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US President Donald Trump has credited doctors and scientists for doing an “incredible” job against the coronavirus in a short period of time.
Trump has often disregarded the guidance of his own scientists and federal public health agencies as the pandemic ravaged parts of the US.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, said Friday that a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House two weeks ago was a “superspreader” event.
Trump admitted during the Fox interview he may have caught the virus at a White House event, but he doesn’t know for sure.
Trump was diagnosed with Covid-19 last week and seemed to make a speedy recovery after a round of treatments, including an experimental monoclonal antibody therapy, the antiviral medication remdesivir, and the steroid dexamethasone.
The global push to develop a coronavirus vaccine is gathering pace, but much to the likely frustration of US President Donald Trump, caution exercised by American drug makers and regulators has put China out in front … for now.
Moderna, a leading coronavirus vaccine maker, said this month it will not be ready to apply for emergency use authorization until at least November 25. Meanwhile, the US-based trial sites of another frontrunner, AstraZeneca, have placed testing on hold after a participant in Britain developed a serious illness last month, further undermining Trump’s hopes that a vaccine would be ready in time for Election Day on November 3.
The stringent US safety protocols have shifted the so-called vaccine race in China’s favor, where – for better or worse – political will holds a much larger sway over state, commercial and individual actions, potentially bending rules or norms as needed.
China’s leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly urged the country’s scientists to accelerate the research and development of coronavirus vaccines. Chinese drug makers have also been told to treat their work as an “important political task” – and they are doing everything they can to follow that directive.
While the successful development of a vaccine would not preclude other countries from continuing to pursue their own research, China has placed special emphasis on being first.
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A new report from the Council on Foreign Relations says that while pandemic threats are inevitable, the US and global response failures that contributed to the spread of coronavirus are not.
The report, released this week, was compiled by a 22-member task force led by Sylvia M. Burwell, the US Health and Human Services secretary during the Obama administration, and Frances Fragos Townsend, who led the US Homeland Security Council during the Bush administration.
It says the US and other governments failed to adequately invest in prevention, detection and response capabilities to protect populations. There was an “illusion — but not the reality — of preparedness,” the report says, and while the World Health Organization had the expertise to lead a global response, “it is beleaguered, overstretched, and underfunded.”
The US response, the report says, was “deeply flawed” and too slow. Health systems were underfunded, and leaders — including President Donald Trump — failed to communicate clearly or defend public health leaders.
The task force recommended improvements in US and global pandemic responses by encouraging officials to:
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued warning letters to two herbal medicine companies telling them to stop trying to sell products which they allege are effective against the coronavirus.
Colorado-based Prairie Dawn Herbs was warned after the FDA investigated its website and social media sites and learned the company was selling products it claimed could protect the immune system and combat symptoms of Covid-19, the FDA said in a news release Friday.
The FDA cited a monthly newsletter posted to the company’s website offering 20% off several herbal products (Chest Tea, Echinacea Tincture, Mentholated Salve, Eucalyptus Oil, Thieves Oil and Echinacea Glycerite) for the duration of the outbreak “due to the continued threat of COVID-19.”
The FDA also warned Griffo Botanicals for selling herbal tincture products it said could treat symptoms of Covid-19.
There are no FDA-approved products to prevent or treat coronavirus. One antiviral drug, remdesivir, has emergency use authorization for treatment but must be used in a hospital under physician supervision.
The FDA says that until the companies took corrective action, they would be on a list of firms and websites that have received warning letters from the FDA “concerning the sale or distribution of COVID-19 related products.”
As of Friday afternoon, the COVID-19 Special was still available for purchase on the Prairie Dawn Herbs website. There was no mention of Covid-19 treatments on the Griffo Botanicals website.
Florida will be “like a house on fire” in another few weeks because the state has dropped coronavirus precautions, and President Trump probably should not hold a rally there right now, infectious disease specialist Mike Osterholm said Friday.
Trump, who has been battling Covid-19 for the past week, is heading to Florida Monday for a campaign rally.
Osterholm said it’s probably not a good idea to hold a rally in the state right now, even if it’s held outside. The state has reported 2,900 new infections in the past day, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“The challenge we have is helping the American people understand if you bring people together, even when they’re outdoors, it’s less risk of transmission being close together outdoors, but it’s surely not zero,” he said.
Trump is also planning an outdoor gathering at the White House Saturday and said he’ll address the crowd from a balcony.
Osterholm said attending that event isn’t a good idea either.
“I wouldn’t go right now because I think the White House itself has a fair number of infections.”
Trump was just released from the hospital Monday and other administration staffers are still battling the virus.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will announce new coronavirus restrictions on Monday as the government tries to curb a surge in new cases.
A Downing Street spokesperson said the details will be outlined in a statement to the House of Commons.
The UK recorded 13,864 new cases on Friday, which is lower than the previous 24 hours. But there has been a sharp upward trend in recent weeks.
Large parts of the UK are already under local lockdowns.
After observing trends in how coronavirus spread throughout the country, White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx said Friday that people in the Northeast need to take preventive measures, too.
Birx said people need to heed lessons from the summer outbreaks in the South, where seemingly harmless gatherings contributed to spread of the virus.
“People let down their guard when they were with friends and family, and they took off their masks, and they share dinner, or they share drinks inside, and those become spreading events,” she said.
Birx described how outbreaks began across the South after Memorial Day, then moved north to the Midwest.
Birx said that test positivity rate can serve as a call to action for communities before the spread of the virus takes off.
“When you go from a .9 to 1.1, or you go from a .9 to 1.3, that’s your early warning sign,” she said. “It’s not when you go from 4 to 4.5.”
The World Health Organization reported a record number of new coronavirus cases Friday – more than 350,000 in a single day.
WHO now reports a total of 36,361,054 coronavirus cases, although WHO officials have said this is a vast undercount and estimate there are likely many times that number of cases.
WHO reported 6,339 new deaths Friday, for a total of 1,056,186 deaths so far in the pandemic.
Note: CNN relies exclusively on Johns Hopkins University data for its coronavirus case and death counts. Johns Hopkins currently reports 36,685,866 Covid-19 cases and 1,064,204 deaths. The record one-day count recorded by Johns Hopkins was 361,019 cases globally on Sept. 24.
More closures and restrictions were announced in Canada on Friday as new, daily cases of Covid-19 doubled in less than three weeks.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and public health officials released new modeling Friday that showed a further doubling of new, daily cases was possible within weeks if people don’t begin to restrict their contacts by about a third.
Ontario joined the province of Quebec Friday with targeted closures in its largest urban centers that include a ban on dine-in restaurants and the closure of bars. Both Toronto and Montreal, Canada’s two largest cities have now shuttered restaurants and bars as hospitalizations increase.
Trudeau pleaded with Canadians to stay home as much as possible, especially during the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday coming up this weekend.
“We need people to do everything they can to prevent transmission of this virus. Stay home as much as possible, listen to the public health advice, download the COVID alert app, wear a mask and really, really, pull together and lean back by stepping apart these coming weeks,” he said adding, “We flattened the curve before, we can do it again.”
Trudeau said more targeted closures, instead of a lockdown, are now possible during this second wave because more is known about how the virus is transmitted. Public health officials pointed out that while the majority of Canadian children are attending classes in-person, so far, schools have not been a significant source of transmission.
But Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, warned that while the vast majority of new cases have been detected in Canadians under the age of 40, the virus is again gaining a foothold in vulnerable long-term care centers and that is now putting more pressure on hospitals.
“We are now observing an increase in hospitalizations in some regions and the overall number of Covid-19 cases in hospital per day has more than doubled, from 380 cases at the time of our last update to 820 cases in hospital yesterday,” she said at the news conference.
Florida health officials reported at least 2,908 new cases of Covid-19 and 118 resident deaths on Friday, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The health department has reported at least 2,200 new coronavirus cases daily for four consecutive days, CNN’s tally shows.
This brings the state’s total cases to at least 728,921 and Floridian death toll to 15,186, the department’s data shows.
At least 45,675 Florida residents with Covid-19 have been hospitalized since the start of the pandemic, the department’s data shows.
Note: These numbers were released by Florida’s public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.
Three members of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ staff have been quarantined after one of them tested positive for Covid-19, according to a statement from the governor’s office.
The staffer, who was not identified, tested positive on Thursday, the statement said.
The person who tested positive did not have close contact with the governor, the statement said.
President Trump has signed off on a roughly $1.8 trillion stimulus offer to be presented to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
The offer would mark the highest topline dollar figure the administration has put on the table to this point — up from $1.6 trillion earlier this week.
The number remains below the $2.2 trillion in the bill passed last week by House Democrats — and Pelosi has been unwilling to go below $2 trillion in negotiations up to this point, people familiar with the matter say.
And the details in the offer remain as important — if not more so — than the offer itself. The specifics are not currently known, though they are expected to be presented to Pelosi today.
Pelosi has said repeatedly that the actual legislative language — and where that language directs the funds — has become the most critical aspect of any agreement.
Trump’s willingness to “go big,” as he framed it on Twitter Friday, runs risks inside his own party. Republicans in both chambers have voiced concern over any price tag above $1 trillion. And many are opposed to any new aid at all.
Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the US Department of Health Human Services, said, “I can tell you that we currently – as of today – have access to a couple hundred thousand doses of the monoclonal antibodies.”
“We expect that volume to exceed a total of a million before year-end 2020,” he said during a Friday briefing.
Mango declined to provide further details, saying, “I think it’s a little bit market sensitive to talk about which manufacturer has what,” he said. He added that if an emergency use authorization is granted, “We will have enough to take care of the Americans that need that from a clinical perspective, and that production will continue to ramp up as we go throughout the fall.”
Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, tampered expectations a bit, reminding the US, “How many doses [are] available of a therapeutic depends on the actual milligram dose that is show to be effective,” as well as the patient population across the nation.
Earlier in the briefing, Woodcock said, “We feel like the early indications of antiviral activity and potential impact on the clinical course of disease is very promising.”
“Of course we will see what decisions the FDA makes about perhaps making these more widely available,” she said. “In the meantime we continue to study these antibodies we plan to study more of them in our master protocols that we have ongoing.”
Some context: Eli Lilly and Company’s monoclonal antibody combination therapy reduced virus levels, hospitalizations and emergency room visits in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, the pharmaceutical company said Wednesday.
Based on new interim data and previous study results, the pharmaceutical company said it submitted a request to the US Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization for its single monoclonal antibody therapy, and said it expects to submit an EUA request for its combination therapy in November.
The hold placed on the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine clinical trial continues, Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the US Department of Health Human Services said during a briefing on Friday.
Four of the six candidates for a vaccine are currently in Phase three clinical trails, he said. One of those is the paused AstraZeneca trial.
“The other three are doing exceptionally well,” Mango said, adding that minority recruiting has “exceeded the threshold necessary to ensure we have the appropriate diversity.”
“Both Moderna and Pfizer – as you’ve read – are essentially completed with their recruiting into their clinical trials,” Mango said.
“In Johnson and Johnson, the Janssen product, really just started just in the last couple of weeks. And just by way of reminder, again, that’s a single dose vaccine, not two doses, so we anticipate that they’ll get through their clinical trials a bit faster than the other two,” he added.
Some background: AstraZeneca announced last month that it had paused global trials of its coronavirus vaccine because of an unexplained illness in one of the volunteers.
“As part of the ongoing randomized, controlled global trials of the Oxford coronavirus vaccine, our standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data,” the company said in a statement sent to CNN.
National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins told a Senate hearing that it’s a standard precaution in vaccine trials meant to ensure experimental vaccines don’t cause serious reactions among participants.
“To have a clinical hold, as has been placed on AstraZeneca, as of yesterday, because of a single serious adverse event, is not at all unprecedented,” Collins said at a hearing of the Senate Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
The company is testing its vaccine, called the Oxford vaccine because it was developed with Britain’s University of Oxford, in the United States as well as the UK, Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa.
Italy has reported at least 5,372 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total to 343,770 since the pandemic began.
The increase represents the highest daily rise in new cases since March 28, when the country was under strict lockdown rules.
The death toll has increased by at least 28 during the past 24 hours to reach a total of at least 36,111.
The Broadway League announced on Friday that all ticket sales for Broadway performances in New York City will be suspended through May 30, 2021.
All 41 Broadway theaters have been closed since March 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Broadway League, which is the national traded association for the Broadway Industry, has repeatedly extended the suspension of shows. Most recently, the league said shows would not be returning to the stage until at least January of 2021.
The Broadway League says theatergoers holding tickets for dates through May 30, 2021 should contact their point of purchase for details about exchanges and refunds.
Spanish Health Minister, Salvador Illa, announced at a news conference on Friday that the government is declaring a state of emergency in the Madrid region for 15 days.
This decision follows a court ruling overturning a government order a week ago that introduced new coronavirus restrictions in the capital.
The state of emergency will ensure that those measures stay in place, “the situation is the same as it was yesterday, only the legal form is different,” Illa said.
Here are some of the measures that will apply to nine municipalities of the Madrid region and include mobility and commercial restrictions:
The state of emergency declaration came at the start of a bank holiday weekend when normally more than a million Madrid residents would leave the area, but Illa said authorities don’t want them potentially spreading the virus elsewhere in Spain.
Spanish Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, announced the “deployment of national police and civil guards to guarantee that the announced measures are complied with , more than 7,000 police officers and civil guards will be deployed immediately and check points will be put in place in the affected municipalities.”
They can issue fines for non-compliance, he added.
The state of alarm cancels the measures announced by Madrid’s regional government earlier today. Regional health chief Enrique Ruiz Escudero, said at a news conference Friday morning that the region would continue with the Basic Health Zones, isolating only the areas and neighborhoods with 750 cases per 100,000 people in a 14-day -period.
Illa accused the Madrid regional government of “not doing anything”. He explained that the transmission levels in Madrid are “very high” and that hospitals are “at the risk of being overwhelmed”. “Patience has a limit, there is no one more blind than the one who does not want to see. It is important that the level of contagion in Madrid does not spread to the rest of the country”, he added.
The United States on Thursday reported the most cases it has seen in a single day in nearly two months — more than 56,000 new cases were added yesterday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Meanwhile, only 2 states are showing a downward trend in new cases compared to the previous week — Hawaii and Alabama.
At least 28 states are showing upward trends and 20 states are holding steady.
Ten states saw their highest seven-day averages for new daily cases yesterday, per Johns Hopkins University data: Alaska, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
Here’s a look at where new cases are rising across the country:
A National Football League source confirms to CNN that there were no new positive Covid-19 tests Thursday among the New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans or Kansas City Chiefs. Those teams have had their schedules altered by recent coronavirus infections.
Despite the news, a Patriots spokesperson says the team will continue to work remotely Friday, as a precaution.
The Pats, whose scheduled game against the Chiefs last Sunday was moved to Monday, haven’t practiced on the field all week. This upcoming Sunday’s game between the Patriots and Denver Broncos has been moved to Monday by the NFL.
If the Titans continue to test negative for the next three days, their scheduled Sunday game with the Buffalo Bills will be moved to Oct. 13. Then, if that game does go ahead Tuesday, the Bills game vs. the Chiefs will shift from Oct. 15 to next weekend.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 36.5 million people worldwide and killed at least 1,062,624. Here’s what you need to know:
Europe leads daily Covid-19 cases: The world has recorded its highest number of daily Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began, fueled by a second wave in Europe.
Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis: The US President has been cleared by his doctor to resume public engagements, but there are still unanswered questions about his health.
Promising therapeutic: Monoclonal antibody treatments like the one Trump got may be the most effective approach for treating coronavirus infections, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Thursday. Those treatments were developed using cells derived from aborted fetuses, a scientific method that the Trump administration has tried to block.
Pandemic Peace Prize: The World Food Programme won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize as the world grapples with a pandemic-induced food crisis.
Global vaccine effort: China has signed onto the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which aims to provide worldwide access to effective Covid-19 vaccines. Meanwhile, Trump’s promises of a vaccine by Election Day have been called “reckless” by an ousted vaccine director.
