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Back to Trump news now:
Sean Conley, White House physician, reportedly told co-workers in the spring, before the president contracted Covid-19, that he was feeling intense personal stress in his current job, according to a new report from the Washington Post.
Conley, a 40-year-old Navy commander, joined the White House medical staff in December 2016 after serving as a Navy emergency physician and serving in a trauma unit in Afghanistan. He was tapped as White House physician in 2018.
The Post reports that those who have worked with Conley believe that the public statements he has given appear to be dictated by politics. “Every statement he is giving appears to be political, dictated by the White House or the president,” one anonymous source who has worked with Conley told the Post. “These are not statement a medical doctor gives.”
After painting an upbeat picture of the president’s health on Saturday, Conley today admitted that the president’s oxygen levels had dropped at one point. He said that he was “trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, over his course of illness, has had.”
In the UK, thousands of work coaches will be hired under a new government employment programme to help those who have lost their jobs during the pandemic, amid fresh warnings of an unemployment crisis as the furlough scheme ends.
The £238m job entry targeted support (Jets) scheme will help jobseekers who have been out of work for at least three months. It will be available to people receiving the “all work related requirements” universal credit payment, or the new style jobseeker’s allowance:
Irish health chiefs recommend return to full lockdown
Ireland’s health chiefs recommended to the government on Sunday that the country enter a second nationwide lockdown for four weeks in a surprise move that cabinet will discuss on Monday, two government sources said.
Reuters: Ireland’s National Public Health Emergency Team recommended a leap to the highest level of COVID-19 restrictions, Level 5, from current Level 2 controls in 24 of Ireland’s 26 counties and stricter Level 3 measures in Dublin and Donegal.
The government has almost entirely adopted their health chiefs’ advice throughout the pandemic, but one of the sources said a return to lockdown would have a serious economic and societal impact.
Prime Minister Micheal Martin and the leaders of his two coalition partners will meet the country’s chief medical officer on Monday ahead of a cabinet meeting to discuss the recommendations.
Under level 5, people are asked to stay at home, except to exercise within 5 kilometres, with only essential retailers allowed to stay open. Unlike the first lockdown, schools and crèches would not have to close.
Nine New York neighbourhoods headed for lockdown
New York City’s mayor said Sunday that he has asked the state for permission to close schools and reinstate restrictions on nonessential businesses in several neighbourhoods because of a resurgence of the coronavirus.
The action, if approved, would mark a disheartening retreat for a city that enjoyed a summer with less spread of the virus than most other parts of the country, and had only recently celebrated the return of students citywide to in-person learning in classrooms.
Shutdowns would happen starting Wednesday in nine ZIP codes in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
About 100 public schools and 200 private schools would have to close. Indoor dining, which just resumed a few days ago, would be suspended. Outdoor restaurant dining would shut down in the affected neighbourhoods as well, and gyms would close.
Houses of worship would be allowed to remain open with existing restrictions in place, de Blasio said.
Over the past two weeks, the number of new cases of the virus has been rising in pockets of the city, predominantly in neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are home to the city’s large Orthodox Jewish population.
Nearly 1,100 people have tested positive in Brooklyn in just the last four days, according to state figures.
As many as 500,000 people live in the neighborhoods affected by the proposed shutdown, de Blasio said. He said the lockdown could be lifted in 14 days or 28 days if the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 declines.
More now on doctors condemning Trump for his surprise drive-by visit to supporters outside the Walter Reed military medical center, where the president is being treated for an infection of Covid-19.
At least two other people, probably Secret Service agents, wearing respirators and eye protection, were seen on video in the vehicle accompanying Trump, who was also masked, during the short drive.
James Phillips, doctor of emergency medicine at George Washington University, who is an attending physician at Walter Reed, called the stunt “insanity”.
“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die,” he wrote in a tweet.
Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University school of medicine and health services, said in a tweet: “By taking a joy ride outside Walter Reed the president is placing his Secret Service detail at grave risk”:
Jonathan Reiner
(@JReinerMD)By taking a joy ride outside Walter Reed the president is placing his Secret Service detail at grave risk. In the hospital when we go into close contact with a COVID patient we dress in full PPE: Gown, gloves, N95, eye protection, hat. This is the height of irresponsibility.
Trump signalled his intention to visit his flag-waving supporters in a video tweet of his own, released only moments before a cavalcade of black SUVs drove through the gates of the Maryland medical center. Trump was seen waving animatedly through a fully-closed window, before the vehicles doubled back into the hospital grounds.
