COVID-19 News from Around the Web

The United States reported more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, marking the first time since June 10 the nation has surpassed that grim milestone, as California closed in on passing New York in total infections. Nearly 142,000 Americans have now died from the illness caused by the coronavirus, a toll that experts warn will likely surge following recent record spikes in case numbers and an alarming rise in hospitalizations in many states.

The reason is simple: the US is experiencing a surge in cases, with states such as Florida, Texas and California reporting thousands of new confirmed cases in recent weeks. At the peak of the pandemic in April, 59,538 people were hospitalized nationwide on April 15, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That number reached its lowest level on June 15 with 27,772 people hospitalized. But as of July 20, that number has climbed back up to 58,330 -- just hints beneath April's high. … while President Donald Trump, his allies and some Republican governors have pointed to increased testing as the reason, others have rightly pointed out that hospitalizations are not the result of testing, as testing does not send people to the hospital.

The true number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. could be anywhere from six to 24 times higher than the confirmed number of cases, depending on location, according to a large federal study that relied on data from 10 U.S. cities and states. The vast majority of Americans, however, are still vulnerable to Covid-19. The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine, relied on serological tests — blood screens that search for antibodies to the virus and that determine whether someone was previously infected. … In seven of the 10 sites, the estimated number of cases was 10 times the number of reported cases.

President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that the “nasty horrible’” coronavirus will get worse in the U.S. before it gets better, but he also tried to paint a rosy picture of efforts to conquer the disease that has claimed more than 140,000 American lives in just five months. He also professed a newfound respect for the protective face masks he has seldom worn. He pulled one from his pocket in the White House briefing room but didn’t put it on. After a three-month hiatus from his freewheeling daily virus briefings, Trump returned to the podium, keeping the stage to himself without the public health experts who were staples of his previous events but keeping close to scripted remarks prepared by aides.

Washington is racing to complete a fifth round of legislation to address the ongoing, and still surging, coronavirus pandemic in the next three weeks. The two parties and the White House are at odds over what the major pillars of the legislation should include and how much it should cost. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wants to get a bill to President Trump by Aug. 7 when Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the rest of the summer — a time when lawmakers traditionally hit the campaign trail in an election year.

After a sudden surge in reported COVID- 19 cases beginning at the end of June, Houston's daily case count and hospital admission rates seem to be leveling off. Health officials say they're not ready to determine if the data are statistically significant yet, but it's a positive trend. … Houston hospitals are not overwhelmed, though they've moved into what the Texas Medical Center calls the secondary ICU surge plan. Collectively, the center's hospitals are using just under 5% of those surge ICUs. However, Houston's two hospitals owned and operated by the county say that COVID-19 patients are taking up more than half of their ICU beds.

Early data from trials of three potential COVID-19 vaccines released on Monday, including a closely-watched candidate from Oxford University, increased confidence that a vaccine can train the immune system to recognize and fight the novel coronavirus without serious side effects. The vaccine being developed by British drugmaker AstraZeneca along with the Oxford University, induced an immune response in all study participants who received two doses without any worrisome side effects. A coronavirus vaccine under development by CanSinoBiologics Inc and China’s military research unit, likewise showed that it appears to be safe and induced an immune response in most of the 508 healthy volunteers who got one dose of the vaccine, researchers reported. Some 77% of study volunteers experienced side effects like fever or injection site pain, but none considered to be serious. German biotech BioNTech and U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc released details from a small study in Germany of a different type of vaccine that uses ribonucleic acid (RNA) - a chemical messenger that contains instructions for making proteins. In the not-yet peer reviewed study of 60 healthy adults, the vaccine induced virus-neutralizing antibodies in those given two doses, a result in-line with a previous early-stage U.S. trial.

With the first federal relief package poised to end, Congress was trying to agree on another deal to ease the financial burden on Americans as businesses have endured repeated closures meant to contain the spread of the virus. Congressional Republicans at odds with Democrats over how much money is enough for a new rescue package also face pushback from the White House. GOP leaders met with President Donald Trump as the White House panned some $25 billion in the party’s plan that would be devoted to testing and tracing, said one Republican familiar with the discussions. Democrats have passed a $3 trillion package in the House, while the Republican plan totals about $1 trillion.

The coronavirus pandemic raged in Florida on Monday as the state reported more than 10,000 new infections for a sixth day in a row, but California saw improvement, with cases and hospitalizations beginning to stabilize after a surge. Florida has become the epicenter of the latest COVID-19 surge, prompting the state’s teachers union to sue Republican Governor Ron DeSantis over his plan to reopen schools for in-class instruction. In California, which emerged as another coronavirus hotspot in July, Governor Gavin Newsom said new infections, hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions were all still rising in the nation’s most populous state but not nearly at the pace of recent weeks.

In a commentary published in Pediatrics, two pediatric infectious disease experts concluded that while these studies are "far from definitive, the [research] provides early reassurance that school-based transmission could be a manageable problem." However, as testing of children has increased, scientists are learning more. Just last week, a top health official in Victoria, Australia, cautioned that child-to-child transmission is "more apparent" than was previously understood, as more kids have started to be tested. Other recent research suggests that the age of children may be a factor. Data from contact tracing in South Korea suggest that older children are more likely to spread the virus to their close contacts compared to younger children, particularly in a home setting. Researchers analyzed thousands of contacts of about 5,700 coronavirus patients (from January through March of 2020), looking at the age of the first infected person in a household. In homes where the first person infected in a cluster was 10 to 19, about 19% of their household contacts got COVID-19. In contrast, only 5.3% of the household contacts of younger children aged 0 to 9 were known to be infected.

Many companies devised strategies based on WHO guidance that large respiratory droplets of the virus could infect people when first emitted and after they landed on surfaces. Now the concern over infection is focused on the idea that tiny droplets could linger in the air for hours. Companies are reviewing if they have gone far enough with policies on mask-wearing, sealing off conference rooms and upgrading ventilation systems. Some, like retailers who have installed plexiglass barriers in their stores between cashiers and customers, are wondering what else they can do if the larger droplets those barriers aim to contain are just one piece of respiratory transmission, consultants said.