July 16 coronavirus news

Beginning on Monday, pharmacy chain CVS will require all customers to wear face covering when entering any of their stores throughout the US.

"To be clear, we're not asking our store employees to play the role of enforcer. What we are asking is that customers help protect themselves and those around them by listening to the experts and heeding the call to wear a face covering," Roberts added.

CVS joins other major companies that have announced similar moves, including Walmart, Starbucks and Best Buy.

Dave Galloway, a sixth-grade science teacher in Florida, said he is setting up his will and thinking of pushing up his retirement because of coronavirus concerns. 

Galloway, 64, who has been teaching for 14 years, is an Army veteran who has type 2 diabetes. His wife is a breast cancer survivor. 

The state is unprepared to properly plan for school reopenings, he said, and schools shouldn’t be open if the governor’s office isn’t even open for visitors and teachers still need to meet virtually. 

“Right now, we have been given yet another mandate, a demand to perform, if you will, with … what I consider zero leadership from Tallahassee and zero funding to accomplish what it is they want us to do,” he said.

Part of his school prep this year has been setting up a will, he said, and he's not the only one facing these concerns.  

“They are putting an assumed level of risk on teachers and students — and our most vulnerable students — that quite frankly, I find untenable,” Galloway added. 

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Atlanta's mask order remains in effect, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' office told CNN, despite the governor's earlier executive order suspending all local government mask mandates.

Some background: Yesterday, Gov. Brian Kemp signed an executive order that included language indicating that local governments are prohibited from implementing rules requiring people to wear masks and face coverings in public places.

 Under the executive order, the Republican governor extended the state's public emergency and said face coverings are "strongly encouraged," but not required.

Kemp's executive order voids masks mandates already imposed by some local governments as Covid-19 cases tick up in cities across the state.

Following the Trump administration’s decision to reroute coronavirus hospital data first to the administration, instead of sending it to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some data is no longer available on the CDC.gov website. 

The information removed from the website is the hospital data that was reported to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network, according to CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund.

The data includes...

The information appeared on the National Healthcare Safety Network Covid-19 module page and the CDC’s Covid-19 data tracker.

There were 65 new suspected Covid-19 hospitalizations across New York City yesterday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in a press conference this morning, adding the city’s latest test positivity rate was 2%.

The latest city data shows there are at least 332 patients being treated for the virus in ICUs. 

Remember: These numbers were released by the city and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database, which is drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Miami hospitals have reached 95% capacity due to the growing Covid-19 pandemic, the city’s mayor, Francis Suarez, told reporters Thursday.

The percentage of positive cases is growing at a smaller rate, Suarez said.

The highest category of people who are getting infected are people between the ages of 18 and 34, who represent 27% of the population, Suarez said.

“They are going back to the home and infecting everybody in the household,” according to Suarez.

From the surveys received by the city “33.7% are reporting they are getting infected by a family member,” Suarez said, emphasizing the importance of sanitizing measures at home.

After going more than a month without speaking, President Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke by phone Wednesday despite persistent tensions between the White House and the administration's public health experts. 

One official described the conversation as "good," but other officials declined to characterize the discussion.

Last week, Fauci told the Financial Times that he last saw Trump on June 2 at the White House, and hasn't personally briefed him in at least two months. CNN has reported that Trump hasn't attended a coronavirus task force meeting in months and has turned instead to economic and political advisers as the pandemic continues to rage.

Their conversation yesterday came as White House officials and Trump himself were attempting to distance themselves from an op-ed written by trade adviser Peter Navarro trashing Fauci.

About the piece: Trump said Navarro shouldn't have written it and White House aides said Navarro broke protocol by submitting it for publication. But the article reflected the same sentiment Trump and White House officials have been expressing publicly questioning Fauci's record.

"Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on," Navarro wrote in the USA Today op-ed.

Argentina’s death toll due to Covid-19 has reached 2,072, with 22 new deaths in the last 24 hours, according to data released by the Ministry of Health on Thursday morning. 

The total number of coronavirus cases stands at 111,160, with 4,250 new cases, a record daily increase.

During the ministry’s morning briefing, Carla Vizzotti, Health Access Secretary, highlighted that 93% of the new cases belong to the Buenos Aires metro region (AMBA).

At least 49,120 people have recovered from the virus since the pandemic started, according to health officials. 

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández is expected to meet different health experts and officials on Thursday in order to decide new lockdown measures in the capital and surrounding areas that would start on Saturday, Argentina’s state news agency Telam reported. 

Fernández reimposed a lockdown in the metro area of Buenos Aires until Friday due to the spread of the virus. 

Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mayor G.T. Bynum signed a new mask ordinance while wearing a mask himself this morning, according to a post on his Facebook page.

The city of Tulsa has posted more information for residents on its website, including the letters of support from various organizations and the full text of the ordinance.

The Tulsa City Council announced yesterday that it approved face-covering ordinance by a 7-2 vote.