September 15 coronavirus news

US President Donald Trump continued to claim that coronavirus will “go away,” claiming it might disappear without a vaccine, while speaking at an ABC town hall on Tuesday

Trump also claimed “herd development” can help the disease dissipate, and some doctors, including Scott Atlas, have argued for that strategy.

Herd immunity: When pressed about his claim that the virus might go away without a vaccine, Trump apparently argued for herd immunity, a strategy that has become controversial in recent weeks.

Trump then said that Dr. Scott Atlas, a coronavirus adviser to the administration, said herd immunity could have been helpful from the beginning of the pandemic, though Atlas has claimed he has never advised the President for a herd immunity strategy.

“You look at Scott Atlas, you look at some of the other doctors that are highly, from Stanford, look at some of the other doctors. They think maybe we could have done that from the beginning,” Trump said.

Atlas’ comments: In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, Atlas said he had never recommended herd immunity as a strategy to fight the virus.

“I have never, literally never, advised the President of the United States to pursue a strategy of herd immunity, of opening the doors and letting people get infected,” Atlas told the BBC. “I have never advised that, I have never advocated for that to the task force, I have never told anybody in the White House that that’s what we should be doing.”

US President Donald Trump contradicted his administration’s top health advisers call for Americans to wear facial masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, saying during a town hall hosted by ABC on Tuesday that “there are a lot of people that think that masks are not good.”

Trump was asked why he hasn’t supported a national mask mandate and why he doesn’t wear one more often.

Trump said he does wear masks “when I have to.” He also blamed Democrats and Joe Biden for not instituting a national mask mandate, as though Biden was in office.

“They said at the Democrat(ic) National Convention they’re going to do a national mandate. They never did it, because they’ve checked out and they didn’t do it. And … Like Joe Biden. They said ‘We’re going to a national mandate on masks.’ … But he didn’t do it. He never did it.”

Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for a specific example, Trump said waiters.

“They come over, they serve you and they have a mask. And I saw it the other day, where they were serving me and they’re playing with mask. I’m not blaming them … they’re playing with the mask … they’re touching it and then they’re touching the plate. That can’t be good,” Trump said.

Then Trump cited early statements from federal officials discouraging mask use, as though top federal health officials have not underscored to the public that science has evolved on the issue.

In July, Trump said he was “all for” wearing face masks, despite refusing to wear one in public. 

The deadly coronavirus may have circulated in the United States as early as December, about a month earlier than believed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to researchers with UCLA.

Their study, published last Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant increase in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illnesses as early as the week of December 22.

The first known case of Covid-19 in the US was thought to be a patient in Washington who had visited Wuhan, China, according to the CDC. The case was reported in January.

Dr. Joann Elmore and colleagues looked through nearly 10 million medical records from the UCLA Health system, including three hospitals and 180 clinics.

Elmore said she started the search after receiving a number of emails from anxious patients in March through her clinic’s patient portal at UCLA. Patients kept asking if the cough they had in January could have been Covid-19.

Read the full story here.

An Australian Defence Force (ADF) member broke his quarantine restrictions in Sydney Tuesday by allowing a female guest in his hotel room, according to New South Wales police.

The ADF member was under mandatory hotel quarantine after returning from an overseas deployment, police said.

ADF officers were “conducting security” at the Sydney hotel around 12:45 a.m. “when they heard a female voice in the room.”

The 26-year-old ADF member and 53-year-old woman, who was a guest staying at the hotel, were each fined 1,000 Australian dollars ($730) for failing to comply with coronavirus restrictions, NSW police said.

ADF officers later escorted the woman from the quarantine area and asked her to check out immediately and get a coroanvirus test before self-isolating at her home. The ADF member remains in hotel quarantine.

President Trump “failed to tell the public the truth that he knew” about the novel coronavirus in February, veteran journalist Bob Woodward told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Speaking on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Woodward said the President knew the seriousness of the virus in February. Woodward went on to say that Trump could have warned Americans about the virus during his State of the Union speech that month.

Trump told Woodward he knew how deadly the virus was, telling the journalist on Feb. 7, “This is deadly stuff.” In March, Trump admitted he kept that knowledge hidden from the public.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

In a new clip aired on “Anderson Cooper 360” Tuesday, Woodward asked Trump on March 19, “Was there a moment in all of this, last two months, where you said to yourself — you know, you’re waking up or whatever you’re doing and you say, ‘Ah, this is the leadership test of a lifetime?’”

“No,” Trump replied.

Woodward asked, “No?”

“I think it might be, but I don’t think that,” Trump said. “All I want to do is get it solved. There are many people that said that to me. They said, you’re now a wartime President.”

CNN’s Caroline Kelly contributed to this report.

Watch:

President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a news conference at the White House in Washington on Thursday, September 10.

President Trump insisted that he didn’t downplay the coronavirus but rather “up-played it in terms of action taken” at ABC’s town hall set to air in full Tuesday night.

Responding to a question from an undecided voter at ABC’s town hall, Trump contradicts his own statements to journalist and author Bob Woodward where he said he “wanted to always play it down.”

Trump said last week that he was a cheerleader for the country and didn’t want to create a panic responding to the comments he made to Woodward.

“The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country, I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say,” Trump said on Sept. 9.

The assistant secretary of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, accused the media of being dishonest about the coronavirus pandemic and reiterated talking points about Covid-19 that President Trump has pushed for months, including that schools should reopen for in-person learning and that very few children are affected by Covid-19.

“I just wish that the media would get honest about its coverage of Covid,” MCance-Katz told embattled Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo in the HHS “Learning Curve” podcast Friday. “For children, this is not a life-threatening illness.”

McCance-Katz, who was appointed to SAMHSA by Trump in 2017, acknowledged that children do get the severe form of the virus “in rare cases,” but said “with a great, great majority of children this is not a serious illness,” something Trump has also repeated for months.

“And when we put them in school with safety measures in place, why can’t they go to school?” she burst out at one point in the interview.

Many studies have shown children do get Covid-19 and do die from it. They also can spread the virus to others. The American Academy of Pediatrics says more than 500,000 children have been diagnosed with the infection.

“So, lost in all of this response to Covid and nonstop 24/7 horrors of Covid and if you can’t find something to talk about, it appears to me they make things up. It just does,” McCance-Katz said at another point in the interview, referring to media coverage of the pandemic.

McCance-Katz also expressed dismay with the way states have tried to handle the surging pandemic.

“There was no agreement to this nonstop restriction and quarantining and isolation and taking away anything that makes people happy,” she said. “You can’t go to a movie, you can’t go to a football game.”

McCance-Katz, a psychiatrist with a doctorate in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale, argued at one point that the shutdown last spring was too severe.

She argued that getting the economy and schools reopened is integral for Americans’ mental health.

Nurse Lina Acevedo holds the plasma donated by a man who recovered from COVID-19 on August 14 in Bogota, Colombia.

A new study finds some evidence that infusions of convalescent plasma may help severely ill coronavirus patients survive better. 

Patients given the plasma treatments at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City were a little less likely to die and a little less likely to get worse in the hospital than patients not given the treatment, researchers reported Tuesday.

The US Food and Drug Administration has given emergency use authorization to the use of blood plasma for treating coronavirus. It’s an old approach. The idea is that the blood of survivors of a viral disease, in this care coronavirus, has antibodies and other factors that can jumpstart the immune response of someone more newly infected.

Dr. Nicole Bouvier and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai looked at the cases of 39 patients with severe or life-threatening Covid-19. About half got plasma and the rest did not.

About 28% of those not treated needed more oxygen as time went on, compared to 18% of those treated with plasma, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

The treatment also seemed safe enough. “Among the 39 convalescent plasma recipients, no serious adverse events were judged to be directly caused by convalescent plasma transfusion,” the team wrote.

There are at least 6,601,337 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 195,637 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

So far on Tuesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 47,685 new cases and 1,144 deaths.

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

Medical grade masks such as N95 respirators may not fit female and Asian health care workers as well as their male, Caucasian counterparts, researchers in Australia reported Tuesday.

It’s an especially important question because of the coronavirus pandemic and the researchers recommend more consistent testing of masks for health care workers, rather than having each worker check the fit.

Britta von Ungern-Sternberg from the Perth Children’s Hospital and colleagues reviewed data and studies going back to 2003 on how well filtering facepiece respirators fit, and found the masks passed fit tests just 85% of the time for women, compared to 95% of the time for men.

They also found these rates were lower among Asians, (84%), than Caucasians, (90%). Fit test pass rates were particularly low in Asian females, with an average fit pass rate of 60%, they reported in the journal Anaesthesia. How well a mask fits is more important than the how well the material it is made of filters the air, the researchers said.

Health care workers are more likely than other people to become infected with coronavirus, the team noted. Inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) is sometimes to blame, and poorly fitting masks and respirators can be a factor.

The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health standards requires N95 masks used in the US to meet a fit of 95%, defined by a fit test panel. The team notes that the dimensions of that test panel come from a group in which women and Asian people are underrepresented.

The researchers also compared mask “fit checks,” when a health care worker checks their own mask to make sure it’s fitting properly, to “fit tests,” which are more involved and costly but yield a more accurate assessment. Health care workers are supposed to check their masks every time they are used, but the researchers do not recommend replacing fit tests with fit checks.

Qualitative fit testing involves releasing sprays that test bitter or sweet test agents. If the mask-wearer cannot taste the bitter or sweet test agents, the mask is determined to fit. Quantitative fit testing involves actually measuring the concentration of substances inside and outside the mask to determine how well the mask fits and filters particles.

Researchers believe they have found evidence that the novel coronavirus may have been circulating in the US as early as late December, about a month before the current timeline from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

Their study, published last Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found a statistically significant uptick in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illnesses as early as the week of Dec. 22.

The first known case of Covid-19 in the US was thought to be a patient in Washington who had visited Wuhan, China, according to the CDC.

Dr. Joann Elmore and colleagues looked through nearly 10 million medical records from the UCLA Health system, including three hospitals and 180 clinics. Elmore said she started the search after receiving a number of emails from anxious patients in March through her clinic’s patient portal at UCLA. Patients kept asking if the cough they had in January could have been Covid-19.

“With the outpatients, I found a 50% increase in the percentage of patients coming in complaining of a cough. It came out to over 1,000 extra patients above the average of what we would typically see,” Elmore told CNN.

The number of patient visits to the ER for respiratory complaints, as well as the number of people hospitalized with acute respiratory failure between December 2019 and February 2020, were all up compared to records from the past five years. The uptick in cases started in the final week of December.

“Some of these cases could have been due to the flu, some could be for other reasons, but to see these kinds of higher numbers even in the outpatient setting is notable,” Elmore said.

Elmore hopes this research shows that real time data collected on diseases like this could potentially help public health experts identify and track emerging outbreaks much earlier and potentially slow or stop the spread of disease.

Dr. Claudia Hoyen, an infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center who did not work on the study, also believes it’s possible Covid-19 may have been in the US much sooner than first realized.

Kristian Andersen, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, doesn’t, however. “We know from the SARS-CoV-2 genetic data that the pandemic started in late November / early December in China so there’s absolutely no way the virus could have been spreading widely in December 2019. From the same genetic data we know that widespread transmission didn’t start in the United States until (around) February 2020,” Andersen said in an email.

“The paper is picking up spurious signals and the hospitalizations are more likely from flu or other respiratory diseases,” Andersen wrote.

Health agents of the City of Rio de Janeiro walk in an alley of Favela da Mangueira on September 3.

Brazil’s health ministry reported 36,653 new Covid-19 infections and 1,113 new coronavirus-related deaths on Tuesday.

That brings the country’s total number of coronavirus cases to 4,382,263 and raises the death toll to 133,119.

According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, Brazil is the third-worst hit country in the world in terms of cases, behind only India and the United States.

Brazil is second-worst in terms of deaths, with only the US having suffered more coronavirus fatalities so far.

It might not be until 2022 when the world can begin thinking about returning to “pre-Covid” life, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, chief science officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva, said Tuesday.

“We’re looking at 2022 at least before enough people start getting the vaccine to build immunity. So for a long time to come, we have to maintain the same kind of measures that are currently being put in place with physical distancing, the masking and respiratory hygiene,” said Swaminathan, speaking to reporters during a virtual meeting hosted by the United Nations Foundation.

“Those will have to continue after the vaccine starts getting rolled out, because we need 60% to 70% of the population to have immunity before you will start seeing a dramatic reduction in transmission of this virus,” Swaminathan said. “We also don’t know how long these vaccines will protect for — that’s the other big question mark: How long does immunity last? And it’s possible that you will need a booster.”

Swaminathan added that health officials are currently looking to control the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, rather than eliminate it at this point.

Swaminathan added that she doesn’t think the coronavirus will become a seasonal virus as time goes on, but instead we could expect to see “ups and downs” in cases and transmission.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced Tuesday he is extending the city’s outdoor dining program until December. It was originally set to expire Oct. 31.

This means restaurants can continue to use private outdoor spaces as well as public spaces on streets and sidewalks, Walsh said during a briefing. 

Restaurants will be able to use electric heaters without a permit as long as the cords don’t cross the sidewalk,” the mayor said.

The latest numbers: Boston reported at least 51 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total to approximately 16,245 cases in the city, Walsh said. There were two deaths over the weekend, bringing the total number of deaths to approximately 757. 

The positive Covid-19 test rate in Boston is 1.6%, down from 1.7% last week but Walsh encouraged residents to continue adhering to mask and social distancing guidance to avoid a spike in numbers. Walsh said 2,700 Boston residents were tested every day on average last week, including college students.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before a House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on July 31 in Washington.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said “it’s just a matter of time” before the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial resumes in the United States. 

The trial went on pause worldwide last week while doctors looked into the illness of a Phase 3 clinical trial participant who received the vaccine and became ill. 

“It would be unusual to completely stop a trial on the basis of one single adverse event,” Fauci told CNN on Tuesday afternoon. 

The study participant who became ill is enrolled in a trial in the UK being run by the University of Oxford, which is working with AstraZeneca on the vaccine, since they developed.

The UK arm of the trial has already resumed. In its information for trial participants, the university mentions that study volunteers “developed unexplained neurological symptoms including changed sensation or limb weakness” and that “after independent review, these illnesses were either considered unlikely to be associated with the vaccine or there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine.” 

Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said doctors leading the trial sites in the US will be told to look out for similar symptoms. 

“You have to be extra special careful and watch out to see if it happens again, and then if it does, it becomes an entirely different situation,” he said.

Sondra Wolfe speaks during an interview with CNN affiliate KCCI. Her husband died of Covid-19.

After her husband died of Covid-19, Sondra Wolfe wants people to see the human lives behind the numbers.

She described her husband, Mike, as a great father, grandfather and husband. She said losing him is leaving a big hole in their family and community.

“He took care of all of us. He was just an all around great guy,” Wolfe said.

She said it is frustrating that President Trump and other federal leaders did not act on the severity of the pandemic earlier.

“Other countries have this under control and are protecting their citizens, and that they’ve made this political and about an election and about ratings, just makes me angry. This is about people and lives,” she said.

“It is not going away,” she added. “It is not political. It is a health crisis and we need to do what we can to take care of each other.”

She urged people to wear masks and have empathy, saying that simple action could save lives.

“If you would pass this on to somebody else, how would it make you feel. If your selfishness was responsible for somebody’s death,” Wolfe said.

Watch:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced 87 Covid-19 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the highest number of deaths reported in one day since early May. 

He clarified that while the deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, it doesn’t mean the deaths occurred in that time frame. About 83% of the deaths occurred within the last month, while the rest happened before then, he said. 

DeWine said there have also been at least 1,001 new Covid-19 cases – bringing the total to approximately 139,485 cases with a 3.6% positivity rate. There have been at least 4,506 total deaths reported in the state.

The governor said that in a recent conversation with university presidents in Ohio about the return to campus, many said that the major issue they are facing is large student gatherings without masks. DeWine encouraged students to wear their masks in any social situation and to remain outdoors whenever possible.

On the economy: DeWine also announced the launch of a new work program meant to help those lost their jobs during the pandemic find new positions. The program, which will first launch in Cleveland, will pair each person with a coach that will identify their strengths and provide any additional job training that is needed, he said.

The state is currently working with 30 employers on the job program and will provide job fairs to connect applicants and companies, he said.

Note: These numbers were released by the state of Ohio, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

US stocks were mostly in the green at the end of Tuesday. While the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite added another day of gains, the Dow finished flat.

Here’s where things finished:

The market had started the session higher following positive news about China’s economic recovery, and some better-than-expected economic data.

Remember: As stocks settle after the trading day, levels might still change slightly.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber speaks during an interview in Miami Beach, Florida, in June.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis moved Miami-Dade County into phase two of the reopening plan yesterday – and today Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber fired back in a scathing letter.

Gelber blamed the state for failing to implement an “effective and sufficiently staffed contact tracing program” in Miami-Dade County and for sending mixed messages regarding mask use. 

“As we reopen, our positivity rates are actually worse than they were the last time we reopened,” the letter said. “So the only way this doesn’t become déjà vu all over again, is if we do something different.” 

Gelber urged DeSantis to improve contact tracing, to consider using a digital contact-tracing app and to mandate masks statewide.

CNN has reached out to the governor’s press office for comment.

New York state on Tuesday reported a Covid-19 infection rate of 1%, according to a news release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The 1% rate was derived from the 73,678 Covid-19 tests reported to state authorities on Monday — 766 of which were positive, the release said. 

The latest Covid-19 positivity rate follows 38-straight days of a rate below 1% in the state. 

New York also reported 11 new Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday. So far, New York has recorded 445,714 people who have tested positive for Covid-19 and 25,405 people who have died.

One thing to note: These numbers were released by New York state, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.