Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in the US has ended for the day. Get the latest updates from around the globe here.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts said the state’s health care system “remains in very good shape.”
He said 48% of the hospital beds in the state are available, 41% of the beds in intensive care units are available and 76% of the ventilators are currently available.
“So what are we doing something now obviously we want to loosen those restrictions to the point where we’re managing a way that preserves a hospital capacity and allows much of a normal return to life as possible,” he said.
Coronavirus killed nearly 40% of critically ill patients treated at two New York City hospitals in the early days of the pandemic, doctors reported Tuesday.
An in-depth look at more than 1,100 patients treated at two Columbia University hospitals showed a high rate of severe illness and death in March, when New York was suffering the worst outbreak in the US.
“As of 28 April 2020, almost 40% of the critically ill patients had died and more than one third remained in hospital. Less than one quarter had been discharged alive,” Dr. Natalie Yip of Columbia University Irving Medical Center and colleagues wrote in the Lancet medical journal.
Yip and colleagues examined the cases of 1,150 adults admitted to Columbia’s two hospitals in northern Manhattan in March. Of them, 257 or 22% were critically ill.
“The majority of critically ill patients were men (67%),” they wrote. While most critically ill patients were on average 62, 1 in 5 were under 50.
“More than 80% of critically ill patients had at least one chronic illness,” they added. More than 60% had high blood pressure and 36% had diabetes. Close to half were obese. These have all been noted in other studies to raise the risk of severe disease.
Most of the critically ill patients, 79%, needed ventilators to breathe and they stayed on those ventilators for an average of 18 days, the team reported. And 31% needed dialysis because of kidney damage.
“This has important implications for resource allocation in hospitals, where access to equipment and specialized staff needed to deliver this level of care is limited,” Dr. Max O’Donnell of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who led the study team, said in a statement.
While 81% of the patients got either hydroxychloroquine or remdesivir, the study could not show whether either drug helped.
Many of the patients belonged to ethnic minorities. “Specifically, our cohort included a high proportion of Hispanic or Latino and black or African American patients who are known to have higher prevalence of cardiometabolic comorbidities and socioeconomic vulnerabilities that may make social distancing and access to care more difficult,” the team wrote.
Doctors described growing evidence Tuesday that inflammation is causing the severe effects of Covid-19 disease in patients, and said reducing those effects may be key to helping people get better.
Teams across the country are testing a variety of immune-modulating drugs that are often already prescribed to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, Dr. Vincent Marconi of the Emory University School of Medicine told a briefing organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Marconi described more than a dozen drugs, most of them monoclonal antibodies, that are being tried out in severely ill Covid-19 patients. Various drugs attack inflammation from different angles and might tamp down the so-called cytokine storm that appears to be causing the worst damage in advanced patients, Marconi said. They include sarilumab, sold under the brand name Kevzara, to treat rheumatoid arthritis; adalimumab, or Humira, also a rheumatoid arthritis drug; siltuximab, or Sylvant, used to treat cancer; and others.
He said a three-stage process takes patients from mild disease to extreme symptoms that affect the whole body, and said inflammation underlies the most serious stage.
Many people infected with Covid-19 may not have any symptoms at all, and most have mild symptoms. Marconi said the mild stage has common symptoms, including a dry cough, fever and a headache. “The vast majority of individuals will recover at this point and will not progress to the pulmonary phase,” he said. That second phase is marked by lung inflammation and trouble breathing.
After that, patients can get worse quickly.
That’s when doctors see symptoms of shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and the “terrible” clotting problems that cause organ damage, blockages and strokes.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general is undertaking two new investigations into the department’s response to the coronavirus outbreak due to concerns that federal agencies mismanaged the pandemic.
The government watchdog is examining management of the Covid-19 response at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, related to detainees in their custody and to the staff, according to the inspector general.
This coronavirus-related investigation — as well as one into the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of DHS — are listed as “new” on the inspector general’s list of ongoing investigations.
Some background: In April, a group of 26 senators called for the inspector general to immediately review concerns over conditions in ICE detention facilities, asking for site visits to determine whether the facilities were sufficiently addressing the threat of Covid-19 to migrants and staff.
DHS and CBP did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
At the time of the letter, 360 detainees, 35 ICE employees at detention facilities and 89 ICE employees not assigned to detention facilities, tested positive for Covid-19, according to the senators, who wrote that some contract employees also died of the virus.
As of this month, more than 1,000 immigrants in ICE custody have tested positive for coronavirus, according to the agency’s latest statistics, and the number of cases in custody has gradually climbed in recent weeks. ICE has said that it’s working to release detainees it deems are vulnerable to the virus.
Along the border, customs officials and the US Border Patrol have turned away asylum seekers and denied entry to migrants who illegally cross the border, citing a risk of coronavirus spread in its detention facilities.
Testing for Covid-19 is a “critical” part of Missouri’s economic recovery, Gov. Mike Parson said Tuesday.
The state has tested 158,296 people for Covid-19 since March 7. According to a statement from the state, approximately 90% of these tests have been negative.
Parson said an increase in tests likely means an increase in the number of positive cases in the state.
“By increasing testing, we can continue to slow the spread by identifying positive patients and isolating them as quickly as possible,” he said.
Montana will increase the number of people allowed in restaurants and gyms on June 1, as the state begins its next reopening phase.
“The first gradual phase of our reopening gave us the time that we needed,” Gov. Steve Bullock said in a press conference Tuesday.
Starting next month:
The governor is also canceling the 14-day quarantine that is currently required of people traveling to Montana from out-of-state as of June 1.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that the state plans to test every nursing home resident and staff starting next month.
Arkansas Executive Director of Health Rachel Bunch said private labs and the Health Department are also working together on the appropriate plan for statewide testing.
“Our state has taken a proactive approach to testing and long-term care that is different than many other states. Anytime we have a positive worker or resident, we test the entire building, not waiting for other people to become symptomatic,” Bunch said. “This approach has allowed us to identify positive asymptomatic workers and patients early so that we can move patients to areas that are unaffected and send those workers home until they get well.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announced today that certain educational and cultural activities will be allowed to resume starting June 8.
These include:
Beshear said the state is still working on the specific guidance for these reopenings, but noted that there will be capacity limitations everywhere.
In places like distilleries, there will also be sub-limitations like there are in restaurants.
Right now, restaurants have overall capacity limitations, as well as limitations to the size of each party, being 10 persons and under. Beshear said tours, for instance, will follow the same guidelines.
Nearly 100 workers, environmental and food and agriculture groups sent a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and members of Congress calling on them to protect meatpacking and production workers, as well as guarantee them hazard pay.
Here’s what the letter said:
The University of California estimates the financial losses for the school system from mid-March through April to total nearly $1.2 billion, as a result of closures to UC hospitals, health centers and campuses because of Covid-19.
University President Janet Napolitano wrote about the significant financial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on UC, and the ongoing budgetary uncertainties ahead in a letter sent to the UC community on Monday.
Napolitano announced that she and 10 university Chancellors will take a voluntary pay cut of 10% for the upcoming year.
There will be a systemwide freeze on salaries for staff employees, and other cuts to non-essential travel and renegotiating service agreements to further reduce expenses.
Los Angeles County Supervisors are hoping to reopen businesses in the nation’s most populous county by July 4.
The county’s economic task force urged reopening in all facets of the economy from film production to education to sporting events.
Entertainment executive Casey Wasserman pressed supervisors to bring back events without fans, saying opportunities will be lost to other cities if Los Angeles doesn’t act fast.
“We’re not quite there yet,” Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a daily briefing. “I think as a county we can prepare ourselves for that possibility. These are complicated issues on reopening.”
“We can’t stay locked down forever, we have to learn to live with it,” County Supervisor Janice Hahn said.
It’s almost 6 p.m. in New York. Here are some of the top coronavirus headlines you may have missed.
President Trump defended Tuesday his use of hydroxychloroquine, the drug that is unproven to prevent coronavirus, and called a study warning of its risks a “phony study.”
Trump particularly bashed a study, where patients from the Veterans Affairs received the drug. He said those patients were too sick and old.
“There was a false study done — they gave to sick people,” Trump said, adding it was given to people who “were ready to die.”
“The study came out, the people were ready to die. Everybody was old, had bad problems with hearts… so immediately when it came out they gave a lot of false information,” Trump said of the study.
Trump claimed that the study was conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was in fact funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia but conducted in VA hospitals.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie did make the distinction in the cabinet meeting, however, he also promoted the drug and said it’s been used by the VA in large quantities for many health issues.
“I want to clear up something… that was not a VA study,” Wilkie told reporters. “Researchers took VA numbers and they did not clinically review them, they were not peer reviewed. They did not even look at what the president just mentioned the various comorbidities.”
What other studies say: The study Trump was alluding to is not the only study of its kind warning of the risks of hydroxychloroquine.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a new study last week, the largest of its kind, that shows that hydroxychloroquine does not work against Covid-19 and could cause heart problems. That follows another study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing similar results.
“It’s gotten a bad reputation only because I’m promoting it,” Trump told reporters, adding, “If anyone else was promoting it, they’d say this is the greatest thing ever.”
On his own use of the drug, Trump claimed to reporter that it “doesn’t seem to have any impact” on him. He added that “it seems to be an extra line of defense and it is has gotten tremendous reviews.”
See Trump’s remarks here:
The Trump administration is extending a public health order that allows for the swift removal of migrants apprehended at US borders, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday.
It was first implemented in March.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf called it “one of the most critical tools” to stem the spread of coronavirus in a statement.
Health experts, however, have slammed the use of the public health law to bar migrants from entering the US, arguing the order appears to be intended to halt immigration, not serve a public health purpose.
CNN previously reported that this extension was expected.
Major League Soccer announced Tuesday that the 2020 MLS All-Star Game between the best of MLS and a team of LIGA MX all-stars has been canceled.
The game was scheduled for July 29 in Los Angeles at the Banc of California Stadium.
While tickets to the All-Star Game had not gone on sale yet, fans who purchased tickets to the All-Star Skills Challenge via Ticketmaster will be automatically refunded, a statement said.
The 2021 MLS All-Star Game and festivities are expected to take place in Los Angeles at the same venue, the league said.
Illinois has now overtaken New York to become the number one state in the nation for testing per capita over the past seven days, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday.
As of Tuesday, a total of 621,684 tests were performed and about 18,443 were completed in the last 24 hours, according to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike.
Pritzker said there is more work to do to advance testing and make it even more widely available.
A Mississippi state official reported Tuesday the first case of a child with multisystem inflammatory syndrome.
The child is from central Mississippi and had tested positive for Covid-19. The child has recovered and been discharged from the hospital, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said.
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children – abbreviated as MIS-C – is a syndrome believed to be associated with Covid-19.
Young people who may have multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, a troubling complication of Covid-19 infection, need immediate attention and will probably need to be hospitalized, doctors said Tuesday.
Symptoms do not look like the classic symptoms of coronavirus and may mostly include stomach pain and vomiting, along with fever and perhaps a rash, the experts told other doctors on a briefing organized by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s becoming clear that many of the children with the new syndrome have damage to their hearts and need immediate treatment, the experts told the briefing. And they believe it’s increasingly clear that Covid-19 is involved, even though many of the children test negative for the virus and never seemed to have had symptoms of infection.
The syndrome appears to develop two to six weeks after infection with Covid-19 and affects children who were perfectly healthy beforehand. The CDC issued a health alert last week warning pediatricians to be on the lookout, and at least 18 states plus Washington, DC have reported they are investigating possible cases.
“A striking finding here – alarming – is that in this group, about half the children already had coronary artery abnormalities,” Dr. James Schneider, who heads pediatric critical care at Northwell Health in New York, told the briefing. Because the children were previously healthy, he thinks the abnormalities were caused by MIS-C, possibly as a result of a delayed immune response to the coronavirus.
14-year-old describes his bout with inflammatory syndrome linked to coronavirus:
Farmers and ranchers who have experienced losses due to the coronavirus pandemic will be able to start applying for long-awaited federal funds on May 26.
The US Department of Agriculture announced additional details about the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) on Tuesday, which will provide up to $16 billion in direct payments to farmers and ranchers affected by Covid-19.
Here are some details on the program:
The funding was allocated by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Stability Act and the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act.
The National Pork Producers Council reacted to the program in a statement:
