COVID-19 News from Around the Web

The Adamus children are among tens of thousands of students across the nation who resumed in-person school Monday for the first time since March. Parents in Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee are also among those navigating the new academic year this week. Many schools that are recommencing in-person instruction are also giving parents a stay-at-home virtual option; Adamus, like many other parents, decided against that. Other schools are planning a hybrid approach, with youngsters alternating between in-person classes and online learning. But an uptick in COVID-19 cases in many states has prompted districts to scrap in-person classes at least for the start of the school year, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington.

Dozens of colleges and universities nationwide started 2020 already under financial stress. They’d spent the past decade grappling with declining enrollments and weakening support from state governments. Now, with the added pressures of the coronavirus pandemic, the fabric of American higher education has become even more strained: The prospect of lower revenues has already forced some schools to slash budgets and could lead to waves of closings, experts and researchers say.

Now, tenants are crowding courtrooms — or appearing virtually — to detail how the pandemic has upended their lives. Some are low-income families who have endured evictions before, but there are also plenty of wealthier families facing homelessness for the first time — and now being forced to navigate overcrowded and sometimes dangerous shelter systems amid the pandemic. Experts predict the problem will only get worse in the coming weeks, with 30 million unemployed and uncertainty whether Congress will extend the extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits that expired Friday. The federal eviction moratorium that protects more than 12 million renters living in federally subsidized apartments or units with federally backed mortgages expired July 25. If it’s not extended, landlords can initiate eviction proceedings in 30 days.

The coronavirus outbreak has significantly harmed the finances of U.S. Hispanics. … As the United States locked down amid COVID-19, the unemployment rate for Hispanics increased from 4.8% in February to a peak of 18.5% in April before dropping to 14.5% in June, nonseasonally adjusted. This exceeds levels from the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when the unemployment rate peaked at 13.9% in January 2010. Hispanic women have experienced an especially steep rise in their unemployment rate, which jumped from 5.5% to 20.5% between February and April 2020.

By almost every measure, far fewer cancers are being diagnosed during the coronavirus pandemic, whether the decline shows up in screening mammograms and colonoscopies or in other tests ordered after troubling symptoms prompt a doctor’s visit. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open notes a steep downward slope in newly identified cases of six common cancer types, based on weekly numbers from Quest Diagnostics. The clinical laboratory’s data add to similar analyses conducted in May and July from the electronic medical records vendor Epic and a July report from the COVID and Cancer Research Network on trends in cancer-related patient encounters.

As essential workers across the country accuse employers of failing to keep them safe on the job, Senate Republicans are pushing to shield businesses from legal liability if workers or customers are exposed to COVID-19. Mike Jackson was working a mandatory overtime shift at a Wisconsin engine plant in May when a co-worker saw him slumped over at his station. The 45-year-old was sent home for the day, but was back on the assembly line two days later. But when he returned, Jackson collapsed again and was sent to the hospital, where he tested positive for COVID-19. He died 10 days later. According to his mother Virl Newsom, Jackson was worried if he didn't show up, he'd risk losing his job at Briggs Stratton, where he'd worked since 2017.

Schools and college campuses across the country should be OK to reopen, but officials need to proceed with caution and make safety a priority, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday. The default position with K-12 schools should be to reopen them, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. There are two big reasons schools should go back to in-person learning, Fauci said Monday. Students need the psychological and nutritional benefits of being in school, and parents may have to "dramatically modify their work schedule." "The primary consideration should always be the safety, the health of the welfare of the children, as well as the teachers and the secondary effects for spreading (to) the parents and other family members," he said. On college campuses, Fauci said testing will be the key to reopening. Plans should include testing people before they arrive on campus, when they arrive and quarantining them for 14 days. Colleges should still proceed with caution, though. "If done properly, it would not be a risk, but then again, you've got to be careful when you get people coming in from outside," he said. "But I think if they maintain the guidelines that are put together for people coming back, that they should be fine."

The US Food and Drug Administration has expanded its warning about hand sanitizers to avoid, with the list now topping 100. The agency first warned consumers in June about hand sanitizers containing methanol, which can be toxic when absorbed through the skin and potentially deadly if ingested. Since then, several such products have been recalled by manufacturers and pulled from store shelves. Now, the FDA is also warning about hand sanitizers containing insufficient levels of alcohol. "FDA test results show certain hand sanitizers have concerningly low levels of ethyl alcohol or isopropyl alcohol, which are active ingredients in hand sanitizer products," the agency said in its updated warning on July 31. Nearly all of the hand sanitizers on the FDA's list were manufactured in Mexico. The agency has recommended recalls for most of the products, and has also issued import alerts to halt them from entering the country.

The United States will need to bring its daily coronavirus case count down to 10,000 by September to gain some level of control over the pandemic before fall, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said Monday. The country continues to log 50,000 to 60,000 new cases a day, suggesting it is "right in the middle of the first wave," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a livestream with the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Howard Bauchner. "If we don't get them down, then we're going to have a really bad situation in the fall," Fauci said. The prediction is based on two factors: the expected flu season, which sickens thousands of people in the U.S. each year, and cooler weather, forcing people indoors.

The novel coronavirus is surging in several Midwestern states that had not previously seen high infection rates while average daily deaths remained elevated Monday in Southern and Western states hit with a resurgence of the disease after lifting some restrictions earlier this summer. Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma are among those witnessing the largest percentage surge of infections over the past week, while, adjusted for population, the number of new cases in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama still outpaced all other states, according to a Washington Post analysis of health data. Experts also see worrying trends emerging in major East Coast and Midwest cities, and they anticipate major outbreaks in college towns as classes resume in August.

Mississippi is heading for a title that no state would want: It is on track to overtake Florida to become the No. 1 state for new coronavirus infections per capita, according to researchers at Harvard. The state already faces high levels of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity. Most of the state's major hospitals have had challenges with capacity, particularly ICU capacity, in recent weeks, says Woodward, who is also dean of the University of Mississippi's medical school and an emergency medicine doctor. As of July 31, only 17% of the state's 904 ICU beds were available, according to the state health department.

With the Trump administration aiming to deliver 300 million doses of vaccine against the coronavirus as early as January, state officials and health experts say they remain in the dark about key details and, therefore, are inadequately prepared for what is expected to be the largest single vaccination campaign ever undertaken. Getting shots into the arms of millions of Americans is a massive undertaking, they say, requiring extraordinary coordination, planning and communication. But with only six months to the government’s target date for approving a vaccine, the administration has shared limited and often confusing information about its plans for distribution, making it difficult for overwhelmed state and local officials, including those who run immunization programs, to prepare.

The Trump administration’s plan to provide every nursing home with a fast COVID-19 testing machine comes with an asterisk: The government won’t supply enough test kits to check staff and residents beyond an initial couple of rounds. A program that sounded like a game changer when it was announced last month at the White House is now prompting concerns that it could turn into another unfulfilled promise for nursing homes, whose residents and staff represent a tiny share of the U.S. population but account for as many as 4 in 10 coronavirus deaths, according to some estimates.