Category: Corona Virus

Attendance in Tulsa fell well short of what officials had publicly touted, and the event was widely seen as a disastrous attempt to reset the campaign in the midst of the President's falling poll numbers. A handful of aides tested positive for coronavirus the day of the rally, and dozens more had to quarantine afterward. Sources close to the campaign say that the fallout shook some operatives' faith in the one area the campaign has always been able to flawlessly execute.

Before the coronavirus hit, campaign officials expected to be holding one to two rallies a week by now. But with cases surging across the country, it's unclear if the campaign will ever be able to work its way up to that pace. And while there are serious questions about whether rallies are the right strategy in the midst of a pandemic, Trump's bullheaded determination to press forward with in-person events is forcing the campaign to find a way.

By contrast, President Barack Obama had an extremely active summer when he was running for reelection in 2012. Obama spoke at 18 campaign events in June 2012 and 27 in July, a mix of private fundraisers and public rallies in swing states across the country.

"I think there is a growing sense of concern that the campaign isn't functioning as we want it to," one donor close to the campaign told CNN in the immediate aftermath of Tulsa.

The value of the rally

The Trump rally is in many ways the central aspect of the President's political brand, and a hallmark of his success as a first-time populist politician. The events offer an essential psychological boost to a President who has always fed on the energy of crowds -- and, now more than ever, is in need of that boost as he stews over his sinking polls and how the pandemic has upturned his political prospects.

"He can't win without rallies," one Trump adviser said, pointing more to the psychological effect of the rallies than anything else. "When he does them, it is a little bit of a release and takes some pressure off of his psyche and him believing that he's not getting his narrative out and everyone's against him."

In the words of a GOP strategist from a crucial swing state: "He needs rallies like a kite needs wind."

That information doesn't just provide a snapshot of the President's biggest fans, it also helps identify potential new voters, including those who rarely vote and are especially valuable turnout targets.

Rallies also provide the campaign with free TV coverage from local affiliates that can amplify the President's message in parts of the country that are harder to reach. It's no accident that Trump has conducted several interviews in recent weeks with reporters from local TV broadcast networks.

Even the campaign seems to recognize that something has been lost with the lack of rallies.

"There is nothing like a Donald Trump rally," said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director. "It is a unique phenomenon in American political history; it is difficult to replicate that experience."

"We're pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy, and our goal is to put President Trump in front of as many patriotic Americans as possible," said Jason Miller, the campaign's top strategist. "Rallies are going to happen. They're going to be bigger than anything Joe Biden is able to pull off this year."

The fallout from Tulsa

Hope Hicks, one of the President's longest-serving aides, warned Parscale against touting ticket request numbers, reminding him that the number one rule in politics is not to overpromise and underdeliver, a source familiar with the matter said. But Parscale forged ahead, tweeting about the 1 million ticket requests the campaign had received.

And other officials estimated before the rally that a maximum of 15,000 people would likely attend, by looking at the ZIP codes of those who had signed up, using data modeling and factoring in the human element: the ongoing pandemic. But Parscale was confident the 19,000-person arena would be packed and the campaign even planned for Trump to address an overflow venue.

Officials say Trump's relationship with Parscale hasn't been the same since.

"He does not like Brad," the adviser said, noting that Trump has taken to frequently cutting Parscale off during meetings and disagreeing with nearly every position he takes -- at times ultimately agreeing with the same position when it is later reiterated by another aide in the room.

"It's very clear that when Brad offers a position, Trump decides to be against it," the adviser said.

In response to questions about Parscale's standing, the Trump campaign sent the following statement attributed to Lara Trump, the President's daughter-in-law and a senior adviser: "He has the confidence of the President and the entire family."

"I think Parscale probably needs to go," said the donor close to the campaign. "I think a lot of folks would feel more comfortable with someone who's actually run a campaign before."

So far, that hasn't happened. The biggest staff change in the wake of the Tulsa debacle: Michael Glassner -- the campaign's chief operating officer, who previously handled rallies -- has been reassigned to deal with legal affairs.

But for other Republicans, the problems are less about the management and marketing and more inherent to the product itself. The candidate and the campaign don't have a good story to tell.

"The rallies are a barometer of voter sentiment," Dan Eberhart, an oil executive and Trump donor, told CNN. "The living embodiment of Trump's slumping popularity."

One Republican strategist working on congressional races said Trump and the GOP need a "choice" election between Trump and Biden that the environment isn't giving them.

"It's all a referendum," said the strategist. "Trump is swinging at ghosts."

Still, some campaign officials remain confident that Tulsa was an outlier -- the result of overhyped expectations and news of campaign staffers testing positive ahead of the rally.

Time is running short

Though there are still four months until the election, some Republican operatives say the campaign is running out of time to turn things around. Given the amount of mail-in and early voting that will happen this cycle, the die could be cast by September, when early voting begins in some states.

Without rallies, the task of bringing swing voters into the Trump fold will fall chiefly to the RNC's traditional ground game operation. Unlike the core Trump campaign team -- Parscale; Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner; and the President himself -- the get-out-the-vote side is run by old political hands with years of experience in GOP politics.

That includes veteran operatives such as Katie Walsh Shields, currently the senior adviser for data at the RNC, who spent years working for the party, and Chris Carr, the political director for the campaign and the RNC. Carr worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee during the tea party wave in 2010 and is a RNC veteran.

"This process is much more scientific than it has ever been and it is a lot more accurate," said Rick Gorka, the spokesman for the Trump Victory Fund, the joint operation between the campaign and the RNC. "Voters tend not to just show up organically; you need to find a way to motivate them and convince them to participate. We've never stopped doing that because of this digital operation."

While there has been consternation from donors about several aspects of Trump's reelection campaign, there's more confidence about how well the Trump data operation and the RNC ground game can work together.

On Monday, the RNC and the campaign announced they have now hired 1,500 field staffers, and Trump campaign aides describe the ground operation as the largest ever assembled by a Republican nominee.

"I think it's a lot bigger, a lot more effective, and it's gone local," Doug Deason, a Dallas businessman, Republican donor and Trump fundraiser, said of the Trump and party ground game. "It's a lot more local than it was. It's much more organized. There are a lot more people on the ground, a lot more people on the phones."

Deason, who skipped the Tulsa rally over concerns about Covid transmission and anti-Trump protests, insists that even without the rallies, Trump's base remains solidly behind the President so he can finish the job of disrupting the status quo in Washington.

"He'll be able to really break up and bust up DC in a second term," Deason said of Trump. "All of his base knows that. That's the goal. That's why we hired him. We didn't hire him to be a wonderful role model for our children. We've had that for decades and it hasn't worked."

Read more from the original source:

Amid rising coronavirus cases, the Trump campaign struggles to get its rally machine going - CNN

Singapore's economy sinks into a recession, falls more than 40% on-quarter

Singapore entered a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of decline. Its economy shrunk 41.2% in the three months that ended in June, compared with the three months prior, according to advance estimates from the government.

The second quarter's economic performance worsened as the city-state implemented partial lockdown measures, described by the government as a "circuit breaker," to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Nonessential workplaces and businesses were closed from early April through May, before the restrictions were eased in phases starting in June. Those restrictions were said to have hurt businesses dependent on domestic consumption, particularly at a time when demand for Singapore's goods externally is weak due to the economic downturn.Yen Nee Lee

Health officials in Tokyo have appealed for more than 800 theatergoers to get tested for the coronavirus infection, Reuters reported.

A production, which starred Japanese boyband members, and staged at Theatre Moliere for six days, near Tokyo's red-light district, was discovered to be the source of at least 20 infection cases, the newswire said.

Tokyo's government said it learned of the first infection among the cast on July 6 and by Monday, testing found 20 related cases, according to Reuters. As such, the government has asked all audience members who attended the performances to get tested. Saheli Roy Choudhury

Massachusetts casinos reopened Monday after being closed for four months because of the coronavirus crisis, CNBC's Contessa Brewer and Jessica Golden report. With reopening comes strict guidelines, including a maximum occupancy of 25% for the casinos.

Seth Stratton, MGM Springfield's vice president, said some machines were moved to allow for more social distancing. Some games, including poker and roulette, will not be opened during the first phase.

Outdoor seating options have increased by 200% on MGM property, and guests will no longer be allowed to walk around the casino with a drink. Only 700 employees will go back to work initially, and over time, more will come in phases.

MGM's first-quarter revenue decreased 29% while the coronavirus shut down casinos. Suzanne Blake

Across the U.S., 19 states saw new cases reach daily records on Sundaybased on an average over the previous seven days,according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That includes Texas, Georgia and Florida, the last of which reported 15,300 new cases on Sunday.

Coronavirus-related deaths in Texas surged 140% from last week to an average of about 82 deaths per day over the past seven days as of Sunday, according to CNBC's analysis of data compiled by Hopkins.Arizona has reported an average of about 59 new coronavirus-related deaths per day over the past seven days as of Sunday, up more than 78% compared with a week ago.As of Sunday, the U.S. averaged just over 700 new deaths a day, according to Hopkins data.Noah Higgins-Dunn

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ordering some indoor businesses including restaurants, bars, movie theaters and museums to reclose statewide as new cases continue to rise.

The governor previously issued a "watch list" of hot-spot counties and is ordering additional businesses including gyms and places of worship to shutter in those areas for three days. Read more on the latest closures from CNBC's Noah Higgins-Dunn.Sara Salinas

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases testifies during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S.

Kevin Dietsch | Reuters

New cases are surging across the United States because the nation failed to shut down entirely early in the outbreak, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said. The comment by Fauci came during a Q&A withStanford Medicine Dean Lloyd Minor.

Fauci also said that the U.S. hasn't "even begun to see the end" of the coronavirus pandemic yet, contradicting President Donald Trump, who has previously said the pandemic is nearing its end.

In recent weeks, Trump and some state leaders have downplayed the threat of the virus, tying the surge in new cases to an increase in testing. However, public health officials and infectious disease experts refute those claims, saying the rate of cases that test positive in the U.S., hospitalizations and deaths remain high in some states.

Fauci said he expects the public to compare the Covid-19 pandemic to the1918 pandemic flu, which killed around 50 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

While class will be in session this upcoming August for two of California's largest school districts, instruction will be strictly online, according to a joint statement from the Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified School Districts. In the statement, the school districts said much of the research surrounding the coronavirus and children is still unknown and many of the guidelines for reopening are "vague and contradictory."

Both school districts said they would reevaluate in the fall whether to invite students back for in-class instruction at some point during the academic year. The decision will be based on whether the virus is sufficiently under control, whether testing is sufficient and whether the federal government provides adequate funding, according to the statement.

California is one of many states seeing a surge in Covid-19 cases, with Los Angeles County, San Diego County and other surrounding counties reporting the most cases.

"One fact is clear: those countries that have managed to safely reopen schools have done so with declining infection rates and on-demand testing available. California has neither," according to the statement. Noah Higgins-Dunn

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined the state's plan to allow schools in some regions to reopen this fall, adding that "we're not going to use our children as guinea pigs."

The governor's guidance comes after President Donald Trump vowed to pressure state and local officials into reopening schools for in-person learning even as the outbreak appears to worsen across the country.

Schools in regions that are in phase four of New York's reopening plan are eligible to hold in-person classes this fall, but the area has to maintain a daily infection rate below 5%, based on a 14-day average over a sustained period, he said. He added thatif the regional infection rate rises above 9%, based on a 7-day average, after the first week of August, schools will not be allowed to reopen.Will Feuer

TrivagoCEOAxel Hefertold CNBC the company has observed a decline in travel demand in response to the rising Covid-19 cases in parts of the U.S.

"With a significant deterioration of the health situation, you see a significant drop in travel activity,"Hefer said on"Squawk on the Street," while adding the correlation "goes both ways."

"You can clearly see that when there is a significant improvement in the health situation, and also clear communication from the government that it is safe to travel, that there is an increase in demand," he explained.

Trivago, a platform to search for and book hotels, expects to see a "bumpy ride" for travel in the months ahead as a result of the public health crisis, Hefer said.Kevin Stankiewicz

How Canada is fighting Covid-19: Ramping up PPE production, U.S. travel ban

Canada has excelled in hospital preparedness and increasing PPE production, CNBC's Christina Farr reports as part of a CNBC series on how the world is fighting Covid-19.

The country reported more than 105,000 coronavirus cases and more than 8,000 deaths. Experts gave the country a score of 6.5/10 in how it has handled the pandemic.

Canada's economic relief package has surpassed what the U.S. has offered, providing Canadian residentswho have lost their jobs or couldn't work because of the virus up to $2,000 in direct monthly payments for a four-month period. Now, the relief package has been expanded to those who earn up to $1,000 a month.

Canada issued a travel ban on March 20 for visitors from the U.S.Since then,thousands have been turned away at the border, particularly those traveling for nonessential reasons. Suzanne Blake

World Health Organization officials warned global leaders against turning the decision to reopen schools "into yet another political football in this game," adding that children will be exposed to the virus and some will be infected and spread it to others.

"My fear in this is that we create these political footballs that get kicked around the place," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies program, said at a news conference. "If we suppress the virus in our society, in our communities, then our schools can open safely."

Current studies show that the coronavirus doesn't generally make children as sick as adults, but the organization's research on Covid-19's impact on children is "still limited," WHO said. Ryan noted that scientists still don't know the long-term effect of the coronavirus on children's health, although they tend to have milder symptoms. Noah Higgins-Dunn

World Health Organization officials said that patients who recover from Covid-19 may be able to get the virus again, adding that studies suggest their immunity may wane after a few months.

While scientists don't yet have a complete answer,Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said patients"do mount some level of an immune response."

But it is unclear "how strong that protection is and for how long that protection will last,"she said at a news conferenceat the organization's Geneva headquarters.

Antibodies are generally produced in response to foreign particles or antigens that invade the body and help the body's immune system fight off infections. When a person gets sick with a virus, they produce antibodies to that particular virus in the recovery process, which generally protects them from getting reinfected.

In the case of the Covid-19 virus, health officials have said there is insufficient data to indicatethat antibodies ensure immunity against the virus.Jasmine Kim

The month of June saw a 55% jump annually in sales of newly built homes, according to a survey by John Burns Real Estate Consulting. This marks the largest annual gain since the housing boom more than a decade ago, CNBC's Diana Olick reports.

The coronavirus' impact on new housing demand is thought to play a role in the jump, as the supply of existing homes declines and residents prefer new, high-tech homes for easy work from home potential. Many buyers are also fleeing to the suburbs and away from large cities.

"The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Sales in the distant commuter areas are the most robust," said John Burns, founder and CEO of JBRC. "I believe a lot of computer-oriented people have proven to their co-workers that they can be productive from home, and have sensed, or officially been given the green light, to work from home at least a significant portion of the time after a vaccine has been found."

New home sales were greatest in the Northeast, with an 86% annual jump, and in Florida, which saw an 84% increase, while California lagged behind, the survey found. Suzanne Blake

Executive Director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) emergencies program Mike Ryan speaks at a news conference on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Geneva, Switzerland.

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

The World Health Organization warned that too many countries are headed in the "wrong direction" as the coronavirus continues to rapidly spread across the globe.

The comment by the WHO came after the U.S. and Brazil reported111,319 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday, accounting for roughly half of all the new cases reported worldwide.As of Sunday, U.S. cases are growing by 5% or more in 37 states and also Washington D.C.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the agency's top official, criticized some countries' responses to the virus, saying their actions haven't matched the seriousness of the pandemic.

"The only aim of the virus is to find people to infect. Mixed messages from leaders are undermining the most critical ingredient of any response: Trust," he said during a press conference. The virus "is going to get worse and worse and worse but it doesn't have to be this way."Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

Disneyland Hong Kong.

Getty Images

Disney's theme park in Hong Kong will close temporarily on Wednesday after the island reported a spike in coronavirus cases.

Hong Kong Disneyland reopened less than a month ago after closing down in January during the first surge of Covid-19 cases in the region.

The local government has limited group gatherings to four people, from 50, and forced 12 different kinds of businesses, including gyms and gaming centers, to shutdown for a week.

The news of the park's closure comes as Disney's Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom reopened in Orlando, Florida on Saturday.Sarah Whitten

Children in the U.S. are more likely to become severely sick and die from Covid-19 than kids in other countries because the U.S. has a comparatively unhealthy population, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr.Scott Gottliebsaid.

"We have more co-morbid illness among young people in this country, more asthma, more obesity, more diabetes, so there is going to be higher risk with our school-age population," Gottlieb said on "Squawk Box."

President Donald Trump vowed last week to pressure governors into reopening schools even as the U.S. outbreak continues to balloon, especially in a number of hot-spot states across the South and West.Will Feuer

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic-testing start-upTempus and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings' and Royal Caribbean's "Healthy Sail Panel."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Michael Brochstein | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images

People volunteer for Covid-19 surveillance testing using the Quest Diagnostics self administered PCR test in Livingston, Montana.

William Campbell | Getty Images

Quest Diagnostics reported preliminary revenue for the second quarter above analysts' estimates, pushing shares up 2.7% before the bell on growing demand for Covid-19 testing. The company's revenue fell 6% to $1.83 billion, but was still above estimates of $1.52 billion, according to the company.

After more than a 40% decline in testing during the last two weeks of March, the company began seeing a rise in testing volume at a faster-than-expected rate. Quest is expected to report second-quarter results on July 23, according to Reuters.Alex Harring

Yelp will bring back "nearly all" of its 1,100 furloughed employees next month, and will restore employee pay and work hours.

The company in April laid of 1,000 employees and furloughed roughly 1,100 more, as the Covid-19 pandemic kept people across the nation home.

"As local economies begin their recovery, we remain cautious but optimistic in the face of continued uncertainty," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote in an email to employees that was shared with CNBC.

Coronavirus cases continue to spike in some areas across the nation, and Yelp will extend its office closures into 2021. The company said that will result in a layoff of 63 more employees.JessicaBursztynsky

PepsiCo's net sales fell more than 3% in the most recent quarter as the coronavirus kept consumers away from restaurants, convenience stores and sporting events, the company announced in its quarterly report.

The company's North American beverage division reported a 7% drop in organic revenue, which strips out the impact of foreign currency, acquisitions and divestitures. Pepsi's packaged food units, by contrast, saw increased sales as Americans stayed home. Quaker Foods North America reported organic revenue growth of 23%, and Frito-Lay North America reported organic sales growth of 6%.

Read more on the quarterly update from CNBC's Amelia Lucas.Sara Salinas

Mon, Jul 13 20207:38 AM EDT

German biotech firm BioNTech and U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizerannounced that two of their vaccine candidates were granted "fast track" status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The companies said in a statement that the designation was based on preliminary data from the candidates' phases one and two trials, which are still ongoing. On July 1, the companies released early data on the trials.

"We look forward to continue working closely with the FDA throughout the clinical development of this program, Project Lightspeed, to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these vaccine candidates,"Peter Honig, Pfizer's senior vice president of global regulatory affair, said in a statement.

The companies said they expect to start late-stage clinical trials that will involve up to 30,000 participants as soon as later this month.Will Feuer

Mon, Jul 13 20207:35 AM EDT

Citizens walk at the pedestrian zone in Guetersloh, western Germany.

Ina Fassbender | AFP | Getty Images

Germany can prevent a second wave of the coronavirus later this year if people remain vigilant, the country's health minister said, warning German holidaymakers not to be complacent over the risks.

"We have to try particularly now in the holiday season to prevent infections,"Jens Spahn told a news conference Monday, Reuters reported. "We don't automatically have to expect a second wave in the autumn and winter. Together, as a society, we can prevent that, as we did once before: breaking the wave and keeping the pandemic in check."

Spahn said it was important to remain alert when traveling abroad and that he was worried by pictures showing holidaymakers ignoring social distancing rules. Holly Ellyatt

Read CNBC's previous coronavirus live coverage here:Record single-day spike in cases; Gottlieb says 1 in 150 Americans are infected

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California's two largest school districts to return online in the fall - CNBC

The disease investigators arrived at the apartment in street clothes, carrying their gowns, gloves and face shields in Whole Foods bags. They didnt knock on the door.

Instead, they called the resident a man in his 50s, then Californias first known coronavirus case by phone. When he answered, he was instructed to move to the farthest corner of the apartment so the team could go inside and suit up.

They had come to the apartment building in Orange County to make sure the man was where he promised to be and that he was isolating there, completely alone.

First case. New virus. We werent going to take peoples word for it, recalled the countys medical director of communicable disease control, Dr. Matthew Zahn, who oversaw the operation.

They asked about symptoms in the patients wife, his child, his recent dinner guest.

So began what by many measures was the most extensive public health campaign in California: a rapid mobilization to identify people suffering from the novel coronavirus and prevent them from infecting others. In the early days, officials didnt know whether this would be a short-term undertaking to prevent community transmission in the state or an epic battle against a once-in-a-century pandemic.

But as the latter scenario played out, California found itself unprepared, overwhelmed and constantly lagging, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found. Those early failures left California far behind in the fight against the coronavirus, and it has struggled to keep up even as cases surge today.

In the beginning, dozens of investigators, called cluster busters, worked each case to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus. They aimed at identifying each strand of transmission and snipping it before the virus could take hold as a sturdy web across communities. They functioned as all-inclusive personal assistants: arranging child care, setting up WiFi, coordinating grocery drop-offs.

But data would later show that, long before the official case count began to climb, the virus was freewheeling. Federal officials grappling with a shortage of test kits issued narrow testing criteria; that meant key local spreaders in the states budding outbreak were going unnoticed and untraced.

Contact tracers were never alerted, for example, to people such as Margaret Cabanis-Wicht and her husband, a 41-year-old movie director in Rancho Palos Verdes who had attended a January gala in Beijing with hundreds from across China.

Twelve days after her husbands return to California, their 5-year-old daughter woke in the night with a 102-degree fever. Cabanis-Wicht had one, too. For days, they hounded their doctors, the state health department and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the two were ineligible for coronavirus testing because, though living with a potential carrier, they hadnt left the country.

Well never know, Cabanis-Wicht said.

With a positive test result in the household, contact tracers would likely have visited the family, along with each of the children with whom the girl had played. Instead, Cabanis-Wicht watched in horror as school officials soon reported cases of influenza-like illness arising in the elementary school. In early March, a parent of a fellow student finally got a test and turned up positive.

Without a doubt, we were all aware that we were likely missing cases, said Zahn, citing the testing restrictions. We relied on test results. If you werent tested, we didnt identify you.

If the earliest potential spreaders werent eligible for coronavirus testing, how could cluster busters find them in time to curb a full-blown outbreak?

It was a question we were all asking, Zahn said.

Unprepared

The laboratory testing process relied on strikingly inefficient instruments: humans.

The strict protocol approved by federal health officials meant no automation at L.A. Countys public health lab. Lab workers hovered over patient samples, using the plastic droppers known as pipettes to manually extract genetic material from them, one by one.

They loaded samples into the wells of a testing machine that looked more like an outdated LaserJet office printer than the solution to a pandemic. It ran 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Still, by March 11, with infections likely spreading by the thousands, only about 70 peoples specimens had been tested in the Downey lab, the departments director said.

Other counties were worse off. One in four of the states public health laboratories closed entirely in recent years, and there remained less than one public health lab per million state residents. Many reported an annual equipment budget of zero dollars or were under review for closure until couriers began arriving with patient swabs and hand-scribbled test requests.

A technician processes specimens at the UCLA clinical microbiology lab in Brentwood.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Demand for testing surged after about 1,250 Californians who had been on a cruise ship with a coronavirus patient had unknowingly scattered across the state, likely proliferating the spread. Another 9,000 people in California had recently returned from countries experiencing severe outbreaks.

The pileup of samples left the countys testing infrastructure bottlenecked and on the brink of collapse. A county memo asked hospitals to turn away any suspected coronavirus patient with mild symptoms without a test and without reporting the case.

Dont call the public health department, one infection control coordinator wrote in an email to doctors.

The county reported a total of just 29 infections an obvious undercount.

Outmatched

On March 13, a Friday, Steve Rusckowski, the chief executive of Quest Diagnostics, approached the podium in the Rose Garden of the White House. President Trump patted him on the back.

Stephen, Trump said. Great job.

Stephen Rusckowski, chief executive of Quest Diagnostics, discusses the coronavirus at a White House news conference with President Trump on March 13.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

With the testing infrastructure in public facilities crippled, the federal government had turned to private partners to scale up testing. Flanked by industry leaders and members of the federal task force, Rusckowski told television cameras and print reporters that the companys testing process was underway, adding that the number of tests available to the public will be considerably increased in the next few weeks.

It was. That day, Los Angeles County had reported just eight new coronavirus cases overnight; the following Friday, it reported 64 overnight. The one after that, it was 252. By the end of the month, total detection in the county surpassed 3,000 cases.

But unfortunately for Quest and other private players such as LabCorp the growing capacity to detect cases was only as good as supply lines. And quickly, every step in the process showed strain.

For tens of thousands of Californians to receive a coronavirus test, medical staff needed just as many cotton-tipped swabs the simplest piece and yet the No. 1 issue, said Dr. Clayton Kazan, medical director for the Los Angeles County Fire Department and former coronavirus testing coordinator for the county. A common type, called a flocked swab, is typically produced in Italy and China, where the outbreak had paralyzed manufacturing. More than 125 testing sites in California would later report swabs as their primary testing shortage.

After collection, a swab sample was immediately inserted into a plastic screw-top tube filled with transport medium a solution intended to preserve it on its journey. But the fluid was so scant that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began endorsing the use of basic saline in its place.

Once it arrived at processing laboratories such as Quest or LabCorp, sample preparation required specific chemicals, known as reagents, to extract genetic material from the swab. Without the reagents, Gov. Gavin Newsom said, the test kits were like printers, but without ink.

But Qiagen, a top supplier, quickly fell behind. Patients in intensive care units waited more than a week for results; some nurses had to tell families that, in the pileup, the commercial labs had lost their relatives samples entirely.

Even on their deathbeds, they had no diagnoses.

Reagent manufacturing looked like having a garden hose on hand to fight a wildfire, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. The outbreak in Wuhan, China, demanded a full-blown fire hydrant, he added, and the global spread required virtually a canals worth.

And while states such as New York used expanded testing to screen every nursing home patient, California didnt have the means; about half of deaths in California are from these facilities.

The testing regime failure was federal, state and local. We all failed, Kazan said. If we could go back to January, when we saw what was happening in Wuhan, if we had taken that opportunity to scale ourselves up in anticipation, we could have been more prepared than we are now.

By March 25, Quest alone had 160,000 unprocessed tests about half of all the orders it had received.

The scramble

The backlog reached all the way to the office of Dr. Valerie Ng, the lab director at the Alameda Health System who one day in mid-March found herself piling patient samples into her car for a road trip to the state lab in Richmond. Two separate testing infrastructures had failed her. This was Plan C.

Earlier that month, the pileup at Quest had become insufferable; Dr. Ng had redirected samples to Alameda Countys public health lab. But their aging equipment delivered test results by fax; the head of labs at three hospitals and several clinics found herself relegated to watching for the LOW TONER light to illuminate on the printer.

Issues compounded when the lab equipments test results could not be validated. The deluge of specimens came to resemble the accelerating conveyor belt of confections in the classic chocolate factory episode of I Love Lucy, she said. She began chauffeuring them to Richmond.

When the surge came, it came to the lab, she said in an interview. Were swimming as fast as we can.

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, molecular biologist Fyodor Urnov formed what he called SEAL Team Six: hand-selected scientists, physicians and students who had constructed a volunteer lab in a matter of weeks to help relieve Quests backlog. They moved heaven and earth to get government certifications and create a highly automated lab that could run as many as 1,000 patient samples a day, he said.

But when Urnov told nearby hospitals he could provide free testing and results in 48 hours, the hospitals declined, saying their electronic records systems were still entangled at Quest and LabCorp. The volunteers were stunned.

We said, What? Are you kidding me? They have a direct link to a testing provider that has failed, Urnov said. Theres institutional inertia.

Silicon Valley steps in

Fred Turner has always been entrepreneurial. By 17, hed built a DNA machine in his bedroom to figure out why his brother was a redhead. At 20, he dropped out of Oxford to launch his first biotech start-up. And this spring, during an afternoon kicking back at his San Francisco flat, friends of the then-24-year-old talked him into upending his life to address a new problem: coronavirus testing.

Thanks to venture capitalists, Turner, within weeks, was in a hotel room in Southern California blasting out job openings for medical technicians, lab workers and programmers. DM if interested! Turner, the new chief executive of the brainchild, Curative, wrote on Twitter.

Staffers slept in sleeping bags between shifts at their new facility: a former NFL/MLB anti-doping laboratory in San Dimas, its glass walls and biosafety cabinets transformed into the most efficient coronavirus testing operation in the region. By late April, patient samples stuffed inside trash bags were arriving by the truckload on the ground floor of the facility, called KorvaLabs.

Each day, some 350 employees stepped into the assembly lines: sterilizing pouches and scanning bar codes, feeding racks of samples to an automated Tecan extraction robot and transferring plates into almost two dozen viral detection machines with a master mix of chemicals that run in tandem almost around the clock.

Industrial engineers used digital time stamps to track the daily workflow of each step, looking for lags. Were back to Henry Ford, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, professor of medicine and public health at UCLA, the medical director of the program.

By early May, California had gone from 2,000 to nearly 40,000 tests per day. The Curative-Korva lab was running 10,000 of them.

Back to the future

Dr. Zahns contact tracing team was back in action, and their caseload by late May was surging. Trading their gowns and gloves for phone lines and shared drives, tracers spend their days staring at computer screens glowing with the ever-growing lists of names.

Dont think Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. Dont think Sherlock Holmes, said Zahn. There is no big opera music in the background. Think less glamorous: Excel spreadsheets.

Californias contact tracers librarians, Peace Corps volunteers and others called infected patients and asked for the phone number of each person theyd recently seen, vowing to keep the identity of the positive case concealed. Those contacts were asked about symptoms, and they, too, were requested to isolate at home.

But the challenges were overwhelming. Los Angeles County, after a massive team scale-up, still had only 1,759 contact tracers for more than 10 million residents, and, in the U.S., there was another unique hurdle: enforcement.

Effective methods to force compliance were in use elsewhere: Taiwan monitored quarantined people with digital fencing that sounded an enforcement alarm whenever one of some 50,000 quarantined citizens ventured too far from home. Contact tracers in South Korea and Singapore kept track of infected people through GPS and Bluetooth data.

But none of those options were available in California. Contact tracers lacked authority to insist that infectious individuals avoid exposing others.

I cant imagine an America where we can replicate exactly what they did in Asia, given the fact that we have freedoms and a Constitution, said Dr. Bob Kocher, a venture capital executive and former member of the governors task force on testing.

And the more contact tracers went about their work, the more their effectiveness was entirely dependent on the one thing they still couldnt control: testing.

The shadow of past failures and the legacy of ones still in the making lingered.

For example, L.A. County health officials in early June were still only about three-quarters of the way through testing residents and staff at the nearly 400 skilled nursing facilities. In jails, another hot spot for the virus, staff have reported running out of the rapid test kits used before booking new inmates. In rural towns and inner-city neighborhoods, California is scaling back its testing expansion, citing costs.

And, in a startling dj vu to the outbreaks inception, L.A. County public health officials on Wednesday limited the criteria for testing due to dwindling supplies. The ever-fragile testing infrastructure is once again threatened by shortages of swabs, reagents and, curiously enough, those tiny plastic pipette tips that lab workers had wielded by hand in the Downey lab.

The droppers now work robotically, but the plastic needed to manufacture the tips is shrinking across the globe, experts say. If labs run out of the tiny, crucial components, the entire system could grind to a halt by October, they say.

Without these little plastic tips, Kocher said, testing will break down again.

Times staff writers Melody Petersen, Anita Chabria, Sandhya Kambhampati, Matt Stiles and Sean Greene contributed to this report.

Read the original:

How California failed at coronavirus testing from the start - Los Angeles Times

When coronavirus first hit in March, the freelance production manager paid about $30 for a three-month premium subscription on the dating app Hinge -- and he figured he'd just keep swiping until that ended.

Like many, the 29-year-old used dating apps like Hinge as a way to connect with others, especially since making in-person connections had become nearly impossible with Covid-19 shutdowns. He went on one Facetime date -- the girl, he said, seemed like she was "just going through her matches ... like on a spreadsheet."

But on May 29, he had plans to meet up with a different match -- this time in person. A 28-year-old nurse named Brooke, with whom he would hike Runyon Canyon -- Los Angeles' picturesque, influencer-ridden trail.

It was in the middle of their approximately three-mile hike, when the two decided they felt comfortable enough to remove their face masks, that he knew this was different. Their guards were down, or as he described it, "all caution (regarding coronavirus) was thrown to the wind."

Now, less than one month and many dates later, they split most of their time between his West Hollywood apartment and hers in Long Beach. He's done what many initially considered impossible with social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders:

He found love during a global pandemic.

"This is truly two people finding their soulmate during the most unlikely of times," he told CNN in a phone interview. "We're thinking about eloping to Vegas if the chapels open."

While this may sound extreme, many formerly single people -- and dating experts -- say the pandemic has actually helped people find their matches more easily.

"Because we have this dedicated time to find love, there are no distractions -- you're not a bar looking at people around you or looking at your drink. Everyone's more present and they are more conscious about the way they are showing up to these virtual or real-life dates."

Xu and podcast co-host Julie Krafchick, who are based in San Francisco, said they've noticed an overall change for the better in terms of the dating landscape over the past few months.

"Consider this a reset," Xu said. "Even though we're losing magic of that first date -- the first kiss, first touch -- we're forced to think about how we can reinvent dating."

The 'fail fast mentality'

Dating has never been -- and never will be -- perfect. Before the pandemic, Xu and Krafchick answered questions on their podcast such as "Do Millennials even want to find love?" and "Is monogamy dead?"

"We can't have amnesia that dating wasn't perfect before," Krafchick said. "Part of the reason we created the podcast in the first place was to answer the question, 'What the f**k is wrong with modern dating?'"

The biggest challenge for the singles out there before the pandemic, Krafchick said, was that many spent a lot of time in relationship limbo.

"No one wanted to say they were excited about someone," she said. "No one wanted to define the relationship."

Now, however, the pandemic has led to what Krafchick described as the "fail fast mentality."

"People are starting to feel it's better to fail fast than be in this constant state of equilibrium," she said. "Like, let's either get it off the ground or end it."

The podcast hosts have heard countless stories during these past few months of people who have successfully found love, and people who have felt more encouraged by their dating experiences even if their quarantine relationships didn't work out.

"Coming out of quarantine, everyone has a really strong feeling of a yes or no," Xu said.

Many have also taken this time in quarantine to self reflect, which has helped pave the way to finding healthier relationships.

"I think this time has given people a lot of clarity into what they want in life," Krafchick said. "It's shown life is short and at the end of the day, relationships are what matters most. A lot of people have used this time to do self work, especially in the dark middle period of quarantine, where it didn't feel like there was any way to meet someone."

Virtual dates have also made people throw their old notions of dating out of the window, as they are forced to get creative. For example, "there are 'Zootie' calls now," Xu explained. "Zoom booty calls."

'A whole other dimension of consent'

With this uncharted era of dating also comes new conversations around consent: Do you feel safe meeting in person during a pandemic? Do you agree to wearing masks on the first date? Do you feel comfortable being less than 6 feet apart?

Jessica Gerhardt, a Santa Monica, California, native, and her new partner -- they have not labeled the relationship yet -- waited three months before they decided to meet in person for the first time last week.

The two, who had mutual friends in the music scene, began talking after he "slid into her DMs" on Instagram. Before they met up, he researched and looked into data about social distancing, Gerhardt said.

"We both consented to hug when we first met," the 30-year-old told CNN. "There's a whole other dimension of consent during this pandemic. Under normal circumstances, of course I'd want to hug -- but it was helpful to have that conversation before and nice to know if we don't do something it's not necessarily a sign of 'Oh, I'm not attracted or interested, but I'm trying to be considerate of your safety and vice versa.'"

The lack of touching before meeting, Gerhardt said, made her feel like the two were cultivating "deeper intimacy" as they got to know each other.

They ended up going on a social distance walk in her neighborhood while both wore face masks. At the end of their walking date, he asked whether he could use her bathroom before he drove home.

"He came inside, and we both took off our masks after I asked, 'Do you feel comfortable being maskless?' and he said, 'I feel comfortable.' It was a nice surprise," she said. "We ended up feeling comfortable enough to also hold hands and cuddle. It was really sweet."

While they do not have plans to move in together any time soon, Gerhardt said he has now joined her quarantine pod, which includes her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend.

Learning each other's values early on

How people have acted during this time has helped provide a window into their beliefs, which for some singles has helped narrow down their pool of potential matches.

For example, on dating apps, many have said they have encountered photos of people holding "Black Lives Matter" signs at protests on their profiles. Others said they've seen people sporting face masks in their pictures, to highlight the fact that they are following social distancing guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in order to curb the spread of the virus.

"With the Black Lives Matter movement, Covid, and everything else that's been going on, it's been causing people to have way deeper conversations," Krafchick said. "You can really quickly realize who has same values as you and who would be a better long-term partner. (Talking about) those things can really help you understand someone a lot better on a deeper level and get you past those basic dating questions."

Liz Dwyer, who lives in LA, fell for a guy named Demis Courquet-Lesaulnier, who she has been messaging on Instagram since before the pandemic. He lives in Paris, and they had plans -- pre-coronavirus -- to meet abroad. Now, that plan has been put on hold.

But that hasn't slowed their relationship down at all. In fact, it's sped things up. Dwyer said she's gotten closer to her now-boyfriend these past few months virtually, thanks to many of the current events they discuss.

"We have completely different cultural backgrounds," the writer and editor told CNN. "I'm American, he's French. I'm Black, he's White. We had to get to know each other -- not just on the 'I think you're good looking' and 'you're cute too' conversation."

"He was open to understanding what was happening in terms of racism," she said.

Without the pandemic, she doesn't know what their relationship would look like today.

"I don't know what the future holds," she added, "but no matter what, the experience has changed me for the better."

Finding your 'apocalypse partner'

Ronni Morgan, 32, and her partner Adriane (AJ) Johnson, 41, met on the HER app -- a dating app for queer people -- on March 23.

They started by texting, having FaceTime dates and watching Netflix together virtually, with Morgan in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Johnson in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

When they finally reached a point where they felt safe enough to start planning an in-person meeting, they found an AirBnB in between their two locations that they considered secluded and off-the-beaten path.

From the beginning, Morgan said, the two were "on the same page about how to handle the pandemic."

"We have both taken it very seriously," Morgan told CNN. "I don't think we would've made it this far otherwise."

When they finally did meet, on June 26, Morgan said their weekend together "legitimately was like a lesbian romance novel, complete with a fireplace, velvety red blanket and epic thunderstorm."

"When we did finally get to meet in person, we were already so deeply connected there was no question of what the chemistry would be like," she told CNN.

Their relationship is still a long-distance one -- but Morgan said there's no doubt in her mind that she's found her "apocalypse partner," aka the person to ride out the pandemic with.

"There's this meme that talks about how dating in 2020 is about choosing your apocalypse partner wisely and honestly I couldn't agree more," Morgan said. "I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, there's no one I'd rather be braving the new world with than AJ."

"I never imagined I'd meet the love of my life during a global pandemic but here we are," Morgan wrote in a post sharing their story on Facebook.

"Anything is possible."

Meeting at the virtual bar

Back in March, Krafchick and Xu decided to bring their community of listeners together in a Facebook group they called "Love in the Time of Corona by the Dateable Podcast." They said they felt it was important for people to feel less alone as quarantine began.

So far, the group has amassed more than 500 members -- who all actively utilize the group to share their experiences with dating in comments, over virtual happy hours, and, sometimes even with the two hosts as guests on their show.

Thursday afternoon, a "Dateable"-hosted virtual happy hour was in full swing, with about 20 people from across the United States -- some returning faces, others new to the hangout -- hopping on a video chat on Facebook.

Group members could check out different Facebook rooms, including: "The Bar," where Krafchick and Xu kicked off the afternoon with intros. Then, some stayed behind to play a game of "Would You Rather?" with dating-themed questions.

"Would you rather date someone who is in a lot of debt but donates to charity on a regular basis," Xu asked the group, "or someone who has no debt, but doesn't donate to charities?"

Others joined the "Playtime" room, where they participated in dating-themed trivia. And some joined a new "room" called the "Dance Floor," where one member taught a dance class.

Read more from the original source:

Love in the time of coronavirus: Couples share how they found matches in the middle of a pandemic - CNN

I'm hearing a lot of talk about the coronavirus spreading through aerosols is wearing a mask in a grocery store enough protection? What else should I do to stay safe?

Quick answer first: Going to the grocery store where you and everyone else is wearing a mask and keeping a distance from each other is still considered a low-risk activity. Go get your summer strawberries!

For background, aerosols are tiny microdroplets containing the virus that can be expelled when we talk or breathe and can stay aloft and travel on air currents. It's still unclear how much of a role they play in spreading the virus, but recently more than 200 scientists wrote an open letter asking the World Health Organization to pay more attention to them.

The agency still maintains that the greater risk of spread appears to be from droplets larger particles, also expelled when we talk or breathe, which settle more quickly and are less likely to accumulate in the air. However, WHO released a new scientific brief on July 9 saying that airborne transmission might be contributing to spread in crowded, poorly-ventilated indoor spaces such as gyms, choir practice rooms and nightclubs. But how much transmission aerosolized particles are responsible for, versus droplets and contaminated surfaces, they can't say for sure.

"What we are calling for is more systematic research to be done in these types of settings," said Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for WHO's health emergencies program, at a press conference on Friday. In other words, stay tuned.

Bottom line: It's impossible to rule out that some amount of transmission may be caused by aerosols. If you want to err on the side of caution, here's what some infectious disease researchers say can help minimize the risks:

Face away from people when you talk: When you're talking face to face with someone, you're in direct line of the plumes of breath that come out of their mouths when they speak. "If there's any scenario where I'm face to face, with someone, I move my head off-center so I'm no longer inhaling that direct plume," says Seema Lakdawala, a flu transmission researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. One tip that helps her is to not make direct eye contact with people. It can be awkward, she acknowledges, but "it's not just about protecting myself, but also about protecting other people," since it's possible to shed the virus without knowing you're infected.

Wear your mask properly: Wear a layered cloth mask in public spaces, especially if you're indoors or in a setting where you can't socially distance. Make sure it covers your nose and mouth. This will catch many of the droplets that come out when you breathe or speak and prevent them from getting into the air. Ideally, to take precautions against tiny, aerosolized microdroplets, "we should be masking everyone with better masks," says Abraar Karan, a physician at Harvard Medical School. But the N95 masks that effectively filter most aerosol particles are in short supply and uncomfortable to wear. Karan suggests well-fitting KN95 masks which have similar protection (but make sure your mask isn't counterfeit).

Make the indoors more like the outdoors: "You limit aerosol transmission by increasing ventilation and increasing air circulation by opening a window, putting on a fan and just moving the air," says Lakdawala, who keeps several fans running at all times in her lab and office space. Moving air disperses the particles in the air and makes it less likely that someone will breathe in a concentrated cloud of infectious virus. Donald Milton, an infectious disease aerobiologist at the University of Maryland and lead author on the open letter about aerosols, also recommends cleaning indoor air, through air filtration and ultraviolet sanitizing light. "You wouldn't drink water downstream from another town without treating it. But we breathe air from other people without treating it," he says.

Limit the amount of time you're in close contact with people: The public health rule of thumb for what counts as an exposure is close contact with an infected person for 15 minutes or more, so uncrowded grocery stores where everyone is masked and moving represents a relatively low-risk situation, both Lakdawala and Milton agree. Hopefully, you're not standing in one aisle for very long, but you're going to shop efficiently, says Lakdawala, "So even if there are fine aerosols that are getting released by somebody who is infected, they're getting diluted out as these people move in air currents." Indoor bars, restaurants and other situations where people are staying in one place for a period of time, and speaking or singing loudly, make Milton more wary. "I don't know how to drink a beer with a surgical mask on," he says. "And I wouldn't go sing at choir practice, OK?"

Keep a buffer of personal space: This isn't just important for the spray of droplets, it may also help when it comes to tiny airborne particles. If you are planning to sit and talk to a friend, keeping a distance of at least 6 feet creates more opportunities for airflow between you and others. "We have a happy hour in our neighborhood where everybody brings our chairs, and we sit on someone's lawn," says Lakdawala. "Everyone is spatially distanced, and we bring our own drinks and talk." Maintaining a distance from others means there's more ventilation and space for air to pass between you, says Lakdawala.

Each precaution adds another layer of safety from aerosolized particles, says Milton. "Wearing a mask means you're putting less virus droplets into the air, sucking less out [of the air]. Keeping distances means there's less of it near you. And having good ventilation or air sanitation means what's in the air is getting removed. All of those things add up to giving you good protection."

View post:

How To Protect Yourself From The Risk Of Airborne Coronavirus Transmission? : Goats and Soda - NPR

COVID-19 isnt going away anytime soon in Washington, King Countys top public health official said Friday so we need to learn to make protecting each others health part of our daily lives, he added. The county saw an average of 118 new cases per day during the week ending July 9, according to the countys COVID-19 dashboard.

Meanwhile, Washingtons colleges and universities are pushing back on a new federal directive that would require international students to return to their home countries if the schools have to go to all-online classes this fall. On Thursday, President Donald Trump in another push to get schools and colleges to reopen this fall threatened schools tax-exempt status.

Throughout Saturday, on this page, well be posting Seattle Times journalists updates on the outbreak and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world. Updates from Friday can be foundhere, and all our coronavirus coverage can be foundhere.

When her father died of COVID-19 last month, Kristin Urquiza minced no words assigning blame.

Mark Urquiza, 65, should still be alive, his daughter wrote in a scathing obituary, published Wednesday in the Arizona Republic.

His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk, she wrote.

The searing tribute encapsulates the fury of critics who say governments at multiple levels are failing at their most basic duty: keeping citizens safe. The obituary also nods at the outbreaks disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic communities, who have been devastated by higher rates of coronavirus-related hospitalization and death.

Among the leaders whom Kristin Urquiza feels disregarded her father, a Mexican American resident of Phoenix who worked in manufacturing, are Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, and the Trump administration. Ducey, she said, has blood on his hands for beginning to reopen the state in early May, roughly three weeks before new infections started to rise quickly.

Patrick Ptak, a spokesperson for Ducey, said in a statement: Our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of Mark Anthony Urquiza. We know nothing can fully alleviate the pain associated with his loss, and every loss from this virus is tragic.

The full story here.

The Washington Post

The governor of Japans Okinawa island demanded a top U.S. military commander take tougher prevention measures and provide more transparency hours after officials were told that more than 60 Marines at two bases have been infected over the past few days.

Okinawan officials on Sunday reported a total of 61 cases 38 of them at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since July 7. They said that U.S. military officials told them the two bases have since been put in lockdown.

The disclosure of the exact figures came only after Okinawas repeated requests to the U.S. military. Gov. Denny Tamaki, in telephone talks late Saturday with Lt. Gen. H. Stacy Clardy, commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, demanded the U.S military increase disease prevention measures to maximum levels, stop sending personnel from the mainland U.S. to Okinawa and seal the bases, as well as provide more transparency.

Okinawans are shocked by what we were told [by the U.S. military], Tamaki told a news conference Saturday. It is extremely regrettable that the infections are rapidly spreading among U.S. personnel when we Okinawans are doing our utmost to contain the infections. We now have strong doubts that the U.S. military has taken adequate disease prevention measures."

Read the full story.

The Associated Press

Taiwan wrapped up an annual film festival with an awards ceremony Saturday night as it holds more public events after keeping its coronavirus outbreak to a few hundred cases.

Actors and others lined up for photo shoots with no social distancing, and participants didnt wear masks in historic Zhongshan Hall in Taipei. Taiwan, with a population of about 23 million people, has had 451 confirmed cases and seven deaths.

A baseball game in the city of Taichung on Saturday drew more than 10,000 fans for the first time this season, the official Central News Agency said. Health authorities said last week that fans would be allowed to sit in alternate seats and no longer would have to wear masks, except when leaving their seats.

The horror film Detention, set during martial law in Taiwan in the 1960s, was the biggest winner at the Taipei Film Festival, taking six awards including the Grand Prize and Best Actress for 22-year-old Gingle Wang.

Chang Jung-chi, the Best Director winner for We Are Champions, said the virus outbreak had forced him to slow down his work. This comes to me like a friend patting my shoulder and saying, Hang in there, he said.

The Associated Press

"Hot or not, mask or not, we're just happy to be here," said an emotional guest as Walt Disney Worlds Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom reopened Saturday with new rules in place to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The reopening comes even as a huge surge of Floridians have tested positive for the new coronavirus in recent weeks. On Saturday, there were about 10,000 new cases reported, according to state statistics. Many cities and counties around the state have recently reinstated restrictions that had been lifted in May, when cases seemed to drop.

All of Disneys Orlando parks closed in mid-March in an effort to stop the viruss spread. Universal Orlando and SeaWorld Orlando closed around the same time but reopened several weeks ago. Epcot and Disneys Hollywood Studios are expected to open next week.

Full story here.

The Associated Press

There will be no daily update on coronavirus cases Saturday from the Washington state Department of Health.

The DOH announced that its data system would be down for maintenance on Saturday, and that new figures will be available in the late afternoon on Sunday.

Here's where to find the state's COVID-19 Data Dashboard.

Scott Hanson

Amitabh Bachchan has tested positive for the coronavirus and is hospitalized in Mumbai, Indias financial and entertainment capital, the Bollywood superstar announced Saturday.

Bachchan, 77, said in a tweet on Saturday that his family and staff have also undergone tests and are awaiting results. He appealed to those who were in close proximity to him in the past 10 days to get themselves tested.

The elder Bachchan has acted in more than 200 Indian films over the past five decades. He is also a former politician and a television host.

The Bachchans are often called Bollywoods first family. His wife, Jaya, is also an actress and a one-time member of Parliament. Their son, Abhishek, and daughter-in-law, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, are Bollywood superstars as well. Abhishek Bachchan, who is 44, tweeted Saturday night that he also has tested positive for COVID-19 and is hospitalized.

Both of us having mild symptoms have been admitted to the hospital, he wrote. I request all to stay calm and not panic.

The full story here.

The Associated Press

New York Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman became the latest high-profile player to test positive for the coronavirus, his diagnosis announced Saturday hours after the Houston Astros canceled another practice due to virus concerns.

In New York, manager Aaron Boone said Chapman wouldnt be here for the foreseeable future. Boone said the left-handed reliever overall was doing well despite experiencing mild symptoms.

The Yankees are scheduled to start the virus-delayed season July 23 at the World Series champion Washington Nationals. The AL champ Yankees already were missing star infielder DJ LeMahieu and right-hander Luis Cessa, who both tested positive last week and are still isolating at home.

Boone wouldnt say whether Chapman had been at Yankee Stadium since throwing a bullpen session Tuesday.

In Houston, the Astros canceled their workout after learning that a staff member could have been exposed to a person outside the organization with the coronavirus. Its the second time this week the Astros have wiped out a practice session because of concerns about the pandemic. Houston also scrapped its Monday workout because of delays with testing results due to the holiday weekend.

The Associated Press

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has asked all its members in Utah to wear face coverings when in public, a request that comes as confirmed infections in the state increase.

The Deseret News reports that the Utah Area Presidency sent out the request in an email on Friday evening. The area presidency operates under the authority of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Now we ask all Latter-day Saints in the Utah Area to be good citizens by wearing face coverings when in public, the email said. Doing so will help promote the health and general welfare of all.

About 62% of Utahs 3.1 million residents are members of the church.

Nearly 900 new cases were reported in the state on Friday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Overall, Utah had 28,223 confirmed cases and 207 deaths due to the virus as of Saturday. The number of infections is thought to be far higher because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick.

The Associated Press

President Donald Trump wore a mask during a visit to a military hospital Saturday, the first time the president has been seen in public with the type of facial covering recommended by health officials as a precaution against spreading or becoming infected by the novel coronavirus.

Trump flew by helicopter to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington, D.C., to meet wounded service members and health care providers caring for COVID-19 patients. As he left the White House, he told reporters: When youre in a hospital, especially I think its expected to wear a mask.

Trump was wearing a mask in Walter Reeds hallway as he began his visit. He was not wearing one when he stepped off the helicopter at the facility.

The president was a latecomer to wearing a mask during the pandemic, which has raged across the U.S. since March and infected more than 3.2 million and killed at least 134,000. Most prominent Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, endorsed wearing masks as the coronavirus gained ground this summer.

Trump, however, has declined to wear a mask at news conferences, coronavirus task force updates, rallies and other public events. People close to him have told The Associated Press the president feared a mask would make him look weak and was concerned that it shifted focus to the public health crisis rather than the economic recovery.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

Oregon officials Saturday reported 409 new coronavirus cases.

The Oregon Health Authority said the high number is partially due to a new reporting system that prevented processing some positive cases Thursday.

The state is reporting 11,851 total cases with 232 deaths.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

DALLAS The coronavirus pandemic has taken away another summertime tradition in the U.S.: There will be no free Slurpees at 7-Elevens on Saturday July 11 to hail a date that doubles as an abbreviation of the convenience store chain's name.

7-Eleven has been giving away its slushy beverage to all customers for nearly 20 years on July 11, but it scrapped the promotion this summer to reduce the risk of people flocking to its stores and risking contracting the coronavirus.

Gathering nine million of our closest friends in stores on one day just didnt feel right," said Marissa Jarratt, 7-Eleven's chief marketing officer.

The Dallas-based chain instead decided to donate 1 million meals to Feeding America, a hunger relief group.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

As Montana warily reopened last month to pandemic-weary tourists, an isolated community held firm with closures and stay-at-home orders. Few outsiders would have paid much attention but for one detail: The Blackfeet Nation borders Glacier National Park, and its decision blocked access to much of the vast wilderness there.

The result this month has meant throngs of visitors crowding into a tiny corner of Glacier a crown jewel of the park system with long lines of cars at what is now the only entry point.

And the bottleneck wont disappear anytime soon. Tribal leaders recently announced they would keep the eastern entrances and roads to Glacier, which lie on reservation land, closed at least through August.

Our number one objective is to keep people alive, said Robert DesRosier, who leads the tribes COVID-19 incident response team. We dont want one person to die. Our elders are the keepers of the culture, and we cant afford to lose them.

The Blackfeets fears are well-founded. COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has ravaged some Native American communities. In Montana, state data show that more than a third of the people to have died so far identified as Native American, though natives make up less than 7% of the population. In the Southwest, the Navajo Nation has been one of the countrys worst hot spots.

The National Park Service and local tourist companies are backing the Blackfeet. Boat and bus operators are shut down for the summer, as are hotels and restaurants on Glaciers east side, and Park Service officials are weighing Glaciers first-ever ticketing and reservation plan to deal with the crush of traffic.

The park, which extends north to Canada, encompasses a million acres of glacially carved peaks, turquoise-colored lakes, trails and wild country. Until a controversial land agreement in 1895, all of it was Blackfeet country.

Read the full story here.

NEW YORK A long-expected upturn in U.S. coronavirus deaths has begun, driven by fatalities in states in the South and West, according to data on the pandemic, according to The Associated Press.

The number of deaths per day from the virus had been falling for months, and even remained down as states like Florida and Texas saw explosions in cases and hospitalizations and reported daily U.S. infections broke records almost daily.

Scientists warned it wouldnt last. A coronavirus death, when it occurs, typically comes several weeks after a person is first infected. And experts predicted states that saw increases in cases and hospitalizations would, at some point, see deaths rise too.

Now thats happening.

Its consistently picking up. And its picking up at the time youd expect it to, said William Hanage, a Harvard University infectious diseases researcher.

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily reported deaths in the U.S. has increased from 578 two weeks ago to 664 on July 10 still well below the heights hit in April.

Daily reported deaths increased in 27 states over that time period, but the majority of those states are averaging under 15 new deaths per day. A smaller group of states has been driving the nationwide increase in deaths.

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Angel Pacheco tested positive for coronavirus last week. Before he was released from the Yakima County Jail on bail Wednesday, he said he spent a week in an isolation cell with no hot water.

Despite his continuous vomiting and diarrhea, he said corrections officers denied him a shower and change of clothes for three or four days, saying he could expose other inmates in the showers.

They allowed me to sit in my own, you know, filth, Pacheco, hoarse from coughing, said over the phone about an hour and a half after his release. When I was hospitalized, I was in really bad shape. I would consider myself on the verge of dying.

Pacheco is one of 83 inmates out of about 400 inmates who had tested positive for the coronavirus at the jail as of Tuesday, and he described conditions in the jail as gross and unhuman with mold growing in the showers its appalling.

But jail administrators deny the claims of Pacheco and other inmates. They say officers are not denying sick men showers and that the jail is following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards, though they acknowledge the facility has been affected by the pandemic like other institutions.

Jeremy Welch, chief of the security operations division of Yakima County Department of Corrections, said Yakima County has reduced the jails inmate population to 40% capacity through work with local courts, law enforcement and contract jurisdictions, Welch said.

But Pacheco, who suffers from underlying heart problems including hypertension, said his treatment was inhumane.

Read the full story here.

Seattle Times staff & news services

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Coronavirus daily news updates, July 11: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world - Seattle Times

Tensions are breaking out on beaches and tourists from Lombardy have reported instances of discrimination as Italys first holiday season since the coronavirus outbreak gets under way.

Residents of Codogno, in Lodi province, the first town in the countrys badly affected Lombardy region to be quarantined, have claimed attempts to book holidays elsewhere in Italy were rebuffed after they revealed they would be travelling from a former red zone.

Among them was Davide Passerini, who lives in Codogno but is mayor of the small town of Fombio, another area quarantined early. His accommodation booking for a weekend away in Tuscany was rejected after the owner discovered he was from Codogno.

Even if these are rare episodes, the prejudice leaves you feeling very bitter, Passerini said. It is the result of ignorance among those who dont understand that people coming from the first red zones are today probably less likely to bring the virus because the level of contagion in these places is now close to zero and has been for a long time. But in the minds of some people, Codogno remains synonymous with infectious disease.

During a phone-in to an Italian radio show last week, a couple from another area hard-hit by the virus spoke about being turned away at a hotel reception with the excuse that the establishment was fully booked.

At the same time, tempers are rising as people jostle for space on packed public beaches, where safety rules are rarely observed. On a beach in Ostia, near Rome, last weekend a 20-year-old woman was slapped after she asked a fellow beachgoer to move his towel because there was no safe distance between them.

Marina Marzari, a psychologist from Veneto, said her recent experience at a beach in the Marche region went from paradise to hell within a few hours as large groups descended throughout the day.

It was the most dense crowd Ive ever experienced, she said. There were no masks and not even the slightest distancing being respected. Its really dangerous.

Marzari called the local police several times but she said nobody came to patrol the beach. Weve all made sacrifices in recent months but feel taken for a ride after having stayed at home for so long, as when we go out situations like this arent made safe. If I get sick due to something similar I will press charges against the state.

Safety rules at privately run establishments, where people can rent loungers and umbrellas, have been easier to maintain.

Even though requirements are similar for free beaches people can gather in groups of no more than four people, maintaining a 1.5-metre distance from others, and beach games are banned they have been more difficult to enforce.

But some areas are starting to take action. Authorities on Ischia, an island off Naples, last week imposed an exclusion law, known as a daspo in Italy, that will ban those who flout safety regulations from the beach for the rest of the summer season.

Enzo Ferrandino, the mayor of Ischia, told local newspapers: The right to go to the beach in safety must be defended. We owe it to those who deserve a little more respect in an island that sometimes lets itself be overwhelmed by selfishness.

In Bordighera, a beach town in Liguria, stewards have been hired to patrol public beaches, and a similar move is being planned by authorities in Salerno, Campania.

The coronavirus transmission rate in Italy has slowed considerably since lockdown restrictions began to be eased in May, despite the emergence of clusters across the country that have mostly been due to imported infections. People have been able to travel between regions since early June.

But as they adapt to living alongside the virus, judgments over the risk have polarised peoples attitudes and behaviour.

When there is strong social anxiety, this is typical, said Giuseppe Pantaleo, a social psychologist at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. So we either treat everyone as a potential source of infection, which has some justification as the data is still so awful in other countries, or we go to the opposite extreme and totally deny the risk.

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Coronavirus brings tension and prejudice to Italy's beaches - The Guardian

One evening last week, after making one of his most consequential decisions yet in Texas response to the coronavirus, Gov. Greg Abbott settled in for his pandemic routine: a rapid-fire round of local TV interviews from his campaigns satellite studio in Austin.

In the hours since hed issued a statewide mask mandate, Abbott had taken a familiar shellacking from both sides of the aisle: the Democrats who had wanted the mask requirement weeks earlier, and some Republicans who had not wanted it at all.

An anchor with KIII in Corpus Christi offered a measure of sympathy.

Governor, I must tell you I wouldnt trade jobs with you for anything, he said, drawing chuckles from Abbott.

You articulate it well, Abbott later said. I get it from both sides.

Four months of unprecedented emergency have forced the cautious, measured governor into a leadership test like no other. While he has steered the state through major crises before Hurricane Harvey, multiple mass shootings no other has required the sustained, high-stakes decision-making that this one has, leaving Abbott with countless, constant choices that have immediate impact on millions of Texans. Abbott is leaning hard on his executive power and a small circle of advisers as the biennial Legislature remains on the sidelines.

If the virus has presented a leadership test, Abbotts metrics are getting worse. COVID-19 has already killed at least 3,013 Texans and is spreading rapidly, infecting new people and filling hospitals with the sick. Hospitals are beginning to get overwhelmed. Despite an early reopening, the states economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate in double digits and budgets facing major shortfalls. Even by the metrics Abbott has said he is focused on the percentage of COVID-19 patients who require hospitalization, and the share of tests coming back positive Texas is headed in an alarming direction. While Texas at first fared better than many other states, it is now a national hotspot.

For most of the pandemic, Abbott has been met with persistent criticism from Democrats and a small but vocal faction of his GOP, but lately his Republican skeptics have begun to grow in number.

Critics point to ever-changing, sometimes serially confusing top-down guidance. Facing down a public health emergency, the governor has more than once reversed himself, making virus mitigation decisions that some say came too late and others say should not have been made at all.

Abbotts defenders praise him for remaining characteristically calm during a dark hour for the state. Democrats plead with him to act on the advice of public health experts, many of whom urge further shutdown of the economy, and to allow local leaders to issue stricter guidelines than the statewide regulations. A growing group in his own party questions both his choices and his authority to make them.

Politically, Abbott who does not face re-election until 2022 has little to fear on his own. But he sits atop a Texas GOP that has plenty to worry about in November, with polls showing Joe Biden in striking distance of President Donald Trump and Democrats making a massive push farther down the ballot.

Abbott entered the pandemic with plenty of political capital as the states most popular Republican leader. While Abbott maintained a generally high approval rating during the first few months of the pandemic, his rating fell seven percentage points from April to June in University of Texas polling.

The second-term governor, who often seems reluctant to take political risks, is forging his legacy through a crisis that he is singularly positioned to address. With the Legislature out of session, and after he limited the power of the states mayors and county judges, Abbott has almost complete authority to make critical decisions about the states response. That means he owns the decisions that lead to lost jobs and lost lives.

The summer will prove a critical chapter: Can he change the states course, or will it careen further toward disaster?

Theres so much at stake here weve got to get it right. We dont have a whole lot of time, said state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, a nurse and leader in the states minority party. And I dont believe the governor has shown the leadership we need. I realize its a tough job, but the buck stops with him. The Legislature is not in session. Hes the one thats running the ship.

In a public health crisis, government at all levels has a role to play: federal health agencies issuing guidance; states wrangling data; mayors and city councils communicating with their constituencies.

But Abbott came to the public health crisis with an already-tense relationship with local leaders. The GOP-dominated state government he heads clashes routinely with Democratic leaders in the states biggest cities and counties, over issues ranging from property taxes to paid sick leave requirements. As the coronavirus began to spread in China and then to Europe, the governor was bickering with Austins leaders about people experiencing homelessness.

Still, in March, as cases of the new coronavirus began to pop up in Texas cities, Abbott was uncharacteristically deferential to local officials.

Amid calls for a statewide stay-at-home order, a spokesman for the governor said in mid-March that cities and counties have done a very good job of doing what is right for their municipalities.Abbott ordered the states bars and restaurants to close, but resisted calls for a more comprehensive directive that Texans stay at home, insisting local officials have the authority to implement more strict standards. I would applaud them for doing so.

By the end of the month, though, with case counts surpassing 3,000 and states across the country battering down, Abbott finally took statewide action: He ordered Texans to remain in place except for essential activities like grocery shopping.

Was this the stay-at-home order Democrats and health experts had been agitating for? He didnt call it that.

Asked to clarify, the governor dithered, using language that experts said confused the public and undermined the seriousness of the situation.

Well candidly, when people talk in terms of shelter in place, what shelter in place really means as a term of art, would mean that wherever you may be at a particular time, you need to take shelter immediately right there. Whether you are at your home or some other location or in a roadside ditch, wherever you may be, youre supposed to take shelter because of something like a tornado would be coming. ... This is not a stay-at-home strategy. A stay-at-home strategy would mean that you have to stay at home, you cannot leave home under any circumstances, he told reporters.

Whatever it was called, experts agree it helped deter the spread of the virus. During the month of April, cases were on a steady but manageable rise, with Texas typically adding fewer than 1,000 new cases each day. Other mitigation measures, like barring elective medical procedures, kept hospitals freed up for a crush of patients that didn't materialize at the time. Abbott mostly steered clear of the culture wars that emerged, leaving Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to defend a ban on nearly all abortions.

But many in Abbotts own party were growing restless. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was making national headlines for telling Fox News there are more important things than living. The president had said he wanted the economy opened up and raring to go by Easter.

No sooner had Abbott shut the state down than he began to talk about reopening. He named a strike force of business leaders to advise him on his reopening plan, along with a group of medical advisers including Dr. John Zerwas, the executive vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Texas System, state health Commissioner John Hellerstedt and Mark McClellan, a former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Abbott announced businesses would reopen in phases starting May 1, with the second phase coming as early as May 18 if all went well.

We need to see two weeks of data to confirm no flare-up of COVID-19, he said.

He also laid out tough enforcement measures fines of up to $1,000, jail sentences of up to 180 days.

Experts praised Abbotts plan for its promise to open businesses slowly, in measured phases. But they noted that unlike in some states, there were few specific health metrics that controlled further reopenings. Experts warned that the pandemic could spiral out of control.

Just hours after he had promised a measured approach, the governor hinted to a Houston TV station that he might allow more businesses to reopen even before the May 18 date some experts had cautioned was too early.

On the evening of April 30, with restaurants and malls set to reopen the next day, Texas reported its highest death toll yet: 50 people. But Abbott remained cautiously optimistic, pointing to two key metrics hospitalization rate, the share of COVID-19 patients who required hospital care; and positivity rate, the percentage of coronavirus tests that showed presence of the virus which remained in a manageable range. The governor had made clear from the start that cases would rise when the state reopened; his goal was not to prevent all spread, but to open slowly enough that hospitals could care for all the people who fell ill.

As Democrats and public health experts warned he was moving too fast, many in Abbotts own party urged him to move yet more quickly. Restaurants were open in limited capacity, but not bars or hair salons. What was the difference, critics demanded, between a waiter serving a meal and a bartender pouring a cocktail? Two hardline conservative lawmakers got haircuts at an illegally open salon in Houston, daring the governor to insist on the penalties hed warned about. In Dallas, a salon owner named Shelley Luther earned praise from Fox News, hundreds of thousands in donations from like-minded shutdown skeptics and a weeklong jail term after she repeatedly defied court orders to close her business until state law permitted her to open.

The governor backpedaled rapidly. He revised his coronavirus executive orders so that violators could not be forced to serve jail time. His team contacted Luther not to order her to close, but to seek her advice on how salons could open safely and soon. Abbott said salons could reopen May 8, more than a week before his target date for phase two. The slow reopening he promised had begun to speed up already and the penalties that were supposed to ensure compliance were beginning to disappear.

Heeding Luthers example, and watching their own bottom lines plummet amid the shutdown, bar owners started to wonder about their own strategy.

This one lady did it, and she got a lot of attention and now all the salons are open, bar owner Emil Bragdon told the Tribune in May. Is that something we have to do? Because if we have to do that, we'll do it.

The economic advisors on Abbotts strike force began to press for bars to open, too. After a substantial amount of conversation with medical advisors, Abbotts team agreed that the bars could open so long as they followed social distancing protocols, Zerwas recalled.

It would prove to be a major misstep one Abbott said he regrets.

Young people crowded into bars, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was slow to enforce regulations or yank licenses. Cases began to rise among young people. Weeks later, with cases surging, Abbott shut the bars back down.

Clearly what happened is the bars, when they opened, did not comply. In hindsight, it wouldve been quite a challenge for them to comply, Zerwas said. We took a leap of faith on that.

Meanwhile, Abbotts tentative truce with local leaders was eroding, and the usual antagonism reemerged.

As Texas remains a hotspot for the virus, local leaders are pleading with him to either order more shutdowns or allow them to do it for their own communities.

Even some fellow Republicans, like Lubbock Mayor Dan Pope, have criticized Abbott for tying their hands with his statewide order. In an interview, Pope acknowledged it has been a little tough to keep up with the states evolving rules. But, Pope said, "we're in unprecedented times."

"I know how difficult COVID-19 has been locally and I can only imagine how difficult it is at the state level," Pope said, describing his citys relationship with the state as very strong at this point.

Clay Jenkins, the Democratic county judge in Dallas, said when he was navigating fears of an Ebola outbreak in 2014, he was in touch with former Gov. Rick Perry cellphone to cellphone at least once every day. This emergency has been different from any other hes weathered, Jenkins said, because the virus became politicized.

In this public health emergency, local officials have been left to guess at Abbotts intentions. Jenkins said he hasnt spoken to Abbott in more than a month.

Nowhere has the friction between state and local leaders been more visible than on the issue of masks.

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending masks in April, Abbott encouraged Texans to wear masks, but often appeared in public without wearing one himself. And when Abbott allowed businesses to reopen May 1, he stripped local leaders like mayors and county judges of the ability to mandate stronger restrictions, including the wearing of masks. His statewide standards were not a floor but a ceiling.

Local leaders in big cities like Houston and Dallas began to chafe under the states firm hand, agitating to impose the mask requirements that public health experts call essential. Abbott made it clear mask mandates would not be acceptable and the Texas attorney general threatened lawsuits against cities and counties that passed them.

We strongly recommend that everyone wear a mask, Abbott said in May. However, its not a mandate. And well make clear that no jurisdiction can impose any type of penalty or fine for anyone not wearing a mask.

That push and pull continued for weeks as case counts began to surge following the Memorial Day Weekend. The virus began to spread more rapidly in Texas than ever before, a trend Abbott attributed in part to young people gathering at the bars he had opened. For weeks, the governor remained optimistic, pointing to hospitals abundant capacity to serve the sick even as their ranks began to grow exponentially.

In June, with the virus rocketing through San Antonio, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff tried a workaround: Instead of ordering residents to wear masks, he required businesses to require them.

To the surprise of local officials, Abbott praised Wolff. He finally figured that out, Abbott said.

The riddle of the mask mandate earned Abbott immediate criticism: Either the governor had been intentionally misleading or confusing to the point of negligence, allowing local leaders to stumble in the dark for weeks.

I thought, my God, its not a scavenger hunt, Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, said of the mask order. Have you listened to the physicians who said that masks help? If you did, then you wouldve announced this yourself much earlier. You dont hide important facts about protecting peoples health.

That same week, Abbott acknowledged that the virus was spreading at an unacceptable rate. Days later he paused the states reopening process, closed bars again, and told Texans theres never a reason for you to have to leave your home.

Still, he left open the restaurants many Texans were leaving their homes for. And that weekend he appeared before a gathering of hundreds at a Dallas church. Another featured guest: Mike Pence, the vice president.

The next week, Abbott reversed himself again: Under mounting political pressure, and watching the exponential rise of case counts, Abbott issued a mask order for most of the state. Accompanying it was the fine after a warning that he had previously prohibited local officials from issuing.

To public health experts, and to many of the governors critics on the left, it was the right decision, but it had come far too late.

Jenkins, who was the first in the state to issue a stay-at-home mandate for his county, said he expects that pattern to repeat itself.

The crush of new cases and the continual unfortunate bad news that were getting every day will force the governor to listen to the doctors recommendations, Jenkins said. The key thing is how fast will that happen? Because every day that we wait is more damage to our economy, more people getting sick, and the longer its gonna take to pull out of the tail spin.

While some Republican state lawmakers have become more vocal against Abbotts response, the governor still has defenders in the Legislature.

We have a Governor who uses facts, not fear, to drive decision-making, and thats never been a more critical leadership attribute than during this challenging season, state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, told The Texas Tribune.

But some conservatives question Abbotts authority to issue sweeping disaster orders. At least six county GOPs have censured him for his handling of the pandemic, including those in Montgomery and Denton Counties, two of the partys biggest strongholds. Many of those resolutions have called for delegates to the state GOP convention to consider a broader censure of the governor a striking but largely symbolic move.

Republican lawmakers have begun to agitate for more say in the states response, with some pushing for a special session of the Legislature to consider coronavirus responses.

"It should not be the sole responsibility of one person to manage all of the issues related to a disaster that has no end in sight, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, wrote last week.

Patrick Svitek contributed reporting.

Disclosure: The University of Texas System and Rice University 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 Gov. Greg Abbott's leadership tested by coronavirus - The Texas Tribune

Airborne transmission is the most likely explanation for several clusters of infection, including a choir in Washington State and a restaurant in China, according to some scientists.

But W.H.O. staff members have yet to accept the importance of these case studies and instead have dreamed up an alternative story in which an infected person spat on his hands, wiped it on something and magically infected numerous other people, Dr. Greenhalgh said.

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The agencys staff and nearly 30 volunteer experts have spent weeks reviewing evidence on the possible modes of transmission: by exhalation of large and small droplets, for example, by contact with a contaminated surface, or from a mother to her baby.

The W.H.O. easily accepts that droplet and fomite transmission occur, but seems to want more definitive proof of spread by aerosols, some experts said. The agency has noted that the virus has not been cultured from air samples, for example, but the same was true of influenza for many years until two groups of scientists figured out how to do it, noted Don Milton, an aerosol expert at the University of Maryland.

W.H.O. staff members are reluctant to make statements when they do not have irrefutable proof of certain phenomena, and are slow to update their hypotheses, scientists have charged. They are still challenged by the absence of evidence, and the difficulty of proving a negative, Dr. Hanage said.

The W.H.O. is being overly cautious and shortsighted unnecessarily, Dr. Julian W. Tang, honorary professor of respiratory sciences at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in an email.

By recognizing aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and recommending improved ventilation facilities to be upgraded or installed, you can improve the health of people by eliminating a variety of hazards, including indoor pollutants and allergens, he added.

Isnt that what the W.H.O. stands for the improvement of human health from all angles?

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The Coronavirus Can Be Airborne Indoors, W.H.O. Says - The New York Times

Manasquan has suspended its recreation programs for a week after several employees tested positive for the coronavirus, a borough official said in a video posted online Saturday.

A recreation counselor, junior guards counselor and several other employees tested positive for COVID-19, Councilman and Beach and Recreation Chair Michael Mangan said in the video. He did not provide details on their conditions.

Mangan said the town will pause its recreation programs to assess how many people were infected and who each person was in contact with. The beach will remain open, though Mangan reminded people to practice social distancing.

I know that the parents of young children in this town are all anxious to get their kids back involved in organizations where they socialize with each other. Thats crucial to their development. But we cant do that at the risk of public safety, Mangan said.

Right now, we can trace all the contacts for the cases we have, he said. If we have more positive cases, we will continue to release that information. As a parent, I can tell you the only thing I know is everyone wants to make sure they have all the information they need to make decisions for their own families.

To date, Monmouth County has reported 9,620 positive cases of coronavirus, 37 of which were in Manasquan. The state has slowly been allowing businesses to reopen in phases over the past month after the number of new cases hit its peak in April.

The boroughs decision not to shut down its recreation programs entirely was a measured approach, Mangan said. He said officials want to allow children to participate in activities while also keeping the population safe.

However, he said, if the health department cannot determine who was exposed and how many were exposed to the virus, then the programs would be canceled.

This virus is going to be with us for a while. This is not something thats going to go away this summer or even this fall as much as we want it to and we have to figure out a way to live with it and a way to deal with these cases as they come up, Mangan said. Were going o have to figure out a way to continue our society while seeing these cases of positive tests come back.

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Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo.

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Jersey Shore town suspends recreation programs after employees test positive for coronavirus - NJ.com