At least 25,000 people marched in the capital Buenos Aires, according to the local police department. The demonstrators are protesting the government’s handling of Covid-19 and the country’s economic crisis, as well as a judicial reform bill launched by Fernandez.

Protests were also reported in other Argentinian cities, including Cordoba, Mar del Plata and Rosario. 

As of Monday, Argentina’s Health Ministry had reported a total of 299,126 coronavirus cases, including 5,814 deaths.

On Friday, Fernandez announced quarantine measures will remain in place across the country until the end of the month. 

This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.

A total of 155 Colorado College students have been placed under quarantine for two weeks after a new student arrived on campus last Friday and tested positive for Covid-19, the college announced in its weekly newsletter. 

The quarantined students have been told not to leave their rooms except to go to the restroom and only while wearing a mask, according to the newsletter.

University clusters nationwide: As schools and universities reopen for the new academic year, there are already reports of new clusters emerging at some locations – and in some cases, those schools have been forced to close again just days or weeks after opening.

More than 2,000 students, teachers and staff members across five states have been quarantined after at least 230 positive coronavirus cases were reported.

Schools in Georgia were hit particularly hard; in the Cherokee County School District, which reopened schools on August 3, more than 1,100 students, teachers and staff members are under quarantine after new cases were reported.

Read more here:

Supporters of the Cherokee County School District's decision to reopen schools cheer on faculty arriving to the district's headquarters in Canton, Georgia.

Related article More than 2,000 students, teachers and staff quarantined in several schools

Mexico recorded 3,571 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, bringing the total number of infections confirmed in the country to 525,733.

The Mexican Health Ministry also recorded 266 new fatalities, raising the death toll to 57,023.

Only the United States and Brazil have recorded more coronavirus deaths than Mexico, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

CNN is tracking worldwide coronavirus cases here:

The United States has reported 33,326 new cases of Covid-19 and 406 new related deaths so far today, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

That brings the national total to at least 5,436,539 cases and 170,458 deaths.

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

Follow CNN’s live tracker of US cases:

A healthcare worker walks past a First Medical Response trailer at a Texas Division of Emergency Management free Covid-19 testing site in Houston, Texas on August 8.

Texas reported 51 new Covid-19 related deaths, bringing the total number of coronavirus related deaths to 10,034 in the state. 

The state also reported 2,713 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases to 542,950. 

The Texas Department of State Health Services also noted:

Note: These numbers were released by the Texas Department of State 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

Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer

Los Angeles County is continuing to show progress in the fight to curb the spread of Covid-19, health officials say.

In a Monday news conference, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer revealed the daily number of hospitalizations have steadily decreased in the last month by 37%, dropping from 2,719 in mid-July to 2,388 in mid-August.

The daily number of reported cases dropped from around 3,200 in mid-July to 2,388 in mid-August, the seven-day average of positive test results dropped from 10% in mid-July to about 6% in mid-August, and the daily number of deaths dropped from a late-July average of 43 to a mid-August average of around 30.

The county is currently meeting five of the six state-enforced benchmarks: More tests per day at 181 (meeting goal of > 150), testing positivity rate at 6% (meeting goal of 20% ), and ventilator availability at 63% (meeting goal of > than 25%).

The one benchmark Los Angeles County is still not meeting, is case rate per 100,000, currently at 235 (not meeting goal of < 100).

Nineteen additional deaths were announced Monday, bringing the county total to 5,273. An additional 1,185 new positive cases were also added Monday, bringing the countywide total to 223,131 confirmed cases.

Brazil has reported at least 19,373 new Covid-19 cases and 684 deaths in the past 24 hours, the country’s health ministry reported Monday. 

The total number of confirmed coronavirus infections now stands at 3,359,570. At least 108,536 have died from Covid-19 in the country, according to the ministry’s data.

São Paulo State, the hotspot of the pandemic in Brazil, reported 3,022 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the state’s total to 702,665 confirmed infections, according to data presented today by the state government at its daily news conference.

The Kansas City Chiefs will celebrate their Super Bowl LIV title and take on the Houston Texans in the NFL’s season opener in front of spectators at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Chiefs, in consultation with health officials and the NFL, have announced a plan allowing 22% of stadium capacity (under 17,000 fans) to attend upcoming home games. Fans with tickets will also be allowed to tailgate ahead of kickoffs.

Tickets will be sold and grouped in six seats or less. 

The team says fans will be required to wear a mask at all times while at the stadium, except for when they are “actively eating or drinking.”

All staff working home games will be directed to wear personal protective equipment.  

The first game of the season is Sept. 10.

At least 24 people tested positive for coronavirus in connection with a wedding reception in Millinocket, Maine, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency announced Monday it had opened up an investigation of the outbreak associated with the reception at the Big Moose Inn in Millinocket. The gathering occurred Aug. 7.  

Maine health officials have identified 18 people who attended the reception who tested positive and another 6 people testing positive after coming into close contact with event attendees.  

All those testing positive are residents of the state of Maine. 

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer sparred with senior advisor to President Trump, Jared Kushner, on Monday asking him if he still believed the federal government’s coronavirus response represented “a great success story for the federal government” as the President’s son-in-law claimed back in April. 

“I will just press you Jared, a thousand Americans dying every day is not a success, right?” Wolf Blitzer asked.

Kushner touted the administration’s response and pointed to “a very strong rebound” in the US economy. 

“You want to keep that number as low as possible,” Kushner said, in response to Blitzer’s question. “One American dying everyday is too much but if you look at where we were back in April we had 2,500 Americans dying a day… But if you look at the case fatality rate obviously it’s gone down.”

Kushner predicted back in April that “by June a lot of the country should be back to normal” and said he was hopeful that “by July the country’s really rocking again.” 

Watch:

Lebanon has registered a record 456 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, bringing its total number of cases to 9,337, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

Earlier Monday, the caretaker Minister of Public Health Hassan Hamad said there is a need for “a courageous two-week lockdown decision” or the situation will get out of control.

He also recommended people arriving in Lebanon to self-isolate at home for a week, even if they tested negative upon arrival.

These recommendations are not binding and the government is yet to make a decision whether to implement a lockdown or not. 

This morning, Dr. Firass Abiad, head of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the main hospital tackling Covid-19 in Lebanon, said in a tweet that “Without resorting to a lockdown, the numbers will continue to rise, which will lead to exceeding the capacity of hospitals. This happened, catastrophically, in other countries. If we wait longer, and as the days go by, the gravity of the situation will be clear even to skeptics of COVID-19. Unfortunately, it will be too late.”

Lebanon has recently witnessed a spike of Covid-19 cases. This comes as the country is suffering from an economic collapse and dealing with the aftermath of the port blast that ripped through the capital killing about 170 people, wounding around 6,000 people and displacing about 300,000 people.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams holds up a mask while speaking as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp looks on during a press conference announcing statewide expanded COVID testing on August 10, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. 

The federal government is working on delays in coronavirus testing, but the country needs to lean more on prevention, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams says.

“It’s important to know that a test result that comes back seven, 10, 14 days later, does not allow us to isolate and contact trace, which is something that we feel is important to contain the virus, so we’re very cognizant of concerns about delays,” Adams said Sunday on INFocus, a Fox news magazine show focused on Indiana.

“As a public health physician, I want people to know that we feel tests are important, but we can’t test our way out of this problem,” Adams added. “We need to lean on prevention, and that’s making sure everyone’s wearing a mask, washing their hands, and watching their distance from others.”

Adams said that about 50% of the testing done in the US is either point of care “which is 15 minutes or less” to get results, or in hospitals “which is 24 hours or less.”  

“So this is a problem — it’s a problem for some labs and some people in particular. It’s a problem we’re working on, but we’re continuing to drive down those cases.” 

When asked about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments that “we aren’t doing great” compared to other countries, Adams said, “I think that two things can be true at once: it can be true there are a lot of people out there doing the right thing and also true that we need to do better.”

Adams noted that the US has not seen the more than 1 million deaths that some health experts were predicting. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t do more. We must stay vigilant,” he said. According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 170,000 Americans have died of coronavirus, although the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 90% of cases have likely been missed.

Adams blamed the spike in numbers on spring and summer fever, which has people wanting to “hang out” with friends and family. “What I would say to folks is, we can get through this… and get to a place where we can safely reopen. But if people just ignore those basic public health measures, we’re going to continue to see spread increasing and we’re actually going to lose choices and lose freedom, because we’re going to be forced to shut down,” he said.

Adams said Indianapolis “has been on our radar screen” because more than 10% of people tested for coronavirus in Marion county have had positive test results — in the red zone. The same goes for Fort Wayne’s Allen county. 

“We want the people of the state to know we are concerned but also want them to know we have the tools to turn this around,” he said. 

Before becoming surgeon general, Adams was Indiana’s state health commissioner. 

A sign alerts residents to a mobile COVID-19 testing site set up on a vacant lot in the Austin neighborhood on June 23, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. 

Illinois Department of Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike reported that 1,773 people were newly diagnosed with Covid-19 over the last 24 hours. 

At least 12 additional people died due to Covid-19, Ezike said.

The total number of individuals in Illinois who have Covid-19 is 207,854 and there have been 7,756 Covid-19-related deaths, said Ezike.

At least 1,544 people are hospitalized due to Covid-19, with 340 of those hospitalized in the intensive care, and 126 on ventilators, Ezike said.

Remember: These numbers were released by the Illinois public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the briefing room of the White House on August 14, 2020 in Washington, DC.

The US has had the worst response to Covid-19 of any major country, Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Institute of Health, said Monday.

“I think it’s pretty fair to say we may have the worst response of any major country,” Jha said during a Center for American Progress webinar. While he said that it could be argued that Brazil’s response has been as bad or worse, competing with Brazil for that title is “not where you want to be.” 

Jha said that the US has gone from believing that coronavirus was a hoax, to believing it was the flu, to now thinking the pandemic is nearly over because a vaccine is two months away. 

“One message,” he said. “The vaccine is not two months away and we are nowhere near done with this pandemic.” 

In January, the federal government and others denied the existence and importance of the virus, Jha said. In February, the country “largely flew blind,” with no testing capacity and no idea about the spread across the country. March brought awareness of how bad the situation was, but a response that was far too slow, costing lives. 

In April and May, when the country was supposedly shut down, he said, large parts of the country still allowed much activity and the White House was sending mixed messages about what needed to be done. June brought reopening “way too soon, in way too many places, and way too aggressively,” he said. 

Looking at the country today, while what Jha called the “super hot zones,” like Texas, Florida and Arizona, are starting to cool down. But too many cases are still being generated, he said.

Jha sees more challenges and “muddling along” in the coming weeks and months, with the pandemic being fought on a state-by-state basis. “What I’m worried about is that there will continue to be no real national strategy,” he said. “When things are bad in Florida, you can’t really protect New York or New Jersey or Washington state. We are all in this together.”  

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx speaks to reporters in the rotunda of the State Capitol in Lincoln, Neb., Friday, Aug. 14, 2020, after meeting with Gov. Pete Ricketts and community and state health officials.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said Monday that she wished the US shutdown had looked like Italy’s, which was under a total lockdown.

In a roundtable discussion hosted by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Birx said she has learned what Americans are willing to do to combat the virus, and that we must meet people where they are.

She explained how the strategy worked for Arizona, where people were still able to go to malls and restaurants at reduced capacity, but gyms and bars were closed, mask mandates were implemented and gatherings of more than 10 people were prohibited. 

“People were interacting, people were out, but people, by just not doing those careful things, were able to drop the cases significantly, probably by more than 80%,” said Birx. 

She said that kind of behavioral change is something every American can do.

“Tens of thousands of lives can be saved if we wear masks, and we don’t have parties in our backyards … taking those masks off.” 

“Somehow we always believe our family’s safe and our friends are safe. You cannot tell who’s infected with the virus,” Birx added. “You need to keep your mask on.”

People get tested for COVID-19 at a free walk-up testing site on July 11 in Atlanta.

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported 1,843 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday. The statewide case total is now 238,861.

Georgia DPH reported 25 new deaths. The total number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the state is now 4,727. 

There were also 46 new Covid-19 related hospitalizations recorded.

One thing to note: These numbers were released by the Georgia Department of Public Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

A lab technician sorts blood samples inside a lab for a COVID-19 vaccine study at the Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Florida, on August 13.

Vaccine skeptics and vaccine hesitancy can hurt efforts to protect Americans if and when a coronavirus vaccine comes out, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday. But he said the experience with getting people to trust in treatments and preventions for HIV/AIDS provide a roadmap for gaining trust.

“Society is not just jumping around waiting to get a vaccine. It’s not,” Fauci added. “We have got to change that.” 

Fauci said clinical trial networks that get into the community, get the word out and generate enthusiasm will play a big role in improving the trust of Americans in an eventual coronavirus vaccine.

“Those same clinical trial groups that we built for HIV are now being used for the vaccine trials,” he said. 

Fauci said once the right distribution of people have been enrolled in trials, and the trials have shown a vaccine is safe and effective, the next step is to win confidence. That’s the time to “reach out the community, to be transparent and explain to them the individual and societal benefits,” he said.

People in their 70s are being enrolled as volunteers in coronavirus vaccine trials because “there is no age limit” for these tests, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

Early stage safety trials only accepted volunteers who were 18 to 65, but more advanced trials need a broader study group, said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Now that some studies have moved into later phases, “we are already enrolling people who are in their 70s,” Fauci said during a briefing with the American Society for Microbiology.

Calgary Flames' Dillon Dube is chased by Dallas Stars' Mattias Janmark during second-period NHL Western Conference Stanley Cup hockey playoff action in Edmonton, Alberta, on August 16.

The National Hockey League announced that it has received no new positive Covid-19 test results during the past week inside the league’s two hub cities of Toronto and Edmonton. 

Every member of each team’s traveling party was tested on a daily basis between Aug. 9 and Aug. 15. 

Since entering its two hub city “bubbles,” the league has not returned a positive test from any of the teams participating in the NHL’s return to play. 

The NHL season returned to play with 24 teams participating and has now progressed to the Stanley Cup Playoffs with 16 teams still competing.