The US will see deaths skyrocket “well into the multiple hundreds of thousands” if it doesn’t control the pandemic, medical experts are warning.
A GOP congressman who frequently refuses to wear a mask has tested positive for Covid-19. The lawmaker removed his mask during yesterday’s hearing with Attorney General William Barr.
Renewed coronavirus restrictions are being implemented as fresh outbreaks of the virus sweep across Europe and Asia.
Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has moved here.
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Brazilian mayor tests negative for Covid-19 nearly a month after contracting the virus
From CNN's Fernanda Wenzel in Porto Alegre and Rodrigo Pedroso in Sao Paulo
The mayor of Brazil’s Amazonian city of Manaus, Arthur Virgílio Neto, was discharged from hospital Wednesday nearly one month after contracting Covid-19.
The mayor was transferred to a São Paulo hospital for treatment on July 6 with his wife, who had also tested positive for the virus, according to a previous statement from his office.
The mayor has been a vocal critic of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during the pandemic. In a profanity-laced video of a cabinet meeting released by Brazil’s Supreme Court in May, Bolsonaro referred to Virgílio Neto as a “piece of sh**” for digging mass graves in his city during the coronavirus pandemic.
Health crisis: Manaus is the capital of Amazonas, a northern state in Brazil. It was the first state capital to see its hospital system collapse due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Last week, Amazonas state recorded 5,560 new cases, down from 11,758 new infections a week at the end of May. The state’s death toll now stands at 3,232, with seven deaths in the past 24 hours.
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North Korea has tested over 1,000 people for Covid-19 and found no confirmed cases, WHO says
From CNN's Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Joshua Berlinger
People stand at Taedongmun gate in Pyongyang to watch a firework display on July 27 to mark the 67th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War armistice agreement.
Kim Won Jin/AFP/Getty Images
North Korea has tested 1,211 people for coronavirus as of July 16, with all results returned negative, the World Health Organization’s representative to North Korea Dr. Edwin Salvador told CNN.
All educational institutions in the country – including pre-schools – are now on extended summer break for the next two months, Salvador said.
Currently, 696 North Koreans are under quarantine. They are all laborers and loaders working at the Nampo port on the country’s western coast and the Sinuiju-Dandong border between North Korea and China, Salvador said.
According to WHO, 15 laboratories are designated for coronavirus testing in North Korea, including provincial laboratories. The Central Hygiene Anti-Epidemic Institute remains the reference laboratory.
Primers and probes for PCR machines to facilitate 1,000 tests, sent from WHO’s Southeast Asia regional office, have arrived in North Korea, Salvador said, adding that WHO had earlier provided 900 pieces of personal protective equipment along with laboratory reagents.
North Korea is also checking people’s temperature using infrared thermometers, providing hand-washing facilities and sanitizer in all public places including shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels. Public announcements on Covid-19 information are made over TV, radio, print media as well as loudspeakers, Salvador said.
Suspected case: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened an emergency meeting Saturday after it was reported that a defectorwho fled the country three years ago had returned to the North Korean city of Kaesong, while possibly infected with coronavirus, according to state-run newswire KCNA.
Few experts believe that North Korea, a country of nearly 25 million people which shares a border with China, could have escaped the effects of a pandemic that has infected more than 16 million people worldwide and killed nearly 650,000.
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Australia's Victoria state sees highest daily surge in Covid-19 cases
From CNN's Angus Watson in Sydney
Medical transport workers prepare to enter the Epping Aged Care Home on July 29 in Melbourne.
Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
The Australian state of Victoria recorded 723 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, setting a new daily high for the state and the whole country, according to numbers delivered by Premier Daniel Andrews on Thursday.
Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, has so far diagnosed 9,998 cases, accounting for more than 60% of the country’s total number of infections.
The state now has 5,385 active cases, with more than 80% of them in metropolitan Melbourne and neighboring Mitchell Shire – both subject to a stay-at-home order.
Andrews announced 13 further fatalities recorded Wednesday, another single-day high for the country, bringing the state’s death toll to 105 and Australia’s to 189.
Wednesday’s new cases were found through 19,921 tests conducted across the state.
Stricter measures: On Thursday, Andrews announced that from midnight Sunday, a mandate to wear masks or face coverings in public will extend from metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire to the rest of the state.
A ban on home gatherings has been extended to six further areas of Victoria, Andrews said, noting that household to household transmission was a factor in the rising numbers.
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China reports more than 100 new coronavirus cases for second day in a row
From CNN's Isaac Yee in Hong Kong
China recorded more than 100 new coronavirus cases for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, according to the country’s National Health Commission.
Among the 105 new cases – the highest number the country has seen since it brought the virus largely under control in March – 102 were locally transmitted.
Some 96 local infections were found in the far western region of Xinjiang, one in Beijing, with the remaining cases confirmed in Liaoning.
The NHC also recorded a further 21 asymptomatic infections, which are not included in the total tally of confirmed cases.
Tuesday marked the first time China had recorded over 100 new cases since early April.
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Face coverings now required in House office buildings
From CNN's Manu Raju
The House Sergeant at Arms and Attending Physician have issued rules, “upon the direction of the Speaker of the House,” requiring face coverings in all House office buildings effective at 8 a.m. ET Thursday.
There are some exceptions, such as when a person is eating or drinking, or when a person is giving a speech or interview provided no one is within six feet.
“Any person not wearing a face cover will be asked to put on a face cover or leave the building,” the memo announcing the policy says.
The rules come just a few hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that face coverings would be required on the House floor.
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Attorney General William Barr tests negative for Covid-19
From CNN's Evan Perez
Attorney General William Barr removes his mask after a break in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on July 28 in Washington.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Attorney General William Barr tested negative for Covid-19 today, according to a Justice Department official.
Barr, who is routinely tested, attended a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday in which Rep. Louie Gohmert was present.
Gohmert has tested positive for Covid-19. The congressman was seen maskless outside the room near Barr briefly at one point.
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US Open golf tournament to be held without fans
From CNN's Jill Martin
Jets fly by the course ahead of the trophy presentation at the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links on June 16, 2019 in Pebble Beach, California.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
The United States Golf Association has announced that the 120th US Open Championship, which is scheduled September 17-20 at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York, will take place without spectators.
Some context: The USGA announced on April 6 that the US Open, which was scheduled to be held June 18-21 on Winged Foot’s West Course, had been postponed to September.
The organization also said in June that the championship would be conducted without traditional qualifying.
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Mexico surpasses 45,000 coronavirus deaths
From Karol Suarez in Mexico City
Aerial view of graves at the special area for Covid-19 victims of the Municipal Pantheon of Valle de Chalco, Mexico, on July 28.
Alredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images
Mexico recorded 485 new deaths from Covid-19 Wednesday, bringing the country’s death toll to 45,361, according to the country’s health ministry.
Mexico has the fourth highest death toll from the virus worldwide, behind the UK, Brazil and US.
The health ministry also reported 5,752 new Covid-19 cases, bringing Mexico’s total to 408,449.
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Italy extends coronavirus state of emergency
From CNN's Nicola Ruotolo in Rome
Italy has extended the state of emergency imposed in the country due to the coronavirus outbreak until Oct. 15, according to a government statement released early Thursday morning local time.
Italy was one of the first European countries to be hit by the virus and went into a state of emergency on Jan. 31.
The legal framework gives the government special powers to curb certain freedoms and access to additional resources to stop and contain the spread of Covid-19.
The latest numbers: The country has so far recorded 246,776 coronavirus cases and 35,129 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
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Coronavirus resurgence moving into Midwestern states, Fauci warns
From CNN's Shelby Lin Erdman
The resurgence in coronavirus infections in states across the south and west is now moving into Midwestern states, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday in an interview on MSNBC.
In Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, an increase in the percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive signaled a later resurgence, Fauci said. “We’re starting to see that in some of the states now, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and other states,” he added.
Fauci said the White House coronavirus task force warned the governors in a conference call Tuesday that they need to get out ahead of the curve. “Because what we’re seeing now is what actually took place a couple of weeks ago and what we’re going to see a couple of weeks from now, is what we’re doing now,” he said.
“And that’s one of the things that’s kind of tough to comprehend, that you look around you and it looks like you’re doing okay but if you’re not getting your arms around and suppressing that surge that’s coming up, that’s just a little bit below the radar screen, before you know it, two to three weeks down the pike, you’re in trouble.”
The states experiencing a resurgence need to take a look at the reopening guidelines, Fauci said, emphasizing the need to adhere to a phased reopening.
“Not all the states did that and even in the states that did, some of the people in the states didn’t listen to what the suggestions in the guidelines were. So, what we’re dealing with now is we want to make sure that as we start seeing these surges, you may need to go back a little,” he said.
Fauci said he didn’t believe moving back to a complete shutdown is necessary.
“I think psychologically that would be really very difficult for people to accept but what we can do is, if you’re going to quickly call a pause, a timeout and think maybe you want to backtrack a little, not necessarily all the way back to shut down, but enough to regain your footing, so that you then proceed to open in a much more cautious fashion.”
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FDA could issue Covid-19 vaccine emergency authorization weeks after evidence it works safely
From CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas
The US Food and Drug Administration could issue emergency use authorization (EUA) of a coronavirus vaccine in a matter of weeks, once a vaccine meets efficacy requirements, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which approves vaccines, said Wednesday.
An EUA would green light a coronavirus vaccine for use on an expedited basis.
Marks said the increased attention the agency is giving to coronavirus vaccine trials should speed up the process of granting emergency use authorization to a vaccine that crosses an efficacy boundary in a clinical trial.
“We’d like to hope that when that happens, it will be a matter of weeks before we could actually potentially have something like an emergency use authorization,” said Marks, who added that he hopes the EUA will apply to a relatively broad population. “Emergency use authorization will be for the population for which we have appropriate data.”
Marks emphasized that safety will not be sacrificed in the race for a vaccine.
“The first vaccines that come along may be slightly disadvantaged compared to ones that come along later,” said Marks, who suspects the “trailblazer” vaccines will reveal information that can speed up the process for subsequent vaccine candidates.
Some context: Two potential vaccines started advanced trials this week in the US.
“There are aspirational timelines, and I think that’s actually wonderful here, that people have aspirations for moving forward as quickly as possible, but we all know that real life generally does not go as well as our aspirations,” Marks said.
Clarification: An earlier version of this headline failed to specify the FDA would issue an emergency authorization once a coronavirus vaccine meets safety and efficacy requirements.
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Texas surpasses New York state in total Covid-19 cases
From CNN's Haley Brink
A nurse conducts a coronavirus test at a newly opened mega drive-thru site at El Paso Community College Valle Verde campus on July 21 in El Paso.
Cengiz Yar/Getty Images
Texas has now surpassed New York in total coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
Johns Hopkins now reports a total of 417,098 total cases across Texas since the start of the pandemic.
New York state has 413,593 total cases across as of Wednesday.
Florida, Texas, and New York are behind California, which currently leads the country with 475,806 total cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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Brazil will allow foreigners to enter by air travel despite record amount of new Covid-19 cases
From Fernanda Wenzel and and Rodrigo Pedroso
The Brazilian government is allowing foreigners to enter the country by air travel, according to a decree issued hours after the country reported a record number of new coronavirus cases and deaths.
The decision will go into effect immediately.
The decree was signed by four ministers, including Minister of Health Eduardo Pazuello, and was published Wednesday in Brazil’s official gazette.
Foreigners were previously banned from entering Brazil since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in March.
Road and water travel is still banned for the next 30 days, according to the decree.
The latest numbers: Brazil saw new records on coronavirus figures Wednesday.
In the last 24 hours, 69,075 new cases and 1,595 new deaths were registered by the health ministry. Brazil has reported 2,552,265 Covid-19 cases and 90,0134 deaths since the pandemic began.
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It's time to "radically rethink" coronavirus testing in US, leading health expert says
From CNN's Shelby Lin Erdman
Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, during a CNN interview earlier in July.
Source: CNN
Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said “it’s time for a paradigm shift” when it comes to Covid-19 testing in the US.
He said the federal government needs to step in and distribute faster antigen tests to power through the backlog of testing and get ahead of outbreaks, according to an opinion piece he penned for Time magazine.
With current Covid-19 testing results delayed by days, and in many cases more than a week, due to a critical shortage in testing supplies, Jha said testing is practically useless in identifying who has the virus.
If health officials can’t quickly determine who has the virus and where it is, they can’t prevent the spread, Jha wrote in the op-ed.
The country needs to switch to faster antigen tests that can quickly return test results, even though the results are not as accurate as the slower polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, he said.
PCR tests require amplification of the virus, a time-consuming process, while antigen tests look for proteins made by the virus.
“By putting a premium on the accuracy of tests, we fail to test a majority of people with Covid-19 and these built in delays actually undermine our ability to timely identify cases which is the key purpose for widespread testing,” Jha wrote in the commentary.
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Early coronavirus spread came from 3 countries, analysis finds
From CNN's Maggie Fox
The earliest global spread of the novel coronavirus came from travel involving mostly three countries: China, Italy and Iran, researchers reported Wednesday.
Three-quarters of cases reported outside of China in January and February were linked to travelers from an affected country, mostly those three, a team at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
“Cases with travel links to China, Italy, or Iran accounted for almost two-thirds of the first reported Covid-19 cases from affected countries,” the CDC’s Dr. Fatimah Dawood and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The team went through online reports from national ministries of health and other government agency websites, social media feeds, and news releases to tally up all coronavirus cases reported between December 31 and March 10.
Half of the early cases in Africa were linked to travel from Italy, they found. Travelers from Italy also carried the virus in a third of the earliest cases elsewhere in Europe and the Americas.
The analysis also showed that large gatherings were a source of spread.
While many studies have confirmed that the virus originated in China, genetic analysis shows that a new strain arose in Europe, likely Italy, early in the pandemic and that strain predominated in the US.
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Citations mount in Florida's Broward County in effort to reduce the spread of Covid-19
From CNN's Pierre Meilhan
The Broward County Sheriff Department carried out 25 arrests and issued 260 citations as part of an ongoing operation aimed at reducing the spread of Covid-19, the department said today.
The arrests and citations were part of an effort to prevent crime as well as crackdown on large gatherings and parties, the department added.
The operation followed several shooting incidents in connection to large party gatherings and the agency decided to take a “very aggressive stance” with “zero tolerance,” Sheriff Gregory Tony told reporters during a virtual news conference.
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GOP congressman won't isolate after interacting maskless with Rep. Louie Gohmert last week
From CNN's Manu Raju
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, speaks during a hearing on preparedness for and response to the coronavirus outbreak on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 11.
Patrick Semansky/AP
Last week, Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, was on the House floor interacting at length with Rep. Louie Gohmert who has since tested positive for Covid-19.
Neither men were wearing masks.
Today, Roy was in the House and wearing a mask. He said he isn’t going to isolate and wasn’t worried about contracting the virus.
Roy says he’s not concerned “anymore than the interactions with perfect strangers on an airplane with circulating air. With cotton masks on an airplane, where everybody is pretending like they’re doing something noble to try to save people from a virus on a cylinder with 50 people on it flying through the air.”
“My question to you all is how are people wearing a cotton mask on an airplane saving you from circulating virus on an airplane?” he added.
Roy contended he’s “happy to wear a mask” and is not skeptical of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but questioned whether a “thin piece of cotton” on someone’s face — often with a valve — is enough to prevent the virus from spreading. He argued there are doctors who raise questions about the effectiveness.
“But my question here is we act like wearing this thin piece of cotton, then everybody gets the blessing that they’re somehow saving everybody,” he said.
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Georgetown University will begin fall semester online
From CNN's Elizabeth Stuart
Georgetown University.
Shutterstock
Courses for all undergraduate and graduate students at Georgetown University will begin all online for the fall semester, according to a letter from university President John J. DeGioia.
He cited the acceleration of Covid-19 and increasing restrictions on travel between states for the move to online instruction in his letter Wednesday.
The decision marks a reversal for Georgetown, which earlier this month planned to welcome back about 2,000 undergraduate students to campus.
DeGioia outlined the travel restrictions put in place by Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser, which require 14 days of quarantine for travelers from 27 states.
“These developments indicate a strain on our public health framework,” DeGioia said, adding that Maryland, DC, and Virginia have also been designated as “high-risk” areas by other states throughout the country.
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NBA commissioner says there's "no question" he'll end the season if virus poses risk to players
From CNN's Josiah Ryan
In this October 8, 2019 file photo, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver speaks at a news conference near Tokyo.
Jae C. Hong/AP
NBA commissioner Adam Silver today said the leagues’ fight to operate in a bubble amid a worsening pandemic in Florida is going well, but warned he is willing to end the season if he believes the virus poses a significant health risk to players or personnel.
“No question,” replied Silver, when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if he’d end the season if it was “the right thing to do.”
“We have a panel of expert immunologists, infectious disease experts, public health experts and really they would make the decision frankly,” he said. “It would not be a business decision.”
Silver also outlined the extensive measures the league has put in place inside its so-called bubble in Orlando, Florida, saying there are nightly tests and players are expected to wear masks at all times except when they are on the court playing basketball. He also warned, however, the plan is not bulletproof.
“We’re protected in essence from the high case rate around us but it’s not a hermetically sealed bubble of any kind … [But] so far we’ve been in there for roughy three weeks and we’ve had zero cases,” he said.
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New Mexico surpasses 20,000 Covid-19 cases
From CNN’s Andy Rose
New Mexico’s coronavirus case count topped 20,000 on Wednesday after adding 352 new Covid-19 cases.
The state is now reporting a total of 20,136 coronavirus cases.
Some context: The milestone comes two days after New Mexico reported a new one-day record of confirmed cases, with 467.
Note: The figures above were released by the New Mexico Department of Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
