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More than half of all California counties are now moving forward with plans to further reopen their economies despite data showing the state recorded its second highest number of daily Covid-19 deaths on Tuesday.
According to California Department of Public Health, there were 102 deaths reported in the state Tuesday, bringing the total number of deaths to 3,436.
The last time California reported more deaths in one day was on April 21. On that day, 115 deaths were recorded statewide, the most deaths California has seen in a single day since the pandemic began.
Some more context: As of Wednesday evening, 32 of California’s 58 counties attested to meeting guidelines that ensure the stability of the virus in their area, and have been approved to move forward by the Department of Public Health.
Orange County in Southern California, on the other hand, reported its single worst day for deaths and new coronavirus cases.
The county reported 249 new cases and 10 deaths Wednesday, raising the county’s totals to 4,742 cases and 98 fatalities.
Only two days after Yellowstone National Park partially reopened following coronavirus restrictions, a woman was injured by a bison Wednesday afternoon.
The victim had been following the wild animal too closely, according to a statement from park spokesperson Linda Veress.
The woman – whose name was not released – was knocked to the ground and received attention from park medical staff, but did not go to the hospital. Veress said the woman did not follow the park’s guidance to stay at least 25 yards away from all large animals.
On May 12 – while the park was still closed – a different visitor entered the park illegally and fell into what Veress described as a “thermal feature” near Old Faithful. She had to be taken by air ambulance to a burn center for treatment.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday released guidance for the 2020 hurricane season, taking into account the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 59-page document details what the agency — and its partners — will need to consider when responding to hurricanes, given the pandemic, like practicing social distancing at shelters and following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect personnel and survivors.
For example, the agency — in coordination with state and local partners — will develop “localized mitigation strategies, including temperature and health screenings, increased cleaning and disinfection requirements, and reduced personnel footprints for social distancing,” when considering new disaster facilities.
FEMA says it will also address the use of face coverings and guidance for individuals instructed not to enter FEMA facilities, like people who have tested positive for coronavirus.
While the document focuses on hurricane season preparedness, the agency notes that “most planning considerations can also be applied to any disaster operation in the COVID-19 environment, including no-notice incidents, spring flooding and wildfire seasons, and typhoon response.”
The document also acknowledges that FEMA is responding to the pandemic and as a result, the agency “is preparing additional personnel and physical space to meet expanded [National Response Coordination Center] incident support requirements,” and planning for contingencies.
The NCAA has announced that Division I football and men’s and women’s basketball players can participate in on-campus voluntary athletics activities beginning June 1.
The decision was made by the NCAA Division I Council in a virtual meeting Wednesday, as long as all local, state and federal regulations are followed.
The status of voluntary athletics activities in all other sports and summer access activities in football and men’s and women’s basketball will be determined via electronic vote.
Ventura is the latest county to receive the green light to proceed forward into the “expanded phase two” of reopening in California.
As California counties move one by one further into reopening, Gov. Gavin Newsom is warning that Los Angeles is “likely a few weeks behind” the rest of the state. About a quarter of all California residents live in Los Angeles County.
Los Angeles is “seeing some good signs which are very encouraging,” Newsom said in a round table discussion with entertainment leaders. He added that Los Angeles “remains a challenging part of the state.”
More counties reopen: In Central California, Kern and Kings counties were also granted permission to allow retail shopping and in-restaurant dining.
Meanwhile, San Diego officials said they are submitting a plan to move forward, but California Public Health noted the county has seen a marked rise in its infection rate, which jumped nearly 40% in the past two weeks.
In the Bay Area, Solano County leaders have submitted required information requesting permission to take the next step and say they anticipate approval.
Newsom expects to release guidelines next Monday allowing counties meeting defined criteria to continue moving even further into the process of reopening.
Protesters staged a mock funeral at Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, to protest the White House coronavirus response.
Dozens of cars lined the street honking near the White House, while protesters lined body bags in the park.
Some protesters held signs criticizing President Trump, including one sign reading “How many graves can one President dig?”
The “Day of Mourning” protest was organized by multiple activist and political action groups, including Center for Popular Democracy, MoveOn, Indivisible and Care in Action.
The US Census Bureau released the first results from its new “pulse survey” today in response to the pandemic. In the April 23-May 5 period, 74,413 households responded.
Here are some of the key findings:
EMPLOYMENT
FOOD INSECURITY
MENTAL HEALTH
OPTING TO DELAY MEDICAL CARE
HOUSING INSECURITY
HOMESCHOOLING
Expectations for loss in income have been most extreme in Hawaii, New Jersey and Nevada.
Food scarcity has been at the highest levels in Mississippi, Illinois and Louisiana.
Orange County in Southern California reported its highest number of deaths and new cases in a single day on Wednesday with 10 deaths and 249 confirmed cases.
At least 4,742 cases and 98 deaths have been reported in the county, according to the Orange County Health Care Agency (HCA).
Data from the Orange County HCA shows that 30 of the county’s 98 deaths were from skilled nursing facilities. Of the 4,742 confirmed cases, 514 were from skilled nursing facilities and 360 were jail inmates.
Earlier this month, crowds of more than 2,500 people gathered in Huntington Beach to protest Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order to temporarily close all Orange County beaches to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
In a bipartisan vote, the Illinois House of Representatives voted 81 to 27 to remove Rep. Darren Bailey for refusing to wear a mask during the special session Wednesday.
People in Illinois are required to wear face coverings in public places where a 6-foot distance isn’t possible under an order from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Bailey, a Republican representing the 109th district in Southern Illinois, has been a vocal opponent of Pritzker’s stay-at-home order to stem the spread of Covid-19. In April, he filed a lawsuit in Clay County Circuit Court challenging the order.
A judge ruled that Bailey is personally exempt from the stay-at-home order, but on Wednesday, the Illinois House voted to adopt rules that include a requirement for members, staff and visitors to wear a face-covering over their nose and mouth during the special session.
Bailey said he would not comply with the rules, and Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, a Democrat, made a motion to remove Bailey from the House floor.
CNN has reached out to Bailey for comment. One representative voted present on Wednesday.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said dine-in eating, hair and nail salons, barbershops, churches and pools will be open on Friday.
“I am lifting the stay-at-home order. We are shifting to a safer-at-home recommendation,” he said. “The state’s overall indicators remain stable, however, the increases in the Covid-19 cases signal a need to take a more modest step forward in phase two than originally envisioned.”
Some places will remain closed, including bars, nightclubs, gyms, and indoor fitness facilities, he said. Mass gatherings will be limited to no more than 10 people indoors, and 25 people outdoors.
Coronavirus testing in the United States is disorganized and needs coordination at the national level, experts said in a new report released Wednesday.
Right now, testing is not accurate enough to use alone to make most decisions, including who should go back to work or to school, the team at the University of Minnesota said.
“It’s a mess out there,” Mike Osterholm, head of the university’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), which issued the report, told CNN.
The number of tests that have been completed – numbers widely reported by states and by the White House – show only part of the picture, the report reads.
“Pandemic messaging needs to move beyond ‘Test, test, test!’ mantras, as the current testing reality is complicated and depends on a cascade of interconnected factors — and our approach must be strategic,” the report reads.
The report also says that antibody tests should be used only with caution. These tests check the blood for evidence of an immune response to the virus, and indicate that someone has been infected for some days or has even cleared an infection. They are most useful for identifying donors of plasma used to treat patients or for deciding on how to manage patients when standard diagnostic tests are negative, the report says.
The report calls on the US Department of Health and Human Services to appoint a panel to oversee and organize testing. “The panel should include representatives from public health, clinical laboratory, and medicine; the laboratory testing research and development, marketing, and product support industries; ethicists; legal scholars; and elected officials,” it says.
President Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen will be released early from prison on Thursday and is expected to serve out the remainder of his sentence at home as coronavirus continues to spread behind bars, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Cohen will be released on furlough while he completes the process of being moved to home confinement, the person said.
Cohen was serving a three-year sentence in New York after pleading guilty to lying to Congress, tax charges and two campaign finance charges for facilitating hush money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump.
The Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons has released scores of non-violent and vulnerable inmates early as the pandemic grew in the corrections system. Cohen had anticipated being released earlier this month but his early release was delayed as the agency’s conditions for early release amid the pandemic were narrowed.
Cohen’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
The New York Police Department says 5,521 members of the department have returned to full work duty after recovering from coronavirus.
There are 128 members still out sick with the virus. Of those members, 100 are uniformed members and 28 civilian members, according to the NYPD.
More than 1,000 uniformed members remain on sick report, which accounts for 2.9% of the departments uniformed workforce.
So far, 5,691 members of the NYPD have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the department.
President Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he believed Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is doing a “very good job” leading the agency and denied ever discussing the CDC at Tuesday’s lunch on Capitol Hill with GOP senators.
When asked about reporting that Trump was complaining with Redfield with Republican senators, Trump replied, “No I wasn’t complaining, I don’t know who gave you that, that’s fake news,” he said.
When asked whether Redfield was going a good job, he responded, “Yeah. I do, I do.”
Trump said he was “not blaming CDC” for “something going wrong with one of the tests.”
This comes after an interview Sunday, where White House trade adviser Peter Navarro publicly blamed the CDC for the testing failures in the United States. Navarro argued that the top health agency, under Redfield, “let the country down” on testing.
Some background: Earlier today, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported that Redfield’s fate at the agency is in question after Trump privately excoriated the CDC to Republican senators during a lunch on Capitol Hill.
Trump did not bring up or single out Redfield during his lunch with GOP senators, multiple sources familiar with the discussion told CNN. The director was also at the White House on Monday for a meeting.
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced a $300 million award to city and county governments to help reimburse them for expenses incurred in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the governor, the funds, which are part of the CARES Act funding, will be administered by the state’s Department for Local Government (DLG) and can be used for reimbursements of expenses “necessary to comply with public health guidelines and protect Kentuckians.”
The funding will be allocated to city and county governments based on approximate population size as recorded in the most recent census data, Beshear said.
There have been at least 1,547,353 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 93,119 people have died, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
Johns Hopkins reported Wednesday 18,785 new cases and 1,198 deaths.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
President Trump says his course of an unproven drug to prevent coronavirus ends soon.
Some context: Trump has defended his decision to take the drug, despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration that it shouldn’t be used outside a hospital and clinical setting.
Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the drug was safe to use.
“Hydroxychloroquine has been a drug that has been in use for 65 years for lupus, arthritis, and malaria. It has a very good safety profile, but as with any drug and as with any prescription, it should be given by a doctor to a patient in that context, so no one should be taking this without a prescription from their doctor,” McEnany said during a White House briefing.
Missouri unveiled a new online coronavirus dashboard Wednesday, as the governor promised it would provide accurate information.
Why this matters: States like Florida and Georgia have received criticism over whether their Covid-19 reporting has been released in a misleading way.
Parson did not directly mention other states Wednesday, instead focusing on what he said were inaccurate projections about the virus.
“A lot of think tanks were sending information that really turned out to be more guesstimates than anything,” Parson said.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said restaurants in Illinois can offer outdoor seating to patrons with certain additional precautions as part of phase three of reopening.
“We are by no means out of the woods, but directionally, things are getting better. And because of these advances, we are able to make some modifications to allow more activity during Phase 3 of our reopening plan Restore Illinois,” he said in a statement from his office.
Phase three is expected to begin May 29, and bars and restaurants will be able to resume operations so long as tables are six feet apart and away from sidewalks, and masks and distancing measures for staff continue to be followed, the governor said.
Other precautions and guidance will be issued, he said.
“The Governor’s action to allow for expanded outdoor dining options will benefit many restaurants at a time when every dollar counts and provides a glimmer of light at the end of this long, COVID-19 tunnel,” Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, said in a statement.
