Coronavirus daily news updates, July 8: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world – Seattle Times

Editors note:This is a live account of COVID-19 updates from Wednesday, July 8, as the day unfolded. It is no longer being updated. Clickhereto see all the most recent news about the pandemic, andclick hereto find additional resources.

As of Tuesday, Washington businesses are required to turn away customers who arent wearing face coverings, per a new statewide order.

The rule comes as the World Health Organization acknowledges that airborne transmission of the virus may be a threat indoors which could have broad implications for our daily lives.

Heres what researchers have found aboutthe most effective non-medical masks, andhow to wear a face mask properly.

Throughout Wednesday, 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 Tuesday can be foundhere, and all our coronavirus coverage can be foundhere.

In the wake of a pandemic that has triggered unpredictable costs for school districts across the country, the Seattle School Board approved $1.3 billion in spending for the upcoming school year at its Wednesday meeting.

The budget passed with four yes votes and three abstentions from Board members Lisa Rivera-Smith, Eden Mack and Leslie Harris. Mack and Harris questioned the accuracy of the budget, given uncertainty about how many students will re-enroll in the fall, and what additional costs may arise from the districts negotiations with its teachers union over reopening schools.

Im rather concerned that we are not set up effectively for the current crisis and what is actually going to happen come fall, Mack said.

District officials said theyre confident they can flex the 2020-21 budget to meet the anticipated costs associated with reopening in the fall, about $15 million. The district will also receive more than $10 million from the federal CARES Act.

Read the full story here.

Dahlia Bazzaz

Wearing a mask and standing against the wall while reporters stood in an awkward configuration 6 to 10 feet apart down T-Mobile Parks club-level hallway, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto answered questions about the start of summer camp Wednesday.

The coronavirus has changed just about everything.

On Wednesday, the Mariners released their results from 122 initial intake tests prior to the start of summer camp workouts, and three players tested positive for COVID-19. All three were asymptomatic and are in minimum 14-day quarantine and following the required procedure to be cleared, which includes daily testing. After the 14-day quarantine, a person must test negative on consecutive days before beginning the process to be admitted to workouts.

Dipoto said hes encouraged because other teams have reported more positive tests in the intake period.

Read the full story here.

Ryan Divish

The United States Department of Labor on Wednesday approved a trade adjustment assistance petition filed by hundreds of Alcoa workers trying to save their jobs at the company's Ferndale aluminum smelter.

The petition was filed by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) for the more than 700 workers at the Whatcom County plant. It will provide the workers with training and resources to get rehired, according to a statement from Rep. Suzan DelBene's office.

Alcoa announced in April that the plant the last remaining smelter west of the Mississippi would curtail production by July, citing challenges created by the coronavirus crisis. The company also announced it would cut $100 million in capital expenditures and defer $220 million in pension fund contributions.

In May, DelBene and Sen. Patty Murray, joined by Sen. Maria Cantwell and Rep. Rick Larsen, wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia to support the petition, according to the statement.

These layoffs could not have come at a worse time amid a global pandemic," DelBene said in the statement. "The transition for the workers at the Intalco facility wont be easy but the TAA assistance approved today is a critical resource for them and their families during this difficult time."

The four lawmakers also wrote to the president and CEO of the Alcoa Corporation, as well as to President Donald Trump, urging him to "prioritize resolving the issue of excess Chinese aluminum capacity, which has depressed prices in the global market and harmed American businesses and workers, specifically in Washington state."

Elise Takahama and Geoff Baker

Public Health Seattle & King County shut down Dukes Seafood on Alki Beach on Wednesday morning as a safety precaution after seven employees at the popular West Seattle hangout tested positive for thecoronavirusin the past two weeks, management confirmed.

A source told The Seattle Times that two employees at its branches in Bellevue and Tacoma also tested positive, though neither of those restaurants was shut down.

Dukes management released a statement Wednesday saying team members at three locations alerted us to exposure to COVID-19 outside of the restaurant over the past few weeks. Each subsequently tested positive. When we learned of their exposures, we worked to contain it, evaluated each situation, informed all company team members, alerted the health department, and notified our guests through a variety of channels. In each case, we closed these stores for cleaning and to allow time for team members to be tested.

Read the full story here.

Tan Vinh

Washington Athletics performed coronavirus tests on 17 athletes who returned to campus this week and those tests revealed zero positive cases, according to a university release.

In four weeks of testing, 157 Husky athletes have been tested and there have been three positive tests (1.9%). Of those three positive tests, just one is an active positive case. That unnamed individual is currently going through UWs COVID-19 care and quarantine protocols.

Additionally, the release stated that surveillance testing is being done on athletes who have previously returned to campus, and those tests have returned zero positive cases as well.

The university declines to name the athletes who tested positive or provide details on which sports they participate in.

Read the full story here.

Mike Vorel

This year's Washington State Fair which has run mostly uninterrupted for about 120 years has been canceled due to coronavirus concerns, the fair said in a statement Wednesday.

"We have met the challenges of fires and floods, withstood changes in culture and the challenges of time and, except for the four years of World War II, operated uninterrupted that entire span," the statement said. "Now, after thoughtful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 Fair."

The decision was made by the fair's board of directors, which voted on the cancellation after reviewing recommendations from the management team. This years fair was supposed to take place in Puyallup in September.

"Though it was a difficult decision, it was really the only decision possible based on what we currently know," the statement said. "It was a decision made in what we feel are the best interests of the health and safety of all of our guests, our employees, our exhibitors."

The fair still plans to host three events this summer, including a drive-thru food-to-go event, a drive-in concert series and a drive-in movie night. More information about each event is available here.

Read the full story here.

Yasmeen Wafai and Elise Takahama

Washington health officials confirmed 521 additional coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 10 more deaths.

The update brings the states totals to 37,941 cases and 1,394 deaths, meaning about 3.7% of people diagnosed in Washington have died,according to the state Department of Health (DOH). The data is as of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.

So far, 645,072 tests for the novel coronavirus have been conducted in the state, per DOH. Of those, 5.9% have come back positive since testing began.

Overall deaths are concentrated in King County, Washington's most populous county, where DOH has confirmed 11,284 diagnoses and 628 deaths accounting for about 45% of the state's death toll.

Elise Takahama

SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, N.J. Armed with a cheap steak knife and a plastic basket lined with a garbage bag, a high-school sophomore named Alicia Garlic sat cross-legged in the dirt at Specca Farms, a pick-your-own operation here in South Jersey.

Garlic wasnt picking greens for herself on this Tuesday morning in June, but for Farmers Against Hunger, a program of the New Jersey Agricultural Society. Along with more than a dozen others spread out along the rows for social distancing a retired schoolteacher, a Census Bureau employee, a young mother with her grade-schooler in tow she was there to glean, a practice traditionally defined as gathering anything left over after a harvest.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic, mile-long traffic jams at food banks and the disturbing sight of farmers plowing under their onions when food-service contracts disappeared overnight.

Now, gleaning groups are at the front lines of those helping to stabilize the nations shaky food supply, perfectly positioned to leverage one problem a bounty of unsellable crops to help solve another: rampant hunger.

The New York Times

In late May, former World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, an American who has served in Democratic and Republican administrations, waxed incredulous at the lack of a coordinated U.S. strategy aimed at combating the novel coronavirus.

The thing thats been driving me crazy is that weve just decided that the standard health response the only thing thats worked in any of the countries that suppressed the virus is something that were just not going to do, Kim said.

Sara Cody, head of the public health department in Californias Santa Clara County, known now for orchestrating one of the countrys earliest coronavirus shutdowns, was also on the call. She seemed relieved to hear him say so.

Cody is not alone among U.S. health officials, epidemiologists, virologists and other experts in feeling like she missed the memo saying the worlds richest nation really couldnt do much to keep this virus from paralyzing it. Many local officials are still asking the same question Kim posed that day: Why have we given up on containment?

So far, that political will has been largely lacking, from President Donald Trump down to many state and local officials trying to limit the viruss spread without destroying the economy.

The Washington Post

The Ivy League on Wednesday became the first Division I conference to say it will not play sports this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. The league left open the possibility of moving some seasons to the spring if the outbreak is better controlled by then.

Although the coalition of eight academically elite schools does not grant athletic scholarships or compete for an NCAA football championship, the move could have ripple effects throughout the big business of college sports. Football players in the Power Five conferences have already begun workouts for a season that starts on Aug. 29, even as their schools weigh whether to open their campuses to students or continue classes remotely.

The Ivy decision affects not just football but everything before Jan. 1, including soccer, field hockey, volleyball and cross country, as well as the nonconference portion of the basketball season.

Power Five conferences told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they were still considering their options. But it was the Ivy Leagues March 10 decision to scuttle its postseason basketball tournament that preceded a cascade of cancellations that eventually enveloped all major college and professional sports.

Associated Press

A new report studying the impact of the coronavirus on workers at meat processing plants has found that 87% of people infected were racial or ethnic minorities and that at least 86 workers have died.

The report released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined more than 16,000 COVID-19 cases at 239 plants in 21 states. It offers perspective on how the virus devastated U.S. pork, beef and poultry processing plants, but the figures likely understate the problem as Iowa officials declined to participate in the study.

Iowa is the nations largest pork-producing state and saw severe coronavirus outbreaks at several huge processing plants.

The CDC report found 87% of coronavirus cases occurred among racial and ethnic minorities even though they made up 61% of the overall worker population. The data shows 56% of coronavirus illnesses involved Hispanic workers, 19% were non-Hispanic Blacks and 12% were Asians. The data showed 13% of coronavirus cases involved white workers, who made up 39% of the overall workforce studied.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

President Donald Trumps campaign rally in Tulsa that drew thousands of people in late June, along with large protests that accompanied it, likely contributed to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.

Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday.

Although the health departments policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings more than likely contributed to the spike.

In the past few days, weve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots, Dart said.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue new guidance on school openings, Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday, hours after President Donald Trump criticized earlier recommendations as very impractical and vowed to meet with the agency himself.

Citing Trumps concern that the guidance might be too tough, Pence said the CDC would issue additional recommendations starting next week that would provide more clarity and stressed that the guidelines should not supplant judgments by local officials.

We dont want the guidance from CDC to be a reason why schools dont open, Pence said. I think that every American, every American knows that we can safely reopen our schools. . . . We want, as the president said this morning, to make sure that what were doing doesnt stand in the way of doing that.

His comments, at a White House coronavirus task force briefing, came about two hours after Trump undercut the recommendations of administration health experts as he continued to ramp up pressure on state and local officials to reopen schools this fall.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees nearly half its U.S. staff they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry.

The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers.

United officials said Wednesday that they still hope to limit the number of layoffs by offering early retirement benefits, and that 36,000 is a worst-case scenario. The notices going to employees this month are meant to comply with a 60-day warning ahead of mass job cuts.

The furloughs could include up to 15,000 flight attendants, 11,000 customer service and gate agents, 5,500 maintenance workers and 2,250 pilots.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

TOKYO Japan is facing a sudden spike in coronavirus cases, but this time with no political will for another round of economically punishing shutdowns.

At the end of last month, the national government abruptly dismantled a panel of medical experts that had been guiding the response to the virus, and replaced it with a group that includes envoys from the business world and others.

Tokyos municipal government also abandoned an alert system based on numerical targets that could have triggered fresh shutdowns if the virus started spreading again.

The message from Japans leadership has been clear: The virus will be tackled only through measures that would not further harm the economy, according to Tokyos governor, Yuriko Koike.

Read the full story here.

The Washington Post

ATLANTA Atlantas mayor says she will sign an executive order mandating masks in Georgias largest city Wednesday, defying Gov. Brian Kemps decision to strongly encourage but not require face coverings.

Spokesman Michael Smith said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms plans to sign an order requiring masks, which could set up a confrontation with the Republican Kemp.

Like a number of other local leaders in Georgia, Bottoms has unsuccessfully appealed to Kemp to change his order that local governments cant exceed the states requirements.

Read the full story here.

The Associated Press

Missouri leaders knew the risk of convening thousands of kids at summer camps across the state during a pandemic, the states top health official said, and insisted that camp organizers have plans in place to keep an outbreak from happening.

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Coronavirus daily news updates, July 8: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world - Seattle Times