June 19 coronavirus news

The New Orleans Health Department is investigating two clusters of Covid-19 cases after a high school graduation party and a large gathering at a bar outside the parish, the agency said. 

Both clusters appear to be impacting young people who live in Orleans Parish. 

The health department warned residents, especially young people, to take immediate precautions to prevent the spread of Covid-19, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

The health department has urged anyone who has taken part in a non-physically distant gathering without masks or proper precautions to quarantine for 14 days.

The chief of the Houston Police Department, Art Acevedo, told CNN that the police department has recorded a huge spike in Covid-19 cases due to protests. 

Acevedo said that in less than two weeks, the cases in the department have doubled due to "close proximity." 

"Take the lesson from us, please wear your mask. It is the right thing to do. It is not about politics, it's about common courtesy and personal responsibility," he added. 

Intensifying anti-science sentiments that have led people to ignore public health guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic are “disturbing” and “disappointing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CBS Radio Friday.

CBS’s Steven Portnoy had asked the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force specifically about his level of concern for the people who will be attending President Trump’s rally in Tulsa on Saturday.

Fauci thinks some members of the public harbor an anti-science mentality that has intensified in the current situation and stems from a mistrust of authority. He sees the anti-vaccination movement in this vein. “It’s all part of that trend, which is very disturbing,” Fauci said.

Fauci said he gets concerned about the increased risk of spreading infection when he sees crowds or sees people not wearing masks. 

“If in fact, for one reason or other, you feel compelled to do that, which we don’t recommend, then wear a mask at all times,” Fauci said.

Pressed again on the risk of the virus widely spreading at a mass gathering,  Fauci said he couldn’t put a number on it. “But it’s very clear that the risk exists,” Fauci said. 

The Small Business Administration and Treasury Department, under withering criticism for lack of transparency, shifted course Friday and announced they would disclose details of borrowers in the Paycheck Protection Program.

The SBA, which manages the $660 billion emergency lending program, will disclose business names, addresses, loan amount ranges and demographic data, among other things, as part of an agreement with bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the SBA and Treasury announced in a joint statement.

Fatal cardiac arrests soared in the streets and homes of New York at the peak of the coronavirus epidemic there in March and April, researchers reported Friday.

While coronavirus likely caused many of these deaths, others were probably a consequence of an overwhelmed medical system, the researchers reported in the journal JAMA Cardiology.

They found a three-fold increase in the number of people needing emergency resuscitation in 2020 as compared to the same time period last year. And 90% of these people died, the team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Health System found.

“Three-fold is actually a conservative number because on April 6 it was a 10-fold increase,” Prezant told CNN. On that day in 2019, EMTs responded to 30 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. On April 6, 2020, there were 305.

For the whole time period of March and April, there were 3,989 cardiac arrests outside of the hospital in 2020, compared to 1,336 in 2019. That’s 2,653 more deaths in 2020 compared to 2019.

Prezant and colleagues analyzed the available information on these victims. They were mostly older, Black or Hispanic, and more likely to have diabetes or high blood pressure. Many were also physically frail, Prezant said.

Plus, when EMTs arrived, they found that the patients had what are called non-shockable arrhythmias. They could not be rescued by CPR or defibrillation.

“The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is not just the number of patients infected, but the large increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and deaths,” Prezant and colleagues concluded.

“This catastrophe transpired despite similar rates of bystander CPR, similar EMS response times, and similar durations of resuscitation efforts, compared with 2019.”

Brazil’s health ministry has reported 54,771 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, a record daily spike that brought the nationwide total to 1,032,913.

The newly reported cases make Brazil the second country worldwide to record more than a million virus cases, following the United States, which passed that mark on April 28.

Brazil also reported 1,206 new deaths from the virus, bringing the country’s total to 48,954.

More on this: The South American nation’s death toll is ahead of one of the official tallies in the United Kingdom, where the Department of Health and Social Care has reported 42,461 virus deaths. However, the UK Office of National Statistics on June 16 reported a Covid-19 death toll of 51,804, a number that remains above the corresponding tally in Brazil.

The United Kingdom and Brazil are behind only the United States in reported virus deaths.

Brazil medical expert makes dire prediction as coronavirus top 1 million: 

Arizona Department of Health reported 3,246 Covid-19 cases on Friday, the state's highest total reported in a single day. 

"IMPORTANT: 3,246 cases of COVID-19 reported in Arizona on Friday. Please keep yourself and your family safe. Always wear a mask in public even if you do not feel sick. Maintain physical distancing. Let's work together to slow the spread of COVID-19. #MaskUpAZ," Arizona Department of Health tweeted Friday. 

There have been at least 46,689 Covid-19 cases in the state and at least 1,312 people have died from the virus. 

There are at least 2,213,000 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 118,967 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases.

So far on Friday, Johns Hopkins reported 23,944 new cases and 546 deaths. 

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

Arkansas has reported 415 new Covid-19 cases, according to officials in a news conference.

Of the 415 new cases, 35 were in correctional facilities, meaning that 380 cases were from community spread, the officials said.

Gov. Asa Hutchison said that this is the largest increase of community spread cases the state has seen since it began reporting Covid-19 cases.

The state has reported 14,631 total cases and 214 deaths.