March 11 coronavirus news

Chicago is postponing its annual tradition of dying the city's river green for St. Patrick's Day, "out of an abundance of caution," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a morning press briefing. 

Earlier today, officials announced that the city's St. Patrick's Day parade, set for Saturday, was postponed.

"Having a parade at this time posed unnecessary risk to the public's health" drawing millions of people from around the world to the city, Lightfoot said. Lightfoot will work with organizers for possible days to have the St. Partick's Day events in the future. 

City officials said going to polling locations for the Illinois 2020 primary — scheduled for Tuesday — is still safe. Lightfoot reminded residents that they can still cast ballots in the mail. 

Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske said three San Jose, California, TSA employees with coronavirus are all receiving medial care.

The TSA has "thoroughly disinfected" the worksite at the San Jose airport, he added.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced today that due the coronavirus-related flight cancelations, it will waive a requirement that the industry says could otherwise lead to airlines running empty flights. 

The requirement normally requires that airlines use 80% of their assigned runway slots at several busy airports — including LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy in New York and Reagan National in Washington, DC. 

There are four other airports — Chicago O'Hare, Newark Liberty, Los Angeles International and San Francisco — at which the agency has a formal schedule review and approval process. The FAA said it will give credit to airlines for flights that were canceled at those airports due to the virus.

Most major US airlines have moved to cancel a significant portion of their flights due to the outbreak, raising the possibility that they will not meet the targets. Without the waiver, the airlines risked losing their slots. 

The agency said the waiver is good through the end of May.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is one of several officials testifying in front of the US House Oversight Committee, told Chair Carolyn Maloney that the country should expect things to get worse.

Here's how their exchange went down:

Maloney: “Is the worst yet to come Dr. Fauci?”

Fauci: “Yes it is... Things will get worse...The bottom line it’s going to get worse.”

Kentucky is suspending visitation rights for those held in state prisons and similar institutions in light of the coronavirus, Gov. Andy Beshear announced today.

Inmates will instead be allowed one free call, and up to two contacts through controlled social media. 

Beshear said there are eight cases of coronavirus in the state, and all patients are "stable, doing well.” 

"A couple of these individuals may almost be through this," Beshear said. "And that is very, very good news." 

The Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade — one of the largest St. Patrick's Day parades in the US — has been canceled, organizers announced on their website. 

The parade was slated for Saturday afternoon. Each year, Chicago's parade and river dyeing attracts hundreds of thousands of people to downtown.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are expected to give updates at a novel coronavirus briefing later this morning. 

Illinois has reported 19 coronavirus cases as of yesterday. 

No one knows for sure. President Trump suggested this coronavirus could subside by the warmer summer months — but scientists say it's too early to tell.

"The short answer is that while we may expect modest declines in the contagiousness of (novel coronavirus) in warmer, wetter weather and perhaps with the closing of schools ... it is not reasonable to expect these declines alone to slow transmission enough to make a big dent," wrote Dr. Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar responded to Trump's suggestion that coronavirus could weaken in warmer weather.

"What the President is saying is, we hope it will respond the way regular coronaviruses do and be heat responsive," Azar said.

"But it also could just as equally respond the way SARS — a coronavirus adaptation — responds and continue in the warm season."

Lufthansa has canceled 23,000 short-, medium- and long-haul flights between March 29 and April 24 because of coronavirus.

The German airline says the cancellations will mainly impact flights in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is warning that further cancellations are expected in the coming weeks.

Georgetown University in Washington, DC, will move classes online starting on Monday due to concerns over the novel coronavirus outbreak, they announced in a statement on their website. 

The university is currently on spring break. 

All undergraduate students are advised to return home, but the campus will remain open. No guests will be allowed into any residential facilities starting this Sunday, according to the school's website. 

Washington, DC, is currently reporting four cases of coronavirus.

Georgetown is the latest school to close campus classrooms during the coronavirus outbreak.

The cancellations have been focused in states and areas hardest hit by the virus, including the Seattle area, California and New York. The Ohio State University, which has an enrollment of more than 60,000 students, and Harvard University, the Ivy League institution, were some of the most recent schools to announce they are closing classrooms.