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COVID-19 news update Apr/28
source:WTMF 2020-04-28 [Medicine]

 

 

Country,
Other

Total
Cases

New
Cases

Total
Deaths

World

3,062,515

+69,223

211,449

USA

1,010,356

+23,196

56,797

Spain

229,422

+2,793

23,521

Italy

199,414

+1,739

26,977

France

165,842

+3,742

23,293

Germany

158,758

+988

6,126

UK

157,149

+4,309

21,092

Turkey

112,261

+2,131

2,900

Iran

91,472

+991

5,806

Russia

87,147

+6,198

794

China

82,830

+3

4,633

Brazil

66,501

+3,642

4,543

Canada

48,500

+1,605

2,707

Belgium

46,687

+553

7,207

Netherlands

38,245

+400

4,518

India

29,451

+1,561

939

Switzerland

29,164

+103

1,665

Peru

28,699

+1,182

782

Portugal

24,027

+163

928

Ecuador

23,240

+521

663

Ireland

19,648

+386

1,102

Sweden

18,926

+286

2,274

Saudi Arabia

18,811

+1,289

144

Israel

15,555

+112

204

Austria

15,274

+49

549

Mexico

14,677

+835

1,351

Singapore

14,423

+799

14

Pakistan

13,915

+587

292

Chile

13,813

+482

198

Japan

13,614

+165

385

Poland

11,902

+285

562

Romania

11,339

+303

641

Belarus

11,289

+826

75

Qatar

11,244

+957

10

UAE

10,839

+490

82

S. Korea

10,738

+10

243

Indonesia

9,096

+214

765

Ukraine

9,009

+392

220

Denmark

8,698

+123

427

Serbia

8,275

+233

162

Philippines

7,777

+198

511

Norway

7,599

+72

205

Czechia

7,445

+41

223

Australia

6,720

+4

83

Dominican Republic

6,293

+158

282

Bangladesh

5,913

+497

152

Malaysia

5,820

+40

99

Panama

5,779

+241

165

Colombia

5,597

+218

253

South Africa

4,793

+247

90

Egypt

4,782

+248

337

Finland

4,695

+119

193

Morocco

4,120

+55

162

Argentina

4,003

+111

197

Luxembourg

3,729

+6

88

Algeria

3,517

+135

432

Moldova

3,481

+73

102

Kuwait

3,288

+213

22

Thailand

2,931

+9

52

Kazakhstan

2,835

+118

25

Bahrain

2,723

+76

8

Hungary

2,583

+83

280

Greece

2,534

+17

136

Oman

2,049

+51

10

 

 

 

The White House unveils a testing plan, but Democrats are skeptical.

 

The entrance to a testing facility in Brooklyn on Saturday.Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times

President Trump, under growing pressure to expand testing as states move to reopen their economies, unveiled a plan on Monday to ramp up the federal government’s help to states, but his proposal runs far short of what most public health experts say is necessary.

The announcement came after weeks of the president insisting, inaccurately, that the nation’s testing capability was “fully sufficient to begin opening up the country.”

 

In a call with governors, Trump suggests some states should reopen schools.

The New York Times

 

President Trump suggested to the nation’s governors on Monday that some should move to reopen their public schools before the end of the academic year, an indication that he is growing impatient with the widespread closures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

“Some of you might start to think about school openings,” Mr. Trump said on a conference call with the governors, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. “The young children have done very well in this disaster that we’ve all gone through, so a lot of people are thinking about the school openings.”

Addressing Vice President Mike Pence, who was also on the call, Mr. Trump added, “I think it’s something, Mike, they can seriously consider and maybe get going on it.”

The president’s nudge on school openings runs counter to the advice of medical experts and came unbidden during a conversation about testing and respirator use.

Mr. Trump reiterated his desire to see schools open Monday evening at the White House, saying, “I think you’ll see a lot of schools open up, even for a short period of time.”

 

 

Some businesses reopen, but fear may keep customers away.

 

A Waffle House in Madison, Ga., reopened for in-house dining on Monday.Credit...Maranie Staab/Reuters

Many business owners in states that are easing restrictions and allowing some businesses to reopen said they were uncertain about all the new rules, and were trying to make sense of a cacophony of messages from President Trump, governors, county commissioners and mayors.

“I couldn’t sleep last night because I was so confused,” Jose Oregel, who owns a barbershop in Greeley, Colo., said on Monday morning, an hour before he was expecting his first customers, who will get haircuts from barbers wearing masks and gloves.

In Colorado, real estate showings were allowed to restart on Monday as the governor’s stay-at-home order expired, and pet owners were able to take their animals to the vet for nonemergency operations. At the same time, Denver and many surrounding suburbs extended their closure orders.

 

 

The known U.S. death toll exceeds 50,000, with nearly a million cases.

 

Family members with the coffin of a relative in Brooklyn on Friday.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

More than 50,000 people have died from the virus in the United States, which has more confirmed cases and deaths than any other nation, according to a tally by The New York Times.

And as the outbreak spread, the nation’s total number of confirmed cases continued to climb toward one million, reaching more than 987,000.

Those bleak milestones are yet more reminders of the toll in America as the virus has taken lives, destroyed families, spread through meat plantsprisons and nursing homes, and caused more than 26 million people to lose their jobs in the past five weeks.

The tally does not include more than 5,200 people in New York City and smaller numbers in other states and U.S. territories who died and are believed to have had the virus. Many of those patients were not tested, a consequence of a strained medical system and a persistent lack of testing capacity.

Even as case numbers have stabilized in some hard-hit cities, including New Orleans and Seattle, other places have seen growth.

 

 

Amid high demand for small-business aid, the website for processing loans crashes.

The New York Times

 

Less than an hour after the Small Business Administration on Monday morning resumed taking requests for another $310 billion in emergency aid for small businesses, its computer system for processing the loan applications crashed.

“It’s obvious the system is simply flooded right now,” said Craig Street, the chief lending officer at United Midwest Savings Bank in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s been very stop and start, with no real way to know whether it is working other than to keep hitting the submit button.”

It was a rocky resumption for the Paycheck Protection Program, a stimulus initiative that offers small companies forgivable loans to cover their payrolls. The program began early this month, but its initial round of funding — $342 billion — was depleted in 13 days and the agency stopped accepting requests, leaving hundreds of thousands of borrowers frozen out until Congress provided a new funding round last week. The government began accepting applications for it at 10:30 a.m. on Monday.

 

 

The C.D.C. expands its list of symptoms.

 

Health care workers walking past NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan last week.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added six possible symptoms of the virus to its list, a step that reflects the broad variation and unpredictability of the effects of the illness.

Echoing the observations of doctors treating thousands of patients, the federal health agency this month changed its website to cite chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell as possible indicators of Covid-19.

The C.D.C. had listed just three symptoms: fever, cough and shortness of breath. The agency made no public announcement when it added the new symptoms to its website on April 18, and it did not immediately respond to questions about the revised list.

 

 

The White House canceled — and then rescheduled — Monday’s daily task force briefing.

 

President Trump during a White House briefing last week.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Never mind. Less than two hours after the White House canceled the daily coronavirus news briefing, it rescheduled it, saying that the president would make an announcement on testing.

“The White House has additional testing guidance and other announcements about safely opening up America again,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, wrote on Twitter. “President @realDonaldTrump will brief the nation during a press conference this evening.”

The White House scheduled the newly slated news conference for the Rose Garden at 5 p.m., the same time the briefing was originally scheduled before it was canceled shortly before lunch. Some of Mr. Trump’s aides and allies had expressed concern that the briefings had become a liability for the president, and he himself said over the weekend that they were “not worth the time & effort.” But Mr. Trump has rarely resisted news media appearances for long.

 

 

A House panel opens an investigation into Trump’s decision to halt W.H.O. funding.

The New York Times

 

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday announced it would open an investigation into Mr. Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization, calling the move a “political distraction” from the administration’s lackluster response to the pandemic.

“Attacking the W.H.O., rather than the Covid-19 outbreak, will only worsen an already dire situation by undermining one of our key tools to fight the spreading disease,” Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

 

 

Houston reels from oil-market chaos on top of a virus shutdown.

 

Cities across the country are struggling under the economic shadow of the virus. But few have to deal with the collapse of their fundamental industry the way Houston, the self-proclaimed energy capital of the world, has as oil prices have plummeted.

On the same day that the price for U.S. crude oil fell to about $30 below zero — a mind-bending concept that signaled the first time oil prices had ever turned negative — Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston stood before reporters and delivered the grim news, his words muffled by the black mask covering his face.

City employees would soon be furloughed, the mayor announced, but he declined to say how many. The Houston Zoo, he said, could expect to see funding deferred under what he called “the worst budget that the city will deal with in its history.”

 

 

People in poorer parts of Los Angeles are far more likely to die of the virus.

 

People lined up for coronavirus tests in downtown Los Angeles.Credit...Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

Residents of poorer areas of Los Angeles County are more than three times more likely to die because of the virus than people in wealthier communities in Southern California, public health officials said.

In a statement on Sunday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it had recorded 16.5 deaths per 100,000 people in areas where at least 30 percent of residents lived in poverty. The death rate in communities with less poverty was 5.3 per 100,000 people.

 

 

 

U.S. testing needs “a huge technology breakthrough.”

 

A testing site in San Juan, P.R., on Monday.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

A different type of test is required to screen the U.S. population on the necessary scale, Dr. Birx said on Sunday, adding that it would take “a huge technology breakthrough” to get there.

What’s needed, she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” is a screening test that detects antigens, like the screening tests used for flu, strep and other diseases. Antigens stimulate the body to produce antibodies, and are essentially evidence of an immune response.

“We have to be able to detect the antigen, rather than constantly trying to detect the actual live virus or the viral particles itself, and to really move into antigen testing,” she said. The current RNA tests, which are more precise but more laborious, would then be used to confirm diagnoses.

 

Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/us/coronavirus-live.html

 

Germany's virus reproduction rate edges closer to key level identified in Merkel warning

From CNN’s Fred Pleitgen in Berlin

 

Germany’s coronavirus reproduction rate has increased to 1, coming closer to a threshold that Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously warned it must stay under in order for the country to continue pushing the disease back.

On average, one person infected with Covid-19 is now infecting one other person, according to the country's center for disease control and prevention, the Robert Koch Institute. That’s up from a reproduction rate of 0.9 a week ago and 0.7 the week before.

Merkel has previously warned that if the number -- also known as the R0 value -- rises above 1, the country’s health system would eventually be overwhelmed.

She has also said that Germany risks squandering the gains made so far if it loosens physical distancing restrictions too quickly. 

Despite the rise in the reproduction number, new infections remain at a relatively moderate level.

The institute reported 1,144 new infections in the past 24 hours, while 163 people died of coronavirus-related symptoms.

 

 

Future pandemics will be deadlier if we don't change our behavior, leading scientists say

From CNN's Helen Regan

 

Future pandemics are likely to be more frequent, deadly, and will spread more rapidly, unless we stop the widespread destruction of our environment, a group of four leading scientists say.

"There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic -- us," the group said in a guest article published on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)'s website.

"We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones."

 

 

Sweden says its coronavirus approach has worked. The numbers suggest a different story

From CNN's Emma Reynolds

 

https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/digital-images/org/6e6de5d0-69b4-41f1-bdd9-24261e1c1d0c.png

Sweden has been an outlier during the coronavirus outbreak.

The country has not joined many of its European neighbors in imposing strict limits on citizens' lives, and images of people heading to work on busy streets, or chatting at cafes and bars have raised eyebrows.

Younger children have continued to go to school, although universities and schools for older students have switched to distance learning. Businesses -- from hair salons to restaurants -- have remained open, although people have been advised to work from home where possible.

Among Nordic countries -- which share similar cultural, geographical and sociological attributes -- the contrast with Sweden is great. 

 

 

Hong Kong civil servants will return to work next Monday

From journalist Vanesse Chan in Hong Kong

 

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks at a news briefing on Monday. Reuters

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that civil servants will start returning to work and public services will resume next Monday.

The government will also begin loosening some Covid-19 anti-epidemic measures, after the city reported no new confirmed cases for the fourth time in eight days on Monday.

In a news conference today, Lam described the approach of handling the pandemic as a “suppress and lift” policy.

 

 

Pandemic model increases predicted US coronavirus death toll to 74,000

From CNN's Carma Hassan

 

Dr. Chris Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Help Metrics and Evaluation, told CNN Tonight that they’ve adjusted their scientific model to increase the predicted death toll from the novel coronavirus to 74,000.

“Our forecast now is for 74,000 deaths. That’s our best estimate. The range is pretty wide because there’s a lot of unknown factors there, but our best estimate is going up, and we see these protracted, long peaks in some states,” Murray said.
“We’re also seeing signs in the mobility data that people are getting more active, and that’s also feeding into our assessment.”

 

 

WHO says it "can only give advice" and "each country takes its own responsibility"

From CNN’s Amanda Watts 

 

World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. WHO

World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency “can only give advice, but one thing should be clear -- we don’t have any mandate to force countries to implement what we advise them.”

“It’s up to the countries to take our advice, or reject it,” Tedros said during a media briefing in Geneva on Monday, adding the organization gives advice based on “the best science and evidence.”  

On January 30, the WHO declared the highest level of global emergency. “During that time, as you may remember, there were only 82 cases outside China,” he said. 

"The world should have listened to WHO then, carefully,” Tedros said. “Every country could have triggered all its public health measures possible.”  

At the time, the WHO advised the world to find, test, isolate and contract trace for each case.

 

 

New Zealand's Ardern says next level of recovery doesn't mean country is "out of the woods" 

From CNN's Jaide Garcia and Sol Han

 

New Zealand is "not out of the woods," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, as the country entered its first day of transitioning to Alert Level 3 from the toughest lockdown restrictions of Level 4.

"As I have said before it is a recovery room of sorts to assess the incredible work that New Zealanders have done at level 4, to break the virus's chain of transmission and prevent further community outbreak," Ardern said in a news conference today.

Ardern said Alert Level 3 represents the move toward getting the country and its economy up and running again. 

Source:https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-04-28-20-intl/index.html