August 7 coronavirus news

President Trump on Friday laid out the executive actions he would pursue “if Democrats continue to hold” a relief package “hostage.”

The actions would include a payroll tax deferment, extending unemployment benefits, extending an eviction moratorium and deferring student loan payments and forgiving their interest.

“If Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage I will act under my authority as President to get Americans the relief they need,” he continued.

Some context: Negotiations over the next stimulus package stalled on Capitol Hill today as Democrats and Trump administration officials walked away after talks broke down and devolved into partisan finger-pointing. 

Princeton University has decided to have all undergraduate students fully remote for the fall 2020 semester, according to an update sent by Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber on Friday.

According to Eisgruber's letter, the decision was made due to the pandemic's impact on New Jersey which "has led us to conclude that we cannot provide a genuinely meaningful on-campus experience for our undergraduate students this fall in a manner that is respectful of public health concerns and consistent with state regulations and guidance."

Some context: Princeton had announced July 6 that it planned to welcome back first-years and juniors for the fall semester, and sophomores and seniors for the spring semester, however, that plan was always subject to change according to the public health situation.

According to the announcement, Princeton hopes to bring students back to campus in the spring, and said seniors in the class of 2021 will be its top priority.

People in many parts of the US are moving around as much as they did before the pandemic started, a top disease forecaster said Friday.

That’s not good, said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which issues regular forecasts about the coronavirus pandemic.

More movement predicts more spread of the virus.

“If you look at the mobility data collected from cell phones in many parts of the country, we're almost back to pre-Covid levels of mobility, so we're just not being as cautious as other people are in other countries,” Murray told CNN on Friday.

Murray said that when cases start to come down, people tend to start interacting more, resulting in the up and down phenomenon many states have experienced with Covid-19 cases. 

There are other things people can do to slow the pandemic besides staying put, Murray said.

“Our view about this is that there should be a universal mask mandate in the US, that should come with some penalty if you're caught without a mask, because we know penalties actually increase mask-wearing even more than just a mandate,” Murray said. 

The latest prediction: The IHME released a model Thursday projecting nearly 300,000 deaths in the US from coronavirus by Dec. 1. 

The model calculated that if 95% of the people in the US wore masks, that number could decrease to 228,271 deaths, saving more than 66,000 lives.

California colleges and universities reopening this fall will need to follow guidelines issued on Friday by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), which includes the use of face coverings, social distancing and intensified cleaning protocols.

While indoor lectures are currently prohibited in counties on the state’s monitoring list, courses offered in specialized indoor settings like labs and studio arts will be permitted as long as substantial physical distancing measures are in place based on the nature of work performed in the space, the guidance says. 

Here's what else the state said:

The newly released guidance also provides information on college sports.

“Teams must require masks for coaches, staff, media and any players not engaged in play at each match,” the guidance stated. Practice may only resume if athletes and staff get regular periodic Covid-19 testing. 

The state said competitions for high contact sports may be held without spectators only if the college can provide Covid-19 testing and results within 72 hours of a game.

“As colleges and other institutions of higher education plan to resume in-person instruction, it’s critical that campuses make modifications to reduce risk," State Epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan said in a news release. "This guidance aims to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 among our students, families, and the communities where they study.”  

Some context: Many campuses in the state, including the University of Southern California and schools within the University of California system, have announced they will start the school year with mostly online classes.

A glitch in California’s disease registry system (CalREDIE) has created a backlog of 250,000 to 300,000 records causing an underreporting of some coronavirus cases, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in a briefing on Friday.

While the majority of these records may be coronavirus results, Ghaly explained that it includes duplicate records, both positive and negative test results, and records for any other reportable diseases.

A server outage on July 25 created a delay in lab records going into the state’s lab reporting system, Ghaly said. While temporary technical changes were implemented to allow the records to flow into the system more quickly, these changes were not disabled later which caused a further delay in reporting lab data and creating an extensive backlog, he explained. 

The state also learned that they were not receiving data from one of its largest commercial lab for five days between July 31 through Aug. 4, “due to a certificate that the state neglected to renew timely,” Ghaly said.

According to Ghaly, Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed a full investigation into the issue.

Ghaly expects to see a normalization of data in 24 to 48 hours. After working through the backlog, the state will have a better understanding of the statewide epidemiological curve and the future state of hospitalizations.

The glitch in the system did not impact any data on hospitalizations or deaths, according to Ghaly who believes the trend line has been “stabilizing and coming down.”

The Italian government will extend its coronavirus safety measures until Sept. 7, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Friday during a news conference.

The council of ministers approved a decree related to the health emergency, which will be in force from Aug. 10 through Sept. 7.

"The rate of infections in Italy is among the lowest in the European Union," Conte added, recalling how bad the virus hit the country. 

Among the measures that will be extended, the obligation of wearing face masks in closed places accessible to the public, the one-meter distance rule on social distancing and the ban on gatherings.

University of Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley announced that six players would be opting out of the 2020 season due to the pandemic.

The players are defensive lineman Jalen Alexander, offensive guard Austin Fontaine, offensive lineman Johnny Jordan, quarterback Josh Jackson, defensive back Vincent Flythe and linebacker TJ Kautai.

Jackson, Jordan and Fontaine were starters last season.

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) announced that the Covid-19 data numbers posted today contain “a significant increase due to a data backlog from earlier in the week.”

The state reported 2,015 new cases Covid-19, but according to VDH, that number includes information that should have been reported on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, as well as the regular numbers for Friday.

Note: These numbers were released by the state’s 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 chief adviser for Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, said Friday that coronavirus vaccine trials will be representative of those most impacted by the virus.

Slaoui also addressed plans to distribute a vaccine, once it is approved. 

“We are extremely cognizant of the importance of making sure that the vaccines, if and when they become available, are appropriately allocated in the population, on the basis of data…and on the basis of need,” he said.

More details: Slaoui said his team’s role in the operation is to deliver up to 300 million doses in the US, beginning January 2021 or earlier.

They hope to have completed that process by mid-2021. He added that they have an agreement with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review all data “quickly, but totally independently.”

He said the aim is to receive full FDA approval of a vaccine, adding that it will be the FDA’s decision to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) of a vaccine, which would greenlight the vaccine for use before it receives full approval. The FDA has said that any vaccine that receives an EUA must meet efficacy requirements first.