September 30 coronavirus news

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has signed a new joint agreement, along with 16 pharmaceutical companies, to commit to scaling up manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines at "an unprecedented speed" and making sure that approved vaccines reach broad global distribution as early as possible.

"The only way to eliminate the threat of this disease somewhere is to eliminate it everywhere,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates said during a World Health organization briefing.

The 16 pharmaceutical companies to sign this agreement are AstraZeneca; Bayer; bioMérieux; Boehringer Ingelheim; Bristol Myers Squibb; Eisai; Eli Lilly; Gilead; GSK; Johnson & Johnson; Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada); Merck KGaA; Novartis; Pfizer; Roche; and Sanofi. 

"The next component we need for global elimination is the funding to pay for those vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry has already made significant commitments in this area as well. The companies involved in the agreement are committed to using donations for going profits, and using tiered pricing to make their products as affordable as possible," Gates added. 

The state of Missouri hit another high since July for hospitalizations, according to the state's Covid-19 dashboard. Hospitalizations were at 1,139 Tuesday, according to the state’s website.  

Hospitalizations have been increasing every day since Sept. 6, when the state reported 930 people hospitalized.  

The National Football League has announced that Sunday's Pittsburgh Steelers-Tennessee Titans game has been postponed.

The league says it will reschedule the game to either Monday or Tuesday so that additional time can be allocated for coronavirus testing. 

The Titans have had four players and five staff members test positive for Covid-19. 

The NFL said in a statement that details on the new game date and time will be announced as soon as possible.  

As New York City began indoor dining Wednesday at 25% capacity, mayor Bill de Blasio said there will be "rigorous" inspection efforts particularly in the zip codes with clusters.

“There is going to be a very rigorous inspection effort in those zip codes and we are going to be looking carefully to make sure every restaurant is following the rules," he said.

Violations will lead to immediate summonses, De Blasio said

Health department professionals and other staff will be visible in restaurants Wednesday through the evening.

Asked whether he would engage in indoor dining, Mayor de Blasio said, “My outdoor dining experiences have been amazing, I’m going to keep doing that for the foreseeable future and then of course shift to indoor when the outdoor isn’t as prevalent because of the weather.” 

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is reporting a rate 0.94% positivity in testing of Covid-19 – down from over 3% the day before – as he detailed the “intense efforts” and a “huge amount of focus” on neighborhoods of concern.

The 7-day rolling average is 1.46%, he said.

In six of the target neighborhoods, the rate of percent positivity is continuing to go up, the mayor said. 

The percent positivity’s in those nine key zip codes range from more than 6% to more than 3%.

The city is also monitoring four other zip codes with percent positivity’s under but close to 3%.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, on a private call with the House Democratic caucus on Wednesday, said the House would vote today on the $2.2 trillion stimulus proposal *if* no deal is reached between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin this morning, according to two people on the call.

Hoyer’s comments underscore just how crucial the discussion between Pelosi and Mnuchin will be this morning. Should Democrats move forward on a vote, it is all but certain to put an end to bipartisan negotiations until after the election.

What happens next: House Democratic leaders have teed up the bill in case talks fall apart, as has happened repeatedly over the course of the last few months, amid pressure from frontline Democrats who want to show they are taking action to address pandemic-driven economic shortfalls in the weeks before the election.

Pelosi, for her part, made clear on the call that this won’t be the last opportunity for Democrats to consider a broad stimulus deal and noted that the major outstanding issues are funds for state and local governments and liability protections.

Pelosi and Mnuchin are slated to talk before noon today, according to people familiar with their schedules. Mnuchin is planning to present a counter-offer somewhere around the $1.5 trillion range, one of the people said.

Mnuchin, on CNBC this morning, said he and Pelosi are “going to give it one more serious try to get this done. We’re hopeful."

A fourth Tennessee Titans player has tested positive for Covid-19, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy tells CNN.

There are now nine total cases within the team – four players and five staff members. The club’s facilities remain indefinitely closed. 

The Titans are scheduled to host the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday. When asked about the status of the game, McCarthy relied, “we are taking this day by day.”

Data from hospitals in the Paris region is not looking positive, the head of the Paris region health authority said Wednesday on French radio France Inter. 

Aurelien Rousseau said 34% of ICU beds are occupied by Covid patients in the Paris region, with 30% ICU Covid bed occupancy for the city of Paris. 

He added the incidence rate is very high for 20- to 30-year-old with 450 cases per 100,000 people. Rousseau said the incidence rate for people over the age of 65 is over 100 per 100,000 inhabitants. 

With worsening numbers, the government may decide that Paris, like Marseille and the overseas department of Guadeloupe, become a zone of “maximum alert,” meaning bars and restaurants close. 

The French minister of Health, Olivier Veran is expected to announce an update of measures in a press conference before the end of the week. Many bars and restaurant owners in Paris fear closure and the economic impact. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced an array of new measures aimed at stopping a recent spike in novel coronavirus infections in the country. 

At a news conference following a meeting with Germany’s state governors, Merkel announced that gatherings in public venues would be limited to no more than 50 people in areas with a large number of coronavirus infections.  

“We know that a more difficult time is coming, fall and winter,” Merkel said as she justified the new restrictions, which also include fines of at least 50 euros ($60) for patrons in bars and restaurants who provide false contact data used by authorities for tracing.  

Merkel also issued a strong warning, saying that if the current trajectory of rising coronavirus infections continues unabated, Germany could see up to 19,200 new infections per day in in the winter months.