COVID-19 News from Around the Web

California, Florida and Texas, the three largest U.S. states, all set one-day records for fatalities from COVID-19 on Wednesday, a Reuters tally showed, and the Miami-area school district said students would not return to classrooms when the new academic year begins as deaths from the virus spiked nationwide. The United States has registered 10,000 deaths over the last 11 days, the fastest surge since early June, prompting heated debates between the American public and its leaders over the best course forward. New infections do not appear to be rising at the same pace. “In light of viral surge in our community, it’s in the best interest of students and employees to commence the 20-21 school year at a distance,” Miami-Dade County Public Schools said on Twitter. Classes are set to begin Aug. 31 in Miami-Dade, which has more than 350,000 students, making it the country’s fourth largest school district. With the scheduled reopening of schools days away in some states, President Donald Trump has pushed for students to return to class while teacher unions and local officials have called for them to stay home.

The scene inside United Memorial Medical Center in Houston has become all too familiar: overwhelmed medical staff fighting to curb the wave of COVID-19 patients that come through the hospital’s doors every day. While in earlier pandemic hot spots like New York the medical emergency has subsided, Texas is among the many U.S. states battling a resurgence of the virus that is straining their healthcare systems. Dr. Joseph Varon, the chief medical officer of United Memorial Medical Center (UMMC), said he is afraid he will soon face a dilemma many doctors elsewhere said they confronted earlier in the pandemic: deciding who to save. “I’m afraid that at some point in time I’m going to have to make some very serious decisions,” he told Reuters in an interview. “I’m starting to get the idea that I cannot save everybody.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Capitol officials issued broad new mask requirements Wednesday after a Republican member of Congress tested positive for the coronavirus. The member, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, often shunned wearing masks and was known to vote without one. Pelosi announced Wednesday evening that all members will be required to wear a mask when voting on the House floor and that one will be provided if anyone forgets. Several hours later, the House sergeant-at-arms and the Capitol’s top physician issued an order requiring masks inside House office buildings, with few exceptions. That mandate goes into effect at 8 a.m. Thursday. Pelosi said failure to wear a mask on the House floor is a “serious breach of decorum” for which members could be removed from the chamber.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Wednesday that trials have shown "consistently" that hydroxychloroquine is "not effective" in treating the disease caused by the coronavirus. Fauci's comments came as President Donald Trump faces questions over his promotion Monday night of a now-deleted video in which a doctor claimed that the drug was a "cure" for COVID-19. Speaking with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the data don't support the claim. "The scientific data, the cumulative data on trials, clinical trials that were valid — namely, clinical trials that were randomized and controlled in the proper way — all of those trials show consistently that hydroxychloroquine is not effective in the treatment of coronavirus disease or COVID-19," he said.

Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence. The U.S. government’s chief counterintelligence executive warned in a rare public statement Friday about Russia’s continued use of internet trolls to advance their goals. Even apart from politics, the twin crises buffeting the country and much of the world — the pandemic and race relations and protests — have offered fertile territory for misinformation or outfight falsehoods. Trump himself has come under scrutiny for sharing misinformation about a disproven drug for treating the coronavirus in videos that were taken down by Twitter and Facebook. Officials described the Russian disinformation as part of an ongoing and persistent effort to advance false narratives and cause confusion. They did not say whether the effort behind these particular websites was directly related to the November election, though some of the coverage appeared to denigrate Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, and called to mind Russian efforts in 2016 to exacerbate race relations in America and drive corruption allegations against U.S. political figures.

It's what I call a double whammy against the minority, but particularly the African American and Latinx community. You don't like to generalize, but as a demographic group, the African American community is more likely to be in a job that does not allow them to stay at home and do teleworking most of the time, they're in essential jobs. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of African Americans who are not, that could just as easily do that. But as a broad demographic group, you're outside, you're exposed. You may be in a financial or economic or employment situation where you don't have as much control over physical separation, which is one of the ways that you prevent infection. So the likelihood of your getting infected is more than the likelihood of someone not in your position. The other side of the coin — and this has a lot to do with long-term social determinants of health — as a demographic group, African Americans have disproportionately greater incidents of the underlying conditions that allow you to have a more unfavorable outcome, namely more serious disease, hospitalization and even death. That is, diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, obesity, chronic kidney disease. If you look at populations as a whole, and you look at the demographic group of African Americans and the demographic group of the rest of the population, or Caucasian, what you see is a much greater incidence. So you have two things going against you: You are physically in a position that's more likely you're going to get infected, and if you do get infected, you're more likely to have a serious outcome.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Wednesday that the viral epidemic is endangering the modest economic recovery that followed a collapse in hiring and spending this spring. As a result, he said, the Fed plans to keep interest rates pinned near zero well into the future. That faltering economy, pressured by a resurgence of the virus, has heightened the need for Congress to continue providing significant financial aid, Powell said. Members of the House and Senate are negotiating a new package but are nowhere near agreement. Senate Republicans and the White House are proposing a plan that would provide less help for unemployed Americans than they are now receiving. Speaking at a virtual news conference after a two-day Fed meeting ended, Powell said the economy had rebounded after nearly all states lifted their broad business shutdown measures in May. But since then, he noted, as new confirmed cases have soared, measures of spending and hiring have slipped or plateaued at low levels.

U.S. energy consumption plummeted to its lowest level in more than 30 years this spring as the nation’s economy largely shut down because of the coronavirus, federal officials reported Wednesday. The drop was driven by less demand for coal that is burned for electricity and oil that’s refined into gasoline and jet fuel, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The declines were in line with lower energy usage around the globe as the pandemic seized up economies. Those trends are turning around as commercial activity resumes but the impact has already been profound — including energy companies filing for bankruptcy protection and a forecasted dip in annual U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions. Overall U.S. energy consumption dropped 14 % during April compared to a year earlier, the energy administration said. That’s the lowest monthly level since 1989 and the largest decrease ever recorded in data that’s been collected since 1973.

Months after the coronavirus pandemic shut down American sports, the games are returning. For now, at least. Baseball and women's basketball have begun, hockey and basketball will return this week and football's season is just over a month away. Their restarts have broad similarities. All of the professional leagues decided to sharply restrict or outright ban fans from attending, focusing instead on the television audience at home. They also will all be repeatedly testing players and staff for infection throughout the season. They most sharply diverge in where the games will be held. Generally, sports with smaller roster sizes (NBA, NHL) are playing in "bubbles," isolated from the outside community, while sports with larger rosters (NFL, MLB) are playing at their regular stadiums and traveling between cities.