August 8 coronavirus news

President Donald Trump on Saturday signed executive actions, one of which would provide $400 a week in federal enhanced unemployment benefits after Democrats and the White House were unable to reach an agreement on a Coronavirus stimulus relief bill this week.

“I'm taking action to provide an additional or extra $400 a week and expanded benefits, $400. That's generous but we want to take care of our people,” Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Trump signed one executive order and three memoranda, one of which will enact a payroll tax deferment for Americans earning less than $100,000 a year. He also proposed to extend an eviction moratorium and defer student loan payments and forgive their interest.

Trump said the federal government will pay $300, leaving it up to the states to pay the remaining $100. He did not outline where the federal funds would be coming from. 

When asked by a reporter why $400 instead of the previous $600, Trump responded: “This is the money they need, this is the money they want, this gives them a great incentive to go back to work."

Trump went on to say, “there was a difficulty with the 600 number because it really was a disincentive.” 

Trump also took the opportunity to criticize the Democrats, saying, “We are doing that without the Democrats. We should have been able to do it easily with them but they want all of these additional things that have nothing to do with helping people.”

Democrats are likely to challenge the executive actions in court. Trump first laid out the executive orders at a hastily called news conference on Friday at his New Jersey golf club, where he said he wasn't concerned about the legality of the actions he promised.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife Fran DeWine have tested negative for Covid-19 for a second time after getting a false positive, DeWine said in a statement. 

Some context: On Thursday morning, following the testing protocol established to be able to greet the President, "DeWine took a rapid antigen test and the results reported back for that test were a false positive," the statement said. 

The state of Wisconsin saw its highest single-day number of new coronavirus cases Saturday with 1,165 reported, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Service website.

A graph of daily new cases and 7-day average shows the previous highest single-day increase in cases was on July 21 when 1,117 new cases were reported.

There are now a total of 59,933 confirmed positives reported in the state and a total of 996 deaths, according to a tweet from the state's health department.

Read the tweet:

Illinois' health department reported more than 2,000 new Covid-19 positive cases for the second day in a row.

The 2,190 new cases are the highest daily reported number since May 24, when the department reported 2,508 new cases.

There are now 192,698 total cases in Illinois and 7,631 total deaths, up 18 since Friday’s report, according to the department.

The positivity rate over the past seven days rose again, to 4.2%, while the number of patients hospitalized statewide due to the virus rose to 1,538 from Friday’s number of 1,486. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Illinois 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.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott extended his disaster declaration for all Texas counties in response to Covid-19, according to a statement released by his office on Saturday.

The disaster declaration, originally issued on March 13, provides the state a variety of resources to effectively mitigate the spread of Covid-19, the statement said.

Iraq’s Ministry of Health reported 3,325 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday.

This brings the total cases in the country to 147,389. 

The health ministry also reported 74 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday, bringing the total to 5,310.

According to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases in the United States, there are at least 4,964,430 cases of coronavirus in the country and 161,810 people have died from the virus.

As of 1:30 p.m. ET, 22,675 new cases and 463 new deaths have been reported in the US since midnight.   

The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.  

On Saturday, there were 1,178 new Covid-19 cases reported and 67 additional confirmed deaths in South Carolina, according to a statement from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). 

South Carolina health officials encourage residents to fight the spread of Covid-19 as evidence increases about "high rates of infection in people who do not have symptoms and don’t know they are infectious." 

DHEC announced its new "Fight the Spread" campaign Saturday to encourage residents to wear masks, practice social distancing and get tested, the statement said.  

The state's current positivity rate is 15.9%, DHEC reported.  

More details: There are now 98,743 total coronavirus cases in South Carolina and 1,931 deaths in the state, DHEC said.  

There are 30,251 Floridians who have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, according to Florida Department of Health (DOH).   

This figure includes "anyone who was hospitalized at some point during their illness," according to the department. 

There are currently 6,836 people hospitalized in Florida with Covid-19, down from 7,942 last Saturday morning, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). 

The counties with the most hospitalizations include Miami-Date with 1,558, Broward with 960 and Palm Beach with 419.

Note: These numbers were released by Florida's 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