Tag Archives: COVID-19

U.S. defends COVID testing moves in Texas, four other states

(Reuters) – The Trump administration said it was “transitioning” 13 coronavirus testing sites in five states, not cutting them, following an NBC report on Wednesday that funding and support for those sites would end June 30.

NBC said the sites are in Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado and Pennsylvania as well as Texas, which is among several U.S. states where cases of the novel coronavirus have surged.

U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir called the report misleading. “We are transitioning 13 sites from the original now antiquated program to the more efficient and effective testing sites,” he said in a statement.

Giroir added that he had spoken to leaders of the five states, noting they had agreed “it was the appropriate time to transition” to other options. He said testing sites that will continue to get federal payments include those at pharmacies and federally qualified health centers.

U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, whose district includes Houston, called the closures alarming as hospitalizations have spiked in Texas.

“If we lose those sites, they’ll just put more pressure on some of the other clinics,” she told MSNBC in an interview, adding that she has asked federal authorities to delay the move until August.

President Donald Trump has lamented the rising U.S. coronavirus cases and sought to put the onus on increased testing, which he said makes the United States look bad. He told a weekend political rally that he asked for testing to be slowed down, something White House and top U.S. health officials have said was not requested.

Besides more testing, health experts have said the rise in U.S. cases is due to a higher proportion of positive test results and more community spread in some states.

The Trump administration tried to move testing site responsibility to states in April, but backed off the effort under pressure from lawmakers, NBC reported.

The National Governors Association had no comment on the report. Representatives for the governors of the five affected states could not be immediately reached.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Caroline Humer in New York; additional reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Franklin Paul and Richard Chang)

Three U.S. governors to quarantine visitors from states where COVID-19 spiking

By Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As the number of new coronavirus cases surged in many areas of the United States, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut – once at the epicenter of the outbreak – will require visitors from states with high infection rates to quarantine on arrival.

The announcement on Wednesday came a day after the country recorded the second-largest increase in coronavirus cases since the health crisis began in early March. There were nearly 36,000 new infections nationwide on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally.

States subject to the 14-day quarantine are Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and Utah, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a briefing.

“This is a smart thing to do,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said via video at a joint news conference in New York City. “We have taken our people, the three of us from these three states, through hell and back, and the last thing we need to do right now is subject our folks to another round.”

While the United States appeared to have curbed the outbreak in May, leading many states to lift restrictions on social and economic activity, the virus is moving into rural areas and other places that it had not initially penetrated deeply.

The virus is also renewing its surge in states that opened up early to ease the devastating effect of the restrictions on local economies.

Florida, one of the first states to reopen, on Wednesday experienced a record increase of more than 5,500 new cases. Oklahoma, which never ordered a statewide lockdown, posted record new cases on Wednesday, the sixth time it has shattered that record.

On Tuesday, Arizona, California, Mississippi and Nevada had record rises. Texas set an all-time high on Monday.

The surge in cases nationwide on Tuesday was the highest since a record of 36,426 new infections on April 24.

The New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area has lowered its infection rate after locking down much of its economy.

Visitors found violating the new quarantine order in the three Northeast states could face fines of $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for repeat offenses, Cuomo said.

The order will take effect from midnight. “So get on a flight quickly,” he said.

QUARANTINE

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said officials would carefully monitor travel from states with high infection rates.

“If you come to Connecticut, you come to New York, you come to New Jersey, you come safely, you follow the protocols,” said Lamont.

Such quarantines are not unprecedented. Hawaii requires visitors from the U.S. mainland to self-quarantine for two weeks. Florida and Texas at one point required people coming in from New York area airports to quarantine for two weeks.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed its support for a lawsuit challenging Hawaii’s quarantine, saying visitors are being denied rights granted to most island residents.

While some of the increased numbers of cases can be attributed to more testing, the numbers do not correlate.

The average number of tests has risen 7.6% over the last seven days, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project, while the average number of new cases rose 30%.

The percentage of positive tests is also rising.

At least four states are averaging double-digit rates of positive tests for the virus, such as Arizona at 20%. By contrast, New York has been reporting positive test rates of around 1%.

The European Union hopes to reopen borders from July but will review individual nations’ COVID-19 situation fortnightly, according to diplomats and a document laying out criteria that could keep Americans and Russians out.

 

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Peter Szekely in New York; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Sonya Hepinstall; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

‘Do I need to be here?’: Some New Yorkers decide to pack up and leave

By Maria Caspani and Angela Moore

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rebekah Rosler and her husband did not intend to leave Manhattan for good in March when they packed up their three children and headed 50 miles north to wait out the coronavirus pandemic in her parents’ vacant home in upstate New York.

“My kids were all dressed in their pajamas, we loaded up the car with paper towels and toilet paper and food,” said Rosler, 40, who works in mental health. “That was what I thought was going to be a commitment for a week.”

A week became months as New York City emerged as the global epicenter of the outbreak. The Roslers postponed their return again and again until in May, they broke the lease on their apartment after they decided to stay upstate.

Rosler said she loved her Manhattan neighborhood but it was nearly overwhelming to care for her small children in a two-bedroom apartment where her husband was also working remotely at his full-time job for a nonprofit.

The Roslers are not the only New Yorkers re-evaluating whether to stay in the country’s largest metropolis. High costs, small living spaces, density and reliance on public transport make it extra hard to deal with social distancing and staying at home.

This has pushed some New Yorkers to consider alternatives, said Bess Freedman, chief executive of Brown Harris Stevens, a real estate firm specializing in luxury Manhattan properties.

“There’s some that are going to leave because they don’t want to be in vertical living, they don’t want to be in an elevator with other people, they don’t want to raise kids here,” she said. “That’s part of what happens during a time like this.”

There is no hard data on how many New Yorkers fled the city during the pandemic or whether those who relocated will eventually move back. New York has proved resilient in the past, defying predictions of a permanent exodus after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Still, New York City’s population was declining even before the pandemic. The city of some 8 million lost more than 53,000 residents during the 12-month period ending on July 1, 2019 – the third straight annual decline, according to an Empire Center for Public Policy analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

But many New Yorkers cannot afford to pull up stakes and move out even if they wanted to do so.

When the lockdown began in March, Judy Dodd, an actor and director who lives in Manhattan, said a sense of solidarity almost compelled her to stay in her beleaguered city. She changed her mind after sporadic looting in her neighborhood during recent civil unrest, but concluded she could not afford to move away, even temporarily.

“I just don’t have the cash, my work has been decimated,” she said.

As many as 300,000 workers were expected to return to their jobs on Monday as the city entered Phase 2 of reopening, Mayor Bill de Blasio said last week. But with many businesses allowing employees to continue working at home in the coming months, some questioned the need to go back to the office.

“It has a lot of people asking the question, ‘If I can work from home, do I need to be here?,” said stay-at-home mom Stephanie Ellis, 33.

She said the pandemic not only forced her to think about her family’s health and safety, but also to ask whether it was still worth living in a city whose energy and glitz has faded, at least for now.

“To pay such an extremely large amount of money to live there and not really have it be the city that we want it?” said Ellis, who moved from Manhattan to Marlboro, New Jersey in March with her husband and toddler.

“We sort of slowly realized and accepted we are not going back.”

(Reporting by Maria Caspani and Angela Moore in New York, Editing by Frank McGurty and David Gregorio)

Black Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 at four times the rate of whites, Medicare data shows

(Reuters) – Black Americans enrolled in Medicare were around four times as likely as their white counterparts to be hospitalized for COVID-19, U.S. government data released on Monday showed, highlighting significant racial disparities in health outcomes during the pandemic.

“The disparities in the data reflect longstanding challenges facing minority communities and low income older adults,” said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which released the data.

The data showed that more than 325,000 Medicare beneficiaries were diagnosed with COVID-19 between Jan. 1 and May 16. Of those, more than 110,000 were hospitalized.

Black Americans had a hospitalization rate 465 per 100,000 Black Medicare beneficiaries. For other groups measured by CMS, the rates of per capita hospitalizations were 258 for Hispanics, 187 for Asians and 123 for whites.

Hospitalization rates were high for people who qualified for both the senior-focused Medicare program and the low-income-focused Medicaid program, at 473 per 100,000.

“Low socioeconomic status all wrapped up with racial disparities represents a powerful predictor of complications with COVID-19,” Verma said during a briefing about the data.

Medicare beneficiaries with end-stage kidney disease were hospitalized for COVID-19 at a rate of 1,341 per 100,000.

Medicare is a federal health insurance program designed primarily for seniors, as well as some people with disabilities and end-stage kidney disease.

Verma said that CMS’ ongoing push to reimburse providers based on health outcomes rather than paying them fixed fees for their services could help address racial disparities.

“When implemented effectively, (value-based reimbursement) encourages clinicians to care for the whole person and address the social risk factors that are so critical for our beneficiaries’ quality of life,” Verma said.

The data is based on claims filed for reimbursement from Medicare and therefore operates at a delay of several weeks.

(Reporting by Trisha Roy and Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Cynthia Osterman)

What you need to know about the coronavirus right now

(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Traffic jams signal return to normal in New York

New York City residents, gradually emerging from more than 100 days of coronavirus lockdown, celebrated an easing of social-distancing restrictions by shopping at reopened stores, dining at outdoor cafes and getting their first haircuts in months.

The usual traffic jams clogged city streets, and the sound of honking cars brought a welcome sense of a return to the ordinary.

But even as New Yorkers returned to some semblance of normalcy, spikes in coronavirus infection rates elsewhere around the country worried public health experts.

Chief among the latest hotspots was Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions.

Pig trial shows promise

A trial of AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine in pigs has found that two doses of the Oxford University-developed shot produced a greater antibody response than a single dose, scientists said on Tuesday.

Research released by Britain’s Pirbright Institute found that giving an initial prime dose followed by a booster dose of the shot elicited a greater immune response than a single dose – suggesting a two-dose approach may be more effective in getting protection against the disease.

Pigs are a useful research model for this type of vaccine and other trials have been able to predict vaccine outcomes in humans, particularly in studies of flu.

Meanwhile, French drugmaker Sanofi said it expects to get approval for the potential COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline by the first half of next year, faster than previously anticipated.

Local lockdown in Germany

The premier of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia said he was putting the Guetersloh area back into lockdown until June 30 after a coronavirus outbreak at a meatpacking plant there.

Guetersloh is the first area in Germany to go back into lockdown after the authorities began gradually lifting restrictive measures at the end of April.

More than 1,500 workers at a meat processing plant in Guetersloh had tested positive for the coronavirus, plus some of their family members and 24 people who had no connection to the plant.

The coronavirus reproduction rate in Germany is estimated at 2.76, probably mainly due to local outbreaks.

UK death toll tops 54,000

The United Kingdom’s suspected COVID-19 death toll has hit 54,089, according to a Reuters tally of official data sources that underline the country’s status as one of the worst-hit in the world.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due on Tuesday to announce cinemas, museums and galleries in England can reopen next month to try to revitalize the economy.

But the large death toll means criticism over his handling of the pandemic – that Britain was too slow to impose a lockdown or protect the elderly in care homes – is likely to persist.

International haj pilgrims barred

Saudi Arabia said it would bar arrivals from abroad for the haj this year due to the novel coronavirus, making this the first year in modern times that Muslims from around the world have not been allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims aim to perform at least once in their lives.

Some 2.5 million pilgrims typically visit the holiest sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-long haj. Official data shows Saudi Arabia earns around $12 billion a year from the haj and the lesser, year-round pilgrimage known as umrah. International arrivals for umrah pilgrimages have also been suspended until further notice.

 

(Compiled by Linda Noakes; editing by Barbara Lewis)

New U.S. COVID-19 cases surge 25% last week; Arizona, Florida and Texas set records

By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker

(Reuters) – The United States saw a 25% increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the week ended June 21 compared to the previous seven days, with Arizona, Florida and Texas experiencing record surges in new infections, a Reuters analysis found.

Twenty-five U.S. states reported more new cases last week than the previous week, including 10 states that saw weekly new infections rise more than 50%, and 12 states that posted new records, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.

Texas reported one of the largest rises in new cases at 24,000 for the week ended June 21, an increase of 84% from the previous week. The number of COVID-19 tests that came back positive in the state rose to 10%, from 7%.

New cases in Florida rose 87% last week to almost 22,000, with the state’s positive test rate nearly doubling to 11%.

Arizona reported 17,000 new cases, a 90% increase, with 20% of tests coming back positive, according to the analysis.

(GRAPHIC-Where coronavirus cases are rising in the United States)

The governors of all three states have attributed the increases in new cases to more testing, and to younger residents not following social distancing guidelines. Some health experts have criticized these states for reopening too quickly without adequate restrictions, for instance not making it mandatory to wear masks in public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia are in compliance with that guideline, the analysis showed, down from 17 states the prior week. New York leads with 10 straight weeks of declines, followed by Rhode Island, Illinois and Washington, D.C.

Nationally, the number of new COVID-19 cases had been falling on a weekly basis through May. Last week’s 25% jump came after a 1% rise in the second week of June and a 3% increase in the first week of June.

Graphic – Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.:

Graphic – World-focused tracker with country-by-country interactive:

(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Explainer: Why COVID-19 can run rife in meatpacking plants

(Reuters) – Meat-processing plants around the world are proving coronavirus infection hotspots, with an outbreak at a factory in Germany leading to Guetersloh becoming on Tuesday the first area in the country to be ordered back into lockdown.

More than 1,500 workers at the Guetersloh plant tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, while outbreaks have also hit meat and poultry plants in Britain in recent days.

In many rural parts of the United States, meatpacking plants have been the main source of infection. On April 28, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep such factories open, warning of a potential threat to the U.S. food supply.

The meat industry is particularly susceptible to coronavirus infections because of the nature of the work: intense physical labor conducted indoors at close proximity to other workers.

“Their work environments – processing lines and other areas in busy plants where they have close contact with coworkers and supervisors – may contribute substantially to their potential exposures,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says of meatpacking workers.

The CDC maintains a list of recommendations for factories, including steps to keep workers apart such as staggered arrival times and breaks, supplying workers with masks and hand sanitizer and making sure tools are disinfected.

It says factories should take workers’ temperatures on arrival and send those with fevers home.

Conditions on the factory floor itself are also not the only issue. Meatpacking workers often share transportation and housing once their shifts are over.

In Germany, for example, many are migrants from poorer EU countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, often housed in large dormitories where the virus can spread.

“Some of these factories have on-site or nearby accommodation where there are several people in each dormitory, they may be transported on a bus to the site of work, and they will be indoors together all day,” said Michael Head, an expert in global health at England’s University of Southampton.

In the United States, by the end of May, the UFCW labor union estimated that at least 44 meatpacking workers had died of COVID-19, and that at least 30 meatpacking plants had to be temporarily shut down, impacting more than 45,000 workers and contributing to a 40% reduction in pork slaughtering capacity.

(Reporting by Peter Graff; Additional reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Pravin Char)

Trump backs more aid for Americans amid coronavirus: Scripps

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he supported the idea of giving Americans a second round of financial aid amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Asked if he backed another payment for Americans, Trump told Scripps Networks in an interview that he backed sending out a second check. “We will be doing another stimulus package” with Congress, he added, saying the bipartisan measure would come “over the next couple of weeks probably.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey)

After 100 days, New Yorkers can get haircuts, dine outdoors while virus cases soar in 12 other states

By Maria Caspani

NEW YORK (Reuters) – After more than 100 days of lockdown, New York City residents on Monday celebrated their progress in curbing the coronavirus pandemic by getting their first haircuts in months, shopping at long-closed stores, and dining at outdoor cafes.

Once the epicenter of the global outbreak, New York City was the last region in the state to move into Phase 2 of reopening with restaurants and bars offering outdoor service and many shops reopening. Barber shops and hair salons welcomed customers for the first time since mid-March.

Playgrounds were also due to reopen on Monday in the most populous U.S. city. The pandemic has killed nearly 120,000 Americans.

At the same time, a dozen states in the South and Southwest reported record increases in new coronavirus cases – and often record increases in hospitalizations as well, a metric not affected by more testing.

The number of new cases rose by a record last week in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, together home to about a third of the U.S. population. Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming also experienced record spikes in cases.

On Saturday more than 6,000 people, mostly without masks, crowded together inside a Tulsa, Oklahoma, arena for a campaign rally by President Donald Trump.

Trump defended his response to COVID-19, saying more testing had led to identifying more cases, seemingly to his chagrin.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to … find more cases,” he said. “So, I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.'” A White House official said he was “obviously kidding” with that remark.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Additional reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Howard Goller)

Acting DHS head says U.S. doing ‘great job’ getting economy back up

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration is doing “a great job” reopening the country after lockdowns to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said on Sunday, as infections continued to spike in some key states.

Wolf told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program that the White House coronavirus task force was continuing to meet daily and the Centers for Disease Control had issued guidance to states on how to flatten the curve, including use of face masks.

“We’re seeing a number of states throughout the country in different phases, from phase one to phase three, trying to get this economy, trying to get the country back up and running. And we’re doing a great job at that,” Wolf told NBC.

In a separate interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Wolf said the White House task force was “on top of all of these outbreaks within state by state, county by county, whether it’s Arizona, Texas, Florida, a number of these states that are having hotspots.”

He said the Trump administration was surging medical equipment and staff, as well as individuals from the Department of Homeland Security, into areas that were seeing an uptick in infections, to better understand the causes of those outbreaks and support the state-led reopening efforts.

The United States has reported 2.26 million cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, which comprises nearly 26% of the global total of 8.81 million cases, according to a Reuters tally. Over 119,600 deaths have been reported in the United States.

He defended President Donald Trump’s decision to hold an indoor campaign rally in Oklahoma, where infections have also been rising but many attendees did not wear face masks.

“The president’s rally is a state in a phase three reopening, and so activities like this are allowed,” Wolf said in the NBC interview, adding, “It’s also a personal choice that people are making on the face coverings.”

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Nick Zieminski)