May 10 coronavirus news

Despite South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem requesting the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe take down its coronavirus checkpoints, tribe Chairman Harold Frazier told CNN they’re going to stay put.

The main purpose of the checkpoints set up by the tribe is to monitor and try to track coronavirus should it ever come into tribal lands, Frazier said.

“We want to ensure that people coming from ‘hot spots’ or highly infected areas, we ask them to go around our land,” Frazier tells CNN.

Noem’s request to take down the checkpoints came because she said they “interfere with regulating traffic on U.S. and state highways.” 

“With the lack of resources we have medically, this is our best tool we have right now to try to prevent (the spread of Covid-19),” Frazier told CNN.

Frazier said reservations are ill-equipped to deal with a coronavirus outbreak adding that, “the nearest health care, critical care is three hours away from where we live.”

Frazier said the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has only an eight-bed facility on the reservation and no intensive care unit for the 12,000 people who live on the reservation.

A letter written by Noem’s policy director, Maggie Seidel, points to a memorandum pertaining to road closures on tribal lands issued by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, written April 8.

The memorandum states tribes “may restrict road use or close” tribal-owned roads temporarily without first consulting with the secretary of the interior or private landowners under conditions involving “immediate safety or life-threatening situations.” Seidel points out that the memorandum does not give tribes the authority to manage the flow of traffic to state and US highways.

“The checkpoints on state and U.S. highways are not legal, and if they don’t come down, the state will take the matter to Federal court, as Governor Noem noted in her Friday letter,” the letter reads.

Some lawyers are offering free legal services to help health care workers draw up wills during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Attorney Natalie Elisha Gold, CEO of Gold Legal Group, said she was inspired to offer free services by her own sister, a nurse in Manhattan.

Her firm, which operates in New York, New Jersey and California, has received an “extraordinarily high volume” of roughly 200 inquiries so far, with about 40 health care workers embarking on the will process, Gold explained.

Gold said she created an online system that would allow people to submit their information immediately. They’ve also heard from health care workers and first responders in Alabama, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she added.

“I am so grateful to Natalie for her dedication to helping health care workers, especially in a time like this,” said Dr. Alexandra Volo, a family medicine physician based Pennsylvania. “It’s very important to have a last will and testament to know exactly what our wishes are, especially in a time like this.”

“We don’t have a magic 8-ball, you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” Volo added.

Volo just came back to work following the birth of her child, now 4 months old. She works at Penn State Health St. Joseph in Redding, Pennsylvania, roughly an hour away from Philadelphia.

The hospital is seeing a surge of patients, Volo said. 

The United Kingdom will “soon” introduce a quarantine period on people coming into the country by air, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday.

“To prevent re-infection from abroad, I’m serving notice that it will soon be the time – with transmission significantly lower – to impose quarantine on people coming into this country by air," Johnson said during a taped address to the nation.

Some context: In a statement to CNN on Saturday, the chief executive of the UK Airport Operators Association, Karen Dee, warned that the introduction of a quarantine period could have a "devastating impact" on the UK aviation industry. 

Dee continued: “Airports have done their utmost to stay open through this crisis to provide vital services to communities – from facilitating freight and repatriations to air ambulance, police, Royal Mail and HM Coastguard services – but cannot survive a further protracted period without passengers that would be the result of quarantine measures. If quarantine is a necessary tool for fighting Covid-19, then the Government should act decisively to protect the hundreds of thousands of airport-related and travel-related jobs across the UK."

The United Kingdom is introducing a new Covid-19 alert system to help keep the rate of infection low, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today.

During a taped address to the nation, Johnson said the new system would be run by a “new joint biosecurity centre” and will determine “how tough we have to be in our social distancing measures” in the weeks and months ahead. 

Under the new system, level 1 would indicate that “the disease is no longer present in the UK,” while level 5 indicates a “critical” level, with the National Health Service unable to cope. 

According to the prime minister, the country has been at level 4 during the lockdown period, but can now begin to take the steps needed to move to level 3. 

As part of the government’s long-term “road map” for the gradual relaxation of the nationwide lockdown, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Sunday that the government will seek to re-open schools, shops and some aspects of the hospitality industry over the weeks and months ahead.   

“Our ambition is that secondary pupils facing exams next year will get at least some time with their teachers before the holidays,” he added.

Some more context: In his taped address from Downing Street, the prime minister also noted that the government will seek to re-open some aspects of the hospitality industry and other public spaces, "provided they are safe and enforce social distancing" measures.

“All of this is conditional. It all depends on a series of big ‘ifs’ – it depends on all of us, the entire country, to follow the advice, to observe social distancing,” Johnson said. “If we can’t do it by those dates, if the alert level won’t allow it, we will simply wait and go on until we’ve got it right."

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has unveiled the “careful steps” the government will take to ease the emergency restrictions implemented as part of the nationwide lockdown, relaxing the government’s stay-at-home order and allowing some people to return to work.

“From this Wednesday, we want to encourage people to take more and even unlimited amounts of outdoor exercise,” Johnson said during his address to the nation on Sunday.

In his taped address from Downing Street, the prime minister also confirmed that all those who are unable to work from home — such as those in construction and manufacturing — will be “actively encouraged” to return to work as of Monday.

"Work from home if you can, but you should go to work if you can't work from home and when you do go to work, if possible, do so by car or, even better, by walking or bicycle," Johnson said. “We want it to be safe for you to get to work, so you should avoid public transport if at all possible, because we must and will maintain social distancing, and capacity will therefore be limited."

While the stay-at-home order has been relaxed, Johnson affirmed that there will be "no immediate end" to the nationwide lockdown.

“This is not the time simply to end the lockdown this week…we are taking the first careful steps to modify our measures,” Johnson said.

“It would be madness now to throw away that achievement by allowing a second spike…we must stay alert. We must continue to control the virus and save lives,” he added.

According to the prime minister, all modifications in the government’s restrictions will be monitored closely at a local, regional and national level so as to avoid the risk of a second peak.

“If there are outbreaks, if there are problems, we will not hesitate to put on the brakes,” Johnson asserted.

There has been approximately 1,320,362 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 79,180 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

New Jersey saw at least 1,503 new confirmed positive cases of Covid-19, bringing the statewide total to approximately 138,532, Gov. Phil Murphy said.

“We’ve tragically lost 140 more lives, pushing our total to 9,255 lives lost,” Murphy said in a tweet Sunday.

By the numbers: Of the confirmed cases 4,308 patients that are in hospitals, 1,338 of them are in critical or intensive care and 994 are on ventilators.

Read Murphy's tweet:

All of the administration witnesses at the Senate Covid-19 hearing on Tuesday, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, will now testify remotely, Sen. Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee, announced today.

As of Saturday night, Fauci and one other witness, Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Brett Giroir, were going to testify in person while two others were going to testify by teleconference.

Fauci was planning to wear a mask during the hearing.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn had already worked it out with the committee to testify remotely after deciding in the last few days they would self-quarantine once they had been exposed to the Vice President’s press secretary, Katie Miller, who testified positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

The hearing is titled: “Covid-19: Safely Getting Back to Work and Back to School.”

Alexander said he consulted with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Saturday about making a change to administration policies. The administration has previously opposed having its officials testify remotely.

The Washington Post first reported the latest witness shift.