Tag: covid

The Past 24 Hours or So – Coronavirus, Protests, Trump Administration, and Election Updates

Read TIme: 6 Minutes

Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

  • The U.S. reported 60,264 new cases and 1,172 new deaths – The twelfth time in thirteen days over 1,000 deaths have been reported. 
  • Reiterating that Democrats are not interested in a short term coronavirus relief deal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived on Capitol Hill on Saturday morning and told reporters she’s hoping “that we make progress on a long-term deal.”
  • Trump administration officials and Democratic leaders negotiating a new coronavirus relief package said they made “progress” during a rare Saturday meeting but aren’t yet close to a deal.
  • Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) tested positive for the coronavirus days after he sat close to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who also tested positive. Grijalva is at least the 11th member of Congress to have tested positive.

In a statement, Grijalva said, “While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously. Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families.”

“This stems from a selfish act by Mr. Gohmert, who is just one member of Congress.”

  • The “diversity of response” by U.S. states hampered the country’s ability to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

When asked why Europe appears to have been more effective at controlling the spread of the virus, the nation’s top infectious disease expert said that it might have helped that about 95% of Europe had shut down much earlier.

“When you actually look at what we did, even though we shut down, even though it created a great deal of difficulty, we really functionally shut down only about 50% in the sense of the totality of the country,” Fauci said.

  • A July 23 Delta flight from Detroit to Atlanta was forced to return to the gate when two passengers refused to wear masks, according to Delta Air Lines spokesperson Emma Protis.
  • Just hours after postponing Saturday night’s game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers, MLB announced the postponement of Sunday’s scheduled doubleheader between the two teams after four more Cardinals’ players tested positive for COVID-19.
  • Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford has been placed on the NFL’s Reserve/Covid-19 list by his team.
  • New Jersey reported 393 new cases of and 11 deaths.
  • Just days after the owners were arrested and the gym was shut down by officials, the Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, NJ made a dramatic re-open Saturday morning with gym owners kicking in the boarded-up front entrance.
  • 41 New York state establishments were issued Covid-19-related violations Friday.
  • Florida reported 9,591 new cases and 179 additional deaths.
  • Mississippi has the highest percentage of Covid-19 positive tests in the country at 21.11%.
  • California reported 219 Covid-19-related deaths, the most reported in a single day in the state.

Protests/Racial and Social Justice

  • Sgt. Daniel Perry, an active-duty Army sergeant from Fort Hood, says he was the one who shot and killed an armed protester during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Austin last week. His attorney said Perry fired out of self-defense after Garrett Foster allegedly raised an assault rifle toward him.
  • As some federal forces withdraw from Portland, more than 130 other federal officers will stay behind near the federal courthouse there to act as a “quick reaction force.”
  • The superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute said the school will not remove Confederate monuments or rename buildings named after Confederate leaders.

Trump Administration

  • The Census Bureau will cut the amount of time that it will spend knocking on doors across the country.

In April, the agency indicated that it would need until Halloween to accurately count all of the people in the country due to delays incurred by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, the effort to knock on doors will stop Sept. 30,

  • The acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Matthew Albence, is leaving the government.

Trump officials had accused Albence of favoring humanitarian concerns about the treatment of immigrants over the chance to take more aggressive action, POLITICO reported in March. Albence’s decision to halt most ICE enforcement efforts put him in a tenuous position with White House officials.

POLITICO reported in May that Albence had angered White House officials when he refused to install a number of political appointees at his agency.

  • In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, The Supreme Court declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

A federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal.

  • President Trump said  he could use emergency economic powers or an executive order as early as Saturday to ban the social media platform TikTok from operating in the United States.

“As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

  • A new proposal from the Trump administration that defines habitat under the Endangered Species Act would limit the areas species will have to recover, critics say.

When species are endangered, the ESA requires the government to set aside habitat deemed critical for its recovery.

But environmental groups say the new definition being proposed will allow the agency to block setting aside any land that isn’t currently habitat but might be needed in the future, particularly as the climate changes.

  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin anticipates that his department will conduct a review of guidance related to the tax-exempt status of universities after President Trump tweeted earlier this month that he wanted the department to re-examine schools’ tax exemptions because of what he deemed “Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education.”
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced new sanctions on Friday against Chinese officials and a government entity over Uighur human rights abuses he called the “stain of the century.”
  • U.S. Africa Command has been ordered to draw up plans to relocate its headquarters as part of the Trump administration’s military drawdown in Germany.

Presidential Campaign

  • House Democrats are warning that the integrity of November’s elections are under significant threat from foreign actors — and the Trump administration, they say, is going out of its way to conceal the danger from the public.

Emerging from a long, classified briefing with top administration officials in the Capitol, a host of Democrats said they now have less confidence that the elections will be secure from outside influence than they did going into the meeting.

  • House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding tens of thousands of documents that the State Department provided to Senate Republicans as part of their investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.

“Secretary Pompeo has turned the State Department into an arm of the Trump campaign and he’s not even trying to disguise it.”

  • Joe Biden’s presidential campaign rolled out his plan to combat racial inequity in the nation’s economy as a part of his wide-ranging “Build Back Better” economic plan in the wake of the pandemic. The plan includes investing millions to help BIPOC-owned businesses recover from the coronavirus fallout, as well as plans to change the criminal justice system and invest in public housing.
  • President Trump held a scaled-down campaign-style rally on an airport tarmac in Florida, drawing a small crowd of supporters who nonetheless packed closely together in a state that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
  • The Republican National Convention in Charlotte, NC, will be closed to the press. Reporters will not be allowed on site as RNC delegates vote to formally nominate President Trump as the 2020 Republican presidential nominee, but the vote will be livestreamed, the Republican official said.

The restriction is unprecedented in modern American political history, but Republican officials said they were forced to limit attendance due to social distancing restrictions imposed by the governor of North Carolina.

Sources:  ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So – Coronavirus/COVID-19 Update

Read Time: 7 Minutes

  • The U.S. hit another daily record in coronavirus cases — the 6th time in 9 days. For the first time, single day COVID-19 infections topped 55,000 in the U.S.
  • Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate and businessman, has tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after attending President Donald Trump’s Tulsa rally, a statement posted to his official Twitter account on Thursday.

The day before being admitted into the hospital, regarding the president’s upcoming appearance in South Dakota, Cain Tweeted: “Masks will not be mandatory for the event, which will be attended by President Trump.  PEOPLE ARE FED UP!” 

  • Vice President Pence’s trip to Arizona this week had to be postponed by a day after several Secret Service agents who helped organize the visit either tested positive for the coronavirus or were showing symptoms of being infected.

Pence was scheduled to go to Phoenix on Tuesday but went on Wednesday instead so that healthy agents could be deployed for his visit

  • Senate appropriators on Thursday expressed concern about whether the government was doing enough to ensure that coronavirus vaccines developed with federal assistance are made affordable.
  • CDC Director Robert Redfield estimates the number of people in the United States who have been infected with the coronavirus is likely to be 10 times as high as the 2.4 million confirmed cases.
  • The U.S. is no longer “flattening the curve” of the COVID-19 epidemic, Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Service told members of Congress Thursday. 

“We are not flattening the curve right now. The curve is still going up,” Giroir said during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing. “There is no question the more testing you do the more you will uncover, but we do believe this is a real increase in cases because the percent positive [tests] is going up,” he said.

  • The coronavirus delayed the arrival of seasonal immigrants who normally help harvest U.S. wheat, causing farmers and harvesting companies to have a hard time finding and keeping workers to run machines that bring in the crop.
  • In an interview with The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Thursday that a new strain of the coronavirus found to be dominant around the world may contain a mutation that allows it to spread from person-to-person with more ease.

The new, prevalent virus strain is thought to have first been seen in Italy.

  • Treatment with hydroxychloroquine cut the death rate significantly in sick patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – and without heart-related side-effects, according to a new study published by Henry Ford Health System.

In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities.

  • More than three dozen U.S. states were seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases, according to a Reuters analysis on Thursday, the latest grim sign that the coronavirus pandemic, once thought to be waning, was again spreading rapidly.
  • Florida reported 10,109 new COVID-19 cases Thursday morning, the first time Florida has recorded more than 10,000 cases in a 24 hour period.
  • GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued an order making it mandatory for all Texans to wear a face covering of some kind while out in public as the state faces a surge in coronavirus cases.
  • Vanilla Ice is still slated to hold an Independence Day concert in Austin, Texas on Friday, even as the state reimposes certain coronavirus restrictions amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

UPDATE: Vanilla Ice has indefinitely postponed his concert that drew fierce criticism due to the coronavirus pandemic.

  • The Executive Committee of the Texas Republican Party on Thursday voted to push ahead and have their state convention in person this month, despite a surge in coronavirus cases in Houston, where it will take place.
  • The committee voted 40 to 20 to host the meeting that about 6,000 people are expected to attend in Houston’s George R. Brown convention center in just over two weeks.
  • A 1,500-member church in Mobile that resumed in-person, social-distanced worship with weekly attendance of about 350 people has had more than 20 members test positive for COVID-19 the past two weeks, and has moved back to online services only.
  • Students in Alabama threw COVID-19 parties where infected students were invited and there was a contest over who would get it first, according to officials.
  • Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that New York City schools would open in some form come September — only for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office to describe the mayor’s announcement as “premature.”

“We value the opinion of local politicians and the state’s 700 local school districts as to what should be done, but the public should not be confused on this important decision that has practical consequences for many,” Dani Lever, Mr. Cuomo’s spokeswoman, in a statement.

  • In New York City, twenty-two streets, some already closed to car traffic, will be dedicated to outdoor dining on Friday nights and weekends.
  • Five of the nine Atlantic City casinos reopened Thursday but with new rules: Gamblers must wear masks, and won’t be allowed to smoke, drink or eat inside.
  • Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly told legislative leaders that a desire to reopen schools is a key reason for her executive order requiring Kansas residents to wear masks in public and their workplaces. The order took effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday, with a fine of up to $2,500 possible for violators.
  • The powerful Nevada union that represents more than 60,000 casino workers in the Las Vegas area filed a lawsuit against several of the city’s casino operators, accusing them of failing to properly protect employees from the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham modified her public health order to tighten travel restrictions by requiring all out-of-state travelers to quarantine for 14 days, including New Mexicans who traveled out of state and are returning home.
  • Noting what was probably his last chance to reach residents before the July 4th holiday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Thursday implored residents to refrain from gathering with people outside their household — no matter how great the temptation — and to wear masks.
  • Striking California nurses picketed outside Riverside Community Hospital and demanded the proper protective equipment and better conditions to fight COVID-19.
  • A group of Oregon State Police troopers appeared to defy Gov. Kate Brown’s statewide mask order while in uniform Wednesday, entering a Corvallis coffee shop without wearing required face coverings, video obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows.

The store’s assistant manager, Travis Boss, said he told the first trooper who arrived that the trooper needed to wear a mask.

“Governor Brown has no authority to take our civil liberties. We aren’t going to wear masks,” the trooper allegedly said, according to a written statement from Boss provided to the newsroom. 

Three other law enforcement officers entered the business moments later and also refused a request to wear masks, Boss said. Boss said he felt compelled to fulfill their drink orders because they were in uniform, even though he said he had sent other patrons away earlier for not wearing masks.

  • A spokesperson for Oregon State Police told Oregon Live that the trooper who appeared to be speaking to the manager had been placed on administrative leave and was under investigation. The four officers are all assigned to Oregon State University, according to the agency.
  • COVID-19 testing supplies distributed by the federal government have failed quality checks and are arriving late, Washington state’s top health official said in a letter to a senior administration official, warning of problems as cases spike.
  • Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Thursday that the city is issuing an emergency travel order directing all residents and travelers entering Chicago from states experiencing an uptick in coronavirus cases to quarantine for 14 days in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
  • The Treasury Department on Wednesday approved a $700 million loan from CARES funds to YRC Worldwide, a financially-troubled trucking company that is also being sued by the Defense Department for overpricing shipping costs.
  • The European Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged European Union countries to step up testing and contact tracing, and asked governments to communicate to their citizens that “the pandemic is not over.” The warning comes as Europe’s reopening has brought a resurgence of cases in some pockets.
  • The Palestinian Authority announced plans to reimpose virus restrictions throughout the West Bank following a sharp rise in the number of new cases in the territory.
  • Scots have been ordered to wear face coverings in all shops starting July 10. Those who don’t comply face a £60 fine. 
  • Mexico posted a record 6,741 new cases.
  • Nearly six weeks after Tokyo lifted a state of emergency and declared the virus contained in the Japanese capital, new cases spiked to 107 on Thursday, up from 67 just a day earlier and the highest level since May 2.
  • Tesla is building mobile molecule printers to help make the potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by CureVac in Germany, the electric-car maker’s CEO Elon Musk tweeted.

Sources:  ABC News, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post