August 5 coronavirus news

This image taken from video by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services shows Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on July 30, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said the Wisconsin National Guard will assist as poll workers for the primary elections held on Aug. 11.

The announcement comes a week after Evers issued an executive order authorizing the activation of the National Guard to support the primary election and operate community Covid-19 testing sites across the state.

The release said the troops will report to duty on Sunday and will be released on Aug. 12, the day after the primary. The mobilized members will complete training provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the release said.

Siblings Paul Adamus, 7, left, and Neva Adamus, 5, put on their backpacks to get ready for their first day of school on August 3, in Dallas, Georgia.

The Georgia Department of Public Health reported 3,817 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 201,713.

Georgia is the fifth state to surpass 200,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases.

The department reported 65 additional death on Wednesday, bringing the total number of deaths to 3,984.

There were 362 new Covid-19 hospitalizations, which brings the number of total to 19,788, the department said.

Note: These numbers were released by the Georgia Department of Public Health and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Boston Public Schools is ruling out a full in-person return to school for the start of the 2020-21 school year, but a final plan on how schools will restart has not yet been decided upon, according to a draft of the district’s plan.

Boston is one of just a few of the largest districts in the US that has yet to announce its back to school plan.

The district is still working to decide if it will start the school year with a hybrid plan or fully online.

According to the draft, the district is following instruction from the Boston Public Health Commission to determine when schools may safely reopen, and as with many other plans, once a decision is made, it could change.

Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius outlined the plans for the hybrid and online options during a press conference Wednesday, saying parents will be invited to participate in a survey online and over the phone over the next few weeks to discuss whether their preference is for their children to attend any school in-person, or keep them home for remote instruction.

“We’re going to be designing this remote learning and it will look very different than it did in the spring,” Cassellius said. 

More details: Cassellius said the hybrid model would include two days of in-person learning and three days remotely. Students attending school in-person would be in small classes of 10-15 students, maintain social distancing, wear a face covering, and engage in regular hand washing.

The draft of the plan said the hybrid model “is not perfect.”

The rate of case growth in Kansas is higher in the counties with no mask mandate, according to Dr. Lee Norman, the secretary of the state’s Department of Health and Environment.

“All of the improvement comes from those counties wearing masks,” Norman said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

There have been 841 new cases and three new deaths since Monday’s report. At least 62 cases have been tied to schools and daycares, Norman said. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Several people in the Corinth School District in Mississippi have been infected with Covid-19, Dr. Thomas Dobbs with the Mississippi State Department of Health said during a news conference.

Dobbs said that more than 100 students in the district have been quarantined after the positive tests.

In a letter to parents posted on their Facebook page today, Corinth School District said a person from Corinth Middle School tested positive as well as an employee at Corinth Elementary School. 

Dobbs said this is one of several schools that has had positive cases since returning to in-person classroom instruction in the state.

The letter said the school has done contact tracing and is asking anyone who had contact with the individuals to quarantine for 14 days. While in quarantine, children cannot attend school or any activities, the letter said. 

On Monday, the school district said two individuals from the high school had tested positive, making five positive cases reported at the high school.

In-person classes resumed in the district on July 27, according to the school calendar. Parents were able to choose for their child to return to the traditional attendance schedule or do virtual learning. Students can only enter and exit the virtual learning model at the end of a nine-week period, according to the district. 

According to the district’s reopening plan, students and staff are screened daily upon entering the building with temperature checks. Staff has to answer questions daily about if they have had symptoms in the past few days.

Guidance from the district says that all staff, parents and volunteers must wear a face covering in the school buildings. Teachers must wear a face covering in all common areas and during all student interactions.

A person walks past flood barriers in lower Manhattan as Tropical Storm Isaias approaches New York City on August 4.

New York City has 18,937 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 4,626 probable coronavirus deaths as of Aug. 5, according to the most recent data on the city website.

The New York City Health Department defines probable deaths as people who did not have a positive Covid-19 laboratory test, but their death certificate lists as the cause of death “Covid-19” or an equivalent.

The total number of confirmed coronavirus deaths and probable coronavirus deaths in New York City is 23,563.

There have been 223,186 coronavirus cases in the city and 56,414 people have been hospitalized, according to the city.

The data is from the New York City Health Department and was updated on August 5 at 1 p.m., according to the website.

Note: The numbers may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Election Worker Darleen Jara wears a face mask with "vote!" written on it as she handles signature verifications as vote-by-mail ballots for the August 4 Washington state primary are processed at King County Elections in Renton, Washington on August 3.

Infectious disease experts in the United States are calling on the White House to issue a federal mask requirement across all states.

Dr. Thomas File, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and Dr. Judith Feinberg, chair of the HIV Medicine Association, sent a letter on behalf of their organizations to US Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday.

The letter urges the White House Coronavirus Task Force to adopt a uniform policy on wearing masks. 

The two health experts said that “while state and local requirements are particularly effective at increasing the use of masks, this is the time for national solidarity as Covid-19 has made significant inroads into rural areas that were initially considered ‘safe.’”

“Policies to greatly increase the use of masks are integral to a broader national strategy to control the Covid-19 pandemic, which must also include increasing testing capacity and its timeliness to bolster the impact of contact tracing,” the pair wrote.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson removes his mask before a briefing at the state capitol Monday‚ July 20, 2020 in Little Rock.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson reported that the state has 46,293 cumulative Covid-19 cases — with 912 new cases reported since yesterday. The state has reported at least 508 fatalities. 

Health Secretary Dr. Jose Romero said that there are 6,937 active cases — 6,336 are community cases, 88 are cases in nursing facilities and 513 are cases in correctional facilities. 

The governor announced today that the state has set up a plan to test 100% of inmates in their prisons. Hutchinson said out of the 19 prisons, 10 facilities have already been tested and the plan is to have testing finished by the end of this month. 

Note: These numbers were released by the Arkansas public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

The NCAA’s Division III Presidents Council announced on Wednesday the cancellation of all 2020-21 fall sports championships due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“With the health and safety of the division’s student-athletes, coaches, athletics administrators and communities as its priority, the Division III Presidents Council made the decision Wednesday to cancel the championships due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related administrative and financial challenges,” Chair of the President’s council Tori Murden McClure said in a news release.

“Our Championships Committee reviewed the financial and logistical ramifications if Division III fall sports championships were conducted in the spring and found it was logistically untenable and financially prohibitive. Our Management Council reached the same conclusion. Moving forward, we will try to maximize the championships experience for our winter and spring sport student-athletes, who unfortunately were short-changed last academic year,” McClure continued.

Earlier on Wednesday, the NCAA Board of Directors gave all three divisions an Aug. 21 deadline on whether their respective fall sports seasons and NCAA championships should occur this year. 

In this photo illustration a pack of Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate medication is held up on March 26 in London.

A renewed focus on the potential use of the malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is taking time and resources away from the search for something that actually does work to help coronavirus patients and may end up costing lives, two dozen Yale University researchers said Tuesday. 

Yale cancer epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch launched a new round of headlines when he wrote a commentary in Newsweek last month calling for renewed research on hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus, despite multiple studies showing it doesn’t help and might harm patients, and decisions by the US Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization to stop further testing.

The White House, which had promoted the drug, was encouraged to renew its lobbying for the drug, even as coronavirus task force members, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx and Adm. Brett Giroir, all said repeatedly the drug does not work and should be dropped.

The Yale researchers said they all want the same thing: an effective treatment for coronavirus. But they said heavy pursuit of hydroxychloroquine took up resources that could be used elsewhere.

“The continuing advocacy on behalf of HCQ distracts us from advancing the science on Covid-19 and seeking more effective interventions in a time when more than 1,000 people are dying per day of this disease,” they wrote.

A member of medical staff holds a nasal swab as he collects samples from a person at a Covid-19 drive-in test in Brest, France, on Wednesday, July 31.

France has recorded the highest daily rise in coronavirus infections in more than two months, according to figures published by the National Health Agency on Wednesday show.

France reported 1,695 new cases in 24 hours, making this the biggest increase since May 30, when an increase of 1,828 cases was recorded. 

The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals and in intensive care units has decreased in the past 24 hours, according to the Health Agency data. 

The overall death toll in the country stands at 30,305.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo sits during a news conference Monday, June 22, in Providence, Rhode Island.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo is rolling back reopening in the state with a last-call for bars, restrictions on out-of-state travelers and limits on social gatherings.  

Anyone traveling into Rhode Island from 33 hot zone states, including Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia and California, will have to provide a negative Covid-19 test or must quarantine, she announced Wednesday.  

Travelers checking into a hotel or any kind of a rental property will “need to sign a certificate of compliance, verifying that they have had a negative test result, or that they intend to quarantine for 14 days while they are here,” Raimondo said. 

The National Guard will assist with informing travelers of the tightened restrictions at airports, she said.

Raimondo said 20% of bars inspected this weekend “were still not separating the bartender from the customer.”  

State officials have been “bending over backwards to keep the bars open” because they are “sympathetic to the fact that restaurants are barely making it,” she said. Raimondo then announced starting Friday, bars will not be allowed to operate after 11 p.m. 

More details: In an effort to crack down on gatherings, group sizes will now be reduced to 15 people or less, she said. Rhode Islanders should consider gathering with the same 15 people whenever possible, the governor said.  

Raimondo reminded residents the fine for violating the social gathering limit is $500 for each person found to be in violation. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said a universal coronavirus vaccine is one of the lessons that must be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, Fauci said it will be important for the nation to prepare for the next pandemic by developing a universal vaccine “that has the specificity against all the coronaviruses, so we don’t have to anticipate the next time this happens.”

“That’s the lesson that we’ve learned with influenza, which is why we’re developing a universal influenza vaccine. And we’re going to do the same thing with coronaviruses,” Fauci said.

Fauci said he hopes the country maintains corporate memory of the current crisis for when it’s time to allocate resources for pandemic preparedness in the future.

 “Shame on us if we’re not prepared for the next coronavirus pandemic outbreak,” Fauci added.

The recent Covid-19 outbreak at a sleep away camp in Georgia is not necessarily an example of what might happen when schools open, Dr. George Rutherford, principal investigator of the state of California’s contract tracing program, said Wednesday.

Some background: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on the outbreak as a cautionary tale about what might happen at schools if they open for in-person learning. More than 40% of campers and staff at the camp became infected with coronavirus.

Both Rutherford and the CDC report pointed out that the children were not wearing masks, there was regular singing and cheering and that windows and doors were closed in the cabins. These closed windows and doors probably increased recirculated air and the risk factors, according to Rutherford.

“We’ve always known that children could get infected. We’ve always known that children could infect other people, just not at the same rates,” Rutherford said. “And if you put them into an intensive situation like this, these are the kinds of results you can expect.”

Rutherford said that bars and churches were places that worried him when it comes to transmission of Covid-19.

“If you have places with the windows all shut, people singing, it’s like Georgia summer camp, okay, it’s not a great idea,” he said. “If you’re going to do that stuff, they have to be outside and people have to be socially distant.”

The University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.

The University of Louisville has announced the suspension of team-related activities for four fall sports as of Aug. 3, after 29 members of the four teams tested positive for Covid-19.

The four sports affected are men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey and volleyball.

Following athletic department policies and protocols, the university traced the exposure primarily to an off-campus party.

Student-athletes from the four sports who have not tested positive or been identified through contact tracing are being permitted to return to workouts on campus beginning Aug. 10, pending further testing results.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waits for the subway to the Hart Senate Office building August 5.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN that senators will “certainly be in next week,” delaying the start of the chamber’s August recess.

“We’ll certainly be in next week. We’ll see what happens after that,” McConnell said. 

White House officials Steve Mnuchin and Mark Meadows set a deadline to negotiate with Democrats for the end of the week. It’s unclear if they will meet that. 

GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of leadership, argued that if there wasn’t a deal, members might as well go home. 

“If there’s not a deal by Friday, there won’t be a deal,” Blunt said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday that the White House coronavirus task force will take a “careful look” at air droplets and their role in the spread of Covid-19, to see if new guidance is warranted.

Fauci, speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, said he’s been in touch with experts about the possibility that there may be droplets much bigger than five micrometers that continue to float around in the air.

Fauci said the possibility of bigger droplets “gives you a greater reason for wearing a mask at all times,” and that being outdoors is much better than being indoors.

He added there may be a need to rethink air circulation when indoors, including filtering air with HEPA filters.

St. John’s Well Child & Family Center workers prepare to test a woman for Covid-19 at a free mobile test clinic set up outside Walker Temple AME Church in South Los Angeles amid the coronavirus pandemic on July 15

Dr. Anthony Fauci said the coronavirus testing challenges in the United States are “unacceptable — period,” during an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Gupta explained a situation last week when he was preparing for brain surgery and couldn’t get the timely result of a Covid-19 test.

“I got a CAT scan on my patient, I got coagulation numbers on my patient, I got a cardiac echo on my patient, I was doing brain surgery on this patient, and could not get a Covid result,” Gupta explained.

Gupta asked why, after so many months, do we still have this problem?

“I could bend myself into a pretzel trying to get out of that question,” Fauci answered. “It’s unacceptable – period.”

“You a real world example of why we got to do better,” he said. 

“There you were in the operating room, having to put on PPE,” because the patient’s Covid status was unknown, Fauci said. “That is totally unacceptable, and for me to say anything different is distorting reality.” 

Fauci went on to say that “the ultimate goal, is that you would have a test that you could do and get a result in 10 minutes, that’s sensitive, specific and can be upscaled in the sense of – you can do it any place, in anywhere.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, said coronavirus has the world in “uncharted territory.”

When it evolves, that’s when science needs to drive the recommendations, “particularly things like masks and crowds, indoor/outdoor, aerosol, not aerosol – these are things that we’re learning as time goes by, and you do the best you can to make the recommendation, based on the data that you have right now,” Fauci said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Wednesday that the US had a “disparate” response to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“We live in a very big country, and we often leave the decisions about the implementation of things at the local level. And what we’ve seen is a great disparity in how individual states, cities, etcetera, responded,” Fauci told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a virtual forum hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Fauci explained that the US never got the number of new daily Covid-19 cases low enough to reopen in a safe way compared to other countries. Fauci added that states also didn’t open uniformly, causing numbers to jump back up.

“We can do much better,” Fauci added.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says wearing a mask should not be a political issue.

Speaking with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum on Wednesday, Fauci said, “There’s such a divergence of how people view this [wearing masks].”

“A little while ago, you know, it depends on whether you wear a mask on how you feel politically, which was completely ridiculous,” he said.

 “The mask is a public health tool,” he added.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, warned that if the US does not have a unified response against Covid-19, the country is at risk of continuing to “smolder.”

Speaking to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Fauci used the metaphor of a rowing team, noting that while watching matches of his daughter who was on a varsity crew team in college, he learned that to “win the race” all those on the boat must be “rowing in unison.”

Fauci added that he thinks this lack of unity “is the problem.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said a mixed message around coronavirus is what is driving new cases.

“The good news about Covid-19 is that about 40% of the population has no symptoms. … The bad news, for messaging, is that 40% of the population get no symptoms,” he told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum.

 WATCH:

Dr. Anthony Fauci said there’s “a degree of anti-science feeling in this country” while speaking to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta today.

Fauci said he believes this feeling about science by some is “almost related to authority and a mistrust in authority.”

He said that sometimes scientists are “looked upon as being authoritative figure” and those that mistrust science thinks that “pushing back on authority, they’re pushing back on government, it’s the same as pushing back on science.” 

“Unfortunately, that’s not what scientists are,” he continued.

Fauci added that scientists need to be “more transparent in reaching out to people and engaging society and understanding why science and evidence-based policy is so important.” 

WATCH:

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that receiving death threats for advocating public health principles has been stressful for him and his family, during an interview on Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta .

“Getting death threats for me and my family and harassing my daughters to the point where I have to get security, it just, it’s amazing,” Fauci told Gupta.

Fauci also discussed how he has adjusted to “chronic exhaustion” since starting to work on the coronavirus task force.

“I’m doing fine… I can’t complain. I think the energy and adrenaline rush and the focus comes from the, what you said, the importance of the problem,” Fauci said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before a House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on July 31 in Washington.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, said when it comes to coronavirus in the United States, the country has suffered “as much or worse than anyone.”

Speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta during a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health forum, Fauci said, “When you look at the number of infections and the number of deaths, it really is quite, quite concerning.”

There are at least 4,785,528 cases of coronavirus in the US, and at least 157,186 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally of cases.

So far on Wednesday, Johns Hopkins recorded 14,448 new cases and 385 reported deaths. 

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

The NCAA Board of Governors announced Wednesday that each division of school athletics will have to determine its ability to meet specific requirements in order to proceed with fall sports during the preseason, regular season and postseason.

Schools and conferences will have until Aug. 21 to determine whether their respective fall sports seasons and NCAA championships should occur this year.

In addition, the board expressed serious concerns about the continuing high levels of Covid-19 infection in many parts of the nation and emphasized it will only support moving forward with fall championships and postseason play if strict conditions are applied and maintained.

The requirements include:

The NCAA will also establish a phone number and email address to allow student-athletes, parents, or administrators to report alleged failures of compliance, with school and conference officials expected to take immediate action.

If fall sports championships area postponed in any division, a decision to schedule for a later date will be based on scientific Covid-19 data available at that time.

Read the NCAA’s statement on fall sports.

TSA agents work at a security checkpoint at the Ronald Reagan National Airport on July 22 in Arlington, Virginia.

New numbers show more than 1,500 Transportation Security Administration workers have now tested positive for coronavirus, but the agency hopes new protective shields at airport security checkpoints will help.

The TSA announced that it has awarded a nearly $2.5 million contract to California-based Lavi Industries.

The company will build more than 1,200 acrylic barriers to be installed at 37 “priority” airports that the TSA considers are its busiest domestic hubs. The TSA said the barriers add to those already in place and will be installed this fall.

“As long as this virus remains a threat, TSA will continue to implement the measures necessary for containment,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said.

TSA data shows that six workers have died from coronavirus, and more than 1,000 have recovered.

One of Brazil’s leading indigenous leaders, Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, leader of the Upper Xingu, died on Wednesday of Covid-19, his nephew Kaiulu Yawalapiti told CNN. 

“My heart is in pieces, bleeding,” Kaiulu Yawalapiti said. 

Aritana was admitted to an intensive care unit on July 22 after suffering from severe breathing problems. He was 71. 

Aritana was one of the most prominent leaders in the Xingu park, the first indigenous territory to be recognized by the Brazilian government in 1968. He fought for the safety and health of the Upper Xingu for many years. 

Yawalapiti told CNN then that the Upper Xingu lacked medical supplies, testing kits and medical assistance to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Covid-19 spreads very fast, the whole community is sick, children, the young, the elderly. We are being neglected by the Brazilian government, they are not helping us enough and it seems that they want to decimate us,” Yawalapiti told CNN on July 22. 

The Xingu reservation park is located at the northeast of the state of Mato Grosso, southern portion of the Brazilian Amazon.  

Latest figures: On Wednesday, Brazil’s Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI) reported 139 indigenous people infected with coronavirus, nine people have died and 138 people have been treated for “suspected Covid-19.”

But the Association of Indigenous people (APIB), an independent organization in Brazil, has reported that 21,571 indigenous people have been infected with the virus and 618 people have died since the pandemic started in the country, according to data released on August 1. 

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's removes his mask before giving his daily press briefing at the War Memorial in Trenton, New Jersey, on Saturday, April 11.

New Jersey reports 378 new cases of Covid-19 and 8 additional deaths from the virus, Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday during the state’s Covid-19 presser. 

The state is experiencing a Covid-19 positive infection rate of 2.57%, which is “too high because it’s over 2%,” Murphy said. 

New Jersey has a statewide total of 183,327 cases of Covid-19 and 13,989 deaths from the virus, Murphy said. 

“Let’s keep up what we are doing to keep the virus down,” Murphy said. 

Note: These numbers were released by the state of New Jersey and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

Following the Big Ten’s decision to hold a conference-only football season on Wednesday, the conference’s student-athletes penned a letter via The Players Tribune, calling the Big Ten and the NCAA to review its current Covid-19 safety protocols. 

The letter continues, “Given that the NCAA and conference leadership have not asked for our input, we feel compelled to call for clarity, commitment, and action regarding our common-sense proposal below.”

The letter outlines five areas they’d like more regulations and enforcement in to protect the well-being of all athletes starting with more oversight and transparency, prevention and safety protocols, testing, contact tracing and related procedures, player assurances and hazard-related economic support. 

The University of Virginia.

The University of Virginia announced it is delaying in-person classes for undergraduate students and move-in to dorms on campus by two weeks because of “an uptick in local and national coronavirus cases.”

The semester begins on Aug. 25, but now classes will be held all online until Sept. 8. According to an email sent to the university community by President Jim Ryan and other university leaders on Tuesday, “students will be able to move into residence halls several days before then.”

“In response to these conditions, and based on the advice of UVA public health experts, we have decided to adopt a phased approach to the fall semester, which we believe will best safeguard the health and safety of our University community and our Charlottesville neighbors and give us the best chance of a successful return to Grounds,” they wrote. 

UVA has more than 25,000 students, according to the school’s website.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar attends an event where U.S. President Donald Trump signed executive orders on prescription drug prices in the South Court Auditorium at the White House on July 24 in Washington.

In the last two weeks, “we’ve seen – under President Trump’s leadership – the most historic advances in the development of vaccines we’ve ever seen in human history,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday on Fox News. 

“It’s really just President Trump has marshalled the whole of the US government and our biopharmaceutical industry – it’s incredible,” he added.

Azar said it’s “very credible” that the US will have “high tens of millions of doses of FDA gold-standard vaccine by the end of this year,” with “many hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine by the beginning of next year.”

Earlier today: HHS announced it will own 100 million doses of the Covid-19 investigational vaccine Johnson & Johnson is developing. 

In a statement, HHS said the doses from the “large-scale manufacturing and delivery” agreement could be used in clinical trials or as part of a Covid-19 vaccination campaign under the guidance of the US Food and Drug Administration. 

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is committing more than $1 billion for this agreement, Johnson & Johnson said in a separate statement. The US government may also purchase an additional 200 million doses of the vaccine candidate under a subsequent agreement, the company added.

Azar said in the statement the federal government is assembling a “portfolio of vaccines” under Operation Warp Speed and this latest partnership will increase the chances the US “will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021.”

“We believe we can get our kids back to school in a way that’s safe and sensible, under most circumstances,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Wednesday.

Speaking on Fox News, Azar said, “There are tools that you can use – very simple interventions, if you put your mind to it – that you can get the kids back so that they’re safe, so that teachers are safe.”

Azar said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has laid out clear guidelines for reopening.

Azar cautioned that getting kids back to school is “going to vary based on local circumstances,” adding, “for the most part, our kids can and need to get back to school, and it can be done in ways that protect them and keep them safe.”

The state of Florida is reporting 5,409 coronavirus cases, pushing the state over the half a million mark, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health on Wednesday.

The state is also reporting 225 additional deaths in a single day.

To date, there are now 502,739 total cases in the state, including out of state residents, DOH reports. Florida has reported 7,627 resident deaths to date, DOH data shows.

Carnival Cruise Line's Carnival Ecstacy cruise ship is docked at the Port of Jacksonville amid the Coronavirus outbreak on March 27 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Major cruise lines announced Wednesday that sailing will be suspended through at least October.   

The Cruise Lines International Association — whose members include the Carnival, Disney, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean brands — said the decision, its third extension, was made because of “the health and safety of passengers and crew.” The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a no-sail order effective through September for cruise ships carrying more than 250 passengers.   

Today’s announcement comes as a small cruise ship in Alaska was forced to turn around early from its maiden pandemic-era voyage because a passenger tested positive.  

UnCruise Adventures said an onboard passenger on its Wilderness Adventurer received a positive result Tuesday, from a test taken days earlier ashore. The passenger had tested negative on an earlier test, the cruise line said.   

The company did not say how many passengers were aboard the ship. Its website said the ship has a capacity of 60 passengers and 25 crew members.  

The company said it has “opted to suspend all future 2020 Alaska departures.” 

New York City will put a stronger focus on out-of-state drivers coming in from states on the tri-state quarantine list by setting up checkpoints at key entry points into the city, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a press conference. 

The checkpoints will be at major bridge and tunnel crossings, according to New York City Sheriff Joseph Fucito.

The announcement comes after Mayor de Blasio said that the New York City’s positivity rate has been below 3% since June 10. 

“This is serious stuff and it’s time for everyone realizes it. If we are going to hold at this level at health and safety in this city and get better we have to deal with the fact that the quarantine must be applied consistently” de Blasio added. 

The checkpoints will start today, according to de Blasio. 

A man wearing a face mask walks past a sign "Now Hiring" in front of a store amid the coronavirus pandemic on May 14, in Arlington, Virginia.

America’s services sector grew for a second month in a row in July, beating economists’ expectations. But beneath the headline number, some things are still quite gloomy.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index to measure non-manufacturing activity climbed to 58.1, from 57.1 in June. Any reading over 50 means the sector is expanding.

But while business activity and new orders grew at a faster pace than in June, other parts of the index didn’t look so good.

Supplier deliveries, inventories and prices all expanded at a slower pace in July compared to the prior month.

And employment in the services sector has been contracting for five months in a row. In July, it fell at a faster pace than in the previous month.

Jeff Gregorich, superintendent of Hayden-Winkelman School District in Arizona, called Gov. Ducey’s push to open schools by August 17 a “fantasy” in a Washington Post op-ed.

“We’re such a small, remote, rural community. We’re close-knit and it would be devastating to our families, and it already has hit us hard,” he said.

There has already been one teacher who died from Covid-19 in his district, and he fears there will be more deaths.

He said that he’s advocating for postponing the reopening of schools until he sees data that it’s safe to do so. 

“We’ll be losing some funding, but I think it is far more important that we keep the health and safety of our community, our children, our teachers, our staff,” he said. 

Gregorich told CNN’s Poppy Harlow that more than a quarter of his students live with their grandparents. “There’s no one else if these children take it home and their grandparents were to pass away,” he said. 

Watch:

A health worker administers a Covid-19 test on the Upper West Side on July 29 in New York.

The New York City Test and Trace Corps says that one-fifth of all new Covid-19 cases have been linked to travelers coming in from other states, Dr. Ted Long, head of the New York City Test and Trace Corps, said at a news conference. 

Travelers booking a flight, hotel, or arriving in New York City are now required to fill out an online traveler form when coming to the city, according to Long  

“The reason that form is important is because that is how we get the information to reach out and call you and ask how we can help,” Long said.

The Test and Trace Corps will additionally begin deploying teams to Penn Station tomorrow to make sure travelers have filled out the form and will make them do so if they have not, Long added. 

“We want you to come into New York city but we need you to safely separate for 14 days when you arrive to keep new York city safe,” Long said.

“Test and trace corps has made 86.500 phone calls to people in quarantine and sent 20,870 text messages. We have deployed teams that are now knocking on doors to make sure you are safe,” Long added. 

In this Friday, July 17 file photo, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson speaks during a news conference in Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools will start the 2020-21 school year with fully remote learning for all its students, the district announced in a press release Wednesday, a decision that could avoid a possible strike from the Chicago Teacher’s Union. 

The district will implement remote learning through the first quarter, which ends November 9. At that time they will evaluate if it is safe to open in a hybrid learning model.

“I understand the uncertainty this pandemic has caused our parents, especially communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted. We are making every possible effort to provide a high-quality remote learning experience in the fall, utilizing live, virtual instruction for every student, every day, and we are committed to ongoing engagement and communication with parents,” Jackson said.

Some background: The announcement comes a day after a source close to the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) told CNN that the CTU planned to convene their House of Delegates early next week to discuss taking a strike vote to demand remote learning for Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago, the nation’s third largest school district, had previously hoped to start the school year with a hybrid learning model, and had prepared a scenario to do so.

“This hybrid model would allow students to follow proper social distancing guidelines by effectively cutting the number of students in a classroom and ensuring students can access high-quality in-person instruction from caring teachers,” according to a preliminary framework released July 17.

“The decision to begin the 2020-2021 CPS school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we’ve received from parents and families,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. 

“As we build out this remote learning model and seek to establish a hybrid learning model in the second quarter, we will continue to support and collaborate with parents and school leaders to create safe, sustainable learning environments for our students,” Lightfoot added.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported 636 additional cases of Covid-19 and 4 deaths from the virus yesterday, a press release from the governor’s office said.

The governor said the state tested 72,668 people yesterday — a 0.87% positive infection rate.

The negotiators are, at long last, actually negotiating. After seven meetings, totaling more than a dozen hours, the top Democratic and White House negotiators are not just walking through their disagreements, but putting offers on the table, trading proposals and to a small degree, starting to make concessions.

They’ve even agreed on a deadline for a deal — the end of this week.

Bottom line: There is still a long way to go and an agreement to a timeline to reach an agreement — one that is already one week after the initial deadline — isn’t much on its face. But what’s happening behind the scenes is a signal things are actually starting to kick into gear.

What to watch: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will be back on Capitol Hill for negotiations.

What was put on the table: The Tuesday meeting between Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the top White House negotiators, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, was by far the most productive of all the meetings up to this point, according to both sides.

Schumer said both sides made concessions and, most importantly, the talks had gone beyond identifying areas of disagreement or even topline points of overlap and have now moved to trading actual paper proposals between sides. It seems minor or just an obvious step in the process, but the trading of paper means things are getting real, finally.

That came in large part due to what the White House negotiators put on the table. To be clear, these proposals weren’t agreed to and won’t be accepted by Democrats (much to the frustration of the administration negotiators). But they represent tangible movement – the type of movement that can draw out real concessions and counters.

Read more here.

Wall Street opened higher on Wednesday as investors keep a close eye on the stimulus negotiations in Washington.  

However, Wall Street also have a lot of economic data to digest ahead of Thursday’s weekly jobless claims and Friday’s July jobs report. The US private sector only added 167,000 jobs last month, ADP reported this morning — nearly 10 times lower than expected.

Here’s how things looked at the opening:

There are two days before the US government releases its July jobs report, but President Trump is already talking it up.

Trump has spoken about previous monthly jobs reports in similarly vague terms before their release, breaking with years of presidential protocol.

In the “last two months we set a record on the job numbers. Now we will have another big job number on Friday, so it will be interesting to see what that is,” he said in the interview.

Some context: Economists expect 1.6 million jobs were added to the US economy in July, markedly fewer than the 4.8 million added in June, which set a record for most new jobs in one month. But even if the July predictions hold true, the US economy will still be down some 13 million jobs since February. 

The unemployment rate is expected to fall to 10.5% in July, still above the Great Recession peak.

Only 167,000 new private sector jobs were added last month, according to ADP, while economists polled by Refinitiv expected a whopping 1.5 million.

This is the third month of job gains in a row for the private sector — 3.3 million in May and 4.3 million in June. But the low number doesn’t bode well for Friday’s government jobs report, which economists predict will be 1.6 million new jobs.

Economists glance at the ADP number to get an indication for the official numbers, but because the reports are based on different surveys, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

As per ADP, both small and large businesses added jobs, but mid-sized companies shed 25,000 positions.

Natural resources, construction, financial services and IT were among the sectors that lost jobs, while the professional and business segment added the most positions with 58,000.

In Florida, 43% of all Covid-19 deaths are linked to long-term care facilities, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health.

To date, 3,155 out of 7,402 total deaths are associated with long-term care facilities in the state of Florida, according to the department’s data.

The list of long-term care facilities with active Covid-19 cases is available here, and the list of long-term care facilities with deaths is available here, which is updated weekly.

Tony Potts, a 69-year-old retiree living in Ormond Beach, receives his first injection as a participant in a Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial sponsored by Moderna at Accel Research Sites on August 4, 2020 in DeLand, Florida.

Moderna, one of the companies working on a treatment for Covid-19, said Wednesday that it’s on track to finish enrollment for a phase three study of its vaccine by the end of September and plans to eventually price it below $40 per dose for most customers.

The biotech, which has received funding from the United States federal government’s Operation Warp Speed program, also said it had about $400 million of customer deposits for a potential supply of its mRNA-1273 vaccine.

People have also been closely watching to see what drug companies plan to charge for treatments after biotech Gilead Sciences revealed in June that its remdesivir drug would cost $520 a vial, or $3,120 for a five-day course of six vials, for people covered by private heath insurance plans.

But Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel vowed during a conference call with analysts that its vaccine would be affordable. 

Moderna made the announcement in its earnings release Wednesday morning. The company posted a loss that was smaller than expected but revenue that topped forecasts.

Shares of Moderna fell about 2% on the news, but the stock has soared more than 300% this year on hopes that it will be able to develop a successful coronavirus vaccine.

The company has also come under scrutiny from some investors as several insiders have sold stock as it has surged.

Moderna is just one of several companies racing to come up with a vaccine. Shares of another smaller biotech, Novavax, soared 20% Wednesday after it announced promising clinical trial results of its own.

Johnson & Johnson headquarters stands in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on Saturday, August 1.

The US Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced it will own 100 million doses of the Covid-19 investigational vaccine Johnson & Johnson is developing. 

In a statement, HHS said the doses from the “large-scale manufacturing and delivery” agreement could be used in clinical trials or as part of a Covid-19 vaccination campaign under the guidance of the US Food and Drug Administration.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is committing more than $1 billion for this agreement, Johnson & Johnson said in a separate statement. The US government may also purchase an additional 200 million doses of the vaccine candidate under a subsequent agreement, the company added.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in the statement the federal government is assembling a “portfolio of vaccines” under Operation Warp Speed and this latest partnership will increase the chances the US “will have at least one safe, effective vaccine by 2021.”

Manufacturing will take place while clinical trials are underway to expedite the traditional vaccine development timelines, according to the statement.

The doses would be available to the American people at no cost if used in a Covid-19 vaccination campaign. However, health care professionals could charge for the cost of administering the vaccine even if the doses are purchased by the government, according to HHS.

Janssen has received about $456 million for clinical trials and other vaccine development activities from BARDA, according to HHS.

Amy Forehand.

A first-grade teacher says she just found out yesterday that her county will proceed with allowing kindergarten and first-grade students back into her school. 

Amy Forehand, a teacher in Gwinnett County, Georgia, told CNN’s “New Day” that she had been preparing for virtual learning and now has “a lot of fears” about the news that students will be returning on August 26. 

Forehand said she has asthma and is worried about her health and the well-being of her family and 2-year-old son.  

“Fears and anxiety are really high right now as we are trying to contemplate what this is going to look like for our students and for us and our safety,” she said.

Forehand said that the physical space of her school is not prepared yet for social distancing and has not been equipped with any sanitizing stations. 

The teacher said she isn’t comfortable with the situation right now, but she is still optimistic that something will work out. 

Watch the interview:

All pubs, cafes, bars and restaurants are to close in the Scottish city of Aberdeen by 5 p.m. local time Wednesday after a “significant” local outbreak in the area.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the measures during a new conference today, saying that the high number of new cases “considerably heightens our concern that we are dealing with a significant outbreak in Aberdeen.”

According to Sturgeon, 54 cases associated with the cluster have now been confirmed. The outbreak was first identified by the local health authority last week. Sturgeon said that despite the main link in the cluster having been identified, more than 20 licensed venues “are now part of the contact tracing picture.”

A further 64 cases were confirmed for the whole of Scotland on Wednesday.

New safety measures include:

The measures will remain in place for a seven day period, according to Sturgeon and will be extended if necessary. Sturgeon acknowledged that this was “extremely unwelcome news for the people of Aberdeen.” 

Sturgeon emphasized that this “is also about doing everything we can to ensure that our children can return to school next week.”

The University of Connecticut Department of Athletics announced today that its football program will cancel all competition for the 2020-21 school year.

According to the press release, members of the team will remain enrolled in classes, either virtually or in person, as full-time students at the school.  They will also retain access to facilities and support services in accordance with NCAA rules, ensuring that student-athletes remain on track academically and developmentally.    

“We engaged and listened to the concerns of our football student-athletes and feel this is the best decision for their health, safety, and well-being,” head football coach Randy Edsall said. “Our team is united in this approach and we will use this time to further player development within the program and gear ourselves to the 2021 season.”

The football student-athletes added this in the statement. 

The start of the new school year is already proving that there is no one way to reopen schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that returning to classes does not mean anything close to returning to normal.

Reopenings are underway, with the number of cases in the US surpassing 4.7 million and 156,782 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, leaving school districts to strategize how to safely restart.

Their plans for the best way forward vary wildly.

Chicago Public Schools is expected to begin the year with full remote learning for students, according to local reports.

Meanwhile in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds pressed to have students back in the classroom by emphasizing that defying the state’s 50% in-person learning mandate is against the law.

Other school leaders fall somewhere in between. In California, Los Angeles County announced that officials will not issue any waivers that would allow elementary schools to open for in-person classes. And in Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves ordered a delay in the return-to-classroom date for students in grades 7-12 in eight counties.

But as the infection rates in the country change, so will many districts’ plans, said Wendy Price, president of the National Association of School Psychologists.

Read the full story:

Amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19, Alma Odong wears a mask as she cleans a classroom at Wylie High School in Wylie, Texas. The cost of bringing students back to classrooms is proving a major stumbling block to safely reopening schools across the U.S. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

Related article Schools find there's 'no one size fits all' approach to returning to campus during coronavirus outbreak

President Trump argued on Wednesday that children should return to US schools because they’re “almost” or “virtually immune” from the coronavirus. Even though children are less susceptible to the virus, they can still transmit it to others in their household or within their communities.   

Trump said he would get media criticism for using the term “totally immune,” adding, “but the fact is that they are virtually immune from this problem.” 

The President also brought up that only one minor had died from coronavirus in the state of New Jersey and that he suspected the child was diabetic. He also suggested that children under the diabetic child’s age were also even more immune. 

Remember: But at least two children have died from coronavirus in New Jersey and both were under the age of five. 

The President also said older teachers should wait out the pandemic before returning to work in classrooms. 

Last month, Trump asserted that children do not catch or spread the coronavirus easily and that he’s comfortable with his children and grandchildren returning to school. 

What we know about kids and coronavirus: CNN previously reported that researchers in South Korea have found that children between the ages of 10 and 19 can transmit Covid-19 within a household just as much as adults, according to research published in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. They also found that children ages 9 and under transmitted the virus within their household at rates that were a lot lower. 

US Surgeon General Jerome Adams told CBS News last month that though the risk to children getting coronavirus is low, they can still transmit it to others.  

“We know the risk is low to the actual students. But we know they can transmit to others. … We need to take measures to make sure we protect those who are vulnerable either because they are older or they have chronic medical conditions,” Adams said. 

In this Wednesday, April 1 photo, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba announces a stay-at-home order for the city of Jackson to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi, said he is worried that the state has “yet to see the worst” of the coronavirus pandemic as cases continue to grow. 

He said that the city’s hospitals and intensive care units are “overwhelmed” and asked for temporary hospitals to be set up during a recent meeting with the governor and Dr. Deborah Birx, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force. 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves just implemented a two-week temporary statewide mask mandate, which Lumumba calls “necessary.” 

“I think that we failed to operate with a sense of urgency. We issued a … mandatory facial covering mandate in the city of Jackson nearly a month ago,” Lumumba said. 

“…We warned that we were opening up too soon and that communities were having their hand forced to do so. And so I think we’re seeing the ill effects of that decision,” he said. 

Lumumba also spoke out against President Trump saying in an interview “it is what it is” when asked about the coronavirus death toll. “It’s simply not OK just to say that people will die, knowing that we haven’t put our best effort forward,” the mayor said. 

Watch:

President Donald Trump answers questions from the press at the White House in Washington, on August 4.

President Trump reiterated on Wednesday that he may use executive authority to implement a payroll tax cut.

The President then went on to say that the leaders of Democratic states don’t want their states to reopen.

“The Democrats are standing in our way. They don’t want their states open, even if their state’s in good shape,” the President said.

Some context: Trump has been pushing Congress to include a payroll tax cut in the next economic relief package. Payroll tax cuts have had mixed results in the past, and some economists argue that it’s not the best way to boost the economy right now.

A payroll tax cut would reduce the amount taken out of workers’ paychecks to fund federal programs including Social Security and Medicare.

Congress would have to decide how much to reduce the rate and how long the tax holiday would last.

Medics transfer a patient on a stretcher from an ambulance outside Coral Gables Hospital near Miami on July 30. 

In Florida, 52 hospitals have reached ICU capacity and show zero ICU beds available, according to data released by the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA). 

Eight of the hospitals at capacity are in Miami-Dade County, eight in Hillsborough and six of them are in Broward County, AHCA data shows.

Another 38 hospitals have 10% or less ICU capacity available, according to AHCA.

AHCA reports about 16% ICU beds are available across the State of Florida.

On Tuesday, Florida reported 5,446 coronavirus cases and 245 additional deaths in a single day, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health (DOH). 

There are now 497,330 total cases in the state, including out-of-state residents, and it has reported 7,402 resident deaths to date, according to DOH data.

Google is chiming into the Covid-19 discourse using a “Google Doodle” to emphasize the importance of wearing a mask. Their homepage is featuring a Google logo that shows each letter doing its part and following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.

In the short doodle scene, the letters are brandishing colorful masks. They sprout feet and shuffle away from each other to demonstrate their effort to social distance. The letter “e” sends “a” heart emoji into the air, depicting adherence to CDC guidelines as an act of compassion towards its fellow letters.

Clicking on the animation takes the viewer to Google’s Covid-19 prevention page where there are additional safety tips. Google is also using other platforms to highlight this message including YouTube and Google Maps.

A PSA on YouTube reminds people that wearing masks is a simple way that can reduce Covid-19 transmission by 80%. It is imploring individuals to “Do it for them. Do it for you. Do it for all of us.”

A version of this story appeared in the August 5 edition of CNN’s Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction newsletter. Sign up here to receive the need-to-know headlines every weekday.

“It is what it is.”

That’s what President Donald Trump had to say about the staggering death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, which, at more than 150,000, is nearly a quarter of all global fatalities – far outpacing that of any other nation.

In an interview with Axios on HBO, Trump claimed that the virus is “under control as much as you can control it” in the US, despite the fact that infection rates and deaths have been spiking. 

Nationally, the seven-day average of new daily cases is at about 60,000, while deaths, which typically lag several weeks behind, are steadily increasing, averaging 1,000 a day for a week straight.

Globally, more than 5,900 people are dying every day from Covid-19 on average, according to CNN calculations based on Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data from the past two weeks. That is 248 people per hour, or about one person every 15 seconds.

“We’re lower than the world,” Trump said in an incomprehensible response when pressed on the climbing US death toll.

Read more in today’s coronavirus newsletter.

From today, Florida will provide rapid Covid-19 antigen testing at two state-supported drive-thru locations in Miami-Dade County, according to Jason Mahon, communications director at the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

The rapid testing sites will be located at Hard Rock Stadium and Marlins Park and will be available for symptomatic individuals and people over the age of 65.

These are the first state-supported antigen testing sites in the state, Mahon said. 

On the same day, the City of Miami Beach announced it has closed all basketball courts in city parks due to Covid-19, according to the city government. The order is effective immediately.

Miami Beach plans to remove the basketball rims across all city courts and all solo or group basketball activity, including dribbling or shooting basketballs, is prohibited.

On Tuesday, Florida reported 5,446 coronavirus cases and 245 additional deaths in a single day, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health (DOH). 

There are now 497,330 total cases in the state, including out-of-state residents, and it has reported 7,402 resident deaths to date, according to DOH data.

Joe Biden’s campaign says it has reserved $280 million in television and digital advertising that it plans to use largely to hammer President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The presumptive Democratic nominee’s ads will often run 60 seconds rather than the more typical 30-second commercials, and will frequently feature Biden speaking directly into a camera, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo Wednesday. The ads will air in 15 states the campaign believes will be competitive in November’s election.

The ads will focus heavily on the pandemic, contrasting what Biden’s campaign sees as Trump’s failures with the former vice president’s experience and empathy. Biden’s ads are intended to allow voters to “hear directly from the vice president in his own voice, speaking to this moment that we’re in,” O’Malley Dillon told reporters in a call detailing the strategy.

Read the full story here.

Bolivia has made the stark choice to cancel school for the rest of the year due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Some 2 million students in the highland nation won’t attend either online or in-person classes until at least 2021.

“The school year is cancelled because the vast majority of rural areas do not have internet,” said Yerko Nunez, Bolivian minister of the presidency.

“The children do not have internet. The fiber optic system unfortunately only reaches the city.”

UNICEF reports only 40% of Bolivian students are able to take classes online but, as other countries find creative solutions, some feel Bolivia is giving up too easily.

CNN’s Patrick Oppmann has the full story.

Watch below: Bolivia cancels school year for 2 million children due to Covid-19

A third US company has released study results showing its coronavirus vaccine is safe and elicits an immune response.

Novavax, Inc. released Phase 1 data Tuesday from 131 volunteers showing that after two doses of the vaccine, participants developed neutralizing antibodies at levels more than four times higher on average than the antibodies developed by people who had recovered from Covid-19. Neutralizing antibodies fight off the virus that causes Covid-19.

“That’s good. That’s really encouraging,” said Novavax president Dr. Gregory Glenn.

The vaccine also induced a response from T-cells, a type of immune cell, according to an analysis of 16 randomly selected volunteers, the report stated.

The report has been submitted to a medical journal, but has not yet been reviewed by scientists outside of Novavax or published.

Read the full story here.

For a world crippled by the coronavirus, salvation hinges on a vaccine.

But in the United States, where at least 4.6 million people have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, the promise of that vaccine is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded Covid-19: obesity.

Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that Covid-19 vaccines will be any different.

“Will we have a Covid vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way,” said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“Will it still work in the obese? Our prediction is no.”

Read the full story here.

A Georgia second grader tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the first day of school, the school district told CNN.

Sixes Elementary in the Cherokee County School district began in-person classes on Monday. But by Tuesday, a classroom was temporarily closed for deep cleaning and the teacher and 20 other students had been asked to quarantine for two weeks after the second grader tested positive.

Parents and officials have debated whether it is safe to send students back into classrooms as virus cases have surged across the country. While health experts are still investigating how children spread the virus, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci has emphasized that schools need to include safety in their reopening plans.

Read the full story here.

Critical media reporting about Operation Warp Speed, the US federal government’s effort to speed development of drugs, vaccines and other measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, is distracting people working on the project, its chief adviser said.

Former pharma executive Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief adviser to Operation Warp Speed, complained on a US Health and Human Services Department podcast that he never expected to encounter what he considers unfavorable media coverage.

Michael Caputo, the podcast host and assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS, asked if accepting this kind of job position within the Trump administration was akin to placing “a target on your back.”

“Yes. Honestly, I think I was naïve when I made the decision,” answered Slaoui, who spent 30 years at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, including as chairman of global vaccines.

Read the full story:

Related article Operation Warp Speed adviser says media criticism slows coronavirus fight

Coronavirus infection rates in the United States are significantly higher among children of minority race and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, according to a new study.

The study examined 1,000 child patients tested between March 21 and April 28 in Washington DC. Only 7.3% of White children tested positive for coronavirus, in contrast to 30% of Black children and 46.4% of Hispanic children, the study found.

Three times as many Black children reported known exposure to the virus as White children, the researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics on Wednesday.

Socioeconomic background: The test site collected basic demographic information for all patients; the research team then used survey data to estimate family income based on home addresses.

Of the 1,000 people tested, 207 were positive for coronavirus. About 9.7% of those in the highest income quartile were infected, while 37.7% in the lowest quartile tested positive, the team found.

Racial breakdown: Of the patients tested, about one third were Black and about a quarter were Hispanic.

The team found that the inequities existed even after they adjusted for age, sex and median family income.

What this means: Inequalities could be in part due to limited access to health care and resources, as well as bias and discrimination, but the researchers said that further research is needed to understand the cause.

These findings may even underestimate the inequities in coronavirus rates, because a physician referral was needed for testing. Minority and lower socioeconomic populations have less access to primary care physicians, meaning the inequities could be even larger in reality than observable in this study.

Because this study focused on one site, the results may not be generalizable to other geographic locations. 

People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus cross an intersection in Beijing, China, on Tuesday, August 4.

China reported 27 new coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Tuesday, a sign its outbreak may be subsiding after a rise in figures in the past few weeks, according to the country’s National Health Commission.

Five of the new cases were imported from abroad, and the remaining 22 cases were locally transmitted in Xinjiang province. There were no new deaths.

China also reported 24 new asymptomatic cases, which are counted on a separate tally.

That raises the country’s total to 88,206 cases and 4,676 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

National Health Service personnel fumigates during an operation to curb the spread of COVID-19 in San Cristobal, Domincan Republic, on June 13, 2020.

The Dominican Republic government on Tuesday said it will “intervene” at a hospital in the northern city of Nagua after 44 staff members tested positive for Covid-19.

The announcement comes after the director of Antonio Yapor Heded Hospital, Dr. Emmanuel Oscar Perez, on Monday said at least seven doctors, 18 nurses and 19 administrative employees at the hospital have tested positive so far. 

The minister said that a possible “biosecurity failure” could have caused the outbreak at the hospital. 

He added that experts from the capital, Santo Domingo, along with members of the Emergency Operations Center and local authorities will be heading to the hospital to assist to contain the outbreak.  

CNN has reached out to the hospital for comment. 

The Dominican Republic has so far registered 74,295 coronavirus cases and 1,213 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

The United States recorded 57,540 new coronavirus cases and 1,399 virus-related deaths on Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

That raises the national total to at least 4,771,080 infections and 156,801 fatalities. 

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.

California remains the state with the highest number of cases, at 526,685. Florida follows, then Texas, New York, and Georgia.

But New York still has the highest number of Covid deaths, at 32,725. Only one other state – neighboring New Jersey – has crossed the 10,000 mark in its death toll.

Follow our live tracker of US cases here:

People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus walk on a street in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, August 4.

Japan recorded 1,240 new coronavirus cases and six virus-related deaths on Tuesday, as the country grapples with a recent spike in infections.

Tuesday’s figures raise the national total to 41,841 cases and 1,035 deaths.

Of Tuesday’s new cases, abut a quarter came from the country’s capital, Tokyo. This is the eighth straight day that Tokyo has recorded more than 200 new daily cases.

Two thirds of the city’s Tuesday cases are untraceable, meaning authorities were unable to find out the source of infection, said the metropolitan government.

Other major cities like Osaka also saw high numbers of new cases, raising concerns among local politicians. The governor of Kanagawa prefecture, which neighbors Tokyo, said he expected the rise in Tokyo cases to also spread into his prefecture.

A spike in cases: For months, Japan seemed to have the virus largely under control. Throughout most of May and June, daily case numbers hovered around several dozen, ranging from around 20 to 60 a day.

But case numbers passed 100 on June 30, and have only continued rising since then, jumping by hundreds in a matter of weeks.

Ron Klain, former White House Ebola response coordinator, speaks during a House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing in Washington DC, on March 10.

People in the United States are at high risk of dying from coronavirus – perhaps more than people anywhere else in the world, said Ron Klain, the former Ebola czar under President Barack Obama.

“America has one of the worst numbers on planet Earth. You are more likely as an American to die from Covid then you are in almost any other country,” said Klain, who was chief of staff to then vice-president Joe Biden, on Tuesday.

“It is what it is”: In an interview with the news website Axios on Monday, President Donald Trump responded to a question about the high Covid-19 death rate in the US by saying “it is what it is.”

Trump also argued that he’s doing a good job and that the US is doing better than any other country in responding to the pandemic.

Victoria's State Premier Daniel Andrews arrives for a news conference in Melbourne, Australia, on August 5.

The Australian state of Victoria, the current center of the country’s outbreak, saw 725 new coronavirus cases and 15 new deaths on Tuesday, according to State Premier Daniel Andrews.

The state is three days into a Stage 4 Lockdown. Earlier in July, Melbourne – the state capital – had been placed under soft lockdown as cases spiked. Victoria reimposed the full lockdown after declaring a “state of disaster” on Sunday.

Of Tuesday’s new cases, 164 have been linked to known cases and outbreaks. The remaining 561 cases are still under investigation for infection origin.

Twelve of the 15 new deaths reported are linked to elderly care homes. One man aged in his 30s has died after contracting the virus, Andrews said. 

New lockdown rules: In a news briefing on Tuesday, Andrews thanked residents for abiding by the new restrictions, and called out those who were flouting the rules.

He also announced that non-urgent elective surgery in public and private hospitals will be put on hold until further notice to preserve capacity in the health system 

Father Tomas Torres Najera, Vicar of the Cuernavaca Diocese greets parishioners sitting in their cars before Mass at a drive-in cinema in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Sunday, August 2.

Mexico reported 6,148 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, bringing its total number of infections to nearly 450,000, according to the country’s Health Ministry. 

The ministry also registered 857 new related fatalities, raising the total death toll to 48,869. 

On Monday, Mexican Education Minister Esteban Moctezuma announced that the 2020-21 school year will begin with remote learning on August 24.  

Gov. Greg Abbott speaks to the media during a visit to a Texas Division of Emergency Management Warehouse in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday, August 4.

Stacey Nagy, a Texas woman who lost her husband David to the coronavirus, called out the President and state governor Greg Abbott in no uncertain terms in his obituary.

“Family members believe David’s death was needless,” the obituary read. “They blame his death and the deaths of all the other innocent people, on Trump, Abbott, and all the other politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.”

Nagy told CNN on Tuesday night that she initially hoped putting her husband’s obituary in their local newspaper might spur members of her community to respect the seriousness of the pandemic, and was surprised when her words spread nationwide online.

“I posted it in my little town’s little newspaper, and hoped that a few of the residents would read it and start wearing masks, and I had no idea that it would have turned out the way it did,” she said.

Loving husband: Nagy told CNN how her husband lived, in addition to the manner in which he died.

“Dave was a character, he was a fun-loving person, and he loved his family dearly,” Nagy said. “You know, I could be in the kitchen washing dishes at the sink and he would come up and start kissing the back of neck, giving me chills in the back of my neck, and he was the love of my life, and I love him. He was a part of me, and I feel lost without him.”

US President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House in Washington DC, on Tuesday, August 4.

US President Donald Trump told reporters that he is “looking at” possibly signing an executive action if no deal is made by the end of this week on unemployment benefits but said that “progress” is being made on the Hill.

Trump also sounded more encouraged by discussions today on the Hill saying, “We’re talking with the Democrats. They seem to be much more interested in solving the problems in some of the Democrat-run states and cities that have suffered greatly through bad management.”

“As far as the various things that I may or may not sign – I may not have to sign. Progress has been made as you know, very well on the Hill. We’ll see what happens, including the payroll tax suspension,” Trump added.

It remains unclear what, if any, legal authority the executive branch has to address those issues in a substantive manner. Congressional aides and lawmakers, who remain in the dark on the details, are skeptical the efforts have any validity. 

Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti speaks during a news conference in Pristina, Kosovo, on July 24.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti has tested positive for Covid-19, his press office told CNN on Tuesday. 

Hoti is in good health and will stay home for the next two weeks, following his doctor’s recommendation, his press office said.

“Indeed, we have a difficult situation here, but the government and health institutions are doing everything they can to manage and prevent this pandemic,” the press office told CNN in an e-mail.

Latin America and the Caribbean have reached over 5 million cases of Covid-19, according to a CNN tally based on Johns Hopkins University (JHU) data.

As of Tuesday morning, the region has reported 5,021,760 coronavirus cases and 203,589 deaths, according to the data released by JHU.

Brazil continues to be second hardest-hit country worldwide following the US and the first in the Latin American region with 2,750,318 cases reported on Monday, according to JHU.

Among the top 10 countries with the most cases worldwide, five are from Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia, according to JHU.

Several countries in Latin America, including Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Peru, have seen an acceleration in the number of new cases over the past two to three weeks.

CNN is tracking worldwide coronavirus cases here: