September 22 coronavirus news

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued its first guidance for the holidays, including Halloween, while the coronavirus pandemic rages on.

Most traditional activities for Halloween, such as door-to-door trick-or-treating and costume parties, are discouraged this year due to the pandemic, the CDC said in a new posting on its website.

The new guidance lists “low-risk, moderate and higher risk activities” for celebrating All Hallow’s Eve.

Low risk activities include: carving pumpkins and decorating your home, outdoor scavenger hunts, virtual costume contests and hosting a movie night with household members.

Moderate risk things to do include: so-called “one-way trick-or-treating” by exchanging goody bags placed at the end of a driveway or the edge of a yard, having a small group outside for an “open-air costume parade” where participants are at least 6-feet apart or attending an outdoor costume party where masks are worn and people social distance.

Higher risk activities the CDC is urging against include: door-to-door trick-or-treating, attending crowded, indoor costume parties, visiting indoor haunted houses or going on hayrides or tractor rides with strangers.

The agency is also discouraging: the use of costume masks this year, saying they are not a substitute for cloth masks. It is also warning against wearing a costume mask over a protective cloth, pointing out it’s dangerous because it might make it hard to breath.

Another 356 coronavirus fatalities were recorded in the United States on Monday, bringing the country's death toll to at least 199,881, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.

A further 52,070 new Covid-19 cases were also recorded Monday, raising the nationwide total of confirmed virus cases to 6,857,703.

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

CNN's map is tracking the US cases:

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Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

The nearly 200,000 people killed by Covid-19 in the United States would “likely not have died,” when they did if they didn't have the virus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

Fauci told Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show” Monday night that the victims “likely would not have died if they didn’t have this infection,” answering a question from Noah about those who claim people are dying with the virus and not from it.

Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said they definitely died from Covid-19.

Scientists still don’t know a lot about the virus, though, Fauci said. "We're starting to see right now a couple of things that are troubling to me.”

More young people are contracting the illness and symptoms are lingering longer in patients who have cleared the virus, Fauci said.

A third thing is that those who have recovered from the disease, and not a very severe form of it, are exhibiting inflammation of the heart, Fauci said.

Covid-19 has devastated the global economy and forced governments around the world to pour trillions into the recovery effort.

The pandemic could have been the decisive moment in the fight against climate change -- an opportunity for leaders to bail out the environment and pivot the planet toward a greener future.

Instead, CNN has found that some of the biggest fossil fuel-producing countries are injecting taxpayer money into propping up polluting industries. And exclusive new data shows these decisions are taking the world a step closer to a climate catastrophe.

The research shows that the world is running well behind its already insufficient targets of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

“We are in a situation where enormous sums of money are (being) spent,” Höhne said. “A similar opportunity for spending so much money from government budgets will not come in the next 10 to 20 years.”

Read CNN's investigation here

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said while he’s encouraged by the coronavirus response in some areas of the country, overall the numbers aren’t great.

“We have in this country now, you know, close to 200,000 deaths," Fauci said Monday night on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

But Fauci said he does see some encouraging developments.

“There are parts of the country that have done well, that are doing well,” he said. “Right now, what I'm liking that I'm seeing is that some of the numbers are coming down.”

But the baseline is still too high, Fauci said.

The number of new infections never got below 20,000 new cases a day.

“When we tried to open up the economy, as it were, some states jumped ahead of the guidelines, some people didn't listen to what the governors and what the mayors were saying, and remember, we went way up to 70,000 and now we're coming back down to 30 or 40,000 (new cases a day).”

Fauci said he’s concerned that the number of new infections are still too high as fall and winter set in and people will have to remain indoors more.

You’re at a disadvantage when you have 40,000 new infections a day, Fauci said. 

“That is not a good place to be.”

Divisive politics in the United States are getting in the way of consistent messaging on the coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday night.

Noah asked about the inconsistent messaging from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and why the US doesn’t have a centralized source of information like other countries.

“That's a difficult question to give a satisfactory explanation for because, as a matter of fact, there, you know there has been switches in how the messages have gone out,” Fauci responded

“From a research and public health standpoint, I try my best. and I think I'm successful in giving a consistent message as often as I can get the message out.”

Americans want to get the economy open and people back to work, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said. Public health measures should be “a gateway and a pathway to opening the country as opposed to an obstacle to opening the country.” 

“So what has evolved now is that almost people take sides like wearing a mask or not is a political statement and that’s really unfortunate, totally unfortunate because this is purely a public health issue. It should not be one against the other.”

Fauci said when messages get thrown into “political buckets,” then “you don’t have a single message.”

Fauci said he has never had a political ideology that he has made public: “I'm really just talking to you about public health.” 

Three NFL teams -- the Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers -- are being fined $250,000 each because their head coaches were not wearing their face coverings on Sunday, a league source told CNN.

The coaches, Seattle’s Pete Carroll, Denver’s Vic Fangio and San Francisco’s Kyle Shanahan, were each fined $100,000, the source said.

CNN has reached out to all three teams seeking comment regarding the fines.

A week ago, Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, sent a memo to clubs cautioning coaching personnel to wear their masks at all times.

In the memo, Vincent said failure to adhere to the protocols in place would lead to sanctions.

Canadian health officials across the country have pleaded with the public to stay home, stick to your bubble and mask up, as daily positive cases continue to climb to levels not seen since May. 

Officials in the province of Quebec and in the country’s capital, Ottawa, have declared that a second wave has already taken hold in their cities and communities. 

Canada’s seven-day average is now just under 1,000 cases per day according to Johns Hopkins University and the Public Health Agency of Canada. 

What's behind the spike? Public health experts say Canadians are having too many close, social contacts between family and friends and young people are gathering in groups that are too large to contain the spread. The spike in cases comes two weeks after the Labor Day holiday and as a majority of Canadian children return to in-person learning in schools. 

Young are getting sick: Canadian government statistics show that about two thirds of new, positive cases of Covid-19 are detected in people under the age of 40. 

Restrictions to be enforced: In cities like Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, city officials, bylaw officers and police say they are stepping up enforcement of strict protocols that limit indoor, private gatherings to six or 10. In Ontario the minimum fine for breaking the rules is $7,500. 

In British Columbia, the spike in cases is being described as a resurgence and public health officials say they would not yet depict the spike in cases as a second wave. 

Officials say hospitalizations have crept up but are stable and add they will wait for more data before deciding if or when to bring in more closures or restrictions. 

As most US states head in the wrong direction with coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has retracted key information about how the virus spreads.

The US is on the brink of 200,000 coronavirus deaths, with the number of new cases rising in 28 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

"And it's happening because we're forcing schools to reopen in areas of high transmission. We're forcing colleges to reopen, and we don't have the leadership nationally, telling people to wear masks and to social distance and do all the things we need to do."

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said she agrees this fall "could be apocalyptic" after recent spikes.

"Why are we going back up? I think there are a few reasons," Marrazzo said.

"One is that there is general fatigue. People are really tired of this," she said. "And then the second thing is ... the completely contradictory messages that we're getting -- not just the misinformation, but also the confusion about how things are spread."

CDC reversal: She cited a recent update from the CDC that said you can get Covid-19 just by inhaling tiny particles from an infected person's breath that linger or travel in the air.

Many doctors have known that for months -- hence their pleas for the public to wear masks.

"The updated guidance would have been fine if it came out last May," Hotez said. "We knew all of these things months ago."

But by Monday afternoon, the CDC's update was removed.

Read the full story:

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More than half of states are reporting more new coronavirus cases as the US nears 200,000 deaths