Dr. Fauci: I have 'a very good relationship' with Trump
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What you need to know
The US surpassed 4 million Covid-19 cases. The country added 1 million known cases in just 15 days as some states reported record-breaking numbers.
President Trump has canceled the Jacksonville, Florida, component of the Republican National Convention.
The Trump administration and Pfizer have reached a deal to produce 100 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine in the US. It will need emergency authorization from officials before it can be distributed.
Brazil’s government has claimed that the local epidemic is “under control” despite tens of thousands of new cases being announced daily.
Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has move here.
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96 employees at seafood processing plant test positive for Covid-19
From CNN’s Jennifer Henderson
Ninety-six employees at a seafood processing plant in Seward, Alaska have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.
The company, OBI Seafoods, said most of the employees have not experienced any Covid-19 symptoms and none have been hospitalized, the press release said.
The infected employees were taken to Anchorage to isolate where they will be provided medical care, monitoring, security and housing.
Employees who tested negative will be placed under quarantine in Seward and will be monitored and tested every three days until no additional positive cases are identified.
The first case was discovered after a plant employee, who had sought medical care for a non-Covid 19 related issue, tested positive for the virus. The company then tested all 262 plant employees, implemented isolation protocols and began contact tracing.
CNN has reached out to OBI Seafoods for comment.
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Australian Defense Force to assist with contact tracing in Victoria as 300 new cases are reported
From CNN's Sandi Sidhu
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews speaks to the media during a press conference on July 23 in Melbourne.
Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
A total of 300 new novel coronavirus cases have been detected in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, the state’s premier announced Friday.
Of the 300 cases, only 51 are from a known source with connections to previous cases.
Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters that health authorities had struggled to conduct contact tracing interviews with around 25% of people who had tested positive, as they were unable to contact them.
To ensure that contact tracing interviews are conducted on the same day, twenty-eight teams from the Australian Defense Force will be dispatched to go from door-to-door with health officials, Andrews said.
Before the military support teams are sent to individual homes, Andrews said that authorities would attempt to telephone first. If the call goes unanswered then they will visit the home.
Andrews warned that if the person was not at home when teams arrived, they could be subject to fines for breaching lockdown orders.
The military personnel who have been sent to Victoria State has been bolstered to 1400.
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Structural racism is a large driver of the disproportionate number of Covid-19 cases among Latinos
From CNN Health’s Jen Christensen
Counties that are predominantly Latino account for a disproportionate number of Covid-19 cases in most regions of the United States, with the exception of the South, and structural racism is in part to blame, according to a new study.
In general, the Latino/Hispanic community has been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19. While Latinos account for 18% of the US population, in June the community accounted for one in three of all confirmed Covid-19 cases in the US.
Latinos also had among the highest age-adjusted rates of Covid-19 related hospitalizations and in June made up one in five of all confirmed Covid-19 deaths.
For the study published Thursday in the Annals of Epidemiology, researchers looked at data on Covid-19 cases in deaths at the county level. In the Northeast, majority Latino counties have more than 63% of coronavirus cases and more than 66% of the deaths. In the Midwest, these counties have more than 31% of the cases and more than 22% of the deaths. In the West it’s more than 75% of the cases and more than 73% of the deaths.
These numbers are likely an undercount, the researchers said, because Latino communities, particularly in low-income areas, are less likely to have access to Covid-19 testing.
Rodriguez-Diaz hopes that public health leaders can use this work to inform decisions about which areas need to increase access to testing and access to language-appropriate education materials about Covid-19. The study also argues that all states need to expand Medicaid.
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Mexico reports at least 8,400 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the highest number yet
From journalist Karol Suarez in Mexico City
A nurse supplies medicine for a Covid-19 patient at Hospital General Leon on July 23, in Leon, Mexico.
Leopoldo Smith/Getty Images
Mexico’s health ministry reported a new daily record in coronavirus cases Thursday, logging 8,438 new confirmed infections in 24 hours.
The ministry also said there had been 718 new deaths from the virus.
The country’s total number of confirmed coronavirus infections is now 370,712, while the death tolls stands at 41,908, according to the ministry.
Mexico has the world’s fourth highest Covid-19 death toll, trailing the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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We should have been clamping down not opening up, Bill Gates says
From CNN Health’s Shelby Lin Erdman
Americans should have clamped down on public gatherings instead of opening up, global philanthropist and coronavirus vaccine funder Bill Gates said Thursday on CNN’s Global Town Hall Coronavirus: Facts and Fears.
Going to bars is one of those activities, he said.
Coronavirus cases are surging across parts of the United States and hundreds of people are now dying again every day from the deadly virus.
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Here's what Bill Gates says he learned from the Covid-19 pandemic
When asked what he learned from the Covid-19 outbreak, philanthropist Bill Gates said that testing needs to be “10 times faster.”
Gates said he plans to invest in testing for future pandemics.
“We will invest — and I know the US government and other governments will — in having vaccine platforms that get us very rapid results. Likewise, next time we’ll be able to scale up diagnostics 10 times faster than this time. And antivirals and antibodies, we’ll be able to do those more quickly,” he said.
Gates continued: “It’s sad that it took this, you know, these deaths, the economic pain, the divisiveness that we still aren’t sure how quickly it will end, but they are indeed a priority and the potential to solve these things is absolutely there. That’s why I was excited in 2015 that even if tens of billions had gone into these things, this is exactly the kind of thing that could have been stopped before it did significant damage.”
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Bill Gates addresses QAnon and says he hopes "the conspiracy stuff dies down"
CNN
Despite what hordes of conspiracy theorists online may believe, Bill Gates, one of the world’s most magnanimous philanthropists, is not responsible for causing the coronavirus pandemic, he said today.
Gates was specifically asked on CNN’s global coronavirus town hall about the fringe group known as QAnon, which claims that dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse, among other theories.
Followers also believe there is a “deep state” effort to annihilate President Trump.
Earlier this week: Twitter removed thousands of accounts linked to QAnon which has become notorious for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation online.
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” Twitter’s safety team said late Tuesday in a tweet. “In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service.”
More than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks, according to Twitter. It also expects that additional actions it is taking to limit the reach of QAnon activity on its platform could affect 150,000 accounts worldwide.
QAnon began as a single conspiracy theory. But its followers now act more like a virtual cult, largely adoring and believing whatever disinformation the conspiracy community spins up.
CNN’s Rishi Iyengar contributed to this report.
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A coronavirus vaccine will likely be multi-dose, Bill Gates says
Early data on a coronavirus vaccine shows that it will take more than one dose to protect people from the virus, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates told CNN tonight.
Gates, who along with his wife Melinda, runs the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which pledged up to $100 million in February to help contain the coronavirus outbreak around the world.
These funds have also been used to help find a vaccine for the virus, limit its spread and improve the detection and treatment of patients.
Gates said that his foundation is funding not only the first generation of vaccines and the capacity for those, “but also a second generation that will be ready four to six months later that may get us closer to 100% protection or 100% transmission reduction.”
“So there’s a lot of uncertainty in the vaccine enterprise, which is hard to explain, you know, when people want to summarize is the vaccine miracle on its way,” Gates added.
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Here's what the next year will look like, according to Bill Gates
Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes there could be some advances in testing and therapeutics in the next year.
“So I think by the end of the year, therapeutics will be making a big difference,” he said.
Gates said by the first half of 2021, the first round of vaccines could be approved.
“Then by the end of 2021, if people are willing to take the vaccine, we’ll be able to stop the transmission in the rich countries and maybe within nine months after that in the world at large,” he said.
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Reopening schools could result in the spread of Covid-19 to older people, Bill Gates says
CNN
One of the real problems that could occur as schools reopen this fall for in-person learning is the spread of Covid-19 to older people, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said.
Gates’ comments follow new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on education and childcare that favor the opening schools, saying children don’t suffer much from coronavirus, are less likely than adults to spread it, and suffer from being out of school.
Gates was heartened over the news that “there’s likely to be money for schools on a bipartisan basis in this next bill, because funding some of that and spreading best practices there will mean we can reduce the education deficit.”
More on the CDC guidelines: The new CDC guidelines posted Thursday do recommend that local officials should consider closing schools, or keeping them closed, if there is substantial, uncontrolled transmission of the virus.
The CDC has been promising new guidelines for more than a week, after demands from President Trump that the agency alter its recommendations for opening schools. They were posted on the agency’s website Thursday afternoon with little public notice and no explanation of what has been changed.
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Bill Gates calls the Covid-19 infection rate in the US "deeply troubling"
CNN
Microsoft founder Bill Gates called the coronavirus infection rate in the US “deeply troubling” and doesn’t suspect things will get better soon.
Helping to find a vaccine: Gates said on June 25 that he’s aligned with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, on his prediction that there will be a viable vaccine by the end of the year, or early 2021. He said he and Fauci are in constant contact.
Here's the latest coronavirus update from Colombia
From CNN's Maria Ramirez Uribe
Colombia’s health ministry reported 315 new coronavirus deaths Thursday, raising the country’s total to 7,688. The daily figure is the highest number that Colombia has reported so far in the pandemic.
The ministry also reported 7,945 new cases Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases to 226,373.
This comes the same day that Colombia’s capital added five more parishes to its list of those on lockdown.
Around 5 million people, from 13 parishes, are now on lockdown in Bogota.
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Convention official describes chaos after Trump pulls the plug
From CNN's Jim Acosta
Evan Vucci/AP
A convention official described chaos inside the Republican National Committee after President Trump pulled the plug on convention activities in Jacksonville, Florida.
The official described the situation as “a multimillion dollar debacle and think of where that money could have gone,” noting the funds could have been better spent on fighting the virus.
The official went on to say that some convention staffers simply don’t know what to do now. The official added there were some questions whether all campaign staffers scheduled to work the event would actually show given concerns about the virus.
This official said a key moment in the decision to scrap Jacksonville came when the local sheriff said adequate security could not be provided for the convention given the pandemic.
That sheriff, the official said, has close ties to other local officials in the area who were all becoming more concerned by the day about hosting the convention.
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DOJ watchdog report finds lack of staffing contributed to Covid-19 outbreak in California prison
From CNN's David Shortell
The Justice Department’s internal watchdog found that a federal prison in California, where nearly 1,000 inmates have tested positive for coronavirus, was slow to implement safety measures and lacked adequate staffing to confront the growing pandemic.
At Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County, California, a nationwide order to restrict the movement of prison staff wasn’t fully implemented for more than two weeks because of a staff shortage — possibly allowing workers to bring the virus inside prison walls, a review released Thursday by the Justice Inspector General’s office found. Two staff members who showed up for work in late March with coronavirus symptoms made it past a weak screening process, and one inmate who had complained of coronavirus symptoms on March 22, wasn’t isolated or tested for days.
The review of Lompoc represents the first official scrutiny of the federal prison system’s handling of coronavirus after months of dire warnings from advocates and politicians that more needed to be done to protect the vulnerable prison population. Ninety-eight federal inmates have died since the start of the pandemic, including four at the California prison.
In April, as the number of positive inmate cases across the federal system jumped towards 500, the inspector general’s office announced it would begin a series of remote inspections of a selection of the Bureau of Prison’s 122 facilities. The watchdog office has since surveyed over 38,000 prison employees nationwide and conducted phone interviews with staffers as well as a review of documents and data at 16 sites. The report on Lompoc, as well as a second report on FCC Tuscon in Arizona, are the first to be released, with more expected in the coming months.
In an interview with CNN in April, the director of the Bureau of Prisons called confronting the pandemic the most challenging situation the federal prison situation has been confronted with in decades.
The Bureau of Prisons has taken a wide range of steps since the virus was first detected — shutting down visitations, instituting quarantines for all new inmates temporarily moving all of the country’s 150,000 federal inmates into near-isolation.
Attorney General William Barr also directed prison officials to expand programs to release certain vulnerable inmates early into home confinement in an effort to protect them from the virus and thin out the population of overburdened facilities.
While the report released Thursday found that the Bureau of Prisons surged resources to an office that considered inmates for early release —cutting down processing times from months to just two weeks — the application of the new abilities to release prisoners early as a result of the pandemic was “extremely limited” at Lompoc. Only eight inmates had been transferred to home confinement under the new programs by mid-May, while more than 900 inmates had been sickened by the virus there, according to the inspector general review.
For those that remained bars, their access to medical treatment was limited by a severe staffing shortage. When the outbreak hit Lompoc, medical staffing at the prison was at just 62%. The prison’s ability to screen inmates for coronavirus symptoms was negatively impacted as a result, the report concludes. The Bureau of Prisons has since dispatched additional medical staff as well as correctional officers to prisons facing staffing shortages, including Lompoc.
Seventy percent of Lompoc staff surveyed by the inspector general’s office also said that staff needed more personal protective equipment, and 36% said that inmates needed more hygienic products — despite masks and hygiene kits being handed out by the prison weeks into the pandemic.
By contrast, no inmates have tested positive for coronavirus at the federal prison in Tuscon whose response to the pandemic was detailed in the second report released by the inspector general on Thursday.
That report found that adequate staffing levels and empty housing units that could be converted to quarantine space allowed the facility to prevent the introduction of the virus from the outside world. Still, 77% of staff surveyed by the inspector general’s office at the Tuscon prison said they wanted more protective equipment.
BOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Pelosi says Trump has been "the biggest failure, practically in the history of our country"
From CNN's Haley Byrd
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed President Trump’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, saying Thursday night that he has been “the biggest failure, practically in the history of our country.”
During an interview with MSNBC, Pelosi also responded to Trump’s decision to cancel convention activities in Jacksonville, Florida.
Pelosi added that the coronavirus pandemic is “rolling like a freight train.”
She criticized Republicans and the White House for struggling to finalize a proposal for the next round of stimulus legislation. The California Democrat said they are “in total disarray” and the slipping timeline for introducing a bill has “gone beyond the pale.”
Pelosi claimed that all Republicans care about “is what’s happening at the corporate boardroom table.”
“There is a very big difference here,” she said. “They really don’t intend to meet the needs of the American people, and they will be fully exposed.”
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Tennessee governor to roll out fall school plans next week
From CNN’s Janine Mack
Tennessee Governor's office
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he plans to roll out school reopening plans on Tuesday.
The Tennessee Department of Health has reported 86,987 total cases of coronavirus and 925 deaths since the pandemic began.
These figures include an increase of 2,570 cases and 37 deaths in a single day, according to the department.
“Wearing a face covering when in public is a simple but effective way for us to each do our part and help stop the spread of Covid-19,” Lee said.
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New CDC guidelines come down hard in favor of opening schools
From CNN’s Nick Valencia and Maggie Fox
New US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on education and childcare come down hard in favor of opening schools, saying children don’t suffer much from coronavirus, are less likely than adults to spread it, and suffer from being out of school.
But the new guidelines posted Thursday do recommend that local officials should consider closing schools, or keeping them closed, if there is substantial, uncontrolled transmission of the virus.
The CDC has been promising new guidelines for more than a week, after demands from President Trump that the agency alter its recommendations for opening schools. They were posted on the agency’s website Thursday afternoon with little public notice and no explanation of what has been changed.
They start with an unsigned statement on “the importance of reopening America’s schools this fall.”
The CDC said scientific studies suggest that Covid-19 “transmission among children in schools may be low.”
“International studies that have assessed how readily Covid-19 spreads in schools also reveal low rates of transmission when community transmission is low,” the organization said.
More details: The CDC statement says extended school closures harm children.
“It can lead to severe learning loss, and the need for in-person instruction is particularly important for students with heightened behavioral needs,” it reads.
The new guidance notes that children often get food, mental health care, speech language therapy and other services at school.
Other guidance takes into account the risk of transmission in schools and from schools. Many medical experts have said it’s not safe to open schools while coronavirus is spreading in a community. The guidelines take note of these arguments.
The guidelines suggest that school administrators consider keeping children in cohorts or pods to reduce the risk of spread. They also encourage the use of social distancing, hand hygiene, face masks and other measures to control spread – and incorporating these measures into school curricula.
“There is mixed evidence about whether returning to school results in increased transmission or outbreaks,” the guidelines note, and reference studies done in other countries that have taken various approaches to reopening schools.
“It is important to consider community transmission risk as schools reopen. Evidence from schools internationally suggests that school re-openings are safe in communities with low SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates.”
The guidelines recommend against screening all students for coronavirus.
“CDC does not currently recommend universal symptom screenings (screening all students grades K-12) be conducted by schools,” the guidelines read. “Parents or caregivers should be strongly encouraged to monitor their children for signs of infectious illness every day,” they add. “Students who are sick should not attend school in-person.”
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Bolivia postpones elections as coronavirus cases continue to rise
From CNN's Radina Gigova and Abel Alvarado
Bolivian Supreme Electoral Tribunal president Salvador Romero
Alzar Raldes/AFP/Getty Images
The President of Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Court, Salvador Romero, announced on Thursday that the new date for the country’s presidential election will be moved to October 18 with a possible second round on November 29, so that proper coronavirus safety measures can be implemented.
Bolivia’s National Scientific Committee had sent a letter to Romero on Monday, recommending not to carry out the elections in September due to the high number of coronavirus infections.
The election was scheduled to take place on September 6, after being delayed again from its initial date in May.
The country’s former long-term leader Evo Morales, who resigned after the 2019 election over allegations of ballot fraud, quickly criticized the announcement.
“The postponement of the election date will only cause more suffering to the Bolivian people because it prolongs the agony of the government in a sea of incapacities and ambitions that prevented them, in eight months, from taking measures to manage the current human and economic catastrophe,” Morales, who is currently in Argentina, said in a series of tweets.
Morales also accused the interim government of trying to “gain more time” ahead of the election.
Interim President Jeanine Áñez, who has vowed to hold new elections soon, is running against the candidate of the Movement for Socialism party, Luis Arce, backed by Morales. Also running are two former presidents, Jorge Quiroga, and Carlos Mesa.
Why this matters: Bolivia is one of the hardest hit countries by the virus in Latin America. Infections have continued to rise rapidly in recent weeks. The country has so far reported more than 64,100 coronavirus cases and over 2,300 deaths, according to the latest numbers by Johns Hopkins University.
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Fauci throws ceremonial first pitch as Nationals host the Yankees on MLB Opening Day
From CNN's Jill Martin
Rob Carr/Getty Images
The 2020 MLB regular season is set to begin, as the Washington Nationals are hosting the New York Yankees at Nationals Park.
The ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Receiving the ceremonial first pitch was Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle. Fauci wore a No. 19 jersey and had on a mask and a Nationals cap. The pitch didn’t reach the plate, going wide to the left.
A new 2019 World Series Champions flag was raised at Centerfield Plaza. Lineups for both teams were announced by the public address announcer, with his words echoing around the empty stadium.
In a moment of solidarity both teams took a knee in support of unity.
The National Anthem was a pre-recorded performance by DC Washington, and members from both teams were seen standing during the playing of it.
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Brazil reports its second highest number of new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began
From Márcia Reverdosa in São Paulo
Brazil has reported 59,961 new cases of coronavirus over the past 24 hours, according to the country’s health ministry Thursday.
On Wednesday, Brazil reported 67,860 new Covid-19 cases, the highest number its seen since the start of the pandemic. Thursday’s numbers were the second highest.
The ministry also reported 1,311 new deaths on Thursday.
Brazil has 2,287,475 total Covid-19 cases and 84,082 deaths as of Thursday.
The Ministry of Health confirmed to CNN that its data system had issues this week but couldn’t specify what states have been affected.
“Some states had difficulty inputting their data on the Covid-19 in the System during the weekend (07/18 and 07/19),” the ministry said. “We emphasize that the ministry promptly assisted the states in solving the problem.”
