COVID-19 News from Around the Web

The U.S. economy suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic shattered consumer and business spending, and a nascent recovery is under threat from a resurgence in new cases of coronavirus. The bulk of the deepest contraction in at least 73 years reported by the Commerce Department on Thursday occurred in April when activity almost ground to an abrupt halt after restaurants, bars and factories among others were shuttered in mid-March to slow the spread of coronavirus. More than five years of growth have been wiped out. … Gross domestic product collapsed at a 32.9% annualized rate last quarter, the deepest decline in output since the government started keeping records in 1947. The drop in GDP was more than triple the previous all-time decline of 10% in the second quarter of 1958. The economy contracted at a 5.0% pace in the first quarter. It fell into recession in February.

There’s no end in sight to the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top government health experts will tell Congress on Friday. “While it remains unclear how long the pandemic will last, COVID-19 activity will likely continue for some time,” Fauci, along with CDC head Dr. Robert Redfield and Health and Human Services testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir say in prepared testimony for a special Hose panel investigating the pandemic. At a time when early progress seems to have been lost and uncertainty clouds the nation’s path forward, Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, is calling on lawmakers — and all other Americans — to go back to public health basics such as social distancing and wearing masks.

U.S. coronavirus deaths rose by almost 25,000 in July and cases doubled in at least 18 states during the month, according to a Reuters tally, dealing a crushing blow to hopes of quickly reopening the economy. The United States has recorded nearly 1.8 million new cases in July out of its total 4.5 million infections, an increase of 66% with many states yet to report on Friday. Deaths in July rose at least 19% to over 152,000 total. The biggest increases were in Florida, with over 300,000 new cases in July, followed by California and Texas with about 250,000 each. Those three states also saw cases double in June.

While deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. are mounting rapidly, public health experts are seeing a flicker of good news: The second surge of confirmed cases appears to be leveling off. Scientists aren’t celebrating by any means, warning that the trend is driven by four big, hard-hit places — Arizona, California, Florida and Texas — and that cases are rising in close to 30 states in all, with the outbreak’s center of gravity seemingly shifting from the Sun Belt toward the Midwest. Some experts wonder whether the apparent caseload improvements will endure. It’s also not clear when deaths will start coming down. COVID-19 deaths do not move in perfect lockstep with the infection curve, for the simple reason that it can take weeks to get sick and die from the virus. The future? “I think it’s very difficult to predict,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s foremost infectious-disease expert.

Florida reported 253 new COVID-19 related deaths on Thursday. The fatalities mark the third day in a row that the Sunshine State has reported its highest single-day death toll during the pandemic. The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday reported 186 new deaths due to COVID-19. The next day, that number jumped to 216. Both records were eclipsed Thursday when 9,943 additional COVID cases were also confirmed by the state's department of health. More than 6,300 people in Florida have now died from the disease, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

Coronavirus infections appear to be picking up in the U.S. Midwest, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force said on Thursday, as Ohio reported a record day of cases and Wisconsin’s governor mandated the use of masks. The coronavirus outbreak is “moving up” into Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska from the south “because of vacations and other reasons of travel,” Deborah Birx told Fox News. Ohio’s health department said the state had its highest single-day increase in cases since the pandemic started in January, which Governor Mike DeWine told a news conference was “certainly not good news.” A few states away in Wisconsin, Tony Evers joined dozens of other governors who have ordered residents to wear face coverings in public.

As COVID-19 infections surge across the United States, 11 states could find themselves with too few doctors to treat non-COVID patients in intensive care units, a new report finds. Arizona and Texas already have a shortage of such doctors, the researchers added. "This week's update shows that Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Washington all could face a shortage of intensivists," said researcher Patricia Pittman, director of George Washington University's Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity in Washington, D.C. "In these states, less than 50% of intensivists are available for non-COVID patients."

Herman Cain, a successful businessman who ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and later became a backer of President Donald Trump, has died from complications from COVID-19, according to a statement posted Thursday on his personal website. He was 74. "Herman Cain — our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us — has passed away," the statement posted to his website said. "We knew when he was first hospitalized with COVID-19 that this was going to be a rough fight. He had trouble breathing and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. We all prayed that the initial meds they gave him would get his breathing back to normal, but it became clear pretty quickly that he was in for a battle," the statement said. Last month, Cain had tested positive for COVID-19, just a little over a week after he had attended a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20.

As coronavirus cases surge in hard-hit Florida, so do the turnaround times for test results. The reasons are many: Often it has to do with lab staffing, backlog, or equipment shortages. Some tests are done in house, while others are sent to overloaded labs out of state. Health experts say test results that come back after two or three days are nearly worthless, because by then the window for tracing the person’s contacts to prevent additional infections has essentially closed. But there is one place in Central Florida where a group of people are being tested and getting results within a day: the NBA.

Earlier this month, when the Trump administration told hospitals to send crucial data about coronavirus cases and intensive care capacity to a new online system, it promised the change would be worth it. The data would be more complete, transparent, and an improvement over the old platform run by the CDC, administration officials said. Instead, the public data hub created under the new system is updated erratically and is rife with inconsistencies and errors, data analysts say. … The delays and problems with data on the availability of beds, ventilators and safety equipment could have profound consequences as infections and deaths soar throughout most of the country, public health experts say.

Children under 5 can carry just as much of the coronavirus in their noses as older children and adults, researchers at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago reported Thursday. The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, raises the possibility that young kids may be able to spread COVID-19 as easily as adults, even if they aren't that sick. Dr. Taylor Heald-Sargent, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Lurie Children's, and her colleagues analyzed data from the diagnostic tests of 145 COVID-19 patients who had mild to moderate cases of the illness. The tests look for pieces of the virus's RNA, or genetic code, to make a diagnosis. The 145 patients were split into three groups: those under 5, those ages 5 to 17, and adults ages 18 to 65. "Children had equal — if not more — viral RNA in their noses compared to older children and adults," Heald-Sargent said.

More than 1.4 million laid-off Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, further evidence of the devastation the coronavirus outbreak has unleashed on the U.S. economy. The continuing wave of job cuts is occurring against the backdrop of a spike in virus cases that has led many states to halt plans to reopen businesses and has caused millions of consumers to delay any return to traveling, shopping and other normal economic activity. Those trends have forced many businesses to cut jobs or at least delay hiring. The Labor Department's report Thursday marked the 19th straight week that more than 1 million people have applied for unemployment benefits. Before the coronavirus hit hard in March, the number of Americans seeking unemployment checks had never exceeded 700,000 in any one week, even during the Great Recession.

One person in the United States died about every minute from COVID-19 on Wednesday as the national death toll surpassed 150,000, the highest in the world The United States recorded 1,461 new deaths on Wednesday, the highest one-day increase since 1,484 on May 27, according to a Reuters tally. U.S. coronavirus deaths are rising at their fastest rate in two months and have increased by 10,000 in the past 11 days. Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week recently fell for the first time since June. A spike in infections in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas this month has overwhelmed hospitals. The rise has forced states to make a U-turn on reopening economies that were restricted by lockdowns in March and April to slow the spread of the virus.