Category: Corona Virus

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Athletics officials at Texas universities spent months planning for a fall football season during a pandemic. As conferences deliberated how teams could safely compete in the age of coronavirus, proponents hoped enhanced coronavirus testing for athletes would ease any lingering doubts.

It worked. Within the month, five major Texas football programs are slated to play. In football and other high contact sports like soccer and volleyball, athletes will be tested three times a week, according to directives from the Big 12 Conference and Southeastern Conference.

For teams competing on a Saturday, that might mean a test Sunday, another Wednesday, and a final, rapid-results test Friday, said Kenny Boyd, a Baylor University senior associate athletic director. Non-conference opponents must also adhere to testing protocols that match conference standards.

Conference and school officials say enhanced testing for sports is necessary to protect athletes, support staff and the teams they compete against. Its an impressive regimen, public health experts agree. But that same level of testing is not available to other Texas college students even those living in high-risk settings like dorms.

Universities dont follow the same testing methods and report cases differently, so theres no way to compare outcomes since classes began again.

Texas A&M University reported 327 new positive tests the week ending Aug. 29, down slightly from the 371 it reported a week prior. Between Sept. 1 and Sept. 3, The University of Texas at Austin reported 103 new positive cases, more than doubling in three days the amount it reported for all of August. Baylor also reported 101 new cases during that time frame.

Public health experts say schools need to dramatically ramp up testing in order to catch silent spread fueled by students who are infected but dont have symptoms.

In Texas, that means colleges should be testing everyone as much as the athletes, said Diana Cervantes, an epidemiologist at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.

If you really wanted to find out what's going on you're going to have to do more intense and more frequent, routine testing, Cervantes said. Because right now, all of the schools and universities and public schools, they're really relying on symptomatic screening. They're not doing a lot of testing.

Many colleges in Texas offer diagnostic testing for students, faculty and staff who have symptoms of the virus. But routine testing for those without symptoms or exposure to a positive case is less prevalent, even as the CDC estimates 40% of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic.

A. David Paltiel, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said frequent testing for asymptomatic spread is crucial to controlling college outbreaks. Given the infectiousness of the coronavirus, schools should be testing everyone every three or four days, he said.

By far, the most powerful variable that administrators control is testing frequency, Paltiel said. If you're only springing into action when symptoms emerge its like a fire department that only responds to calls when the house is already known to have been burnt to the ground.

As Texas continues to report thousands of new cases a day, some colleges in states with fewer infections have launched aggressive testing campaigns. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign requires students, faculty and staff to be tested twice a week.

Among Texas schools that have rolled out plans to catch silent spread, officials vary on how much testing to offer, who exactly should be tested and whether that testing should be mandatory.

Baylor University stands out as one of the few Texas institutions to mandate participation in testing. The private Christian university is requiring all students, faculty, staff and vendors to test if selected, warning that failure to comply may result in disciplinary action. Unlike other Texas universities, Baylor also required a negative test from all students and employees before they returned to campus.

UT-Austin, Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University encourage participation in asymptomatic testing but stop short of requiring it. Texas Christian University does not offer routine testing for students without symptoms, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Cervantes worries a voluntary approach could allow outbreaks to go undetected, especially if some students dodge the invitation to test.

If it's optional then people could self-select themselves out of that," Cervantes said. "Let's say I think I had a high-risk exposure and I think that testing positive is going to mean something detrimental to me, maybe I'd decide not to get tested."

Texas Tech is offering walk-up testing on campus for students, faculty and staff, including those without symptoms or exposure to the virus.

In College Station, Texas A&M is randomly selecting students to participate in saliva-based testing throughout the semester. Faculty and staff members are not included, said Shawn Gibbs, dean of A&Ms School of Public Health.

Faculty and Staff are not part of the random testing program as they represent a population that is less likely to be asymptomatic, more likely to seek testing if they develop symptoms, and less likely to participate in riskier behaviors that could expose them to COVID-19, Gibbs said in a statement, adding that the school has made testing freely available to employees who have symptoms or are close contacts to someone who has tested positive.

The public flagship launched the first round of random testing Aug. 21, selecting more than 5,000 students about 7% of its student population. The testing is voluntary for now, but if the school is not satisfied with the response rate, it says the next round will be mandatory.

UT-Austin plans to test 5,000 students, faculty and staff members who do not have symptoms each week. The saliva-based testing is voluntary and directed toward critical populations, such as students in dorms, but anyone is allowed to participate every 14 days, University spokesperson J.B. Bird said. On Sept. 4, the University reported 36 clinical positive results among the 2,770 tests of asymptomatic people it has conducted since the week of Aug. 23.

Bird said UT-Austin has the capacity to increase the number of asymptomatic tests through the semester and will adapt if the data indicate that this would be a better strategy for tracking, tracing and limiting transmission.

With the reduced number of students in Austin, our capacity of up to 5,000 proactive community tests per week offers the chance to survey a significant percentage of the community, Bird said.

The protocol for athletes, school officials say, seems to be successful at preventing clusters of infection, though it remains to be seen whether testing for Texas campuses at large will provide that kind of mitigation. Plans to press forward with major college football in Texas were dealt an early setback Friday after TCU canceled its first football game due to COVID-19.

Paltiel said any plan dependent on random or voluntary testing is not good enough.

Young, asymptomatic individuals are fueling the spread of this pandemic," Paltiel said. "You have to test everyone because you're really looking for those silent spreaders, the kids who feel just fine."

Disclosure: Baylor University, Texas A&M University, Texas Christian University, Texas Tech University, University of Texas at Austin and University of North Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas universities need to test more student for coronavirus, experts say - The Texas Tribune

Northeastern ousts 11 students for violating safety protocols, and keeps their $36,500 tuition.

In one of the harshest punishments imposed to date against students for violations of coronavirus safety protocols, Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students this week and declined to refund their $36,500 tuition after they were discovered crowded into a room at a Boston hotel serving as a temporary dormitory.

About 800 students are staying in two-person rooms at the hotel, the Westin, which is less than a mile from Northeasterns Boston campus.

Two university staff members making rounds on Wednesday evening discovered the gathering, which violated university rules against any guests, visitors or additional occupants, the university said in a news release.

In addition, the students were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing, in defiance of university requirements, a university spokeswoman, Renata Nyul, said.

Northeasterns move comes as colleges across the country are struggling to figure out how to stop campus partying, which has already set off outbreaks at a number of schools and shut down some classes. The New York Times has counted at least 51,000 cases in universities and colleges around the country since the start of the pandemic, and many major college towns have become national hot spots.

Most colleges appear to be trying to sway students with warnings and pleas, and relying on peer pressure to moderate behavior, but some are taking a more punitive approach. Purdue University suspended 36 students after a cooperative house was caught partying less than 24 hours after the university president outlawed off-campus parties. At the University of Connecticut, several students were evicted from campus housing over a mask-free dorm bash.

The Northeastern students have the right to contest the action in an expedited hearing, the university said.

They were enrolled in a program that normally offers international experiences for first-year students, but some were placed in Boston this fall because of the pandemic.

The dismissed students will not be allowed to attend fall classes remotely, said the spokeswoman, Ms. Nyul, and they must start over as first-year enrollees if they come back.

They were notified on Friday that they would have to vacate the hotel within 24 hours, the university said, and before leaving, would have to be tested for the coronavirus at Northeastern. Anyone who tested positive would be moved into wellness housing at the university until they no longer had the virus.

Northeastern said that all students in the program had been forewarned of the obligation to practice social distancing and wear masks when among others. Students who attend an unsafe gathering, social or party, either on or off-campus, can expect suspension, Madeleine Estabrook, senior vice chancellor for student affairs, wrote in a letter to students.

Northeastern also sent an email warning certain incoming first-year students to follow social distancing guidelines. Those students had responded affirmatively to a social media poll asking if they were planning on partying once they were on campus, according to The Huntington News, Northeasterns student newspaper.

The first famines of the coronavirus era are at the worlds doorstep, the U.N. warns.

The first famines of the coronavirus era are looming in four chronically food-deprived conflict areas Yemen, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo the top humanitarian official of the United Nations has warned.

In a letter to members of the U.N.s Security Council, the official, Mark Lowcock, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the risk of famines in these areas had been intensified by natural disasters, economic shocks and public-health crises, all compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. Together, he said, these factors are endangering the lives of millions of women, men and children.

The letter, which has not been made public, was conveyed by Mr. Lowcocks office to the Security Council on Friday under its 2018 resolution requiring updates when there is a risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity. A copy of the letter was seen by The New York Times.

United Nations officials have said before that all four areas are vulnerable to food deprivation because of chronic armed conflicts, and the inability of humanitarian relief providers to freely distribute aid. But the added complications created by the pandemic have now pushed them closer to famine conditions.

In April, David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the anti-hunger arm of the United Nations, warned the Security Council that, amid the coronavirus pandemic, we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic. In July, his program identified 25 countries that were poised to face devastating levels of hunger because of the pandemic.

Mr. Lowcocks new warning of impending famines effectively escalates those alerts. Under a monitoring system for assessing hunger emergencies, famine is Phase 5, the worst, marked by starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels.

The lockdown in Melbourne, Australias second-biggest city, will be extended by two weeks, officials said Sunday, as they try to contain the countrys worst coronavirus outbreak.

The lockdown, which began in early August and had been set to end on Sept. 13, will now last until at least Sept. 28, said Dan Andrews, premier of the state of Victoria. Expert modeling, he said, suggests that easing restrictions too quickly could lead to a new wave of infections and keep the state from reaching its goal of lifting almost all restrictions by the end of the year.

I want a Christmas that is as close to normal as possible and this is the only way, these steps are the only way, that we will get to that point, Mr. Andrews said as he unveiled detailed road maps for ending restrictions in Melbourne, the state capital, and the rest of Victoria.

The announcement came a day after about 200 protesters in Melbourne clashed with the police at a Freedom Day rally calling for an end to pandemic restrictions. The police arrested 17 protesters and fined more than 160 others nearly everyone who had flouted the authorities instructions to stay home.

Tensions have surged in the fifth week of Victorias lockdown, which is one of the strictest in the world. All nonessential businesses are closed. Melburnians are allowed to leave the house only for work, exercise or buying groceries, and travel is restricted to within about three miles of home.

Under the changes Mr. Andrews announced on Sunday, after Sept. 13 the nightly curfew will begin at 9 p.m. instead of 8 p.m., outdoor exercise will be limited to two hours a day instead of one, and people living on their own will be allowed to have one friend or family member in their home whereas currently they can meet only with intimate partners. If the average daily rise in cases falls below 50 by Sept. 28, Melbourne will move on to the next stage of reopening.

Restrictions in the rest of Victoria, which is under a less severe lockdown, will be eased slightly after Sept. 13.

Daily new cases in Victoria have been trending downward since their peak in early August. On Sunday, the state reported 63 new coronavirus cases and five deaths, all of them linked to nursing homes. Australia, a country of 25 million people, has had a total of more than 26,000 cases and 753 deaths, according to a New York Times database.

In other coronavirus news from around the world:

The health ministry in Mexico said Saturday that the country had recorded 122,765 more deaths than usual from the time the pandemic started until August, suggesting that its true death toll from the virus could be much higher than reported. Mexico had recorded almost 630,000 cases and 67,326 coronavirus deaths as of Saturday night, according to a Times database, though a Times investigation in the spring found that the government was not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of such deaths in Mexico City, the capital.

How the virus has devastated India, which now has over four million reported cases.

Not so long ago, before the coronavirus, Indias future looked entirely different.

It had a sizzling economy that was lifting millions out of poverty. It aimed to give its people a middle-class lifestyle, update its woefully vintage military and become a regional political and economic superpower that could rival China, Asias biggest success story.

But the economic devastation caused by the pandemic is imperiling many of Indias aspirations. The countrys economy has shrunk faster than any other major nations. As many as 200 million people could slip back into poverty, according to some estimates. Many of its normally vibrant streets are empty, with people too frightened of the outbreak to venture far.

Much of this damage was caused by a lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that experts now say was both too tight and too porous, both hurting the economy and spreading the virus. India now has the fastest-growing coronavirus outbreak, topping four million confirmed cases, according to a New York Times database. On Sunday, the country reported a one-day increase of 90,632 cases, surpassing 90,000 for the first time and setting a global record.

A sense of malaise is creeping over the nation. Its economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic. Social divisions are widening. Anti-Muslim feelings are on the rise, partly because of a malicious social media campaign that falsely blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. China is increasingly muscling into Indian territory.

Scholars use many of the same words when contemplating India today: Lost. Listless. Wounded. Rudderless. Unjust.

The engine has been smashed, said Arundhati Roy, one of Indias pre-eminent writers. The ability to survive has been smashed. And the pieces are all up in the air. You dont know where they are going to fall or how they are going to fall.

To counter fears over Trumps urgency for a vaccine, 5 drug companies plan a joint safety pledge.

President Trump has pushed for a coronavirus vaccine to be available by October just before the presidential election and a growing number of scientists, regulators and public health experts have expressed concern over what they see as a pattern of political arm-twisting by the Trump administration.

In that environment, a handful of drug companies competing to be among the first to develop coronavirus vaccines are planning to release a joint pledge meant to reassure the public that they will not seek premature approvals.

Their statement, which has not been finalized, is expected to say that the companies will not release any vaccines that do not follow rigorous efficacy and safety standards, according to representatives of three of the companies.

The joint statement was planned for early next week, but it may be released earlier since its existence was made public on Friday by The Wall Street Journal. The manufacturers that are said to have signed the letter include Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi.

Pfizer and Moderna, along with the British-based company AstraZeneca, are testing their candidates in late-stage clinical trials. Pfizers chief executive said this week that the company could see results as early as October, but the others have said only that they plan to release a vaccine by the end of the year.

The companies must navigate perilous terrain. If they are among the first to bring a successful vaccine to market, they could earn major profits and help rehabilitate the image of an industry battered by rising drug prices.

But if a vaccine turns out to have dangerous side effects for some people, the fallout could be catastrophic, damaging their corporate reputations, putting their broader portfolio of products at risk and broadly undermining trust in vaccines, one of the great public health advances in human history.

Some experts fear a surge in U.S. cases tied to this Labor Day weekend.

Contagion operates on a simple rule: The more infections there are in an open population, the more opportunities it has to spread until enough people are protected either by immunity or a vaccine.

So elected officials and public health experts worry that active coronavirus infections in the United States during the Labor Day weekend are roughly twice what they were at Memorial Day. Roughly a month after holiday gatherings at the end of May, the countrys seven-day average of new daily cases had shot up to the highest level so far, more than 60,000.

The country is now registering roughly 40,000 new cases a day, compared with roughly 22,000 a day at Memorial Day weekend, according to a New York Times database. Outbreaks at colleges and in college towns have proliferated as dorms fill and classes resume. Many of the metro areas with the most cases per capita in recent days including Auburn, Ala.; Ames, Iowa; and Statesboro, Ga. have hundreds of cases at universities, The Timess data analysts wrote.

In a thread on Twitter, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, reviewed the troubling trends, calling the current level of infections a bit of a disaster given that a fall surge is to be expected just as the flu season sets in.

Some states are still holding mass gatherings; several moved forward with state fairs held over the Labor Day weekend. Colorado and Maryland are both holding events, as is South Dakota, where cases have spiked in recent weeks.

The viruss spread is broad, so few hospitals are overwhelmed the way many were in New York, New Jersey and other areas that were hit hard in the spring. And more treatments are available. Over all, fewer Americans are sick, hospitalized or dying from Covid-19 than in the spring or summer surges.

However, deaths are trending up in at least 12 states, according to a New York Times database: Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Hawaii, Virginia, Montana, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland and Colorado. North Carolina appears to be joining that group, reporting 45 deaths a record for the state on Saturday. Almost all of those states also have caseloads that were already high or trending upward.

On Saturday, officials in West Virginia announced more than 250 new cases, its third-highest daily total. The state has now announced more cases over the last week than in any other seven-day period.

The top-seeded womens doubles team at the United States Open tennis tournament was forced to withdraw from the event this weekend as the rules for players exposed to the virus changed for the third time in less than a week, and the second time in 24 hours.

The team, Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos, withdrew because Ms. Mladenovic had spent time with a player who tested positive, and health officials in Nassau County, where the players hotels are located, decided on Friday that allowing the team to play would violate the countys protocols. Ms. Mladenovic had been participating in the tournament all week after being exposed to the virus, but she was now expected to quarantine at the hotel.

The teams Saturday match was removed from the schedule, even though the day before a match that included another player who had been exposed to the virus was allowed to take place, albeit after a delay of about two and a half hours to consider the rule change.

This probably cost us a Grand Slam, Michael Joyce, Ms. Baboss coach, said of the forced withdrawal of a pair that had already won three major doubles titles together the 2018 and 2020 Australian Open and the 2019 French Open.

Two days before the tournament began, Benot Paire of France tested positive for the coronavirus. Mr. Paire was removed from play, but rules about the people in contact with him shifted over time.

Electronic contact tracing revealed that Mr. Paire had been in close contact for an extended period in a card game at one of the two hotels housing players on Long Island and possibly through other socializing with seven players, including Ms. Mladenovic, also of France.

After Mr. Paires positive test, U.S. Tennis Association officials scrambled to create a revised set of procedures for players who had been exposed but then tested negative, including daily screening and isolation from the rest of the players. The exposed players would be required to confine themselves to their hotel rooms unless traveling to the tournaments site, the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens.

Under those rules, Ms. Mladenovic had remained in the tournament, though after a stunning collapse in her second-round singles match, she vented frustration over her confinement.

I have the impression we are prisoners or criminals, she said. For even the slightest movement, we have to ask permission even though we are tested every day and had 37 negatives. Its abominable. The conditions are atrocious.

The spy service of every major country around the globe is trying to find out what everyone else is up to in developing a vaccine.

Updated September 4, 2020

China, Russia and Iran have all made attempts to steal research by some of the United States top companies and universities, according to U.S. intelligence agents. British intelligence has picked up signals of Russian spying on U.S., Canadian and British research. Washington and NATO have both redoubled efforts to protect the information garnered so far.

It would be surprising if they were not trying to steal the most valuable biomedical research going on right now, John C. Demers, a top Justice Department official, said of China last month during an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Valuable from a financial point of view and invaluable from a geopolitical point of view.

Chinas push is complex, with intelligence officials focusing on universities in part because they view the institutions data protections as less robust than those of pharmaceutical companies. Its operatives have also surreptitiously used information from the World Health Organization to guide its vaccine hacking attempts, both in the United States and Europe, according to a current and a former official familiar with the intelligence.

To date, no corporation or university has announced any data breaches resulting from the publicly identified hacking efforts. But some of the operations succeeded in at least penetrating defenses to get inside computer networks, according to one American government official.

Economic troubles have forced more than 100 Catholic schools to shut down.

In more than four decades of coaching girls basketball at Lebanon Catholic High School in southeastern Pennsylvania, Patti Hower had led the team to three state championships and 20 district titles. This year, there were high hopes again.

But then in April, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg announced that the school was permanently closing, citing insurmountable financial stress, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

We never thought, Hey, were never going to get on that court together again as a team, said Ms. Hower, 68, who attended the school, like her father and granddaughters.

As schools around the country debate how to reopen safely, a growing number of Catholic schools already facing declining enrollments and donations from before the pandemic are shutting down for good.

About 150 Catholic schools have closed, said Kathy Mears, the director of the National Catholic Educational Association, equal to about 2 percent of the 6,183 schools that were up and running last year. The number of closures is at least 50 percent higher this year than in previous years, she said.

As parents and families lost their jobs during the pandemic, many could no longer pay tuition at Catholic schools. And when churches began shutting down to curb the spread of the virus, that also ended a major source of donations some of which would normally be allotted for parish schools.

Among the best-known Catholic schools shutting its doors is the Institute of Notre Dame, an all-girls facility in Baltimore. Some alumni are fighting to keep the school open, upset that school leaders havent pushed harder to avoid closure.

Drena Fertetta, an alumnus who graduated from Notre Dame in 1983, began a group dedicated to reopening the school next year, perhaps at a different site.

There is just a sisterhood that happens to the girls who go to that school, Ms. Fertetta said. Its not something were willing to just walk away from.

Three deaths from Covid-19 and 147 infections have been linked to an August indoor wedding reception in north-central Maine, the spokesperson for the states Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday. None of those who died had attended the wedding, according to the C.D.C. spokesperson.

From the wedding in Millinocket, about 70 miles north of Bangor, transmission passed into a prison and a long-term care facility both of which are more than 100 miles from the wedding venue.

As of Thursday, there were 144 cases associated with the wedding, said Nirav Shah, the director of Maines C.D.C. Of those cases, 56 were wedding guests and their second or tertiary contacts, Mr. Shah said at a briefing on Thursday.

A member of the York County jail staff who tested positive for the virus attended the wedding, Dr. Shah said. Now 18 additional staff members, 46 of the jails inmates and seven family members of staff have confirmed cases, Dr. Shah said.

The Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison, about 100 miles away, has also been affected by cases linked to the wedding. A staff member at Maplecrest who is a secondary contact of one of the wedding guests tested positive, and as of Thursday there were 15 more infected individuals at the facility, Dr. Shah said. Eight of the cases are among residents, and seven among the staff.

The state C.D.C. said that about 65 people attended the indoor wedding. Maine has limited indoor gatherings to 50 people, according to the governors executive order.

Outbreaks are not isolated events, Dr. Shah said. One outbreak can quickly lead to several more outbreaks, especially in a close geographic area.

At a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19 have primarily benefited parents.

At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didnt have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.

As companies wrestle with how to support their staff during the pandemic, some employees without children say they are being asked to shoulder a heavier workload. The divide is more pronounced at some technology companies, where workers tend to be younger and have come to expect generous perks and benefits in exchange for letting their jobs take over their lives.

Tech companies were among the first to ask employees to work from home in the pandemic, and to offer generous leave and additional time off once it became apparent that children would remain home from school.

The tension has been most vividly displayed at Facebook, which in March offered up to 10 weeks of paid time off for employees if they had to care for a child whose school or day-care facility had closed or for an older relative whose nursing home was not open.

When Sheryl Sandberg, Facebooks chief operating officer, hosted a companywide videoconference on Aug. 20, more than 2,000 employees voted to ask her what more Facebook could do to support nonparents.

An employee wrote in comments accompanying the video feed that it was unfair that nonparents could not take advantage of the same leave policy afforded parents. Another wrote that while the procedure for taking leave was usually difficult, it was easy breezy for parents.

A parent responded in a note on her corporate Facebook page, visible only inside the company, that the question was harmful because it made parents feel negatively judged and that a child care leave was hardly a mental or physical health break.

Research connects vaping to a higher chance of catching the virus and suffering its worst effects.

Since the start of the pandemic, experts have warned that the coronavirus a respiratory pathogen probably capitalizes on the scarred lungs of smokers and vapers. Doctors and researchers are now starting to pinpoint the ways in which smoking and vaping seem to enhance the viruss ability to spread from person to person, infiltrate the lungs and prompt some of Covid-19s worst symptoms.

I have no doubt in saying that smoking and vaping could put people at increased risk of poor outcomes from Covid-19, said Dr. Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, a pediatric pulmonologist at Columbia University. It is quite clear that smoking and vaping are bad for the lungs, and the predominant symptoms of Covid are respiratory. Those two things are going to be bad in combination.

But while several studies have found that smoking can more than double a persons risk of severe Covid-19 symptoms, the relationship between vaping and Covid-19 is only beginning to become clear. A team of researchers recently reported that young adults who vape are five times as likely to receive a coronavirus diagnosis.

If I had caught Covid-19 within the week before I got really ill, I probably would have died, said Janan Moein, 20, who was hospitalized in early December with a collapsed lung and a diagnosis of vaping-related lung illness.

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Northeastern University Dismisses 11 Students for Breaking Virus Rules but Keeps Their Tuition - The New York Times

New estimates released this week suggest the global impact of the coronavirus pandemic will reach even greater levels of awfulness before 2020 is over: A prominent forecasting team projects that between now and Jan. 1, the virus will kill an additional 1.9 million people worldwide, pushing the total death toll by year's end to above 2.8 million.

But other disease specialists are highly skeptical of that forecast, which comes from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation or IHME. NPR spoke with the head of IHME's team, Chris Murray, as well as two researchers who are not involved with IHME's work: Ashish Jha of Brown University and Kalipso Chalkidou of the Imperial College School of Public Health in London. Here are five takeaways from those interviews:

1. The United States could continue to rank among the hardest hit countries.

According to IHME, by year's end the death toll in the United States will top 410,000 second only to India's death total, which is projected to reach nearly 660,000, and well ahead of Brazil's projected 174,000 dead. Similarly, when it comes to deaths as a share of population, the U.S. is projected to rank eighth. (The top five in that group are the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Peru.) And Murray expects that Americans will help fuel that trend by easing up on precautions in response to the decline in daily new cases since mid-July. "Rather than celebrating, we should be planning for what is coming up in the fall," he says. "By December we can get up to 30,000 deaths a day at the global level. So it's so important for governments to be anticipating this."

2. Colder weather in northern regions will largely drive the coming surge.

Relaxed vigilance won't be the only factor behind the autumn upswing in cases, says Murray. The major driver will be colder weather in the northern hemisphere. He says the team compared the rates of coronavirus transmission to date in countries in the southern hemisphere, where June through August coincide with winter, and those in the Northern hemisphere, where those months bring summer weather. "When you look at the huge epidemics that unfolded in Argentina, despite considerable efforts at lockdowns, the big epidemics that occurred in Chile, the epidemics in Southern Brazil and South Africa" he says, "and contrast them with what was happening in the Northern hemisphere, in places with similar social distancing mandates, where things were actually on average, improving that's where in the statistical analysis, we see a very strong correlation with seasonality."

This analysis doesn't speak to why colder weather correlates with greater transmission for instance, it could be that people spend more time indoors or that the virus survives better in cold air or some combination of those explanations. Regardless of the reason, says Murray, because far more people in the world live in the northern hemisphere, the arrival of cold weather there will dramatically increase the number of daily global infections overall.

3. These projections could be substantially off.

Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, says he finds IHME's forecast highly implausible particularly when it comes to the projected 410,000 death toll in the U.S. by Jan. 1. "I think that's completely unrealistic. I see no basis for that," says Jha.

Among his critiques is that IHME's team assumes that people who are infected with coronavirus in the coming months will die at the same rates as those who were infected earlier on in the pandemic. Murray says this is based on the team's finding that death rates have failed to improve even after advancements in various therapies and treatments.

Jha disagrees. "We have gotten so much better at taking care of sick patients, I think mortality has probably fallen by about 50%," says Jha. "The idea that everything we have learned in the last six months, we will have forgotten and that none of the new therapies will make a difference I don't know any public health person who can look at this and think this is a credible estimate."

4. It's not even clear how many people have already died of COVID-19.

A related challenge is that many countries lack reliable health statistics. This is particularly true of low- income countries, says Imperial College's Kalipso Chalkidou who also directs global health policy at the thinktank, Center for Global Development and is leading an international effort to quantify the wider health impacts of the pandemic.

"In most countries around the world we really don't know what people die from," says Chalkidou. And she adds, this means it's likely that vast numbers of COVID-19 deaths are going uncounted.

One result is that estimates on the global coronavirus death toll to date already vary substantially. For instance, IHME estimates that about 910,000 people have died worldwide. That's about 44,000 more than is estimated by another prominent team, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Murray says the difference comes down to adjustments IHME's team has made to make up for what appears to be a significant undercounting of COVID-19 deaths in two countries where the outbreaks have been particularly severe: Ecuador and Peru.

Chalkidou notes that, "we also don't have good data on comorbidities [that increase people's chances of dying of COVID-19] how many people suffer from chronic conditions such as diabetes for instance in Africa." That further complicates efforts to accurately predict the course of the pandemic in the region.

5. Getting the forecast right could have political implications.

Jha says his disagreement with IHME's methodology amounts to much more than a technical debate. "The problem here is if we come in at 250,000 or 300,000 dead [by year's end in the United States] which is still just enormously awful political leaders are going to be able to do a victory dance and say, 'Look, we were supposed to have 400,000 deaths. And because of all the great stuff we did, only 300,000 Americans died.'" says Jha.

"It's just setting a bar that's so easy to beat, it makes us somehow numb to the actual horrendous outcomes that the United States has had so far."

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Controversial Forecast Of COVID-19 Death Toll Worldwide : Goats and Soda - NPR

COVID-19 widespread testing is crucial to fighting the pandemic, but is there enough testing? The answer is in the positivity rates. USA TODAY

President Donald Trump urged the nation"to be careful" over Labor Day weekend as health experts worryholiday gatheringsincluding a state fair in the virus hotspot of South Dakota will fuel thespread of the virus.

In the weeks following the previous two summer holiday weekends Memorial Day and the Fourth of July positive tests climbed in the nation, according toJohns Hopkins University data. After peaking in mid-July, positive tests have been on a slow downward trend in the nation. Deaths peaked in the spring and have been slightly falling from a smaller second spike over the summer.

Hours after mocking Democratic opponent Joe Biden for wearing a mask, Trump asked Americans to keep their distance from each other as they celebrated the holiday, "wearing a mask whenever the distancing is not possible."

The pivotal weekend comes amid more grim projections for the death toll of the virus. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine saysmore than 410,000 deaths are predictedby January if mask usage stays at current rates. If governments continue relaxing social distancing requirements, that number could increase.

Some significant developments:

Today's numbers:A USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins data through late Friday shows Montana and North Dakota set records for new cases in a week while West Virginia reported a record number of deaths. The U.S. has 6.2million confirmed cases and over 188,000 deaths. Globally, there are 26million cases and more than 876,000 people have died.

What we're reading:Schools play a pivotal role in U.S. vaccination efforts since laws require children to have certain immunizations to enroll and attend classes. But with schools increasingly starting online amid COVID-19, are many needed vaccinations are getting skipped?

This file will be updated throughout the day. For updates in your inbox,subscribe to theDaily Briefing.

San Diego State University on Saturday announced a stay at home order for students living on-campus after San Diego County announced120 new virus cases connected with the campus.

The move comes days after SDSU halted in-person classes for a month but kept on-campus housing open. The university, the third-largest in the state, has more than 35,000 students but as many as 2,600 students have been living on campus since the fall semester began Aug. 24.

Since the beginning of the semester, there have been 184 cases at the university, according to San Diego County.

Among Californias 10 most populous counties, San Diego is the only one with virus cases low enough to meet state standards for reopening theaters, museums and gyms, and resuming indoor dining all with limited capacity to provide for physical distancing. But on Friday, county health officials warned of a concerning of rise cases in the county which could not be entirely attributed to SDSU cases.

A Polk County judge upheld Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds'new round of bar closures Friday, refusing to issue a temporary injunction that would have allowed some Des Moines metro bars to reopen.

Judge William Kelly said in his decision that Reynolds'Aug. 27 order was "not in violation of Iowa law and the statutes under which she issued it. Echoing the states argument in a Wednesday hearing on the injunction request, Kelly emphasized the importance of public health in his explanation of the ruling.

"The worst (bar owners) could expect is losing revenues, possibly bankruptcy and going out of business, while the worst (the state of Iowa) could expect is widespread transmission of COVID-19 across the state, high numbers of deaths and long-term health consequences," he wrote.

Earlier this week, White House health experts warned Iowa leaders that the state has the country's steepest outbreak and suggested the state should close bars in 61 counties and test all returning college students.

Katie Akin and Tony Leys, Des Moines Register

The members of nine fraternities and sororities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been directed to quarantine after 38 students tested positive for COVID-19, the university confirmed Friday.

UW-Madison and Dane County health officials told about 420 Greek life students to quarantine for at least 14 days. Violation of isolation and quarantine orders could result in a court order requiring the students to quarantine or a fine of up to $10,000, the university warned in a statement.

UW-Madison is also requiring every student who lives in one of the campus' 38 chapter houses to be tested for COVID-19. There are about 1,500 students who live in such houses, out of 5,000 total members of Greek life organizations at the university.To date, 440 UW-Madison students have tested positive for COVID-19 at on or off-campus testing sites.

Devi Shastri, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The coronavirus pandemic has hit Mexico so hard that the governments of several states have runout of death certificates.

Officials said Friday that at least three states Baja California, the State of Mexico and Mexico City started running out about15 to 20 days ago.

Authorities say a million new forms have been printed and are being distributed. The certificates are printed with special characteristics because falsification has been a problem in the past.

Mexico has suffered the fourth-highest leof COVID-19 deaths in the world. On Friday, the number of confirmed cases rose by 6,196 to 623,090, while deaths rose by 522 to 66,851. Cases in Mexico now appear to have plateaued and are no longer decreasing.

The Associated Press

Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students after they were discovered together in a room at the Westin Hotel in Boston on Wednesday night, in violation of university and public health protocols that prohibit crowded gatherings, the school announced Friday. They will not receive refunds on their payments for the semester.

The students were part of a study-abroad experience for first-year studentsthat had been modifieddue to COVID-19 and was, instead, hosting more than 800 students in two-person rooms at the Westin, less than one mile from campus. The gathering was discovered Wednesday night.

"Cooperation and compliance with public health guidelines is absolutely essential. Those people who do not follow the guidelines including wearing masks, avoiding parties and other gatherings, practicing healthy distancing, washing your hands, and getting tested are putting everyone else at risk,"Madeleine Estabrook, senior vice chancellor for student affairs at Northeastern, said in a statement.

Russian scientists have belatedly published first results from early trials into the experimental Sputnik V vaccine, which received government approval last month but drew considerable criticism from experts, as the shots had only been tested on several dozen people before being more widely administered.

In a report published in the journal Lancet on Friday, developers of the vaccine said it appeared to be safe and to prompt an antibody response in all 40 people tested in the second phase of the study within three weeks. However, the authors noted that participants were only followed for 42 days, the study sample was small and there was no placebo or control vaccine used.

One part of the safety trial included only men and the study mostly involved people in their 20s and 30s, so it is unclear how the vaccine might work in older populations most at risk of the more severe complications of COVID-19.

The Associated Press

Many months into the pandemic, Google is making Friday a one-time paid holiday for "collective wellbeing" and encouraging employees to enjoy a four-day holiday weekend, the company confirmed.

Google announced in July that employees would continue to work from home until summer of 2021.

Thousands of Black and Hispanic Americans could go uncounted in the nations census this year because of the coronavirus pandemic and other disruptions that discouraged households in poor and heavily minority neighborhoods from filling out their forms.

In 63% of census tracts, fewer people provided initial responses this year than in 2010, a USA TODAY analysis found. Response rates fell particularly in tracts with high concentrations of Black or Latino residents, large percentages of families qualifying for government benefits, or low levels of access to broadband internet.

People of color and poor families are undercounted every census. But COVID-19 delayed delivery of Census questionnaires for hard-to-reach populations during the spring quarantine and delayed operations since then to reach households that failed to respond.

Theresa Diffendal

The U.S. economy added 1.4 million jobs in August as businesses shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic continued to reopen and bring back workers, more than offsetting a fresh wave of layoffs by firms that have exhausted their federal loans.

The unemployment rate fell sharply to 8.4% from 10.2% in July, the Labor Department said Friday.

Augusts payroll gains were healthy but mark the second straight monthly slowdown in hiring after employers added a record 4.8 million positions in June and 1.8 million in July. Thats a troubling sign considering the nation has recouped slightly less than half the unprecedented 22 million jobs wiped out in early spring as states closed down nonessential businesses such as restaurants, malls and movie theaters.

Paul Davidson

At least 7,000 health workers worldwide have diedafter contracting COVID-19, human rights organization Amnesty International said Thursday.

"For over seven thousand people to die while trying to save others is a crisis on a staggering scale. Every health worker has the right to be safe at work, and it is a scandal that so many are paying the ultimate price," Steve Cockburn, Head of Economic and Social Justice at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

At least 1,320 health workers are confirmed to have died in Mexico alone, the highest known figure for any country, the group said. The U.S. has seen the second-highest number of health care worker deaths, Amnesty International said, with morethan 1,000 deaths.

More than 410,000 Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1, according to a model cited by top health officials and once used by the White House.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine predicts that number could exceed 620,000if mask usage stays at current rates and governments continue relaxing social distancing requirements. Global deaths couldreach4million by the end of the year in a worst case scenario, with a "most likely" scenario of 2.8 million.

Daily deaths in December could be as highas 30,000.

"Looking at the staggering COVID-19 estimates, it's easy to get lost in the enormity of the numbers," said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray."The number of deaths exceeds the capacity of the world's 50 largest stadiums, a sobering image of the people who have lost their lives and livelihoods."

Murray said more lives could be saved if mask usage is near-universal and governments implement social distancing requirements.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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Coronavirus live updates: Thousands of college students ordered to stay in dorms; cases spiked after other holidays - USA TODAY

Three people connected to the outbreak have died of the virus, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Robert Long told CNN.

The wedding was held in Millinocket on August 7. Since then, the cases have spread to a nursing home and a prison, both more than 100 miles away from the venue.

The wedding outbreak investigation as of Thursday was still at 56 cases among the guests and their secondary and tertiary contacts. Secondary contacts are people who had close contact with someone who attended and tertiary contacts are people who had close contact with a secondary.

Covid cases at a jail and nursing home

Outbreaks linked to the wedding have unfolded at Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison and York County Jail in Alfred, the state agency announced last week.

Seventy-two people connected to the York County Jail have tested positive for the virus, Long said Thursday. Of those, 46 are inmates, 19 work at the jail and seven are household members of those jail employees.

The jail is more than 220 miles away from the reception site. Maine CDC began investigating the jail outbreak on August 21.

The outbreak at the Maplecrest rehab center in Madison, which is more than 100 miles from the wedding venue, has also grown, according to Maine CDC.

An employee of the nursing home is a secondary case associated with the wedding outbreak. Sixteen people at Maplecrest have tested positive, including that person.

"That's what Covid-19 is like. You open up glitter in Millinocket and next thing you know you are finding traces of it at a jail complex in York County. It's just emblematic of how quickly, silently and efficiently it can spread."

Wedding venue cited

Maine CDC is investigating other points of connection with the group, including the ceremony held at Tri Town Baptist Church, Shah said last week.

In defense, Big Moose Inn staff said they misinterpreted the state's rules on social distancing, according to a statement sent August 29 to CNN.

"We understood that there could be no more than 50 persons in our largest room. We did make an error in the interpretation of that rule," the venue said in the statement. "Our interpretation was that we could take a wedding party of more than 50 persons, and split them between two rooms as long as it didn't exceed our total capacity or a specific room's capacity."

CNN's Sheena Jones, Lauren del Valle, Anna Sturla, Rebekah Riess, Laura Ly and Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

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Coronavirus cases tied to a Maine wedding reception hit 147, with 3 deaths - CNN

India will supply coronavirus vaccines to the world will its people benefit?  Nature.com

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India will supply coronavirus vaccines to the world will its people benefit? - Nature.com

Jose Velasquez, a 79-year-old father from Bexar County, Texas, tested positive for the coronavirus on March 26 and died on April 17. During those weeks, the staff at the nursing home where he lived assured his family that he showed no symptoms of Covid-19 and, according to a lawsuit filed by his children, failed to ensure that he received proper medical care. The staff did not transfer him to a hospital as he deteriorated or even warn his family that he was sick, according to the suit. Mr. Velasquezs family says that just hours before he died, the staff at the home reported he was doing fine.

The facility had a bad safety record, according to the lawsuit, was chronically understaffed, had received citations for failing to carry out basic infection-control programs and, in the months after the coronavirus erupted, its operators did not heed state guidelines for keeping the virus in check. At least 18 residents and one staff member have died from the virus at the nursing home more than at any other nursing home in San Antonio, according to an analysis by The New York Times; other homes owned by the same company have lost at least 43 more people.

Thats not surprising. Around 40 percent of all coronavirus-related deaths in the United States have been among the staff and residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities totaling some 68,000 people.

Those deaths were not inevitable. The novel coronavirus is adept at spreading in congregant living facilities, and older people face an increased risk of contracting and dying from it. But most of the nations nursing homes had months of warning about the coming threat: One of the first coronavirus outbreaks in the country was in a nursing home near Seattle, making it clear that such facilities ought to prepare.

Its no mystery how. Nursing homes that have managed to contain the virus have done so by employing basic measures such as using personal protective equipment, routinely testing employees and residents and bringing on extra workers. Those successes make clear that many, if not most, of those 68,000 lives could have been spared with careful planning and effective leadership.

To be clear, responsibility for the nations disastrous coronavirus response rests largely with the federal government which left states, cities and institutions scrambling to set social distancing policies, secure equipment and effectively test and trace enough people to stop the virus from spreading. But in nursing homes, those broader failures have been compounded by several long-brewing problems of the industrys own making.

Some 70 percent of Americas long-term care facilities are run by for-profit companies, including private investment firms. Those companies have squeezed profits out of these facilities by forcing them to skimp on care. As a result, per-patient staffing hours have fallen and staff quality has suffered. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that almost half of American nursing homes routinely violate infection-control standards, including those involving the isolation of sick residents, and a ProPublica investigation found that roughly 43 percent of such facilities did not have a legally mandated emergency response plan at the start of this pandemic.

Rather than check these practices with a strong hand or a watchful eye, the Trump administration has granted the long-term care industry several concessions in recent years: smaller fines, potentially lower tax bills and relaxed training requirements for nursing home workers. It has also proposed rolling back infection-control rules meant to keep pathogens like the coronavirus under control.

Since the start of the pandemic, the industry has received billions of dollars in emergency aid hundreds of thousands of which has gone to companies with terrible safety records. Rather than focus on improving those records, operators of private nursing homes have deployed an army of lobbyists to press for even more funding and favorable policies.

Among the most alarming of those policies is total immunity from wrongful death and other malpractice lawsuits including those pertaining to the coronavirus from 2019 through at least 2024. Republican lawmakers and industry trade groups have argued that such protections are necessary to prevent struggling homes from collapsing under the weight of litigation. But theres a much better way to protect nursing homes from wrongful death lawsuits: help them protect patients from dying needlessly.

In a just world, the long-term care industry would right now face more accountability, not less. Eric Dreiband, an assistant U.S. attorney general, was correct when he spoke of the governments duty to ensure that nursing home residents are adequately cared for with dignity and respect and not unnecessarily put at risk. But the Justice Departments investigation into whether states violated nursing home residents rights by admitting Covid-19 patients into state-run homes from hospitals is not the best way to fulfill that duty. Such transfers were almost certainly unwise, but research continues to show that asymptomatic staff members not incoming patients were the driving force behind nursing home outbreaks.

Instead, federal officials ought to increase financial oversight of the industry, in which many businesses have been known to run afoul of the law for instance, by bilking Medicare, soliciting kickbacks and illegally shielding assets from bankruptcy filings. Investigations by ProPublica and other news outlets have found that some facilities that struck lucrative deals to take on residents who tested positive for the coronavirus did not in turn ramp up their services accordingly.

Every effort should be made to ensure that the bulk of the money that the government puts into this industry goes to patient care, not providers pockets. An investigation started by the House of Representatives into the nations largest for-profit homes is a meaningful step in this direction. The Justice Department should follow suit.

For another thing, testing mandates and rules about personal protective equipment need to be backed up with financial and logistical support. Facilities and municipalities are still bidding against one another for personal protective equipment, and for most of the past six months long-term care facilities have had no higher prioritization for testing than an average person.

The federal governments attempts to address these problems have been belated and clumsy: unusable gloves and gowns, a testing initiative that didnt begin until midsummer and that remains far too meager, and unenforceable mandates. Before you can hold facilities to testing requirements or mandate the use of personal protective equipment, you have to ensure that they can actually access those things, said David Grabowski, a health care policy expert at Harvard Medical School.

The only way to prevent the coronavirus from racing through nursing homes is to nationalize the supply chain for these essential tools, and then ensure that they are readily available to the institutions that need them most.

Nursing home staffing shortages also need to be addressed. As Mr. Grabowski and others have noted, certified nursing assistants, who make up the bulk of nursing home workers, have one of the most dangerous jobs in America right now. Their work is more deadly than logging or deep sea fishing more than 700 nursing home workers have died from the coronavirus so far and most earn minimum wage or close to it. As certified nursing assistants get sick or quit, staff shortages are approaching crisis levels.

In the near term, lawmakers should provide for hazard pay for nursing home workers in the next relief package and should require all nursing homes to enact non-punitive sick-leave policies so that workers dont infect colleagues or residents.

In the longer term, federal officials need to consider revising Medicaid reimbursement rates for long-term care so they support higher than minimum-wage salaries, and shifting reimbursement policies so at least some long-term care can be reimbursed with Medicare dollars.

Lawmakers and nursing home operators also would do well to consider a national initiative, perhaps involving student volunteers and internship programs, to recruit future workers to nursing home care. That work, which can be deeply rewarding, will remain urgently needed long after this crisis passes.

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Could Many Coronavirus Deaths in Nursing Homes Have Been Avoided? - The New York Times

TheWest Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reportsas of 10:00 a.m., on September 5, 2020, there have been 453,285 total confirmatory laboratory results receivedfor COVID-19, with 11,289 total cases and 243 deaths.

CASESPER COUNTY: Barbour (34), Berkeley (822), Boone(152), Braxton (9), Brooke (99), Cabell (577), Calhoun (15), Clay (29),Doddridge (11), Fayette (398), Gilmer (20), Grant (143), Greenbrier (106),Hampshire (92), Hancock (125), Hardy (75), Harrison (296), Jackson (210),Jefferson (386), Kanawha (1,650), Lewis (36), Lincoln (125), Logan (516),Marion (228), Marshall (133), Mason (119), McDowell (74), Mercer (344), Mineral(146), Mingo (272), Monongalia (1,342), Monroe (133), Morgan (40), Nicholas(57), Ohio (294), Pendleton (45), Pleasants (15), Pocahontas (45), Preston (141),Putnam (338), Raleigh (389), Randolph (227), Ritchie (6), Roane (36), Summers(21), Taylor (109), Tucker (11), Tyler (15), Upshur (46), Wayne (285), Webster(7), Wetzel (45), Wirt (8), Wood (321), Wyoming (71).

Pleasenote that delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from thelocal health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the localhealth department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain countymay not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual inquestion may have crossed the state border to be tested.Such is the case of Hancockand Mason counties in this report.

Pleasevisit the dashboard located at http://www.coronavirus.wv.gov for more information.

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COVID-19 Daily Update 9-5-2020 - West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources

Every few weeks, Caryn Cardello and her partner contemplate bringing their son back to day care.

They are stressed and overwhelmed with parenting alone after months of shelter-in-place, and they want their 2-year-old to have the opportunity for normal social development.

But when the San Francisco couple asked their pediatrician about the coronavirus risks, the doctor did not give a clear recommendation.

We just wanted someone to tell us what the risk was, Cardello said. We dont know what the hell to do.

Like Cardello, most Bay Area parents are confused, scared and stressed about the lack of clarity surrounding the risk of coronavirus transmission in day care facilities.

More than 320 coronavirus cases associated with day care facilities have been confirmed in the Bay Area, according to Sept. 3 data from the California Department of Social Services. More than 6,000 day care providers are open in the region, meaning that on average, there have been about five cases reported for every 100 facilities.

But major unknowns remain. Because the state data does not indicate exactly how many children and staff are associated with each day care facility, there appears to be no way to calculate the rate of coronavirus transmission. Without that figure, it is impossible to compare the risk in a child care facility with the overall rate of transmission.

The department does not make public health determinations as to the risk associated with the number or percentage of child-care related (coronavirus) cases, wrote Scott Murray, a spokesperson for the department, in an email. Instead, the department reports the data to help parents and caregivers make informed decisions, he added.

The state data do not necessarily reflect transmission within the centers themselves, but rather the reported total of cases associated with children, parents, staff members and other adults at day care facilities or within childrens families, multiple experts said.

Some lower-income and essential-worker parents have had no choice but to enroll their children in day care. Some work-from-home parents have decided the risk is low enough to be worth the benefits. And countless others like Cardello, especially work-from-home mothers, are overwhelmed by the competing demands of their jobs, children and personal lives but remain too scared to choose day care.

They all want to know: Is it safe?

Most experts agree that the risk of coronavirus transmission is comparatively low for children old enough for day care, and many researchers and health care providers with access to the most recent information have decided to send their own children back to day care.

But the answer to that question is mostly a personal decision, experts and day care providers agreed.

In San Francisco, day care facilities are about as safe as they can be, said Gina Fromer, the chief executive officer of the Childrens Council of San Francisco, a nonprofit that supports child care providers and helps parents find care. She feels confident that the state and county safety rules greatly minimize any transmission risk.

The number of affected child care sites is still relatively small, Fromer said.

Kate Shaheed, the director of St. Vincents Day Home, one of Oaklands oldest day care providers, agreed. Despite hosting more than 100 children, St. Vincents has not experienced any coronavirus cases.

But its a choice. Its a hard choice, Fromer said about parents deciding whether to enroll their kids in day care. There is some risk there, and we just cannot say there is not, she added.

About 30 of the cases associated with day care facilities in the Bay Area were reported in the last two weeks, according to the data.

Santa Clara County tops the list of Bay Area counties with 94 confirmed cases at child care facilities, an average of five cases per 100 facilities, and Alameda follows with 49 and an average of three cases for every 100 facilities, according to state data released Sept. 3.

In Santa Clara County, at least 30% of the confirmed cases were among children as of Aug. 30. The county is one of the few in the region with enough positive tests among children (29 total as of Aug. 30 data) to report them without violating health privacy guidelines.

I do think its helpful to know the number of cases that have been connected to child care, said Lea Austin, the director for the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. But what the numbers dont tell us is whether any of these cases have actually been transmitted in a child care facility.

Californias statistics indicate that parents and staff make up about 80% of the states child care-related infections, according to Sohil Sud, an associate professor of pediatrics at UCSF. For day care-aged children, the evidence indicates that coronavirus transmission among these children and from children to adults is substantially less frequent than transmission between adults, he added.

Children might just be asymptomatic more frequently than adults, but with frequent testing, we havent seen that children are as likely to get infected as adults, said Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics specializing in pediatric infectious diseases at Stanford, about her own research currently under way.

A typical story of transmission might be something like an aunt with COVID-19, who gives it to a parent, who gives it to their child, who happens to be in child care, Sud said.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that described limited coronavirus transmission in child care facilities in Rhode Island corroborates this evidence, especially when combined with several recent studies conducted internationally, Sud added.

But of course, low risk is not zero risk, he added. He chose to allow his preschool-aged daughter to return to her school in June.

Overall, it appears that young children in particular are less likely to be affected, Maldonado said.

Many of Maldonados colleagues have returned their children to day care, she said.

Because of the constantly shifting science, day care centers have to rely on parents to carefully follow coronavirus prevention guidelines, Shaheed said.

I think its really working because our parents are very very serious about not getting ill, she added. Its a community trust.

At the Oakland facility, children are kept in stable groups with the same caretakers and same children every day; outdoor play areas are fenced off to allow each group to play safely outside; adults wear masks at all times; and areas are cleaned regularly throughout the day, among many other prevention measures, Shaheed said.

Some parents have expressed confusion and frustration that day care centers and other child care activities are allowed to remain open, but schools cannot.

Its almost not fair to compare child care and K-12, Shaheed said. While many day care centers, which are mostly private, cut capacity in half in order to reopen, such an option is far more difficult for public schools, which must serve all enrolled students.

And the science about coronavirus transmission among children past pre-kindergarten age is much murkier and indicates that older kids could pose higher coronavirus risks, she added.

To compensate for closed schools, some day care centers have begun to accept children ages five to eight for the first time, if they are siblings of younger enrollees, Fromer said. By accepting older siblings, some day care facilities can create more stable child care bubbles, because a group of four children from two families poses a lower transmission risk than four children from four different families, she added.

Its about education, and about getting beyond the fear and looking at the data, Fromer said. Parents can make informed decisions about their childs safety if they visit the day care they are considering and make sure they feel confident about their coronavirus protection procedures.

Ask the questions, she said. Get the data.

Cardello is still asking questions. For now she has decided to keep her child at home until she feels more certain about the mixed signals. There are just too many unknowns, she said.

Anna Kramer is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: anna.kramer@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @anna_c_kramer

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Heres how many coronavirus cases have been linked with Bay Area child care centers - San Francisco Chronicle

HILO, Hawaii (KHON2) A family linked to a growing coronavirus cluster on the Big Island is making an emotional plea to the public.

[Hawaii news on the goLISTEN to KHON 2GO weekday mornings at 7:30 a.m.]

Mary Benevides was in shock when she found out her 77-year-old father Walter Santos Sr. had COVID-19. She knew it was possible, but hoped he wouldnt get it.

Just take it seriously if you love your family. If you love anybody within your community, take it seriously, said Benevides.

She said its been like an emotional roller-coaster. She and her siblings have been grappling with the uncertainty brought on by the virus, praying their father will pull through. Her message to othersCOVID-19 is very real.

Santos is one of the 54 residents and 18 staff at the Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home with the virus.

Cases inside the home exploded after an asyptomatic staff member tested positive in late August.

Benevides said her father has a fever, body aches and loss of appetite, but nothing too serious, so far.

He is isolated right now and semi sedated. Hes on IV fluids to keep him as nourished and as strong as they can. Right now he doesnt have an appetite so they are monitoring that.

She believes that Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home is doing all they can for her father and to prevent further spread.

But she still worries.

Her father has underlying health conditions and had suffered a stroke last year. She is well aware of what could happen and knowing that five residents from the home have already died from COVID-19, makes her even more anxious.

New tests show that a sixth person previously reported to have died from coronavirus, did not have it.

To know that there are people within that facility that my dad knew that he wont get to see again and they wont get to see their families, its really hard. I just I think, Im trying to pray that I dont get the phone call that my dad is one of them, Benevides said as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Benevides is urging everyone to take the virus seriouslypractice social distancing and wear a mask.

Its not that hard to do your part and to be a good part of it. Its uncomfortable, but its more uncomfortable to lose somebody you love.

Continued here:

Family linked to Big Island COVID-19 cluster makes an emotional plea to the public - KHON2