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Colombia’s Health Ministry reported 7,230 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday – the lowest daily increase since August 4.
This marks the country’s fifth consecutive day reporting fewer than 10,000 new cases.
It also reported 299 new virus-related deaths.
Monday’s figures bring Colombia’s total to 615,168 cases and 19,663 deaths, according to the ministry.
Rising unemployment: As the number of new infections declines, unemployment is on the rise in Colombia.
The unemployment rate topped 20% in July – double the rate reported in July 2019, according to the country’s national statistics agency.
On Saturday, Colombian President Iván Duque Márquez announced the government’s plan to open a credit line worth $370 million for the bankrupt state airline Avianca to help prevent further layoffs.
After overtaking Mexico on Thursday, August 27, Colombia now trails only Brazil and Peru with the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in Latin America, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
About three-quarters of people surveyed around the world say they’d be willing to get a coronavirus vaccine if one came out, with the most enthusiasm in China and the least in Russia.
The poll, conducted by Ipsos for the World Economic Forum, surveyed nearly 20,000 people across 27 countries.
The survey showed:
Experts expressed concern that more than a quarter of people worldwide would not get the vaccine.
Mexico reported 3,719 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, bringing the country’s total number of infections to 599,560.
The country’s Health Ministry also reported 256 new deaths. The death toll stands at 64,414.
Mexico has recorded the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in Latin America, behind Brazil, Peru and Colombia, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States has reported 31,313 new coronavirus cases and 560 virus-related deaths so far on Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The national total now stands at 6,028,617 Covid-19 cases and 183,579 fatalities.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
Follow our live tracker of US cases:
The Quebec government says it will not hesitate to shut down schools again if Quebecers do not show more caution in the coming weeks.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault issued the warning Monday after health officials confirmed more than 100 staff and students are currently in quarantine or isolation as a precaution after possible exposure to Covid-19 in schools.
“Above all, I do not want to close the schools,” said Legault, adding, “We owe this to our children. In order for our children to stay in school, we have to be careful.”
Provincial officials in Quebec confirmed Monday that 81 students in Quebec City are in isolation after three cases of Covid-19 were confirmed at two high schools.
And in the Laurentians region of Quebec 4 teachers have tested positive for Covid-19, sending more than 30 staff and students into isolation for 2 weeks as a precaution.
Most of Canada, including Quebec, has been experiencing a recent spike in cases.
Earlier in the summer, Canada averaged about 350 new positive coronavirus cases per day, but that number has increased to an average of 435 over the last week, according to Canadian public health officials.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp extended statewide limits on public gatherings for another two weeks.
The order continues to ban public gatherings of 50 or more people unless they can maintain six feet of social distancing. The new order announced Monday expires at the end of the day on Sept. 15.
Despite the extension, the governor’s office says the state is making progress in fighting coronavirus.
“Currently, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Georgia are at their lowest since July 6,” the governor’s office said in a statement. “Cases reported yesterday were at their lowest point since June 22.”
The governor also extended the state’s general state of emergency through Oct. 10.
British drug maker AstraZeneca – which announced Monday the US launch of Phase 3 trials for its coronavirus vaccine – said its “core values to follow the science” and “put patients first,” according to a statement.
The statement come on the same day that the World Health Organization cautioned countries against rushing to develop coronavirus vaccines and to use great care in granting emergency use authorization. Those remarks appeared to be directed toward China, Russia and the United States.
Both China and Russia say they will start deploying vaccines before completing late-stage clinical trials, and US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn has said if the US gets enough data from advanced stage trials, it might be possible to authorize a vaccine before the trials are completed.
AstraZeneca, which developed the vaccine with the University of Oxford, also said it will enroll more than 50,000 volunteers globally, including 30,000 in the United States, as well as participants in “Latin America, Asia, Europe, Russia and Africa that will provide data for ethnically diverse populations.”
In US trials, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said he wants to see minorities enrolled at levels that are at least double their percentages in the population, or roughly 65%.
Neither Moderna nor Pfizer/BioNTech – the two other drugmakers with coronavirus vaccine candidates in large-scale phase 3 trials in the US – have finished enrolling their stated goals of 30,000 volunteers each.
The city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is set to reopen cultural centers such as museums, amusement parks and libraries on Tuesday as the city enters the first part of the final phase in its reopening plan, the city announced Monday.
Theaters, stadiums and sunbathing on beaches will stay closed.
The move comes after Rio saw a decrease in new Covid-19 infections and deaths over the past two weeks. If cases and deaths continue to decline, the city expects to enter the second part of phase six, phase 6B, on Oct. 1.
The latest numbers: On Monday, the state of Rio de Janeiro reported at least 329 new Covid-19 cases, bringing its total count to approximately 223,631.
The state’s Health Ministry also reported at least 38 new deaths, bringing that total to approximately 16,065 people.
The Rio de Janeiro state is the third-most severely impacted by the pandemic in the country, to date. Brazil is second only to the United States in terms of the highest total number of coronavirus cases and deaths globally.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and White House Coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas discouraged testing individuals with no coronavirus symptoms at a Monday roundtable event in Tallahassee, Florida.
This comes after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised testing guidelines last week. The new recommendations suggest asymptomatic people may not need to be tested for Covid-19, even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person.
But, some experts are still concerned about asymptomatic spread.
Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”
Atlas said that although asymptomatic spread can occur, symptomatic individuals are “super spreaders” of the virus.
Brazil’s Health Ministry is reporting at least 45,961 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases in the country to approximately 3,908,272.
The ministry also reported at least 553 additional coronavirus deaths on Monday, raising the country’s death toll to approximately 121,381.
Even as new cases and registered deaths continue to rise in Brazil, a CNN analysis shows the rate of increase in both new cases and the number of deaths has notably decreased during the month of August.
Brazil continues to trail only the United States in terms of the highest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world, according to data held by Johns Hopkins University.
Covid-19 patients who are obese face more serious disease than those without obesity, a new study finds. Nearly all intensive care patients who were studied ended up on a ventilator if they had severe obesity, the researchers founds.
Obesity is listed as a risk factor for severe disease by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies. Dr. François Pattou, head of the Department of General and Endocrine Surgery at Lille University Hospital in France, along with colleagues set out to quantify the risk.
Back in April, Pattou’s team began to look at Covid-19 patients across Europe. They studied 124 patients admitted to intensive care units and compared them with 306 patients in the intensive care unit for reasons other than coronavirus.
They found about half of the patients with Covid-19 in ICU had obesity, defined as a body mass index or BMI over 30. A quarter of the patients had a BMI of 35 or above, Pattou found. But only around 10% of the patients had a BMI that was under 25, considered a healthy weight.
When researchers compared this to the non-Covid patients in ICU, fewer were obese. “A quarter had obesity or severe obesity; a further quarter were overweight, and around half fell into the healthy weight range,” the European and International Congress on Obesity, where the findings will be presented, said in a statement.
Doctors know obesity puts patients at higher risk of severe illness from infectious respiratory diseases such as flu. Pattou’s study found that the higher a patient’s BMI, the worse the symptoms.
“Several months into the Covid-19 pandemic, the increased risk posed by this virus to people living with obesity could not be clearer,” Pattou said in a statement.
“Our data show that the chances of increasing to more severe disease increases with BMI, to the point where almost all intensive care Covid-19 patients with severe obesity will end up on a ventilator.”
Houston, Texas, Mayor Sylvester Turner on Monday encouraged residents to avoid large gatherings ahead of Labor Day Weekend, saying coronavirus “is still looking for you.”
“You know what happened during Memorial Day and the Fourth of July weekend. People came together, and then the virus took off, and then you saw the numbers go up,” Turner said during a news conference.
The latest numbers: Sylvester said the positivity rate for new Covid-19 cases in Houston has decreased to 7.8% from 9.2% the week before.
“We are moving in the right direction,” Turner said, urging people to continue public health measures such as wearing masks and social distancing for the city to reach the 5% positivity rate goal.
The only way to find those with asymptomatic infections of Covid-19 at universities is to do aggressive testing, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said over the weekend.
Birx said what she sees happening at schools “really gives us hope” that the universities will be able to find asymptomatic patients.
Most university students won’t know that they’re infected, Birx said during a news briefing in Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday.
Birx also said she hoped universities could use surge testing, adding that testing could be sped up through innovative methods like pool testing and new collection techniques such as using saliva instead of nasal swabs.
“That is all going to move forward here,” she said.
University students who get infected with coronavirus should isolate where they are and not carry the virus away from campus, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said over the weekend.
Numerous coronavirus outbreaks have been detected as university and college students returned to campuses across the country to start the fall semester.
“We can prevent the spread from any university into the community and into the homes from where the students came if the students will isolate and ensure they don’t spread the virus,” Birx said.
British drugmaker AstraZeneca announced Monday it has started Phase 3 trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate in the United States.
AZD 1222 becomes the third vaccine to enter large-scale trials in the United States, after vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.
For the US trial, AstraZeneca said in a statement that it is “recruiting up to 30,000 adults aged 18 years or over from diverse racial, ethnic and geographic groups who are healthy or have stable underlying medical conditions, including those living with HIV, and who are at increased risk of infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Participants will receive two active or placebo doses, spaced two weeks apart.
The trial will assess safety and efficacy in all participants – a subset of 3,000 participants will be assessed for local and systemic reactions and immune responses.
Currently, Phase 3 trials of AZD1222 are going on in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. Trials are also planned for Japan and Russia.
In total, Phase 3 clinical trial for AZD 1222 will enroll up to 50,000 participants globally. Results from the late-stage trials are anticipated later this year.
The trial is funded by the Biomedical Advanced Development Authority, which is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
A top World Health Organization official praised Sweden’s response to the coronavirus pandemic Monday, saying its approach has been mischaracterized.
Sweden’s government has been widely criticized for seeking herd immunity by allowing the virus to burn through the population. But Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program, said it was not true that Sweden has not implemented control measures.
This is based on historically very high levels of trust between the Swedish government and its people, Ryan said.
“That is the way in which Swedish people, the Swedish government interact,” he said. “That is the social contract in Sweden.”
He said that it is wrong to suggest that Sweden had an altogether different approach to Covid-19 than the rest of Europe and that it had an “approach of light touch regulation of the process.”
Ryan singled out Anders Tegnell, an epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, which advises the country’s government on health matters.
“I think even in Sweden, Anders Tegnell and the team there have done a good job,” Ryan said.
“Each government has to find its way, with its population to control the disease and there are lessons to learn from every country and its approach,” he added. “No country has done perfectly. All countries have made mistakes, but all countries have done some things correctly,” he added.
On the same day Iowa State University’s director of athletics Jamie Pollard declared Cyclones fans are welcome to attend the football home opener on Sept. 12, the University of Iowa announced it was halting all sports programs until after Labor Day.
The Iowa Hawkeyes of the University of Iowa reported 93 positive Covid-19 tests within the athletics community in the last week. When asked about the numbers within the football program, a spokesperson for the Hawkeyes would not provide specific breakdown of positive tests by sport.
In an open letter to fans released Monday, Iowa State’s Pollard says the school expects 25,000 fans when the Cyclones host Louisiana in less than two weeks’ time and acknowledges the decision to allow spectators won’t appease everyone.
Iowa’s football season was postponed when the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors voted to postpone all of the conference’s fall sports due to health and safety concerns.
The Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA and Milwaukee Brewers of MLB announced today that each team will open their facilities as early voting sites ahead of the 2020 general election.
Milwaukee’s NBA and MLB teams opening their facilities to the public will help meet the increased demand for early voting due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Bucks said in a team press release.
The Bucks’ Fiserv Forum will serve as an early voting site, and the Brewers’ Miller Park will be used as an early drive-thru voting location.
The announcements were made at a press conference today will Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as well as leadership from both the Bucks and the Brewers.
“We are now fortunate to announce that not only have we found one, but we have found two locations that are absolutely fabulous for allowing more people to exercise their right to vote,” said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. “Nationally, Milwaukee has become the leader by providing both Fiserv Forum and Miller Park for early voting. I don’t know of another city in this nation that is using a major league ballpark and an NBA arena for early voting— that’s how committed we are to making sure that people’s voices are heard.”
“We are excited that Fiserv Forum will be designated an early vote site,” said Milwaukee Bucks Senior Vice President Alex Lasry.
Connecticut will extend its Covid-19 emergency declaration until February 9, 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday afternoon.
Why this matters: The five-month extension ensures that the state can use emergency powers to quickly respond to outbreaks, safely reopen the economy, protect and recover jobs and rapidly procure personal protective equipment, Lamont said.
What the state’s numbers look like: The state also reported 384 new cases of Covid-19 and no new deaths, according to Lamont. Connecticut continues to have a positivity rate of less than 1% — around 0.8%, Lamont said.
Note: These numbers were released by the state’s public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
White House Coronavirus Task Force member, Dr. Scott Atlas, responded to a report by the Washington Post on Monday claiming he is a proponent of a controversial herd immunity strategy to combat Covid-19. The strategy would allow for the virus to spread through the US population in order to develop a resistance to it.
Some background: Herd immunity is reached when 70% to 90% of a population becomes immune to a disease either through infection and recovery or vaccination. When that happens, the disease is less likely to spread to people who aren’t immune because there just aren’t enough infectious carriers to reach them. The Washington Post article claimed Atlas was the chief proponent of the herd immunity strategy.
Atlas has explicitly denied that he is pushing a herd immunity strategy, but an administration official said all of the policies Atlas has pushed for are in the vein of a herd immunity strategy.
Atlas has rejected the need for widespread community testing, arguing that the administration should focus almost exclusively on protecting and testing elderly populations while pushing for the rest of the economy to return to normal, this official said.
“Everything he says and does points toward herd immunity,” the senior administration official said.
CNN has reported that several of the health professionals on the White House Coronavirus Task Force raised questions about Atlas, asking each other who he was and what his role would be. Atlas joined the task force earlier this month as an adviser.
