July 15 coronavirus news

A closely watched model that predicts Covid-19 deaths is now forecasting 224,000 deaths in the United States by November 1 this year. 

The model, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, had projected almost 16,000 fewer deaths in a forecast made last week -- but the surge in cases nationwide have caused the projection to jump. 

“That increase in our forecasts is being driven by the big upsurge in you know the ones we know about in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California,” said the chair of IHME, Dr. Chris Murray.

“There's a longer list of states where deaths are going up, as well as hospitalizations. So, that includes Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. So those are our lists that are driving up forecasts, as we look ahead."

The US coronavirus death toll stands at 136,466.

Face masks could lower this projection: The projection could continue to change depending on the implementation of nationwide restrictions, reopenings, and preventative factors like the use of face masks.

The more people wear masks, the fewer deaths will likely be projected, He said -- at the individual level, masks can reduce transmission of the virus by a third. 

Global coronavirus restrictions are preventing people from fleeing violence or forcing them to take more dangerous routes, warned the International Rescue Committee in a new report.

Border tightening and movement restrictions are also leaving thousands stranded, or to return to dire conditions and places with ongoing humanitarian crises. 

The report found:

Tens of thousands of migrants have also had to return to dangerous conditions due to loss of work and increased risk of xenophobia or infection.

That includes over 80,000 Venezuelans who have returned from Colombia since April, nearly 60,000 migrant workers who returned to Myanmar, and 298,000 people who returned to Afghanistan from Iran.

Many of these migrants are returning to communities of violence, and some have "very low levels of knowledge about Covid-19," said the report.

A 71-year-old man was found dead in the parking lot of a Covid-19 testing location on Sunday in North Ogden, Utah, the facility said in a statement. 

On July 12, a caretaker and driver from Mountain View Health Services, a nursing facility in nearby Ogden, Utah, brought the man to the North Ogden Clinic for a Covid-19 test, Intermountain Healthcare, the company that runs the clinic, said in their statement.

“When the nursing facility’s van reached the testing tent after less than a 45-minute wait, their patient was unresponsive, cold to the touch, and appeared to be deceased,” the statement said.

The 71 year-old-man, who has not been identified, was discovered in "cardiac respiratory arrest" by first responders who could not revive him, said Deputy Chief Jeremiah Jones of the North View Fire District. It's unclear exactly what caused the man's death. 

“Cardiac respiratory arrest can be caused by a variety of medical reasons, including a heart attack or complications from Covid-19,” Jones explained.

The United States reported 67,417 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, the country's highest single-day jump in cases since the pandemic began.

There were also 900 new virus-related deaths Tuesday.

That brings the national total to at least 3,431,574 cases and 136,466 related deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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

Follow our live tracker of US cases here:

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Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

Laboratories in the United States running coronavirus tests are getting more samples than they can process, said the American Clinical Laboratory Association on Tuesday.

“We have urged ordering providers to prioritize testing for those most in need, especially hospitalized and symptomatic patients.”

On Monday, Quest Diagnostics, a member of the ACLA, said some of its tests were taking seven days to turn around because of the demand.

Why this matters: Without quick testing, people cannot know whether they have the virus and take steps to avoid spreading it. Fast testing is central to contact tracing, the method that public health experts say is key to controlling the spread of the pandemic.

What they're doing about it: ACLA member labs are now working on new testing strategies and technologies to maximize their testing capacities, Khani said.

These labs collectively have performed over 20 million molecular tests for Covid-19 since the end of February, when the federal government cleared regulatory hurdles to expand testing.

Testing capacity has tripled since early April, and ACLA labs are performing more than 300,000 tests a day, Khani said.

The ‘patient zero’ for an ongoing coronavirus outbreak in the Australian city of Sydney came from Melbourne, located the next state over, said officials on Wednesday.

Sydney is located in New South Wales state, while Melbourne is in Victoria. Melbourne was placed under lockdown again last week after a dramatic spike in cases.

34 local infections in Sydney have now been traced to the outbreak in Victoria, said NSW health officials.

Patient Zero is a man who arrived in Sydney from Melbourne on June 30. He met with coworkers on July 3 in a hotel pub, officials said.

The border between Victoria and New South Wales -- Australia’s two most populous states -- has been closed for more than a week, in a bid to to stop the spread of outbreak. 

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Wednesday announced 238 new Covid-19 cases in his state with one new death related to the virus.

New South Wales health officials, meanwhile, announced 13 new coronavirus cases in the state in the past day, 10 of which were connected to the hotel pub cluster.

The science shows face masks work both to protect the wearer and to protect others from coronavirus, and everyone needs to wear one around others 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. Face coverings aren't needed all the time -- for instance, people driving or walking alone in uncrowded spaces are probably safe without one.

“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."

The outbreak of coronavirus cases at US military bases in Japan is "extremely serious," said Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono on Tuesday.

A total of 100 US military personnel and their families have so far been diagnosed with Covid-19 across six US Military facilities in Japan since early July. 

The US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, with 71 confirmed cases, is the worst-impacted location.

Patients on commercial planes: Three US personnel, who tested positive after arriving in Tokyo over the weekend, took commercial flight en route to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture -- despite guidelines prohibiting them from using public transportation on Tuesday.

“It is an extremely serious situation. I asked the US side to strictly punish them and to take a serious action to prevent recurrence in the future,” Kono said.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki is arriving in Tokyo today to seek help from the Japanese government to press for more disclosure from the US military, and halt the arrivals of new US military personnel from outside Japan.