August 13 coronavirus news

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is withdrawing his lawsuit against Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the City Council regarding restrictions Atlanta put in place over coronavirus, including a citywide mask mandate. 

In a written statement, the governor said he would instead address the issue in a new executive order this Saturday. 

Kemp referenced Bottoms concession on the city's phase one roll-back plan, but said she refused to compromise any further in mediation. 

"The Governor’s current Executive Order expires this Saturday, August 15, at which time he will issue a new order with relevant language," according to the statement.

A Cherokee County parent has written an open letter to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, asking him not to “turn a blind eye” to the school district.

Some context: Heath is the mother of two children who attended face-to-face classes in the Cherokee County School District earlier this week. She has since pulled her kids back to distance learning. 

In her letter to Georgia’s governor, Heath claims that Kemp is not doing enough to protect the members of their community.  

“I ask you Mr. Kemp how you could possibly feel like the district of Cherokee County is doing a good job protecting not only our students but teachers,” Heath wrote.  

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden emerged from his and Sen. Kamala Harris' coronavirus health briefing from experts Thursday afternoon advocating that a mask mandate be instituted nationwide. 

“It’s not about your rights,” Biden said, seeming to speak directly to Americans who have complained that compulsory mask wearing is a violation of their personal freedom. “It's about your responsibilities as an American."

"Be a patriot. Protect your fellow citizens," he implored. "Protect your fellow citizens. Step up. Do the right thing." 

Biden provided a quick readout of the public health briefing at the top of his remarks, noting that he and Harris spoke with the experts about school reopenings, the distribution of a vaccine, racial disparities that have become expounded as a result of the pandemic, as well as the continued lack of personal protective equipment for health professionals and testing capacity in the US.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has previously said he would support mandating mask-wearing nationally, but this is the first time he has presented the recommendation himself. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will adjourn for its August recess Thursday despite not reaching an agreement on a Covid-19 stimulus bill. 

The senior senator from Kentucky said the Senate will hold its usual pro forma sessions throughout the “state work period,” which ends Sept. 8, but that if a stimulus deal is reached, there would need to be bipartisan consent to allow the Senate to return to vote on it.

If that were to happen, senators would be given 24 hours’ notice to return.  

On a call with reporters Thursday, Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force and the Trump official overseeing coronavirus testing, said he was concerned about data misrepresenting where he believes the United States to be in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Giroir asserted it is clear that the number of cases are decreasing and “that decrease is real.”

He said that the seven day average of new cases, compared with the previous seven days, is down 9%.

Giroir is confident, he said, because percent positivity is going down and hospitalizations are going down. Mortality, however, is lagging – and that is because it is a lagging indicator.

The second point Giroir made, which he said he had often seen misrepresented, is the number of tests that are needed.

“You beat the virus by smart policies supplemented by strategic testing. You do not beat the virus by shotgun testing everyone all the time," he said.

Strategic testing involves making sure everyone sick in the hospital gets tested rapidly, the vulnerable are protected, public health surveillance is supported when necessary, and that reopening is being supported with a number of different measures.

A group of parents are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom over in-person school restrictions. Christine Ruiz has two sons with autism, and she said that without specialized learning, they are falling behind.

The lawsuit is alleging that students will not receive equal access to education.

Ruiz said her two sons with autism are “hands on learners” who work with a “highly educated special education teacher, professional behavioralists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and without that team to do that hands-on learning they’re just languishing at home.”

She worries about the regression she is seeing compounded with escalating behaviors and how that will impact the future outlook of her children.

Jesse Petrilla, another parent suing Gov. Newsom, added that the virtual learning restriction also creates a larger gap between the working class and affluent families.

“This creates such an inequality between the working class and affluent parents who can afford private schools, tutors or childcare,” Petrilla said. “We just believe the negative effects, far outweigh the risks."

According to California’s county-by-county school reopening restrictions, the Covid-19 infection rate cannot be over 100 in 100,000. Currently, in the counties Ruiz and Petrilla live in, the infection rate is well above that threshold, Keilar reported.

Ruiz lives in Los Angeles County, which has 88 incorporated cities. She argues that there “should not be a blanket statement for all schools. The city I live in has low Covid numbers.”

Petrilla, who lives in Orange County, said, “We need a micro approach to this. This should be a local decision. There are districts that have no cases. There are districts that have very few cases, that wouldn’t meet that threshold.”

Watch the full interview:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said if you look at the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, “they don’t lie.”

Fauci said he hears a lot about herd immunity, but “a lot of people are going to die if you do that.”

“We can be part of the solution, as opposed to passively saying, just let it happen. I don't find that to be acceptable," he said. "We can do things without necessarily stopping all the things that are important. We can open the economy. We can get jobs back at the same time as still practicing good public health measures."

Since the Trump administration asked hospitals to report its data directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Covid Tracking Project (CTP) has found the data to be “erratic,” “spotty and difficult to interpret.”

The change went into effect on July 15. CTP “compared the HHS’s counts of currently hospitalized Covid-19 patients, published from July 20 to August 5, to the same metric compiled by The Covid Tracking Project from each state’s publicly available data.” 

CTP collects data from all 50 states and US territories. CNN utilizes testing and hospitalizations data from the organization.

The organization found that in six states — Maine, Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Delaware — “HHS data is, on average, at least 150 percent higher than the data from these states’ dashboards.” 

As a nation, from July 20-26, CTP found that “HHS reported an average of 24 percent more currently hospitalized patients nationwide than was reported by the states.”

HHS said it was taking over the hospitalization data because the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was posting the information too slowly. "Going forward, HHS and CDC will deliver more powerful insights on the coronavirus, powered by HHS Protect," said Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Michael Caputo said in July. 

CTP noted that the switch “has likely been difficult for many hospitals.” HHS requires more data points to be reported and sometimes states have to fill-out two reports with the same data – one for the state and one for HHS. 

Some background: Nearly three dozen public health advisers sent a July letter to the US government saying they are extremely concerned” and “troubled” about the change in how hospitals report Covid-19 data. The letter said hospitals were “scrambling” to keep up with the daily Covid-19 reporting requirements to HHS. 

But CTP said reporting directly to HHS could be a good thing, “we expect hospitals to report more reliable information to the HHS than to their state health departments, or to report to only the HHS and not their state health departments, because the HHS-reported data is used to inform allocation of remdesivir, PPE, and other supplies.”

CTP will continue to track both sets of hospitalization data and remains optimistic that the data set will become more reliable over time. “Hospitalization data used to be a reliable metric demonstrating the stress Covid-19 is causing state health systems. Now, these data are spotty and difficult to interpret. We encourage states to be transparent about when they are encountering issues with hospital reporting and why,” CTP said.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris received their first joint health briefing from experts on Covid-19 Thursday.

“This is what I get four times a week, a briefing on the state of the coronavirus and what we should and shouldn’t be doing,” Biden told reporters ahead of their meeting.

Harris added that she was “looking forward to it.” 

Asked by a reporter how the first few days have gone with Harris on the ticket, Biden replied, “It’s been great.” 

“It’s been great. It’s been great, she and her husband and — Jill and her husband were friends before this and I think have become closer friends. We had a great, great day but we’re going to talk today,” Biden said. 

Watch: