October 13 coronavirus news

Utah is experiencing "one of the worst outbreaks in the country" and has announced a new three-tier Covid-19 monitoring system for counties, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Tuesday. 

Gov. Herbert said during a news conference Utah has seen infection rates and case counts skyrocket over the past month to the highest they've been, with new cases hovering around 1,000 per day since Oct.4.

Gov. Herbert also tweeted, “The new system is based on the Transmission Index, which calculates the level of COVID-19 transmission in each county by analyzing three data points - percent positivity of tests, cases per 100,000, and hospital capacity.”

Counties will be placed on a low, moderate, or high transmission level which will determine things like when masks are required to be worn, and how large of a group can gather. 

American golfer Dustin Johnson, who sits atop the World Golf Rankings, has tested positive for Covid-19, according to a statement from the PGA Tour. As a result, Johnson has withdrawn from this week’s tournament in Las Vegas.

Johnson won the PGA Tour’s season-long $15 million FedEx Cup title in September after winning the Tour Championship event at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. He last competed at the US Open in September, where he finished in sixth place.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said today that they have to get the virus under control in the state to prevent the health care system from being overwhelmed. 

Evers said the state reached a "grim milestone" of over 150,000 positive cases over the weekend and that hospitalizations have nearly tripled over the past month. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health says that there is a total of 155,471 confirmed cases of Covid-19, up 3,279 from yesterday. There are 34 new deaths being reported today, for a total of 1508 deaths since the pandemic began.  

During Tuesday's news conference, Evers said they need a huge, united statewide effort, which includes elected officials, to combat the virus. He said that the state legislature hasn't met for 180 days but that they have tried to "thwart every state effort to keep Wisconsinites health and safe."

He said he is inviting Republican leaders in the state to meet and is hopeful they will put their feedback and plans on the table so they can "urgently address the challenges of our state." He is encouraging residents to reach out to their legislators to find out if they support the mask mandate and the public health emergency. 

On Monday, Evers sent a letter to the speaker and the majority leader asking for their thoughts and feedback to the public health emergency. Evers said in today's news conference that he has yet to hear back from them. 

The University of Florida has released an updated number of Covid-19 positive tests among its football student-athletes, which indicate that the football team has had five new positive tests over the past week. 

The total number of positive tests the team has seen in the month of October now stands at six

The Florida Gators, who are ranked number 10 in the nation, are scheduled to play the defending national champion Louisiana State University Tigers on Saturday at home in Gainesville, Florida.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that “some 65 staff” members had to quarantine after he and his wife tested positive for Covid-19, he said today at a press conference.

“To my knowledge, those 65 staff members all tested negative,” Northam added. “No one tested positive.”

Northam called the result “a testament to wearing these masks.”

Northam added that both he and his wife “have been cleared by health officials to leave isolation and go back to work” since it has been several days since their last symptoms.

Drugmaker Eli Lilly said Tuesday it was pausing its trial of a combination antibody treatment for coronavirus for safety reasons. 

Usually, clinical trials are paused because a volunteer has suffered a side effect or become ill, but the company did not say what happened.

“Safety is of the upmost importance to Lilly,” a spokesperson told CNN by email.

It said the trial’s Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB), an independent group of medical experts who monitor clinical trials, had recommended the pause.

“The trial, evaluating Lilly’s investigational neutralizing antibody as a treatment for COVID-19 in hospitalized patients, is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Lilly is supportive of the decision by the independent DSMB to cautiously ensure the safety of the patients participating in this study,” the company said in the statement.

Lilly is testing a combination of two lab-engineered immune system proteins called monoclonal antibodies to treat severely ill patients with coronavirus. It is similar to the treatment made by Regeneron that was given to President Trump earlier this month.

The news comes after drugmaker Johnson & Johnson announced that it learned of an “unexplained illness” in one of the volunteers which caused it to pause its Phase 3 coronavirus vaccine trial in the US on Sunday, and immediately informed the DSMB, which monitors clinical trial developments.

The drugmaker said it did not know whether the volunteer who became ill had received the vaccine or placebo.

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Florida health officials reported 2,725 new cases of Covid-19 and 119 deaths on Tuesday, according to the Florida Department of Health.      

This marks the ninth day in October that the health department has reported at least 2,200 new cases in a single day, CNN's tally shows.  

The state now has a total of 738,749 coronavirus cases, the department's data shows.       

The Florida death toll now stands at 15,531, the department's data shows.   

Note: These numbers were released by Florida’s public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

For the first time in the 178-year history of the New York Philharmonic, the symphony orchestra is canceling its entire season, citing mandatory state and city government health regulations during the pandemic.

The cancelation will last until at least June 13, 2021.

There will be no live, indoor concerts as the organization had hoped, according to a statement from President and CEO Deborah Borda that cited “deep regret” for the cancelation.

The statement continued: “But the Philharmonic didn’t survive and indeed flourish for nearly two centuries by giving up, so we won’t now! We are energetically working to bring you and all New Yorkers live music experiences with NY Phil Bandwagon, which I’m delighted to report will resume by popular demand in the spring.”

NY Phil Bandwagon is a series of free, pop-up concerts at announced locations around New York City. 

Additionally, the organization is developing an expanded live-streaming series for the winter, if allowed by Covid-19 restrictions, and hopes to announce that soon, according to the statement.  

The New York Philharmonic’s 2021-22 season will be announced in the spring of 2021.   

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday announced a series of additional measures in an effort to contain skyrocketing coronavirus infections.

Here are some of those new measures:

Asked whether his leadership was to blame, and if Dutch citizens had acted so much worse than their neighbors in France and Germany, Rutte said, “I have said before that I don’t venture into sociological comparisons. I am prime minister in this country.”

What we know: Coronavirus infections in the Netherlands rose 60% over the seven-day period ending Monday compared to the previous week-long period, according to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment.