September 15 coronavirus news

Since many Florida public schools opened their doors about a month ago, the number of children under 18 who have contracted Covid-19 statewide has jumped 26%, state data show.

Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to push for in-person instruction across the Sunshine State. Even though his administration has released county-level data that indicates the 26% jump, it has not released school-level Covid-19 data for all K-12 public schools, which CNN began asking the state Department of Health for on August 31.

On September 2 -- nearly two weeks ago -- state officials said by email the data would be released in the coming days and weeks. But still, the state hasn't provided this key information.

Lack of data: To deal with this information gap, some school districts have created their own Covid-19 data dashboards or released coronavirus case numbers on social media pages or their websites. While useful in those jurisdictions, the overall result is a patchwork of data that varies in completeness and timeliness by district at a time when students, parents, teachers and administrators are making tough decisions about whether to opt for virtual or in-person learning. 

It's a problem that reverberates across the US as the White House and federal agencies come down hard in favor of reopening school but often fail to give reliable information to those on the front lines.

Read the full story:

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Covid-19 cases among Florida children jumped 26% in a month. It's still hard to know which schools are safe

The Covid-19 pandemic has stopped, and in many cases reversed, progress towards achieving the United Nations' sustainable development goals, according to the fourth annual Goalkeepers Report, published Monday from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The 2020 Goalkeepers report analyzes the damage that the pandemic has done and is doing to health, economies “and virtually everything else,” and argues the world must work together to overcome it. 

Setback in vaccinations: Vaccinations reached over 80% of the world’s children and prevented more than 2 million deaths in 2019. Because of Covid-19, vaccine coverage in 2020 is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s, the report says. 

Coronavirus vaccines won’t end the pandemic unless they are equitably allocated. A model from Northeastern University, which is included in the report, shows that 61% of deaths could be averted if a vaccine was distributed to all countries proportional to population. If vaccines go to high income countries first, deaths will be cut by only 33%.

Plunged into poverty: The pandemic has pushed almost 37 million people below the extreme poverty line in 2020, with the extreme poverty rate going up by 7% in just a few months, according to the report. Some 68 million people have fallen below the poverty line in lower-middle-income countries, the report says.

The Nevada company that hosted an indoor campaign rally for President Donald Trump attended by thousands of people will face a fine of $3,000 for violating state coronavirus guidelines banning large gatherings.

Sunday's rally in Henderson, Nevada -- which was held inside a facility owned by Xtreme Manufacturing -- was expected to violate the state's restriction on gatherings of 50 people or more. Attendees at the rally were not required to wear masks, and there was little social distancing. The city of Henderson had warned Xtreme Manufacturing that it would be violating the regulations if the rally proceeded.

Richards added that the company "has 30 calendar days to respond to the notice and pay the penalty or dispute the notice of violation."

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The Australian state of Victoria reported zero new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, according to its Department of Health and Human Services, the first time in two months since infections surged in July.

New phase of reopening: Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews announced that regional Victoria would enter the third phase of its reopening on Wednesday. The state capital Melbourne, however, will remain under lockdown restrictions until September 28.

"Having reached a 14-day average of 3.6 and with no mystery cases, regional Victoria has reached the necessary 'trigger point' in our road map - meaning our public health experts have advised we can take this next step," Andrews said in a statement Tuesday.

In the third phase of reopening, the government will allow "household bubbles," where one household can choose another household to visit with up to five visitors.

The third phase will also allow for outdoor and non-contact sports, and up to 10 people will be allowed for public gatherings. The third phase will also allow for regional travel and businesses to reopen with proper social distancing measures, Andrews said.

Local health officials have ordered a number of Michigan State University fraternities and sororities to quarantine for two weeks following hundreds of reported cases in the area.

In an emergency order issued on Monday, Ingham County Health Department listed 30 addresses in East Lansing, Michigan, that will be required to quarantine from Monday until September 28. 

Surging infections: The decision comes after at least 342 people affiliated with the university have tested positive for Covid-19 since August 24, the health department said. 

Ingham County experienced a 52% increase in total case count since August 24, with one third of Ingham County cases since the pandemic started being reported in the past three weeks. The majority of all new cases reported come from students at Michigan State University.

Read the full story here.

Japan recorded 270 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, the lowest daily spike since July 13 before the country was hit by a second wave of infections, according to the Health Ministry.

Nine new deaths were also recorded Monday, bringing the total death toll to 1,464, with the total caseload at 76,670, the Health Ministry said.

Eighty new cases were recorded in Tokyo on Monday, marking the first time the capital's daily new infections fell below 100 in eight days, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government. The city has reported a total of 23,083 cases.

As daily infections drop, authorities are planning to ease restrictions. In central Tokyo, the 10 p.m. closure request for bars and restaurants that serve alcohol will end today.

The people responsible for a weekly report released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been in “trench warfare” with Washington officials over the report’s scientific integrity, infectious disease specialist Dr. William Schaffner said Monday. 

Schaffner said he was “very disturbed” by the news that Trump-appointed officials at the Department of Health and Human Services pushed the CDC to change its weekly science reports so they would not undermine President Donald Trump’s political messages.

Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who spent a brief time at CDC and who often works closely with the agency, added that it’s “totally inappropriate” for Washington to try to influence the report, but the American people can still trust the information they are getting from the CDC.

“We can trust what we're getting. These are professional people,” said Schaffner. “They're just working on behalf of the American people.”

Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said Monday that President Donald 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."

Some 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.

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.