COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Only three US states are reporting a decline in new Covid-19 cases compared to last week, as the country hit its highest daily rate of new cases in almost two months. As of Saturday night, new cases were down in Texas, Missouri and South Carolina, while 21 states reported a rise in cases and a little more than half held steady compared with the week before. Friday, there were 54,506 new reported cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, the highest single day case number since 64,601 cases were reported on August 14.

Nine U.S. states have reported record increases in COVID-19 cases over the last seven days, mostly in the upper Midwest and West where chilly weather is forcing more activities indoors. On Saturday alone, four states - Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin - saw record increases in new cases and nationally nearly 49,000 new infections were reported, the highest for a Saturday in seven weeks, according to a Reuters analysis. … Health experts have long warned that colder temperatures driving people inside could promote the spread of the virus. Daytime highs in the upper Midwest are now in the 50s Fahrenheit (10 Celsius).

Adults can sometimes suffer from dangerous symptoms that resemble a coronavirus-linked syndrome in children, researchers with the US CDC said Friday. They're calling it multisystem inflammatory syndrome in adults, or MIS-A, and say it's similar to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C. Like MIS-C, MIS-A is not obviously linked to coronavirus and sufferers may not show any other symptoms that would point to Covid-19 infection. But MIS-A has killed at least three patients and, similar to Covid-19, disproportionately hits racial and ethnic minorities, the CDC team said.

Word about the three senators’ results prompted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to announce over the weekend that the chamber would be out until Oct. 19, suggesting he did not see an imminent deal on the bill following a week of talks between Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Facing an increase in coronavirus infections in certain neighborhoods, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday that he would close all nonessential businesses, public and private schools, and daycares in nine ZIP codes throughout Brooklyn and Queens, to ensure that the virus doesn't spread further. … After initially leading the nation in positive coronavirus tests, New York City was able to get the virus under control earlier this year through strong messaging on the importance of social distancing and the widespread closures of businesses. But in recent weeks, city officials and residents had been watching the numbers tick back up, particularly in Orthodox Jewish areas. The areas de Blasio mentioned in Brooklyn and Queens have been above a 3% positivity level on testing for seven or more consecutive days.

Governments around the world are using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to restrict freedoms, punish independent news operations and attack minorities, according to a global survey by Freedom House, the U.S.-based nonprofit known for its annual assessment of global democracy. The report, published Friday, found that 91 countries have imposed new controls on news media because of the pandemic, and at least 72 have restricted free speech or criticism of the government.

Governments around the world went in big, hard and fast in their initial efforts to blunt the economic hit from the global pandemic, drumming up roughly $10 trillion in spending plans through June … Government and central bank officials are now devising more targeted follow-up programs they hope will help the industries and people still displaced in the global downturn. With tens of millions remaining unemployed, this second round of government aid will still be counted in the trillions of dollars.

The US economy saw another 661,000 jobs added back in September and a modest improvement in the unemployment rate, as the recovery in the labor market continues as a stagnating rate. The addition in non-farm payrolls marked the fifth straight month of net job gains. Still, the economy remains far from recuperating the jobs lost during the nadir of the pandemic period in March and April. Between those two months, employment fell by more than 22 million. Through August, just 10.6 million jobs were brought back.

Amazon said Thursday that nearly 20,000 of its workers have tested positive or been presumed positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. But the online retail behemoth, revealing the data for the first time, said that the infection rate of its employees was well below that seen in the general U.S. population. Amazon said in a corporate blog Thursday that it examined data from March 1 to Sept. 19 on 1.37 million workers at Amazon and Whole Foods Market across the U.S.

Wisconsin registered a record increase in new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, while New York state reported a worrisome uptick of positive coronavirus tests in 20 ‘hot spots.’ The 3,000 new infections reported in Wisconsin fanned fears that the sheer number of new patients could overwhelm hospitals. Florida, which has four times as many people as Wisconsin, reported 2,628 new cases on Thursday.

As has been seen nationwide, black and Hispanic people were more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white people, the findings showed. And Black and Hispanic people who were hospitalized were more likely to have two or more pre-existing conditions (38% and 43%, respectively) than white people (34%). However, survival rates among Black and Hispanic patients were at least as good as those for white patients after the researchers controlled for age, sex, income levels and pre-existing conditions, according to the study. The results were published online Sept. 25 in JAMA Network Open.