COVID-19 News from Around the Web

Prompted by a dramatic surge in cases across the nation and within their borders, three states on Monday reinstated restrictions that were put in place early in the coronavirus pandemic. At least 27 states have put a hold on reopening businesses or reimposed measures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. Citing rising numbers, the governors of California and New Mexico -- having already taken some steps -- reimposed restrictions on dining. In Oregon, where the number of cases has recently risen, the governor expanded rules on face coverings to include outdoor gatherings where social distance cannot be maintained.

The coronavirus pandemic could push up to 132 million people into hunger by the end of 2020, according to a new report from the United Nations. The finding was included in the latest version of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, published annually by U.N. agencies, including the World Health Organization. The report said an economic recovery expected in 2021 would bring the number of undernourished people down — but it's not clear by how much, and the number will remain above pre-pandemic projections.

Travelers flying into New York from certain states are now required to show proof that they've completed a form with their contact information and travel plans before they can leave airports across the state. Starting Tuesday, teams that include police officers will meet passengers at arrival gates to check if the travel form has been completed on paper or online, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday. The move is part of the state's effort to try to enforce its 14-day quarantine requirements for travelers from 19 restricted states with rising numbers of people testing positive for the coronavirus. Travelers who leave an airport in New York state without filling out a form could face a $2,000 fine and be required to attend a hearing and complete a mandatory quarantine.

The surge in coronavirus cases across many U.S. states will come with a big price tag. The next bailout package will need to be at least $1.5 trillion, compared with an estimate of $1 trillion before the rise in COVID-19 cases, according to Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. "A few weeks ago I thought $1 trillion would be enough," Zandi said on a conference call hosted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But now, he added, a fiscal package of $1.5 trillion in stimulus aid is needed in large part because of the virus' resurgence across swaths of the U.S., which is causing economic headwinds in those states. States that reopened early — such as Arizona and Texas — are suffering from surges in coronavirus cases, leading to rollbacks of economic activity as local officials try to stem infections. Nevada on Thursday tightened rules for bars and restaurants, effectively closing bars that don't serve food, for example.

The World Health Organization reported a record increase in global coronavirus cases on Sunday, with the total rising by 230,370 in 24 hours. The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil, India and South Africa, according to a daily report. The previous WHO record for new cases was 228,102 on July 10. Deaths remained steady at about 5,000 a day. Global coronavirus cases were approaching 13 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, marking another milestone in the spread of the disease that has killed more than 565,000 people in seven months.

The coronavirus proved substantially deadlier to people of color under the age of 65 than to their white counterparts in the early days of the pandemic, an in-depth analysis released Friday found. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the agency’s most comprehensive analysis of the demographics of those who died of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Researchers analyzed data for about 52,000 confirmed deaths between mid-February and mid-April. Most of the people who died were older than 65, and most had underlying medical conditions. But researchers obtained more complete data on race, ethnicity and underlying conditions for a subset of about 10,000 people. Most of those deaths occurred in New York City, New Jersey and Washington state, three areas hardest hit at the dawn of the pandemic.

The White House is making a concerted effort to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci as he becomes increasingly vocal about his concerns over reopening the country amid a national surge in coronavirus cases. The moves to undercut Fauci come just days after he gave an unvarnished look at his relationship with President Donald Trump, including that they have not spoken in weeks. The tension between the two men -- who are no longer speaking, CNN reported last week -- has grown publicly as they have responded to one another through interviews and statements. But recent moves by the White House to publicly diminish the nation's top infectious disease expert amounts to a significant escalation as it seeks to divert attention from the government's failure to contain the coronavirus and instead push Trump's call to reopen the country. That effort continued Monday morning, when the President retweeted a baseless claim by game show host Chuck Woolery that "everyone is lying" about the coronavirus -- including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a statement Saturday, a White House official told CNN that "several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things." The official went on to provide a lengthy list of examples, citing Fauci's comments early in the pandemic and linking to past interviews. These bullet points, which resembled opposition research on a political opponent, included Fauci downplaying the virus early on and a quote from March when Fauci said, "People should not be walking around with masks," among other comments. Not included were previous statements from the surgeon general urging people not to buy masks or an acknowledgment of the President's own false claims and misstatements about the virus.

The US never fixed the core causes of its testing problem. So it’s now seeing the same kinds of issues pop up again. Covid-19 testing in the US improved dramatically over the first half of 2020, but things now appear to be breaking down once more as coronavirus cases rise and outstrip capacity — to the point that the mayor of a major American city can’t get testing quickly enough to potentially avoid spreading the virus. “We FINALLY received our test results taken 8 days before,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted on July 8. “One person in my house was positive then. By the time we tested again, 1 week later, 3 of us had COVID. If we had known sooner, we would have immediately quarantined. Perhaps the National Guard can help with testing too.” Anecdotally, I’ve heard of similar delays across the country — people waiting days or even weeks for their Covid-19 test results after standing in lines for hours to get tested. Labs have warned about problems: Quest Diagnostics, one of the biggest lab companies in the US, said wait times for test results are now averaging between four and six days for most people.“Basically, two things are happening,” Ashish Jha, faculty director of the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI), told me. “One is the outbreaks are getting much bigger, so the amount of testing we need to get our arms around the outbreak is going up. And second, what we did [before] was some tweaking on capacity issues to get ourselves up to 500,000 to 600,000 tests a day, but didn’t fundamentally address the supply chain problems.” He added, “This was supposed to be the job of the White House. … But they just never have prioritized really building up a robust testing infrastructure for the country.”

President Donald Trump’s administration is providing misguided assurances on the safety of kids in school during a coronavirus epidemic. In remarks Sunday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged schools to provide full-time, in-person learning in the fall even with community transmission of COVID-19 rising in many parts of the U.S., suggesting that there is no danger “in any way” if kids are in school. Her statement is unsupported. Some children have become seriously ill from the virus, and one of Trump’s top health experts stresses that data remain incomplete about potential risks they could spread COVID-19 to adults. Meanwhile, Trump continued to spread falsehoods about how well the U.S. is doing with the coronavirus even as the U.S. is taking a disproportionate hit from it globally and does not have it under control.

With the United States grappling with the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world, Florida hit a grim milestone Sunday, shattering the national record for a state’s largest single-day increase in positive cases. Deaths from the virus have also been rising in the U.S., especially in the South and West, though still well below the heights hit in April, according to a recent Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. “I really do think we could control this, and it’s the human element that is so critical. It should be an effort of our country. We should be pulling together when we’re in a crisis, and we’re definitely not doing it,” said University of Florida epidemiologist Dr. Cindy Prins. Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, called mask-wearing in public, which has been met with resistance in some U.S. states, “absolutely essential.” Giroir, the assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that “if we don’t have that, we will not get control of the virus.”

The US on Thursday recorded its highest ever number of new coronavirus infections, as the disease continues to sweep the country. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 65,551 new cases were recorded on Thursday, the highest single day tally yet recorded. The previous daily record for new cases was set only two days earlier on Tuesday, when 60,200 new cases were recorded. Data compiled by the New York Times told the same story, with 59,880 new cases recorded on Thursday, a new single day record by its methodology.

Keeping schools closed in the coming academic year is a greater risk to children’s health than reopening them, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. CDC said on Thursday. Redfield said the guidelines the CDC has given on operating schools during the pandemic are designed to facilitate their reopening, and he would be “disappointed” if they were used as a rationale to keep them closed. “I cannot overstate how important I think it is now to get our schools in this nation reopened,” Redfield said at The Hill’s Health Reimagined virtual summit. “The reason I push it is that I truly believe it’s for the public health benefit of these kids.”