July 14 coronavirus news

At least 1,071,320 coronavirus tests have been conducted in Tennessee since the pandemic began in March, the state's Department of Health reported today.

There have been at least 66,788 cases of coronavirus in the state and at least 767 people have died from the virus since the pandemic began, according to the health department.

During a news conference on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee said his state went from testing a few hundred people a day to more than a million people. He claimed that anyone can get tested in the state.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Covid-19 cases have been trending upward in the state.

"In terms of new cases, we continue to have an upward trend. Twelve of the last 14 days have had an upward trend," Polis said in a news conference on Tuesday.

"And hospitalizations, 11 of the last 14 days have had an upward trend in the seven-day moving average. Cases are growing slowly but consistently, and that is the wrong trend ... We want to see them decreasing slowly but consistently," he added.

The governor also spoke about the importance of wearing masks, and encouraged the public to do so. 

"What we are doing is close but isn't quite working, and we need to do better, and that means reducing our social interactions," he added.

As for hospital capacity, Polis said that the state is not concerned about bed capacity in intensive care units at the time. The state has 552 ICU beds open.

"One of the reasons we want Coloradans to do better early is, we don't want to have to take extraordinary measures as we had to in April to free up additional beds," the governor said. 

Colorado has a total of 37,686 Covid-19 cases and at least 1,589 people have died from the virus in the state.

Note: These numbers were released by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN's database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

The science shows face masks work both to protect the wearer and to protect others from coronavirus, and everyone needs to wear one when around other people in public, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

Even cloth face masks help enough to be worthwhile, three top CDC officials said in a commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“While community use of face coverings has increased substantially, particularly in jurisdictions with mandatory orders, resistance continues,” CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, CDC’s chief medical officer Dr. John Brooks and Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases Dr. Jay Butler said in a joint editorial.

There is “ample evidence” that people who have no symptoms and may not realize they are infected may be driving the ongoing surge in infections, they wrote.

Redfield has been increasingly vocal about his support for the use of face masks, and the CDC published details on Tuesday of a study that found two hairdressers in Springfield, Missouri, who were infected with coronavirus did not infect any of 139 clients they worked with, probably because they wore face masks.

Even homemade, cloth masks help. “Cloth face coverings can substantially limit forward dispersion of exhaled respirations that contain potentially infectious respiratory particles in the 1- to 10-nanometer range that includes aerosol-sized particles, and recent research of household textiles’ performance when used as source control suggests cloth face coverings may be able to do so with acceptable efficiency and breathability,” they wrote.

“However, face covering is not needed all the time. It is probably safe for individuals and safe for others to drive alone or to walk or jog alone on an uncrowded route without a face covering,” they advised.

“But when individuals choose to go out or must be close to others in public, a cloth face covering can help reduce the spread of COVID-19 from asymptomatic individuals or others.”

Health experts need to spread the message, the CDC said. “Innovation is needed to extend their physical comfort and ease of use,” they added. 

“At this critical juncture when COVID-19 is resurging, broad adoption of cloth face coverings is a civic duty, a small sacrifice reliant on a highly effective low-tech solution that can help turn the tide favorably in national and global efforts against COVID-19.”

Venezuela topped 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday, according to data collected by the Venezuelan government led by embattled President Nicolás Maduro. 

The government recorded 303 new cases on Tuesday, Maduro said in a televised speech in Caracas, bringing the total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases to 10,010 cases. 

Three new deaths from the virus were also reported Tuesday, Maduro said, bringing Venezuela's Covid-19 death toll to 96 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in March. 

Venezuela's capital, Caracas, and the surrounding area registered 98 new cases Tuesday, nearly a third of the country's 303 new cases, and will return to strict lockdown measures beginning Wednesday, the Maduro government announced earlier Tuesday. 

The Venezuelan opposition as well as international organization have questioned the government's ability to properly track and report Covid-19 cases.

As coronavirus cases surge in Florida, Miami Beach is sacrificing a key source of money from visitors. 

Starting Thursday, the city is suspending short-term rentals and ordering those properties closed.

“Short-term and vacation rentals shall cancel all existing reservations, and shall refrain from accepting new guests or making new reservations,” the city’s order said.

The order does not provide a timeline for when the ban will be reconsidered.

The world should see a vaccine that protects people from Covid-19 within the next year to year and a half, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday.

And companies making the vaccines have reassured him they will be able to make up to a billion doses, Fauci said during a Georgetown University Global Health Initiative webinar. That’s more than the US would need.

Fauci said that while no vaccine is going to be 100% protective, scientists think there will be herd immunity if there are enough survivors from the disease and enough people get vaccinated with one that is 70% to 75% effective.

“And I hope that that time will be reasonably soon,” he said. “When I say ‘soon,’ I say within the next year to year and a half.”

Earlier Tuesday, vaccine maker Moderna, which has the backing of the US government, said its Phase 1 safety data showed two doses of its experimental vaccine elicited an antibody response in 100% of volunteers with no serious safety problems. Moderna said it would begin Phase 3 experiments, the last stage before approval, on July 27 with 30,000 volunteers.

The World Health Organization says 23 potential coronavirus vaccines are being tested in people around the world.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he hopes the US relationship with the World Health Organization improves, saying “the world does need a WHO.”

“They are an imperfect organization. They have made mistakes, but I would like to see the mistakes corrected, and for them to be much more in line with the kinds of things that we need,” Fauci said Tuesday during a Georgetown Global Health Initiative webinar. 

Fauci said he has been working closely with WHO for the last 40 years and he thinks there are good people in the organization, including WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.  

Los Angeles County reported its highest single-day total for new cases and hospitalizations Tuesday, the county’s public health department said in a statement.

The county recorded 4,244 new cases and 2,103 people were hospitalized. The county also reported 73 new fatalities, one of the highest numbers of new deaths reported in a single day, according to the statement.

“Today's numbers are alarming and unfortunately are the result of many businesses and individuals not adhering to the basic public health requirements of distancing and wearing face coverings,” Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said in a statement.

Ferrer urged residents to stay home as much as possible, wear a face covering, wash their hands, and avoid close contact with people from outside households to help prevent the surge of coronavirus cases.

Los Angeles County, which has an approximate population of 10 million residents, has a total of 140,307 positive cases and 3,894 deaths.

The county is under California’s watch list. County health orders were modified on Monday to align with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mandate to shut down gyms and fitness centers, places of worship, offices for non-critical sectors, personal care services, hair salons and barbershops, and indoor malls.

Brazil surpassed 1.9 million confirmed cases of novel coronavirus Tuesday after adding 41,857 in the past 24 hours, according to its health ministry.

The country now has 1,926,824 total confirmed cases, the second highest worldwide.

The ministry also reported 1,300 new fatalities from the virus, bringing the nationwide death toll to 74,133.

As of Tuesday, Latin America and the Caribbean have now recorded more coronavirus deaths than the United States and Canada, a CNN analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows, with Brazil the hardest-hit by the virus in Latin America.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who tested positive for Covid-19 last week, told CNN affiliate CNN Brasil that he will take another test again on Tuesday for Covid-19 to see if the virus is still active in his body.