November 9 coronavirus news

Coronavirus rates are rising quickly in California with cases, positivity rate, hospitalizations, and the number of people in intensive care all climbing.

Hospitalizations are up 28.6% over the past two weeks and the number of patients in ICU has increased 27.3% over the past three weeks, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday.

The positivity rate has gone up significantly in that time frame, from a low of 2.5% on October 19 to 3.7% today.

Newsom said the reason for the increase was obvious. 

Testing for coronavirus is also climbing in California, with 194,000 tests conducted on Sunday. 

"We anticipated seeing more cases with increased testing, but the positivity rate is a better indicator of what’s actually happening," Newsom said.

Newsom said he expects an announcement on Tuesday that some counties will move backwards in the state's tier system. For some areas, that could include closing some non-essential business and reinstituting stricter health orders.

Michigan State's men's basketball coach Tom Izzo tested positive for coronavirus Monday morning, he said in a statement.

Izzo said he had "some minor symptoms," but remained in good health.

Izzo said technology would allow him to stay connected with his staff and players, and he would be following advice from medical staff, and taking all the steps necessary to return as soon as possible. 

He said he was "proof that no one is immune," but urged people to listen to experts and take steps to reduce their chances of contracting the virus.

Despite promising early results from Pfizer’s trials, the coronavirus vaccine is "not a magic bullet," Dr. Leana Wen, emergency physician and CNN medical analyst, said Monday.

The drugmaker announced Monday that its vaccine appears to be more than 90% effective, based on early data. Wen said that efficacy figure refers to the vaccine's ability to prevent any Covid-19 infection, as opposed to severe infection from the virus.

Wen said she hopes Pfizer will make its data publicly available. The company is expected to do so when it applies to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization.

Wen added that "there is a long road between actually getting the vaccine approved and getting it distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans," emphasizing the importance of basic public health measures in the meantime.

Utah Governor Gary Herbert said Monday that the state's hospitals were almost at capacity, explaining this was the reason a state of emergency and statewide mask mandate were declared yesterday.

Utah's Covid-19 dashboard reports that 78.2% of the state’s ICU beds are currently occupied. The state hit record highs in its 7-day case average and test positivity percentage today, which reached 2,437.4 and 21.25% Monday.

He laid the blame for the surge in Covid-19 cases largely with young people and "unstructured events."

"It is coming from these casual gatherings where we get together with family and friends and, probably, our guard goes down -- we're a little more complacent," the governor said.

He said the highest infection rates were among 15- to 24-year-olds, and said he would "accelerate the testing program today" to include college students, who he said should be tested once a week.

The Governor said this was "less about government mandates and us telling you what to do -- it's more about taking personal responsibility."

 Herbert also bemoaned the injection of politics into the pandemic response nationwide.

"I think it is, in fact, unfortunate that we've had this pandemic during a political year," he said. "The politics has gotten in the way of really doing the right thing and the right way as soon as we can and uniting the public."

Italy has declared five more coronavirus "orange zones" in which tighter restrictions will come into effect, starting Wednesday and lasting at least two weeks.

The regions of Abruzzo, Umbria, Toscana, Liguria and Basilicata will join Puglia and Sicily, which were declared orange zones last Wednesday.

The restrictions mean that:

Lombardy, Valle d’Aosta, Piedmont and Calabria were declared "red zones" last week -- residents there face the tightest restrictions, including stay-at-home orders except for work, study, health and "essential needs."

Small-scale street protests, by local residents angry at Italy's central government, took place in several red zone areas on the eve of the lockdowns.

Stricter measures have also been imposed starting from Monday on the autonomous province of Bolzano -- Alto Adige in northern Italy, because of an increase in cases there. 

Rezza said the average transmission (R) rate is 1.7 in Italy, which has more than 500 positive Covid-19 cases per 100,000 citizens. 

"We also notice an increase in hospitalizations and in people that required intensive care," Rezza said, adding: "this situation justified the further restrictions."

On Monday, Italy registered an increase of 100 patients needing intensive care, bringing the total ICU admissions to 2,849, Health Ministry daily figures show. 

There were 356 deaths, bringing the total to 41,750, and 25,271 new positive cases reported in the last 24 hours, taking the country's total to 960,373.

An adviser for President Donald Trump's campaign, David Bossie, has tested positive for coronavirus only days after he was tapped to oversee legal challenges contesting the outcome of the election, two sources confirmed to CNN. 

Bossie did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has been in the campaign headquarters in Virginia several times in the last week and has traveled extensively.

Bloomberg News first reported the diagnosis. 

Earlier Monday, CNN confirmed that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson had tested positive for coronavirus.

Read the full story here:

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The second wave of coronavirus has yet to peak in France, the country's national health agency director Jerome Salomon said on Monday in Paris.

Salomon said the second wave was affecting all metropolitan areas, but he added that cities where a curfew and other restrictions were put in place early are now beginning to observe a slower progression of the epidemic.

On Monday, France reported 20,155 new coronavirus cases, with 551 deaths occurring in the last 24 hours in French hospitals. France has reported a total of 1,807,479 cases and 40,987 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Salomon and the latest data from the National Health Agency.

Salomon noted that France ranks fourth highest in the world for total cases.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced 1,537 new hospitalizations across the state on Sunday -- the first time the state has exceeded 1,500 hospitalizations since June 9.

Murphy also announced new restrictions for bars, restaurants and indoor youth sports across the state.

The governor said 2,075 new Covid 19 cases and 11 additional deaths had been recorded on Monday; the state's positivity rate is 7.52%. Since the last news conference on Thursday, 9,524 new cases have been reported. Hospitalizations are up, but ventilator use is down overall, according to Murphy. 

New rules for bars and restaurants:

All interstate games and tournaments for indoor youth sports will be prohibited starting Thursday, Murphy said. 

Murphy told reporters that the state was "taking surgical steps to help mitigate the increasing spread" of Covid seen across the state.

He urged New Jersey residents to "shake off" Covid fatigue, encouraging the state to crush the curve, as it did in the spring. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced a $1.75 billion CAD universal broadband fund to connect all Canadians to high speed internet, in light of changes to work and schooling during the pandemic.

The fund will be used to build infrastructure across the country, almost entirely in rural and remote communities, Trudeau said at a news conference on Monday.  

Trudeau addressed the changed landscape of working and learning from home, pointing to the importance of high speed internet and the government's role in providing reliable internet connections to Canadian citizens.

The PM said that in the last five years, his government has invested to connect 1.2 million households to high speed internet. He said the previous government invested $700 million CAD in connecting people to the internet, and that his government has invested $6 billion CAD -- nearly 10 times as much -- over the past five years.