August 10 coronavirus news

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday an expansion in testing for the Atlanta area.

A Covid-19 mega-testing site will run from today until Aug. 26 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time, Monday through Friday in College Park, Georgia.

The site will be able to test 5,000 people per day, and will offer results within 48 to 72 hours, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. 

Today's announcement comes as a result of US Health and Human Services identifying Atlanta as one of several “hot spots” around the country, according Nancy Nydam of the Georgia Department of Public Health.

Asked why this testing will only be available for 13 days, Nydam said there aren’t adequate resources to continue operating this specific site indefinitely.

During the news conference Monday near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, both Kemp and US Surgeon General Jerome Adams were asked by reporters, including CNN's Natasha Chen, whether they want schools to mandate masks.

Just last week, at least 260 students and eight teachers from a suburban school district in Atlanta were quarantined after multiple students and teachers tested positive for Covid-19 during the first week of school.

Meanwhile, Adams said he is "not against" mandates, but doesn't think that alone will fix the issue.

CNN's Natasha Chen reports from the testing site:

Cuba reported 93 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, a record increase in new daily cases since the pandemic began, said the island’s top epidemiologist Dr. Alfredo Durán Garcia.

Cuba had claimed to have brought the spread of the virus under control in July and had begun easing some restrictions.

But the spike in new cases put a halt to plans to reopen the economy of the communist-run island.

On Friday, Cuban officials suspended public transportation and access to the beach and ordered restaurants, bars and pools to shut down in Havana and a neighboring province, the two places that have seen the largest surge in new cases.

Cuba has 2,953 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 88 coronavirus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

There are 107 school districts in New York state that haven’t submitted plans for reopening, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today. 

Cuomo said that because the viral transmission rate in New York is one of the lowest in the United States, districts can reopen.

“Yes, you can reopen,” Cuomo said. “If you have a smart plan.” 

New York City public schools submitted a supplemental plan over the weekend, and Cuomo urged the district to make the plan public and get input from parents and teachers.

“If the parents of NYC and the teachers of NYC say it is a safe plan then it is a safe plan. Education is fundamentally a local responsibility,” he said.

The state of Florida is reporting at least 4,155 new single daily cases of Covid-19 and 91 additional resident deaths on Monday, according to Florida Department of Health. 

The number of new infections on Monday is the lowest increase since June 23, according to state data. 

There are now 536,961 cases to date including out-of-state residents, Florida officials report. Florida has reported 8,277 resident deaths to date, data shows. 

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

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday in a call with reporters that hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions and intubations for coronavirus patients fell to a “new low” number since the state started seeing cases back in March. 

Total hospitalizations fell to 535  — 127 were in ICU and 62 were intubated, Cuomo said. 

Of the 54,000 Covid-19 tests yesterday, 476 were positive, with a positivity rate of .88%. 

Two New Yorkers died yesterday, Cuomo said. 

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.