July 22 coronavirus news

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb today announced a statewide mask mandate to go into effect on Monday, citing rising Covid-19 numbers both within his state and in surrounding states. 

“There has been a rise in Covid-19 positivity across the state, from a low of 3.6% just a month ago, to where we find ourselves today with a seven-day average rate of just about 7% — the last couple days it was closer to 8%," the governor said. 

Health officials said Indiana has also seen a rise in overall hospitalization rates from 600 a day near the end of June to about 800 a day, currently. The governor said a number of counties “that have never even been a blip on the radar screen for positive tests are, in some cases, reporting regular double digit Covid-19 positive cases.” 

Holcomb said that while not wearing a face covering will be a misdemeanor, “mask police will not be patrolling our streets.” He called on residents to “do the right thing” by wearing a mask. 

An ongoing backlog in the federal government's production of green cards and other documents was prompted by budget issues and a hiring freeze at the US agency that handles legal immigration benefits. 

In June, US Citizenship and Immigration Services reduced its capacity to print secure documents, such as green cards and employment authorization documents when it ended a contract with an outside company, according to the agency’s ombudsman.

The agency planned to hire federal employees to fill the roles, but a budget shortfall resulted in a hiring freeze and slowed down printing of the cards, the ombudsman said in an announcement Wednesday.  

“Currently, there is limited production” at the facilities that produce the cards, a spokesperson from USCIS told CNN in a statement, adding that USCIS is currently producing around 10,000 cards per day. 

The Washington Post first reported that the administration scaled back printing of these documents without telling Congress. 

The current production backlog is roughly 115,000 green cards and employment authorization documents, according to the spokesperson with the oldest pending card order in the queue from July 6.

Some background: The agency is bracing to furlough more than half of its staff next month —  a move that could grind the US immigration system to a halt. USCIS, a fee-funded agency, says it's in the hole after having to close offices and put services on pause during the pandemic. The agency has asked Congress for $1.2 billion.

“Should there be a furlough of USCIS employees on August 3, 2020, card production backlogs will likely increase,” wrote the ombudsman.

In the meantime, legal permanent residents awaiting a card may obtain proof of their status by requesting a stamp of temporary evidence in a valid passport, according to the USCIS ombudsman.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced Wednesday that he signed an executive order that requires residents to wear face coverings in indoor businesses and indoor public settings to slow the spread of coronavirus. 

Minnesota Department of Health, along with the Department of Employment and Economic Development, will distribute masks to underserved communities and businesses across the state, according to the statement.

"Individuals with a medical condition, mental health condition, or disability that makes it unreasonable for the individual to maintain a face covering are exempt from the order," the statement said. 

The mandate goes into effect on Saturday.

US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said he loses sleep over the possibility of another pandemic.

Hahn said he also wants to make sure the FDA is ready when there is another pandemic. A key will be advanced manufacturing and domestic manufacturing to make sure the country has adequate supplies of medical products and a supply that’s under US control. 

Hahn said the agency is undergoing a mid-action review to make sense of the lessons the agency has learned from the pandemic. He said he also has been working with the FDA’s leaders to determine how it can sustain some of the innovations they’ve seen during the pandemic.

Hahn said what gives him hope is what he sees from the American people. Doctors, nurses, scientists and pharmacists have done “great things” in response to the pandemic.

“We have challenges, no question about it, but that gives me great hope,” Hahn said. 

“I also have great hope because I know … what’s coming down the pike, in terms of therapeutics and vaccines," he added.

He said Americans need to take the pandemic seriously and follow public health guidelines: Wear masks, maintain physical distance, use good hand hygiene.

“We will get beyond this pandemic,” he said. “I know that we’re going to do this together.” 

Tulane University in New Orleans is planning for a full-campus reopening next month, with the return of university operations and academics. But at least one official at Tulane — which is often ranked as one of the country's top party schools — warned that partiers will be punished.

Tulane President Michael Fitts and other university leaders announced Monday the plan for returning to campus, which includes free Covid-19 testing to all students who plan to live on-campus. Students must have a negative test result before they can move into campus housing, according to the plan.

The fall semester will begin on Aug. 19 and will continue through Nov. 24, with classes ending before the Thanksgiving holiday. According to the plan, students, faculty, and staff will be required to wear masks in common areas and classrooms.

Following the July 4 holiday weekend, Dean of Students Erica Woodley sent a harshly worded email to students warning against parties and large gatherings.

She admonished students who hosted July 4 events for their "disrespectful, selfish and dangerous" behavior. Woodley also warned, in all caps and bold print, that anyone who hosts a group of more than 15 people will face suspension or expulsion from the university.

The NBA's Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Clippers have tipped off at the Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida, in the league's first competition since March 12.

Despite stats and scores being recorded, the scrimmage format allows for teams to collaborate with each other to work on game plans and play execution. 

On the Magic and Clippers broadcast, the scorer’s table can be seen enclosed by plexiglass.

Coaches and players not in the game can be seen sitting separated from one another. Some team staff members are wearing face coverings. 

“Black Lives Matter” is painted on the court. 

There are four scrimmages on the schedule Wednesday and four on Thursday. 

The NBA regular season tips in eight days on July 30. 

US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said that while the US food supply is safe, the system itself has come under pressure from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Early on, he said, the food division of the FDA anticipated that if people who work in the food industry were to get sick, that it would put pressure on the US food supply. “And I think we’ve seen that bear out,” Hahn said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted a significant number of deaths and cases in the food industry. As of July 7, the CDC reported that among the 23 states reporting Covid-19 outbreaks in meat and poultry processing facilities, there were 16,233 cases in 239 facilities, including 86 Covid-19-related deaths. These cases and deaths disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minorities, with nearly 90% of the cases were among ethnic and racial minority groups.

Hahn said the FDA is working closely with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the CDC, as well as with food industry groups, to determine where the problems are that may encourage the spread of the disease. The FDA has developed an internal tool that matches information about the food supply with information about Covid-19 hot spots, so it can predict and proactively address potential problems with suppliers.

The FDA also has been working with other agencies and the industry to take a closer look at workers’ living and working conditions. Both make it difficult to physically distance and reduce the spread. Hahn said the FDA wants to figure out how to get these workers more personal protective equipment and how to make sure they’re among the first groups to get a vaccine when one is approved.

Police dogs in Chile are being trained to detect Covid-19 in humans by sniffing their sweat. 

Chile’s National Police and the Catholic University of Chile are working on a joint project to train three golden retrievers and a labrador to detect “a new odor" in humans which in this case belong to Covid-19 patients, the university’s professor and veterinary epidemiologist, Fernando Mardones told CNN's Spanish-language news network, CNN en Español.

Coronavirus does not have a smell per se, but sweat does and dogs can be trained to detect the smell of a person going through an infection process, Mardones explained.

"A body that contracts Covid-19 generates volatile organic compounds. A sample is taken from a person in the early stages of the infection. A gauze is left for about 15 minutes on an individual's underarm. That's the sample we store and use to train the dogs with," Mardones explained.   

The “bio-detector” dogs, as they are called by the Chilean police, are expected to be trained by mid-September and sent to places with high concentrations of people – such as malls, sports centers, bus terminals and airports, according to the Chilean police. 

A dog can smell 250 people in an hour, so they can be deployed when these places reopen," Julio Santelices from the Chilean police said.

"Their olfactory capacity is so great that they would be able to detect the disease early on" Santelices said, adding that "this means that an asymptomatic person could be detected by the bio-detector dog." 

The dogs can take from two weeks up to two months to be fully trained. The canines are being taught to sit next to the individual with the Covid-19 virus they have detected, instead of "pawing" the individual as they currently do when sniffing drugs, the Chilean police told CNN.

US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said he was surprised how quickly the pandemic spread and is pleased with how quickly scientists have been able to react to get Covid-19 therapies out in record time.

Hahn became commissioner of the FDA in mid-December and had thought the opioid epidemic and youth e-cigarette use were going to be some of the biggest issues he’d tackle first. But within weeks, Covid-19 had started to spread and the FDA had to step up the pace to keep up with new drug and therapy approvals.

Only months into the pandemic, the FDA is overseeing 140 clinical trials and there are more than 450 applications in the pipeline. 

Hahn said the pace is not sustainable, but he’s committed to removing barriers to new drug approvals and to speeding up the process. He thinks there are lessons to be learned from what they have done.

One way the FDA has been able to speed up the process by prioritizing the applications that were submitted based on the merit of the science involved. The FDA used groups of agency scientists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others to go through applications and determine what the priorities should be.

The agency also expedited the approval process by doing what the agency calls a rolling review, where it looks at data in real time. When the clinical trials and application for a new therapeutic or drug for Covid-19 patients is complete, the FDA can make a decision about the safety and efficacy of that product within days, and in some cases, within 24 hours of getting the final data set. 

“It would be difficult to sustain a, double the workload moving forward, but a model that we’re very interested in implementing as we move forward,” Hahn said. “There are some real lessons there for all of us.”