May 29 coronavirus news

Our coverage of the novel coronavirus pandemic has moved to here.

Doctors look at photos of their colleagues who died of COVID-19 after attending patients during the new coronavirus pandemic in Lima, Peru, Friday, on May 29.

The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Peru rose to 148,285 on Friday, a jump of 6,506 from the previous day, according to the country’s health ministry. 

The country also reported 131 new coronavirus-related deaths, taking the national death toll to 4,230, according to the ministry.  

Peru has the second-highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Latin America, following Brazil.

Being sick with Covid-19 around the time you undergo surgery has been linked with an increased risk of complications and death in a new study.

The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet on Friday, found that among patients who had surgery for various reasons this year and were also diagnosed with Covid-19 around the time of surgery, about a quarter died and half experienced complications relating to their lungs.

The study, conduced by an international team of researchers, included data on 969 patients who had surgery between January and March 31 at 235 different hospitals across 24 countries, and who also were diagnosed with Covid-19 either before or after their surgery. 

Almost 24% of those patients died within a month after their surgery. More than half experienced complications relating to their lungs.

The researchers noted that men 70 and older who had emergency or major elective surgery were found to be at a particularly high risk of death. It’s not clear why there seems to be an association between Covid-19 and a risk of lung-related complications after surgery, the researchers said.

It might be important to be careful about who has surgery during the pandemic, they added.

“Medical teams should consider postponing non-critical procedures and promoting other treatment options, which may delay the need for surgery or sometimes avoid it altogether.”

An open mass grave is seen at the Parque Tarumã cemetery on May 27 in Manaus, Brazil.

Brazil recorded 1,124 new coronavirus-related deaths over the past 24 hours, according to the country’s health ministry, raising the overall death toll to 27,878.

The new fatalities push Brazil’s nationwide death toll ahead of Spain, which has reported 27,121 Covid-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Brazil also reported 26,928 cases of novel coronavirus, another record high for the country, bringing the nationwide total number of cases to 465,166.

Friday is the fourth day in a row that Brazil has recorded more than a 1,000 deaths in a day.

Downtown Seattle is seen on March 12.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the state’s stay-at-home order will be allowed to expire this Sunday.

The earliest coronavirus hotspots in the United States were in Washington, but Inslee said enough progress has been made to allow more activities.

“This does not mean, obviously, that we’re returning to normal,” Inslee said. “It means that, three months to the day after we declared a state of emergency, we’re successfully moving forward.”

Inslee said counties with few cases may be able to move into phase three soon, but the earliest date would be June 3.

Pedestrians walk past an NBA store in New York City.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s Board of Governors are considering four possible scenarios to restart the suspended season.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania are reporting that Silver presented the options on Friday that owners will need to decide on before approaching the players union.

Both Wojnarowski and Charania, quoting unnamed sources, outlined four similar options:

ESPN’s Wojnarowski says the Board of Governors will vote on the proposals Thursday. Charania said Silver is targeting a July 31 restart date.

Asked about the reports, the NBA did not have a comment.

President Trump again claimed without evidence that coronavirus is “going away” and said that there may even be a cure on the horizon. 

In response to Geoff Ballotti of Wyndham Hotels speaking about consumers feeling comfortable traveling again, the President repeated one of his favorite refrains throughout the coronavirus pandemic, saying that the virus is “going away.” 

On the possibility of a cure, Trump said “it won’t be in the long distance.”

Some background: Many scientists around the world are frantically working on therapeutics, vaccines and potential treatments. 

No one knows when, or even if, any of them will pan out – or when the virus will no longer be a threat, let alone “disappear.”

Experts on viruses have also said that at the very least this virus will enter the mix of viruses that make people sick every year. 

Florida approved reopening plans for Walt Disney World and Sea World. 

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings submitted an endorsement to the state after both parks presented reopening plans to the Orange County Economic Recovery Task Force Wednesday.

Sea World will reopen on June 10 and Walt Disney World will begin the reopening process on July 11, according to correspondence from Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Combinations of antivirals, anti-inflammatories and other drugs will likely be needed to treat people with coronavirus, a team of US Food and Drug Administration scientists said Friday.

It might even be necessary to customize treatment patient by patient, the FDA team said in a review of the treatments being tested against Covid-19.

“Until vaccines and targeted drugs for COVID-19 are available, there may be a need to intervene with personalized therapeutic approaches. We are learning day after day, that patients may be affected by SARS-CoV-2 differently and that many factors influence the outcome of the disease.”

They reviewed 30 different drugs being tried out, including drugs designed to stop the virus from getting into cells, such as already-approved blood pressure drugs; drugs aimed at stopping the virus from replicating, such as the immune suppressors sirolimus and the antiparasitic drug ivermectin; drugs that control the immune system response, such as type 1 interferon; and drugs meant to block the overwrought inflammatory response to the virus, which include some rheumatoid arthritis drugs.

Different drugs could help people at different stages of the disease. Early on, it could be enough to stop the virus from getting into cells and replicating itself, Puig said. In patients with more severe disease, it will be more important to intervene in the body’s immune response to infection, which can include an overreaction known as the cytokine storm.

No drug is approved to specifically treat coronavirus infections although the FDA has given emergency use authorization to the antiviral drug remdesivir. 

The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 took a “big dip” Friday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in during a news conference.

“We do have some information for you, and that information is actually rather positive. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 actually took a big dip over the last 24 hours, down to 714,” he said. “Several weeks ago, we were well over 2000.” 

Additionally, the state has less than 100 people on ventilators for the first time since March 23, the governor said. 

He did not give an update on the number of coronavirus cases today because of “technical issues.”

The Louisiana Department of Health posted on its website: “Due to network technical issues, case and testing data could not be updated today. The data on deaths and hospitalization have not been impacted. Once resolved, LDH will update at the next noon update.”

President Trump said the US has now conducted more than 15 million Covid-19 tests.

The President then teased an announcement on new tests for tomorrow.

Trump said certain places have more tests available than people seeking them. He mentioned Florida as an example.

Patients hospitalized with Covid-19, especially in an intensive care unit, may suffer higher rates of acute kidney injury than previously thought, according to new research.

More than a third of patients treated at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the height of the outbreak there developed acute kidney injury, the researchers reported. And 78% of those admitted to an intensive care unit had kidney injury, Ruijun Chen of Columbia University and colleagues reported in the BMJ.

They said nearly 14% of those admitted to hospital and 35.2% of those in intensive care needed inpatient dialysis treatment. That is a higher percentage than seen in similar studies in China and Seattle, the researchers said.

Chen’s team looked at the first 1,000 Covid-19 patients who either went to the emergency department or were admitted to the hospital between March 1 and April 5. 

Patients with kidney damage can need intensive dialysis and may develop blood clotting. There could be a variety of reasons for the injuries, Chen’s team said. Sometimes doctors limit delivery of fluids when treating these patients, and that could damage the kidneys, they said. The virus could directly attack the kidneys, also. Plus many of the patients with severe coronavirus infections had other health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes or pre-existing kidney disease. 

The World Health Organization said it has no comment regarding President Trump’s announcement that he would be cutting ties with WHO.

On Friday, a WHO spokesperson said in an e-mail to CNN, “We have no comment to offer at this point.”

Earlier this month, Trump sent WHO an ultimatum saying he would cut funding if WHO didn’t “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days.”

On Friday afternoon, Trump said WHO “failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms,” adding that the US would be “terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs.”

Hair salons and barber shops will reopen in Los Angeles, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

Drive-in theaters, flea markets and swap meets can also reopen.

“We are eager to bolster more businesses and reunify our community,” Barger said.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the White House on Friday, May 29, in Washington, DC.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America said it opposes President Trump’s decision to terminate US relations with the World Health Organization. 

“This pandemic has demonstrated that neither national boundaries nor political positions can protect us from the spread of an infectious disease. We will not succeed against this pandemic, or any future outbreak, unless we stand together, share information, and coordinate actions,” the statement added.

WHO has not yet responded to request for comment by CNN.

Watch Trump’s announcement here:

The headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) is seen in Geneva on Friday, May 29.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global portal Friday to share Covid-19 information around therapeutics and vaccines.

The Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) “will provide a one-stop shop for scientific knowledge, data and intellectual property to be shared equitably by the global community,” WHO said in a statement. 

The pool, first proposed in March by Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado, “will ensure the latest and best science benefits all of humanity — vaccines, tests, diagnostics, treatments and other key tools in the coronavirus response — must be made universally available as global public goods,” he said. 

Tedros said C-TAP has five priorities: Public disclosure of gene sequencing research, public disclosure of all clinical trial results, encouraging governments and research funders to have equitable distribution of trial data, licensing therapeutics and vaccines to both large and small producers and promoting open technology that increases supply capacity. 

WHO is encouraging companies that develop an effective therapeutic to “contribute the patent to the medicines patent pool, which would then sublicense the pattern to generic manufacturers.”

“Science is giving us solutions, but to make the solutions work for everyone - we need solidarity,” Tedros said. 

People sit outside a cafe in Israel's Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv, Israel, on May 27.

Israel has recorded a sudden spike in new coronavirus cases after lifting lockdown restrictions, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, mostly blamed on a lack of discipline in maintaining social distancing guidelines.

The country recorded at least 101 new cases on Friday and 79 new cases on Thursday, according to Ministry of Health data, after experiencing less than 20 new cases a day earlier in the week.

The wave of new cases comes just weeks after Israel made the decision to reopen schools and most commercial enterprises. 

“This a warning siren,” Ministry of Health Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov said during a news conference held Friday.

The decision to hold the news conference during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, when government offices are closed, was a clear indication of how seriously officials are taking the spike.

In another rare move, the government will meet tomorrow, on the Sabbath, to discuss the possible re-closing of school grades seven through 12, in an effort to prevent a second wave of infections.

As of Friday evening, Israel had at least 16,987 coronavirus cases, though the vast majority have recovered. The country has 1,927 active cases, according to the Ministry of Health. In total, 284 people have died as a result of coronavirus.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands outside 10 Downing Street in London on May 28.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to US President Trump on Friday to discuss coronavirus response, according to a Downing Street statement. 

“On the upcoming G7 Summit, the prime minister and President discussed the importance of leaders meeting in the US in person if possible,” the spokesperson added.

Johnson invited Trump to take part in the Global Vaccine Summit that the UK is hosting on June 4 “to raise vital funds to save the lives of millions of children around the world,” the spokesperson said.

An Italian Navy doctor administers a Covid-19 test inside a health facility on May 21 in Tempio Pausania, Italy.

Italy recorded 516 new coronavirus infections on Friday, bringing the total number of cases to 46,175, according to the country’s Civil Protection Agency. However, officials say the number of active Covid-19 infections in the country continues to drop.

There was an increase of 87 new deaths, which is in line with daily death tolls of the last few days, authorities said. The total number of fatalities currently stands at 33,229.

Over the last day, 2,240 more people recovered from the virus, bringing the total number of recoveries to 152,844. There were 475 people still in intensive care on Friday, 14 fewer than on Thursday, according to authorities.

A troop of monkeys snatched the blood samples of suspected coronavirus patients at a government hospital in the Meerut district of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The incident happened on Thursday when a lab assistant working with the Covid-19 facility of the hospital was carrying blood samples due for testing, Dr Dheeraj Baliyan, medical superintendent of Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College and Hospital, told CNN.

The monkeys attacked the lab assistant and stole the sample box with three samples, added Baliyan.

Read more here.