Young, otherwise healthy adults most likely can forgo COVID-19 testing, Dr. Brett Giroir, who oversees coronavirus testing for the Trump administration, said Thursday.

"A lot of people are getting tests that probably aren't needed," Giroir said during a "Doc to Doc" interview with NBC News medical correspondent Dr. John Torres, which was streamed on Facebook.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Even if a person has been exposed to the coronavirus, the advice is to "self-isolate, no matter whether that test is positive or negative," said Giroir, the assistant secretary of health and human services for health.

That's because people who go on to develop COVID-19 may not initially test positive in the days shortly after they've been exposed to the coronavirus. It's possible, therefore, for people to first test negative but then test positive several days later. The incubation period for the illness can be as long as 14 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Always make believe that you are infected.

"You should always make believe that you are infected particularly young, healthy people," Giroir said.

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The advice, meant specifically for people without symptoms, appears to be aimed at easing demand for COVID-19 testing, which has led to long delays between getting tested and receiving the results. People who have symptoms of the illness should still get tested, according to the CDC.

Giroir said that 73 percent of test results are ready within three days and that more than 80 percent are ready within five days. That leaves a significant number of people who must wait longer than a week for test results, potentially exposing others in the meantime. Last week, the CDC said self-isolating until test results come back could slow the spread of COVID-19 by up to 86 percent.

Giroir's guidance is meant to "take down the fervor" of testing, he said, even though the country can now handle about 800,000 COVID-19 tests a day.

"We sort of created a frenzy," he said, adding that he has been working with the CDC to issue guidance on testing for otherwise healthy people. It was unclear Thursday when the guidance would be available.

The one exception for young, healthy people, Giroir said, is if they are living with others who are medically vulnerable, such as elderly grandparents.

"In those circumstances, it's much more of a reason to test. But even if you're negative, you need to be really careful around them," Giroir said. "Wear your mask. Keep a safe distance. We can prevent transmission in the household if you do those simple steps."

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Giroir predicted that point-of-care tests, like rapid flu or strep tests, would be readily accessible within the coming month or so.

"By September, we're going to have about 23 million individual point-of-care tests in the market," he said. Most are expected to be in high-risk places, such as nursing homes and schools.

It's also anticipated that such tests would be administered in conjunction with flu tests, using the same samples.

The federal government has ordered extra flu vaccines this year, and it is encouraging everyone to get flu shots, Giroir said. While they're not 100 percent effective in preventing the flu, they can reduce the severity of the illness.

Giroir discouraged people from relying on COVID-19 tests to ease the pandemic, saying tests should be considered "supplemental" only after extensive mask-wearing and physical distancing.

"If you let your guard down, this is a highly infectious disease that will run rampant. As soon as that horse gets out of the barn, it's really hard to put it in."

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Erika Edwards is a health and medical news writer and reporter for NBC News and "TODAY."

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Giroir: The 'worried well' probably don't need COVID-19 tests - NBC News

For nearly five months, thousands of civilian mariners assigned to the Navys fleet of U.S. Military Sealift Command ships have been living under what are believed to be some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the military. And those restrictions were dropped on them with almost no notice, according to their advocates.

Under the Gangways Up order issued by MSC March 21, the mariners or CIVMARs have been forced to live on their ships, unable to go home when pierside and sometimes unable to obtain basic hygiene and comfort supplies, according to union officials representing the workers.

Such restrictions aimed at keeping the crews free of coronavirus infection are pushing the crews to their breaking point, three unions representing the workers warned in a July 29 letter to Rear Adm. Michael Wettlaufer, MSC commander.

The letter, posted to the Seafarers International Unions website, notes increasingly grave concerns regarding the mental health and well-being of MSCs CIVMARs as a result of the order.

There is growing anger, frustration and despair throughout the fleet, the letter states. People have a breaking point and many of these crewmembers are nearing it.

The letter was also signed by leaders of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association and the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots.

It alludes to the July 22 suicide of Third Officer Jonathon Morris aboard the deployed dry cargo ship Amelia Earhart.

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While not explicitly tying Morris death to the order, the unions wrote that the Gangways Up restriction may have, in some part, contributed to this unnecessary and senseless act.

MSC officials have declined to comment further on Morris death, citing an ongoing Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation.

Morris father, Jeffrey Morris, told Navy Times Thursday he was sure Jon was equally stressed as other CIVMARs but that he would not speculate on why Jon took his own life.

We are genuinely worried that if restrictions are not eased, the likelihood of shipboard emotional instability will increase, the unions letter states. Further, the stress-related fatigue caused by the Gangways Up restrictions could lead to safety and mission degradation and operational mishaps.

The current situation is taking a terrible toll on the families of these mariners as well, the letter continues. The CIVMARs feel unsupported and abandoned.

It ends with the unions asking Wettlaufer to reconsider the order and adopt a more appropriate and reasonable leave and liberty policy.

An effective policy

MSC spokesman Tom Van Leunen defended the policy in an email to Navy Times, stating that it has proven effective in protecting against COVID-19 and preserved mission capability.

The order affects about 3,900 CIVMARs and 1,500 contract mariners, he said.

MSC ships resupply other vessels at sea and are supposed to serve as vital surge capability should conventional war break out, ferrying troops and materiel to the fight.

This relatively small number of mariners are essential to national security, Van Leunen said.

While Van Leunen confirmed that MSC received the unions letter, he declined further comment as the unions have filed grievances over the policy and taken the matter to arbitration.

Randall Rockwood, a retired CIVMAR and vice president of the International Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots union that cosigned the letter sent to MSC, questioned the efficacy and fairness of the order.

Active-duty sailors and contractors come and go from some pierside ships each day, he said, even as the CIVMARs are forced to remain onboard.

The amount of holes in the bubbles the CIVMARs are supposed to be in for their own safety are too numerous to count, Rockwood said.

The CIVMARs are being treated like second-class citizens, worse than convicts, he added. The convicts are being let out of jail.

Zero foresight'

Rockwood also said the order went into effect with next to zero foresight.

Relating what he had heard from union members, Rockwood said some CIVMARs received so little notice that their cars were left parked at the pier because they showed up for work the day the order went into effect and were unable to leave again.

It was as close to instantaneous as you can describe, Rockwood said. One minute theyre coming and going, the next its no one can go ashore.

For the first few months, CIVMARs on pierside ships were not allowed to go to the Navy Exchange for basic supplies, and their colleagues had to toss supplies aboard from the pier, Rockwood said.

They would literally throw the required products onto the ship and receive money via Venmo or a weighted packet, he said. It was so archaic and thoughtless.

In recent weeks, CIVMARs have been allowed to get off the ship for supply runs to the base NEX, but morale is terrible among the crews, Rockwood said.

Some crew members have been stuck on the ship up to four months beyond their contracted assignment, he said.

Rockwood blamed Wettlaufer, the MSC commander, for the ordeal the mariners are enduring.

He continues to treat them as if their interests, well-being, families and loved ones are irrelevant, he said.

A complaint filed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission late last month on behalf of one ship captain alleges that MSC acted unfairly and negligently by forcing CIVMARs to remain on their ships while failing to provide adequate protective equipment for the crews.

More than 40 CIVMARs have since been added to the complaint.

Darrin Gibbons, a Virginia attorney who filed the EEOC complaint, said he is seeking class-action status to bring in more CIVMARs.

The Navys actions are tantamount to false arrest and false imprisonment of its own employees, the complaint alleges.

The complaint seeks an end to the order and compensation owed to the crews, he said.

While the Navy has allowed active-duty sailors, civilians and contractors to move freely between work and home while observing COVID-19 protections, civilian mariners haven been subject to draconian measures due to a perception that CIVMARs are at risk due to their age, the complaint states.

The only public explanation for the order was found in a May 7 letter from MSC leadership to Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, according to the EEOC complaint.

In a copy of the letter enclosed in the EECO complaint, MSC Executive Director Steven Cade writes that the 5,400-person CIVMAR force is older on average than their active-duty peers, making them potentially more vulnerable to effects of the COVID-19 virus.

Maintaining physical distance from others who might be carrying the virus and restricting close personal contacts off the ships is vital and necessary to protect MSCs Mariners and embarked personnel from virus exposure, Cade wrote.

Exceptions to the policy are granted on a limited, case-by-case basis, he wrote, including for medical reasons, to obtain basic health and comfort items or for travel to essential training.

We understand the strain this puts on our mariners and families, Cade wrote in the letter, which was sent in response to a complaint from one of Cantwells constituents, a mariner.

The senators office did not respond to a Navy Times request for comment.

Cade wrote that the policy had proven effective because only two of 166 MSC ships reported positive COVID-19 tests among its CIVMARs.

We are operating in unprecedented times and countering COVID-19 is critical to ensuring the health and safety of our CIVMARs, he wrote.

Twenty-four CIVMARs assigned to the fleet replenishment oiler Leroy Grumman tested positive for COVID-19 in April while the ship was undergoing maintenance in Boston, Van Leunen said.

One mariner, Joseph Bondoc, passed away of complications from COVID-19 at a Massachusetts hospital on May 21, Van Leunen said.

The ships crew was living in a hotel at the time of the outbreak and was not subject to the Gangways Up order because the ship was not inhabitable, he said.

A crew member aboard the hospital ship Comfort also tested positive for COVID-19 this spring.

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'Despair' spreading throughout the Military Sealift Command fleet over 'draconian' COVID-19 restrictions, unions warn - NavyTimes.com

During an interview that aired on Axios on HBO on Monday night, President Trump was interviewed by journalist Jonathan Swan. One of the topics: the number of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19.

Swan noted that there are about 1,000 deaths a day in the United States.

Trump responded that the U.S. "is lowest in numerous categories" when it comes to the pandemic including "case death." This measure, which epidemiologists call the "case fatality ratio," calculates the number of people with COVID-19 who eventually die from the disease.

Swan interjected, "I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera."

Trump replied: "You can't do that."

As Swan noted during the interview, you can in fact calculate the per capita death rate for a country's population that is, the number of deaths per 100,000 people.

But it is difficult to compare death rates among countries. Neither per capita death rate nor case fatality ratio "fully reflect the effectiveness of a country's response," said Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University.

However, these two ways of measuring the COVID-19 death toll can tell us something.

Since January, there have been over 4.7 million COVID-19 cases and 150,000 deaths in the United States.

Among the 45 countries with more than 50,000 COVID-19 cases, the U.S. has the eighth-highest number of deaths per 100,000 people: 47.93 deaths from the coronavirus for every 100,000 Americans. Belgium has the highest per capita death rate: 86.3 deaths per 100,000.

But in terms of case fatality ratio, the U.S. is doing significantly better than many other countries. The country's case fatality ratio is 3.3%, meaning that for every 100 people with COVID-19, only about three die.

Trump said that the low case fatality ratio in the U.S. was a result of his administration's effective pandemic response, such as closing international borders to people from COVID-19 hot spots such as China and the United Kingdom. He also stated that the U.S. has a high per capita death rate because the country has done more testing than any other in the world.

The per capita death rate is primarily an indication of the overall disease burden in a country, according to Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. (Disease burden is the term used to describe the impact of a particular disease in terms of years of life lost and years lived with disability.)

If there is more COVID-19 transmission among communities in a specific country, then there will be more infections and consequently more deaths in that country and presumably a higher per capita death rate.

But other factors influence the per capita death rate. For example, age is a major risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease and death. Therefore, countries with much younger populations may have far fewer deaths. In Uganda, for instance, the per capita death rate is 0.01, one of the lowest in the world. The median age of Ugandans is 15.9. By contrast, the median age in the U.S. is 38.4. In Belgium and the U.K., which have the highest number of deaths per 100,000 people, the median ages are 41.9 and 40.0 years, respectively. And predictably, the per capita death rate is higher in those countries.

Access to care also has an impact on the rate whether patients have access to ventilators and ICU care if needed.

But even though the daily death toll in the U.S. has now averaged 1,000 or more a day for over a week, the per capita death rate is not necessarily the best metric by which to compare mortality among countries. According to Chatterjee, the case fatality ratio may be a slightly better indication of how well a country is doing in responding to the pandemic and preventing infected people from dying.

Among the 45 countries with over 50,000 cases, the U.S. has the 24th-highest case fatality ratio. And the U.S. rate of 3.3% is much lower than that of the U.K. at 15.1% or Italy at 14.2%.

So despite the daily death toll of 1,000 in the U.S., there is some truth to Trump's assertion that the low case fatality ratio is a positive sign in the United States.

As for his assertion that "we have tested more people than any other country," there is also some truth to this. The U.S. has conducted more coronavirus tests than any other country in terms of sheer numbers more than 50 million.

However, when you consider population size, the U.S. comes in ninth place, having conducted 174 tests per 1,000 people. That's much lower than the per capita rate in Luxembourg at 691 per 1,000 people, the United Arab Emirates at 525 and Denmark at 268.

Moreover, while there is no gold standard for testing rates, the number of tests needed is proportionate to the number of infections in a country, says Lessler. So, if the U.S. could reduce COVID-19 transmission and new cases, then the need for high testing levels would drop.

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COVID-19 Deaths In The US: How We Compare With Other Countries : Goats and Soda - NPR

HONOLULU(KHON2) An elderly woman and man are the latest casualties of COVID-19. According to the Department of Health, both were Oahu residents with underlying health conditions. And both were hospitalized at the time of their death. The DOH said the deaths should be a warning of how quickly the virus spreads from person to person.

Today we received the heart breaking news that two more of our neighbors passed away due to COVID-19, said Governor David Ige at a press conference Thursday afternoon.

I want to extend my sympathies and condolences to the family and friends of the victims.

The elderly woman and an elderly man are the 28th and 29th fatalities of the virus.

State Department of Health Director Bruce Anderson said that the female was an individual who was at a Pearl City nursing home before she passed away.

Dr. Scott Miscovich, who was involved with testing the nursing home patients, said the woman was linked to the cluster of cases at the nursing home, in mid July.

State Department of Healths epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said the man who died was also linked to a known cluster.

The passing of this man really demonstrates how rapidly and invisibly COVID-19 is spreading through our communities, particularly on Oahu and particularly associated with clusters. A close contact of this individual attended a spin class at a gym taught by a person linked to the Hawaiian Airlines cluster.

In a statement Hawaiian Airlines said:All of us at Hawaiian Airlines express our deepest sympathies to all who have lost friends and family to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Hawaiian Airlines spokesperson also confirmed that 17 Hawaiian Airlines employees contracted the virus during a training program in June.

DOH said that eight family members of those workers tested positive and that one person then infected more than 20 people at two gyms. The elderly man is linked to one of those individuals.

The mans death marks the second linked to the Hawaiian Airlines cluster. The first was Jeff Kurtzman, a Hawaiian Airlines Los Angeles-based flight attendant who participated in the June training session. Kurtzman had been with the company since 1986.

Anderson said if the state doesnt get a handle on the virus, cases could reach 500 per day by late August, which will overwhelm hospital resources.

We have two models we look at recently, both of which project well see the ICU beds fully occupied by the 21st I think it was, and even earlier in one model the 19th, so a couple weeks out, explained Anderson.

Anderson said that is why its so important to take personal responsibility.

If youre sick, stay home. If youre around other people, wear your mask and practice physical distancing. These are proven methods to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

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Two Oahu residents are the 28th and 29th casualties of COVID-19 in Hawaii - KHON2

Like many rural communities, Amador County went months with only single-digit COVID-19 cases reported. By mid-June, theyd slowly crawled up to a dozen.

There have now been 156 reported cases of the illness, as of Aug. 5.

The foothills community is grappling with its own version of the summertime surge thats preventing 38 California counties from reopening their economies. But Amador is not on the states watch list, so its gyms, salons and other non-essential businesses are still open.

Dr. Bob Hartmann, deputy health director for the county, said he expects theyll be added to that list any day now.

Our gyms are very enthusiastic about keeping open, and they'll be able to do that if we remain off the monitoring list, Hartmann said. But we are teetering on the borderline.

Amador County has just one hospital with six intensive care unit beds. It has a substantial homeless population and a large number of seniors. Many of them live among the areas hills and winding roads, far from services and other people. The countys spotty internet access has made communicating about the virus a challenge, Hartmann said.

Faced with a dramatic spike in cases, health officials are trying to promote mask-wearing, discourage social gatherings and educate the tourists who flock to the area for summertime wine tasting and recreation.

CapRadio chatted with Dr. Hartmann about those efforts.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

On whats behind the surge

One is more people getting together. Getting together weekends, getting together Fourth of July, over the holidays. Also, I think there's sort of a quarantine fatigue, people just getting tired of being at home, getting tired of being told not to go out. And then there's travel that is involved. A number of our cases have come from people who traveled out of the county or came back into the county with coronavirus, and then then there was community transmission. So travel really has made a difference, and people are just tired of not traveling so they're doing so more. And it's a combination of all of those.

I think people had mask fatigue a couple of months ago. And now with our rise in cases, there are more people wearing masks. It's still not as high a percentage as it should be. It's been estimated that if 90 to 95% of people wore masks when there was any interaction with someone outside their household, that in four weeks we would see a dramatic decline in the number of cases. But that's not happening at that rate.

On prisons and senior homes

Note: Amadors case count does not include inmates at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione

In congregate care facilities, it's not only the inmates or the residents that we worry about, but it's the staff that we worry about. Unfortunately, staff are the ones who frequently will bring coronavirus into those settings. And then particularly where elderly populations are involved, it can spread like wildfire. We have one skilled nursing facility in Amador County. We've seen a dramatic, dramatic rise in cases there, and some of the residents have gotten very, very sick. A few of the staff have gotten sick also. But it seems like every day, every week we are reporting more and more from those congregate living settings.

On hospital capacity

Our capacity in the hospital is adequate at this point. We peaked this last weekend with 12 coronavirus patients in the hospital. Our ICU was full, about half of the people in the ICU were coronavirus positive. We had a step-down unit and that was full, and half of the people in the step-down unit also had coronavirus. We do have surge capacities in place. They have not had to be called on yet at the hospital ... Sutter Amador Hospital is part of the Sutter Health system, so patients can be transferred to other Sutter facilities. For instance, our ICU this last weekend was full and a patient was transferred to Sutter Roseville.

We keep our fingers crossed, we know that this is surging, its ongoing. We don't expect that we're going to be out of the woods for a while. But with all the protocols in place, we're pretty confident that we can keep up with it at the hospital.

On public health messaging

In rural areas, there are always parts of communities that you have trouble reaching. There are people that don't have Internet access. There are certain areas that dont have cell phone access in the county. And a large percentage of our elderly population, if they have computers, dont really know how to work them. And so we're constantly challenged with, how do you get information out in rural areas? Certainly radio helps. There is a local newspaper thats published one day a week, that helps. Social media has made a difference But as you know, social media can be used in many ways. And so there's so many falsehoods that go out regarding treatments of coronavirus or regarding masks and usage or not using. And that can really complicate the situation.

What we try to do is be as consistent as possible with our messages. And our messages are: avoid gatherings of people outside of your household, don't go to dinner over at people's houses where you're less than six feet, where you're indoors, where people aren't wearing masks. You know, avoid gatherings. Thats a very basic tenet in trying to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

On masks

Masking is so important and masking is not political. It's not red versus blue. It's not 100% effective either. But it is very good in preventing coronavirus, both for the person wearing the mask and somebody in the vicinity of that person. So I think wearing masks is really a humane concern about our family, our friends, our community, and it should not at all cross political lines. If you choose not to wear a mask, you should choose to stay home or choose to stay away from others. People would do anything and everything they could to keep their children safe and happy. Yet, I see moms going around the grocery store not wearing masks and their kids not wearing masks. There's a gap here that I don't clearly understand.

It's no secret that Amador Countys a conservative area, and a number of people in the county do not believe in masking. A smaller number don't believe the coronavirus is real. I would ask them to come and stand outside the window of the hospital and watch what goes on inside there. And it makes delivering our message in the rural area and message acceptance more difficult. And again, as I said earlier, the masking message is not a political message, it's a health message. That's what's frustrating to those of us working in public health.

On tourism

It does worry us that there's so many people that come into our beautiful, beautiful county and head up to the mountains. However a lot of those people are outdoors. And outdoor recreation, if you follow certain guidelines, is really good. It's good for you. It's good for your psyche. It's good for you physically. But our trails are packed. The parking areas around the trails are packed with people. So we just encourage anyone coming in the county to follow that physical distancing and masking We in the past have noticed when school gets back in session, the number of visitors on weekends drops significantly.

However, without sports activities and with the majority of kids doing distance learning, we anticipate that there'll still be a pretty heavy number of people coming up into our county to recreate. Another area is the number of people coming to the county to visit the wineries. Our county has absolutely wonderful wineries. The tasting rooms can be open at this point for outdoor tasting and associated with food. But our county is in danger of going on the county monitoring list. We're kind of borderline right now. We're waiting for more word from the state later this week and there are going to be more restrictions. And those restrictions probably will decrease the number of people coming from out of county.

On community services

Its been more difficult to get services out to the homeless. There's a group of mask makers that actually live in my neighborhood. They supply me with homemade cloth masks that are very high quality masks, and Ive been able to get them to people and distribute them to the homeless, to some vineyard workers, child protective services, adult protective services, to try to reach some of the harder-to-get-to populations.

But so many of the safety nets we had here in the county just havent been able to continue at a very robust stage with the coronavirus and people staying at home. For instance, STARS, the cancer support group with their drivers that take people to and fro tooncology visits in Sacramento, to surgical procedures, infusion center here, so forth. Most of their drivers are older and so the number of drivers available dropped by 75%. So things like that that are there that don't really hit you in the face when you're reading the newspapers or listening to the radio. Almost every segment of our population has been affected and the most vulnerable have been affected even more.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story included a transcription error in one ofDr. Bob Hartmann's responses. It has been updated.

CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.

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Amador County Is 'Teetering On The Borderline' Of More Closures Amid COVID-19 Spike - Capital Public Radio News

CSU athletes, staff say athletic administration covering up COVID-19 health threat Wochit

Colorado State UniversityPresident Joyce McConnell wasted little time in securing an outside law firm to lead the investigation into the athletic department'shandling of public health precautions surrounding COVID-19

McConnell sent an email to the athletic department and student athletes late Thursday afternoon announcing Colorado State Universityhas hired law firmHusch Blackwellto conduct the investigation. The email said the firm based in Kansas City, Missouri, has experience conducting investigations related to university athletic departments.

In a Wednesday interview with the Coloradoan, McConnell said she wanted to move quickly in finding a firm.

The investigation was spurred by a Coloradoan story Tuesday in which football players and athletic department staff asserted the athletic administration was covering up the COVID-19 health threat.

The two primary Husch Blackwell investigators on the CSU case will be Hayley Hanson and Demetrius Peterson.

In her Thursday email in announcing the firm, McConnell wrote a report will be made available to those in athletics and that staff and student-athletes may be interviewed and should reach out to those investigators.

"My expectation is that everyone will fully cooperate with the investigation,'' she wrote in the email. "If you have information that is relevant to the investigation, it is critical that you share it with the investigators.Any attempts to retaliate against, pressure, or intimidate individuals who participate in the investigation will not be tolerated.Should that occur, please report that conduct to the investigators or to my office immediately.''

Opinion:CSU, college football seasons a lost cause

Reporter Miles Blumhardt looks for stories that impact your life. Be it news, outdoors, sports you name it, he wants to report it. Have a story idea? Contact him at milesblumhardt@coloradoan.com or on Twitter @MilesBlumhardt. Support his work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

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CSU hires firm to investigate athletic department's handling of COVID-19 threat - Coloradoan

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now reached more than 19 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths now stands at more than 714,000.

Just 10 African countries account for 80% of testing on the continent, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits fell last week, but more than 30 million people were still receiving unemployment checks in mid-July.

From Saturday, Norway is reimposing a 10-day quarantine on arrivals from France, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

Hilton Worldwide Holdings says it doesn't expect demand to return to pre-COVID-19 levels until 2022.

The Australian state of Victoria began a six-week total lockdown on Thursday, with shops and businesses closed. It reported its deadliest day on Wednesday, with 15 deaths and a record daily rise of 725 cases.

South Korea has lifted a ban on travellers from the Chinese province of Hubei, the original epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.

Daily confirmed cases and deaths can fluctuate.

Image: Our World in Data

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India have passed 2 million, following a record daily rise. It's the third country, after the US and Brazil, to reach the milestone.

Experts say the epidemic is likely to be months away from hitting its peak in India, as the virus spreads to smaller towns and rural areas.

Authorities also have to contend with multiple outbreaks, across the country's massive population.

A country of Indias size and diversity has multiple epidemics in different phases, said Rajib Dasgupta, head of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

The country has reported just over 41,000 deaths, but it's thought the real number will be higher.

The first global pandemic in more than 100 years, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world at an unprecedented speed. At the time of writing, 4.5 million cases have been confirmed and more than 300,000 people have died due to the virus.

As countries seek to recover, some of the more long-term economic, business, environmental, societal and technological challenges and opportunities are just beginning to become visible.

To help all stakeholders communities, governments, businesses and individuals understand the emerging risks and follow-on effects generated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Marsh and McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, has launched its COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications - a companion for decision-makers, building on the Forums annual Global Risks Report.

The report reveals that the economic impact of COVID-19 is dominating companies risks perceptions.

Companies are invited to join the Forums work to help manage the identified emerging risks of COVID-19 across industries to shape a better future. Read the full COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications report here, and our impact story with further information.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for global unity in facing global challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic.

"We must seize this moment to come together in national unity and global solidarity to control COVID-19, address antimicrobial resistance and the climate crisis," he told yesterday's media briefing.

"For all our differences, we are one human race sharing the same planet and our security is interdependent - no country will be safe until were all safe."

He also called on countries to invest in health systems and universal health coverage:

"While health has often been viewed as a cost, the first coronavirus pandemic in history has shown how critical health investment is to national security."

Building back healthcare systems will require political will, resources and technical expertise, he added.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the pandemic on 7 August - World Economic Forum

Tony Potts, 69, a retiree from Ormond Beach, Fla., receives his first Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shot Tuesday as part of the company's phase three clinical trial. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

Tony Potts, 69, a retiree from Ormond Beach, Fla., receives his first Moderna COVID-19 vaccine shot Tuesday as part of the company's phase three clinical trial.

How much will vaccines against the coronavirus cost? Even though none has finished clinical testing, some clues about pricing are starting to emerge.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna, one of the leading horses in the vaccine race, has already made deals at between $32 and $37 per dose of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in agreements with some foreign countries, rattling consumer advocates, who fear an unfair deal for U.S. taxpayers.

These Moderna prices reflected "smaller volume agreements," Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel said during a conference call Wednesday to discuss the company's second-quarter financial results. He added that the price would come down for larger volume agreements, hinting at a lower price for U.S. taxpayers.

Still, advocates are worried. Moderna has been developing its vaccine with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of help from the federal government.

In mid-April, the drugmaker won a $483 million award from BARDA, the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, toward research and development of its coronavirus vaccine. And that award could ultimately be worth almost $1 billion if the company meets all its goals under the contract, according to federal records.

Moderna has been working on its vaccine with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which anticipates spending an additional $410 million on the effort. This includes money for preclinical and early clinical research, but the bulk of it is going toward the crucial phase three clinical trial that began on July 27 and will include up to 30,000 people.

Given the upfront investment in the Moderna vaccine by the government, there are sharp questions about its eventual pricing. "It's a classic example of taxpayers paying twice for medicines," says Zain Rizvi, a law and policy researcher at Public Citizen focused on pharmaceuticals. "Now it wants to turn around and charge those very same taxpayers the highest public price for a potential COVID-19 [vaccine]. That's outrageous."

The federal government has been announcing procurement agreements over the past few months with pharmaceutical companies that are part of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's push to have a vaccine widely available by January. So far, the prices implied by publicly released deals work out to between $4 and $20 per dose.

Moderna's procurement contract with the United States hasn't been announced, but a company spokesperson told NPR in an email that it is "committed to responsible pricing."

Pfizer's agreement with the federal government is the most lucrative to date. The government agreed to buy 100 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, being developed with German biotech firm BioNTech, for $1.95 billion. That works out to about $20 per dose.

Since Pfizer's contract did not include research funding from the federal government, it's not under the same pressure as some of the other vaccine makers to keep prices low for U.S. taxpayers.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are expected to require two doses to protect against the coronavirus.

On July 21, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., asked vaccine manufacturers at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing whether they would commit to selling their vaccines "at cost," meaning for no profit.

She turned to Moderna's president, Stephen Hoge, first. "We will not sell it at cost," he replied.

"You will what?" she asked.

"We will not sell it at cost," he repeated. "No, ma'am."

Merck also declined to make this pledge during the hearing. AstraZeneca said its existing deal with the U.S. didn't generate a profit, and Johnson & Johnson said it wouldn't make a profit "during the pandemic."

Moderna views pricing of its coronavirus vaccine in two stages: the pandemic period and the endemic period, CEO Bancel said Wednesday during the conference call.

"At Moderna, like many public health experts, we believe that SARS-CoV-2 virus is not going away, and that there will be a need to vaccinate people or give them a boost for many years to come," he told investors.

During the pandemic period, he said the vaccine would be priced "well below value," but afterward, it would be more in line "with other innovative commercial vaccines." That means prices could go up.

That two-tiered pricing outlook highlights the U.S. government's misstep in failing to add reasonable pricing clauses to its contracts with drugmakers, says Kathryn Ardizzone, a lawyer with Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit public interest group that works on intellectual property issues.

"The reality is that this is not just a free market arrangement," she says. "The U.S. government has put up a billion dollars towards the development of the vaccine, and in doing so, should have realized that it has significant leverage and [negotiated] contract terms that are favorable to the American public and worldwide."

Not everyone agrees. Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason University who specializes in intellectual property, says efforts to control vaccine and drug prices during the COVID-19 pandemic could have ripple effects in the biopharmaceutical industry, ultimately stifling innovation.

He says it's a slippery slope to say taxpayers are paying twice for pharmaceuticals because they also financed part of the research. "Because the government is involved in everything in our society, the principles we're establishing would justify the government to dictate prices on not just medicines but also on all products and services from automobiles to smartphones," he says.

It's not clear exactly how much of the bill taxpayers are footing for Moderna's vaccine. Under its contract with BARDA, Moderna is required to disclose regularly the proportion of its funding that comes from the federal government. Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International say it hasn't.

"It appears to be violating that contract and implicitly downplayed the critical role of federal scientists in its press releases," Public Citizen's Rizvi said. "This is shocking in some way, but it's also just another example of the erasure of publicly funded science that large pharmaceutical corporations often do."

Gary Disbrow, BARDA's acting director, replied to the groups Thursday night.

"The trust of the American people is vital in the all-of-America response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic," Disbrow wrote, stressing his colleagues' commitment to transparency regarding vaccine development. "The contracting officer responsible for the Moderna contract has been in touch with the company and will ensure their compliance with their contractual requirements."

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Vaccine Prices For COVID-19 Begin To Emerge : Shots - Health News - NPR

On March 27, Mayor Eric Garcetti virtually convened 45 mayors from around the world to share their experiences responding to COVID-19 as it rippled throughout the world. These mayors were part of C40 Cities, a network of 96 of the worlds largest cities focused on fighting the climate emergency.

Two weeks earlier the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared the outbreak a pandemic. The C40 quickly repurposed from its focus on tackling climate change to leverage its relationships, capacity, and expertise with cities to facilitate their leadership on the front lines of the response to COVID-19. In short order it rolled out a knowledge base, set up a recovery task force chaired by Mayor Beppe Sala of Milan, and signed up an influential set of global cities to make issues of equity and climate action central to COVID-19 response and recovery.

This is just one example of the diverse global activity and collective action facilitated by city-to-city networks since the onset of COVID-19. It stands in stark contrast to the challenges experienced by the traditional, nation-state multilateral system in facilitating global cooperation to address the crisis. Indeed, the difficulties traditional institutions have faced in providing a coherent and timely response to the pandemic accelerated the impulse for rapid city-to-city cooperation. This instinct was also intensified by the lackluster reaction by many national governments in providing guidance, coordination, and resources within their own countries. Cities and local governments banded together to move forward quickly and decisively.

The prevailing view is that cross-border collaboration and experience sharing among city officials reflect a type of global cooperation based primarily on pragmatism and problem-solving, rather than geopolitical interests, which differentiates it from traditional multilateralism. What is the COVID-19 crisis revealing about this thesis and the value, limitations, and likely evolution of global city-to-city cooperation?

Complementing direct bilateral relationships, a large part of city-to-city cooperation is structured through city networks, whose number has grown exponentially since the 1980s, estimated to total about 300 today. Each network emerged primarily to respond to a specific demand, with the resulting ecosystem encompassing a wide range of specific objectives and aspirations. Some seek to create a political forum for dialogue, cooperation, and knowledge sharing, such as the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), which supports an international municipal movement. Others focus on specific sectors or topical areas, such as climate change (C40 Cities), resilience (Global Resilient Cities Network), and migration (Mayors Migration Council).

The pandemic catalyzed initiatives at the national, regional, and global levels. In the United States, the U.S. Conference of Mayors conducted a key survey of cities and facilitated collective advocacy to Congress for additional emergency COVID-19 relief. The mayors of Buenos Aires, Bogot, Lima, Madrid, Montevideo, and Santiago de Chile, all members of the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI), met virtually to share viewpoints and tactics to address the crisis. But many initiatives to support local action have had a global ambition, such as the Beyond the Outbreak platform created by UCLG, Metropolis, and UN-Habitat.

Certain cities belong to multiple networks; others may not belong to any. The decision to engage in city-to-city cooperation varies by their size, staff capacity and resources, and global ambition. The COVID-19 crisis is further forcing city officials to be selective about their engagement. Based on conversations with cities, the most often cited reasons for engaging in international cooperation in response to the pandemic include:

Given the pressures of COVID-19 response, the multiplicity of networks and opportunities, and the limits on resources and staff, cities are beginning to take steps to rationalize their selection and involvement in city networks. The pressures of the pandemic are creating an incentive to:

The creation of city networks has been mostly demand-driven, to meet unique needs in specific sectors or regions. While this provides networks with legitimacy and credibility from their members, it also means city networks have proliferated, creating a fragmented market We might expect city networks to evolve post-COVID along these lines:

Today, cities are in different phases of the pandemic, some still dealing with the emergency response, others reopening and edging toward recovery, and a few, unfortunately, staving off a second wave. At all these stages of the crisis, they are seeking tangible value from engaging with their global peers, disseminating best practices, accelerating the diffusion of innovations, and providing outside validation and elevation of a collective urban voice.

The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the continued evolution of these networks. The forthcoming economic recovery provides another opportunity for cities to strengthen and prove their leadership on solving issues of global importance. The COVID-19 crisis revealed to the world that local leadership matters on the frontlines. Now it is an opportune time for city networks to upgrade their ability to realize the collective ambitions of urban leaders and redefine the face of global cooperation.

Continued here:

How to make the most of city diplomacy in the COVID-19 era - Brookings Institution

Governor Tom Wolf and Pennsylvania Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine today highlighted ongoing efforts to expand testing across Pennsylvania to ensure that every Pennsylvanian who wants a test can get one.

If we want to mitigate the spread of this very contagious virus, we must continue to understand how its impacting Pennsylvania. Most importantly, improving access to testing helps Pennsylvanians who want and need to test for COVID-19, Gov. Wolf said. Testing also provides us with critical data to understand where the disease is in our communities so that we can take the necessary proactive measures to stop the spread and continue to protect the public.

The Wolf Administration continues to work to further increase testing in Pennsylvania. This includes partnerships in place with Walmart and Quest Diagnostics, which provide direct access in many communities, including rural areas.

The administration also continues to work with laboratories across the state in order to enhance testing capacity in Pennsylvania, particularly as we see significant national delays in receiving test results due to other states experiencing major case increases.

In Pennsylvania, we are committed to ensuring that testing is accessible, available and adaptable, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said. Through working with our partners, including Walmart and Quest Diagnostics, we are helping to ensure that anyone who needs to get tested for COVID-19 in Pennsylvania can get tested. Testing, along with wearing a mask, washing your hands, maintaining social distancing and contact tracing are essential tools to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania.

Nine drive-thru Walmart testing sites launched on Aug. 5. These nine new sites are in addition to existing Walmart drive-thru sites in Clarion, State College, New Castle and Edinboro.

Walmart is happy to assist Governor Wolf with reliable timely COVID-19 tests via a convenient drive thru, said Jamie Reilly, Walmart regional health and wellness director.

Pennsylvania has conducted the ninth highest total number of tests for COVID-19 in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 1.6 million tests have been completed, which equates to 13 percent of the Pennsylvania population.

At the height of the first wave in April, statewide testing capacity was limited to under 8,000 tests per day. Pennsylvania is now averaging more than 22,000 test results per day, as of Saturday, Aug. 1, and is testing about 4 percent of the population each month.

The most updated testing sites and information is available at the Department of Health. Testing sites continue to be added.

For the updated commonwealth map of testing sites, visit Pennsylvania COVID-19 Viral Testing Sites.

Ver esta pgina en espaol.

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Wolf Administration Highlights Increased Efforts to Expand COVID-19 Testing Availability - pa.gov

8/6/2020

~504,768 positive cases in Florida residents and 5,621 positive cases in non-Florida residents~

The Florida Department of Health (DOH), in order to provide more comprehensive data, releases a report on COVID-19 cases in Florida once per day. The DOH COVID-19 dashboard is also providing updates once per day. The state also provides a report detailing surveillance data for every Florida county, which is available here.

In order to make the daily COVID-19 report easier to download and more accessible, the daily report will now separate case line data in a separate PDF. Both reports will continue to be updated daily. The case line data report is available here.

Test results for more than 104,100 individuals were reported to DOH as of midnight, on Wednesday, August 5. Today, as reported at 11 a.m., there are:

On August 5, 8.34 percent of new cases** tested positive.

There are a total of 510,389 Florida cases*** with 7,747 deaths related to COVID-19.

Since August 5, the death of one hundred twenty Florida residents who tested positive for COVID-19 have been reported in Brevard, Broward, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Dade, Escambia, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Indian River, Jackson, Lake, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Manatee, Marion, Martin, Okaloosa, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Santa Rosa, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Volusia and Walton counties.

Florida long-term care facility data:

The antibody COVID-19 test results report will be provided once a week and contains county, race and lab information on antibody COVID-19 tests conducted in Florida. The report for antibody tests conducted by private health care providers is available here and the report for antibody tests conducted at state-supported COVID-19 testing sites is available here.

More information can also be found here.

* Florida residents that are diagnosed with COVID-19 and isolated out of state are not reflected on the Florida map.

**This percentage is the number of people who test positive for the first time divided by all tests, excluding people who have previously tested positive.

***Total cases overview includes positive cases in Florida residents and non-Florida residents tested in Florida.

More Information on COVID-19

To find the most up-to-date information and guidance on COVID-19, please visit the Department of Healths dedicatedCOVID-19 webpage. For information and advisories from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), please visit the CDC COVID-19 website, this website is also available in Spanish and Creole.For more information about current travel advisories issued by the U.S. Department of State, please visit the travel advisory website.

For any other questions related to COVID-19 in Florida, please contact the Departments dedicated COVID-19 Call Center by calling1-866-779-6121.The Call Center is available 24 hours per day.Inquiries may also beemailed toCOVID-19@flhealth.gov.

About the Florida Department of Health

The Florida Department of Health, nationally accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board, works to protect, promote and improve the health of all people in Florida through integrated state, county and community efforts.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at @HealthyFla. For more information please visit http://www.FloridaHealth.gov.

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20200806 Florida Department of Health Updates New COVID-19 Cases, Announces One Hundred Twenty Deaths Related to COVID-19 - Florida Disaster

Muslims were caught off guard last week, when the UK government suddenly announced local lockdowns in a slew of areas in northern England where cases have spiked. The announcement came just hours before Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals in Islam.

The restrictions -- published late last Thursday evening -- banned people in the named areas from mixing with other households.

Local politicians and Muslim leaders criticized the timing of the announcement.

"The timing ... it focused people's minds [on Muslims]," Rabnawaz Akbar, a Labour Party councilor in Manchester, told CNN.

The government "have done it on the eve of Eid," leading people to think "it must be the Muslim community's fault," Akbar said. "You see how people would have come to the assumption. [The government] have done it without thinking but of course, they're highlighting a particular demographic. And people are angry and now that anger is focused on a particular community."

A Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement to CNN: "Decisions on lockdowns are based solely on scientific advice and the latest data. Where there are local outbreaks, our priority will remain taking whatever steps are necessary to protect people."

Akbar also criticized Craig Whittaker, a Conservative MP who suggested that England's ethnic minorities were not adhering to pandemic guidelines.

"What I have seen in my constituency is that we have areas of our community ... that are just not taking the pandemic seriously enough," Whittaker said Friday, when asked about the local lockdowns during an interview with LBC radio.

When asked if he was talking about the Muslim population, Whittaker replied: "Of course."

"If you look at the areas where we've seen rises and cases the vast majority -- not, by any stretch of the imagination, all areas -- but it is the BAME [Black, Asian, and minority ethnic] communities that are not taking it seriously enough," he added.

Whittaker's comments were met with an outcry and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked about them at a press briefing on Friday.

The British leader did not condemn the MP, and said: "Well, I think it's up to all of us in government to make sure that the message is being heard loud and clear by everybody across the country, and to make sure that everybody is complying with the guidance."

This week, the Downing Street spokesperson told CNN: "At Friday's press conference the Prime Minister apologized to all those who could not celebrate Eid in the way they had wished, and thanked the work of mosques and imams in getting the message out about the importance of following safety guidance.

"And he set out in his Eid message that he is hugely grateful to the Muslim community for their efforts and sacrifices throughout this pandemic."

"To single out one community this way is wholly wrong, stigmatizing and unbecoming of an MP," the group said in a statement.

Following the controversy, Whittaker said his evidence was based on data from local officials at Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire.

"In an age where authenticity is a behaviour scarcely exhibited by public figures, I am glad that I have chosen open, honest and frank discussion over political expediency and ... I make no apology for my comments," he added.

Tell MAMA director Iman Atta told CNN that far-right extremists had been blaming Muslims for the pandemic since the beginning of the UK's lockdown in March.

"In March, April, May, we saw a lot of conspiracy theories floating around," she said. "The far right were sharing photos of Muslims congregating and flouting the rules at mosques which were, in reality, shut down and not functioning. The photos were from last year," she said.

"And they have spread rumors online about how BAME communities are the ones spreading the virus, so [people] should not be interacting with them."

Atta's findings are echoed by those of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which represents several UK mosques and Muslim organizations.

Earlier in the lockdown "there were theories spreading that Muslims would gather secretly during Ramadan, that mosques were secretly open -- none of that was true and there was no evidence," Zainab Gulamali, a spokesperson for the organization, told CNN.

Gulamali added that she was disappointed that Johnson and his Conservative Party colleagues had failed to condemn Whittaker's comments on BAME people.

Johnson himself has repeatedly been accused of Islamophobia. He drew sharp rebukes from Muslim communities in 2018 over an article he wrote about Muslim women wearing burqas. The politician said women who wore the veil resembled "letter boxes" and "bank robbers."

He later offered a partial apology, saying: "In so far as my words have given offense over the last twenty or thirty years when I've been a journalist and people have taken those words out of my articles and escalated them, of course, I am sorry for the offense they have caused."

Crime figures suggest that the UK has become a more hostile place for Muslims in recent years. Despite accounting for less than 5% of the UK's 66 million-strong population, 52% of religious hate crime offenses committed in England and Wales between 2017 and 2018 targeted Muslims.

Much of the recent blame placed on Muslims appears to be driven by the fact that Covid-19 has hit the country's ethnic minorities hard.

"There is extensive racist commentary on social media," the researchers wrote. "Videos have also been circulated on social media showing the South Asian community flouting social distancing in an attempt to stir conflict."

"We don't want to sweep under the carpet the issues that [Muslim communities] do face," Rabnawaz Akbar said.

"A lot of people live in densely-populated terraced housing," he said, explaining that many Muslims "live with their parents or their grandparents, so you have multigenerational households. A lot of people work in low income and frontline jobs -- they're taxi drivers or health care [workers] ... they're inevitably going to be at risk of catching the virus."

"But rather than blame them, the solution is that local and central government should work with the communities to take extra precautions," he said.

Muslims are far from alone in shouldering increased racial resentment during the Covid-19 crisis.

For many minorities the new threat of the pandemic has only intensified the age-old danger of bigotry.

Excerpt from:

In the latest sign of Covid-19-related racism, Muslims are being blamed for England's coronavirus outbreaks - CNN

Thomas Jefferson Health District

RICHMOND The Virginia Department of Health reported Thursday that the statewide total for COVID-19 cases is 95,867 an increase of 818 from the 95,049 reported Wednesday.

The 95,867 cases consist of 92,244 confirmed cases and 3,623 probable cases. There are 2,299 COVID-19 deaths in Virginia 2,191 confirmed and 108 probable. Thats an increase of 25 from the 2,274 reported Wednesday.

On Thursday, the Thomas Jefferson Health District reported 17 new cases, for a total of 1,845 in the entire health district. One new hospitalization was also reported, along with three fatalities.

Two new fatalities were reported in Charlottesville along with one new fatality in Fluvanna County. There have been 44 fatalities associated with the novel coronavirus in the entire health district.

Albemarle County is now reporting 798 cases and 52 hospitalizations. 16 fatalities have been reported in the county.

The city of Charlottesville has reported 505 cases, 25 hospitalizations and 15 fatalities.

Fluvanna County has reported 179 cases, 31 hospitalizations and nine fatalities.

Greene and Louisa Counties both have reported two fatalities each. 153 cases have been reported out of Greene, while 174 cases have been reported out of Louisa. To date, eight hospitalizations have been reported in Greene, with 22 hospitalizations reported in Louisa.

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20 COVID-19 outbreaks in TJHD, 44 fatalities, 1,845 total cases - The Daily Progress

The Kima:w Medical Center on the Hoopa Valley Reservation. | Image via kimaw.org.

###

Health officials with the Hoopa Valley Tribe have confirmed nearly two dozen cases of COVID-19 on the reservation since Monday morning, and according to Chairman Byron Nelson, Jr., the outbreak is tied to a family trip outside the county.

Basically its one family that had been exposed, he told the Outpost via phone this morning. Theyre being monitored and quarantined, and the county is doing the [contact tracing] on all those cases.

The tribe has identified 23 cases since Monday morning. All of those cases remain active, according to the tribes Office of Emergency Services dashboard. On Tuesday, the tribe issued a press release announcing that the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council had chosen to shut down non-emergency operations for two weeks to allow for contact tracing and other precautions.

That evening, Dr. Eva Smith, medical director at the Kima:w Medical Center, reported another 12 positive cases, and on Wednesday night another five were confirmed, bringing the total number of active cases on the reservation to 23. Prior to Monday, the tribe had only identified a single positive case.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the official countywide COVID-19 case tally stood at 62 active cases and 255 total cases since the first one was identified on Feb. 20. County health officials do include Hoopas case numbers in the countys totals, though as Humboldt County Health Officer Dr. Teresa Frankovich explained yesterday, theres sometimes a lag as the county receives and vets the results.

Nelson said health care workers at the Kima:w Medical Center use both rapid testing kitsthat can provide results within 15 minutes and the more-common molecular testing methods, which require sending samples to commercial labs or the county for results.

At an emergency meeting this morning, the Hoopa Valley Tribe finalized the roster for a COVID-19 response team, Nelson said. This afternoon, on Hoopa Tribal Radio KIDE FM, some key members of that team discussed the outbreak and the tribes response.

One of the things we really want to emphasize is please stay within your household bubble, said Dr. Stephen Stake, chief operations officer at the Kima:w Medical Center. He urged reservation residents to stay away from groups and other households.

Greg Moon, the COVID-19 response teams incident commander, said tribal employees have been placed in key positions and the team is making some great strides right away.

Were taking full authority to mobilize the tribe in this effort, Nelson said. Were making executive decisions, trying to get ahead of this.

Moon said tribal leaders are working to bring in more health care resources. Imagine a tent city coming in here with ventilators, he said. Its not gonna be a small deal; its gonna be a big deal.

The Kima:w Medical Center has conducted about 30 tests per day this week, according to Dr. Stake. He urged reservation residents who need testing to call the facility at (530) 625-4261, ext. 0218.

Nationwide, the New York Times reported last week, there are strong indications that Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus.

Nelson and the team hes helped assemble are aiming to contain the spread of this outbreak on the Hoopa Valley Reservation.

I hope it stops here, he said.

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Outbreak of COVID-19 Cases in Hoopa Tied to Family That Traveled Out of County, Tribal Chairman Says - Lost Coast Outpost

Approving a vaccine in the U.S. usually takes years, but COVID-19 vaccines are moving through in record time. What does that mean? USA TODAY

NEWARK -Twenty three residents have died from coronavirus at one nursing home in Licking County and 10 at another, according to the Licking County Health Department.

Last month, the agency announced an outbreak at Newark Care and Rehabilitation. They were initially notified of the outbreak at the beginning of July.

On Wednesday morning, Licking County Health Commissioner Chad Brown reported 73 Newark Care and Rehabilitation residents and 45 staff members have tested positive for coronavirus, and 23 residents have died from the virus. Brown noted they are working to get the number of active cases from the facility.

Billie Mominey said her mother was one of the first to contract the virus in that facility. Shesaid before her mother's COVID-19 test results came back they had moved her to a different unit in the facility. Within hours, Mominey said thetest results came back positive.

Mominey claimed her mother was not the only resident moved prior to receiving results from their coronavirus test.

More: Evans remembered for dedication to shoe store, downtown, community after COVID-19 death

Newark Care and Rehabilitation at 75 McMillen Drive in Newark(Photo: Sara C. Tobias/The Advocate)

According to Mominey, her mother spent a little over two weeks in the hospital before returning to Newark Care and Rehabilitation. She said there are staff members doing an excellent job, making sure she eats and getting her into a wheelchair to make sure she's still moving.

"But that was a horrible call, sending those patients throughout the building before knowing if she (or they) were positive or not," Mominey said.

Newark Care and Rehabilitation administration could not be reached for comment.

At Middleton Senior Living in Granville, Brown said 10 residents have died from coronavirus. As of Wednesday morning, Brown said 16 residents and 11 staff members have tested positive. He noted the facility has six active cases in residents and two active staff cases. Thatoutbreak was initiallyreported on July 21.

Brown reported 16 resident cases, five staff cases and zero deaths from coronavirus at Arlington Care Center in Newark.

Similar to how LCHD has worked with Newark Care and Rehabilitation during the outbreak, Brown said they've provided Middleton and Arlington's administrative team with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and the Ohio Department of Health, as well as personal protective equipment and coronavirus testing supplies.

Brown said staff at Licking County Health Department communicate with the three nursing homes daily.

Middleton Senior Living in Granville

In a statement from Middleton Senior Living, administration said their hearts are with their employees, residents and staff during this time.

"We have been inspired by our staff courage and loyalty. Our team at Middleton Senior Living is comprised of very experienced and talented managers who call the residents their family," they said. "We remain uplifted by the outpouring of support from our families and their testimonials regarding our loving care to our residents."

Middleton administration said they're committed to their safety measures and are following their procedures regarding universal precautions throughout the community. They noted they are adhering to all state regulations and health department guidance.

Last week, Brown told The Advocate the outbreaks would be considered under control once they've gone four days with zero new cases.

As of Tuesday, Brown said Newark Care and Rehabilitation had gone five days without any new cases in residents. He desribed it as an "encouraging development."

For the outbreaks to be considered cleared, Brown explained they would have to go through two incubation periods, or 28 days, without any new cases.

Last week, the outbreak at Newark Care and Rehabilitation prompted residents' loved ones to seek help from the Licking County Commissioners.

More: Loved ones seek help from commissioners regarding Newark nursing home outbreak

At their Thursday meeting, Stephen Short, of Laurelville, told the commissioners his uncle, Bob Evans, was placed in hospice after contracting the coronavirus while a resident at Newark Care and Rehabilitation. Evans has since died.

Newark Care and Rehabilitation at 75 McMillen Drive in Newark(Photo: Sara C. Tobias/The Advocate)

Mandy Wilson, whose brother receives care at Newark Care and Rehabilitation following an accident that left him paraplegic, told The Advocateher brother has described the facility as prison-like.

"Before he was enjoying it. He actually got the good care he needed," Wilson said. "Since March, it's just been a horror story for him."

Other than video chats, Wilson said their family has only been able to visit him through glass.

"It's very hurtful," she said. "It's kind of like somebody died, but you can still hear their voice and talk to them."

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Wilson said she understands lockdown units in the facility, but says no one is allowed to go outside. She claimed staff have proper personal protective equipment, but the patients don't.

"He says it's like prison. He has no rights," Wilson said. "There's some good nurses and some good aides. He feels like he's in solitary confinement, looking at the four walls. He's telling me 'I think we're going to die in here.'"

Melisa McKinley Bay said her mother was in Newark Care and Rehabilitation for physical therapy.Only July 7, Bay said the nursing home called to say they were discharging her mother. Although her mother was supposed to be in the facility for physical therapy, Bay said her mother was extremely weak. And within eight hours, had fallen and was taken to Licking Memorial Hospital, where she tested positive for coronavirus.

Bay expressed frustration over a lack of communication from the nursing home, saying their family could've removed her from the facility a lot sooner if they'd known.

Bay said her mother, who was 74, diedin Licking Memorial on a ventilator about two weeks ago.

"Something has to be done because 23 (deaths) is way too many," Bay said. "One is way too many."

Bay said she felt the nursing home hadbeen trying to hide the outbreak and had dumped her mom to avoid another coronavirus case.

"She hugged everybody. She would smile - she had the best smile. She was a jokester. She saw the good in everybody," Bay said. "This is serious...It's sad to watch your loved one go through this and to go through it alone. The staff at Licking Memorial was great...but it's so hard. They're still alone. That's probably the hardest part was she was alone when she passed."

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Families express outrage as 33 dead from COVID-19 at two Licking County care facilities - The Newark Advocate

LUBBOCK, Texas As of July 22, Whisperwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center reported 25 COVID-19 deaths in residents to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, and was one of only two nursing homes in the state with the most reported virus deaths.

The other nursing home with 25 deaths was Brenham Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Brenham, Texas, according to HHS. One nursing home in Houston had a reported 24 deaths.

Lakeside Rehabilitation and Care Center reported 10 virus deaths in residents and was in the top 50 in terms of number of coronavirus deaths in Texas nursing homes, according to HHS. Bender Terrace reported 4 deaths, or in the top 150 for COVID-19 deaths in state nursing facilities.

Of the 1,215 nursing homes in the state of Texas, 628 of them had at least one case of coronavirus in its residents, according to HHS data. Of those, 329 had at least one resident who had died from the virus.

In total, Whisperwood had 84 residents test positive for COVID-19, as well as 32 employees. There were no active coronavirus cases in Whisperwood residents as of July 22, according to HHS data.

According to a list of nursing homes provided by the HHS, Whisperwood has a total capacity of 126. That would mean that, at least 60 percent of all Whisperwood residents were infected with the virus, with at least 19 percent of all residents dying.

EverythingLubbock.com reached out to Whisperwood by phone on Thursday afternoon. If Whisperwood accepts the invitation to comment, an update will be provided.

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Lubbock nursing home one of two in Texas with most COVID-19 resident deaths - KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com

Safety metrics If a county were to see substantial community transmission, Gov. Justice, State Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch, and the affected county superintendent would work together on additional actions to keep schools safe, including stopping in-person instruction and going to full remote learning if necessary.

Gov. Justice announced Wednesday that he has directed the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) and State medical experts to work with the WVDE to develop a metric that will be used to indicate when it is safe to go to school and when community transmission rises to a level where additional action may be necessary.

The Governor announced that the metric, which is still in development, will be based on each countys rate of COVID-19 cases over certain periods of time.

As soon as the metric is finalized, it will be made publicly available. The numbers for each county will be posted to an online dashboard and a map for the public to see.

Over the next 10 to 14 days or so, we will develop a code system, Gov. Justice said. From that, what well do is be able to look at an area and say, This county has this level of the metric and it is beyond what we think is acceptable for the schools to be open. From there, in that county at that point in time, we would not have schools open. We would do it all virtually until we get the numbers back down.

Depending on how each county is performing in the metric, they will each be assigned one of four colors: green, yellow, orange, or red.

Green indicates that a county is experiencing minimal community transmission, allowing counties to operate under general re-entry guidelines while continuing to follow best health practices to prevent the spread of the disease.

Yellow indicates that a county is experiencing moderate community transmission and increased restrictions may be necessary.

Orange indicates that a county is experiencing higher community transmission and further restrictions will be necessary, in collaboration with local health officials.

Red indicates that a county is experiencing substantial community transmission. Under these conditions all in-person instruction would be suspended and remote learning plans would be activated. Staff would continue essential support services, including meals, student engagement, and special education.

Each countys performance in respect to the safety metric will be continuously evaluated by DHHR and updated on the online dashboard and map resources.

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COVID-19 UPDATE: Gov. Justice announces reopening plan for West Virginia schools - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

The West Virginia Department of Health andHuman Resources (DHHR) reports as of 10:00 a.m., on August 3,2020, there have been 294,902 total confirmatorylaboratory results received for COVID-19, with 6,973 totalcases and 117 deaths.

In alignment with updated definitions fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the dashboard includes probablecases which are individuals that have symptoms and either serologic (antibody)or epidemiologic (e.g., a link to a confirmed case) evidence of disease, but noconfirmatory test.

CASESPER COUNTY (Case confirmed by lab test/Probable case):Barbour (29/0), Berkeley (634/23), Boone (79/0), Braxton (8/0), Brooke(60/1), Cabell (328/10), Calhoun (6/0), Clay (17/0), Doddridge (4/0), Fayette(131/0), Gilmer (16/0), Grant (80/1), Greenbrier (87/0), Hampshire (74/0),Hancock (98/4), Hardy (53/1), Harrison (197/1), Jackson (157/0), Jefferson(287/5), Kanawha (838/13), Lewis (26/1), Lincoln (67/1), Logan (154/0), Marion(175/4), Marshall (125/2), Mason (49/0), McDowell (43/1), Mercer (165/0),Mineral (111/2), Mingo (132/2), Monongalia (909/16), Monroe (18/1), Morgan(25/1), Nicholas (31/1), Ohio (255/0), Pendleton (37/1), Pleasants (7/1),Pocahontas (40/1), Preston (101/23), Putnam (171/1), Raleigh (189/7), Randolph(202/3), Ritchie (3/0), Roane (14/0), Summers (6/0), Taylor (52/1), Tucker(11/0), Tyler (12/0), Upshur (36/2), Wayne (183/2), Webster (3/0), Wetzel(40/0), Wirt (6/0), Wood (225/11), Wyoming (23/0).

As case surveillance continues at thelocal health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certaincounty may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individualin question may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Brooke and Randolph counties in this report.

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. Visitthe dashboard at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more detailed information.

On July 24,2020, Gov. Jim Justice announced that DHHR, the agency in charge of reportingthe number of COVID-19 cases, will transition from providing twice-dailyupdates to one report every 24 hours. This became effective August 1, 2020.

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COVID-19 Daily Update 8-3-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

News Release

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Initial trial to determine if monoclonal antibodies can shorten severity of COVID-19 in outpatients.

A Phase 2 clinical trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of potential new therapeutics for COVID-19, including an investigational therapeutic based on synthetic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to treat the disease. Researchers sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, are working with clinical sites to identify potential patient volunteers currently infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, who have mild to moderate disease not requiring hospitalization. They will be invited to take an experimental therapy or a placebo as part of a rigorously designed randomized clinical trial. The trial, which is known as ACTIV-2, also may investigate other experimental therapeutics later under the same trial protocol.

If the investigational mAbs show promise, the study would expand from a Phase 2 to a Phase 3 trial to gather additional critical data from a larger pool of volunteers without delay. The trial will be led by the NIAID-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and will enroll participants at sites around the world.

ACTIV-2 was established as part of NIHsAccelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV),a public-private partnership program instituted to speed development of the most promising treatments and vaccines. This study isalso receiving support throughOperation Warp Speed, the U.S. governments multi-agency effort to develop, manufacture and distribute medical countermeasures to fight COVID-19.

The design of the study is adaptive to enable maximum flexibility in the shortest time frame. If the experimental treatment appears effective in the first stage, the treatment can be advanced rapidly to testing in larger groups of volunteers. The study also can be adapted to test additional therapeutics.

We have seen encouraging, rapid results from other adaptive treatment trials for COVID-19, said NIH DirectorFrancis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Under ACTIV, specific therapeutics are being prioritized based on their likelihood for success. Prioritized therapeutics under ACTIV will use a master protocol that emphasizes flexibility, which enables these critical trials to be conducted without incurring delays when a treatment shows promise.

The first therapeutic to be tested in this trial will be LY-CoV555, an investigational monoclonal antibody made byEli Lilly and Company (Indianapolis, Indiana). LY-CoV555 emerged from Lillys collaboration with AbCellera Biologics (Vancouver, British Columbia). Antibodies are infection-fighting proteins produced by immune cells. So-called neutralizing antibodies target specific viruses or other pathogens.This antibody, which was discovered by AbCellera in collaboration withNIAIDs Vaccine Research Center, was isolated from a blood sample from a recovered COVID-19 patient. Copies of this antibody were then synthesized in a labthe term monoclonal refers to these laboratory-manufactured antibodies.

Using an antibody generated by the immune system of a recovered COVID-19 patient gives us a jump start on finding a safe and effective therapeutic, said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. Investigating a variety of different therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies, will help ensure that we advance towards an effective treatment for people suffering from COVID-19 disease as quickly as possible.

The initial stage of the trial is designed to enroll approximately 220 volunteers who report recently experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and who test positive for the virus but are not hospitalized. Once enrolled, they will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: 110 volunteers will receive an intravenous (IV) infusion of LY-CoV555, and 110 volunteers will receive a placebo infusion of a saline solution. The infusion takes approximately an hour to deliver, and volunteers will be observed afterwards to note any reactions.

Over the next 28 days, participants will attend a series of clinic or at-home visits by clinicians to track their COVID-19 symptoms. Investigators also will check whether RNA from SARS-CoV-2, can still be detected in participants noses and saliva using a standard nasopharyngeal swab. Because people with COVID-19 often have unusually low blood oxygen levels, participants will receive pulse oximetry tests to help determine if the investigational therapeutic has a positive effect on blood oxygen levels. They also will give blood samples to help researchers understand how the experimental therapeutics are functioning in their bodies, as well as whether they are affecting the course of their SARS-CoV-2 infection. Participants will receive additional follow-up for up to 24 weeks.

The primary goals of the Phase 2 trial are to evaluate safety, to see if the investigational therapeutic can reduce the duration of symptoms through study day 28, and to see if the investigational therapeutic can increase the proportion of participants with undetectable virus in nasopharyngeal swabs at specific time points. If there are no serious safety concerns and if the investigational therapeutic appears to meet other specific other criteria (such as sufficiently reducing the duration of symptoms or the viral load in the volunteers bodies), the trial will transition to Phase 3 and enroll up to 1,780 additional outpatient volunteers, for a total of 2,000 trial participants. The primary goal of the Phase 3 study will be to determine if the investigational therapeutic can prevent either hospitalization or death through study day 28 while also continuing to evaluate its safety. Participants in the Phase 3 portion of the study will not be provided nasopharyngeal swabs, though they will still perform self-collected anterior nasal swabs, and they will attend fewer clinic visits.

The study team is led by Protocol Chair Davey Smith, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego, David Wohl, M.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Kara W. Chew, M.D., and Eric S. Daar, M.D., both of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),serve as protocol vice-chairs. The ACTG network is led by chair Judith Currier, M.D. (UCLA) and co-chairJoseph Eron, M.D. (UNC).

To ensure that the trial is being conducted in a safe and effective manner, an independent data and safety monitoring board will oversee the trial and periodically review the accumulating data.

NIAID conducts and supports research at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on theNIAID website.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIHTurning Discovery Into Health

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NIH clinical trial to test antibodies and other experimental therapeutics for mild and moderate COVID-19 - National Institutes of Health

Over the last seven days, a grim new COVID-19 calculus has emerged: one person died every 80 seconds from the coronavirus in America.

And the pace at which those 7,486 people died appears to be accelerating, a new NBC News tally revealed Wednesday.

In July, a total of 26,198 deaths were reported, meaning one every 102 seconds. As of Wednesday morning, more than 158,000 people in the U.S. had died of the virus since the start of the pandemic.

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The numbing new national snapshot of how COVID-19 is claiming more and more lives came as Johns Hopkins University reported another milestone: The world death toll from this plague had eclipsed 700,000.

The U.S. has logged over 4.8 million confirmed cases. And around 1.8 million of those have come since July 7, when the 3 millionth case was reported, NBC News figures show.

While most of the new cases and deaths have been in the South and Sun Belt, states in the northeast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts that were hit hardest at the start of the pandemic and were able to flatten the curve have also reported worrying upticks.

Under fire for being slow to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and presiding over the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump once again downplayed the extent of the pandemic in a call-in interview Wednesday with "Fox & Friends."

This thing is going away, he said. It will go away like things go away.

Joe Biden, the Democrat hoping to oust Trump from the White House come November, fired back.

Donald Trump continues to live in a world of delusion, Biden said in a statement.

In other developments:

Joe Murphy is a data editor at NBC News Digital.

Corky Siemaszko is a senior writer for NBC News Digital.

Suzanne Ciechalski contributed.

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One death every 80 seconds: The grim new toll of COVID-19 in America - NBC News