July 14 coronavirus news

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced plans to step up enforcement of coronavirus restrictions statewide, citing an increase in cases especially in the tourist area of Hampton Roads.

“There's clearly some substantial community spread. A lot of that increase is driven by people socializing, without wearing masks, especially young people. As a matter of fact, the increase in the age group of 20 to 29-year-olds from here, compared to early June, is up 250%,” he said. “And it is very concerning.”

Virginia’s Department of Health will immediately deploy 100 additional inspectors to ramp up enforcement of mask-wearing and social distancing. The governor also called on restaurant and business owners to take action, warning their licenses will be on the line. 

Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver said the overwhelming majority of Virginians have been “doing the right thing,” which is why the state has not seen a spike in coronavirus cases like Florida or Texas.

“However, there are a number of people who have in fact not been following the guidelines and, as the governor says, we are going to get much stricter in enforcing those guidelines," he said.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said the Covid-19 hospitalization numbers Tuesday were by far the largest number in the state since the first case was reported on March 11.

Reeves said 805 are hospitalized for Covid-19 and 254 additional hospitalizations are suspected Covid-19 positive and are waiting for their test results.

State Health Official Dr. Thomas Dobbs said there is increasing stress on the hospital system.  

Dobbs said in the past five days, the total confirmed hospitalized patients in Mississippi has gone up by 119 cases. In the past five days, there has been 40 additional intensive care unit patients and 22 additional patients requiring ventilation.

“If we look at hospital capacity, today there are 10 ICUs in Mississippi that have zero beds available. It has become a real issue," Dobbs said.

Dobbs added that 25 hospitals in Mississippi have less than 25% capacity.

The director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said without a “biological countermeasure” such as a vaccine, “we're going to have to go through two or three years of wrestling with this virus.” 

When it comes to a coronavirus vaccine, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said, “I've never seen the government move faster."

“It's clear that this first experience is really going to still leave over 75% of the American public susceptible to this virus,” he said during a webinar with the Buck Institute on Tuesday.   

Testing everyone in a small community may be one way to get on top of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday.

“If there’s 10,000 people in the community…what it would take if we just tested all 10,000 – figure out in a three to five day period who's infected, who isn't – and see if that's a strategy that can help bring the outbreak under control in that community?” Redfield said during a JAMA interview.

Experts have said repeatedly that the only way to control the virus will be to test, find new cases, isolate those people and then find people they have been in contact with and quarantine them to stop onward transmission.

“The challenge that we have with traditional public health diagnosis, contact tracing, isolation of course, is the biological nature of this virus being so asymptomatic,” said Redfield. “I think now that it's moved into the younger age group, we probably have over 50% of infections lack symptoms.”

Testing everyone in a community could help health officials find those without symptoms who could be passing along the virus without knowing it. 

Redfield said he’s noticed a trend in Hispanic communities being disproportionately impacted by the virus. 

“Something's going on in the Hispanic community about community transmission that... we don't have our hands around,” he said. 

Venezuela's capital, Caracas, will go back under total lockdown Wednesday, the country's Vice President Delcy Rodríguez announced on Twitter. 

Venezuela started a gradual reopening since early June, but after a rise in new coronavirus cases reported over the last several days, embattled President Nicolás Maduro announced his decision to reimpose a total lockdown on the Capital District and surrounding Miranda state, Rodriguez tweeted Tuesday. 

Venezuela currently has 9,707 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus, according to data collected by Maduro's government. Of those cases, 1,970 were recorded in Caracas and the surrounding Miranda state. 

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

New Hampshire has released guidance for how schools should approach safely reopening in the fall, Gov. Chris Sununu announced on Tuesday.

The guidance does not prescribe an overarching requirement for schools to reopen in the state and instead gives districts and teachers the ability to design models that work for their specific situations. The guidance noted the wide disparities between rural and urban and suburban areas of the schools in the state.  

Sununu said the goal was to keep things “flexible so they can open today,” but then to “remain dynamic as they go through the fall semester.” 

Here are some of the details in the reopening guidance: 

“We feel confident all students can come back in a safe, productive manner,” Sununu said. 

The guidelines were developed by a task force put together earlier this year that consisted of parents, teachers, administrators and students and surveyed districts across the state, Sununu said. 

North Carolina schools will be open for both in-person and remote learning this fall with key safety precautions being put in place, Gov. Roy Cooper said during a news conference today. 

Face coverings will be required for every K-12 staff member, teacher and student. The state will be providing at least five reusable face coverings for every student, teacher and staff member, Cooper added.

Schools must limit the number of people in the building to enforce social distancing — that might mean alternating days or weeks that kids are in school. Children must also be screened before they enter the building, Cooper said. Teachers will have to limit the sharing of materials and build time into the day to allow for frequent hand-washing and cleaning. Nonessential visitors will also be limited and large gatherings such as assemblies should be suspended.  

A two-month supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and thermometers has already been sent to school nurses, the governor said. 

If local districts are not comfortable following the state's Plan B, they can opt for Plan C which is all remote learning. 

Cooper warned that if the trends spike, and in-person schooling cannot be done safely, North Carolina will move to all remote learning. 

Speaking during a webinar with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr. Robert Redfield, said he does not think reopening is "what's driving the current Southern expansion right now."

Redfield pointed to a spike in coronavirus cases around June 12-16. 

“It all simultaneously kind of popped,” he said. 

Redfield said this surge was independent of when states reopened to varying degrees across the region, “so we're of the view that there was something else that was the driver," he said. The CDC director said the potential spike could have been from travel during the Memorial Day weekend.

“A lot of Northerners decided to go south for vacations. The Southern groups had never really taken the mitigation steps that seriously, because they really didn't have an outbreak," he said.

Redfield's comments come as surges in US cases have forced state and local officials to ponder more restrictions and, in some cases, consider a second round of shutdowns. More than half of US states have now halted or rolled back their reopening plans in hopes of preventing further spread. 

In Houston, where hospitals are already overwhelmed with patients and hitting intensive care unit capacity, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Monday he proposed a two-week shutdown to the governor following a surge in cases.

"I do think we are going to need to shut down for a period of time. I am proposing two weeks, or at the very minimum, to return to phase one," Turner said.

Sacramento Kings forward Harrison Barnes has revealed via social media that he has tested positive for Covid-19 and is “primarily” asymptomatic.

The NBA champion who leads the team in minutes this season, says he tested positive last week before the Kings left for the isolated campus at Disney World.

Barnes said that he is currently in quarantine and hopes to join the rest of the team in Florida when cleared to do so. 

Read his tweet: