August 5 coronavirus news

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported that the state has 46,293 cumulative Covid-19 cases — with 912 new cases reported since yesterday. The state has reported at least 508 fatalities. 

Health Secretary Dr. Jose Romero said that there are 6,937 active cases — 6,336 are community cases, 88 are cases in nursing facilities and 513 are cases in correctional facilities. 

The governor announced today that the state has set up a plan to test 100% of inmates in their prisons. Hutchinson said out of the 19 prisons, 10 facilities have already been tested and the plan is to have testing finished by the end of this month. 

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

The NCAA’s Division III Presidents Council announced on Wednesday the cancellation of all 2020-21 fall sports championships due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“With the health and safety of the division’s student-athletes, coaches, athletics administrators and communities as its priority, the Division III Presidents Council made the decision Wednesday to cancel the championships due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related administrative and financial challenges," Chair of the President’s council Tori Murden McClure said in a news release.

“Our Championships Committee reviewed the financial and logistical ramifications if Division III fall sports championships were conducted in the spring and found it was logistically untenable and financially prohibitive. Our Management Council reached the same conclusion. Moving forward, we will try to maximize the championships experience for our winter and spring sport student-athletes, who unfortunately were short-changed last academic year,” McClure continued.

Earlier on Wednesday, the NCAA Board of Directors gave all three divisions an Aug. 21 deadline on whether their respective fall sports seasons and NCAA championships should occur this year. 

A renewed focus on the potential use of the malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is taking time and resources away from the search for something that actually does work to help coronavirus patients and may end up costing lives, two dozen Yale University researchers said Tuesday. 

Yale cancer epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch launched a new round of headlines when he wrote a commentary in Newsweek last month calling for renewed research on hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus, despite multiple studies showing it doesn’t help and might harm patients, and decisions by the US Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization to stop further testing.

The White House, which had promoted the drug, was encouraged to renew its lobbying for the drug, even as coronavirus task force members, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and Adm. Brett Giroir, all said repeatedly the drug does not work and should be dropped.

The Yale researchers said they all want the same thing: an effective treatment for coronavirus. But they said heavy pursuit of hydroxychloroquine took up resources that could be used elsewhere.

“The continuing advocacy on behalf of HCQ distracts us from advancing the science on Covid-19 and seeking more effective interventions in a time when more than 1,000 people are dying per day of this disease,” they wrote.

France has recorded the highest daily rise in coronavirus infections in more than two months, according to figures published by the National Health Agency on Wednesday show.

France reported 1,695 new cases in 24 hours, making this the biggest increase since May 30, when an increase of 1,828 cases was recorded. 

The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals and in intensive care units has decreased in the past 24 hours, according to the Health Agency data. 

The overall death toll in the country stands at 30,305.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is rolling back reopening in the state with a last-call for bars, restrictions on out-of-state travelers and limits on social gatherings.  

Anyone traveling into Rhode Island from 33 hot zone states, including Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia and California, will have to provide a negative Covid-19 test or must quarantine, she announced Wednesday.  

Travelers checking into a hotel or any kind of a rental property will "need to sign a certificate of compliance, verifying that they have had a negative test result, or that they intend to quarantine for 14 days while they are here," Raimondo said. 

The National Guard will assist with informing travelers of the tightened restrictions at airports, she said.

Raimondo said 20% of bars inspected this weekend "were still not separating the bartender from the customer."  

State officials have been "bending over backwards to keep the bars open" because they are "sympathetic to the fact that restaurants are barely making it," she said. Raimondo then announced starting Friday, bars will not be allowed to operate after 11 p.m. 

More details: In an effort to crack down on gatherings, group sizes will now be reduced to 15 people or less, she said. Rhode Islanders should consider gathering with the same 15 people whenever possible, the governor said.  

Raimondo reminded residents the fine for violating the social gathering limit is $500 for each person found to be in violation. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said a universal coronavirus vaccine is one of the lessons that must be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, Fauci said it will be important for the nation to prepare for the next pandemic by developing a universal vaccine "that has the specificity against all the coronaviruses, so we don't have to anticipate the next time this happens."

"That's the lesson that we've learned with influenza, which is why we're developing a universal influenza vaccine. And we're going to do the same thing with coronaviruses," Fauci said.

Fauci said he hopes the country maintains corporate memory of the current crisis for when it's time to allocate resources for pandemic preparedness in the future.

 "Shame on us if we're not prepared for the next coronavirus pandemic outbreak," Fauci added.

The recent Covid-19 outbreak at a sleep away camp in Georgia is not necessarily an example of what might happen when schools open, Dr. George Rutherford, principal investigator of the state of California’s contract tracing program, said Wednesday.

Some background: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on the outbreak as a cautionary tale about what might happen at schools if they open for in-person learning. More than 40% of campers and staff at the camp became infected with coronavirus.

Both Rutherford and the CDC report pointed out that the children were not wearing masks, there was regular singing and cheering and that windows and doors were closed in the cabins. These closed windows and doors probably increased recirculated air and the risk factors, according to Rutherford.

“We’ve always known that children could get infected. We’ve always known that children could infect other people, just not at the same rates,” Rutherford said. “And if you put them into an intensive situation like this, these are the kinds of results you can expect.”

Rutherford said that bars and churches were places that worried him when it comes to transmission of Covid-19.

“If you have places with the windows all shut, people singing, it’s like Georgia summer camp, okay, it’s not a great idea,” he said. “If you’re going to do that stuff, they have to be outside and people have to be socially distant.”

The University of Louisville has announced the suspension of team-related activities for four fall sports as of Aug. 3, after 29 members of the four teams tested positive for Covid-19.

The four sports affected are men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey and volleyball.

Following athletic department policies and protocols, the university traced the exposure primarily to an off-campus party.

Student-athletes from the four sports who have not tested positive or been identified through contact tracing are being permitted to return to workouts on campus beginning Aug. 10, pending further testing results.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN that senators will “certainly be in next week,” delaying the start of the chamber's August recess.

"We'll certainly be in next week. We'll see what happens after that," McConnell said. 

White House officials Steve Mnuchin and Mark Meadows set a deadline to negotiate with Democrats for the end of the week. It’s unclear if they will meet that. 

GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of leadership, argued that if there wasn’t a deal, members might as well go home. 

“If there’s not a deal by Friday, there won’t be a deal,” Blunt said.