Category: Corona Virus Vaccine

Heres what you need to know:Health care workers at a virus testing site on Thursday in Milwaukee.Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

What does it look like when a country sets a record for coronavirus cases and then breaks it again the next day?

The United States recorded at least 121,000 new infections on Thursday, a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, and for many Americans, fatalism was the order of the day.

We knew it was just a matter of time, said Matt Christensen.

Mr. Christensen was sitting in a minivan in Racine, Wis., his wife next to him and their three children in the back seat, waiting to be tested for the virus. Nearby, feverish and desperate, other people confined to their cars also waited.

On Thursday, as they waited, the coronavirus was spreading relentlessly across America, and America was speeding toward yet another record.

In a single day across America, from dawn to nightfall, it churned through homes, workplaces, hospitals, schools and laboratories.

In Cleveland, lab workers began another grinding day of processing coronavirus tests. In Minot, N.D., a hospital scrambled to find space for the crush of patients who came through the doors. And in Unionville, Conn., grieving relatives planned the funeral of a familys 98-year-old matriarch, who died from the virus.

In the morning, governors began what is now a familiar routine: pleading in front of news cameras for Americans to do their part to stop the spread of the virus.

This virus doesnt care if we voted for Donald Trump, doesnt care if we voted for Joe Biden, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said two days after Americans went to the polls. Its coming after all of us.

In Ohio, which set its own record Thursday, a giant fridge at the Cleveland Clinic glowed with rows and rows of coronavirus samples. Technicians shook test tubes and squinted at graphs on computer screens, trying to determine whether yet another patient had tested positive. I work, I go home, I come back, one lab supervisor said.

In Virginia, students in the Henry County Public Schools district were at work in their classes. But 22 staff members and students had tested positive, and hundreds more had been quarantined. So the superintendent went before the school board to recommend that the district revert to virtual learning until January. The vote was unanimous, and come Monday, the districts schools will close.

In Minot, N.D., patients crammed an emergency room at Trinity Health, waiting to be admitted. The entire floor dedicated to coronavirus patients had no more available beds. Dr. Jeffrey Sather, the chief of staff, called other large hospitals around the state to see if he could send some patients there. But every hospital was also full.

Many on his staff were working overtime, and Dr. Sather said he was worried about all they were seeing every day. They are witnessing people suffocate to death on a regular basis, he said.

In Connecticut, Amanda Harper had always imagined her grandmothers funeral as a full celebration of a life. The service for Juliette Marie Foley, 98, would have been at a church, followed by family time where loved ones would have pored over old photos and swapped stories.

But that was before the pandemic.

In October, Ms. Foley contracted the coronavirus. An avid baker and seamstress, she died on the last day of the month.

On Thursday afternoon, there were still details for the family to consider. Would the Zoom link to the funeral work? Could they keep those few attending in person safe?

This pandemic has robbed us of the way we say goodbye, said Ms. Harper.

By nightfall, the nation hurtled past the 100,000-case mark once again. Sixteen states set daily case records on Thursday, and three had death records. In 28 states, there have been more cases announced in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.

A quarter of a million coronavirus infections have been reported at colleges and universities across the United States, according to a New York Times survey, as schools across the nation struggle to keep outbreaks in check.

The bulk of the cases have occurred since students returned for the fall semester, with more than 38,000 new cases reported in the past two weeks alone.

And the numbers are almost certainly an undercount.

The Timess survey which includes more than 1,700 American colleges and universities, including every four-year public institution and every private college that competes in N.C.A.A. sports is believed to be the most comprehensive tally available. But the lack of a centralized national tracking system or consistent statewide data means the full toll is hard to capture.

When The Times last tallied campus cases on Oct. 22, the figure was 214,000. Now it is more than 252,000.

More than a third of U.S. universities welcomed students back in some capacity this fall.

Some of them have appeared to keep the virus in check, primarily through extensive testing programs, even as they try to provide some semblance of a normal college experience for their students.

But others have done less well, failing to enforce social distancing and other preventive measures in an environment that normally revolves around communal living, group activities, large social gatherings and in-person learning.

Many school officials blame students when there are spikes in cases, chastising them for failing to abide by the new rules that have transformed campus life in 2020.

At Syracuse University, school had barely opened when officials issued an open letter castigating a group of students who had thrown a large party and selfishly jeopardized the very thing that so many of you claim to want from Syracuse University that is, a chance at a residential college experience.

Syracuse has reported 257 coronavirus cases since March.

Some students say administrators should have seen it coming when they chose to reopen in person.

Its very difficult to say whether, you know, its really on students for throwing these honestly reckless parties, or whether theyre just simply acting how college students are going to act in these kind of situations, Dylan Brooks, a senior at Arizona State University told his school newspaper. Of course, if youre bringing A.S.U. college students back to A.S.U., this is how theyre going to act.

The school, which has 44,000 students, has reported 2,518 cases.

The coronavirus has been responsible for at least 80 deaths on college campuses this year. While most of those deaths were reported in the spring and involved school employees, several students have died in recent weeks as a result of the virus.

As case numbers skyrocket across the nation, that number is expected to rise.

A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the coronavirus completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released Thursday by an international team of scientists. The study, which was limited to animals and has not yet been peer-reviewed, was assessed by several health experts at the request of The New York Times.

If the spray, which the scientists described as nontoxic and stable, is proved to work in humans, it could provide a new way to fight the pandemic, with a daily spritz up the nose acting like a vaccine.

Having something new that works against the coronavirus is exciting, said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the chairman of immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. I could imagine this being part of the arsenal.

The work has been underway for months by scientists from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, Cornell University and the University of Campania in Italy. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Columbia University Medical Center.

The spray, which attacks the virus directly, contains a lipopeptide, a cholesterol particle linked to a chain of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This particular lipopeptide exactly matches a stretch of amino acids in the spike protein of the virus, which the pathogen uses to attach to a human airway or lung cell.

Before a virus can inject its RNA into a cell, the spike must effectively unzip, exposing two chains of amino acids, in order to fuse to the cell wall. As the spike zips back up to complete the process, the lipopeptide in the spray inserts itself, latching on to one of the spikes amino acid chains and preventing the virus from attaching.

It is like you are zipping a zipper but you put another zipper inside, so the two sides cannot meet, said Matteo Porotto, a microbiologist at Columbia University and one of the papers authors.

The work was described in a paper posted to the preprint server bioRxiv Thursday morning, and has been submitted to the journal Science for peer review.

Ferrets are used by scientists studying flu, SARS and other respiratory diseases because they can catch viruses through the nose much as humans do, although they also infect each other by contact with feces or by scratching and biting.

The protective spray attaches to cells in the nose and lungs and lasts about 24 hours, Dr. Anne Moscona, a pediatrician and microbiologist at Columbia and co-author of the study.

If it works this well in humans, she said, you could sleep in a bed with someone infected or be with your infected kids and still be safe.

Global Roundup

Chinas foreign ministry issued a strong warning on Friday about the danger of imported coronavirus cases, while imposing further stringent limits on almost any arrivals of international travelers.

Wang Wenbin, the foreign ministry spokesman, said that despite a requirement of a negative nucleic acid test for coronavirus infections before travelers can board a flight to China, more and more people have been showing up with the virus. The number of imported cases grew 45 percent in October to 515 cases, compared with September, he said.

The epidemic situation abroad has deteriorated lately, and the risk of imported epidemics facing China continues to increase, Mr. Wang said at his daily news briefing.

On Friday, Chinese embassies in countries including Ethiopia, France, Italy and Russia prohibited almost all travel to China, except for Chinese nationals. That followed similar prohibitions imposed on Thursday on travel from Bangladesh, Belgium, Britain, India and the Philippines.

Since late spring, China has barred foreign tourists and business travelers, and has said that foreign residents of China could only return with special permission from a Chinese consulate or embassy. The rules this week have been aimed at blocking the return of foreign residents who have recently obtained the necessary special permission but have not yet arrived in the country.

China has also introduced a rule this week that Chinese nationals and any foreign residents still eligible to return to the country must take two tests in the 48 hours before flying and obtain approval of the results from a Chinese Embassy or consulate. These travelers must have negative results not only on a nucleic acid virus test, but also a blood test for antibodies, which measures whether someone has previously been infected or seriously exposed to the virus.

Responding to international criticism that requiring an antibody test is excessive, Mr. Wang said that nucleic acid testing by itself was not accurate enough.

He also defended another new rule this week, that the nucleic acid and antibody tests must be passed at each transit stop on a passengers trip to China. Mr. Wang said that nearly half of the imported cases in China involved people who got sick after passing a nucleic acid test shortly before traveling. Introducing another round of testing could catch some of these travelers before they reach China.

In other developments around the world:

Italy is locking down six regions in the countrys deeply infected north and highly vulnerable, and poorer, south. The measures, which start Friday, are the most drastic since a nationwide lockdown in March.

The Australian state of Victoria on Friday reported its seventh consecutive day of no locally transmitted virus cases, suggesting a three-month lockdown in the states capital of Melbourne had successfully contained a second wave outbreak. Victorias premier, Daniel Andrews, said the state remained on track to ease travel restrictions between Melbourne and other parts of the state on Sunday, but he urged people to remain vigilant.

People in Germany bought 139 percent more toilet paper in the third week of October than they did in the months before the pandemic last year, according to government data published on Thursday. Despite the uptick, the figures suggest that most people have overcome the impulse to stockpile, which Germans call hamster buying. The country tightened coronavirus restrictions this week.

The N.F.L. has fined the Las Vegas Raiders $500,000 and their head coach, Jon Gruden, an additional $150,000 and has taken away a late-round draft pick next year because of repeated violations of the leagues coronavirus protocols, according to a league employee who was not authorized to discuss the penalties publicly.

The team, which had already been fined for violations earlier in the season, is likely to appeal the latest penalties, the employee said.

Thursdays fines and the loss of a draft pick were by far the strongest punishment yet against an N.F.L. team, as the league has tried to push through a season while the coronavirus continues to rage in many areas of the United States.

The N.F.L. has increased the restrictions on where and how players, coaches and staff members can move around in and outside team facilities, and it warned teams last month that violations would result in increasingly stiffer penalties, including the loss of draft picks and potentially the forfeiting of games.

The Tennessee Titans have had the worst outbreak in the league, with at least two dozen players, coaches and staff members testing positive in a period that forced the postponement of two games and required a half-dozen other teams to juggle their schedules. The league fined the Titans $350,000 for their handling of the outbreak. But it did not take away any draft picks.

Last month, Gruden was fined $100,000 and the team was fined $250,000 because the coach had not worn his face covering properly on the sideline during a game. The team was also fined $50,000 for allowing an unauthorized visitor in the locker room.

The American economy gained 638,000 jobs last month, a sign the labor market continues to heal slowly as a resurgence in the coronavirus threatens future growth.

The unemployment rate fell sharply to 6.9 percent, from 7.9 percent in September, the Labor Department reported.

By Ella KoezeUnemployment rates are seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The overall job gain would have been larger without the loss of 147,000 temporary census positions.

The nation has recovered a little over half of the 22 million jobs lost after the pandemic struck in March, but the gains have softened in recent months. The economy added almost 1.8 million jobs in July and 1.5 million in August, but the figure fell to 672,000 in September.

Among the big contributors to the October increase were two industries hit hard by the pandemic: food and drink establishments, which added 192,000 jobs, and retailing, which picked up 104,000. But cooler temperatures and caution about shopping amid surging coronavirus cases threaten those gains.

Its better than expected, but were starting to see headwinds, Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago, said of the October report. The drop in the unemployment rate is welcome news, but there are still over 11 million unemployed workers.

Even as the unemployment rate has come down, joblessness for many has become more prolonged. The Labor Department said the number of long-term unemployed those without work for 27 weeks or more grew to 3.6 million in October, an increase of 1.2 million.

Millions of unemployed workers have had a harder time paying bills since an emergency federal program paying $600 a week in additional benefits expired at the end of July. Another set of federal jobless benefits will last only through the end of the year.

By Ella KoezeData is seasonally adjusted.Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, estimates that more than 30 million workers have lost jobs or had their hours or pay reduced in the coronavirus-related downturn.

With the Senate remaining in Republican hands, as election returns suggest, any further relief will probably be more modest than the multitrillion-dollar package that seemed likely if a blue wave had given Democrats control of Congress and the White House. As a result, Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, has cut his estimate of growth next year by a full percentage point.

The good news is that the U.S. job market is healing, Mr. Tannenbaum said. But full recuperation may take awhile.

Chocolate shops and stationery stores were busy as usual. Universities held in-person lectures. And workers crowded into some offices and factories, often with nothing more than a bottle of communal hand sanitizer to protect them from the rampant spread of the coronavirus.

In England on Thursday, the first hours of Lockdown 2.0, as local newspapers called it, looked very little like a lockdown at all.

The situation exposed the enormous difficulties of European governments, struck by a second wave of the coronavirus, as they try to put the genie back in the bottle after months of encouraging people to flock back to offices and pubs.

Since the spring, when lawmakers with little dissent ordered people to stay home, the political consensus around lockdown measures has collapsed. As a result, Englands new shutdown rules were shot through with loopholes, and companies openly flouted what relatively lenient restrictions were in place. At the same time, citizens and scientists alike fretted about the virus spreading unchecked for much of the winter.

It feels very much like a lockdown in name only, said Steve Gremo, a software developer in Kent, in southeast England. In March, it seemed like the country came to a complete halt. It was not the same vibe this morning at all.

The latest shutdown under which pubs, restaurants and other nonessential shops were supposed to close, but schools, universities and many workplaces were left open is slated to end on Dec. 2. But many scientists doubt that four weeks of spotty restrictions will be enough to stamp out the virus, or that the government will have done enough by then to revamp its contact tracing system to allow officials to keep track of the viruss spread for the rest of the winter.

Despite skepticism from scientists, Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted on Thursday that the new restrictions would work.

This is not a repeat of the spring, he said. Four weeks is enough for these measures to make a real impact.

But the busy subways, motorways, shops and workplaces that were in evidence across England on Thursday made plain that companies were reluctant to take the same precautions they did during the first lockdown.

The coronavirus continued its deadly march in Eastern Europe on Friday. Poland, where the daily average of new cases is above 21,000, saw its highest daily death count of the pandemic 445 and admitted the first patient to its new field hospital at a stadium in Warsaw. Romania, which passed 10,000 daily cases for the first time, announced that it would close schools and implement an overnight curfew. And Hungary has declared a state of danger this week, giving its prime minister the power to rule by decree to combat the virus, though restaurants and stores are still open.

In Romania, new measures are set to go into effect Monday, including closing shops with the exception of pharmacies by 9 p.m. and requiring masks in all public spaces. Fairs and indoor markets will be closed until early December, and employees are being encouraged to work from home. Schools will move entirely online and Romanians will be required to fill out forms if they leave their homes after the nighttime curfew comes into effect.

The measures that have been taken so far are no longer enough, President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday in announcing the new restrictions.

Romania, which has recorded at least 287,000 cases of the virus and 7,663 related deaths, has one of the least developed health care systems in the European Union, and there are concerns over whether the country can handle the rising caseload.

In Poland, where demonstrators have been protesting a newly passed near-total ban on abortion, the prime minister blamed protesters for the coronavirus situation. The country announced new regulations this week. Starting Saturday, all cultural institutions, such as museums, theaters and cinemas, as well as nonessential shops in commercial centers will be closed. There will be limits on the numbers of customers in other shops, and hotels will be allowed to accept only customers traveling on business. All schooling will be online.

The country has a seven-day average above 21,000 cases, and the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said a new national quarantine is possible.

In Hungary, an official with the Hungarian Chamber of Doctors warned that without stricter measures to limit the virus, the situation in the country may in weeks resemble that of Italy earlier this year, according to an interview published Friday. Hungarys daily death toll is averaging more than 70, but topped 100 on Friday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that the government expected to need some 2,240 intensive care beds by Nov. 21 and 4,480 by Dec. 10, adding that this number represents the maximum capacity of the health care system. On Thursday, Hungarys foreign minister Peter Szijjarto, who recently tested positive for the virus, announced that the country would start importing a coronavirus vaccine from Russia for final testing and licensing in December.

Kit Gillet, Anatol Magdziarz, Monika Pronczuk and Benjamin Novak

Since Hawaii welcomed tourists back in mid-October, allowing them to skip its 14-day quarantine as long as they had a negative coronavirus test, more than 100,000 people have rushed to the islands from mainland states, exciting state officials, some hoteliers, airlines and local business owners, who for seven months have watched the states economy grind to a halt.

Instead of the quarantine, the islands began accepting a preflight coronavirus test for entry under a program it is calling Safe Travels. The state is only accepting what are known as nucleic acid amplification tests processed by specially certified laboratories, and test results from certain trusted testing and travel partners, including some airlines.

Hawaii is at the vanguard of what travel will look like for the next year or so as we reopen, said Avi Mannis, senior vice president of marketing at Hawaiian Airlines, one of a handful of airlines that began offering pre-travel Covid-19 tests in October.

Follow this link:

Covid-19 Live Updates: U.S. Hits a Record 121,000 Daily Cases - The New York Times

COVID-19 cases soar in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties but death rate hasn't  KOMO News

Link:

COVID-19 cases soar in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties but death rate hasn't - KOMO News

As new COVID-19 cases reached a record for the third consecutive day in Maine, and as fears of uncontrolled community spread mount, a troubling question emerges: Is it too late to reverse course?

The short answer is no, but it will require vigilance.

This is a war, we have to have a wartime mentality, said Robert Horsburgh, an epidemiologist at Boston University. We have to sacrifice, and we should be sacrificing equally. Without that, another lockdown is going to be the next step if things dont improve.

Dr. Thomas Tsai, assistant professor with the Harvard Global Health Institute, said Maine, and the nation, are on the steep part of a sharply rising curve, but public health strategies can still be effective. He said Maine has had a very robust public health response to the pandemic, and has a lot more tools at its disposal compared to the spring.

We can act decisively to control it. A large basket of smaller interventions can be effective, Tsai said. This is within our control to suppress it.

Cases are spiking everywhere. On Wednesday, the U.S. recorded more than 102,000 new infections the first time it has gone over 100,000 since the pandemic began. The nationwide seven-day average is nearly 90,000, an increase of more than 100 percent in the last month, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. To date, more than 9.4 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19 and more than 233,000 have died.

But Maine does indeed have a lot going for it. Even though the states positivity rate the percentage of tests that come back positive has tripled in the last two weeks, its still just 1.5 percent, which is a sign that widespread testing is being conducted and not just on people who are strongly believed to have the virus. Other states have positivity rates of 10 percent or more.

Maine also has a governor, in Janet Mills, who has demonstrated over the last eight months that shes willing to be aggressive with restrictions and safety measures even in the face of criticism and that she will prioritize public health over economic considerations. On Thursday, Mills strengthened her executive order on face coverings to require that they be worn in all public places, regardless of whether people can physically distance or not, following a similar order by Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker.

On Sunday, Mills postponed the reopening of bars and tasting rooms and dialed back the limit for indoor public gatherings. She also removed New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from the list of states whose residents are exempt from either a 14-day quarantine or negative test when they visit Maine.

Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was not available for an interview Thursday, but at a briefing Wednesday, he was uncharacteristically somber about the direction Maine is headed. Afterward, he wrote on Twitter that he was out of synonyms for concerning.

On Thursday, he explained why: This degree of community transmission means that face coverings and physical distancing are more important than ever, he wrote on Twitter. Why do I worry? Todays community transmission can become tomorrows outbreaks in places like nursing homes. We all need to do our part to keep them safe.

Hospitalizations and deaths often lag behind cases, and Maine already is seeing hospitalizations creep up. On Thursday, there were 38 people hospitalized, including 17 in intensive care units the highest numbers since early June. One month ago, just nine people were hospitalized and only one in critical care.

Steven Michaud, president of the Maine Hospital Association, said hospitals are bracing for the worst. He said there are two positives now that werent true in the spring: Weve learned how to manage the virus better and more younger people are contracting the virus and their cases typically dont lead to hospitalizations.

There is nothing else thats good about it, he said. Give it a week and we could see the hospitalizations start to ratchet up.

My biggest concern is, back at the beginning, the hospitals basically emptied themselves. They stopped taking everything that wasnt an emergencyprocedure to create capacity. The surge never panned out and thats great, but that led to major financial losses. We dont have empty hospitals now, so if this gets going, the threat is that we could be overwhelmed a lot more quickly.

Michaud also said hes concerned about the impact on rural hospitals, since the recent surge in cases has hit rural areas harder than in the spring. Calais Regional Hospital, he said, recently had to transfer COVID-19 patients to Bangor.

Rick Erb and Nadine Grosso, president and vice president of the Maine Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes and long-term care facilities, shared Shahs concerns about nursing homes.

The greatest predictor of whether COVID-19 will appear in a facility is whether its in the community, so thats the concern as we see this trend of higher cases, Grosso said.

Erb said senior living facilities in Maine are in better shape than they were this spring. They have more personal protective equipment for staff and visitors, although there are still shortages from time to time. They have better access to testing. They are better equipped to isolate residents who may have been exposed to help limit the spread.

But residents of nursing homes remain among the highest risk individuals for complications or death if they contract COVID-19.

Our members have really, to be honest, had the same consistent level of fear, Erb said. Theres not a day that goes by that our folks dont worry about the virus getting in.

Dr. Jabbar Fazeli, medical director for Durgin Pines in Kittery, is dealing with a second COVID-19 outbreak at that nursing home. The first was in May.

The good part is that were more prepared now, he said. We have the supplies we need and access to testing, which wasnt the case last time.

Fazeli also said nursing homes are better equipped to catch cases earlier and to isolate people to limit spread.

The goal is always to keep it out, but once it gets in, that shifts to containment, he said.

Tsai, with the Harvard Global Health Institute, said two keys for Maine in the coming weeks will be compliance with mask mandates and the partnership between the state and Walgreens to roll out 15-minute antigen tests. The rapid tests are a better tool for states because they can more quickly capture asymptomatic cases, and more people can isolate when they are contagious.

Maine is receiving 400,000 rapid antigen tests by the end of the year, with 300,000 in Walgreens, where anyone who thinks they need a test can get one for free. Another 100,000 are being distributed to employers with essential workers, such as in health care facilities, schools, and police and fire departments. The rapid tests, which are manufactured by Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories which has manufacturing plants and a lab in Maine are being distributed nationwide.

We are moving from a reactive testing strategy to a proactive one, Tsai said. The testing technology we have been waiting for has arrived. Through testing, we can now identify more people who are infectious and stop them from spreading the disease.

One major concern about increased community spread in Maine is whether the state will be able to keep up with contact tracing, which helps identify close contacts of confirmed cases. Some states have all but abandoned contact tracing efforts and Shah has acknowledged major challenges, even as his agency has added more staff in recent weeks.

There is a physical limit to how much contact tracing you can do, and some people havent been as forthright, said Horsburgh, the Boston University epidemiologist.

In many cases, a feeling of pandemic fatigue has set in. People are tired or bored or even angry about the fact that things havent returned to normal. In Maine, which did so well over the summer to keep the virus from spreading, the recent trend could be another wake-up call.

I think the point of no return is when you run out of space in hospitals, Horsburgh said. Im afraid were headed in that direction. A vaccine is still a ways off. We need to hunker down and get through the winter.

Michaud, the Maine hospital association president, said he travels a lot for his job and sees a lot of complacency in rural parts of the state, with masks especially.

I feel like were on that cusp, he said. If we quit the gatherings, if we abide by the masking, I think we can keep this at bay. But we are kind of at that tipping point and were seeing how quickly and exponentially this can spread.

Staff Writer Joe Lawlor contributed to this report.

Invalid username/password.

Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.

Previous

Next

Read this article:

Can Maine reverse its troubling COVID-19 trend? Experts say yes, but it will take work. - Press Herald

As health leaders prepare to gather for a virtual session of the resumed 73rdWorld Health Assembly (WHA), WHO has three messages to share.

First, we can beat COVID-19 with science, solutions and solidarity.

More than 47 million COVID-19 cases have now been reported to WHO, and more than 1.2 million people have lost their lives.

Although this is a global crisis, many countries and cities have successfully prevented or controlled transmission with a comprehensive, evidence-based approach.

For the first time, the world has rallied behind a plan to accelerate the development of the vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics we need, and to ensure they are available to all countries on the basis of equity. TheAccess to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Acceleratoris delivering real results.

Second, we must not backslide on our critical health goals.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a sobering reminder that health is the foundation of social, economic and political stability.

It reminds us why WHOstriple billion targetsare so important, and why countries must pursue them with even more determination, collaboration and innovation.

Since May, Member Stateshave adopted a number of decisionsthe Immunization Agenda 2030, the Decade of Healthy Ageing 2020-2030, as well as initiatives to tacklecervical cancer, tuberculosis, eye care, food safety, intellectual property and influenza preparedness.

The resumed session will discuss a 10-year-plan for addressing neglected tropical diseases, as well as efforts to address meningitis,epilepsy and other neurological disorders, maternal infant and young child nutrition, digital health, and the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, adopted in 2010.

Third, we must prepare for the next pandemic now.

Weve seen this past year that countries with robust health emergency preparedness infrastructure have been able to act quickly to contain and control the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The WHA will consider a draft resolution (EB146.R10) that strengthens Member States preparedness for health emergencies, such as COVID-19, through more robust compliance with the International Health Regulations (2005).

This resolution calls on the global health community to ensure that all countries are better equipped to detect and respond to cases of COVID-19 and other dangerous infectious diseases.

NOTE TO EDITORS

TheWorld Health Assembly(WHA) is the decision-making body of WHO, attended by delegations from all WHO Member States.The main functions of the World Health Assemblyare to determine the policies of the Organization, appoint the Director-General, supervise financial policies, and review and approve the proposed programme budget.

The WHA usually takes place in May. This year, given the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduced (de minimis) WHA took place on 18-19 May. The resumed WHA73 will take place virtually from 9-14 November 2020.

The WHA open sessions are webcast:https://www.who.int/about/governance/world-health-assembly/seventy-third-world-health-assembly

WHA73 Agenda and all documents:https://apps.who.int/gb/e/e_wha73.html

List of delegates and other participants:https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA73/A73_DIV1REV1-en.pdf

The event will be followed by a resumed 147thsession of theExecutive Board on Monday, 16 November 2020:https://apps.who.int/gb/e/e_eb147.html.

Follow this link:

Assembly charts course for COVID-19 response and global health priorities - World Health Organization

A health care worker in Hungary holds a bottle containing remdesivir. ( Zsolt Czegledi/Media Service Support and Asset Management Fund/AP Images)

U.S. innovators have developed an antiviral drug that can be used to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19, part of Americas wide-ranging response to the global pandemic.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on October 22 approved Gilead Sciences antiviral remdesivir for adults and children older than 12 who are under hospital care for COVID-19. Remdesivir is the first antiviral the FDA has approved to combat the disease.

Todays approval is supported by data from multiple clinical trials that the agency has rigorously assessed and represents an important scientific milestone in the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, FDA commissioner,said in a statement.

The FDA will continue to approve new COVID-19 treatments as soon as they are found safe and effective, as required under the U.S. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA may also issue an Emergency Use Authorization before providing full approval to drugs for which clinical trials demonstrate a minimum duration of safety and compelling evidence of efficacy.

Prior to any approval, the FDA weighs the risks and benefits of a product using rigorous scientific standards. In approving remdesivir, the FDA analyzed data from three randomized, controlled clinical trials that included patients hospitalized with mild to severe cases of COVID-19.

Pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, based in Foster City, California, says remdesivir will help patients recover faster, thereby preserving scarce health care resources.

Through Operation Warp Speed, the United States is alsosupporting the development of numerous potential vaccines for COVID-19, including several that are in the final stages of testing. The operation has convened government scientists, pharmaceutical companies and others with the goal of developing a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year.

The United States also has invested in preparing manufacturers to bring COVID-19 vaccines to market quickly once theyre proven safe and effective.

Were getting ready so that when we get the good word that we have the vaccine, we have the formula, we have what we need were ready to go, as opposed to taking years to gear up,President Trump said May 15.

By U.S. Embassy Tbilisi | 5 November, 2020 | Topics: Health Issues, News | Tags: Coronavirus, Disease prevention and control, Health Programs, innovation

Read more:

US approves first treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients - US Embassy in Georgia

People with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic can spread the disease without any outward signs that they're sick. But a newly developed AI, with a keen algorithmic ear, might be able to detect asymptomatic cases from the sounds of people's coughs, according to a new study.

A group of researchers at MIT recently developed an artificial intelligence model that can detect asymptomatic COVID-19 cases by listening to subtle differences in coughs between healthy people and infected people. The researchers are now testing their AI in clinical trials and have already started the process of seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for it to be used as a screening tool.

The algorithm is based on previous models the team developed to detect conditions such as pneumonia, asthma and even Alzheimer's disease, a memory-loss condition that can also cause other degradation in the body such as weakened vocal cords and respiratory performance.

Related: Coronavirus live update

Indeed, it is the Alzheimer's model that the researchers adapted in an effort to detect COVID-19. "The sounds of talking and coughing are both influenced by the vocal cords and surrounding organs," co-author Brian Subirana, a research scientist in MIT's Auto-ID Laboratory said in a statement. "Things we easily derive from fluent speech, AI can pick up simply from coughs, including things like the person's gender, mother tongue or even emotional state. There's in fact sentiment embedded in how you cough."

First, they created a website where volunteers both healthy and those with COVID-19 could record coughs using their cellphones or computers; they also filled out a survey with questions about their diagnosis and any symptoms they were experiencing. People were asked to record "forced coughs," such as the cough you let out when your doctor tells you to cough while listening to your chest with a stethoscope.

Through this website, the researchers gathered more than 70,000 individual recordings of forced-cough samples, according to the statement. Of those, 2,660 were from patients who had COVID-19, with or without symptoms. They then used 4,256 of the samples to train their AI model and 1,064 of the samples to test their model to see whether or not it could detect the difference in coughs between COVID-19 patients and healthy people.

They found that their AI was able to pick up differences in the coughs related to four features specific to COVID-19 (which were also used in their Alzheimer's algorithm) muscular degradation, vocal cord strength, sentiment such as doubt and frustration and respiratory and lung performance.

The AI model correctly identified 98.5% of people with COVID-19, and correctly ruled out COVID-19 in 94.2% of people without the disease. For asymptomatic people, the model correctly identifed 100% of people with COVID-19, and correctly ruled out COVID-19 in 83.2% of people without the disease.

These are "a pretty encouraging set of numbers," and the results are "very interesting," said Dr. Anthony Lubinsky, the medical director of respiratory care at NYU Langone Tisch Hospital who was not a part of the study.

But "whether or not this performs well enough in a real-world setting to recommend its use as a screening tool would need further study," Lubinsky told Live Science. What's more, further research is needed to ensure the AI would accurately evaluate coughs from people of all ages and ethnicities, he said (The authors also mention this limitation in their paper).

Related: Most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates

If a doctor were to listen to the forced cough of a person with asymptomatic COVID-19, they likely wouldn't be able to hear anything out of the ordinary. It's "not a thing that a human ear would be easily able to do," Lubinsky said. Though follow-up studies are definitely needed, if the software proves effective, this AI which will have a linked app if approved could be "very useful" for finding asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, especially if the tool is cheap and easy to use, he added.

The AI can "absolutely" help curb the spread of the pandemic by helping to detect people with asymptomatic disease, Subirana told Live Science in an email. The AI can also detect the difference between people who have other illnesses such as the flu and those who have COVID-19, but it's much better at distinguishing COVID-19 cases from healthy cases, he said.

The team is now seeking regulatory approval for the app that incorporates the AI model, which may come within the next month, he said. They are also testing their AI in clinical trials in a number of hospitals around the world, according to the paper.

And they aren't the only team working on detecting COVID-19 through sound. Similar projects are underway in Cambridge University, Carnegie Mellon University and the U.K. start-up Novoic, according to BBC.

"Pandemics could be a thing of the past if pre-screening tools are always-on in the background and constantly improved," the authors wrote in the paper. Those always-listening tools could be smart speakers or smart phones, they wrote.

The study, partly supported by the drug company Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, was published Sep. 30 in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

Originally published on Live Science.

See the original post:

AI can detect COVID-19 from the sound of your cough - Livescience.com

CLEVELAND They voted from cars and at outdoor tables. They stood in lines spaced far apart. They strapped on masks and pumped sanitizer into their palms. All across America on Tuesday, voters cast ballots in a presidential election in which the uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic was both a top issue and a threat.

As millions of Americans turned out to vote, the nation was facing a rapidly escalating pandemic that is concentrated in some of the very states seen as critical in determining the outcome of the presidential race. From Wisconsin to North Carolina, infections were on the rise as the nation barreled toward 10 million total cases.

The virus that has left millions of people out of work and killed more than 230,000 people in the United States will be one of the most significant challenges for the winner of the presidential race, and it loomed over every chapter of the election, down to the final ballots.

In the last hours of campaigning, President Trump who, regardless of the election outcome, will be in charge of the nations response to the pandemic for the next two and a half critical months was at odds with his own coronavirus advisers and suggested that he might fire Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious-disease expert. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told voters in a final pitch that the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump.

In Virginia, voters temperatures were taken at some polling sites. In Wisconsin, the mayor of Wausau, a small city where cases are spiking and tensions are high, issued an order banning guns at polling places. And in Texas, an election judge did not wear a face covering, prompting accusations of voter intimidation and such intense heckling that the judge called the local sheriff to report that she felt unsafe.

The pandemic, which drove record numbers of Americans to cast ballots early or by mail, rarely strayed far from voters minds.

I just dont want another shutdown, said Rachel Ausperk, 29, a first-time voter who said she chose President Trump in Ohio, a highly contested state that reported more new coronavirus cases on Tuesday than on any day since the nations outbreak began more than eight months ago.

In Miami, Eddie Gil, 50, said that he, too, had been guided by concerns about the coronavirus and how it was being handled. He said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but chose Mr. Biden this year, in part because of the presidents handling of the pandemic.

The government has failed all the small businesses, said Mr. Gil, who opened a gym in January but said the pandemic forced him to close. Im very disappointed, he added. I thought putting a real estate businessman in office would drain the swamp.

The coronavirus outbreak shaped nearly every aspect of the 2020 election, and only intensified as voters went to the polls. The United States shattered records in recent days, reporting more than 85,000 new cases a day, nearly double the caseload at the start of October. Deaths have increased slowly to more than 800 daily, more than in early July but far fewer than in the spring. Though the country is conducting more testing, that does not fully account for the increase in cases.

In a collision of two powerful forces shaping 2020, the virus was raging most ominously across political battlegrounds around the Great Lakes. Several swing states recorded records or near highs on Tuesday, including Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which have all announced more cases over the last seven days than in any other weeklong period during the pandemic.

In Wisconsin, a prize eyed by both parties, more than 100,000 virus cases have been reported in the past month, and deaths and hospitalizations have spiked, leaving many to fear that worse news could be ahead.

Voters who entered a polling location in Kenosha, Wis., first passed a handwashing station outside the front doors. Then there was a kiosk of free masks, wipes and hand sanitizer just inside the lobby. The room where they voted was a large, airy gymnasium with tables spaced at least 15 feet apart.

David Sconzert, a poll worker, said he carefully considered whether to show up on Election Day at all. A cancer survivor, he said he tested positive for the coronavirus in early October yet feared he did not have the immunity that would prevent him from catching it again.

I almost called it off, he said. But then I just thought, No. Im taking a chance.

Inside a community basketball gym in Cleveland, poll workers fastened on masks and sat down behind cardboard and plastic shields that encased them on three sides. Looking more like a row of bank tellers, they greeted voters, who were expected to give an electronic signature by slipping on disposable plastic finger shields and then guiding their hands under a narrow opening. Voter booths, spaced out around the gym, had been meticulously measured with a six-foot rope.

Nov. 4, 2020, 12:56 a.m. ET

Raven Payne, a 25-year-old first-time poll worker, had one job all day: sanitation. Dressed in a bright yellow vest, plastic gloves, a face mask and a face shield, she had a distinctly buglike appearance as she hovered around the room, swooping in to clean, wipe and scrub each booth in between voters.

A mile away, about 40 people sick with the coronavirus were lying in beds at the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic. Across Ohio, more people are hospitalized with the virus than at any other time during the pandemic; around the country, more than 50,000 people were in a hospital with the coronavirus on Tuesday, up 67 percent from a month ago.

When Americans found themselves voting in the middle of the 1918 flu pandemic, infections also surged in October, peaking around Election Day. After voters turned out for the midterm elections that year, deaths continued at a fairly high rate throughout November and into December. At the same time, some places were lifting restrictions on public gatherings and people were flocking to the streets to celebrate the armistice ending World War I, two factors that contributed to new infections.

This year, experts are hopeful that the flood of mail-in voting and precautions at the polls will protect Election Day gatherings from becoming superspreader events. But with cases soaring nationwide and health officials overwhelmed, it may be difficult to determine in the coming weeks what effect voting may have had.

The next few weeks are seen as crucial for controlling the pandemic, as colder weather forces people indoors and families gather around the table at Thanksgiving.

Heres a guide to The Timess election night coverage,no matter when, how or how often you want to consume it.

No matter the outcome of the election, one person will be in charge of the nations Covid-19 response through the next critical period: Mr. Trump.

The president, who was hospitalized for the virus in October, has largely shut down the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and in recent days downplayed the countrys spiraling cases, saying that the nation is rounding the corner.

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White Houses coronavirus response coordinator, issued an urgent plea on Monday for an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented, in a private memo that was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

In many places, voters and poll workers took extraordinary measures on Tuesday to try to protect themselves. They wore American-flag-themed masks, used napkins to drop off votes in ballot boxes and even passed ballots with the help of salad tongs.

People just love the tongs, said Tommy Nickerson, a ballot worker in Oakland, Calif., where workers in face masks used tongs to collect ballots from drive-through motorists. Across the street, people cast ballots at tables set up outside.

Some thought the virus and all the precautions was overhyped.

I dont think its as big as they say, said Ann Roth, a 57-year-old voter from Papillion in suburban Omaha, who cast her ballot for Mr. Trump. People are going to do what theyre going to do.

In Michigan, another key swing state that Mr. Trump carried by a razor-thin margin four years ago, Democrats were focused on driving up turnout in Detroit. The pandemic was especially devastating for the city.

It hit us like an atomic bomb, said Ronald Lockett, the executive director of the Northwest Activities Center, where there was a line out the door to vote on Tuesday.

Mr. Lockett said he had the coronavirus this year, had to cut his staff during the pandemic, and had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because he had not been able to hold events. He cast his vote for Mr. Biden, he said, in large part because he hoped the former vice president would guide America out of the pandemic.

This election, he said, is going to determine the future of Covid.

Sarah Mervosh reported from Cleveland and Mitch Smith from Chicago. Reporting was contributed by Mike Baker in Portland, Ore., Julie Bosman in Kenosha, Wis., J. David Goodman in University Park, Texas, Manny Fernandez in Houston, Thomas Fuller in Oakland, Calif., Neil MacFarquhar in New York, Patricia Mazzei in Miami, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio in Detroit, Dionne Searcey in Omaha, Lucy Tompkins in Bismarck, N.D., and Michael D. Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg in Washington.

View post:

How Masks, Hand Sanitizer and Covid-19 Have Affected the 2020 Election - The New York Times

Despite urging from lawmakers and public health officials, the state Department of Health continues to withhold what many see as important information about the spread of COVID-19 in the islands details about virus clusters including how others are being infected.

Civil Beat requested specific information under the state public records law several weeks ago about how clusters are actively monitored and how infections originated, but state health officials have yet to provide the data. Gov. David Ige suspended the states public records and open meetings laws in March.

The Department of Health has not been transparent about the findings of its COVID-19 contact tracing team, which is headquartered at the Hawaii Convention Center.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The health department has never included detailed information about virus clusters in its daily data dashboard.

Instead, the public has received sporadic hints, sometimes via press conferences, only once culminating in a limited August report about where some former chains of infection began at a gym, a funeral and a correctional center, to name a few. That list of locations where outdated clusters had originated was quietly erased from the dashboard.

The health departments consistent failure to publish key information about the latest COVID-19 case clusters inhibits public understanding of the disease and behavioral response, local lawmakers and academics say. It also weakens the governments policy response.

Understanding how clusters originate will improve chances of stopping the virus from spreading in the future and help both policy makers and public health professionals prevent similar clusters, said House Speaker Scott Saiki.

When the Hawaii House Select Committee on COVID-19 Economic and Financial Preparedness requested specific information about the locations and types of activities associated with infection clusters this summer, department officials said they did not have the data.

I would have hoped over the past three months the department would have upgraded its ability to gather this kind of data, Saiki said. Its really important for the public to have access to this information so the public understands how and where clusters form.

The health department has yet to provide the cluster information Civil Beat requested Oct. 19 and isnt required to since Gov. David Ige indefinitely suspended Hawaiis public records law.

The department should be able to publish this type of information if its staff is actively collecting it, data scientists and public health experts say.

House Speaker Scott Saiki, who chairs the House COVID-19 committee, has called on the health department to provide more details about coronavirus infection clusters for months.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Theres ways to share information with the public that still protects the privacy of cases, but at same time informs the public about how the disease is spreading, what kinds of precautions should be taken, and even the lessons learned about how its transmitted, said University of Hawaii health economist Victoria Fan, chair of the Hawaii Pandemic Applied Modeling Work Group.

In Taiwan, for example, Fan says the public is notified about every single new case, including details about how that person is believed to have contracted the COVID-19 virus. Taiwanese officials also include information about how many contacts of those infected have been traced, alerted and isolated. Those details are provided without identifying the individual.

Performance metrics for the states contact tracing efforts are also crucial to understanding how effective the state is able to respond, she said.

HIPAM has been asking for that since April and we havent gotten it, she said.

Gov. David Ige indefinitely suspended Hawaiis public records law in March.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Public health authorities elsewhere in the country are using data about clusters to refine their response.

The Massachusetts health department found clusters in private homes, child care centers, nursing homes, prisons and jails, industrial sites, hospitals and social events.

Knowing the size and origin of case clusters would help the public to gauge how widespread transmission is, said Thomas Lee, a University of Hawaii assistant professor of epidemiology and co-chair of HIPAM. It would also help forecasters like Lee make predictions about what types of case surges could be around the corner.

If we understand whats going on then we have better ability to take responsibility for our own actions and as a whole reduce transmissions, not just rely on blanket measures like everybody wears a mask, he said. People can be compliant because theyll understand where its being transmitted.

Sign Up

Sorry. That's an invalid e-mail.

Thanks! We'll send you a confirmation e-mail shortly.

Read the original post:

Hawaii Health Department Still Won't Share Info On COVID-19 Clusters - Honolulu Civil Beat

Follow our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here.

U.S. health officials on Monday added pregnancy to the list of conditions that put people with Covid-19 at increased risk of developing severe illness, including a heightened risk of death.

While most pregnant women infected with the coronavirus have not become severely ill, the new caution is based on a large study that looked at tens of thousands of pregnant women who had Covid-19 symptoms.

The study found they were significantly more likely to require intensive care, to be connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine, and to require mechanical ventilation than nonpregnant women of the same age who had Covid symptoms. Most importantly, the pregnant women faced a 70 percent increased risk of death, when compared to nonpregnant women who were symptomatic.

The study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the largest such study so far, examined the outcomes of 409,462 symptomatic women ages 15 to 44 who tested positive for the coronavirus, 23,434 of whom were pregnant.

We are now saying pregnant women are at increased risk for severe illness. Previously we said they might be' at increased risk for severe illness, said Sascha Ellington, a health scientist with the C.D.C., and one of the authors of the new study.

Still, Dr. Ellington emphasized that the overall risk of both complications and death was low.

The absolute risk of these severe outcomes is low among women 15 to 44, regardless of pregnancy status, but what we do see is an increased risk associated with pregnancy, she said.

Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine, said the new data underscore the importance of pregnant women taking extra precautions to avoid exposure to the virus, including avoiding social gatherings and interactions with people even members of their own households who may have been exposed or become infected.

This is new information that adds to the growing body of evidence, and really underscores the importance of pregnant women protecting themselves from Covid, Dr. Jamieson said. Its important that they wear a mask, and avoid people who are not wearing a mask.

But, she said, women should not skip prenatal care visits and must get the vaccines they need, like flu shots, and noted that the study indicates pregnant women should have access to a safe and effective Covid vaccine, once one is available.

An earlier study did not find a higher risk of death among pregnant Covid patients, but the pregnant patients in the new study were 1.7 times more likely to die than nonpregnant patients. That amounted to a death rate of 1.5 per 1,000 cases among the symptomatic pregnant women, compared with 1.2 per 1,000 cases of symptomatic women who were not pregnant.

Even after adjustments were made for differences in age, race, ethnicity and underlying health conditions like diabetes and lung disease, the pregnant women were three times more likely than nonpregnant women to be admitted to an intensive care unit and 2.9 times more likely to receive mechanical ventilation.

The study also highlighted racial and ethnic disparities. Nearly one- third of the pregnant women who had Covid were Hispanic. And while Black women represented 14 percent of the pregnant women included in the analysis, nine of 34 deaths were Black women.

Dr. Ellington emphasized the importance of taking precautions to avoid infection, saying pregnant women should limit interactions to avoid people who may have been exposed.

Pregnant women should be counseled about the importance of seeking prompt medical care if they have symptoms, the authors wrote.

A smaller study, also released Monday from the C.D.C., reported that women who tested positive for the coronavirus were at increased risk for delivering their babies prematurely, finding that 12.9 percent of live births among a sample of 3,912 women were preterm births, compared with 10.2 percent in the general population. The sample was not nationally representative, but the finding echoes earlier reports that warned of a higher risk for preterm deliveries.

Among 610 newborns who were tested for the coronavirus, 2.6 percent were positive, with most of the infections occurring among babies whose mothers had the infection within a week of delivery.

Follow this link:

Pregnant Women Face Increased Risks From Covid - The New York Times

A poll worker (right) waits while a woman votes Tuesday at the National World War I Museum & Memorial in Kansas City, Mo. Charlie Riedel/AP hide caption

A poll worker (right) waits while a woman votes Tuesday at the National World War I Museum & Memorial in Kansas City, Mo.

Almost two-thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, a majority disapprove of the job President Trump is doing and more than half do not think the COVID-19 pandemic is under control, according to early data from AP VoteCast.

VoteCast is not an exit poll. It is a massive set of pre-election polls that runs up through when voting closes Tuesday. VoteCast is conducted nationally and in key states and surveys some 140,000 voters. By comparison, a statistically significant and rigorously conducted national poll typically surveys about 1,000 people. We will be updating with results through the night.

Just 37% of Americans said the country is on the right track, while 63% said it's off on the wrong track, according to the data.

President Trump has a 44% approval rating, while 56% disapprove of the job he's doing. These are very similar numbers to what Trump has seen throughout his presidency.

When it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, 53% said it is not at all under control.

A plurality of voters also said COVID-19 is their top issue 42% said so, while 27% said the economy and jobs, 9% said health care more broadly and 8% said racism.

Americans also said it is more important to limit the spread of the coronavirus rather than limiting the damage to the economy by a whopping 61%-to-29% margin.

Turnout looks to be on track to be historically high. Before Election Day, more than 101 million Americans voted early. The record for highest total turnout was 137.1 million people in 2016.

The turnout rate is expected to be 65% or higher, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida. That would be the highest rate since 1908.

And VoteCast also shows a significant jump in turnout is likely, with 15% of the electorate being voters who did not vote in 2016.

As for how people voted, 71% said they voted early or by absentee, while 29% said they are voting Tuesday.

Read the original:

Voter Survey: U.S. Is On Wrong Track, COVID-19 Not Under Control - NPR