Tag Archives: COVID-19

Germany surge sounds coronavirus alarm as world takes steps to reopen

By Douglas Busvine and Michel Rose

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Germany reported on Monday that new coronavirus infections were accelerating exponentially after early steps to ease its lockdown, news that sounded a global alarm even as businesses opened from Paris hair salons to Shanghai Disneyland.

Germany’s Robert Koch Institute reported that the “reproduction rate” – the number of people each person infected with the coronavirus goes on to infect – had risen to 1.1. Any rate above 1 means the virus is spreading exponentially.

German authorities had taken early steps to ease lockdown measures just days earlier, a stark illustration that progress can swiftly be reversed even in a country with one of the best records in Europe of containing the virus so far.

It follows a new outbreak in night clubs in South Korea, another country that had succeeded in limiting infections.

Governments around the world are struggling with the question of how to reopen their economies while still containing the coronavirus. In Europe, the world’s worst-hit continent, Spain and France began major steps to ease lockdowns, while Britain announced more cautious moves.

Traffic flowed along the Champs Elysees in Paris, a giant tricolor flag billowing under the Arc de Triomphe, as workers cleaned shop-front windows to reopen.

“Everyone’s a little bit nervous. Wow! We don’t know where we’re headed but we’re off,” said Marc Mauny, a hairstylist who opened his salon in western France at the stroke of midnight when new rules took effect.

Mickey Mouse welcomed thinned-out crowds in Shanghai, the first Disney theme park to re-open, with a strict limit on the number of tickets. Parades and fireworks were canceled, and workers and guests were required to wear face masks and have their temperatures screened at the entrance.

“I think (these measures) make tourists feel at ease,” said Kay Yu, a 29-year-old pass holder wearing a Minnie Mouse hat, who said he had woken up at 4 a.m. to make the trip to the park.

“IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL IT’S OVER”

A German health ministry spokesman said the authorities were taking the rise in the infection rate seriously and it did not mean the outbreak was out of control.

Karl Lauterbach, a Social Democrat lawmaker and professor of epidemiology, had warned that the virus could start spreading again quickly after seeing large crowds outside on Saturday in his home city of Cologne.

“It has to be expected that the R rate will go over 1 and we will return to exponential growth,” Lauterbach said in a tweet. “The loosening measures were far too poorly prepared.”

In South Korea, which largely avoided a lockdown by implementing a massive testing and contact-tracing program early on, authorities were rushing to contain a new outbreak traced to night clubs.

“It’s not over until it’s over. While keeping enhanced alertness till the end, we must never lower our guard regarding epidemic prevention,” President Moon Jae-In said on Sunday.

New Zealand, which had success in fighting infection with one of the toughest and earliest lockdowns, said it would open malls, cafes, and cinemas this week.

“The upshot is that in 10 days’ time we will have reopened most businesses in New Zealand, and sooner than many other countries around the world,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference. “But that fits with our plan – go hard, go early – so we can get our economy moving again sooner.”

But some of the countries and territories that were taking steps to open up their economies were acting without yet reporting sustained falls in the spread.

India, which has locked down its population of 1.3 billion people since March, reported a record daily rise in cases. But it said it would begin to restart passenger railway services, with 15 special trains, from Tuesday.

Russia, where the death toll is still comparatively low but the caseload surging, overtook Italy and Britain to report the highest number of cases after the United States and Spain.

In the United States, where unemployment figures released last week were the worst since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump has been trying to shift the emphasis towards reopening the economy. Many states have begun loosening restrictions even though cases continue to rise.

While economies around the world are facing the worst contraction in living memory, stock markets have surged since the start of April, fuelled by unprecedented injections of cash from central banks. That has created unease that financial markets are out of whack with the economies they reflect.

There were signs of a shift in sentiment on Monday, with stock markets giving up their early gains.

“Since late March there has been an extraordinary divergence between the real economy and financial risk, with the latter helped by unprecedented policy accommodation,” said Alan Ruskin, head of G10 foreign exchange trading at Deutsche Bank.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux, Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Major U.S. airlines endorse temperature checks for passengers

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A major U.S. airline trade group on Saturday said it backed the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checking the temperatures of passengers and customer-facing employees during the coronavirus pandemic.

Airlines for America, which represents the largest U.S. airlines including American Airlines <AAL.O>, United Airlines <UAL.O>, Delta Air Lines <DAL.N> and Southwest Airlines <LUV.N>, said the checks “will add an extra layer of protection for passengers as well as airline and airport employees. Temperature checks also will provide additional public confidence that is critical to relaunching air travel and our nation’s economy.”

A U.S. official said Saturday no decision has been made on whether to mandate the checks, but said the issue is the subject of extensive talks among government agencies and with U.S. airlines and added a decision could potentially be made as early as next week.

One possible route would be for a pilot project or to initially begin temperature checks at the largest U.S. airports. Questions remain about what the government would do if someone had a high temperature and was turned away from a flight.

U.S. officials said the temperature checks would not eliminate the risk of coronavirus cases but could act as a deterrent to prevent people who were not feeling well from traveling.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske told employees during a town hall meeting Wednesday that no decision had been made regarding possible temperature checks of passengers at airports and that questions remained about where such checks might take place and which agency might perform them.

“It’s been a discussion that’s been ongoing for several weeks now,” he said.

A TSA spokesman did not immediately comment Saturday.

Frontier Airlines said on Thursday it would begin temperature screenings for all passengers and crew members on June 1 and bar anyone with a temperature at or exceeding 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 C).

The move, the first among major U.S. airlines, followed the industry mandating facial coverings for all passengers and heightened cleaning procedures to address coronavirus concerns.

The airline group said having temperature checks performed by the TSA “will ensure that procedures are standardized.”

The endorsement comes amid signs of a modest travel rebound from historic lows. On Friday, TSA screened 215,444 people at airport checkpoints, the first time the number topped 200,000 since March 26. But that is still a fraction of the 2.6 million screened on the equivalent day last year.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese)

Pandemic inflicts historic U.S. job losses, as states struggle to reopen

By Lucia Mutikani and Maria Caspani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The coronavirus pandemic triggered the steepest monthly loss of U.S. jobs since the Great Depression, government data showed on Friday, while Michigan and California prepared to put people back to work after a manufacturing shutdown.

Labor Department data for April showed a rise in U.S. unemployment to 14.7% – up from 3.5% in February – demonstrating the speed of the U.S. economic collapse after stay-at-home policies were imposed in much of the country to curb the pathogen’s spread.

Worse economic news may yet come. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the unemployment rate is likely to move up to around 20% this month.

The economic devastation has put a sense of urgency into efforts by U.S. states to get their economies moving again, even though infection rates and deaths are still climbing in some parts of the country.

At least 40 of the 50 U.S. states are taking steps to lift restrictions that had affected all but essential businesses.

Two manufacturing powerhouses, Michigan and California, outlined plans on Thursday to allow their industrial companies to begin reopening over the next few days.

Public health experts said reopening prematurely risks fueling fresh outbreaks. They also have raised concerns that a state-by-state hodgepodge of differing policies confuses the public and undermines social distancing efforts.

“If we make a mistake and react too quickly, the situation is only going to get worse,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a news conference. “We have people who are dying.”

The virus has killed nearly 76,000 Americans with more than 1.26 million confirmed cases, according to a Reuters tally.

An astounding 20.5 million U.S. jobs were lost in April – the steepest loss since the Great Depression some 90 years ago – and the jobless rate broke the post-World War Two record of 10.8% in November 1982, the government said.

Just as the pathogen itself has hit black and Hispanic Americans particularly hard – they are overrepresented in the U.S. death toll relative to their population size – minorities also have suffered greater job losses during the crisis.

The April unemployment rate was 14.2% for white Americans, but the rate reached 16.7% among African Americans and 18.9% among Hispanic Americans, the data showed.

Adding to the pain, millions of Americans who have lost their jobs have been unable to register for unemployment benefits. A survey released last week by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that up to 13.9 million people have been shut out of the unemployment benefits system.

‘JUST SO TENSE’

Rita Trivedi, 63, of Hudson, Florida, was furloughed as an analyst at Nielsen Media Research on April 23 and has struggled to secure benefits from the state’s troubled unemployment system. Trivedi worries that she does not have enough money to cover her husband’s medical bills and other expenses.

“I’m more than anxious, I’m more than worried – it’s ‘can’t sleep’ kind of anxious,” Trivedi said in an interview. “I’m just so tense thinking about these things and how to manage.”

Tom Bossert, Trump’s former White House homeland security adviser, said the national trend of new cases outside New York – where the situation has stabilized – was of great concern.

“What we’re looking for now is red flags for reopening, and unfortunately we’re seeing those red flags – about a 2 to 4% daily increase in the rest of the country when you take New York out of the analysis,” Bossert told ABC News.

That increase, if not contained, could lead to “really devastating results in the next 72 days,” Bossert added.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday gave the go-ahead to Michigan manufacturers to restart on Monday, removing a major obstacle to North American automakers seeking to bring thousands of idled employees back to work this month.

In California, her fellow Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled rules permitting manufacturers in his state – ranging from makers of computers, electronics and textiles to aerospace and chemical plants – to reopen as early as Friday.

President Donald Trump, seeking re-election in November, initially played down the threat posed by the coronavirus and has given inconsistent messages about how long the economic shutdown would last and the conditions under which states should reopen businesses.

“Those jobs will all be back, and they’ll be back very soon,” Trump told Fox News on Friday.

A member of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff has tested positive for the virus, briefly delaying Pence’s Friday flight to Iowa and prompting some fellow passengers on Air Force Two to disembark, according to a White House official.

Trump said certain White House staff members have started wearing masks, one day after the White House said his personal valet had tested positive.

As many as 75,000 Americans could die due to alcohol or drug misuse and suicide triggered by the pandemic, according to a report by the Well Being Trust, a national foundation working on mental health and wellbeing.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Jeff Mason, Mari Caspani, Andy Sullivan, Lisa Shumaker, Rajesh Kumar Singh and Susan Heavey; Writing by Will Dunham, Editing by Howard Goller)

Social distancing signs around the world show the new normal

(Reuters) – They range from simple spray-painted circles on the ground in a Mogadishu market to bright and breezy floor stickers in a Dubai mall, which blow a kiss and urge: “Hey there beautiful, don’t forget to keep a safe distance.”

The markings that will oblige us to keep apart in busy social settings, in order to prevent transmission of the new coronavirus, are appearing on shop floors, city pavements and train or tram platforms the world over.

As people emerge from weeks of lockdown, they face an array of new measures to try and keep the virus in check and protect society’s most vulnerable.

The signs mounted so far went up at speed – but look likely to become commonplace and could be in use for years.

Dots on the ground, lines, squares within squares, love hearts and smiley faces are being used around the world. The markings need to be impactful enough to be adhered to, but also, ideally, to reassure people without making them feel cattle-driven.

“Anywhere where there are graphics at the moment, it is because people have had to react super quick and put something in place – speed has been of the essence. We are now at the point where there is a bit of breathing space,” said Chris Girling, Head of Wayfinding at CCD Design & Ergonomics in London.

We have a hotchpotch of styles, colours, terminology, scale and placement strategies, he notes. “This means every single time a member of the public enters a different space they are having to relearn the rules.”

There is a balance to be found, he said. “People want to feel safe, reassured and at ease. If you can do that, they are in turn going to be more likely to shop, feel relaxed and return. The message needs to be clear and consistent … and absorbed.”

A social distancing marker as preventive measure against the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is seen inside a pharmacy store in downtown Nairobi, Kenya May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

PLEASE

Levels of politeness vary in the places where retailers, city and transport authorities have been able to afford to print special signs.

“For your safety please stand 2 meters from other people,” reads a floor sign in a Shell petrol garage in Britain.

“Please practice social distancing,” reads another alongside footprints in Santa Monica, California.

“Stand here” is written in English on a red circle floor sign in a grocery shop in Beirut.

“If we are using words like ‘stop’ and ‘go’ and more abrupt language, then that is more associated with hazard and prohibitive signage. This (COVID-19) is a very different type of situation and one that people have never experienced before, so it warrants a different tone of voice,” said Girling.

“It is definitely worth trying a more friendly and inventive touch with how you talk to your customers or the general public as they are likely to be more receptive… there is even a bit of space for humour.”

Footprints have proved popular so far, in signs from Bury in Britain to Abidjan in Ivory Coast, but as Girling points out, the best sign systems would also encourage linear movement and give a visual understanding of direction.

Asked how he would design a social distancing system, he suggested a line of tape to show a pathway, which changes color every two meters.

“The instinct to follow a line from childhood naturally stays the same as we become adults, and you subconsciously pick up on these visual cues as you walk around environments.”

Signs related to COVID-19 should also ideally have their own distinctive color, which will become instantly recognizable.

(Reporting by Reuters photographers worldwide; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S. adds social distancing to Atlantic hurricane season emergency response plan

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – With the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season fast approaching, U.S. officials on Thursday said they were readying more buses, hotel rooms and shelter space for social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus during potential evacuations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said in a telephone briefing that it anticipated a higher-than-average number of storms during the U.S. storm season beginning on June 1. It urged states and cities to step up their preparations.

“COVID will make it a little more difficult,” FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor said, referring to the disease caused by the virus. “We’re asking local leaders to think about how they will manage evacuating and shelter. You’re going to need extra space.”

Last year, there were about 15 hurricane-related deaths in the United States, and at least 70 in the Bahamas, where Hurricane Dorian caused billions of dollars in damage.

COVID-19 has killed more than 73,000 people in the United States in the past two months.

In partnership with the American Red Cross, FEMA said it was preparing to house more evacuees in hotel rooms where families can stay, instead of packing them into shelters. They are also working to provide more buses to transport evacuees to avoid tight conditions.

An official estimate on the number of storms during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30, is expected to be released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 21.

But several forecasters see a more active season than average, with 18 named tropical storms and eight hurricanes.

Last year there were 12 named storms of which, seven strengthened into hurricanes, including two major ones, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The most deadly storm was Dorian, which ravaged the Bahamas, killed scores and left whole communities obliterated.

Gaynor said FEMA had more money than ever going into the hurricane season, with $6 billion devoted to federal response to the pandemic that officials could on draw on, as well as $80 billion remaining in disaster relief funds.

Brad Kieserman, vice president for disaster operations and logistics at the American Red Cross, said his organization had reserved more than 20,000 overnight stays at thousands of hotels.

“I can’t reinforce enough: our goal collectively is to keep people safe,” he said.

FEMA is also working to provide more face masks and other protective gear to help states fight COVID-19, as many hospitals and other U.S. facilities struggle to maintain enough masks and protective gear.

FEMA is also working with states to maximize each state’s ability to test for the virus, Gaynor said, but each state must decide how many people get tested.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Tom Brown)

U.S. Post Office board meets as COVID takes its toll and funding dries up

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors meets on Friday at a critical juncture as it faces accusations from the White House that it charges package shippers such as Amazon.com too little and as the new coronavirus cuts its revenue by about $13 billion.

The meeting also comes two days after the governors announced that they had selected Republican donor Louis DeJoy to be the next postmaster general to replace a retiring Megan Brennan.

Top of mind for the governors will be the budget shortfall, according to a person knowledgeable about the agenda.

The service, which was struggling before efforts to stop the spread of the new coronavirus prompted a widespread economic shutdown, is funded entirely through services and postage and has been hurt by advertisers’ decision to reduce mail during the pandemic.

The U.S. Congress has authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. President Donald Trump has threatened to block that aid.

Since early in his administration, the president has criticized the post office, saying it was poorly run and charges too little to deliver packages. Many of those packages are sent by online retailers such as Amazon.com, whose founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which has been critical of the president.

Without assistance, the service may run out of money in September, even as Americans increasingly turn to online shopping as the pandemic batters the U.S. economy. The current postmaster general told a congressional committee last month that the new coronavirus alone could mean $13 billion in lost revenue this year.

The pandemic has also caused a surge of interest in expanding options to vote by mail rather than crowding into polling places, making it more important that funding extends past November for the presidential election.

The board meeting will also address the post office’s response to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, including employee safety, according to a person knowledgeable about the agenda.

The disease has killed more than 50 of the service’s 600,000 workers, said James Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union. A spokesman for the postal service declined to confirm the deaths. COVID-19 has killed more than 75,000 Americans.

The U.S. Postal Service has been struggling for years as online communication replaces letters, and after a 2006 law required it to pre-fund its employee-pension and retirement health care costs for the next seventy-five years.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Some White House staff to wear masks after valet tests positive: Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said certain White House staff members have started wearing face masks, one day after the White House said his personal valet had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Trump, asked whether those who serve him food would now cover their faces, told Fox News in an interview that such White House staff would now be covering their faces.

“They’ve already started,” he said on the network’s “Fox and Friends” morning program.

The White House on Thursday said Trump and Vice President Mike Pence tested negative for the virus and were feeling well after the staffer – a U.S. military service member who works at the White House as a valet – came down with the virus. It also said the two leaders would now be tested daily, versus weekly.

Trump has said he would not wear a mask and has not publicly worn a mask to any of his events so far amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but told reporters this week that he tried some on behind the scenes during his visit to a Honeywell face mask factory in Arizona.

He is scheduled to attend a public event at the World War Two memorial later on Friday before meeting with Republican members of Congress at the White House, according to the White House.

The Republican president also told Fox News that he has not yet been tested for antibodies to the novel coronavirus but probably would be soon. Such a test could confirm previous exposure to the virus.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Lisa Lambertl editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

‘Like a science experiment’: A New York family learns the limits of coronavirus tests

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – After a week or so sick in bed in their New York City apartment in March, members of the Johnson-Baruch family were convinced they had been stricken by the novel coronavirus. Subsequent test results left them with more questions than answers.

Tests both for the virus itself and for the antibodies the immune system produces to fight the infection are becoming more widely available, but they are not perfect. The tests can come back with false positives, false negatives or confoundingly ambiguous results. Doctors cannot always offer definitive explanations.

For Maree Johnson-Baruch, her husband, Jason Baruch, and their two teenage daughters, their experience ran the gamut.

They all became sick around the same time with the same symptoms. But each set of tests they subsequently took, whether for antibodies or the virus, came back with conflicting results among family members – some positive some negative. Eventually, after several weeks and additional tests, they were able to confirm that all four had indeed been infected.

“I feel a little bit like a science experiment,” Johnson-Baruch said. “But no one really knows how this virus is behaving.”

Widespread testing is touted by many policymakers and public health experts as a central tool for reopening closed economies and for tamping down any future outbreaks of the virus. But these public health experts have said that the limitations of tests must be factored in, and that there must be time for more research into the degree that antibodies, for example, confer immunity against future infection.

Johnson-Baruch, an actress, began to feel ill shortly after she finished her final performance in the pivotal supporting role of Madame Giry in the Broadway musical “The Phantom of the Opera.” It was a Thursday matinee on March 12, the day New York City began closing non-essential businesses to try to slow the spread of the virus.

Over the weekend she had occasional aches but thought she was just imagining symptoms. By Monday, she had a fever. One by one, her husband and daughters fell sick over the following week. Johnson-Baruch noticed she could not smell the pine-scented disinfectant she was using to clean the family’s apartment.

The family called the New York State Department of Health’s coronavirus hotline. The federal government had botched the rollout of test kits, which then remained scarce – and limited in New York mostly to only those sick enough to require hospitalization. The family followed the advice to recuperate at home and by April everyone felt recovered.

Soon after, Johnson-Baruch read about a new experimental therapy at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital in which the antibody-rich blood plasma of patients who have recovered from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, is donated to people hospitalized with the illness.

In late April, she and her husband put on face masks and went to the hospital, where healthcare workers decked in protective gear drew blood.

“The strange thing was I tested positive and Jason tested negative,” Johnson-Baruch said.

Such disparities do not surprise Dr. Ania Wajnberg, who oversees Mount Sinai’s antibody testing efforts.

The antibody test developed at Mount Sinai fails to detect antibodies in about 6% of patients who actually have them. The intensity and recentness of the original infection can also affect whether antibodies are detected, Wajnberg said.

“I do think sometimes the results are surprising to people,” Wajnberg said. “And, more than anything, I get tons of questions about what the results mean, and we don’t know exactly what they mean.”

Although antibodies are thought to be likely to provide at least some immunity for some period of time, it remains the subject of study.

“Overall, everyone understands that this is so new and that they are sort of participating in the learning process,” Wajnberg said.

‘WE WERE SURPRISED’

About six weeks after calling the state health department, Johnson-Baruch heard back from an official saying the family could finally get a test for the actual virus that works by looking for distinctive parts of the pathogen’s genetic material, RNA, in a patient’s sample.

“We were well over a month out of our symptoms by that point, so we were surprised to get the call from them sort of out of the blue,” Johnson-Baruch said.

Johnson-Baruch noticed her eldest daughter particularly squirmed when healthcare workers stuck swabs, one by one, deep into the back of their noses.

Once again, the results surprised them. Johnson-Baruch, her husband and their youngest daughter all tested positive. Their eldest daughter tested negative.

What did it mean, the family wondered. Were they still in some sense sick? Could they still infect others?

A health department official who called to relay the results was not much help. “She was quite surprised to hear we were sick six weeks ago,” Johnson-Baruch said.

The tests used by the health department “cannot distinguish between RNA from live or dead virus,” Jonah Bruno, a department spokesman, wrote in an email. “This persistent positive test result can continue long after a person has recovered and does not necessarily indicate that a person continues to be infectious.”

Some 60 different RNA or antibody tests are now available after under emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but the makers of those tests must continue to submit accuracy data to the regulatory agency before final approval is given.

Dr. Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at New York University’s School of Global Public Health, said it was challenging to get the general public to accept the limitations of tests.

“People are way more comfortable with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ than ‘maybe,'” Ompad said. “Unfortunately, that’s where the science has us right now: we just don’t know, and it’s much better to say that we don’t know than to try to make predictions without having the data there because that can be detrimental.”

The Johnson-Baruch family members are not quite done with testing. The daughter who had negative virus results has since tested positive for antibodies for the virus after going to a walk-in clinic. Such facilities made testing more widely available this month.

Jason Baruch, a lawyer for Broadway theaters, is also seeking a second antibody test, this time hoping it comes back positive. A positive test would offer some comfort that he may have some level of immunity.

“No one’s really willing to put themselves on the line and say, ‘Hey, you’re home free, you have antibodies,’ or, ‘You’re still contagious,'” Baruch said. “No one really wants to tell us – definitively – anything.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Mike Segar and Aleksandra Michalska; Editing by Ross Colvin and Will Dunham)

Texas governor bans jail time for coronavirus lockdown violations

By Brad Brooks

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Thursday banned the jailing of anybody in the state who defied his orders to shut businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic, a move that followed an outcry over the arrest and incarceration of a Dallas salon owner.

“Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,” Abbott, a Republican, said in a written statement.

The Texas Supreme Court held up Abbott’s order, which was issued two days after Shelley Luther was arrested and put in the Dallas County jail for opening her business, Salon à la Mode, on April 24 in defiance of a closure order across the state.

Luther was sentenced to serve one week as punishment. She was expected to be freed later on Thursday.

The order will also benefit two women who were arrested last month in Laredo, Texas, for providing salon services and arrested during what local authorities called a sting operation. The two women were already free on bond.

Luther’s case became a rallying cause for protesters and others in Texas who want to see the state open up faster.

Texas, which has one of the lowest per-capita death rates in the country from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, is in the vanguard of states seeking to restart the economy despite the pandemic.

Restaurants, retailers and other stores reopened this week – but under conditions that they only allow in 25% of normal capacity. Salons across Texas will be able to open again on Friday as part of the reopening plan.

Luther’s salon and all others across the state were closed on March 22 because of the pandemic. She publicly railed against Abbott’s orders then, saying she and her salon staff could not feed their kids without income.

Luther reopened her salon on April 24.

A day later, surrounded by boisterous supporters calling for businesses to reopen, Luther tore up a cease and desist order she had received from a Dallas County judge ordering her to close her shop. She kept her salon open.

Dallas County Judge Eric Moye on Tuesday said during a hearing that he would not order Luther jailed if she acknowledged that her actions were selfish and apologized.

“I have to disagree with you sir, when you say that I’m selfish because feeding my kids is not selfish,” Luther said, refusing to apologize.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks; Editing by Paul Simao)

To keep COVID-19 patients home, some U.S. states weigh house arrest tech

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – How do you ensure that someone sick with COVID-19 stays home?

As the United States begins reopening its economy, some state officials are weighing whether house arrest monitoring technology – including ankle bracelets or location-tracking apps – could be used to police quarantines imposed on coronavirus carriers.

But while the tech has been used sporadically for U.S. quarantine enforcement over the past few weeks, large scale rollouts have so far been held back by a big legal question: Can officials impose electronic monitoring without an offense or a court order?

Case in point is Hawaii, which considered the sweeping use of GPS-enabled ankle bracelets or smartphone tracking apps to enforce stay-at-home orders given to arriving air passengers, according to Ronald Kouchi, the president of the Hawaii state senate.

Kouchi said Hawaiian officials were concerned that many travelers were flouting the state’s 14-day quarantine order, putting the archipelago’s inhabitants at risk. But he said that the plan for mass tracking of incoming travelers – inspired by similar technology in place in South Korea – was put on the back burner after the Hawaii attorney general’s office raised concerns.

“America is America,” Kouchi told Reuters. “There are certain rights and freedoms.”

In response to written questions to the attorney general’s office, Hawaii’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center said the “various ideas being evaluated for tracking those under mandatory quarantine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are right now just that, ideas.”

Similar ideas have already been executed in a few other states, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Seven people who broke quarantine rules in Louisville, Kentucky were court-ordered to wear GPS-tracking devices manufactured by Colorado-based SCRAM Systems, according to Amy Hess, the city’s chief of public services. She told Reuters that while she would rather not have had to use the devices at all, state law permitted the imposition of home confinement to protect public health.

“We don’t want to take away people’s freedoms but at the same time we have a pandemic,” she said.

In West Virginia’s capital, Charleston, Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford told Reuters his force had leased 10 additional location-monitoring ankle bracelets from GEO Group Inc. at the outset of the epidemic “to be on the safe side,” although he said they’ve so far just sat on the shelf.

Industry executives including Shadowtrack Technologies Inc. President Robert Magaletta, whose Louisiana-based company supplies nearly 250 clients across the criminal justice system, said they had fielded calls from state and local governments about repurposing their tools for quarantine enforcement, although they wouldn’t name the prospective buyers.

Kris Keyton, of Arkansas-based E-Cell, said he had recently been approached by a state agency that wanted to adapt his detainee-tracking smartphone app for quarantine enforcement.

He said the changes the agency requested were purely cosmetic, including swapping out the word “client” – E-Cell’s term for arrestees – with the word “patient.”

“They just wanted to reskin our app,” he said.

“UNCHARTED TERRITORY”

The industry has two main ways of keeping track of offenders: One is through the traditional ankle bracelet, a battery-powered device which is fastened to a person’s leg and is monitored through GPS. The other is through a smartphone app, either used in conjunction with facial or voice recognition technology to make sure it’s attached to the right person or, as with the app made by E-Cell, tethered via Bluetooth to a fitness tracker-style wrist band to ensure it stays on or near the person it is meant to follow.

A QR code-enabled version of the app-and-wrist band solution is already being used in Hong Kong to enforce quarantines on incoming travelers. Poland uses a facial recognition-powered version of the technology that regularly prompts users to upload a selfie to prove they’re indoors.

Other governments are weighing similar technology, said Magaletta of Shadowtrack, who said he was in talks with half a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

In a call with reporters last month, Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union noted that several governments were toying with the idea of using smartphones as ad hoc ankle monitors.

“As a technological matter that probably would be effective as long as too much precision is not expected,” Stanley said. But he cautioned that enforcement approach to public health “often tends to backfire.”

Magaletta also foresaw thorny issues as far as the United States was concerned, saying he was less comfortable tracking patients with COVID-19 than he was enforcing house arrests for convicted criminals.

“Can you actually constitutionally monitor someone who’s innocent?” he asked. “It’s uncharted territory.”

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin)