August 11 coronavirus news

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont pushed for schools to reopen for in-person learning during a news conference Tuesday, saying he knows the state can bring students back safely.

"If Connecticut can't get their kids back into the classroom safely, no state can," the governor said, citing the state's hard work in wearing masks and social distancing.

Lamont appeared alongside Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona and other educators from the Winchester school district, which is offering full in-person learning to students when the school year starts August 31. There is an option for full remote learning for those families who choose it.

Lamont said he believes students can be brought back safely based on the current public health conditions in the state.

"I wouldn't be opening my school in southern Florida. I wouldn't be opening school in Texas or Phoenix or South Central LA. But I would do it in Connecticut. I would do it right here," Lamont said.

Winchester Schools Superintendent Melony Brady-Shanley said most parents want their children to return for in-person classes, based on the results of a survey the district conducted. According to Brady-Shanley, 76% of families are opting for in-person learning, 22% for temporary distance learning and 2% for homeschooling.

"We expect that education is going to look different. However, different isn't necessarily a negative," Brady-Shanley said. "[Kids] need and benefit from in-person instruction." 

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is reporting their first case of SARS-CoV-2 in a dog in the state. 

On Aug. 3, an owner took their pet to the NC State Veterinary Hospital. The dog had signs of respiratory distress and died from his illness, a news release said.

The owner told the hospital that a family member had previously tested positive for Covid-19. 

The dog was tested and was positive for SARS-COV-2, the agency said.  

“There is no indication at this time that dogs can transmit the virus to other animals, so there is no justification in taking measures against companion animals that may compromise their welfare,” said State Veterinarian Dr. Doug Meckes.  

A necropsy was performed and the state is investigating any contributing factors to the dog’s death.  

The state did not provide any additional information on the dog and its owners.

The Pac-12 conference CEO Group unanimously voted on Tuesday to cancel the fall sports season including football. 

The conference says it would consider a “return to competition for impacted sports after January 1, 2021.”

In a statement, the Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said in part, “Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble... Our athletic programs are a part of broader campuses in communities where in many cases the prevalence of COVID-19 is significant."

The statement also notes that student-athletes impacted by the decision will keep their scholarships.

Some context: This comes just hours after the Big Ten conference also voted to postpone fall sports on Tuesday. The Mid-American Conference made a similar move on Sunday.

Some government decisions about school and workplace closures, event cancellations, travel restrictions and other lockdown measures that emerged early in the coronavirus pandemic were based on what other nearby countries were doing, a new study suggests.

The study, published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, examined those "nonpharmaceutical interventions" that countries adopted to respond to the pandemic, using models related to the timing of implementing such measures between January 15 and March 30.  

The researchers – from various universities in Sweden – specifically focused on nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

"We focus on the OECD, since it represents a group of countries that are relatively homogeneous from an economic and democratic perspective, which means that the alternative cost of policy adoption will be similar across these countries and they have similarly developed democratic systems and healthcare systems," the researchers wrote.

The researchers found that almost 80% of the OECD countries adopted the same Covid-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions or NPIs around the same time, within a span of two weeks.

The researchers also found that countries with more health care capacity, such as hospital beds, were slower to adopt restrictions and the more densely populated a country was, the faster it was to adopt restrictions. Countries with stronger democracies were found to be slower to react.

The study has some limitations, including that some of its findings are based on assumptions from models. The researchers wrote that their findings can help "inform the social view of the world as interconnected."

The World Health Organization has been in touch with Russian scientists and authorities, and "looks forward to reviewing details of the trials," WHO confirmed to CNN in an emailed statement on Tuesday, following news of a Covid-19 vaccine being registered in Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the approval of a coronavirus vaccine for use on Tuesday, claiming it as a "world first," amid continued global concern and unanswered questions about its safety and effectiveness. 

"WHO welcomes all advances in COVID-19 vaccine research and development. At the global level, WHO has been involved in guiding and accelerating R&D efforts since January 2020," WHO's emailed statement said.

Hospitalizations in San Francisco, California, due to the coronavirus continue to drop and are down almost 25% since its peak in July, according to San Francisco Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax.

Colfax announced during a news briefing today that 88 people are currently hospitalized –– which is a slight decrease from last week.

Mayor London Breed said San Francisco is dedicating $446 million in the city’s latest budget for its Covid-19 response.

“That’s money that I wish we could divert to other places but unfortunately this is the reality of today, and I hope that’s not the reality of our next budget cycle,” Breed said.

So far, at least 7,692 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus in San Francisco and approximately 67 people have died.

In response to President Trump's executive order asking states to contribute 25% of additionally weekly unemployment aid, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the state doesn't have "the ability to do that."

“We’re looking at an economy that, while we’re optimistic about it, is coming back, our unemployment has gone down. We hope it will continue to go down. But we also know that we are facing Covid, we’re still fighting the Covid. We know what impact that has on the economy and so, you know, there’s no money in the unemployment fund to do this,” DeWine said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

DeWine added that he thinks Trump did the right thing.

DeWine said he thinks a deal between congressional leaders is necessary.

“I think there’s a deal to bed had between the House and the Senate and the administration, and I urge Congress to get about the job of getting that done," he said.

The Big Ten conference has postponed the 2020 football season. The conference presidents met on Tuesday to determine the fall season and have announced an intention to hold the season in the spring. 

The conference announced the postponement of the entire fall sports season in a statement.

“The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in the statement.

Warren added: “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall."

Obesity is linked with higher odds of having severe Covid-19 symptoms that require hospitalization –– and the higher the body mass index, the higher that risk of hospitalization, according to a new study out of the United Kingdom.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, found "an upward linear trend in the likelihood of COVID-19 hospitalization with increasing BMI" even with modest weight gain. Body mass index or BMI is a common measurement based on a person's height and weight to determine whether they are underweight, overweight or obese.

The researchers, who are from various universities in the UK, examined data on at least 334,329 UK adults ages 40 to 69, taking a close look at their BMI and weight and then whether they went on to be hospitalized with Covid-19.

Among those adults, 640 or 0.2% were hospitalized with Covid-19.

The researchers found that the crude incidence of Covid-19 hospitalization was 19.1 per 10,000 people among those who were overweight. According to the study, that rose to 23.3 per 10,000 among those with obesity stage I and to 42.7 per 10,000 among those with obesity stage II, as compared to people at normal weight, which had a crude incidence of 12.5 per 10,000.

The study had some limitations, including that the data captured Covid-19 cases that warranted in-patient care, therefore the true prevalence of the disease in the data remains unknown.

Overall "we observed a higher likelihood of COVID-19 hospitalization with increasing overall and central adiposity, even in participants with modest weight gain," the researchers wrote, referring to being significantly overweight or obese as adiposity.

"Since over two-thirds of Westernized society are overweight or obese, this potentially presents a major risk factor for severe COVID-19 infection and may have implications for policy," they added.