October 29 coronavirus news

By Nectar Gan, Adam Renton and Luke McGee, CNN

Updated 12:01 a.m. ET, October 30, 2020
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10:43 p.m. ET, October 28, 2020

The US is "not in a good place" when it comes to Covid-19, Fauci says

From CNN's Jacqueline Howard

The United States is "not in a good place" when it comes to a rise in Covid-19 cases nationwide, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"We're not in a good place," Fauci told Dr. Howard Bauchner, editor in chief of the medical journal JAMA, during a virtual Q&A session on Wednesday.

"Now we're averaging about 70,000 a (day). That's a bad position to be in," Fauci said. "As we continue into the cool months of the fall and soon the cold months of the winter, we're starting seeing something going in the wrong direction."

 Fauci called this "a bad recipe for a tough time ahead."

10:43 p.m. ET, October 28, 2020

US may not be back to normal until 2022, Fauci says

From CNN's Madeline Holcombe, Holly Yan and Amir Vera

As Covid-19 cases continue to jump during the fall surge, Dr. Anthony Fauci says there's little chance of normalcy on the horizon.

The US will have a vaccine in the next few months, but there's a chance a "substantial proportion of the people" won't be vaccinated until the second or third quarter of 2021, Fauci said.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reiterated caution on the nation's outlook.

"I think it will be easily by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year, before we start having some semblances of normality," Fauci said during a University of Melbourne panel discussion Tuesday.

Things aren't looking too good for the US as the winter approaches, he said Wednesday.

Twenty-nine states set new records this month for the most new daily cases since the pandemic began, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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#Hotspots##

10:09 p.m. ET, October 28, 2020

France and Germany announce partial lockdowns

From CNN's Tara John and Claudia Otto

Two of Europe's biggest economies have announced lockdowns in response to spiraling coronavirus case numbers.

France will begin a four-week lockdown on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday.

His declaration came just hours after German Chancellor Angela Merkel also announced a four-week nationwide lockdown starting next Monday.

Macron announced the French measures in a televised address on Wednesday evening, saying existing restrictions were "not enough anymore." By mid-November, all intensive care beds could be taken by Covid-19 patients unless a "brake" is put on the virus, he warned.

Under the French lockdown, people will need a certificate to move around. Non-essential businesses, restaurants and bars will be closed.

Schools and workplaces will remain open, and care homes visits will be allowed. However French people will only be allowed outside to go "to work, to go to a medical appointment, to care for a relative, to do shop for essential goods and to get some air," Macron said.

"The virus is circulating at a speed that even the most pessimistic had not predicted," he said, adding that the curfew imposed in Paris and other administrative areas did not dent the spread of the virus.

France's lockdown will last until December 1 at "minimum," according to Macron.

German restaurants, bars and clubs will also be closed in order to "avoid a national health emergency," according to Merkel.

People residing in Germany are advised to stay home, avoid travel and "keep their contacts to an absolute minimum," she said. Social contacts will be limited to two households in public. Schools and kindergartens will remain open, but have to take strict hygiene measure to do so.

Germany's restrictions will be reassessed in two weeks time, Merkel said.

Though strict, the new guidelines in both countries are less harsh than lockdowns imposed this spring, which brought Germany and France to a standstill.

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10:39 p.m. ET, October 28, 2020

Covid-19 deaths aren't rising as fast, despite soaring new cases. That doesn't mean the virus is less deadly

From CNN's Ivana Kottasová

Europe is drowning in the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic. Infection rates are skyrocketing across the continent. Governments are imposing strict lockdowns. Economies are shutting down again. But there is a glimmer of hope: The virus, while still deadly, appears to be killing fewer people on average.

Recent case and fatality figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show that while recorded Covid-19 cases are spiking in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany and other European countries, deaths are not rising at the same rate.

"The fatality rate has declined, in the UK, we can see it going down from around June to a low point in August," said Jason Oke, a senior statistician at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. "Our current estimate is that the infection fatality rate is going up a little bit, but it hasn't come up to anywhere near where we were and that's unlikely to change dramatically unless we see a really surprising increase in the numbers of deaths."

Oke has been tracking Covid-19 fatality rates along with his colleague Carl Heneghan of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and health economist Daniel Howdon. Their research shows that, at the end of June, the fatality rate was just below 3% in the UK. By August, it had dropped as low as about 0.5%. It now stands at roughly 0.75%.

"We think it's probably driven a lot by age, but also other factors, like treatment," Oke said.

The lower death rate isn't unique to Europe.

In New York, the death rate for those hospitalized with coronavirus-related illnesses has also dropped since earlier this year, according to a study by a team of researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. A wider analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the NYU team shows that across the United States, "6.7% of cases resulted in death in April, compared with 1.9% in September."

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