September 14 coronavirus news

The United Arab Emirates has approved the “emergency use” of a coronavirus vaccine for frontline workers, according to the country’s health minister.

The announcement of the emergency use vaccine came as the minister was discussing ongoing phase 3 trials in the UAE of a vaccine developed by China’s state-owned Sinopharm pharmaceutical company.  

China has been using an experimental vaccine developed by Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group Company (CNBG) on people who work in high-risk professions since July, including frontline medical professionals, a senior official from the national health commission revealed in August.

Nevada's Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak skewered President Trump for hosting a large indoor campaign rally in his state with little social distancing, telling CNN's Erin Burnett that the President acted selfishly. 

“He only cares about himself," said Sisolak.

In holding the rally, Trump was defying an executive order from Sisolak, who has banned gatherings of more than 50 people. On Sunday, Trump defended the Henderson event, telling the Las Vegas Journal-Review he did not believe he was subject to the rules, and added the he felt safe.

“I’m on a stage and it’s very far away,” Trump said. “And so I’m not at all concerned.”

Sisolak today blasted Trump's defense of the event, calling his comments "a joke."

"That's just the ego and the arrogance," said Sisolak. "That's just a joke. We don't make laws and say they apply to everybody except Donald J. Trump."

The governor continued: "It's absurd for him to think the rules didn't apply to him... I think he just doesn't much care."

Sisolak also responded to new tapes obtained by CNN in which Trump told veteran journalist Bob Woodward "nothing more could have been done" to stop Covid-19's spread in the US. Sisolak called those remarks "absolutely ridiculous."

"So much more could have been done if there would had been an organized national response we would have saved thousands and thousands of lives but it wasn't important to the President so he chose to just ignore it," he said.

There are at least 6,550,629 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 194,441 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

So far on Monday, Johns Hopkins has reported 31,056 new cases and 340 deaths.

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

The president of North Georgia Technical College, Dr. Mark Ivester, died Saturday after a month long battle with Covid-19, the college announced Sunday. 

According to his obituary, the 57-year-old passed away Sept. 12 at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Braselton.

“Once again, please continue to pray for Eleanor and his entire family. Thank you for all the love and support you have shown them and one another during this time. We are all devastated and will miss him terribly,” the college said in a statement.

Ivester served on the college's executive team for more than 20 years before his appointment to president on August 2016, his obituary said.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp offered his condolences Sunday, saying his family was praying for Ivester's loved ones, colleagues, and community: “We ask God to give them all comfort in this difficult time.” 

The state of Georgia on Monday reported 1,055 new cases of Covid-19 and 20 new fatalities. There have been a total of 295,337 Covid-19 cases and 6,353 Covid-19-related deaths in the state.

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

Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Monday that President Trump's comments that "nothing more could have been done" to handle the coronavirus pandemic was "absurd." 

"By mid-April here in the northeast in the New York-New Jersey area where I live, the densest part of the country, we knew how to flatten the curve," Johnson said. "We knew how to slow the spread of the virus through aggressive physical distancing, through hygiene, wearing masks, but after April even though things slowed down here in the northeast, we had the spikes in the rest of the country simply because our national leadership, our President, allowed this to become a political issue."

Context: Trump's comments were from an Aug. 14 call he made to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. It was their 19th conversation, following 18 interviews that formed a key component of Woodward's book "Rage." Trump had privately told Woodward in February he knew critical details about how deadly the virus was, and in March admitted he was playing it down.

At a packed, indoor “roundtable” that President himself said feels more like a rally, President Trump is the only person socially distanced from everyone else.

Very few people in attendance are wearing masks.

The President is appearing before the Latinos for Trump Coalition Roundtable in Phoenix at the Arizona Grand Resort and Spa.

Brazil’s health ministry has reported 381 new Covid-19 fatalities on Monday, raising the nationwide death toll to 132,006.

The ministry also reported 15,155 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the countrywide total to 4,345,610.

Some context: Brazil is second only to the United States in terms of the most people who have died from coronavirus globally. In terms of cases, it is ranked third, behind the US and India, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened mental health issues, especially for young people of color, a mental health expert said Monday.

Isha Weerasinghe, who leads mental health work for the Center for Law and Social Policy, said that poor support for mental health in many communities has been made worse during the pandemic. She cited a lack of connectedness due to isolation, economic hardships, increased stress due to police brutality and its impacts, and anti-Asian violence and bullying. 

She added that the lack of access to health care in many communities extends to a lack of mental health care.

“There have been, of course, through the pandemic relaxed regulations in terms of telehealth, but when we're talking about people living in low income communities and households…they are privileges that only some of us are able to access,” Weerasinghe said. 

Many of these communities were burdened with higher levels of mental health issues before the pandemic began. 

She cited data from recent years showing disproportionately high rates of suicide, self-harm, anxiety and depression among young people of color, whose communities have now been hit harder by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’ve seen an egregious increase in suicide rates for Native young people, said Weerasinghe, citing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Fatal Injury and Violence data from 2016 to 2018. “We've seen an increase in suicide rates in Black and Hispanic young men, and we've seen an increase in rates of non-fatal self-harm for all young people, with an increase particularly among Black young people.”

The CDC recently released a report showing more people were thinking about suicide this June. 

Nearly 550,000 children in the US have been diagnosed with Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

The groups found that 72,993 new child cases were reported from Aug. 27 through Sept. 10. This is a 15% increase in child cases over two weeks, bringing the total to at least 549,432 cases, the groups said in their weekly report on pediatric coronavirus cases.

Cases listed by age are provided by health department websites of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, but only a subset of states report hospitalizations and mortality by age. From the data available from 24 states and New York City, children made up 0.6% to 3.6% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3% and 8.2% of all child Covid-19 cases ended up in the hospital. From the 42 states that track mortality by age, children were 0% to 0.3% of deaths, and 18 states that reported on deaths by age had no deaths among children.

The AAP would like even more detailed reporting from states.

Children represent nearly 10% of all reported cases in the US, according to the report. The child cases are likely underreported because the tally relies on state data that is inconsistently collected.