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America Now Has 4 Million Covid-19 Cases, As Calls For Mask Mandates Grow
TOPLINE
Seven months since the first coronavirus case in the country was reported, the United State’s total infection count passed the 4 million milestone Thursday, according to a tally from The New York Times, a brutal marker as cases continue to rise in most of the country and calls for masking increase.
KEY FACTS
The number of total fatalities attributed to the virus has exceeded 143,000, the Times reported.
On Wednesday, a record-breaking 12,807 new cases was enough to tip California’s total number past that of New York, once the world epicenter of the pandemic (though its per capita infection rate remains less than New York at its peak).
Nationwide daily virus deaths topped 1,000 fatalities Wednesday for the first time since May.
The troubling numbers come as calls for widespread use of face masks grows, with President Donald Trump, who has in the past downplayed the garment, calling their use “patriotic” in a tweet this week.
Labor Department numbers released Thursday showed unemployment claims over the past week have jumped for the first time since March, rising by upwards of 100,000 to total 1.4 million.
KEY BACKGROUND
Around 230 million Americans are under a form of public masking mandate where they live, amounting to some 70% of the country, according to a Forbes analysis. A politically-charged garment for some, Americans on both sides of the aisle seem to be accepting of face masks mandates—a Politico/Morning Consult poll released this week found that 72% of voters surveyed would support a state mask mandate where they live, though Democrats identified as “strongly support[ing]” such an order roughly twice as much as Republicans, according to the survey.
President Donald Trump and inched closer to voicing support for masking during his first coronavirus briefing in months on Wednesday, saying, “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact, they’ll have an effect—and we need everything we can get,” Forbes reported.
Canceled elective procedures putting pressure on nation’s hospitals
Even upticks in COVID-19 patients haven’t made up for the revenue losses, since reimbursement for those services is comparatively slim.
Elective procedures are in a strange place at the moment. When the COVID-19 pandemic started to ramp up in the U.S., many of the nation’s hospitals decided to temporarily cancel elective surgeries and procedures, instead dedicating the majority of their resources to treating coronavirus patients. Some hospitals have resumed these surgeries; others resumed them and re-cancelled them; and still others are wondering when they can resume them at all.
In a recent HIMSS20 digital presentation, Reenita Das, a senior vice president and partner at Frost and Sullivan, said that during the pandemic, plastic surgery activity declined by 100%, ENT surgeries declined by 79%, cardiovascular surgeries declined by 53% and neurosurgery surgeries declined by 57%.
It’s hard to overstate the financial impact this is likely to have on hospitals’ bottom lines. Just this week, American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack, pulling from Kaufman Hall data, said the cancellation of elective surgeries is among the factors contributing to a likely industry-wide loss of $120 billion from July to December alone. When including data from earlier in the pandemic, the losses are expected to be in the vicinity of $323 billion, and half of the nation’s hospitals are expected to be in the red by the end of the year.
Doug Wolfe, cofounder and managing partner of Miami-based law firm Wolfe Pincavage, said this has amounted to a “double-whammy” for hospitals, because on top of elective procedures being cancelled, the money healthcare facilities received from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was an advance on future Medicare payments – which is coming due. While hospitals perform fewer procedures, they will now have to start paying that money back.
All hospitals are hurting, but some are in a more precarious position than others.
“Some hospital systems have had more cash on hand and more liquidity to withstand some of the financial pressure some systems are facing,” said Wolfe. “Traditionally, the smaller hospital systems in the healthcare climate we face today have faced a lot more financial pressure. They’re not able to control costs the same way as a big system. The smaller hospitals and systems were hurting to begin with.”
LOWER REVENUE, HIGHER COSTS
Some hospitals, especially ones in hot spots, are seeing a surge in COVID-19 patients. While this has kept frontline healthcare workers scrambling to care for scores of sick Americans, COVID-19 treatments are not reimbursed at the same level as surgeries. Hospital capacity is being stretched with less lucrative services.
“Some hospitals may be filling up right now, but they’re filling up with lower-reimbursing volume,” said Wolfe. “Inpatient stuff is lower reimbursement. It’s really the perfect storm for hospitals.”
John Haupert, CEO of Grady Health in Atlanta, Georgia, said this week that COVID-19 has had about a $115 million negative impact on Grady’s bottom line. Some $70 million of that is related to the reduction in the number of elective surgeries performed, as well as dips in emergency department and ambulatory visits.
During one week in March, Grady saw a 50% reduction in surgeries and a 38% reduction in ER visits. The system is almost back to even in terms of elective and essential surgeries, but due to a COVID-19 surge currently taking place in Georgia, it has had to suspend those services once again. ER visits have only come back about halfway from that initial 38% dip, and the system is currently operating at 105% occupancy.
“Part of what we’re seeing there is reluctance from patients to come to hospitals or seek services,” said Haupert. “Many have significantly exacerbated chronic disease conditions.”
Patient hesitation has been an ongoing problem, as has the associated cost of treating coronavirus patients, said Wolfe.
“When they were ramping up to resume the elective stuff, there was a problem getting patients comfortable,” he said. “And the other thing was that the cost of treating patients in this environment has gone up. They’ve put up plexiglass everywhere, they have more wiping-down procedures, and all of these things add cost and time. They need to add more time between procedures so they can clean everything … so they’re able to do less, and it costs more to do less. Even when elective procedures do resume, it’s not going back to the way it was.”
Most hospitals have adjusted their costs to mitigate some of the financial hit. Even some larger systems, such as 92-hospital nonprofit Trinity Health in Michigan, have taken to measures such as laying off and furloughing workers and scaling back working hours for some of its staff. At the top of the month, Trinity announced another round of layoffs and furloughs – in addition to the 2,500 furloughs it announced in April – citing a projected $2 billion in revenue losses in fiscal year 2021, which began on June 1.
Hospitals are at the mercy of the market at the moment, and Wolfe anticipates there could be an uptick in mergers and consolidation as organizations look to partner with less cash-strapped entities.
“Whether reorganization will work remains to be seen, but there will definitely be a fallout from this,” he said.
EXCLUSIVE: WHITE HOUSE PRIVATELY WARNS 11 CITIES MUST TAKE “AGGRESSIVE” ACTION AGAINST CORONAVIRUS
Exclusive: White House privately warns 11 cities must take ‘aggressive’ action against coronavirus
New red flags about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak come after Trump focused on upsides in televised briefing.
Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned state and local leaders in a private phone call Wednesday that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take “aggressive” steps to mitigate their outbreaks.
The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
The call was yet another private warning about the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreaks given to local officials but not the public at large. It came less than a week after the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the White House compiled a detailed report showing 18 states were in the “red zone” for coronavirus cases but did not release it publicly.
Increasing test positivity — an indicator that a community does not have an outbreak under control — should be expected in areas that reopened and grew more relaxed about social distancing measures, said Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage. He said the warnings and data from the White House should be made public.
“This is a pandemic. You cannot hide it under the carpet,” he said. “The best way to deal with a crisis or a natural disaster is to be straight with people, to earn their trust and to give the information they need to make decisions for themselves and their communities.”
Birx told hundreds of emergency managers and other state and local leaders that they should act quickly to stem the outbreaks. Among her recommendations were to trace the contacts of patients testing positive for COVID-19 in areas where test positivity is going up.
“When you first see that increase in test positivity, that is when to start the mitigation efforts,” she said in a recording obtained by Public Integrity. “I know it may look small and you may say, ‘That only went from 5 to 5-and-a-half [percent], and we’re gonna wait and see what happens.’ If you wait another three or four or even five days, you’ll start to see a dramatic increase in cases.”
Birx said the federal government was seeing encouraging declines in test positivity in places like Phoenix and San Antonio but warned that the outbreak in the Sunbelt was moving north.
“What started out very much as a southern and western epidemic is starting to move up the East Coast into Tennessee, Arkansas, up into Missouri, up across Colorado, and obviously we’re talking about increases now in Baltimore,” she said. “So this is really critical that everybody is following this and making sure they’re being aggressive about mitigation efforts.”
It’s unclear who heard the warnings and was invited to the call, which was hosted by the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and closed to the press. Baltimore and Cleveland were two of the cities Birx warned were facing rising test positivity, but a spokeswoman for the Cleveland mayor’s office, Nancy Kelsey-Carroll, said they did not participate in the call. And Baltimore health department leaders didn’t know about it, agency spokesman Adam Abadir said in an email. That city today announced a mask mandate and new restrictions on indoor dining.
The test positivity rates may not have been news to some elected officials. For example, Pennsylvania already publicly reports that data by county.
Birx’s warning came a day after President Donald Trump resumed his televised coronavirus briefings. The president offered a rosier picture of the pandemic than Birx, focusing on examples of improvements in the fight against the virus, such as better treatment with the drug remdesivir.
Her call also came the same day that Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that he and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi had insisted on greater data transparency in a meeting with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Schumer said they would push for legislation to “ensure that COVID-19 data is fully transparent and accessible without any interference from the administration.”
And on Tuesday, former CDC Director Tom Frieden and colleagues released a list of data points they would like states to publish in real-time, standardized, to give officials and residents better information.
“It’s not just people who are holding office who need to make decisions,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, on a call with reporters. “The more that we can provide information to people to keep themselves and their families safe, the better off we’ll be.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Birx’s warnings, nor did it answer repeated questions over several days from Public Integrity on why it had not made the “red zone” report public. Birx said on the call that the weekly report had been sent to governors for four weeks. One staffer for a governor said his boss received only the section of the report related to his state, not the entire report.
Grim statistics mount in the battle with COVID
https://mailchi.mp/9075526b5806/the-weekly-gist-july-24-2020?e=d1e747d2d8
It was a week of unhappy milestones in the nation’s battle with the coronavirus. On Thursday, the US crossed the threshold of 4M confirmed COVID cases, just 15 days after it hit the 3M cases mark. That’s three times as fast as it took to go from 2M to 3M cases, with daily new case counts now hovering near 70,000.
As the virus proliferates across the country, California has now overtaken New York as the epicenter of the outbreak, with more than 422,000 total cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic, versus New York’s 413,000.
Of greater concern, the daily US death toll from COVID stayed stubbornly above 1,000 for most of the week, the highest it’s been since late May. More Americans are currently hospitalized with COVID than at any time since the middle of April, with the Gulf Coast states showing some of the highest per-capita hospitalization rates in the country. For good reason, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar officially renewed the Trump administration’s declaration of a public health emergency for another 90 days, clearing the way for the nation’s hospitals to receive more emergency financial assistance in battling the virus, and for continued relaxation of regulations that have allowed them to provide care virtually, and in non-traditional settings.
Meanwhile, as part of its Operation Warp Speed initiative to accelerate the development of a COVID vaccine, the Trump administration inked a $1.95B deal with pharmaceutical firm Pfizer and a German biotech company, BioNTech, to purchase 100M doses of the vaccine those companies are developing, with an option to buy an additional 500M doses. That’s in addition to contracts already in place to purchase 100M doses of a vaccine from Novavax, and 300M doses from AstraZeneca.
Americans would have free access to the Pfizer vaccine under the new arrangement, with the government subsidizing the entire cost of each dose, estimated to be about $19.50. Similar deals struck by the British government with AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline carry a much lower per dose price tag—between $4 and $10—raising concerns of “profiteering” by pharmaceutical companies in the US vaccine hunt.
The forward purchasing of millions of doses, coupled with rapid progress on vaccine development (at least 25 of the 150 potential vaccines being developed are already in human trials), raises hopes that help is on the way in our battle with the virus. On Friday, however, top White House science advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he doesn’t expect a vaccine to be “widely available” to the American public until the second half of next year. Until then, our hand-to-hand combat with the virus—using non-pharmaceutical interventions such as mask wearing, social distancing, hand hygiene, testing, and contact tracing—must intensify, particularly in light of increasingly worrisome data on the spread and impact of the disease.
US coronavirus update: 4.0M cases; 144K deaths; 48.8M tests conducted.
Photo of COVID-19 victim in Indonesia sparks fascination—and denial
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/2020/07/covid-victim-photograph-sparks-fascination-and-denial-indonesia/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=SpecialEdition_20200724&rid=C1D3D2601560EDF454552B245D039020
Coronavirus victim wrapped in plastic shows what many didn’t want the populace to see.
Photojournalist Joshua Irwandi shadowed hospital workers in Indonesia, taking a striking image of a plastic-wrapped body of a COVID-19 victim while making sure not to reveal distinguishing characteristics, or even gender.
The image, taken for Nat Geo as part of a National Geographic Society grant, struck a chord in the nation of 270 million people. Indonesia had been slow to fight the global pandemic, with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo touting an unproven herbal remedy in March. Some of the reactions to Irwandi’s image, which humanized the suffering from the virus, have been hostile.
Irwandi’s photograph has been displayed on television news and shared by the spokesperson for the nation’s coronavirus response team. The image was widely screen-grabbed and republished without Irwandi’s consent by Indonesian media. More than 340,000 people have “liked” the image on his Instagram page, which he posted after the Nat Geo story published on July 14. More than 1 million people also liked it in its first few hours on Nat Geo’s Instagram.
“It’s clear that the power of this image has galvanized discussion about coronavirus,” Irwandi said from his home in Indonesia. “We have to recognize the sacrifice, and the risk, that the doctors and nurses are making.”
There’s no question the photograph broke through, agreed Fred Ritchin, dean emeritus of the International Center of Photography: “Here we have a mummified person. It makes you look at it, feel terror.”
At the same time, there is distance, Ritchin said. “To me, the image was of someone being thrown out, discarded, wrapped in cellophane, sprayed with disinfectant, mummified, dehumanized, othered … It makes sense in a way. People have othered people with the virus because they don’t want to be anywhere near the virus.”
After Irwandi posted the photograph, a popular singer with a massive following accused the photographer of fabricating the news, said COVID-19 wasn’t so dangerous, and opined that a photojournalist shouldn’t be allowed to take a photograph in a hospital if the family could not see the victim. The singer’s followers erroneously charged Irwandi with setting up the photo with a mannequin, and called him “a slave” of the World Health Organization. The 28-year-old photographer’s ethics were questioned by the government this week, which also suggested the name of the hospital, which was not disclosed in the photograph, should be revealed, CNN Indonesia reported.
”Details of my private life have been published without my permission,“ Irwandi said. ”We’ve gone really astray from the photojournalistic intent of my photograph.“
However, he has gotten support from the nation’s association of photojournalists. They countered that the image met journalistic standards—and demanded the singer apologize, which he subsequently did.
Irwandi says some government officials have said the nation should take COVID-19 more seriously. As of Tuesday, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Tracker had reported 4,320 COVID-19 deaths and 89,869 cases from Indonesia, although the count is believed to be vastly underreported. Many people aren’t practicing social distancing, and hordes have not been wearing masks. Large-scale social restrictions began fading last month.
His hope is that the image encourages Indonesians to take precautions—and save lives. He cited a challenge to photojournalists given in May by Harvard professor Sarah Elizabeth Lewis: to move beyond statistics and show how COVID-19 is affecting people. Other photographers, such as Lynsey Addario, have been motivated to do the same thing. (Addario also has been supported by a National Geographic Society fund for COVID-19 reporting.)
So, what are Irwandi’s next steps?
He paused a moment.
“I think I’m going to stay low for a time,” he said.
America has to be ready for mail voting to avert an election crisis
America has to be ready for mail voting to avert an election crisis
Valid concerns have been raised about mail voting. In New York, the local election boards have taken weeks to count primary ballots received in the mail as a result of the coronavirus, leaving several races for Congress still unresolved. The problems have been blamed on the late decision to send out the absentee ballot applications, outdated ballot counting machines, and the sheer number of mail ballots. The New York case raises a serious alarm with the 2020 election approaching and many states considering more reliance on mail voting in the midst of the pandemic.
Adding to this sense of urgency, President Trump has declared, without evidence, that mail voting is an open invitation to fraud and will be used unfairly against him this fall. He has tweeted that mail voting would make this the “most rigged” election in history. Setting aside the fact that states have relied on absentee and mail voting to hold secure elections for many years, the stumbles in New York and the irresponsible fear mongering by Trump raise the potential of a very real crisis come this fall.
Consider the national disruption surrounding the 2000 election, which was decided for George Bush after a recount in Florida, a month of legal battles, and a controversial split Supreme Court decision. After you add the factor of a second wave of coronavirus cases in the fall and a sitting president shouting “rigged!” to the rafters, and you can understand why some analysts worry that the period following the 2020 election may be one of the most disruptive contests in our modern history.
A crisis foretold, however, can be a crisis averted. Instead of wringing our hands over the recent problems with mail voting in New York, we have to learn from them and from the multiple states that have implemented mail voting systems without problems or fraud. Then states can make common sense preparations to ensure the process goes as quickly and smoothly as possible to prevent a potential election crisis in November.
The fact that election boards were overwhelmed by an influx of absentee ballots in New York must be the rallying cry for dedicating more resources to efficiently implement mail voting systems. Reducing funds available for mail voting initiatives, as some Trump supporters have advocated, in this era when many people have to rely on these ballots or literally risk death, will only serve to suppress voting, which may be the point.
Consider the case of Ohio for a glimpse of what a proactive mail voting initiative looks like. At the urging of Governor Mike DeWine, Republican and Democratic lawmakers unanimously approved their all mail voting primary that was successfully concluded in April. Governors and state legislatures across the country have to learn from Ohio, and additional federal funds have to be made available to assist the efforts.
All those claims that mail ballots are subject to rampant tampering is not evidence that they are, and it suggests the need to educate voters on the issue. Members of the Armed Forces have relied on absentee voting with mail ballots since the Civil War. Trump himself has voted absentee by mail. Meanwhile, three states allow ounties to conduct elections completely by mail if they choose, five other states conduct elections almost entirely by mail, and more than two dozen other states permit their residents to cast absentee ballots by mail without having to provide a reason.
Over 250 million votes have been cast using mailed ballots since 2000, according to the Vote at Home Institute, and yet exhaustive analysis has identified only a tiny fraction of cases of fraud. None of those states that hold their elections almost entirely by mail has seen voter fraud scandals. The bipartisan group Vote Safe, chaired by former Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and former Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, notes that several studies have consistently proven that mail ballots are secure and do not advantage one political party over the other. The team rightly emphasizes that the goal of ensuring the safety of voters as they exercise their rights during a raging pandemic is not a partisan issue.
Whether we improve our voting systems or defund them, the use of mail ballots will inevitably be much greater in the 2020 election than in years past. We can prepare for this eventuality and find innovative ways to deal with the challenges that arise, or we can shift our gaze from another crisis foretold and suffer the major consequences come November.
Winston Churchill noted that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms that have been tried. In the midst of a pandemic across the country that has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, exercising our right to vote by mail instead of in person may also seem like the worst solution, except for all other options.
U.S. passes 4 million coronavirus cases as pace of new infections roughly doubles
The rapid spread of the virus this summer is striking, taking just 15 days to go from 3 million confirmed cases to 4 million. By comparison, the increase from 1 million cases to 2 million spanned 45 days from April 28 to June 11, and the leap to 3 million then took 27 days.
Trump’s cancellation of the in-person portion of the Republican National Convention planned for next month in Jacksonville, Fla., represented a remarkable reversal. He had insisted for months on a made-for-television spectacle that would have packed people close together in a state that is now an epicenter of the resurgent pandemic.
On Thursday, he conceded that was not going to work. “The timing for this event is not right,” Trump said during the latest of somber, solo White House briefings this week. “It’s just not right with what’s been happening.”
Florida reported 173 deaths on Thursday, its highest single-day count of new deaths, and also reported more than 10,200 new coronavirus cases.
In a scathing statement blaming the surge of new cases on Trump’s “failure to care,” presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said the president “quit on this country and waved the white flag of surrender.”
Meanwhile, nearly every public health metric suggests America is badly losing its fight against the virus.
Positivity rates have reached alarming levels in numerous states, hospitalizations are soaring, and more than 1,100 new coronavirus deaths were reported across the United States on Wednesday, marking the first time since May 29 that the daily count exceeded that number, according to Washington Post tracking.
The rolling seven-day average of infections has doubled in less than a month, reaching more than 66,000 new cases per day Wednesday. The U.S. death toll now exceeds 141,000.
As a result, many businesses appear to be pulling back after their attempts to resume more normal operations proved premature, and an additional 1.4 million American workers filed for unemployment benefits last week. It was the first time since March that new claims rose. Another 980,000 new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims — the benefits offered to self-employed and gig workers — were also filed.
Congress, meanwhile, struggled to confront the crisis. Senate Republicans killed Trump’s payroll tax cut proposal on Thursday, widening an unusual rift with the White House over the cost and contents of the latest national coronavirus relief package.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had planned to roll out a $1 trillion GOP bill Thursday morning, but that was canceled amid the intraparty conflicts.
Administration officials then floated a piecemeal approach, involving several different aid bills, but ran into opposition from lawmakers in both parties.
Trump’s briefing Thursday afternoon, his third of the week, reflected an effort to increase popular support for his management of the coronavirus outbreak, which even many of his allies have criticized. About 2 out of 3 Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, a new poll found.
Trump dismissed or played down the risk of the virus for months after it had begun spreading in the United States and has been a self-described cheerleader for rapid reopening of businesses and schools shuttered to help slow its spread.
The survey of 1,057 adults in the United States, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, also showed that 3 out of 4 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support mandatory face coverings when people are outside their own homes.
Democrats overwhelmingly favor mask mandates, at 89 percent. The majority of Republicans — 59 percent — also support them.
Ninety-five percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans say they wear face coverings when leaving home. Overall, more Americans — 86 percent — are wearing masks compared with in May, when 73 percent were doing so.
Trump resisted wearing a mask in public until earlier this month, despite calls to set a good example from the top. He now calls it patriotic to wear a mask, though he still does not wear one consistently and says people should decide for themselves. Trump carries a black-cloth version in his pocket, which he says is sufficient for those instances when he is close to people who have not been screened for the virus.
Trump’s shift may reflect a growing consensus in favor of masks, although it is not clear that opposition to them has ebbed among some of the president’s strongest political supporters.
The business community is struggling, too. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines posted big quarterly losses between April and July in their earnings reports released Thursday, projecting that travel demand will not rebound anytime soon.
In American’s second quarter, revenue dropped more than 86 percent, to $1.6 billion, from nearly $12 billion a year ago, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The company posted a net loss of nearly $2.1 billion, attributing it to stay-at-home orders, border closures and travel restrictions.
“As a result, we have experienced an unprecedented decline in the demand for air travel, which has resulted in a material deterioration in our revenues,” the company said in the earnings report. “While the length and severity of the reduction in demand due to Covid-19 is uncertain, we expect our results of operations for the remainder of 2020 to be severely impacted.”
Southwest posted revenue of $1 billion in its second quarter, an almost 83 percent dip compared with a year ago. The company also posted a net loss of $915 million.
Trump also took a small step back from his insistence that schools should open on time this fall, conceding instead that some schools might need to delay in-person learning. Many school districts have already announced that decision.
Trump has been critical of guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, saying it made it too tough for schools to reopen, and promised new guidelines would be issued. On Thursday, the CDC released several documents emphasizing the benefits of in-person school, in line with Trump’s messaging. Some of the guidance was written by White House officials rather than experts at the CDC, people familiar with the process said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decision-making.
The new guidelines for school administrators mention precautions outlined in previous documents, but they appear to drop specific reference to keeping students six feet apart — something many schools find almost impossible to do if they are fully reopened. This document also suggests that schools consider closing only if there is “substantial, uncontrolled transmission” of the virus, and not necessarily even then.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) echoed Trump in making a case for students to return to classrooms, despite the state’s teachers union suing over an order forcing schools to fully reopen. Meanwhile, a new poll showed that most parents would prefer to delay the start of in-person school.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” DeSantis said that schoolchildren are “by far at the least risk for coronavirus, thankfully.”
“We also know they play the smallest role by far in transmission of the virus, and yet they’ve really been asked to shoulder the brunt of our control measures,” said DeSantis, a close Trump ally who had volunteered his state for the Republican convention next month.
DeSantis said that the “evidence-based decision” is for all parents to have the option of in-class instruction for their children if they choose. He said those who are not comfortable with sending their children back to school could continue distance learning.
The role children play in spreading the virus is still being studied, with experts saying that results are not definitive. A South Korean study found that children over the age of 10 were as likely to transmit the virus as adults, while those under 10 were less likely to spread it.
Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Wednesday on Fox News that the United States is launching a study of its own, adding that the data “really needs to be confirmed here.”
Among the most visible American institutions searching for a path forward is the sports industry. Major League Baseball began a pandemic-shortened season on Thursday, playing in empty stadiums amid questions about whether the sport can make it through October without having to abort. It is as much a science experiment as a championship pursuit.
Players are prohibited from spitting or high-fiving. Foul balls that wind up in the stands will remain there.
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, threw out the first pitch for the Washington Nationals home opener against the New York Yankees. Nationals star outfielder Juan Soto tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday and missed the game.
Meanwhile, Japan marked a year’s delay of the Olympic Games on Thursday. Tokyo was to host the 2020 Summer Olympics starting Friday. A 15-minute ceremony in Tokyo’s newly built $1.4 billion Olympic Stadium started the countdown to the delayed games, now set to begin on July 23, 2021. The city also marked a new daily record in reported cases on Thursday, with 366.
A poll this week by Japan’s Kyodo News Agency found that fewer than 1 in 4 people in Japan even want to host the games anymore. One-third of respondents said the games should be canceled, while 36 percent expressed interest in postponing them for more than a year.
HENRY KOTULA 