July 9 coronavirus news

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves ordered a mask mandate for 13 counties with the greatest spikes of Covid-19.

The mask mandate was ordered for Hinds, DeSoto, Harrison, Rankin, Jackson, Washington, Sunflower, Grenada, Madison, Claiborne, Jefferson, Wayne and Quitman counties. This also includes the cities of Jackson, Biloxi and Gulfport.

Reeves said the counties have seen either 200 new cases within the last 14 days or have had an average of 500 cases per 100,000 residents in the last 14 days.

He is also adding social distancing requirements in the counties but not requiring businesses to shut down, he said. Everyone must wear masks when in public, Reeves said.

“Our numbers are getting worse,” Reeves said. “No orders will be effective if we don’t have the participation of our people.”

There is evidence that some people develop a long-term fatigue syndrome from coronavirus infections, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday.

“There may well be a post-viral syndrome associated with Covid-19,” Fauci told a news conference organized by the International AIDS Society. The group is holding a Covid-19 conference as an add-on to its every-other-year AIDS meeting.

Fauci said the symptoms resemble those seen in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, once known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

“If you look anecdotally, there is no question that there are a considerable number of individuals who have a post-viral syndrome that in many respects incapacitates them for weeks and weeks following so-called recovery,” Fauci said.

A two-drug cocktail used to treat hepatitis C may also help patients recover more quickly from coronavirus, researchers reported Thursday.

Three small studies involving 176 patients show the combination of the two drugs, sofosbuvir and daclatasvir, may have hastened the recovery of patients hospitalized with coronavirus, Andrew Hill of Liverpool University told the International AIDS Society’s Covid-19 Conference.

After two weeks of treatment, 94% of the patients given the two-drug combination were significantly better on a seven-point scale, compared to 70% of those not given the drugs, Hill said at a news conference.

The studies were conducted in Iran, where the drug combination is widely used to treat hepatitis C patients. Hill said the studies were not the carefully controlled trials that doctors prefer to see before they adopt a new treatment.

Hill added that the drugs have been widely used.

“Millions of people have been cured of hepatitis C using this treatment,” he said.

Studies involving 2,000 people are under way and Hill said results should be available by October.

Some context: Currently, remdesivir is the only antiviral drug that has emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration to treat coronavirus infections.

Teams of doctors are testing a variety of antiviral drugs developed to treat hepatitis, HIV and other viral infections.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said trends in the state are "going in the wrong direction.”

Speaking at a news conference, Lujan Grisham said that the state had 238 new Covid-19 cases today and six new deaths.

There are currently 154 people in the state in hospitals, with 32 on ventilators. 

The governor said they are starting to see some long lines for testing, but insisted the state is working on it.

The state has reported 14,251 total cases and 533 deaths.

To note: These figures were released by the state of New Mexico and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Indoor dining in Arizona will now be limited to 50% occupancy, Gov. Doug Ducey announced at a news conference on Thursday.

“We have had a brutal June in Arizona,” the governor said, as the state saw a 50% increase in Covid-19 cases. The state reported a total of at least 108,614 Covid-19 cases. 

He emphasized that residents are safer at home and should continue staying at home. 

The governor also said the United States was seeing a decrease in number of daily cases through the month of May but in June, when Arizona’s number began to climb so did the total numbers for the United States.

“It's possible that Arizona was the front of that wave of increases in these cases and the actions that we're taking can lead the way for our state to navigate forward," Ducey said.

Note: These numbers were released by the state of Arizona, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Bolivian Interim President Jeanine Añez announced on her official Twitter account Thursday that she tested positive for novel coronavirus.

Añez mentioned that many of her cabinet members had tested positive recently.

In recent days, at least four top Bolivian government officials, including Health Minister María Eidy Roca, tested positive for Covid-19. The other officials positive for novel coronavirus include Minister of the Presidency Yerko Núñez Negrette, Minister of Mines Jorge Fernando Oropeza, and the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Sergio Orellana.

Añez is the third Latin American head of state to test positive for the virus, following Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Houston, Texas, Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a news conference Thursday that the Covid-19 virus in the city is "out of control."

He continued saying the goal is to bring the daily number of cases to below 300. 

"And I say 300, that's the number I am using because it makes it then much more practical for us to engage with our contact tracing," he added. 

Houston reported 412 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases to at least 26,012, with approximately 250 deaths. 

Note: These numbers were announced by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

A Massachusetts man has been arrested after he allegedly pulled a gun on another man during an argument over the victim not wearing a face mask inside a store, according to a statement from the Bridgewater Police Department.

The 59-year-old man from East Bridgewater was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, disorderly conduct, and disturbing the peace, the statement said.

The details: On July 3, around 5:20 p.m., Bridgewater Police responded to a call from the manager at a Walgreen’s Pharmacy, who reported that two men were arguing inside the store about one of them not wearing a face mask.

The argument continued into the parking lot, where one of the men allegedly pulled a gun from his vehicle and pointed it at the other man, who had not been wearing a face mask in the store. The suspect then got in his vehicle and left the scene, police said.

The victim, a 30-year-old Abington man, was not injured, according to Bridgewater Police.

Police later identified the suspect and arrested him at his home. He then complained of a medical issue and was transported to a local hospital.

According to police, his license to carry a firearm and firearms from his home were seized.

When 42 states and Washington, DC, implemented shelter-in-place orders in March and early April to help contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus, they may have prevented as many as 370,000 deaths by the middle of May, according to new research.

The study used models to examine Covid-19 death rates and hospitalizations during shelter-in-place-orders and evidence indicated they “helped reduce Covid-19 cases,” authors Wei Lyu and George L. Wehby said.

Not only did lockdowns help reduce coronavirus cases, the study found, but six weeks later, deaths were down by 6%.

The lockdowns also helped reduce daily hospitalization rates by almost 8.5% in 19 states with the mandates, the analysis found.

“This evidence suggests that shelter-in-place orders have been effective in reducing the daily growth rates of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations,” the study concluded.

There were 120,000 deaths and 320,000 hospitalizations from Covid-19 by the time the study was peer-reviewed, up from 83,000 deaths and 198,000 coronavirus hospitalizations as of May 15 when the study ended, Lyu and Wehby reported.

Previous studies have also concluded that stay-at-home and shelter-in-place mandates have helped reduce infections and deaths from Covid-19.