July 19 coronavirus news

President Donald Trump has said he will not consider a national mandate on mask wearing in an interview with Fox set to air Sunday. 

When asked whether he would consider instituting a mandate, Trump responded: "No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don't believe in that, no."

During the hour-long sit-down, Trump also said he disagrees with the assessment by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that "if all of us would put on a face covering now for the next four weeks, six weeks, we could drive this epidemic to the ground." 

In the early days of the pandemic, public health officials asked people to not wear masks to save supplies for frontline workers, but now both Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, have repeatedly called upon Americans to wear masks in public.

Read the full story:

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A hospital in Brooklyn received a special delivery this week: 1,800 paintings representing a flower -- or one for every employee.

The paintings were created and donated by Los Angeles-based artist Michael Gittes, whose works have been shown at The National Portrait Gallery in London, the Park Avenue Armory in New York, and the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

Gittes enlisted Bronner to help him find the perfect hospital for the donation. 

Based on Gittes' specifications, it had to be a non-profit hospital in an underserved community, with an intensive care unit treating coronavirus patients. It had to be small enough for Gittes to be able to paint a unique, original painting for every single staff member, from the doctors and administrators to the janitors, security guards and cafeteria workers, Bronner said..

They decided that Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood would be the perfect fit for the project.

Read the full story.

India recorded 38,902 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday morning and 543 deaths, according to its Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

That marked the highest single-day increase in cases since the pandemic began, bringing the total number of infections in the country to 1,077,618, including 26,816 deaths. 

There are a reported 373,379 active cases in India and 677,422 patients have recovered.

In India, patients with mild and moderate symptoms are considered no longer active after 10 days of symptom onset if they meet certain conditions. A test to confirm they no longer have the virus is not required. Severe cases can be discharged after one negative test.

The western state of Maharashtra, which includes the financial capital Mumbai, remains the worst-hit region of the country by sheer numbers, with 300,937 confirmed cases and 11,596 deaths. 

India had conducted 13,791,869 coronavirus tests as of this morning.

Read more about how the world's second most populous country hit 1 million cases:

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Professional diver Emiliano Pescarolo contracted coronavirus in March and spent 17 days in hospital in the Italian port city of Genoa, before being discharged on April 10.

Now, three months later, the 42-year-old still experiences breathing difficulties. "Once back home, even after weeks I couldn't see any progress: if I took a small walk, it was like climbing Mount Everest. I was out of breath also just for talking. I was very worried," he said.

Pescarolo is one of dozens of former Covid patients receiving care at a rehabilitation clinic in Genoa -- and says he is starting to see some progress.

For much of Europe, the peak of Covid-19 infections has passed. But while hospitals are no longer awash with acute cases, there are thousands of people who had either confirmed or suspected Covid and, weeks or months later, say they are far from fully recovered.

In the United Kingdom, communities of "long Covid" sufferers have spring up online, as people try to manage what appear to be long-term effects of a virus about which much remains unknown. Meanwhile, health authorities in the UK and Italy, two of the European nations worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic, are starting to offer rehabilitation services to Covid-19 survivors.

These will likely need to be wide-ranging, since research now indicates that coronavirus is a multi-system disease that can damage not only the lungs, but the kidneys, liver, heart, brain and nervous system, skin and gastrointestinal tract.

Dr Piero Clavario, director of the post-Covid rehab institute attended by Pescarolo in Genoa, said his team had started contacting several hundred Covid-survivors treated by hospitals in the district in May. Of those, they have now visited more than 50.

"They are not only those that were in ICU and intubated because of Covid, but also patients that spent not more than three days in the hospitals and then went home," he said. "We investigate aspects that escape standard virological and pulmonary exams."

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The State Department has released a 2018 diplomatic cable noting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had "a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory."

Contents of the 2-year-old cable, which were leaked earlier this year, provided fodder for unproven allegations from members of the Trump administration and Congress that the coronavirus may have escaped from the lab at the epicenter of the virus.

The January 2018 cable, obtained by the Washington Post after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, noted that ties between the WIV and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston could help alleviate the shortage and that, reportedly, the US-based institution was training technicians to work at the WIV.

A second cable about the WIV from April 2018 cited a French official who said that "French experts have provided guidance and biosafety training to the lab, which will continue."

Parts of both cables are redacted.

Read more here

Face masks will be mandatory in parts of the Australian state of Victoria from midnight on Wednesday as cases in the region continue to rise.

Daniel Andrews, Premier of Australia’s Victoria State, said Sunday that people within metropolitan Melbourne and Mitchell Shire would be fined 200 Australian dollars ($140) if caught not wearing a face covering.

Andrews said Victoria had recorded 363 new Covid-19 cases Saturday, bringing the state's total to 5,696 cases.

“We are going to be wearing masks in Victoria, and potentially in other parts of the country for a very long time,” Andrews said.

“There is no vaccine to this widely infectious virus. And it’s a simple thing but it’s about changing habit and it’s about it becoming a simple part of your routine.”

Mexico’s health ministry reported a record 7,615 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing the country’s total to 338,913.

Speaking at a Saturday evening press conference, Mexican health officials reported 578 new Covid-19 deaths, raising the country’s death toll to 38,888.

There were 259,848 new Covid-19 cases reported to the World Health Organization in the last 24 hours, according to a WHO situation report published Saturday. The total number of cases worldwide reported to WHO is now 13.8 million.

The rise in newly reported cases sets another record for cases reported to WHO within a 24-hour period. 

The previous record was set on Friday, with 237,743 new cases of Covid-19.

Saturday's report noted there were 7,360 additional Covid-19 deaths reported to WHO in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths worldwide to 593,087.

Keep track of Covid-19 cases across the world with John Hopkins University's interactive map.

Brazil’s health ministry reported 912 new Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, raising the country’s death toll to 78,772.

The ministry reported 28,532 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the country’s total to 2.07 million.

The ongoing outbreak is partly driven by a rise in cases in Brazil’s south and interior. That includes states like Santa Catarina, where the Gov. Carlos Moises announced new lockdown measures in several regions on Friday due to what he called “very grave” public health risk. In Mato Grosso, about 90 percent of ICU beds are occupied, according to the state government.