Category: Corona Virus

For a spiky sphere just 120 nanometers wide, the coronavirus can be a remarkably cosmopolitan traveler.

Spewed from the nose or mouth, it can rocket across a room and splatter onto surfaces; it can waft into poorly ventilated spaces and linger in the air for hours. At its most intrepid, the virus can spread from a single individual to dozens of others, perhaps even a hundred or more at once, proliferating through packed crowds in what is called a superspreading event.

Such scenarios, which have been traced to call centers, meat processing facilities, weddings and more, have helped propel a pandemic that, in the span of eight months, has reached nearly every corner of the globe. And yet, while some people seem particularly apt to spread the coronavirus, others barely pass it on.

Theres this small percentage of people who appear to infect a lot of people, said Dr. Joshua Schiffer, a physician and mathematical modeling expert who studies infectious diseases at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Estimates vary from population to population, but they consistently show a striking skew: Between 10 and 20 percent of coronavirus cases may seed 80 percent of new infections. Other respiratory diseases, like the flu, are far more egalitarian in their spread.

Figuring out what drives coronavirus superspreading events could be key to stopping them, and expediting an end to the pandemic. Thats the million dollar question, said Ayesha Mahmud, who studies infectious disease dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley.

In a paper posted Friday to the website medRxiv that has not yet been through peer review, Dr. Schiffer and his colleagues reported that coronavirus superspreading events were most likely to happen at the intersection where bad timing and poor placement collide: a person who has reached the point in their infection when they are shedding large amounts of virus, and are doing so in a setting where there are plenty of other people around to catch it.

According to a model built by Dr. Schiffers team, the riskiest window for such transmission may be extremely brief a one- to two-day period in the week or so after a person is infected, when coronavirus levels are at their highest.

The virus can still spread outside this window, and individuals outside it should not let up on measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing, Dr. Schiffer said. But the longer an infection drags on, the less likely a person is to be contagious an idea that might help experts advise when to end self-isolation, or how to allocate resources to those most in need, said Dr. Mahmud, who was not involved in the study.

Catching and containing a person at their most infectious is another matter, however. Some people stricken with the coronavirus start to feel unwell within a couple days, whereas others take weeks, and many never end up experiencing symptoms. The length of the so-called incubation period, which spans the time between infection and the onset of symptoms, can be so variable that some people who catch the virus fall ill before the person who gave it to them does. That rarely happens with the flu, which reliably rouses a spate of symptoms within a couple days of infection.

If the coronavirus reaches a peak in the body before symptoms appear if symptoms appear at all that increase might be very tough to identify without frequent and proactive testing. Symptom-free spikes in virus load appear to happen very often, which really distorts our ability to tell when somebody is contagious, Dr. Schiffer said. That, in turn, makes it all too easy for people to obliviously shed the pathogen.

It really is about opportunity, said Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease ecologist at Georgetown University who was not involved in the study. These processes really come together when you are not only infected, but you also dont know youre infected because you dont feel crummy. Some of these unwitting coronavirus chauffeurs, emboldened to go out in public, may end up causing a superspreading event that sends the pathogen blazing through a new population.

This confluence of factors a person in the wrong place at the wrong point in their infection sets the stage for explosive transmission, Dr. Bansal said.

The teams model also pointed to another important variable: the remarkable resilience of the coronavirus when it is aloft.

A growing body of evidence now suggests that the coronavirus can be airborne in crowded, poorly ventilated indoor environments, where it may encounter many people at once. The virus also travels in larger, heavier droplets, but these quickly fall to the ground after they are expelled from the airway and do not have the same reach or longevity as their smaller counterparts. Dr. Schiffer said he thought the coronavirus might be more amenable to superspreading than flu viruses because it is better at persisting in contagious clouds, which can ferry pathogens over relatively long distances.

Its a spatial phenomenon, he said. People further away from the transmitter may be more likely to be infected.

Updated August 6, 2020

Since the start of the pandemic, many comparisons have been drawn between Covid-19 and the flu, both of which are diseases caused by viruses that attack the respiratory tract. But plenty of differences exist, and in many ways the coronavirus is more formidable. This study adds yet another layer to how its different from influenza, said Olivia Prosper, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who uses mathematical models to study infectious diseases but was not involved in the study. Its not just about how sick it makes you, but also its ability to transmit.

Moreover, certain people may be predisposed to be more generous transmitters of the coronavirus, although the details are still a mystery, Dr. Schiffer said.

But when a superspreading event occurs, it likely has more to do with the circumstances than with a single persons biology, Dr. Schiffer said. Even someone carrying a lot of the coronavirus can stave off mass transmission by avoiding large groups, thus depriving the germ of conduits to travel.

A superspreading event is a function of what somebodys viral load is and if theyre in a crowded space, he said. If those are the two levers, you can control the crowding bit.

Both Dr. Mahmud and Dr. Prosper noted that not everyone has the means to practice physical distancing. Some people work essential jobs in packed environments, for instance, and are left more vulnerable to the consequences of superspreading events.

That makes it all the more important for those who can participate in control measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing to remain vigilant about their behavior, Dr. Mahmud said.

Thats what we should be doing, she said. Not just to protect ourselves, but to protect others.

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Why the Coronavirus is More Likely to Superspread Than the Flu - The New York Times

Some party organizers have tried to respond to public concern: Covid-19 measure been taken, said a message in the WhatsApp group about Fridays event. A station at the entry will be at your disposition with facial mask and hydro alcoholic gel, it added. These were not in evidence on arrival, and only a dozen or so attendees wore masks. For most, the coronavirus seemed far from their minds.

Dancers were packed tightly in front of a D.J. In the middle of the improvised dance floor, a tall man stood with his eyes closed, moving his arms like a birds wings, transported by the music. People chatted to each other for a moment, then hugged, instant friends. Occasionally a balloon drifted above the dance floor, filled with nitrous oxide, the partys drug of choice.

One attendee, a 25-year-old architect who asked not to be named in case he was thrown out of the WhatsApp group, said hed been going to illegal raves for a couple of years. Last year, it was smaller, he said. Everybody just wants to get out now, I suppose.

Pubs and restaurants in Britain had reopened, he added, but no one in authority was thinking about dance-music culture. He would have thought twice about going to an indoor or boat party, he said, but outdoor ones seemed fine.

As the night went on, more people arrived, even a man on crutches. Someone climbed a tree at one point, and the music stopped while a security guard ordered him down. That was the closest the event came to an incident until, around 4 a.m., three police officers turned up, shining flashlights across the crowd.

They left as quickly as they arrived, but their presence was enough to send some home.

About 20 minutes later, the police returned 20 officers this time and stood in the path to the clearing. One officer said theyd agreed with the D.J. that he could keep playing until 4:30 a.m.

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At Europes Illegal Parties, Coronavirus Is the Last Thing on Anyones Mind - The New York Times

Need to stay updated on coronavirus news in Texas? Our evening roundup will help you stay on top of the day's latest updates. Sign up here.

For the first time in nearly five months, visitors will be allowed in Texas nursing homes on a limited basis, state health officials announced Thursday evening, reversing a policy intended to keep the states most vulnerable populations safe from a pandemic that has proved especially deadly for older people.

Residents of Texas long-term care facilities have been separated from their family and friends for more than 140 days, since Gov. Greg Abbott shut down visitation in mid-March.

At assisted-living facilities, some indoor visits will be permitted, provided there are plexiglass barriers, there are no active cases of the novel coronavirus among residents and there are no confirmed cases among staff in the last two weeks. Physical contact between residents and visitors will not be permitted, state officials said.

The restrictions are tighter on nursing facilities, which must test staff members weekly and can offer only outdoor visits.

This is a rapidly evolving situation and we are constantly assessing what actions are necessary to keep residents and staff safe in these facilities, said Phil Wilson, the acting executive commissioner of Texas Health and Human Services Commission. By following these procedures and rules, facilities can more effectively prevent the spread of COVID-19 and help us achieve our shared goal of reuniting residents with their families and friends.

The dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 cases across Texas in June and July led to another surge in long-term care facilities, with 57% of nursing homes still reporting at least one active case Thursday. Deaths in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities account for more than a third of Texas death toll.

Despite the need to protect a high-risk population, families and advocates have been urging the state to allow for limited visitation.

Families are just desperate right now to be able to see their loved ones, Alexa Schoeman, deputy state ombudsman in HHSCs office of the long-term care ombudsman, said in an interview last week.

Kevin Warren, president and CEO of the Texas Health Care Association, called Thursdays announcement a great step forward. In an interview last week, he said reconnecting families with their loved ones was a priority and that it should be done as quickly as we can.

Some Texas lawmakers had been agitating for a policy change for weeks. Last month, state Rep. Scott Sanford, R-McKinney, and state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, along with dozens of other signatories, asked state health officials to loosen restrictions on visitations for patients with memory difficulties and mental disabilities.

We will not stand to let these Texans fall through the cracks, they wrote.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story said inside visits would be allowed at long-term care facilities. Inside visits will only be allowed at assisted-living facilities, but not nursing homes. Both are considered long-term care facilities.

Texas Health Care Association has been a financial supporter 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 allows some visits in nursing homes with no active coronavirus cases - The Texas Tribune

Muslims were caught off guard last week, when the UK government suddenly announced local lockdowns in a slew of areas in northern England where cases have spiked. The announcement came just hours before Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals in Islam.

The restrictions -- published late last Thursday evening -- banned people in the named areas from mixing with other households.

Local politicians and Muslim leaders criticized the timing of the announcement.

"The timing ... it focused people's minds [on Muslims]," Rabnawaz Akbar, a Labour Party councilor in Manchester, told CNN.

The government "have done it on the eve of Eid," leading people to think "it must be the Muslim community's fault," Akbar said. "You see how people would have come to the assumption. [The government] have done it without thinking but of course, they're highlighting a particular demographic. And people are angry and now that anger is focused on a particular community."

A Downing Street spokesperson said in a statement to CNN: "Decisions on lockdowns are based solely on scientific advice and the latest data. Where there are local outbreaks, our priority will remain taking whatever steps are necessary to protect people."

Akbar also criticized Craig Whittaker, a Conservative MP who suggested that England's ethnic minorities were not adhering to pandemic guidelines.

"What I have seen in my constituency is that we have areas of our community ... that are just not taking the pandemic seriously enough," Whittaker said Friday, when asked about the local lockdowns during an interview with LBC radio.

When asked if he was talking about the Muslim population, Whittaker replied: "Of course."

"If you look at the areas where we've seen rises and cases the vast majority -- not, by any stretch of the imagination, all areas -- but it is the BAME [Black, Asian, and minority ethnic] communities that are not taking it seriously enough," he added.

Whittaker's comments were met with an outcry and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked about them at a press briefing on Friday.

The British leader did not condemn the MP, and said: "Well, I think it's up to all of us in government to make sure that the message is being heard loud and clear by everybody across the country, and to make sure that everybody is complying with the guidance."

This week, the Downing Street spokesperson told CNN: "At Friday's press conference the Prime Minister apologized to all those who could not celebrate Eid in the way they had wished, and thanked the work of mosques and imams in getting the message out about the importance of following safety guidance.

"And he set out in his Eid message that he is hugely grateful to the Muslim community for their efforts and sacrifices throughout this pandemic."

"To single out one community this way is wholly wrong, stigmatizing and unbecoming of an MP," the group said in a statement.

Following the controversy, Whittaker said his evidence was based on data from local officials at Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire.

"In an age where authenticity is a behaviour scarcely exhibited by public figures, I am glad that I have chosen open, honest and frank discussion over political expediency and ... I make no apology for my comments," he added.

Tell MAMA director Iman Atta told CNN that far-right extremists had been blaming Muslims for the pandemic since the beginning of the UK's lockdown in March.

"In March, April, May, we saw a lot of conspiracy theories floating around," she said. "The far right were sharing photos of Muslims congregating and flouting the rules at mosques which were, in reality, shut down and not functioning. The photos were from last year," she said.

"And they have spread rumors online about how BAME communities are the ones spreading the virus, so [people] should not be interacting with them."

Atta's findings are echoed by those of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which represents several UK mosques and Muslim organizations.

Earlier in the lockdown "there were theories spreading that Muslims would gather secretly during Ramadan, that mosques were secretly open -- none of that was true and there was no evidence," Zainab Gulamali, a spokesperson for the organization, told CNN.

Gulamali added that she was disappointed that Johnson and his Conservative Party colleagues had failed to condemn Whittaker's comments on BAME people.

Johnson himself has repeatedly been accused of Islamophobia. He drew sharp rebukes from Muslim communities in 2018 over an article he wrote about Muslim women wearing burqas. The politician said women who wore the veil resembled "letter boxes" and "bank robbers."

He later offered a partial apology, saying: "In so far as my words have given offense over the last twenty or thirty years when I've been a journalist and people have taken those words out of my articles and escalated them, of course, I am sorry for the offense they have caused."

Crime figures suggest that the UK has become a more hostile place for Muslims in recent years. Despite accounting for less than 5% of the UK's 66 million-strong population, 52% of religious hate crime offenses committed in England and Wales between 2017 and 2018 targeted Muslims.

Much of the recent blame placed on Muslims appears to be driven by the fact that Covid-19 has hit the country's ethnic minorities hard.

"There is extensive racist commentary on social media," the researchers wrote. "Videos have also been circulated on social media showing the South Asian community flouting social distancing in an attempt to stir conflict."

"We don't want to sweep under the carpet the issues that [Muslim communities] do face," Rabnawaz Akbar said.

"A lot of people live in densely-populated terraced housing," he said, explaining that many Muslims "live with their parents or their grandparents, so you have multigenerational households. A lot of people work in low income and frontline jobs -- they're taxi drivers or health care [workers] ... they're inevitably going to be at risk of catching the virus."

"But rather than blame them, the solution is that local and central government should work with the communities to take extra precautions," he said.

Muslims are far from alone in shouldering increased racial resentment during the Covid-19 crisis.

For many minorities the new threat of the pandemic has only intensified the age-old danger of bigotry.

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In the latest sign of Covid-19-related racism, Muslims are being blamed for England's coronavirus outbreaks - CNN

President Donald Trump reiterated Wednesday that the coronavirus will "go away," and he continued to push for schools to reopen since the virus "doesn't have much of an impact" on children.

"It's going away. It'll go away. Things go away. No question in my mind that it will go away," Trump said during a White House press briefing.

Trump applauded the country's coronavirus vaccine and therapeutic development, saying it has had "tremendous success" and is "ready to deliver them literally as soon" as they're approved.

Earlier in the day, Johnson and Johnson announced the U.S. will buy 100 million doses of its potential vaccine, joining a handful of other companies that have struck similar deals with the federal government.

"We think we're going to have the vaccines before the end of the year, maybe long before the end of the year," Trump said.

The president also continued to push for schools to reopen this fall, saying that he believes most of them will. When it comes to the coronavirus, he said children are able to "throw it off very easily."

"They may get it, but they get it and it doesn't have much of an impact on them," he said. "For whatever reason the China virus, children handle it very well."

Trump's comments Wednesday evening come after he told Fox News earlier in the day that virus would "go away like things go away" and made claims that children are "virtually immune" to Covid-19.Facebook later removed a video post on the president's personal page of the Fox News segment, saying it violated its policies around Covid-19 misinformation, NBC News reported.

"This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation," Andy Stone, a Facebook policy spokesperson, said.

White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday the coronavirus is so contagious it won't likely ever completely go away.

"I do not believe it would disappear because it's such a highly transmissible virus,"Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,testified before the House Select Subcommittee.

World Health Organization officials also warned Monday there may never be a magical cure for thecoronaviruseven as scientists and drugmakers across the globe race to find a safe and effective vaccine.

While experts do agree that children are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus, studies have shown that childrenover 9 years old can spread thecoronavirusas well as adults.

White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that while school districts should try their best to return students to school in the fall, the main consideration should be the health and safety of the students, teachers and their families.

Infectious disease experts have warned against returning kids to school where the coronavirus is spreading uncontrollably. Many large school districts have already opted to begin the fall school year online.

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Trump says there's no question the coronavirus 'will go away' - CNBC

"It spread like wildfire, wildfire. Very, very scary," Gov. MIke De Wine said Tuesday. "We know that our faith-based leaders want nothing more than to protect those who come to worship."

To illustrate how one infected person can spread the virus, state health officials released a color graphic showing how the cases radiated to some who weren't even at the service.

DeWine urged people attending religious services to wear masks. He had mandated wearing face coverings for people 10 and older on July 22. On Wednesday, he ordered children in schools to wear masks, with a few exceptions.

The governor said he was going to send letters to churches, mosques and synagogues to share important health information.

"It is vital that, any time people gather together, everyone wear masks, practice social distancing, wash hands, and while indoors, making sure there is good ventilation and airflow," he said.

In the case of community spread from the worshipper at the undisclosed church, a 56-year-old man went to the service. A total of 53 people got sick and 18 of those churchgoers spread it to at least one other person.

One instance of spread was a family in which a 34-year-old man became sick. His 31-year-old wife also became infected, as did four children who range in age from 1 to 11.

The wife and two children of the 56-year-old worshipper mentioned by the governor also got sick. The state didn't detail the seriousness of the 91 people's illnesses.

More than 96,000 people in Ohio have tested positive for the coronavirus.

CNN's Rebekah Riess constributed to this report.

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Almost 100 people in Ohio were infected with coronavirus after man attended church service - CNN

During an interview that aired on Axios on HBO on Monday night, President Trump was interviewed by journalist Jonathan Swan. One of the topics: the number of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19.

Swan noted that there are about 1,000 deaths a day in the United States.

Trump responded that the U.S. "is lowest in numerous categories" when it comes to the pandemic including "case death." This measure, which epidemiologists call the "case fatality ratio," calculates the number of people with COVID-19 who eventually die from the disease.

Swan interjected, "I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera."

Trump replied: "You can't do that."

As Swan noted during the interview, you can in fact calculate the per capita death rate for a country's population that is, the number of deaths per 100,000 people.

But it is difficult to compare death rates among countries. Neither per capita death rate nor case fatality ratio "fully reflect the effectiveness of a country's response," said Nilanjan Chatterjee, a professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University.

However, these two ways of measuring the COVID-19 death toll can tell us something.

Since January, there have been over 4.7 million COVID-19 cases and 150,000 deaths in the United States.

Among the 45 countries with more than 50,000 COVID-19 cases, the U.S. has the eighth-highest number of deaths per 100,000 people: 47.93 deaths from the coronavirus for every 100,000 Americans. Belgium has the highest per capita death rate: 86.3 deaths per 100,000.

But in terms of case fatality ratio, the U.S. is doing significantly better than many other countries. The country's case fatality ratio is 3.3%, meaning that for every 100 people with COVID-19, only about three die.

Trump said that the low case fatality ratio in the U.S. was a result of his administration's effective pandemic response, such as closing international borders to people from COVID-19 hot spots such as China and the United Kingdom. He also stated that the U.S. has a high per capita death rate because the country has done more testing than any other in the world.

The per capita death rate is primarily an indication of the overall disease burden in a country, according to Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. (Disease burden is the term used to describe the impact of a particular disease in terms of years of life lost and years lived with disability.)

If there is more COVID-19 transmission among communities in a specific country, then there will be more infections and consequently more deaths in that country and presumably a higher per capita death rate.

But other factors influence the per capita death rate. For example, age is a major risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease and death. Therefore, countries with much younger populations may have far fewer deaths. In Uganda, for instance, the per capita death rate is 0.01, one of the lowest in the world. The median age of Ugandans is 15.9. By contrast, the median age in the U.S. is 38.4. In Belgium and the U.K., which have the highest number of deaths per 100,000 people, the median ages are 41.9 and 40.0 years, respectively. And predictably, the per capita death rate is higher in those countries.

Access to care also has an impact on the rate whether patients have access to ventilators and ICU care if needed.

But even though the daily death toll in the U.S. has now averaged 1,000 or more a day for over a week, the per capita death rate is not necessarily the best metric by which to compare mortality among countries. According to Chatterjee, the case fatality ratio may be a slightly better indication of how well a country is doing in responding to the pandemic and preventing infected people from dying.

Among the 45 countries with over 50,000 cases, the U.S. has the 24th-highest case fatality ratio. And the U.S. rate of 3.3% is much lower than that of the U.K. at 15.1% or Italy at 14.2%.

So despite the daily death toll of 1,000 in the U.S., there is some truth to Trump's assertion that the low case fatality ratio is a positive sign in the United States.

As for his assertion that "we have tested more people than any other country," there is also some truth to this. The U.S. has conducted more coronavirus tests than any other country in terms of sheer numbers more than 50 million.

However, when you consider population size, the U.S. comes in ninth place, having conducted 174 tests per 1,000 people. That's much lower than the per capita rate in Luxembourg at 691 per 1,000 people, the United Arab Emirates at 525 and Denmark at 268.

Moreover, while there is no gold standard for testing rates, the number of tests needed is proportionate to the number of infections in a country, says Lessler. So, if the U.S. could reduce COVID-19 transmission and new cases, then the need for high testing levels would drop.

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COVID-19 Deaths In The US: How We Compare With Other Countries : Goats and Soda - NPR

Although the delineations arent always clear-cut, the immune systems responses to pathogens can be roughly grouped into three categories: type 1, which is directed against viruses and certain bacteria that infiltrate our cells; type 2, which fights parasites like worms that dont invade cells; and type 3, which goes after fungi and bacteria that can survive outside of cells. Each branch uses different cytokines to rouse different subsets of molecular fighters.

Updated August 4, 2020

People with moderate cases of Covid-19 take what seems like the most sensible approach, concentrating on type 1 responses, Dr. Iwasakis team found. Patients struggling to recover, on the other hand, seem to be pouring an unusual number of resources into type 2 and type 3 responses, which is kind of wacky, Dr. Iwasaki said. As far as we know, there is no parasite involved.

Its almost as if the immune system is struggling to pick a lane, Dr. Wherry said.

This disorientation also seems to extend into the realm of B cells and T cells two types of immune fighters that usually need to stay in conversation to coordinate their attacks. Certain types of T cells, for instance, are crucial for coaxing B cells into manufacturing disease-fighting antibodies.

Last month, Dr. Wherry and his colleagues published a paper in Science finding that, in many patients with severe Covid-19, the virus had somehow driven a wedge between these two close-knit cellular communities. Its too soon to tell for sure, but perhaps something about the coronavirus is preventing B and T cells from talking to each other, he said.

These studies suggest that treating bad cases of Covid-19 might require an immunological reset drugs that could, in theory, restore the balance in the body and resurrect lines of communication between bamboozled cells. Such therapies could even be focused on specific subsets of patients whose bodies are responding bizarrely to the virus, Dr. Blish said: the ones who have deranged cytokines from the beginning.

But thats easier said than done. The challenge here is trying to blunt the response, without completely suppressing it, and getting the right types of responses, Dr. August said. Its hard to fine-tune that.

Timing is also crucial. Dose a patient too early with a drug that tempers immune signaling, and they may not respond strongly enough; give it too late, and the worst of the damage may have already been done. The same goes for treatments intended to shore up the initial immune response against the coronavirus, like interferon-based therapies, Dr. Blish said. These could stamp out the pathogen if given shortly after infection or run roughshod over the body if administered after too long of a delay.

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Scientists Uncover Biological Signatures of the Worst Covid-19 Cases - The New York Times

He continued to say that the virus is "going away" and to suggest that children are immune. And in a series of confusing comments, he also falsely alleged that Arizona's and Nevada's voting systems do not verify signatures on mail-in ballots.

Trump retreated at least slightly, saying, "They don't really know what it is. Nobody knows yet." But then he said, "Somebody was, you know, left some terrible explosive type devices and things around, perhaps. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was an attack. I don't think anybody can say right now. We're looking into it very strongly. Right now, it's -- I mean, you have some people think it was an attack and you have some people that think it wasn't."

Arizona and Nevada vote-by-mail signature

"You look at Arizona, you don't even have to have, as you know, they have a provision where they don't have to check signatures," the President said. "You sign it and you could have a totally different signature, it's okay. It won't be approved."

"They have the right to go seven days after election for approval," Trump added. "We won't know who won the state of Nevada."

It's unclear exactly what Trump is saying and if he originally meant to say "Nevada" instead of Arizona, but here are the facts around Arizona and Nevada mail-in voting and signature verification.

Facts First: Both Arizona and Nevada do check signatures on mail-in ballots and verify them with the corresponding signature on file.

Arizona

According to Arizona's Citizens Clean Elections Commission, 80% of voters in the state receive their ballots by mail. Signatures on these ballots are verified before being tabulated.

"When you vote by mail, your signature on the early ballot affidavit is compared to the signature on file with your voter registration record," the commission says. Voters can also make sure their vote has been counted by going online.

Recently, Arizona Democrats filed a lawsuit in order to allow five days for voters to correct a missing signature. As the commission notes, "voters have until 5:00 p.m. on the 5th business day after the primary or general election to confirm/correct their signature." But the lawsuit maintains that this rule should also apply to ballots missing a signature.

Nevada

When Trump made these claims during the briefing, a reporter quickly fact-checked him on the spot.

"Oh you're talking about Nevada," the reporter said, noting that she called Nevada's Secretary of State's office where a spokeswoman told her that Trump's claim "simply isn't true and that Nevada will continue to check ballot signatures against voter registration cards, it's done at the county level."

Trump denied this, saying, "their machinery, which is old, doesn't allow them to" and moved on to criticizing how long mail-in ballots could take to count.

Nevada recently passed a law that will send all registered voters in the state mail-in ballots for the November election. As the law notes, "The clerk or employee shall check the signature used for the mail ballot against all signatures of the voter available in the records of the clerk."

Nevada counting delays

"I don't think it is appropriate," he added.

Absentee vs. mail-in voting

In a stream of consciousness about mail-in voting and alleged fraud, Trump once again claimed that absentee and mail-in ballots are "much different."

"Absentee ballots are different than mail-in ballots, what you call universal mail in ballots, much different," Trump said. "You have to apply for it, you have to do different things, and it's a much better system."

Rick Hasen, a University of California-Irvine professor and one of the nation's top experts in election law, told CNN, "The President seems to be trying to distinguish between mail-in voting where someone has to have an excuse and no excuse voting by mail."

While there can be some differences in the methods used to implement absentee and mail-in voting, experts say that they are both secure ways of voting.

"The bottom line is that absentee and mail balloting are secure in America," Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, told CNN. "Election officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, pretty much universally are confident in the system."

Children and Covid-19

Facts First: This is still false. While children are far less likely on the whole to get seriously ill or die from coronavirus than adults, they are not "immune" from the possibility; some children do indeed get seriously ill or die. And children also transmit the virus to others.

"I'm starting to sense that maybe he doesn't know what the word 'immune' really means," Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, said on air after the briefing. "Kids clearly get infected. We were just looking up some of the more recent statistics. Between 250- and 350,000 young people, people under the age of 18, have become infected with this virus. The risk is lower for them getting sick or dying, but it's not zero by any means.

"And kids can still transmit the virus. Kids 10 and older transmit this virus just like adults do. Kids younger than that, frankly, I don't think we know enough. Because these kids have largely been at home since the middle of March. They have very few contacts. So I think we're going to learn a lot more about the transmissibility, but it's no question: fourth, fifth grade and above, kids can transmit just like adults do."

The virus 'going away'

He simply reiterated the claim on Wednesday evening, saying, "It's going away. It'll go away, things go away, absolutely -- no question in my mind it will go away. Hopefully sooner rather than later."

More here:

Fact check: At briefing, Trump continues to mislead on coronavirus, mail-in voting and Beirut - CNN

Over the last seven days, a grim new COVID-19 calculus has emerged: one person died every 80 seconds from the coronavirus in America.

And the pace at which those 7,486 people died appears to be accelerating, a new NBC News tally revealed Wednesday.

In July, a total of 26,198 deaths were reported, meaning one every 102 seconds. As of Wednesday morning, more than 158,000 people in the U.S. had died of the virus since the start of the pandemic.

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The numbing new national snapshot of how COVID-19 is claiming more and more lives came as Johns Hopkins University reported another milestone: The world death toll from this plague had eclipsed 700,000.

The U.S. has logged over 4.8 million confirmed cases. And around 1.8 million of those have come since July 7, when the 3 millionth case was reported, NBC News figures show.

While most of the new cases and deaths have been in the South and Sun Belt, states in the northeast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts that were hit hardest at the start of the pandemic and were able to flatten the curve have also reported worrying upticks.

Under fire for being slow to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and presiding over the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump once again downplayed the extent of the pandemic in a call-in interview Wednesday with "Fox & Friends."

This thing is going away, he said. It will go away like things go away.

Joe Biden, the Democrat hoping to oust Trump from the White House come November, fired back.

Donald Trump continues to live in a world of delusion, Biden said in a statement.

In other developments:

Joe Murphy is a data editor at NBC News Digital.

Corky Siemaszko is a senior writer for NBC News Digital.

Suzanne Ciechalski contributed.

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One death every 80 seconds: The grim new toll of COVID-19 in America - NBC News