Health News at Your Fingertips

There have been more than 915,000 new cases in last two weeks in the US.

As states continue to dial back reopening efforts, nearly every metric for tracking the coronavirus outbreak has shown a worsening spread.

“I don’t see this disappearing,” Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told tuberculosis researchers during a live stream on Wednesday.

“It is so efficient in its ability to transmit from human to human that I think we ultimately will get control of it. I don’t really see us eradicating it.”

More than 915,000 new cases have been confirmed in just the past two weeks, totaling more than the entire month of June. The US has now exceeded 140,000 deaths, with Texas alone reporting a state record 197 new fatalities on Wednesday.

New York City has reached its goal of performing 50,000 coronavirus tests a day and its contact tracing effort has potentially prevented thousands of new infections, officials said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said four new clinics operated by the urgent care company MedRite will bring the total citywide daily testing capacity to 50,000.

“This is the number we’ve been wanting to get to for quite a while. We will now have that capacity,” he said.

Dr Ted Long, the head of the city’s contact tracing effort, said the average wait for test results citywide is now two days, down from more than double that a week ago, but he acknowledged that waits at some testing sites have been much longer.

The African Development Bank said it would provide $285 million in aid to Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad to help them fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The aid was being provided within the framework of a $10-billion Covid-19 response facility unveiled by the AfDB in April.

Niger would receive support of $108.8 million, Burkina Faso $54.6 million and Mali $48.9 million in both loans and grants, a statement said.

Chad would receive $61.2 million and Mauritania $10.2 million in the form of grants.

“The board of directors of the AfDB has approved budgetary support of $284.8 million to help the efforts of the Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad – in implementing their response plans to the Covid-19 pandemic and economic recovery,” the pan-African bank said.

The aid “is particularly important for the G5 Sahel countries which are already suffering from climate, humanitarian and security shocks,” said the bank’s director general for West Africa, Marie-Laure Akin Olugbade.

Bolivia’s general election will be pushed back until October 18 due to the pandemic.

The head of the electoral tribunal said on Thursday that the vote would be postponed from the previously scheduled September 6 date to ensure the safety of voters, with hospitals and cemeteries straining under the impact of the virus.

“This election requires the highest possible health security measures to protect the health of Bolivians,” tribunal President Salvador Romero told a news conference in La Paz.

The vote is key to the political future of the Andean nation of 11.5 million people after a fraught election last year sparked widespread protests and led to the resignation of the country’s long-term leftist president Evo Morales.

In a political vacuum and amid deadly conflicts on the street, right-wing lawmaker Jeanine Anez was ushered into power, pledging to hold quick new elections, originally planned for May before being delayed by the pandemic to September.

Anez is running in the election, while Morales is pulling the political strings from exile in Argentina with his Movement for Socialism party, whose candidate Luis Arce leads in some polls.
Morales wrote on Twitter the delay “will only harm the people” and blamed the interim government for its response to the pandemic. He added the move was unconstitutional and a tactic for his opponents to “gain more time.”

Anez said she would accept the new date.

“Whatever the date, the government calls for promoting economic revival, the fight against the virus and the consolidation of democracy,” she wrote on Twitter.

The new election schedule would see a second-round held on November 29 if there was no clear winner in the first-round vote.

It took only 15 days for the total number of coronavirus cases in the US to go from 3 million to 4 million.

In contrast, the number of US coronavirus cases surpassed 1 million 99 days after the country’s first case was confirmed.

The US currently accounts for about a quarter of all confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, according to the data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The US hit the grim milestone of four million cases a day after Fox News aired an interview with Trump in which the president argued coronavirus tests are “overrated.”

“To me, every time you test a case it gets reported in the news, we found more cases,” he said.

“If instead of 50 we did 25, we have half the number of cases. So I personally think it’s overrated, but I am totally willing to keep doing it.”

As the US passes 4 million coronavirus cases, Donald Trump is expected to address the media shortly in Washington.

Meanwhile, Florida, which reported a record one-day increase in Covid-19 deaths on Thursday with 173 lives lost, has been sued by a teachers union to stop schools reopening for in-person instruction, which the union says poses an imminent threat to the health, safety and welfare of children, staff and parents.

Florida’s commissioner said early in July that schools must reopen, but on Thursday Governor Ron DeSantis said parents and teachers had a choice.

“We need to provide all options,” DeSantis told a news conference.

Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funding if schools do not reopen, told a press briefing on Wednesday the decision would ultimately be up to state governors.

Administration officials have said a quicker reopening is essential to get the cratering economy moving again, another central plank of Trump’s re-election campaign.

The number of coronavirus cases in the US has now surpassed four million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The US has confirmed 4,005,414 cases since the start of the pandemic, the highest of any country.

Brazil has the second highest total in the world with around 2.23 million cases followed by India with 1.24 million.

Here are some more comments from the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s address to the nation.

He said it is investigating dozens of alleged corruption cases involving theft or misappropriation of funds earmarked to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

A special investigating team had been set up to look into “allegations of corruption in areas such as the distribution of food parcels, social relief grants, the procurement of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies,” Ramaphosa said.

“At least 36 cases are currently at various stages of investigation and prosecution.”

In April, the government announced an unprecedented 500-billion-rand ($26.7bn) economic stimulus and social relief package to cushion the impact of coronavirus.

But some of those funds have been stolen, misused or relief food aid has been diverted from households in need.

Ramaphosa vowed that all alleged corruption cases would be “thoroughly investigated”, culprits prosecuted and the stolen money recovered.

Corruption involving state assets worsened during the nine-year tenure of the former president Jacob Zuma.

Zuma was forced to resign in February 2018 over graft scandals and Ramaphosa took over vowing to tackle corruption.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said public schools will close again for a month from Monday to limit the spread of coronavirus.

The country has now recorded 408,052 coronavirus cases, the fifth-highest in the world. More than 6,000 people have died from the virus.

Rising infections have caused concern among teaching staff, with unions calling on the government to revoke its decision to reopen schools for certain grades in June.

“Cabinet has decided today that all public schools should take a break for the next four weeks,” Ramaphosa said during an address to the nation, adding that the academic year that is due to end in December would be extended.

Schools will be closed from 27 July and scheduled to reopen on 24 August.

“We have taken a deliberately cautious approach to keep schools closed during a period when the country is expected to experience its greatest increase in infections,” Ramaphosa said.

The president also announced a “historic” R500 billion ($30bn) social relief and economic support package to fund the health response and assist “those in greatest need”.

The director general of the World Health Organization has criticised the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for “untrue and unacceptable” allegations” about the health agency chief’s relationship with China.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said WHO was focused on saving lives as he condemned the reported comments by Pompeo at a closed-door event this week in London.

British newspapers reported that Pompeo claimed Tedros had been bought by the Chinese government.

“The comments are untrue and unacceptable, and without any foundation for that matter,” Tedros told reporters in Geneva.

“If there is one thing that really matters to us and which should matter to the entire international community, its saving lives. And WHO will not be distracted by these comments.”

Critics say the Trump administration has been trying to deflect attention from its own failings in managing the coronavirus outbreak in the US, which has the most confirmed cases and virus-related deaths in the world.

In recent months, the administration has repeatedly criticised WHO’s handling of the pandemic and its alleged deference to Beijing.

Donald Trump has ordered the US to withdraw next year from the agency it has bankrolled and supported for decades.

The White House has released a readout from Donald Trump’s call today with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“Today, President Donald J Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. President Trump and President Putin discussed efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic while continuing to reopen global economies,” the readout says.

“The two leaders also discussed critical bilateral and global issues. President Trump reiterated his hope of avoiding an expensive three-way arms race between China, Russia, and the United States and looked forward to progress on upcoming arms control negotiations in Vienna.”

The readout makes no mention of Trump pressing Putin on reports that Russia offered bounties to Taliban insurgents to kill American troops.

The US president also does not appear to have asked his Russian counterpart about allegations that Kremlin-backed hackers targeted coronavirus vaccine researchers in the US, the UK and Canada.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, says the country’s coronavirus cases have risen above 400,000.

Ramaphosa said the cabinet had decided that all public schools should be closed for the next four weeks with some exceptions.