June 16 coronavirus news

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today that the US Open tennis tournament will be held in Queens from August 31 to September 13.

He said the event will be held without fans, but it will be televised.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he hopes many countries around the world are successful in finding a coronavirus vaccine.

Speaking to NPR’s 1A program on Tuesday, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said, “I would love there to be more than one, two or three vaccines, including China getting a vaccine, and we get a vaccine, and some of the European countries get a vaccine.”

Fauci said that for a vaccine to be successful, it has to be available globally.

“The more companies that have successful vaccines, the better off we are. I don't see this as a race in which there is one winner,” Fauci said.

The United States’ efforts are “moving very quickly,” he said. “And I might emphasize, not at the experience of safety, nor compromising any of the scientific integrity of the study.”

Fauci said there is no guarantee that a vaccine is going to be effective.

“Certainly we would not have a vaccine given to anyone if it's not safe, and if it's not effective,” he said.

But Fauci is hoping “to get to the point where you can make a determination if it's effective likely, by the end of this calendar year and the beginning of 2020. So, the vaccine does show itself to be safe and effective, we may get doses that are available for people by the very end of this year, and the beginning of the first few months of 2021.”

The Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour announced Tuesday that the 2020 season will resume with back-to-back events in Ohio. 

A new tournament, the LPGA Drive On Championship, will take place from July 31 until August 2 at Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio. It will feature a field of 144 players competing for a $1 million purse and will take place without sponsors, pro-ams or spectators. 

The next tournament will be the Marathon LPGA Classic, one of the longest running events on the LPGA Tour. It will be held at Highland Meadows Golf Club in Sylvania, Ohio, August 6 through August 9, with spectators.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said when it comes to protests during a pandemic, the best advice is “don’t gather in crowds,” but added, “If you are going to, please wear a mask consistently. Keep it on. Don't take it off.” 

“That is really an important issue — namely the social injustices that we're seeing towards minorities, particularly African Americans, including the violence against them," the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told NPR’s 1A program.

But he added that demonstrations themselves put protesters and others at risk.

“Please wear a mask, but keep the mask on all the time,” he said.

New York City will be ready for phase two of reopening on June 22 if the indicators and the discussions with the state indicate “we’re ready to go,” Mayor Bill De Blasio said in a news conference today.

Phase two is tentatively booked for June 22, though the mayor said earlier he believes it will take a bit longer than that.

Phase two allows for a wider range of businesses to continue to reopen under Covid-19 guidelines, including retail businesses and offices.

Malls, specifically any indoor common portions of retail shopping malls with 100,000 or more square feet of retail space available for lease, must remain closed to the public

Large gathering and event venues, including but not limited to establishments that host concerts, conferences, or other in-person performances or presentations in front of an in-person audience, must also remain closed to the public.

When asked later in the news conference about the next reopening phase, the mayor said "we want to know what that has resulted in in terms of the spread of the disease, or maybe it hasn’t, we don’t know that answer yet cause not enough time has passed.”

“We need more information,” he said.

The decision to enter the next phase or wait more time will be made alongside the state on June 22.

The mayor said he likes to keep expectations low and points to the beginning of July.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he intends to get a Covid-19 test “because I have asked all New Yorkers to get one.”

De Blasio, who took a sick day yesterday, said he feels fine today. He said he thinks he had a "24 hour kind of thing," which caused him to clear his schedule.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he last spoke to President Trump two weeks ago.

“Not last week, but the week before. I spoke with him when we made the presentation to explain to him our vaccine development efforts,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said while speaking to NPR’s 1A program on Tuesday,

“So it was two weeks ago," he added.

Remember: Even as cases rise, an administration official familiar with discussions inside the coronavirus task force told CNN the panel remains sidelined and muzzled. Key members — such as Fauci along with Dr. Deborah Birx and Robert Redfield — are now far less visible than they were during the early weeks of the pandemic.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, requested a briefing next week from top administration public health officials, including Fauci and Birx, on recent coronavirus spikes in states around the country.

"As the President continues to fixate on the stock market and Senate Republicans are ready to prematurely declare victory, we need to wrest the focus back to these crucial issues," Schumer said last week on the Senate floor.

Only 45% of passengers intend to fly within two months of the pandemic subsiding, compared to 61% in early April, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Tuesday. 

According to a survey carried out by IATA, overall bookings are down 82% on 2019 levels and demand for long-haul travel remains close to zero.

Normally, airlines would have sold 14% of tickets for winter at this point in the year but IATA said passengers are booking tickets much closer to the date of departure.

As travel in Europe is restarting IATA, expressed again the need for an extension of the slot waiver into the winter season to give “fragile” airlines the flexibility they need to focus on meeting passenger demand as it evolves.

The association also called for Covid-19 testing government collaboration, emphasizing it is by far a preferred alternative to quarantine measures.

 “We have seen a few countries, like Iceland, implement testing on arrival as an alternative to quarantine. The point to emphasize here is that testing before departure would be much more efficient. It would keep people who test positive completely out of the travel system. The challenge, however, is for governments to work together so that testing data from the departure location is accepted by the arrival state,” said de Juniac.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said today that the city's team of Covid-19 contact tracers has begun tracking approximately 4,300 cases.

Over the summer, de Blasio said, they will build capacity to trace potentially 250,000 people. The trace core was launched on June 1.

Dr. Ted Long, executive director of the Test and Trace core, said more than 1,000 have been assigned as a resource navigator to assist with food delivery and medications.

The team is working on closing the gap for individuals that they do not have phone numbers and contact information for.

Latest on Covid-19 indicators: The mayor also said all of the city's Covid-19 indicators are below desired thresholds.

The daily number of people admitted to hospitals with suspected Covid-19 is at 52, well under the 200 person threshold

The daily number of people in ICU’s is at 334, under the 375 threshold.

The daily percentage of people who tested positive for Covid-19 is at 2%, under the 15% threshold.