September 8 coronavirus news

People can hope for a mild flu season like that just experienced in the southern hemisphere, but they need to get vaccinated, too, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

“One of the things we can say is that we should continue to encourage people to get vaccinated with the influenza vaccine,” Fauci said during an event sponsored by Research! America. 

Australia had “one of the lowest rates of influenza infection in memory,” Fauci said. “If we can do that, I think that would be very favorable,” he added.

“If what happened in the southern hemisphere happens here, that would be a very good and favorable thing,” Fauci added. 

Mask use, social distancing and hand washing have not only helped prevent the spread of coronavirus, but they likely helped stop the spread of flu, too, he said.

If the US does have what Fauci calls a “full-blown” flu season without getting control over the coronavirus, doctors, hospitals and others will struggle to tell the two infections apart. Plus, the sheer number of sick people could overwhelm the healthcare system.

“That’s the reason why, when you have two coexisting infections during the winter months, it becomes problematic,” he said. 

To increase the supply of remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19 in the United States, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, and the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen are calling for President Trump to let generic drug makers produce the drug. 

Gilead, the California company that makes remdesivir, has exclusive rights to sell the drug in the US.

The situation is different in other countries. 

“There are manufactures in India and Pakistan and the United Kingdom that have been safely producing generic remdesivir in over 100 countries. Unfortunately, we’re not one of them,” Doggett said during a virtual news conference hosted by the advocacy groups PrEP4All Collaboration, Public Citizen and Social Security Works.

About the supply in the US: About 38 hospitals in 12 states have reported shortages of remdesivir since July, according to a report by Public Citizen.

Doctors on the call expressed concern over shortages of remdesivir in the US.

“We do not have enough remdesivir nationally,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a CNN medical analyst. “There simply is not enough of it to go around. 

Dr. Thomas Patterson, chief of infectious diseases at UT Health San Antonio, said his hospital faced shortages of remdesivir during a surge of Covid-19 in August.

“We received enough remdesivir to treat less than a third of the admitted patients — so a really woefully inadequate supply,” Patterson said.

US hospitals do not directly purchase remdesivir the way they do other drugs. Because there isn’t enough to go around, the US Department of Health and Human Services regularly ships remdesivir to states, which then deliver the drugs to hospitals.

Colleges and universities should try their best to isolate students infected with Covid-19 on campus rather than sending them home, so that they don’t infect other students or take the virus home with them, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday.

With students coming from all over the country, colleges and universities can be especially important in spreading the virus, Fauci said during an event sponsored by Research! America.

Colleges and universities are handling Covid-19 in different ways, he said, with some going completely online. Several he has spoken with are testing everybody once, the first time they come onto the campus, so that they start off with a baseline. Then they are doing surveillance testing at various intervals.

“The ones who are doing that and who have the capability of handling students who ultimately get infected seem to be successfully being able to open,” he said. Colleges that cannot sequester students tend to be doing much more virtual or online teaching.

K-12 schools are much more of a local issue, Fauci said. The prudent approach, he said, is to decide how to reopen depending on whether the community is in a green, yellow or red zone.

Green zone schools are able to open for in-person teaching with “relative impunity” as long as they are able to identify and make accommodations for infected students. Yellow zone schools have to be able to adjust and adapt, doing things like modifying the schedule. In red zone schools “you really better be very careful before you bring the children back because you don’t want to create a situation where you have a hyper-spreading event, as you might have in the school,” he said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, today discussed the importance of letting people know what’s going on with development and approval of Covid-19 vaccines.

He said it’s important to engage communities in vaccine education, including with public service announcements broadcast on radio and television as well as in-person efforts.

“That's with PSAs, that's with getting out into the community yourself, boots on the ground, speaking to people, getting them involved,” Fauci said during an event organized by Research! Amerca. “It is not an easy process, but it is definitely worthwhile.”

Fauci added that it’s important that more minority people are included in the clinical trials for Covid-19 vaccines. 

“We want to make sure that when we say that something is safe and effective, we mean it's safe and effective for everyone,” he said. 

The governing body for soccer in North America has announced that it is rescheduling qualifying games for the 2022 FIFA World Cup that were slated for this fall. 

The Confederation of North, Central American, and Caribbean Association Football, also known as CONCACAF, said first-round qualifiers scheduled for October and November will now be played in March of 2021. 

CONCACAF will provide a new 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying schedule after consulting with FIFA, the global governing body for soccer.

There are at least 6,308,741 cases of coronavirus in the US, and at least 189,323 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

So far on Monday, Johns Hopkins has recorded 8,119 new cases and 115 reported deaths.

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

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed Senate GOP leaders for their plan to move later this week on a scaled-down coronavirus stimulus package. 

“What they have is so meager that it insults the intelligence of the American people,” Pelosi said Tuesday during an interview with Bloomberg TV.

What is this about: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing a $500 billion measure, about half the size of Republicans’ initial offer. The bill is not expected to receive the 60 votes needed to pass, as Democrats are likely to oppose it. Democratic leaders have called instead for a $2 trillion relief package.

Pelosi alleged the bill is an attempt to give vulnerable GOP senators some political cover.

“It’s only to check the box so some of his endangered Republican senators can go home and say, ‘Well, see I tried.’ But it isn’t trying. It’s not even an attempt to do the right thing, and Mitch McConnell knows that because he has to satisfy those Republicans in his caucus who don’t want to spend one more dollar,” said Pelosi.

“Get serious. Get real, Mitch McConnell,” she added.

She said Republicans should negotiate among themselves to come to some consensus on how to move forward, noting that the new GOP plan differs from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s proposal to Democratic leaders. “They are in disarray,” Pelosi said.

She also claimed Republicans “don’t believe in science, and they don’t believe in governance.”

But Pelosi projected confidence on a separate front that Republicans and Democrats will move to keep the government funded ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline.

“We’ll come to agreement on that, I feel quite certain,” she said.

She said she believes it would be hard for President Trump to veto a clean continuing resolution. 

“It’s not in anybody’s interest for the government to be shut down. It is to be avoided at all costs,” Pelosi said.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont spoke candidly about his state's shutdown and struggle to obtain supplies during the early days of the pandemic while taking part in a panel today at the Yale School of Public Health.

"At that point, you had 50 governors scrambling," Lamont said, describing planes landing with ordered personal protective equipment, then taking off to another place with a higher offer.

The governor also described the days leading up to initial shutdowns in the United States, and the realization that Connecticut would not receive supplies promised by the federal government.

Lamont remarked on a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the National Governors' Association meeting in early 2020, where Pompeo warned against making deals with China. Lamont described the speech as foreshadowing his realization that the federal government was not in control of supply chains for personal protective equipment.

"There was no supply down in Washington, DC. You probably heard, 'Don't worry, the cavalry's on the way,'" Lamont said. "There was nothing there."

Lamont added he had to convince his constituents that the virus was a matter of life or death.

"I could not just order people, 'Wear the mask, stay safe, stay home, or else I'm going to arrest you,’" said Lamont.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that 64,550 classrooms in NYC public schools have been inspected for ventilation issues and 96% have passed.

Ventilation inspections are completed in all 1,485 public school buildings, according to the mayor.

“Work will continue on the classrooms that need a little more to be done before school opens,” said de Blasio at his news conference. “There is time, obviously, to make the improvements.”

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said a total of 10 buildings need repairs across the board. The city is working to get them “up to par” before the start of school on Sept. 21. Staff at those buildings will be temporarily working from home, said Carranza. 

“Any repairs that aren’t complete by the first day of full time teaching and learning with not be used. It’s a simple as that," he said.

The “Learning Bridges” free childcare program announced by the mayor earlier this summer will have access for 30,000 students starting Sept. 21 for children taking part in the hybrid learning program.  

The city will prioritize those who have the greatest need for pre-K-8 children.

Seventy percent of families considered high priority will have access by the end of September, according to de Blasio, and 100,000 seats will be available by December.