October 11 coronavirus news

Twitter has attached a warning label to President Trump’s tweet where he claimed, without evidence, that he is immune to coronavirus after receiving the all clear from his physician to resume public activities.

Trump also claimed immunity in an interview on Fox News where he said he believes he will be immune for “maybe a long time, maybe a short time, could be a lifetime,” noting it’s unclear how much immunity previously infected individuals can expect after recovering.

Some crucial context: There is no evidence that people are immune if they have been infected once and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention specifically cautions people not to assume they are immune.

Twitter’s warning label says the tweet “violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”

According to a statement from Twitter: “We placed a public interest notice on the Tweet you referenced for violating our Covid-19 Misleading Information Policy by making misleading health claims about Covid-19. As is standard with this public interest notice, engagements with the Tweet will be significantly limited.” 

Dr. Anthony Fauci did not consent to being featured in a new advertisement from the Trump campaign touting President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert told CNN his words were taken out of context.  

The Trump campaign released the new ad this week after Trump was discharged from Walter Reed medical center after being diagnosed with coronavirus. The 30-second ad, which is airing in Michigan, tout’s Trump’s personal experience with the virus and uses a quote from Fauci in attempt to make it seem like he is praising the President's response to the pandemic.

“President Trump is recovering from the coronavirus, and so is America,” the ad’s narrator says. "Together we rose to meet the challenge, protecting our seniors, getting them life saving drugs in record time, sparing no expense.”

The ad then cuts to an interview with Fauci where he says, “I can't imagine that anybody could be doing more.” 

Some context: Though no date is provided in the ad, Fauci’s quote is from an interview with Fox News in March where Fauci praised the White House coronavirus task force’s round-the-clock effort to respond to the pandemic, which he says included numerous White House meetings and late night phone calls. 

“We’ve never had a threat like this. The coordinated response has been…There are a number of adjectives to describe it — impressive, I think is one of them. We’re talking about all hands on deck. I, as one of many people on a team, I’m not the only person," Fauci said at the time. "Since the beginning, that we even recognized what this was, I have been devoting almost full time on this. I’m down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It’s every single day. So, I can’t imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The state of Montana has reported 5,000 coronavirus cases in the last 11 days. That’s a stark contract to the beginning of the pandemic when it took the state almost five months to chart its first 5,000 cases.  

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, from Sept. 30 through Oct. 10, Montana reported 5,046 coronavirus cases. 

The state recorded its first coronavirus case on March 13 and on Aug. 10 reported having 5,017 cases across the state. 

It took 150 days, or four months and 28 days, for the state to reach more than 5,000 coronavirus cases at the start of the pandemic.

One thing to note: Montana’s public health agency numbers may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

White House deputy communications director Brian Morgenstern said the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) should get the second presidential debate back on the schedule after President Trump’s physician said he was no longer a risk to transmit coronavirus.

Morgenstern said Trump wants to debate Joe Biden in person but if the CPD doesn’t reschedule the debate, canceled earlier in the week after Trump declined to participate in a virtual debate, Trump would do some type of public engagement that night, potentially a town hall event. Joe Biden has already announced a town hall event for Thursday, the night the town hall debate was scheduled to take place.

There are at least 7,733,258 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 214,599 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

As of Sunday afternoon, 15,326 new cases and 229 new deaths have been reported in the US since midnight.  

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

Coronavirus hotspots across New York state remain a concern, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a phone call with reporters Sunday. 

The statewide Covid-19 positivity rate is .84% without hotspots included, and .96% with them, Cuomo said. 

These numbers are the lowest since Sept. 24, but there are concerns with areas like Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley region, and Western New York, where the hotspot positivity rate is 5.7%, he added.  

The main areas of concern remain in the Hasidic community, Cuomo said, adding that he understands the importance of in-person religious gatherings.

There are 820 people hospitalized across the state, with 186 individuals in the intensive care unit. 

The way to handle hotspot regions across the state is through aggressive enforcement, much like what was done with restaurants and bars, Cuomo said. 

Through the state police task force, officers conducted approximately 100,000 visits, Cuomo said, with about 1,500 law enforcement actions taken. A similar process needs to happen in these hot spot communities now, he said. 

The White House Correspondents’ Association said the fourth journalist who received a preliminary positive Covid-19 result after a rapid test has ultimately tested negative after taking the more accurate PCR test.

 Previously, three journalists who cover the President recently tested positive for the virus.

Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, in a nod to the struggles in reaching a broad stimulus deal, sent a letter to lawmakers asking for passage of a bill that allows the Trump administration to utilize the $134 billion in unused Paycheck Protection Program funds as talks continue.

“The all or nothing approach is an unacceptable response to the American people,” the pair wrote.

Democratic leaders have rejected all piecemeal efforts up to this point. 

Read the letter:

The United Kingdom reported 12,872 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, compared to more than 15,000 the previous day, according to the government’s Covid-19 dashboard.

That brings the total number of cases to 603,716.

Another 65 people have died from the virus, bringing to 42,825 the number of people who died within 28 days of receiving a positive test result. 

However the total number of people with Covid-19 on their death certificate is 57,347.

On Monday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce new coronavirus restrictions in England in an effort to bring the infection rate under control.