COVID-19 News from Around the Web

A newly revised University of Washington model projects the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 will climb to just above 224,000 by Nov. 1, up 16,000 from a prior forecast, due to rising infections and hospitalizations in many states. But the latest forecast from the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), released late on Tuesday, also predicts the death toll could be reduced by 40,000 if nearly all Americans wore masks in public. “Use of masks is up, but not as high as it should be. If 95% of Americans wore masks each time they left their homes, infection rates would drop, hospitalizations would drop, and forecast deaths would drop,” the IHME said in a statement. The IHME’s new forecast came after Alabama, Florida and North Carolina on Tuesday reported record daily increases in deaths from COVID-19, marking grim new milestones of a second wave of infections surging across much of the U.S.

Walmart will require customers at all of its US stores to wear masks beginning next week, becoming the largest retailer to mandate facial coverings as coronavirus cases continue to rise. Other national chains made similar moves on Wednesday. Kroger and Kohl's announced they would start requiring all customers to wear masks, signaling that more retailers are lining up behind mask-wearing mandates. The National Retail Federation, the main lobbying group for the industry, also called on retailers to require masks for customers. Most major retailers and grocers initially hesitated to enact their own mask mandates for customers during the pandemic, partly over fears of antagonizing shoppers who refuse to wear them. Retailers have said they are reluctant to put their employees in the position of enforcing mask requirements. But the ground in the retail has shifted in recent weeks as the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

Georgia's Gov. Brian Kemp is explicitly banning Georgia's cities and counties from ordering people to wear masks in public places. He voided orders on Wednesday that at least 15 local governments across the state had adopted even though Kemp had earlier said cities and counties had no power to order masks during the coronavirus pandemic. An increasing number of other states order residents to wear masks in public, including Alabama, which announced such a ban Wednesday. The Republican governor has instead been trying to encourage voluntary mask wearing, including telling fans that reduced infections from mask-wearing would make college football season possible. Kemp's move is likely to infuriate local officials in communities that had acted, including Atlanta, Augusta, Savannah, Rome and the governor's hometown of Athens-Clarke County. Overall, mask orders by Wednesday were covering 1.4 million of Georgia's more than 10 million residents. Savannah Mayor Van Johnson was the first local official to defy Kemp and order masks, and had said police would start writing $500 citations to businesses that didn't enforce the law. "It is officially official. Governor Kemp does not give a damn about us," Johnson wrote on Twitter Wednesday night. "Every man and woman for himself/herself. Ignore the science and survive the best you can."

Several Arizona teachers voiced fears from their cars Wednesday about returning to school in a state that continues to be ravaged by the coronavirus. Nearly 20 cars with painted messages like #Return2SchoolSafely traveled in a short procession in central Phoenix. It was one of six “motor marches” organized by members of the Arizona #RedforEd group calling on Gov. Doug Ducey to close schools until case numbers trend downward. Currently, public schools are ordered to delay the start of the classes at least until Aug. 17. “Sure he pushed it back,” said Chico Robinson, one of the march coordinators and a social studies teacher. “But let’s be honest —we’re seeing numbers of 4,000, we’ve seen a 5,000 number. That’s nowhere safe to return our students and definitely not our educators.”

As school districts across the country decide how and when they can bring students back to campus safely, a major sticking point is emerging: the money to make it happen. Keeping public schools for 50 million students and more than 7 million staff safe from the coronavirus could require more teachers and substitutes, nurses and custodians. School districts will need to find more buses to allow for more space between children and buy more computers for distance learning. They’ll need to buy sanitizer, masks and other protective equipment. Some are putting up plastic dividers in offices and classrooms. While public health concerns are getting most of the attention, especially with the nation’s infections and hospitalizations rising, costs have become a major consideration. Many districts are hoping Congress will step in. The Council of Chief State School Officers says safely reopening public schools could cost between $158 billion and $245 billion, while the American Federation of Teachers put the figure at $116.5 billion. The Association of School Business Officials International estimates that reopening will require additional spending equivalent to about 3.5% of districts’ normal budgets. “If you don’t have this money, how are you going to afford PPE? How are you going to have cleaning every day?” asked Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a major union. “That’s why you’re going to see more and more districts, even when they don’t have surges, staying with remote learning.”

Hospital data related to the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. will now be collected by a private technology firm, rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a move the Trump administration says will speed up reporting but one that concerns some public health leaders. The CDC director said Wednesday that he’s fine with the change — even though some experts fear it will further sideline the agency. The CDC has agreed to step out of the government’s traditional data collection process “in order to streamline reporting,” Dr. Robert Redfield said during a call with reporters set up by the agency’s parent, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS officials recently posted a document on the agency’s website that redirected hospitals’ daily reporting of a range of data meant to assess the impact of the coronavirus on them. TeleTracking Technologies, based in Pittsburgh, will now collect that information. However, if hospitals are already directly reporting to state health departments, they can get a written release from the state to keep doing that. The information includes bed occupancy, staffing levels, the severity level of coronavirus patients, ventilators on hand, and supplies of masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment. The CDC will continue to collect other data, like information about cases and deaths, from state health departments. Michael Caputo, an HHS spokesman, said the CDC has been seeing a lag of a week or more in data coming from hospitals and that only 85% of hospitals have been participating. The change is meant to result in faster and more complete reporting, he said.

A lot of Americans are having trouble getting a coronavirus test. If they do get one, they may have to wait more than a week for results. On Tuesday, some of the country's biggest banks announced their second quarter results. The bottom line? The pandemic and the economy can't be separated. Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, announced they will require customers to wear masks beginning next week. Small businesses around the country are already dealing with fallout when customers refuse. And in a surprise move, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced they will rescind regulations barring international students from staying in the U.S. if their colleges don't offer in-person classes this fall.

U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Wednesday called the White House effort to discredit him “bizarre” and urged an end to the divisiveness over the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying “let’s stop this nonsense.” Fauci, who has become a popular and trusted figure during the coronavirus outbreak, came under criticism from President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies as Fauci cautioned against reopening the U.S. economy too soon. The recent spike in coronavirus infections, primarily in states that were among the earliest to lift coronavirus restrictions, put Fauci on a collision course with the White House. “One of the things that’s part of the problem is the dynamics of the divisiveness that is going on now that it becomes difficult to engage in a dialogue of honest evaluation of what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong,” Fauci told The Atlantic in an interview. “We’ve got to own this, reset this and say OK, let’s stop this nonsense and figure out how can we get our control over this now.” The White House over the weekend distributed a list of statements Fauci made early in the pandemic that turned out to be wrong as understanding of the disease developed, according to media reports. Trump said this week he valued Fauci’s input but did not always agree with him. “You know, it is a bit bizarre. I don’t really fully understand it,” Fauci said in an interview with The Atlantic. He said he believed the people involved in releasing that list, which was misleading because it did not include the entirety of Fauci’s statements or other context, are really “taken aback by what a big mistake that was.” White House tensions with Fauci have risen with the decline of Trump’s popularity in opinion polls over the president’s handling of the outbreak.