September 10 coronavirus news

Jakarta is putting the "emergency brakes" on relaxing coronavirus restrictions and instead reimposing strict measures, the Indonesian capital's governor said, according to state news agency Antara.

 The governor said his decision was based on three factors, Anatara reported:

"In the past two weeks, mortality rates have spiked back up. In terms of percentage, they may still be considerably low, but in terms of the numbers, they have gone back up. The availability of beds is at maximum capacity and they may be fully filled by the end of the month, if there are no restrictions," Baswedan said.

The new measures will go into effect September 14, according to Antara.

Jakarta's government reported that 12.2% of those tested for Covid-19 in the city last week tested positive. The city, home to more than 10 million people, has confirmed a total of 49,837 Covid-19 infections. That's nearly a quarter of Indonesia's total number of cases, according to government figures.

Jakarta's death toll from the virus is 1,347. Indonesia's nationwide death toll is 8,336, according to Johns Hopkins University.

India has recorded a new highest 24-hour increase in Covid-19 infections with 95,735 new cases, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

As of Thursday morning, India had confirmed at least 4.4 million cases of Covid-19 nationwide, of which at least 919,018 are active.

India's death toll now stands at 75,062, after another 1,172 fatalities were reported on Thursday, according to the Health Ministry. 

In the capital: In its daily evening bulletin on Wednesday, the Delhi government announced its highest jump in infections, with 4,039 fresh cases, including 20 deaths. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted that the rise in numbers is related to an increase in testing. Kejriwal said the city conducted 54,000 tests on Wednesday, more than double the tests conducted in the past week.

The Delhi government has steadily opened up its economy over the past three months. Earlier this week, the subway system was allowed to operate with restrictions.

Delhi has recorded more than 200,000 coronavirus cases, including 4,638 deaths, since the start of the pandemic. 

It matters who the president is.

Millions of lives and livelihoods depend on the character, competence, altruism and integrity of the person in the Oval Office -- whatever their party or ideology. But President Donald Trump -- as he devastatingly revealed in his own voice to Bob Woodward -- met the great crisis of his age with ineptness, dishonesty and an epic dereliction of duty.

Rarely have a president's actions -- or inaction -- and individual decisions on such a critical issue been so consequential and so exposed in his own time -- in this case in taped interviews with The Washington Post reporter for his new book, "Rage."

"I always wanted to play it down": The scandal of negligence Woodward exposed is distinct from the whirlwind of political corruption, abuses of power, chaotic West Wing dramas and wild personality paroxysms that have defined Trump's presidency. He can't spin this one away as "fake news" because he is on tape. He indisputably told Woodward he purposefully minimized a once-in-a-century health crisis.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

Trump contradicts his own White House's defense: Not every country is a South Korea or New Zealand -- which quickly understood the threat from the coronavirus and acted accordingly. There was plenty of failure in Europe, for instance, though most countries bought a summer respite from a mounting second wave.

And a more honest approach by Trump would not have saved every American life. But his deliberate deception and lack of seriousness at a grave national moment turned the US response into one of the world's worst.

The failure laid bare by Woodward in the President's own words is the ultimate repudiation of the "I alone can fix it" and "I know more about ISIS than the generals" school of leadership, in which Trump makes gut calls, ignores advice and puts politics above science.

Read the full analysis:

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Analysis: Trump's historic dereliction of duty laid bare

The United States reported 32,711 new Covid-19 infections and 1,162 virus-related deaths on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

At least 6,359,720 cases, including 190,815 fatalities, have now been recorded in the US.

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

CNN is tracking US cases here:

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Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

More Americans are foregoing preventive healthcare services amid the coronavirus pandemic compared to last year, a new study by the Health Care Cost Institute has found.

Reviewing health insurance records in 18 states, HCCI examined 184 million claims from 30 million patients in 2019 and 94 million claims from 20 million patients in the first six months of 2020.

The institute mainly reviewed records on women's preventative health services, select services provided during pregnancy and delivery, childhood immunizations and other preventive medical services including colonoscopies, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests.

By June of this year, many preventive health checks were down compared to 2019 levels:

“This analysis is merely a preliminary glimpse at the impact of COVID-19 on health care utilization in 2020 and is not intended to provide definitive answers about the ways in which the pandemic is affecting people's health care,” the group said.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said it is "disgusting" and "almost criminal" that US President Donald Trump knew of the serious risk posed by the coronavirus in February and then downplayed its threat in March.

In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday in Michigan, the former vice president said the revelations about Trump's early understanding of how deadly the virus is and how easily it could spread -- shared in recorded interviews for Bob Woodward's forthcoming book -- are "why we have no confidence in his leadership."

Woodward's book, for which Trump gave 18 interviews, includes Trump saying on February 7 that "this is deadly stuff" and on March 19 that "I wanted to always play it down." The news about Trump's handling of the virus comes less than three weeks before his first debate with Biden, who has led recent national and swing-state polls.

"It was all about making sure the stock market didn't come down, that his wealthy friends didn't lose any money, and that he could say anything, that in fact anything that happened had nothing to do with him," Biden said Wednesday, speculating about Trump's motives for downplaying the virus in the early weeks of its spread.

"He waved a white flag. He walked away. He didn't do a damn thing," Biden said. "Think about it. Think about what he did not do -- it's almost criminal."

Read the full story:

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Biden on Trump concealing coronavirus threat: 'It's almost criminal'

The US federal government said Wednesday it plans to stop limiting international arrivals from certain countries to 15 airports and funneling them through enhanced screening.

Instead, passengers will be advised about risks.

Screening for symptoms doesn’t really help much because so many people do not have symptoms, the CDC said.

“Transmission of the virus may occur from passengers who have no symptoms or who have not yet developed symptoms of infection. Therefore, CDC is shifting its strategy and prioritizing other public health measures to reduce the risk of travel-related disease transmission,” the agency said.

It said resources will instead be dedicated to “more effective mitigation efforts” focused on individuals.

These will include “pre-departure, in-flight, and post-arrival health education for passengers; robust illness response at airports; voluntary collection of contact information from passengers using electronic means,” the CDC said. That should help reduce crowding and lines, it said.

Testing may also be an option, as well as reminding travelers to watch for symptoms and quarantine themselves as possible for 14 days.

The global death toll from the novel coronavirus surpassed 900,000 on Wednesday evening, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.

There have been at least 900,239 deaths worldwide. The United States has accounted for at least 190,784 coronavirus-related deaths, the most around the world. 

The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases around the world stands at 27,719,952, according to the university.

CNN is tracking worldwide cases and deaths here:

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Tracking coronavirus' global spread

The decision to pause AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine trial because of a potential adverse event in one volunteer shows the safety monitoring system is working, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday.

When there is a serious adverse event, “this is the kind of thing that you’d like to see,” he said.

“Mechanisms are put into place to stop everything, no more enrollment until you can figure out what’s going on and you can alert other people in the sites. Did they see anything either similar to or identical to this, is this a one-off, is this a fluke, or is this something that’s real and that we have to pay attention to?" Fauci added.

Americans should feel reassured, he said. They can “feel comfort that when there is an adverse event, it becomes very transparent and it becomes investigated and the trial is halted until we can clarify that.”