The latest on the coronavirus pandemic

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced additional statewide restrictions today on social gatherings, bars, restaurants and alcohol sales, citing an increase in Covid-19 cases that are currently stressing the state’s hospitals. 

Reeves added six counties to the existing list of 23 counties that must follow stricter measures, including mask mandates. 

State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said there are currently nine major medical hospitals in Mississippi with no intensive care unit beds available and some patients have had to be flown to Georgia to receive medical care.

“If we look at how Mississippi stands in the nation, among US states, we're number nine in per capita cases in the last seven days. So, Mississippi is one of the leading states in the country as far as coronavirus goes, and in the Southeast, we’re led only by Louisiana and Florida," the governor said. 

The governor’s executive order requires social gatherings consist of no more than 10 people indoors and no more than 20 people outdoors, including at parties in people’s homes.  

“There's going to have to be additional sacrifices made by the people in Mississippi,” Reeves said. “None of those sacrifices are fun. I don't like it. You don't like it. We don't like it. But we are where we are.”

Twenty-three lifeguards at beaches on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, tested positive for Covid-19 this week, according to the island’s health department. 

Eleven of them are from the borough of Harvey Cedars, while the other 12 are from the borough of Surf City, Long Beach Island Health Department Director Daniel Krupinski told CNN Friday.

Krupinski said the cases and possible incident leading to them remains under investigation. The 23 positive cases have not impacted lifeguard operations to this point, he said.

No major decisions were made Friday by the NCAA Board of Governors regarding the status of fall championships.

NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a statement they will continue to "thoughtfully and aggressively monitor health conditions around the country and the implementation of the COVID-19 guidelines we issued last week." The guidelines include daily self-health checks, face coverings and social distancing during training, competition and outside of athletics, and testing within 72 hours of competition. 

"The health and well-being of college athletes is the highest priority in deciding whether to proceed with our 22 NCAA championships beginning in late November," he said in the statement. 

Following a warning of a “grave health crisis,” the Bahamian prime minister on Friday announced the country would go into an emergency weekend lockdown after a surge in Covid-19 cases since reopening on July 1. 

On Friday, the Bahamian Ministry of Health reported 42 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total so far to 316.

The country's Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said that other than essential workers, all Bahamians would be required to remain in their homes through the weekend other than to buy food and seek medical aid.

All religious services, dining in restaurants and social gatherings will be canceled through the weekend, Minnis said, adding that the Bahamas will likely continue to institute lockdowns during the weekends moving forward.

Minnis also announced he was reversing an order that went into effect Wednesday that banned commercial air travel from the US to the Bahamas.

Instead, he said, the Bahamas would not block tourists from any country but visitors would be required to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival and then test negative for the virus. 

Minnis urged Bahamians not to travel to coronavirus “hotspots” in “neighboring countries.”

The first concern with a vaccine to prevent coronavirus infection will be safety, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Thomas Frieden said Friday.

“This is the first time we've had an anti-vaccine movement before we've had the vaccine,” Frieden said in a podcast sponsored by the online news site Axios.

That makes it important to be honest and open with people about the risks, he said. 

One concern is a potential immune reaction to vaccination, he said. “Because some of the adverse outcomes from Covid are immune-regulated, and that raises the theoretical concern that something like the Kawasaki-like illness that you're seeing in rare instances of childhood illness could be a rare adverse event of vaccination,” he said.

Frieden said if a coronavirus vaccine is approved, he’d get one. “If there’s enough vaccine enough to provide for essential workers and particularly health care workers first and it's demonstrated to be safe and effective, I'd be delighted to get vaccinated,” Frieden said.

“There are a lot of hurdles to get over before we actually have a vaccine available, proven to be effective, demonstrated to be safe and widely used,” he added. “First and foremost is safety and efficacy,” he said. “Does it work, how well, for whom, for how long and is it safe?”

So far 25 vaccines are in human trials around the world and 141 more are in preclinical trials, according to the World Health Organization.

But a vaccine will not be the only solution to the pandemic. “I think what we have to get past is the idea that there is one thing that’s going to make Covid go away,” Frieden said.

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association released today the latest testing results through the end of Thursday, in which six out of 10,939 samples came back positive.

Four of the positive tests were players and two were staff members.

Some context: The MLB and players association have reported a total of 99 positives tests — 84 were players and 15 were staffers — since intake screening began on June 27.

​​The National Football League clubs and NFL Players Association (NFLPA) have approved an agreement that that will allow training camps to begin as scheduled, commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.

Goodell said the upcoming NFL season will "undoubtedly present new and additional challenges, but we are committed to playing a safe and complete 2020 season, culminating with the Super Bowl."

A data entry error resulted in negative tests being reported for Wednesday's totals on the Alabama Public Health website Covid-19 dashboard this week, the agency tweeted.

The error has since been corrected, the agency said Friday. 

No patients received incorrect test results as a result of the error and it only affected the numbers reported for Wednesday on the website, the agency said.

The total new case count was 1,933, not 2,240, the agency said. 

Read the tweets from the agency:

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported 4,813 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday. 

That’s the highest number of new cases reported in a 24-hour period by the department since the the pandemic began. The previous record of 4,689 new cases was reported on July 18.

Georgia's statewide Covid-19 case total is now 161,401. 

The department also reported 82 new deaths. The total death toll for Georgia is now 3,442. 

There were 399 new Covid-19-related hospitalizations recorded on Friday.

To note: These figures were released by the Georgia 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.