October 1 coronavirus news

American and United Airlines are cutting 32,000 jobs after Congress failed to reach a new deal on federal aid plans. Delta has been able to a delay job cuts for now, but CEO Ed Bastian says they may have to furlough 1,900 pilots in the future if Congress doesn’t reach a stimulus deal.

Apart from severely impacting jobs in the aviation industry, the pandemic has also impacted the sense of safety among flyers. Delta has already mandated masks on flights and Bastian says the company is also working on offering its flyers rapid tests.

There is a possibility where Delta may require a flyer to first take a rapid Covid-19 test before boarding, he adds, saying it would largely ensure safety and help passengers avoid quarantines upon arriving at their destination.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated Thursday that the House is likely to move forward with a vote on the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus proposal from House Democrats. 

Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are still far apart in talks for a new round of aid, although she said she remains hopeful that a compromise can be found.

“We’re hopeful that we can reach agreement because the needs of the American people are so great,” Pelosi said. “But there has to be a recognition that it takes money to do that, and it takes the right language to make sure it is done right.”

“State and local, we’re still far apart on that," she said, adding, “we are coming closer on money for our health provisions in the bill, it’s just a question of the language.”

Pelosi also said Democrats “have concerns about a sufficient amount of money to address the unemployment needs of the American people.”

During the news conference, Pelosi also emphasized the need for politics to remain separate from the effort to produce a vaccine. 

“What we have to do is have confidence, trust in the vaccine,” Pelosi said. “Let science determine this, and not politics. And then people will have confidence in the product.”

She said she would take a Covid-19 vaccine, even though she doesn’t like needles and takes her flu shot “under great duress” each year.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has approved $150 million of funding to help 92 low-and middle-income countries “jumpstart” their “readiness to deliver Covid-19 vaccines, in the form of planning, technical assistance and cold chain equipment.”

Okonjo-Iweala added that the decision will support, “lower-income countries’ ability to maintain routine immunization programmes and protect against the threat of other infectious diseases.”

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announced earlier this week it had so far secured 200 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccines for the world’s poorest countries. 

The vaccines will have a ceiling price of US$1.60 to US$2 per dose for the 92 of the world’s low income countries. 

Through the COVAX facility coordinated by Gavi, 75 countries have formally committed to providing funding to provide at least part of the cost for procuring the vaccine for poorer nations.

The first masks arrived on the White House grounds in February by special order of the National Security Council, mobilizing early on to address the emerging threat of the coming coronavirus. Job one in their emergency response was to take personal precautions, preparing for the critical work at hand, multiple officials tell CNN.

But word that some NSC staffers were being told to wear masks quickly made its way back to the West Wing and it wasn't long before a sharp dictum came down.

The West Wing wanted to "portray confidence and make the public believe there was absolutely nothing to worry about," the official said, revealing the image-conscious reason for the opposition to masks for the first time.

The directive opened a schism in the White House complex that would ultimately hinder its ability to contain the spread of the new virus they were now calling Covid-19. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials show how that fissure appeared and spread even as confirmed cases in the US began to grow.

The officials all requested anonymity either because they were not authorized to discuss the matter or because they were sharing private conversations with people currently in the administration. But they tell a consistent story of how the White House attempts to deal with the virus were dogged by the president's fixation on one thing: optics.

The ensuing disaster has now claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Americans, in what may be the most politicized health crisis of the modern presidency. The radical polarization that now grips the country traces back to the very first workplace where it really sank in, at the West Wing of the White House.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews, addressing questions about this story, said that the President "took the virus seriously from the beginning, as evidenced by his administration taking early steps in January to protect the American people." It was Democrats and the media, she says, who were obsessing at the time -- "over the partisan and futile impeachment trial."

But several key officials tell a consistent and different story, about image management and the trouble it caused in pandemic response from the very beginning.

"We lost so much time," a former administration official said, looking back. "The whole thing was mind-blowing. This could have been so different."

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has started a rolling review of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine candidate, it said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the EMA, “a rolling review is one of the regulatory tools that the Agency uses to speed up the assessment of a promising medicine or vaccine during a public health emergency,” and it basically means that instead of evaluating all the data on the vaccine after it is completed, the agency will evaluate the data as it becomes available, in order to speed up its potential approval, if all the safety and effectiveness criteria are met.

“EMA will complete its assessment according to its usual standards for quality, safety and effectiveness,” the EMA also said in its statement.

The EMA had used the rolling review process in the assessment of the Covid-19 medicine remdesivir, but it’s the first time it is applying it to a vaccine.

Trials for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine have been resumed in Britain, Brazil and South Africa after a participant developed a serious illness, but remain on hold in the United States, the US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn confirmed on Wednesday, without revealing why.

“I can’t speak to confidential commercial information and this summit knows that all too well,” he said.

Wisconsin leaders and health experts are sounding the alarm as the state reported its highest death count on record Thursday — 27 people died of Covid-19 Wednesday, according to the state's Covid-19 website. For context, the state reported its second highest death count on May 27 at 22.

Currently, one of Green Bay’s four hospitals has more patients than the entire city had at its peak in April, Dr. Casey told CNN on Thursday. He said he hopes the national attention on the coronavirus cases in the community “will get people to wake up.” 

This comes as President Trump is set to hold two rallies this weekend in the cities of Green Bay and Lacrosse in Wisconsin. Four hospitals in Green Bay are near capacity.

 “Those of us in the medical community are very worried about that,” Dr. Casey said. “We're very concerned about any large gathering, not only weddings, funerals, but much less a very large rally with a bunch of people together without masks.”

The percent of people who tested positive for Covid-19 city wide is at 1.59%, under the 5% threshold, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said. The seven day rolling average is 1.52%.

The mayor said its “imperative” for those in impacted cluster zip codes to get tested adding “overwhelmingly the rest of the city is doing very very well.”

The mayor said 10 zip codes are now testing above 3% — with some having a positivity rate that runs as high as over 6%.

The city is also watching a cluster in Williamsburg Brooklyn which has not yet reached the 3% threshold. Six other zip-codes are being monitored beyond Williamsburg.

Nearly 1,000 city personnel are doing outreach and over 1,100 tests were done on Wednesday, he said. After hundreds of business visits, 130 warnings and 16 violations were issued, the mayor said, not specifying where. There were 160 school visits, he added.

The mayor said the city will continue to watch to determine whether a fuller shut down is required in hot spot communities, adding that as of now there is no indication of an upsurge with regards to schools associated with those communities.

The city's latest figures: The daily number of people admitted to hospitals for Covid-19 in New York City is at 75, under the 200 threshold. The confirmed positivity rate for Covid-19 for those patients is 22%

With regard to new reported cases on a seven-day average, with a threshold of 550 cases, NYC reports at least 394.

School reopenings: The mayor, alongside the city schools chancellor, also championed what he called the success of city officials, union members, staff and families as he says half a million kids this week go through the front doors of schools.

The mayor encouraged parents to fill out waivers to allow their children to be tested monthly within schools, adding testing is to begin next week.

“Those consent forms have been sent home, we are going to start testing next week,” he said.

He said it was free, quick and easy, simple and non-invasive. “Please parents lets fill out those forms and get them back right away,” de Blasio said.

“This is a monumental milestone for our city,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said Thursday.

“We are the only major school district in the entire country to safely open our schools for in- person learning," he added.

“This was an is a colossal undertaking and wouldn’t be possible without every single staff member every family and all new Yorkers," Carranza said.

The state of Wisconsin reported a grim new milestone Thursday — 27 people died of Covid-19 Wednesday, according to the state's Covid-19 website. That is the highest death count on record for the state.  For context, the state reported its second highest death count on May 27 at 22.  

The state is also reporting a record high of at least 683 Covid-19 related hospitalizations, up from the 646 that were reported Wednesday. 

The percentage of available hospital beds dropped one percentage point to 17%. It was 18% Wednesday.  Twenty-nine percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients are in intensive care units, down slightly from yesterday's report of 32%, according to the website.  

Thirteen hundred and fifty-four people have died of Covid-19 in the state of Wisconsin, according to the website.  

A new study suggests that mentions of President Trump played a big role in conversations involving Covid-19 misinformation in the first few months of the pandemic.

The study, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was released online by the Cornell Alliance for Science on Thursday. Co-author Sarah Evanega said the peer-review process was taking too long and the authors chose to post it without outside input, and to alert news media, for quicker release.

The researchers — from Cornell University and Cision Global Insights in Michigan – analyzed media coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic across the Internet, podcasts, television, radio and other platforms between January 1 and May 26. The alliance is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The analysis showed that English-language media outlets published more than 1.1 million articles mentioning Covid-19 misinformation.

Among those articles, the researchers found five different sub-sections of topics that emerged within the overall Covid-19 misinformation conversations:

"It is apparent from the data that mentions of President Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation comprise by far the largest single component of the infodemic," the researchers wrote. "Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall infodemic, well ahead of 'miracle cures', which comprised 26.4%." 

The White House did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.