July 21 coronavirus news

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported Tuesday a new high of 488 total patients hospitalized because of coronavirus in the state.

Speaking during a news conference, Hutchinson said the total number of people hospitalized in the state is something that officials watch and are concerned about.

Dr. Jose Romero, acting secretary of the Arkansas Department of Health, said 110 patients are on ventilators.

Meanwhile, the state is reporting 728 new cases of coronavirus, 17 additional hospitalizations, and 5,670 tests have been conducted, with a positivity rate of 5.5% over the past 24 hours, according to Romero.

The health department reported 33,927 positive cases of coronavirus and 374 deaths since the pandemic began.

Hutchinson and Johnny Key, secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education, both said there are no plans to move the back the school start date of August 24, despite some concerns they have heard from teachers.

Note: These numbers were released by Arkansas Department of Health, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

The state of Mississippi is reporting a record number of positive coronavirus cases for the second day in a row. The state's Department of Health confirmed at least 1,635 new Covid-19 cases Tuesday, an increase of 384 over the previous day.

The number of Mississippi patients hospitalized with Covid-19 also reached a new record in Tuesday’s reporting, now at 943.

Note: The numbers above were released by the Mississippi State Department of Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Martha Baker, a Florida nurse and head of a union that represents 5,000 health workers in the Jackson Health System in Miami, says that the ER at her hospital is getting “stressed to the max.”

“We thought, perhaps that we had dampened the curve and then obviously [this] month we’ve done nothing but continue to break records day after day, embarrassingly enough,�� Baker told CNN’s Brianna Keilar.

“It’s hard on our nurses. It’s hard on all the caregivers inside the hospital. They need a break. It’s been since March. People are near exhaustion and we’re running out of beds, nurses and caregivers,” she added.  

Baker said that she is grateful for the additional 100 nurses that came down from across the country to help their stressed health system. They are asking for 100 more nurses now.

She added that hospitals are having trouble distinguishing Covid-19 patients from non-Covid-19 patients.

“When I was talking to one of our physicians and he was saying, ‘They’re everywhere. The Covids are everywhere.’ You come in for abdominal pain thinking, perhaps, it’s your appendix and they test and you’re Covid positive,” Baker said.

“The patients in the hallways, Covid positive everywhere. It’s hard to stay safe,” she added.

The mixed messaging about safety and reopening protocols coming from state and local leaders isn’t helping. Baker said that caregivers are “getting angry” at leaders for not standing up for them.

“I don’t know how [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis or other leaders in Florida or outside of Florida can ignore the science of this and it’s really unfair to, not only the patients in our community, but to the caregivers inside of our hospital,” Baker said.

Watch full interview here:

Zimbabwe will impose a dusk to dawn curfew on its citizens as it tightens its coronavirus measures, the country's president Emmerson Mnangagwa announced in a televised address to the nation on Tuesday.

The daily curfew will come into effect on Wednesday "between 6 o'clock in the evening and 6 o'clock in the morning" and will be enforced by Zimbabwe's security services, Mnangagwa said.

Business hours will be restricted between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time. Only essential services are exempt from the restrictions.

"Public gatherings for social, religious or political purposes remain banned," Mnangagwa said.

The president warned that anyone who breaches the conditions or encourages actions that undermine the public health measures "will be liable and severely punished accordingly." 

The announcement comes after Zimbabwe police arrested a prominent journalist as well as an opposition leader Monday, alleging the two incited fellow citizens to “participate in public violence.”

In a media statement, the police confirmed that Jacob Ngarivhume of Transformation Zimbabwe and Hopewell Chin’ono, a prominent journalist, were arrested, adding that, “the duo will appear in court soon and are currently in police custody.”

Ngarivhume is calling for nationwide protests on July 31 to push Mnangagwa’s government to fight corruption and a deteriorating economy under hashtag #ZanupfMustGo.

The Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) reported at least 3,413 new cases of coronavirus Tuesday, bringing the state total to 148,988 cases.

Georgia DPH also reported 78 new deaths Tuesday, a sharp increase from the three deaths reported on Monday. The total death toll for Georgia is now 3,254. 

There were at least 447 new Covid-19-related hospitalizations recorded on Tuesday. 

More than 500 women at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, have tested positive for Covid-19, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The bureau says that Federal Medical Center Carswell has at least 509 inmates and 3 staff members currently infected with the virus –– that's more than 37% of the inmate population.

FMC Carswell, which is an administrative security medical center with a minimum security satellite camp in an adjacent complex, has 1,357 total inmates, with 1,119 at the FMC and 238 at the camp.  

Increased testing at the facility started July 1, according to a statement from the Bureau of Prisons to CNN. Inmates are having temperatures taken twice a day and are receiving assessments for symptoms, which helps in slowing the transmission, according to the statement. 

Some context: The only other facility run by the bureau with more positive tests is Federal Correctional Institution Seagoville, outside of Dallas, which shows nearly 63% of its population currently Covid-19 positive, according to the numbers posted on Monday.

Of the 1,798 minimum-security inmates, there are currently at least 1,132 positive cases and 9 staff members who are positive. Mass testing at FCI Seagoville began at the end of June, the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement sent to CNN.

The Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that they are “carefully monitoring the spread of the Covid-19 virus. As with any type of emergency situation, we carefully assess how to best ensure the safety of staff, inmates and the public.”

Vice President Mike Pence said he “wouldn’t hesitate” to send his kids back to school if they were younger, but didn’t elaborate on how schools could prevent kids from catching the virus and spreading it to others. 

“I can tell you with my wife seated right here,” Pence said at a news conference in South Carolina, “if our kids were elementary school age, or high school or college, we wouldn’t hesitate to send them back to school. Because I’ve been looking at this data every day, and I’d encourage any American, any parent in particular to do the same. Because children without a serious underlying condition have a very low risk of serious outcome of the coronavirus.” 

He added, “The risk of the coronavirus to children, young people under the age of 18 or under the age of 25 is very low. There are real costs when our kids are not in the classroom.” 

Asked about the risk to parents and others if children bring the virus home, Pence said the administration was “supporting efforts at the state level and with local schools to do everything in our power to see that that never happens.” 

“We think we can safely reopen schools. The risk to children is very low. We believe that responsible plans can be developed that will protect our students, protect the faculty, and protect the most vulnerable,” Pence said. “We really do believe that it’s possible to safely reopen our schools.”

He did not elaborate on how that could be achieved.

Jennifer Rakeman, the assistant commissioner and laboratory director for the New York City Public Health Laboratory, said Tuesday that the lack of a national coronavirus testing strategy amid supply shortages and increasing demand for testing has contributed to the delay in test results across the nation.

Rakeman addressed the fact that people are waiting up to two weeks for test results, at which point a person could have finished their quarantine and contact tracing would be moot.

“That test that takes two weeks to get a result back was a test that shouldn't have been done,” said Rakeman during an Alliance for Health Policy Summit Tuesday. “Really anything much longer than outwards of 48 hours is not a useful test.”

Jurisdictions have been left to their own devices, she said, resulting in a distribution of testing access that does not meet the needs of many communities. 

“We are working in a system that has been weakened by decreased funding and support, and we have had to rebuild, as we respond,” Rakeman said. “The rapid increase in cases and unprecedented hunger for testing has left labs in a place where we cannot keep up.”

She said a national strategy would help contact tracing become more efficient.

California is now reporting 400,769 total coronavirus cases. California reported at least 9,231 new coronavirus cases today, bringing the total to approximately 400,769 total cases statewide, according to new data provided by the California Department of Public Health.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of at least 7,755 people have died as a result of the virus in California. 

Hospitalization rates and those in the intensive care unit are again reaching highs with increases of 1.9% and 0.7% respectively.

California’s positivity rate over the past two weeks stands at 7.5%, which is slightly under the state’s goal of remaining below 8%. More than 6.5 million tests have been performed to date.

Note: These numbers were released by the CA Department of Public Health, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.