August 10 coronavirus news

Parents with children in the New York City public school system were given the opportunity to opt out of the schooling plans announced at the end of last week, but as of Monday, 74% of students say they are planning to participate in in-person learning and/or blended learning which closely mirrored the city survey taken earlier this summer, Mayor Bill de Blasio said today at his daily presser. 

The virus positive test rate has been under 3% positive in NYC for two months running, which de Blasio said makes New York City schools ready to open under caution. The positive testing rate on Monday was 1%. 

Parents will start to get notification of their kids’ school schedules next Monday and everyone will have that information by the week after that. 

When asked about teacher union concerns about city schools without nurses, de Blasio said he's working on that right now, and there will be a significant testing and contact-tracing presence from the city in schools.

When asked about ventilation in schools, the mayor said schools and custodial staffs are working on it. He said if a classroom can't be prepared well enough it won't be used. This in part is why additional learning locations will be necessary. Specifically the mayor said schools will be opening windows as much as possible for ventilation. 

When asked about a Daily News report that 650 of 1,500 schools have at least one reported exhaust fan issue, de Blasio said it’s being worked on but reiterated if a classroom isn’t ready, it won’t be used and if there’s a bigger problem in a school, that adjustment will be made.  

California’s health director and state public health officer resigned from her post on Sunday, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Dr. Sonia Angell sent an email to staff announcing her departure:

“I want to thank Dr. Angell for her service to the state and her work to help steer our public health system during this global pandemic, while never losing sight of the importance of health equity,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

State Health and Human Services Agency Secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly said he was "grateful to Dr. Angell for her service to the people of California during this unprecedented public health crisis. She has worked tirelessly for all Californians, always keeping health equity in mind. Her leadership was instrumental as Californians flattened the curve once and in setting us on a path to do so again.”

Sandra Shewry will be appointed acting California Department of Public Health Director and Dr. Erica Pan will assume the role of acting State Public Health Officer, according to the CDPH.

California has the dubious distinction of being the state with the most number of coronavirus cases.

The state is currently battling a technical glitch in its disease reporting database (CalREDIE) causing an underreporting in coronavirus cases. Gov. Newsom has launched an investigation. 

He will hold a press conference today at 12:00 p.m. PT.

Georgia state representative Beth Moore said she’s received messages from hundreds of anonymous teachers and students since Friday about concerns of Covid-19 and schools. 

During a virtual news conference hosted by the Georgia Democrats, Rep. Beth Moore said she posted a video on her social media on Friday asking teachers, students, and school administrators to anonymously send their concerns related to school reopening in the state.

She said she did so after hearing about a student in Paulding County, Georgia who was suspended for posting a picture of her crowded school hallways on Twitter. That suspension was later rescinded.  

She read a portion of an email from a high school English teacher in Forsyth County, Georgia who was concerned about class size.

Rep. Moore said the email read, in part, “every class, I teach 5, has 30 to 31 students, except for one that has 33. No masks are required. I am scared to death.”

Watch her interview on CNN:

Covid-19 is brutal in its simplicity and its cruelty, but there are things that can be done to outsmart it, according to World Health Organization officials.

“When we talk about what is the virus trying to do and the virus being an enemy, the virus doesn’t have a brain. We’re the ones with the brains,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, during a news conference in Geneva on Monday.

Ryan described the virus as a simple biologic entity that can enter a human cell and instruct that cell to make more viruses, which can at minimum infect someone else; or in the worst case, kill the person.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for coronavirus, elaborated on how this can be done, saying that the goal of the virus is to reproduce, find individuals to pass between but not kill too many, as it Is unable to pass to another person if it kills its host.

“There’s many, many things that we can do right now with the tools that we have right now, to outsmart this virus,” she said.

While work on therapeutics and vaccines will continue, at this point chains of transmission can be broken, she said.

These include social distancing, contact tracing, quarantining infected individuals, the use of masks when physical distancing isn’t possible, and hand washing.

“If we do all of these things, we can outsmart the virus, and we can prevent this virus from passing from one individual to another,” she said, adding that everyone on the planet needs to understand that they have a role to play in breaking chain of transmission.

As the legal battle over the reopening of Florida public schools continues, at least 12 county public schools systems are planning to reopen this week and offer in-person instruction, according to Mark Richard, Florida Education Association attorney.

According to Richard and the school district websites, the school districts opening this week are Baker, Bradford, Dixie, Franklin, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Suwannee, Martin, Calhoun, Hardee, Union and Wakulla.

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said last month that officials in counties with a positivity rate higher than 5% might consider keeping schools closed; and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx agreed with Redfield’s take on the matter on CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash on August 2.

On Saturday, 9 of 12 counties reopening schools this week had a positivity rate above 5%, according to the latest data available from the Florida Department of Health. The same data showed that in the past two weeks, all 12 counties on some days exceeded 5% positivity rate, with some counties far exceeding that metric. For example, Baker County had a 36.9% positivity on Friday and Bradford had a 42% positivity rate on Thursday.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the administration is prepared to put more money on the table as stalled stimulus negotiations continue on Capitol Hill, but couldn’t say when his team would meet with Democrats.

Mnuchin declined to say when negotiators would be meeting, but said he heard House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over the weekend, and “if we can get a fair deal, we’ll do it this week.”

“I’m not gonna comment on the specifics of the logistics of negotiations because I don’t think that’s helpful,” he said when pressed on when they would meet next.

One area where they were willing to compromise is food assistance for children: “I listened to the Speaker over the weekend. She’s right. We started low on food. We realize there’s a lot of kids out there and that there is an issue,” he said, adding that they will “go down the list” on further issues. 

He reiterated the administration’s position against funding for state and local governments after the President’s executive action slashed the federal unemployment benefit from $600 to $400, requiring states to pay for 25%.

Trump told reporters late Sunday it will depend on the state and the federal government could pick up the entire cost if governors make a request, but the action received criticism from many governors.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer roundly criticized the move and how it will impact states with “severe holes in our budgets” and suggested it shows he’s more focused than winning the election than fighting the virus.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it “laughable.” And Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told CNN he’s not sure if his state will take the federal money.

Mnuchin said House-passed legislation with $1 trillion of aid to state and local governments was an “absurd number.”

He claimed “all 100%” is coming from the federal government and claimed states had “plenty of money.” 

“The 25% isn’t really coming from the states because we’re authorizing them to use money out of the $150 billion we just sent them… I have from every single state how much money they have left over. They have plenty of money,” he said. 

He suggested states would get that money back in additional legislation.

 Mnuchin said he would be on Monday’s governors call and had spoken with many of them amid widespread concern from governors regarding the President’s executive actions. 

The closed call is at 3:00 p.m. ET.

Covid-19 is proving exceptionally difficult to stop, and it is important to identify where the human-animal barrier was breached, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, said during a news conference in Geneva on Monday.

“This is not an easy virus and not an easy virus, either, to detect. It’s not an easy virus to stop,” he said.

Ryan explained that it is difficult to detect and distinguish between Covid-19 and other syndromes without adequate and immediate testing which is being seen in countries where both Covid-19 and influenza are circulating at the same time.

An epidemiologic investigation will start in Wuhan, because that’s where the first clusters of cases were picked up, he said, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that is where Case Zero was, according to Ryan. 

“If you follow the data and the science, you will find, hopefully, the point at which the disease crossed the species barrier,” he said.

Finding Case Zero helps to distinguish this crossing of the barrier between species.

“It is important that we find that, because as long as the animal-human breach has not been discovered, there’s always a chance that that barrier can be breached again," he said.

Although finding this breach is important, it can take some time, according to Ryan, who said It took years for MERS, and has never been fully established for SARS.

 The world is at greater risk for these species breaches, Ryan said.

“We are pressuring the biologic system. We live in a biome. We live in a world of biology. And we are creating – actively creating – the pressures that are driving the breaches of those barriers,” he said. “And we need to do better at managing the risks associated with that.”

US stocks advanced slightly Monday morning as Wall Street tried to gauge how much President Trump’s recent executive actions would stimulate the economy.

Trump announced this weekend he would go around Congress to deliver aid to Americans affected by the pandemic. But a close read of the actual text of the executive actions he signed Saturday suggests that even if they are deemed constitutional, they will not quickly deliver the aid Trump promised. They may not deliver much at all.

Here's how things looked at the opening:

There was always a chance that Covid-19 would flare up again, even after it was suppressed, and countries need to focus on their response to these flare-ups, according to World Health Organization officials.

“There was always a likelihood that diseases, that we have said – it would spike and there would be flare ups of the virus – because until the virus has gone, there’s always a chance of flare-ups,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, during a news briefing in Geneva on Monday.

Countries really need to focus their response on the inevitable flareups, Ryan said – how fast and how effectively they respond to them, and if they are able to shut them down as quickly as possible, and move on to the next flare-up.

Once the virus has been bought down to a low level and these flare-ups do occur, how quickly a country or area is able to respond to them, and how localized they can be in their response, really comes down to how well they have invested in the ability to do things such as surveillance, quarantine and contact tracing, according to Ryan.

While viruses often show seasonality when there are not control measures in place, Covid-19 has not shown this. But, what it has “clearly demonstrated is you take the pressure off the virus, the virus bounces back,” Ryan said.

“That’s the reality. That’s the fact. You can call that a second wave, you can call that a second spike, you can call that a flare-up. You can call it anything you like. Take the pressure off this virus, the virus will bounce back,” he said.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, agreed with Ryan.

Everyone on the planet should know what their role is in the fight against Covid-19 and manage their own risk, she said.

There is no indication of seasonality. The virus hasn’t gone away and that the majority of the population remains susceptible to infection, she said.

“So, we have to do everything that we can to prevent infections and save lives,” Van Kerkhove said. “Do it all. Physical distance, wear a mask where appropriate, make sure you practice respiratory etiquette, avoid crowded settings, follow national guidance, be informed. All of this needs to be done every day.”