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New Mexico’s governor is allowing most businesses in the state to reopen starting on May 16, but only at 25 percent capacity.
The governor’s reopening order does not include salons, gyms, malls and dine-in service at restaurants. It also does not apply to three counties in the northwestern part of the state that are considered a “hotspot” for coronavirus.
Houses of worship must limit their gatherings to 10% of normal capacity.
At the same time, New Mexico is requiring face coverings for anyone in public places. Exceptions are given only for eating, drinking, exercise and medical requirements.
The governor indicated that they plan to enforce the mask requirement only through “peer pressure,” but encouraged people to take the order seriously.
“Is it possible that a first responder or police officer might bark at you [for not wearing a mask]? It is, because it saves lives,” Lujan Grisham said.
Lawmakers on the newly formed House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis sparred with panel of top health experts Wednesday afternoon about testing, tracing and targeted containment of the new coronavirus.
One leading expert complained about a failure of federal leadership in getting diagnostic tests distributed, while Republican lawmakers pushed back.
“Testing was the fundamental failure that forced our country to shut down,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, testified.
Jha placed the blame on the federal government.
“I believe we need federal leadership,” he said. “The institute that I run has calculated that the US needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again. We’re doing about a third of that.”
Several lawmakers on the panel took exception to Jha’s statements, including Rep. Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee.
“I’m sorry, but we shut the economy down to flatten the curve, to not max out our ICU bed capacity and our ventilator capacity, period. It wasn’t an absence of testing that caused us to shut down the economy. We shut down the economy to save lives, American lives, because of the ICU and ventilator issue,” Green said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, argued that the new committee is political in nature. He also took issue with Jha’s comments.
“I thought the shutdown was initiated so the current health care system wasn’t overwhelmed. We already got a political statement from the very first witness,” Jordan said.
Other health experts on the panel, including former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, agreed that testing is one of the keys to safely reopening society.
“Most of all, it’s going to turn on testing, as four panelists just mentioned, and we need to make sure that we get testing out widely and get testing most of all to the people who are at highest risk of this virus,” Gottlieb said.
“Not everyone’s at equal risk for the coronavirus. Many people, because of where they work and where they live and how they work, are at higher risk than other Americans, and we need to make sure we get testing into the communities that are most affected by this,” he added.
The mayor of the largest city in the country said a federal stimulus is nothing short of imperative.
“I appeal to President Trump to remember his hometown and remember cities and towns all over the country. We cannot recover without the stimulus, period,” he added.
De Blasio estimated New York has lost more than $7 billion during the 10 weeks the city has been closed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Think where this is going,” he said during an interview on CNN. “If our federal government doesn’t step in and fill that gap and help cities and states back on their feet there won’t be a recovery.”
The mayor also noted that his city will be cautious as it begins to reopen.
“We’re taking a very conservative approach here in New York. We’re the epicenter,” de Blasio said. “We are not going to reopen anything until we prove by real data that we’ve made enough progress to do it safely, and then we’re going to do it in small, careful steps and smart steps.”
On the backdrop of President Trump criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s reopening strategy, de Blasio came down firmly on the side of the nation’s top infectious disease specialist.
“I think Dr. Fauci’s someone who’s legendary in this country going back decades for the work he has done… and I share his view. I think we have to be very careful about the steps we take,” the mayor said.
More than one in four of the most popular YouTube videos about the novel coronavirus contained misinformation, Canadian researchers reported Wednesday.
It’s a problem that could be dangerous in a pandemic that requires people to take action to protect themselves and others, the team reported in the online journal BMJ Global Health.
More than 70% of adults turn to the internet to learn about health and healthcare. YouTube is a dominant source that has billions of daily views that could be used to educate viewers, but it can also be a source of misleading public health information, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University wrote.
The team analyzed the information provided on YouTube videos on a single day earlier this year.
Excluding videos that weren’t in English, that ran for more than an hour, or didn’t have audio or visual content, they wound up with 69 videos that had a total of 257, 804,146 views. They rated each based on factual content covering symptoms, prevention, treatments epidemiology and viral spread.
The videos came from a variety of sources such as network news — which made up the largest portion of — entertainment videos, internet based news operations, professional YouTube stars, newspapers, educational institutions and government agencies.
Nearly 50 of the videos, or 72%, got the facts right. The one in four that didn’t had either misleading or inaccurate information. More than 62 million people watched those inaccurate videos, Heidi Oi-Yee Li of the University of Ottawa and colleagues found.
Past studies looking at YouTube usage found the platform has been key in spreading vital information about how to keep people safe in a pandemic or public health emergency.
If this many videos are inaccurate, there’s a “significant potential for harm,” Li and colleagues wrote.
“YouTube is a powerful, untapped educational tool that should be better mobilized by health professionals,” they wrote.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned the state’s stay-at-home order, ruling the order “unlawful” and “unenforceable.”
The court ruled that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration overstepped its authority when state Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm issued an extension of the order that was scheduled to run until May 26.
The lawsuit was filed by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature against Palm and other health officials, who recently extended the state’s “Safer-at-Home” emergency order, but loosened some restrictions on certain businesses, including golf courses, public libraries and arts and crafts stores.
Evers, who had ordered Palm to issue the stay-at-home order in late March, has not yet issued a statement, but had slammed the lawsuit after it was filed as “focused entirely on how to get legislative Republicans more power” and “exploiting a global pandemic to further their attempts to undermine the will of the people.”
The governor also said Republicans want his administration to “ask for their permission to save lives.”
When people infected with the novel coronavirus talk, their speech droplets can linger in the air and could potentially trigger new infections.
A new estimate by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Pennsylvania found that talking loudly for one minute in a confined space could generate at least 1,000 speech droplets containing Covid-19 particles.
Those droplets could remain in the air for more than eight minutes, according to the study published Tuesday in the open-access journal PNAS.
According to other research, that could be enough to generate an infection if someone inhaled them.
Bars and restaurants in Wyoming will be allowed to reopen on May 15 under a new order signed by Gov. Mark Gordon.
Tables will be limited to six people, but unlike most states with similar regulations, people from different households will be allowed to sit at the same table. Buffet service is not allowed, and tables must be separated by at least six feet.
All restaurant employees must be screened for Covid-19 symptoms before beginning work.
Movie theaters and salons also are being allowed to open with social distancing, and public gatherings of up to 25 people will be allowed.
“The size change for gatherings is significant but does not allow for large events,” said State Epidemiologist Dr. Alexia Harrist.
Some context: All of the health orders now in place are set to expire on May 31. Some counties have been given permission to loosen regulations even more.
“This is not a hold-my-beer moment,” Gordon said. “Let’s do this carefully and make sure we don’t lose ground.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he is working with Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam as the region grapples with Covid-19.
Hogan said the areas surrounding DC, including two Maryland counties, are hot spots for Covid-19.
“As I said, 70% of our infection rates are in four counties, I think 50% of it is in the two counties surrounding Washington. And Washington, Prince George’s and Montgomery County and Northern Virginia, right now are the hot spots in the country behind New York,” he said
Hogan said he spoke with both leaders on Friday and took their input into consideration when deciding Maryland’s next steps.
He announced Wednesday that Maryland will enter a partial reopening phase on Friday, lifting the stay-at-home order, and allowing certain businesses and activities to resume. Prince George’s County and Montgomery County, the two counties closest to Washington, will not move ahead with “Stage One” reopening guidelines yet.
Hogan’s announcement came hours after DC officials extended the city’s stay-at-home order through June 8.
Virginia will similarly implement a partial reopening on Friday, with Northern Virginia maintaining firmer restrictions.
“I think we’re all in accord with what’s going on. We’re working together on regional issues,” Hogan said.
Massachusetts reported 1,165 new coronavirus cases Wednesday and 174 new deaths, according to the state’s Department of Public Health.
The state now has a total of 80,497 confirmed cases and 5,315 deaths, according to the state health website.
Coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts had been trending down since May 5, with less than 100 deaths reported every day since May 8 – until today.
New coronavirus cases in the state were trending down since May 6 when the state had 1,754 new cases. On May 11, the state hit a low of 669 new cases but that number has risen every day since.
The state had a peak number of 3,079 new coronavirus cases on April 23 and one day later, the state had a peak number of 193 coronavirus deaths.
Parents, hospitals and clinics should expect to see more cases of a mystifying condition that seems to be affecting children after a bout with Covid-19, doctors said Wednesday.
The condition, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, appears to be a post-viral syndrome, said Dr. Jeffrey Burns, a critical care specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital who has been coordinating a global group of doctors who compare notes on the condition.
It has affected at least 100 children in the United States, most of them in New York. But doctors in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan and elsewhere have also reported cases.
Symptoms include persistent fever, inflammation and poor function in organs such as the kidneys or heart. Children may also show evidence of blood vessel inflammation, such as red eyes, a bright red tongue and cracked lips.
Burns believes more cases will turn up as Covid-19 affects more people. It’s a rare condition, but rare consequences of viral infections are seen more often when millions of people are infected.
Most children are not seriously affected by the syndrome, Burns said. Most don’t even need treatment in the intensive care unit, he said, although a very few have died. “We do have proven treatments that we can use and are using,” he said. They include blood thinners and immune modulators.
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President Trump said the administration will “go after” public companies that received
that they should not have taken if they don’t return the loan.
The deadline for companies to return the loans with amnesty to the Small Business Association is Thursday.
Earlier in the week, a House coronavirus oversight panel asked five companies to return PPP loans.
President Trump said the House Democrats’ proposed $3 trillion coronavirus relief package is “dead on arrival” because it contains provisions he believes are meant to prevent Republicans from winning elections.
Congressional Republicans swiftly rejected the package, which includes new stimulus payments for families and payments to states.
Trump seemed to fixate on the roughly $3.6 billion contained in the bill that would aid states in addressing voting challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“What they want more than anything else — it’s a voting package,” Trump said. “They want to make sure that Republicans can’t win an election.”
The US Food and Drug Administration said thermal imaging systems shouldn’t be used for “mass fever screening” in crowds, according to guidance published Wednesday.
When used correctly, these devices have certain benefits such as allowing individuals’ temperatures to be taken at a distance, for example, the FDA said.
The agency cautioned that the systems “have not been shown to be accurate when used to take the temperature of multiple people at the same time.”
The effectiveness of the systems, the agency said, depends on their careful set-up and operation, as well as proper evaluation of the person being screened.
For example, people having their temperature taken shouldn’t have any facial obstructions, like masks or glasses. And they need to have waited at least 30 minutes after exercise or other temperature-altering activities.
The FDA also warned that thermal imaging systems alone can’t diagnose coronavirus. People can be contagious with a normal body temperature, for example, and people can have a fever for other reasons.
The FDA also said high body temperatures should be confirmed with other methods, like a clinical grade thermometer. And if someone does have a fever, the FDA recommended additional evaluation – such as a medical interview or laboratory testing.
President Trump said Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments that some schools should not reopen in the fall was not an “acceptable answer” and claimed that Fauci “wants to play all sides of the equation.”
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified on Tuesday on Capitol Hill and suggested that schools open only cautiously, and in some places perhaps not in the fall. Fauci was asked about the risk/benefit ratio between sending kids back to school and having them miss out on education.
Trump reacted to Fauci’s remarks saying, “He wants to play all sides of the equation.”
Asked what he meant by that, Trump responded, “I was surprised by this answer actually because you know, it’s just to me it’s not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to school.”
Trump has insisted in recent weeks that schools will reopen in the fall, despite schools and universities saying otherwise.
“We’re opening our country. People want it open. The schools are going to be open,” Trump said Wednesday in the Cabinet Room.
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Maryland’s stay-at-home order will be lifted this Friday at 5 p.m. ET, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Wednesday.
Hogan announced Maryland will instead be under a “Safer-at-Home” public health advisory.
Under this new advisory, Hogan said retail stores may open with 50% capacity, manufacturing operations may resume, barber shops and hair salons may open with 50% capacity by appointment only and churches can begin to hold religious services again either outside or indoors with 50% capacity.
Hogan advised proper precautions, such as masks and social distancing, must still be practiced.
President Trump said he believes schools should reopen to students, noting there is “very little impact on young people.”
“Oh I think they should open the schools absolutely,” Trump said.
Trump claimed that teachers over a certain age should “perhaps you ought to stay out for a little while longer. But I think you should absolutely.” He said the age ranges he think should maybe stay home are “like let’s say 65, or maybe if you want to be conservative let’s say 60.”
Trump did say the decision to reopen schools is up to state governors but, he said, “their state is not open if the schools are not open.”
April prices for supermarket staples like eggs, meat and cereal saw a the largest one month spike in close to fifty years, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overall, food prices climbed an average of 2.6%, highest increase since February, 1974.
The price index for eggs climbed more than 16% — the biggest increase for any food item.
As consumers are buying more groceries and eating at home more often, David Ortega, a food economist and associate professor at Michigan State University, said he thinks it’s less of an issue of grocers taking advantage of the current market environment, and more a symptom of current market conditions.
“For the most part, it’s supply and demand issues here, at play,” Ortega said to CNN. “What we’re seeing here is economic forces at play, but also the resiliency of our food system to be able to provide food at a reasonable price.”
CNN reached out to several grocery store chains to ask about consumer concerns around rising prices at the supermarket.
Publix, one of the largest grocery store chains in the southeast, said in a statement to CNN, “In some instances, there have been price increases from manufacturers. We work extremely hard to negotiate pricing with our suppliers, so that we can offer the best price to our customers. To mitigate price increases during difficult times such as these, we also try to absorb as much of the increase as we can before having to pass along an increase to our customers.”
The University of Louisiana is set to resume in-person classes this fall across all of its nine campuses, president of the university system Jim Henderson told CNN’s Jake Tapper today.
Running through details of how the institution plans to bring back 92,000 students, as well as faculty and support staff, Henderson said they’d comply with all guidance from health officials as well as the governor’s office “and other policies.”
“I imagine most will be wearing masks for some time, in addition to having increased hygiene,” he said.
Henderson went on to say that social distancing will “become part of the new norm for us.”
Asked by Tapper how he’d handle social situations such as fraternity parties, Henderson said new rules would likely be accompanied by enforcement.
“I think there’s going to be significant restrictions on those types of engagements,” he said.
Henderson added: “We’ll certainly have some restrictions that are enforced. Enforcement is going to be key.”
Henderson’s announcement comes just one day after administrators at the California State University system, which claims to be the nation’s biggest four-year university system, announced plans to cancel nearly all in-person classes through the fall semester to reduce spread of coronavirus.
