COVID-19 News from Around the Web

The United States surpassed 170,000 coronavirus deaths on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, as health officials express concerns over COVID-19 complicating the fall flu season. Deaths rose by 483 on Sunday, with Florida, Texas and Louisiana, leading the rise in fatalities. The United States has at least 5.4 million confirmed cases in total of the novel coronavirus, the highest in the world and likely an undercount as the country still has not ramped up testing to the recommended levels. Cases are falling in most states except for Hawaii, South Dakota and Illinois. Public health officials and authorities are concerned about a possible fall resurgence in cases amid the start of the flu season, which will likely exacerbate efforts to treat the coronavirus.

The number and rate of coronavirus cases in children in the U.S. have been "steadily increasing" between March and July, according to new guidance released Friday by the CDC. The surge in cases comes as schools across the country struggle with returning to in-person learning. While children make up about 22% of the nation's population, they only account for about 7.3% of all COVID-19 cases, as of August 3. The CDC said that tracking coronavirus cases in children has been difficult due to a lack of widespread testing and the prioritization of testing for adults. The CDC said that transmission of the virus among kids may have been lower in the spring and summer due to strict stay-at-home orders, warning that trends are likely to change after the return to in-person learning and other activities.

It can seem to public health officials that giving an inch means people will take a mile. In the months since most U.S. states emerged from coronavirus lockdowns, wearing a mask has become a matter of politics more than safety, “pandemic parties” have been broken up in California, New York and Florida, and many states that forged ahead with reopening plans in May have been forced to pause or reverse the orders. It’s in this fraught climate that public health experts are saying that if other less-extreme measures are not working or being ignored, another round of lockdowns — as politically unpopular as they may be — may be the only way to keep an already-dire situation from spiraling further out of control.

The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday authorized emergency use of a new and inexpensive saliva test for Covid-19 that could greatly expand testing capacity. The new test, which is called SalivaDirect and was developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, allows saliva samples to be collected in any sterile container. It is a much less invasive process than the nasal swabs currently used to test for the virus that causes Covid-19, but one that has so far yielded highly sensitive and similar results. The test, which also avoids a key step that has caused shortages of chemical reagents used in other tests, can run approximately 90 samples in fewer than three hours in a lab, although the number can be greater in big labs with automation.

Researchers from Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China traced more than 3,410 close contacts of 391 COVID-19 index cases between January and March 2020 to evaluate the risk for disease transmission in different settings. They found that risk for secondary transmission of COVID-19 was less than 4 percent among close contacts of persons with COVID-19. In addition, secondary infections acquired while using public transportation were rare. In contrast, 1 in 10 household contacts was found to be infected. The researchers also found that patients with more clinically severe disease were more likely to infect their close contacts than were less severe index cases. Those with asymptomatic cases were the least likely to infect their close contacts.

Only a handful of contact tracers working to slow COVID-19 in 125 communities near Chicago speak Spanish, despite significant Hispanic populations. Churches and advocacy groups in the Houston area are trying to convince immigrants to cooperate when health officials call. And in California, immigrants are being trained as contact tracers to ease mistrust. The crucial job of reaching people who test positive for the coronavirus and those they’ve come in contact with is proving especially difficult in immigrant communities because of language barriers, confusion and fear of the government. The failure of health departments across the U.S. to adequately investigate coronavirus outbreaks among non-English speakers is all the more fraught given the soaring and disproportionate case counts among Latinos in many states.

In a bid to survive, airlines are desperately trying to convince a wary public that measures like mandatory face masks and hospital-grade air filters make sitting in a plane safer than many other indoor settings during the coronavirus pandemic. It isn’t working. Surveys indicate that instead of growing comfortable with air travel, more people are becoming skeptical about it. In the United States, airline bookings have stalled in the past month after slowly rising — a reaction to a new surge of reported virus infections. Globally, air travel is down more than 85% from a year ago, according to industry figures. The implications for the airline industry are grave.