A spiking COVID-19 case count is straining Florida's hospital system as nearly half of its intensive care units are at least 90% full, state data shows.

On Thursday, Florida recorded a one-day record of 120 deaths. More than 4,000 people have died there since the start of the pandemic.

Mississippi has also seen a recent strain on its hospitals. Five of the largest medical centers have no ICU bed space for new patients – COVID-19 or otherwise – and are being forced to turn patients away.

Meanwhile, some states are scaling back reopening guidelines or adding new requirements: Some bars in Nevada will be closing again Friday and restaurants can no longer serve parties more than six people. Kentucky will join the growing list of states that require face coverings in public, too.

In New Mexico, indoor dining at restaurants and breweries will be restricted again starting Monday, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham halted high school sports and said state parks will be closed to out-of-state residents.

Here are some recent developments:

· Every state in the country had visitors from the Sunshine State this week, according to mobility tracking data, despite a surge of cases in Florida.

· Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Friday he has not briefed President Donald Trump in at least two months.

· New data on the experimental drug remdesivir confirms it can shorten the course of COVID-19 infections and suggests it also can save lives.

· Congestion, runny nose, nausea and diarrhea are the four most recent COVID-19 symptoms that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added to its growing list of potential signs of the novel coronavirus.

· Fifty-eight Major League Baseball players tested positive for the coronavirus upon reporting to their team, while an additional 13 tested positive after workouts began, according to data released by MLB on Friday.

The U.S. has surpassed 3.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. More than 133,000 deaths have been confirmed, according to John Hopkins University data. Globally, there have been 12.3 million cases and over 556,000 deaths.

States scale back reopenings. Here's what's happening

As COVID-19 cases spike across, multiple states have taken measures to scale back their reopening plans. Here are some of the last moves:

· South Carolina: Restaurants, bars, breweries and other establishments won't be able to serve alcoholic beverages starting at 11 p.m. Saturday.

· New Mexico: Parks will close to out-of-state residents, some high school sports were delayed or prohibited for the the fall sports and indoor dining was restricted.

· Nevada: Bars in some counties will have to close Friday. Restaurants also can no longer serve parties more than six people.

Shutdowns prevented quarter of a million deaths

Shutting down states in the early days of the US COVID-19 outbreak prevented at least 250,000 deaths and as many as 750,000-840,000 hospitalizations, a new study found. Shelter-in-place orders took about two weeks to show an effect on hospitalizations and three weeks to limit the number of deaths, according to the study by researchers at the University of Iowa and National Bureau of Economic Research.

The authors, who published their results in the journal Health Affairs, also found that deaths from causes other than COVID-19 might have increased if hospitals had become overwhelmed; slowing cases saved those lives, as well, they said.

Estimates on deaths were limited to 22 of the 42 states that imposed shut-downs between March 21 and May 15, and the researchers only counted confirmed cases and deaths. The hospitalization information was based on data from 19 states.

"These estimates indicate that [stay in place orders] played a key role in flattening the curves not only for cases, but also for deaths and hospitalizations, and eased pressure on hospitals from avoided COVID-19 admissions," the authors conclude. "Of course, [stay in place orders] also generate a large economic toll and are not sustainable over extensive periods. Understanding their effects on cases, deaths, and hospitalizations can help inform policy responses."

CDC adds runny nose, nausea to the growing list of COVID-19 symptoms

Congestion, runny nose, nausea and diarrhea are the four most recent COVID-19 symptoms that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added to its growing list of potential signs of the novel coronavirus.

The CDC previously said symptoms include chills, fever, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and a new loss of taste or smell. The agency now lists 11 symptoms on its website.

The additions come as health experts continue to learn more about the disease, and care for very ill COVID-19 patients is improving. Even so, the CDC states the current list doesn't include all possible symptoms for the virus.

Fauci says he hasn't briefed Trump in at least two months

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Friday he has not briefed President Donald Trump in at least two months and not seen him in person at the White House since June 2, despite a coronavirus resurgence that has strained hospitals and led several states to pause reopenings.

Fauci told the Financial Times he was "sure" his messages were sent to the president even though the two have not been in close contact in the past several weeks.

The comments from the Trump administration's director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came as Trump has been critical of Fauci and spoken openly about issues on which they disagree.

In a Thursday interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci had "made a lot of mistakes" but called him a "nice man." Trump also said "most cases" of coronavirus would "automatically cure. They automatically get better."

Fauci also in the FT interview said Trump was incorrect in claiming 99% of coronavirus cases were "harmless" and may have conflated some statistics.

New data suggests remdesivir can shorten how long people are sick

New data on the experimental drug remdesivir confirms it can shorten the course of COVID-19 infections and suggests it also can save lives.

Gilead Sciences, Inc., a California pharmaceutical company that makes the drug, revealed data Friday about nearly 400 patients in its late-stage clinical trial.

According to the results, 74% of patients treated with remdesivir had recovered by their 14th day of hospitalization, compared to 59% of those who did not get the drug. Nearly 8% of the patients on remdesivir had died by day 14, versus more than 12% of patients who did not receive it.

The study also found patients who took the drug hydroxychloroquine along with remdesivir fared worse than those on remdesivir alone. The company recommended against using the drugs in combination.

Remdesivir, an antiviral initially developed to treat Ebola, has not yet been approved for widespread use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but it has been given emergency use authorization to treat COVID-19 patients.

Report: Plasma shot could protect people against virus for months

A Los Angeles Times report says that researchers are working on an upper-arm injection that would deliver antibody-rich blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors to provide potentially months of protection from the virus.

The approach is similar to one used for other diseases like hepatitis A and could be widely available across the United States, the Times reported.

However, the proposal has received push back from the federal government and pharmaceutical companies, who argue efforts in plasma-based therapy should focus on treating sick people rather than preventing infection, the Times report says.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told the newspaper that the research was promising but more work is needed to show that coronavirus antibodies work.

'The curve is no longer flat': Nearly half of Florida's ICUs are at least 90% full

Nearly half of Florida's intensive-care units are at least 90% full, and more than 1 in 5 are completely full, according to state data.

Hospitals are increasingly strained under COVID-19, and hospitalizations across the state have jumped more than 13% just since July 1. More than 17,100 Floridians have been hospitalized for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

A total of 95 hospital ICUs were at least 90% full Thursday, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. That's nearly half the 207 ICUs that the agency is tracking. At least 45 hospital ICUs were at capacity, and 46 others had only one bed available in the units.

At least 4,111 people in Florida have died from the virus, according to the state, a figure that would have made it the ninth leading cause of death in Florida last year, according to Florida Department of Health statistics. Florida set a one-day record Thursday with 120 deaths. The previous high, 83, was in late April.

"Three months ago, everyone joined in a shared goal of flattening the curve, which was temporarily accomplished ... the curve is no longer flat, instead we have a spike in cases and the spike is growing fast," said Larry Antonucci, CEO of Southwest Florida’s Lee Health hospital system.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: Wear a mask or risk another shutdown

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott begged Texans to mask up in a Friday interview with eastern Texas TV station CBS19, saying face coverings were "the only way" businesses could stay open.

"It’s disappointing" that some local officials are refusing to enforce the state’s mask order, Abbott said. "If we do not all join together and unite in this one cause for a short period of time … it will lead to the necessity of having to close Texas back down."

Abbott's order effective July 3 requires face masks in public spaces in counties with 20 or more active COVID-19 cases. The order does not apply to people eating, drinking, swimming or exercising or those under 10 years old.

Mississippi hospitals turning patients away

The five largest medical centers in Mississippi have no ICU bed space for new patients, coronavirus or otherwise, and are being forced to turn patients away, even as COVID-19 continue to surge.

In some cases, patients are being sent to facilities out of state and as far away as New Orleans. In many hospitals, patients admitted to the ER are being forced to spend the night before they receive treatment.

"(Wednesday), five of our biggest hospitals in the state had zero ICU beds. Zero," State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. "Our biggest medical institutions who take care of our sickest patients have no room."

The transition from shelter-in-place to where we currently stand, with the highest number of hospitalizations since the first reported case of the coronavirus virus on March 11, has left the state "wide open," said Dr. Louann Woodward, UMMC vice chancellor for health affairs.

West Virginia has highest transmission rate, official says

West Virginia is among states with the fewest COVID-19 cases, but the state now has the highest coronavirus transmission rate in the country, the head of the state's coronavirus response said Friday.

"The virus is spreading faster person to person in West Virginia right now than in any other state in the country," Dr. Clay Marsh. The state's "RT value" – the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person – is the highest in the nation, at 1.37, Marsh said. "We can see that COVID is starting in that logarithmic phase, that compounding phase."

The state has doubled its number of active cases in the last 10-14 days.

Frats and sororities spread coronavirus at UC Berkeley

At least 47 students at UC Berkeley tested positive for the coronavirus in just one week, and most of the new cases stem from a series of Greek life parties, university officials said.

In a message to the campus community, University Health Services Medical Director Anna Harte and Assistant Vice Chancellor Guy Nicolette said it was "becoming harder to imagine bringing our campus community back in the way we are envisioning."

"Generally, these infections are directly related to social events where students have not followed basic safety measures such as physical distancing, wearing face coverings, limiting event size, and gathering outside," the officials wrote.

Floridians came to your state this week

All 50 states had visitors from Florida this week, according to data that 15 million U.S. mobile device users provided to the data company Cuebiq. Applying Cuebiq’s sample to the whole population, approximately 1.5 million Floridians are now setting up shop in other states.

Residents have left the state in increasing numbers at a time when the crisis there got worse. In early June, just 5% of the state’s residents appeared in other states. That number has ticked up every week.

Cuebiq’s data, which is based on cell phone locations, shows that most interstate visitors from Florida appeared in other parts of the South. About 38% of the state’s travelers were in Georgia at least once during the week, for example. Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee also topped the list of destinations for visitors from the hard-struck state.

States outside the region saw big Florida influxes as well. New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio all had more than 50,000 visits from Florida residents in the most recent week of data, based on an extrapolation of the cell phone location data.

So far, the moves do not appear to be permanent, or at least not to the same level as last year. Five percent of residents changed their home county, down from 6.5% during the same period last year.

Trump and CDC battle over how to reopen schools safely

President Donald Trump’s attack on his own health experts’ guidance for safely reopening schools cracked open for public display a power struggle within the administration that has been building for months.

Trump blasted the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday as “very tough & expensive” and “asking schools to do very impractical things.”

But CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said on Thursday the guidance would stand, and his staff would provide some new documents to clarify the recommendations.

The flare-up punctuates a conflict escalating for months, with the nation’s top scientists publicly sidelined in the Trump administration’s initial coronavirus response. Earlier disagreements delayed the release of the reopening guidance for schools and businesses.

Public health leaders who worked at the CDC under prior presidents said they had never seen anything like this week’s open discord. "It undermines leadership for everyone involved,” said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a former CDC director. "It's public health malpractice to say, 'Open without worrying about anything.'"

13 MLB players have tested positive for coronavirus since workouts began

Fifty-eight Major League Baseball players tested positive for the coronavirus upon reporting to their team, while an additional 13 tested positive after workouts began, according to data released by MLB on Friday.

Perhaps most disconcerting is that 10 teams reported positive test results during what MLB is calling "monitoring testing," meaning one-third of the league's teams had an infected player or staff member after workouts began last week.

Several teams have had workouts halted or curtailed while awaiting test results, and besides those testing positive, players who have come in contact with those testing positive have been temporarily sidelined, as well.

Survey: More than 1 in 3 Americans say they know someone with COVID-19

Americans are three times as likely to know someone in their community who has been sick with the coronavirus than they did in March, according to a new survey.

More than one-third of Americans (36%) say someone they know outside of their immediate family or work has been sick with the coronavirus, according to a new survey from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project. That number is more than triple the number in mid-March, when it was 11%.

The survey also showed Black (11%) and Latino (11%) Americans are more likely than white Americans (7%) to have had an immediate family member get sick, according to the survey. These racial differences were not apparent in the survey from March.

Caesars Entertainment employees will not work without getting COVID-19 test

If Caesars Entertainment employees do not get tested for COVID-19 by the end of next week, they will be knocked off the schedule. In response to a spike in coronavirus cases recorded across the country, the hotel-casino company has required all employees in Southern Nevada to get tested.

"We thought mandatory testing would be a good way to identify employees who might be positive for COVID-19 without knowing it and wouldn’t realize they could be spreading the virus at work," the company said in a statement.
Workers at Caesars Palace, Paris, Flamingo, Harrah's and Nobu have until July 17 to get tested.

California to sue Trump administration over international student visa policy

California is set to become the first state to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a new policy that prevents international students from staying in the U.S. if their college or university switches to online-only classes in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The announcement comes a day after some colleges and universities filed similar lawsuits or announced plans to do so.

The Trump administration revealed its new guidelines in a memo issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday. It says that international students will have to leave the country, or face possible deportation, if their schools switch to remote learning, which many have planned to do amid the pandemic. (Source: USA Today)

Story Date: July 13, 2020