October 1 coronavirus news

In this Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019 file photo, Albert Bourla, chief executive officer of Pfizer, prepares to testify before the Senate Finance Committee hearing on drug prices, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who has enthusiastically promised to know by the end of this month whether the company’s coronavirus vaccine will work, tried to distance himself and his company from politics Thursday.

“The amplified political rhetoric around vaccine development, timing and political credit is undercutting public confidence,” Bourla said in a letter to Pfizer employees posted online Thursday.

He said the debate this week between US President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden made the issue too overtly political.

“Once more, I was disappointed that the prevention for a deadly disease was discussed in political terms rather than scientific facts. People, who are understandably confused, don’t know whom or what to believe,” Bourla wrote in the letter.

Bourla said Pfizer was racing to make a vaccine for the good of the world.

Bourla added: “We would never succumb to political pressure.”

“I can’t predict exactly when, or even if our vaccine will be approved by the FDA for distribution to the public. But I do know that the world will be safer if we stop talking about the vaccines’ delivery in political terms and focus instead on a rigorous independent scientific evaluation and a robust independent approval process.”

Trump has claimed a vaccine could be ready before Election Day on November 3. Most vaccine manufacturers and public health experts, including Trump’s own advisers, have said that’s unlikely.

But Bourla has repeatedly promised his company will know whether its vaccine protects people from coronavirus by the end of October. 

US President Donald Trump said that both he and First Lady Melania Trump will begin their “quarantine process” until they get their coronavirus test results, following news that his top aide Hope Hicks tested positive for the virus. 

“Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!” Trump tweeted Thursday night. 

Hicks traveled with the President multiple times this week, including to the presidential debate in Cleveland and a campaign rally in Minnesota on Wednesday. 

Anyone who’s been near US President Donald Trump’s top aide Hope Hicks for more than a few minutes should quarantine at home following her positive test for Covid-19, a leading infectious disease expert said.

Hicks traveled with Trump multiple times recently, including to the debate in Cleveland Tuesday.

“Everyone who’s associated with Miss Hicks in the recent past should be quarantined at home and stay at home and not go out anywhere. That would be routine public health policy,” Vanderbilt University’s Dr. William Schaffner told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Thursday night. 

White House staff are routinely tested for Covid-19. “This is another example where you can demonstrate that testing does not prevent infection,” Schaffner said. “They do a lot of testing in the White House, but you need to wear the mask.”

Who is at risk: Some White House staffers who were working with Hicks were notified Thursday in a development first reported by Bloomberg News, but it’s taken 24 hours for others, such as the media who cover the Trump administration, including flying to rallies and fundraisers, to learn of their potential exposure.

The odds are that Trump might have been exposed, too: “If the President were a normal person, they would stay at home, their symptoms would be monitored, they would be tested periodically. You would be sure then to shelter him from others, so he doesn’t potentially transmit this infection to others,” Schaffner said.

Trump supporters and staff have not always been doing what they need to do to prevent transmission and attending rallies and having staffers around is “exactly the wrong thing to do,” said Schaffner.

“This is not a political statement. The virus doesn’t care. This is a simple public health statement, the virus will spread and I promise you, in these large rallies, the virus is there, it’s contagious and it’s spreading, just as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” he said.

US President Donald Trump confirmed that his top aide Hope Hicks has tested positive for coronavirus and said he and First Lady Melania Trump took a test Thursday evening. 

Trump said he doesn’t know whether he has contracted the virus, saying he spends “a lot of time with” Hicks but noted she wears a “lot of masks.”

“She did test positive, I just heard about this. She tested positive. She’s a hard worker, lot of masks, she wears masks a lot but she tested positive,” the President said. during a call-in appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

“So whether we quarantine or whether we have it, I don’t know.”

Trump speculated that Hicks could have contracted the virus from an interaction with a supporter. 

“She’s a very warm person. She has a hard time, when soldiers and law enforcement comes up to her, you know, she wants to treat them great, not say, ‘Stay away, I can’t get near you.’ It’s a very, very tough disease,” he said. 

Trump said he wasn’t sure when he would get the test results back, but indicated it would most likely be tonight or tomorrow morning. 

Hicks’ positive test marks the fifth known White House coronavirus case and the closest to the President since the pandemic began.

She traveled with the President multiple times recently, including to the debate in Cleveland on Tuesday, and was seen boarding Marine One, along with several other of the President’s closest aides – Jared Kushner, Dan Scavino and Nicholas Luna – none of whom wore masks, on Wednesday as Trump was heading to a campaign rally in Minnesota.

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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 11: U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk to the White House residence as they exit Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on September 11, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Trump and the First Lady traveled earlier to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania to mark the 19th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Related article Close Trump adviser Hope Hicks tests positive for coronavirus, sources say

Dr. Stephen Hahn testifies during a US Senate Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine Covid-19 in Washington, on September 23.

It’s important that a diverse group of Americans, including the elderly, is part of the ongoing Covid-19 clinical trials now underway in the United States, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said.

“We have been very clear about diversity,” Hahn told the National Consumers League during a discussion Tuesday.

Hahn said the FDA has discussed the importance of including different populations in clinical trials in vaccine development guidelines issued in June.

“We’ve talked a lot about ethnic diversity,” he said. “We also have talked about diversity with respect to those who are elderly, but also those who have comorbidities, other illnesses that put them at risk,” he added.

He continued that the agency has been looking at enrollment for the clinical trials “to ensure that there’s adequate representation of all groups so that the data are generalizable. That’s very important to the agency,” he said.

However, in the three large-scale vaccine clinical trials currently underway in the US, children are not part of those groups. Hahn did not address that during the discussion.

Women eat lunch in an almost empty restaurant in Moscow on September 29.

Companies in Moscow must enforce remote working from October 5 for at least 30% of their staff to help stem a recent surge of Covid-19 cases, the Russian capital’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announced on Thursday.

Sobyanin wrote in a blog post that all employees over the age of 65 and people with chronic illnesses will also be required to work remotely. Exceptions will be made for staff whose presence in the workplace is critical to the functioning of the organization as well as for medical organizations and defense companies.

Moscow reported 2,424 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, according to state media, bringing the city’s tally of cases to 295,025. Across the city, 5,282 people have died from the disease, including a further 28 people in the past 24 hours.

In this Sept. 12, 2020, file photo, Counselor to the President Hope Hicks arrives with President Donald Trump at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Reno, Nev.

Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s top aides, has tested positive for coronavirus, three sources told CNN.

Hicks traveled with the President multiple times recently, included to the debate in Cleveland on Tuesday and was seen boarding Marine One on Wednesday as Trump was heading to a campaign rally in Minnesota.

Some White House staffers who were in close proximity were notified of the positive test result today, the official said. 

This development was first reported by Bloomberg News. 

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The House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus proposal put forward by House Democrats with no bipartisan deal in sight even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have continued talks in an effort to reach an agreement.

The measure passed largely along party lines amid GOP opposition with a final tally of 214-207.

Eighteen Democrats crossed party lines to vote against the bill, while Republicans were united in opposition.    

The legislation will give Democrats something to point to as lawmakers face pressure from constituents to deliver more aid as the pandemic continues to take a devastating toll across America. But the Democratic plan has been rejected by Republicans as too costly and is not expected to be taken up by the GOP-led Senate, and time is quickly running out to clinch a bipartisan agreement that could be signed into law ahead of the November elections. 

Pelosi, as she walked off the House floor, told a group of reporters Thursday evening ahead of the vote that there will be no agreement on any stimulus deal tonight, but talks with Mnuchin will continue.

Some context: Both the White House and House Democratic leaders are struggling with internal party divisions over how to move forward in the stimulus talks. 

For months, moderate Democrats in the House have been pushing their leadership to go back to the table and get a deal with the White House on stimulus rather than forging ahead with another Democratic-only package. 

Fourteen Democratic members voted against the original Heroes Act back in the spring, arguing it was not a plan that was going to be signed by the President. The legislation voted on Thursday has been referred to by House Democrats as an updated version of the Heroes Act. 

The positivity percentage rate in 20 Covid-19 hotspots in New York has increased, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday at a daily presser.

The positivity rate has increased from 5.5% to 6.5%, the governor said.

“There are increases primarily in Brooklyn,” Cuomo said.

The governor called on local government to move from compliance to enforcement and to start fining people if they do not wear a mask.

The governor reiterated that he spoke with people in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in the hotspot area and told them enforcement would be stepped up.

Cuomo also announced that Covid Alert, an app to help with Covid-19 contact tracing, will launch in New York Thursday.

The app will allow users to know if they were in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, the governor said.

Using cellphone data and Bluetooth technology, the app will tell users if they have been within six feet of someone who tested positive for Covid-19. It will also tell users if they were near someone for longer than 10 minutes, Cuomo said.

The governor said he will make the app available to any other state that wants to use it. 

The state of Pennsylvania also launched a Covid-19 tracking app in September.

In New York City: The city is now tracking 11 zip codes where Covid-19 cases continue to grow and are outpacing the citywide average by 3.4 times over the past 14 days.

The 11 neighborhoods all have a positivity rate higher than 3% and are a part of four Covid-19 clusters the city is monitoring.

The cases in the 11 neighborhoods account for 29.9% of all Covid-19 cases in New York City over the past two weeks, despite representing 8.8% of the cities population.

The city of New York is additionally monitoring seven zip codes that have a positivity rating below 3% but “are quickly becoming an area of concern.”

Dr.Stephen Hahn testifies during a US Senate Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, on September 23.

The US Food and Drug Administration won’t allow political pressure to interfere with the agency’s decision-making on a potential Covid-19 vaccine, FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said. 

Hahn sought to reassure Americans about the FDA’s vaccine development process at a discussion recorded on Tuesday with the National Consumers League.

When it comes to authorizing or approving drugs and therapeutics, “science will guide our decisions,” he told the group. “FDA will not permit any pressure from anybody to change that.” 

Hahn has been responding in recent days to concerns about political pressure potentially influencing the approval or authorization of coronavirus treatments or vaccines in recent days after President Trump said last week that the White House could overrule FDA rules on vaccine development.

But even before that, Hahn was criticized for announcing an emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma at a news conference with Trump in August. The agency also revoked an EUA for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in June, a drug pushed by Trump, because it didn’t work in Covid-19 patients and in fact, may have caused harm, studies found.

“I know that there’s been particular attention paid to a few of the decisions reached by FDA scientists over the past few months,” Hahn admitted. “As Commissioner, it’s my responsibility to help explain why support for and confidence in the FDA is justified,” he added.

“I want to assure you that every one of the decisions we have reached has been made by FDA scientists based on science and data, not by politics.”

Hahn told the NCL that if and when a Covid-19 vaccine is authorized or approved, Americans “should have complete confidence in that decision.”

“I will fight for science and data to guide our decisions,” he said. 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi talks to reporters during her weekly news conference in the House Visitors Center at the U.S. Capitol on October 1 in Washington.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters there will be no agreement on any stimulus deal tonight, but talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will continue. 

Pelosi stressed that the central issue is less about whether they can reach a top line agreement in principle, but about whether they can nail down the actual details in legislative language. 

Pelosi said she was headed back to her office to review documents sent to her by Mnuchin and would figure out where things go next after that. 

As to the odds of reaching an actual agreement, Pelosi said, “I don’t know, it just depends.”

Wisconsin teachers unions are requesting that virtual learning be implemented from kindergarten through college across the state due to the increase of new Covid-19 cases, according to a release from Milwaukee’s teachers union.  

The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association called on the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to begin virtual instruction until the community spread is contained, according to a statement posted on its Facebook page on Thursday.

“DHS should confirm that plans are feasible, and the district, school, college or university does in fact have the necessary PPE and resources to accomplish the reopening plan,” the statement said. 

Teachers believe authorities have not done enough to keep in-person learning safe.

“Families are knowingly sending COVID-19 positive sick symptomatic students to school,” said Amy Mizialko, a representative of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

Traci DeSalvo, with Wisconsin Department of Health Services, told CNN affiliate WKOW they are providing information for schools to make safe decisions.

On Thursday, the state’s health department said that 45 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties “meet the threshold of very high activity” for Covid-19 infections, with 41 counties showing cases on the rise as reported in an earlier alert. 

Wisconsin has 122,274 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 1,327 total virus-related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In this file photo from Nov. 19, 2019, a person is silhouetted in the shade as he walks by the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania House voting session was canceled this morning after a representative tested positive for Covid 19, according to a news release. 

State Rep. Paul Schemel, a Republican, tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday morning after experiencing mild symptoms and quarantining on Wednesday, according to a statement. He was last in the Capitol on Tuesday, he said. 

The House voting session for Oct. 1 was canceled “out of an abundance of caution,” House Speaker Bryan Cutler said in a statement. He said human resources is working with Schemel to determine all interactions with members and staff, and those who were exposed will be contacted. 

Cutler also noted that the chamber, meeting rooms and staff work areas are professionally sanitized on a nightly basis. 

The CEO of a defense contractor in Hawaii has been charged with fraud and money laundering in connection with the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.

The US Attorney’s office says Martin Kao inflated the payroll figures of his company, Navatek LLC (which has since changed its name to Martin Defense Group).

Kao is also accused of applying for loans with two different banks, even though the program limited him to one application.

Five counts of money laundering relate to five checks written on the loan funds, two of which were made out to Martin Kao personally. Kao allegedly deposited $2 million into a personal investment account.

Martin Defense Group designs and produces specialty marine equipment.

Kao appeared in court Thursday. Federal prosecutors asked that he be held without bond because of what they say is a “serious risk defendant will flee.”

Kao’s attorney, Victor Bakke, did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.

Martin Defense Group also did not return CNN’s request for comment, but told CNN affiliate Hawaii News Now they were surprised by the charges.

“As a company, we will address the allegations and have retained legal counsel to review these claims,” the company said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks during a press conference on Thursday, October 1.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan reported that the state had no coronavirus-related deaths for the first time in 187 days.

Hogan said in a news conference Thursday afternoon that this is the first time since March 28 that the state has not had a Covid-19-related death. 

The statewide positivity rate is now at 2.8%, which is down from a high of 26.91% in April, according to Hogan. He said that all jurisdictions in the state currently have positivity rates under 5%. 

Hogan also announced that indoor visitation will begin in all nursing homes that are not experiencing a current outbreak or have not experienced a positive test in the past 14 days. Hogan said that based on federal guidelines, visitation will not be permitted in local jurisdictions that have a positivity rate over 10%. 

Gov. Mike DeWine said despite many Ohioans working hard to keep Covid-19 “in check, unfortunately, we are seeing a rebound in some areas of the state.” 

The governor announced 1,327 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday and said the daily positivity rate increased from 3% to 4%. 

Ohio health officials observed that 11 counties had a very high spread, or “red counties,” which is more than what the state had in September, DeWine said during a coronavirus briefing on Thursday. 

There were four counties added to the “red” list this week; including Clermont, Hamilton, Muskingum and Richland County.  

DeWine shared several coronavirus cautionary stories, including one of a woman in her 80s who went to a neighboring state to bury her husband and contracted the virus from a funeral director who did not wear a mask; the woman died shortly after.  

Ohio now has 155,314 coronavirus cases and 4,817 deaths, DeWine said.  

The Wisconsin Army National Guard administers free Covid-19 tests on Wednesday, September 2 at the Sunnyview Expo Center in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday a new order that allows out-of-state health care workers to practice in the state following “alarming trends” in coronavirus cases.

The governor urged residents to stay home, wear a mask, and practice social distancing.

Secretary-designee Andrea Palm reported 21 new fatalities Thursday in the state, bringing the number of total deaths to at least 1,348.

Palm said 45 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties “meet the threshold of very high activity” for Covid-19 infections.

This means that there are more than 350 cases per 100,000 people. Palm said 41 counties are showing growing trajectory, an indication that cases are on the rise.

Hospitalizations are increasing: ThedaCare president and CEO Dr. Imran Andrabi said his hospital communities are seeing the increases in Covid-19 infection rates and hospitalizations. He said 95% of hospital beds within his system are full at this point and 250 ThedaCare hospital workers did not show up for work Thursday. Andrabi said the workers are getting sick because people are not wearing masks out in the community.

“This is really a responsibility that we all have to take seriously because if some of us do it and others don’t, it doesn’t work,” Andrabi said.

Medical staff holds swabs for rapid Covid-19 tests on September 28 in Rome, Italy.

Italy on Thursday reported the highest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since April 24, figures from the country’s health ministry show.

The country recorded at least 2,548 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, bringing the total number of infections to 317,409.

The number of people that have died from coronavirus is at least 35,918 – an additional 24 fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours. The number of patients admitted to intensive care has also risen by 11, bringing the total to at least 291.

A sign is posted in front of the Gilead Sciences headquarters in Foster City, California.

The US Food and Drug Administration has updated its emergency use authorization for the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir for the treatment of Covid-19.

The agency is no longer requiring remdesivir to be distributed through the US government, officials announced during a call with reporters on Thursday.

Starting on Thursday, the biopharmaceutical company Gilead — the maker of remdesivir — will be responsible for the distribution of the drug in the United States.

Gilead said in a news release the company is “now meeting real-time demand” for the drug, sold under the brand name Veklury in the United States.

The release also noted that AmerisourceBergen will continue to serve as the sole US distributor of remdesivir through the end of this year and will sell the product directly to hospitals. It costs about $3,200 for a five-day treatment course.

“We feel very confident in supply ramp up and that’s what we’ve been working through all year,” Johanna Mercier, chief commercial officer for Gilead Sciences, said during Thursday’s call. 

“By the end of the year we will have more than 2 million treatment courses available,” Mercier said. “We feel very confident that, even if there was a surge in the epidemic, that we can manage that.”

Loss of smell and taste are a strong sign that someone is infected with Covid-19, according to new research published Thursday. 

People who lose either smell or taste should consider self-isolating, even if they have no other symptoms, researchers in Britain said.

How the study was conducted: The team studied 590 volunteers who experienced a new loss of smell or taste. They tested 567 of them for coronavirus.

Of the 567, 77.6% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. In total, 80.4% of participants reporting smell loss and 77.8% of those reporting taste loss had a positive test result, the team reported in the journal PLoS Medicine.

Nearly 40% of those who tested positive for antibodies had neither a fever nor a cough.

Batterham and her colleagues also found that participants with a loss of smell alone were nearly three times more likely than patients with just a loss of taste to have Covid-19 antibodies, and participants with a combined loss of smell and taste were four times more likely to have antibodies.

“These findings suggest that a loss of smell is a highly specific symptom of Covid-19, in contrast to a loss of taste, despite their comparable frequency,” the researchers wrote.

The study recruited its volunteers between April 23 and May 14, during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak in London. It did not include a comparison group of people who did not lose their sense of smell and/or taste.

As the United States continues to battle the coronavirus pandemic, a majority of states are showing an increase in new cases compared to the previous week.

According to Johns Hopkins University data:

The US is currently averaging 42,785 new Covid-19 cases a day, which is down 1% from last week. The country continues to lead the world in total cases, with more than 7 million coronavirus cases.

Watch CNN’s John King break down the latest figures:

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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a news conference at the White House on October 1 in Washington, DC.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was questioned Thursday on the President’s decision to hold rallies in Wisconsin Saturday against recommendations from the White House coronavirus task force regarding social distancing.

The Trump campaign told CNN Thursday that “everyone attending will receive a temperature check, be provided a mask they are encouraged to wear and have access to plenty of hand sanitizer.”

The events come as Wisconsin “has continued to see a rapid worsening of the epidemic in the last week,” a September 27 task force report obtained by CNN said. The state has the third highest case rate in the country and has a test positivity rate between 8% and 10%, the seventh highest in the country. 

The task force recommended increased social distancing “to the maximal degree possible.”

“During the intense period of viral surge, large numbers of acutely infected individuals caused exponential growth in infections. Although young adults are the most affected group currently, spread to other age groups is inevitable. To the maximal degree possible, increase social distancing mitigation measures until cases decline, including through supporting local authorities to pass and enforce mitigation measures,” the report said. 

The state also reported a grim new milestone Thursday — 27 people died of Covid-19 Wednesday, according to the state’s Covid-19 website. That is the highest death count on record for the state.  

McEnany attacked what she described as “two standards of health in this country: one for Trump supporters and one for everyone else,” railing against social justice protesters.

Delta Air Lines planes are seen through a window at Salt Lake City International Airport on September 15.

American and United Airlines are cutting 32,000 jobs after Congress failed to reach a new deal on federal aid plans. Delta has been able to a delay job cuts for now, but CEO Ed Bastian says they may have to furlough 1,900 pilots in the future if Congress doesn’t reach a stimulus deal.

Apart from severely impacting jobs in the aviation industry, the pandemic has also impacted the sense of safety among flyers. Delta has already mandated masks on flights and Bastian says the company is also working on offering its flyers rapid tests.

There is a possibility where Delta may require a flyer to first take a rapid Covid-19 test before boarding, he adds, saying it would largely ensure safety and help passengers avoid quarantines upon arriving at their destination.

Watch:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a press briefing in Washington, DC, on October 1.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated Thursday that the House is likely to move forward with a vote on the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus proposal from House Democrats. 

Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are still far apart in talks for a new round of aid, although she said she remains hopeful that a compromise can be found.

“We’re hopeful that we can reach agreement because the needs of the American people are so great,” Pelosi said. “But there has to be a recognition that it takes money to do that, and it takes the right language to make sure it is done right.”

“State and local, we’re still far apart on that,” she said, adding, “we are coming closer on money for our health provisions in the bill, it’s just a question of the language.”

Pelosi also said Democrats “have concerns about a sufficient amount of money to address the unemployment needs of the American people.”

During the news conference, Pelosi also emphasized the need for politics to remain separate from the effort to produce a vaccine. 

“What we have to do is have confidence, trust in the vaccine,” Pelosi said. “Let science determine this, and not politics. And then people will have confidence in the product.”

She said she would take a Covid-19 vaccine, even though she doesn’t like needles and takes her flu shot “under great duress” each year.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has approved $150 million of funding to help 92 low-and middle-income countries “jumpstart” their “readiness to deliver Covid-19 vaccines, in the form of planning, technical assistance and cold chain equipment.”

Okonjo-Iweala added that the decision will support, “lower-income countries’ ability to maintain routine immunization programmes and protect against the threat of other infectious diseases.”

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance announced earlier this week it had so far secured 200 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccines for the world’s poorest countries. 

The vaccines will have a ceiling price of US$1.60 to US$2 per dose for the 92 of the world’s low income countries. 

Through the COVAX facility coordinated by Gavi, 75 countries have formally committed to providing funding to provide at least part of the cost for procuring the vaccine for poorer nations.

President Donald Trump walks outside the White House on March 3.

The first masks arrived on the White House grounds in February by special order of the National Security Council, mobilizing early on to address the emerging threat of the coming coronavirus. Job one in their emergency response was to take personal precautions, preparing for the critical work at hand, multiple officials tell CNN.

But word that some NSC staffers were being told to wear masks quickly made its way back to the West Wing and it wasn’t long before a sharp dictum came down.

The West Wing wanted to “portray confidence and make the public believe there was absolutely nothing to worry about,” the official said, revealing the image-conscious reason for the opposition to masks for the first time.

The directive opened a schism in the White House complex that would ultimately hinder its ability to contain the spread of the new virus they were now calling Covid-19. Interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials show how that fissure appeared and spread even as confirmed cases in the US began to grow.

The officials all requested anonymity either because they were not authorized to discuss the matter or because they were sharing private conversations with people currently in the administration. But they tell a consistent story of how the White House attempts to deal with the virus were dogged by the president’s fixation on one thing: optics.

The ensuing disaster has now claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Americans, in what may be the most politicized health crisis of the modern presidency. The radical polarization that now grips the country traces back to the very first workplace where it really sank in, at the West Wing of the White House.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews, addressing questions about this story, said that the President “took the virus seriously from the beginning, as evidenced by his administration taking early steps in January to protect the American people.” It was Democrats and the media, she says, who were obsessing at the time – “over the partisan and futile impeachment trial.”

But several key officials tell a consistent and different story, about image management and the trouble it caused in pandemic response from the very beginning.

“We lost so much time,” a former administration official said, looking back. “The whole thing was mind-blowing. This could have been so different.”

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has started a rolling review of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine candidate, it said in a statement on Thursday.

According to the EMA, “a rolling review is one of the regulatory tools that the Agency uses to speed up the assessment of a promising medicine or vaccine during a public health emergency,” and it basically means that instead of evaluating all the data on the vaccine after it is completed, the agency will evaluate the data as it becomes available, in order to speed up its potential approval, if all the safety and effectiveness criteria are met.

“EMA will complete its assessment according to its usual standards for quality, safety and effectiveness,” the EMA also said in its statement.

The EMA had used the rolling review process in the assessment of the Covid-19 medicine remdesivir, but it’s the first time it is applying it to a vaccine.

Trials for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine have been resumed in Britain, Brazil and South Africa after a participant developed a serious illness, but remain on hold in the United States, the US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn confirmed on Wednesday, without revealing why.

“I can’t speak to confidential commercial information and this summit knows that all too well,” he said.

Dr. Paul Casey on CNN's "Newsroom" on October 1.

Wisconsin leaders and health experts are sounding the alarm as the state reported its highest death count on record Thursday — 27 people died of Covid-19 Wednesday, according to the state’s Covid-19 website. For context, the state reported its second highest death count on May 27 at 22.

Currently, one of Green Bay’s four hospitals has more patients than the entire city had at its peak in April, Dr. Casey told CNN on Thursday. He said he hopes the national attention on the coronavirus cases in the community “will get people to wake up.” 

This comes as President Trump is set to hold two rallies this weekend in the cities of Green Bay and Lacrosse in Wisconsin. Four hospitals in Green Bay are near capacity.

 “Those of us in the medical community are very worried about that,” Dr. Casey said. “We’re very concerned about any large gathering, not only weddings, funerals, but much less a very large rally with a bunch of people together without masks.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a briefing on October 1.

The percent of people who tested positive for Covid-19 city wide is at 1.59%, under the 5% threshold, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said. The seven day rolling average is 1.52%.

The mayor said its “imperative” for those in impacted cluster zip codes to get tested adding “overwhelmingly the rest of the city is doing very very well.”

The mayor said 10 zip codes are now testing above 3% — with some having a positivity rate that runs as high as over 6%.

The city is also watching a cluster in Williamsburg Brooklyn which has not yet reached the 3% threshold. Six other zip-codes are being monitored beyond Williamsburg.

Nearly 1,000 city personnel are doing outreach and over 1,100 tests were done on Wednesday, he said. After hundreds of business visits, 130 warnings and 16 violations were issued, the mayor said, not specifying where. There were 160 school visits, he added.

The mayor said the city will continue to watch to determine whether a fuller shut down is required in hot spot communities, adding that as of now there is no indication of an upsurge with regards to schools associated with those communities.

The city’s latest figures: The daily number of people admitted to hospitals for Covid-19 in New York City is at 75, under the 200 threshold. The confirmed positivity rate for Covid-19 for those patients is 22%

With regard to new reported cases on a seven-day average, with a threshold of 550 cases, NYC reports at least 394.

School reopenings: The mayor, alongside the city schools chancellor, also championed what he called the success of city officials, union members, staff and families as he says half a million kids this week go through the front doors of schools.

The mayor encouraged parents to fill out waivers to allow their children to be tested monthly within schools, adding testing is to begin next week.

“Those consent forms have been sent home, we are going to start testing next week,” he said.

He said it was free, quick and easy, simple and non-invasive. “Please parents lets fill out those forms and get them back right away,” de Blasio said.

“This is a monumental milestone for our city,” Chancellor Richard Carranza said Thursday.

“We are the only major school district in the entire country to safely open our schools for in- person learning,” he added.

“This was an is a colossal undertaking and wouldn’t be possible without every single staff member every family and all new Yorkers,” Carranza said.

The state of Wisconsin reported a grim new milestone Thursday — 27 people died of Covid-19 Wednesday, according to the state’s Covid-19 website. That is the highest death count on record for the state.  For context, the state reported its second highest death count on May 27 at 22.  

The state is also reporting a record high of at least 683 Covid-19 related hospitalizations, up from the 646 that were reported Wednesday. 

The percentage of available hospital beds dropped one percentage point to 17%. It was 18% Wednesday.  Twenty-nine percent of hospitalized Covid-19 patients are in intensive care units, down slightly from yesterday’s report of 32%, according to the website.  

Thirteen hundred and fifty-four people have died of Covid-19 in the state of Wisconsin, according to the website.  

President Donald Trump holds a news conference at the White House on September 23.

A new study suggests that mentions of President Trump played a big role in conversations involving Covid-19 misinformation in the first few months of the pandemic.

The study, which has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, was released online by the Cornell Alliance for Science on Thursday. Co-author Sarah Evanega said the peer-review process was taking too long and the authors chose to post it without outside input, and to alert news media, for quicker release.

The researchers — from Cornell University and Cision Global Insights in Michigan – analyzed media coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic across the Internet, podcasts, television, radio and other platforms between January 1 and May 26. The alliance is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The analysis showed that English-language media outlets published more than 1.1 million articles mentioning Covid-19 misinformation.

Among those articles, the researchers found five different sub-sections of topics that emerged within the overall Covid-19 misinformation conversations:

“It is apparent from the data that mentions of President Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation comprise by far the largest single component of the infodemic,” the researchers wrote. “Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall infodemic, well ahead of ‘miracle cures’, which comprised 26.4%.” 

The White House did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The NFL has announced the Tennessee Titans have additional members of the team who have tested positive for Covid-19. There are now five players and six staff who have tested positive for the virus this week. 

The league had originally planned to reschedule Sunday’s postponed Titans game with the Pittsburgh Steelers for this coming Monday or Tuesday but now says the game will be slated for later this year.

The Titans facilities remain closed with no in-person activities allowed.

The NFL statement in full reads:

A person leaves an H&M store on June 18 in San Francisco.

H&M is closing 250 stores next year because of the coronavirus pandemic, as people increasingly shop online.

The fast-fashion retailer has 5,000 stores worldwide, so Thursday’s announcement accounts for 5% of its total store count. 

The Swedish retailer said its third quarter, which encompasses sales from June to August, recovered as time went on because of store reopenings and “strong and profitable” growth in online shopping. Still, September sales declined 5% compared to the same month a year ago. 

“Although the challenges are far from over, we believe that the worst is behind us and we are well placed to come out of the crisis stronger,” CEO Helena Helmersson said in release.

The coronavirus has accelerated the trend toward online shopping, which was already disrupting the retail industry and battering major chains before the pandemic hit. H&M rival Inditex, which owns Zara and other fast-fashion brands, said earlier this year it plans to close as many as 1,200 stores this year and next.

H&M and Inditex aren’t the only retailers feeling the pinch. American Eagle Outfitter and GameStop also recently announced plans to close hundreds of stores because of the rise of online shopping.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, leaves the Capitol in Washington, DC, after meetings on September 30.

As coronavirus pandemic continues to hammer the US economy, House Democrats held off on a planned vote Wednesday night on their $2.2 trillion stimulus proposal to allow more time for bipartisan negotiations in a last-ditch effort to reach a deal just weeks before Election Day.

Latest on the negotiations: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are still far apart, however, as negotiations continue, according to four sources briefed on the talks.

Despite optimistic words from Pelosi and Mnuchin, sources briefed on the talks said that reaching an agreement with the backing of Senate GOP leaders and the White House remains a tall order.

But for now, the two plan to continue to talking, with House Democrats delaying a vote on their own plan to create room for the two sides to come closer to a deal on Thursday.

The stimulus package: Still, the topline cost of a final package — which had been the defining hurdle throughout weeks of inaction — has narrowed, the people said, with Mnuchin’s proposal running above the $1.5 trillion that the Trump administration had signaled it was open to in the talks.

But it remains short of the current $2.2 trillion House Democratic proposal — and it’s far more than what Senate Republicans are willing to accept given that their conference united around a $500 billion proposal.

More importantly, the people said, the actual details of the various pieces remain far from ironed out, with issues like funds for state and local governments and the shape of liability protections still nowhere near agreement.

Mnuchin told Fox News Wednesday night that President Donald Trump had instructed him and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to significantly increase the amount of money in a White House proposal, however, he would not say if there’s a magical number that would lead to a deal.

What comes next: Mnuchin said he would most likely speak with Pelosi again Wednesday night but he didn’t think there would be significant progress until Thursday, when the two sides plan to continue the conversation to try and add details to the talks and narrow differences.

“We’re gonna go back and do a little bit more work,” Mnuchin told reporters as he left the Capitol Wednesday. “We’ve made a lot of progress in a lot of areas.”

Time is running out, however, to strike a bipartisan deal before Election Day and pressure is running high, with lawmakers facing questions from constituents in need amid the economic and public health fallout from the pandemic.

Read more here.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board.

The Data and Safety Monitoring Board, a group of experts in areas like statistics, ethics and vaccine development, views “unblinded” coronavirus vaccine data as it starts to come in, reports CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. 

They can advise companies to apply for FDA review or might bring a trial to a halt, according to Gupta. 

Susan Ellenberg, a professor of biostatistics at UPenn’s Perelman School of Medicine and a Covid-19 DSMB member, agreed to speak with CNN. 

“We have certainly never been in a situation where the national leadership has seemed to be so involved, directly involved, in these kinds of processes,” she told Dr. Gupta about President Trump’s claims that the White House can overrule the FDA’s attempt to toughen guidelines for a coronavirus vaccine.  

Members of the board go through an extensive vetting process.

“We want to know they’re fully independent, that they have no prior, you know, relationships with the company so that they’re not conflicted any way,” Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research. 

Watch:

On Wednesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said if its Covid-19 vaccine is proven safe and effective, it could be available to the general population by late March or early April.

Moderna began its Phase 3 clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine in the US in July. It’s one of four companies that have begun Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trials in the US — the others are Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca.

The AstraZeneca trial was paused after an unexplained illness in a volunteer, and US health authorities are still considering crucial questions that remain around the injections of the experimental vaccine.

“I think a late Q1, early Q2 approval is a reasonable timeline, based on what we know from our vaccine,” Bancel said at a conference hosted by the Financial Times.

But there are several steps that will have to come before that.

If the safety and efficacy data checks out, Bancel says he expects Moderna will be able to file a Biologics License Application (BLA) with the US Food and Drug Administration by late January or early February. That application asks the FDA to consider fully licensing a drug, while an emergency use authorization (EUA) expedites a drug candidate for use on an emergency basis.

Moderna could file for an EUA as early as November 25 for people who are deemed high priority, including health care workers and the elderly, Bancel said at a conference hosted by the Financial Times.

Until a vaccine is available, experts have for long said the country’s most powerful tools against the pandemic are face masks and other safety measures like social distancing.

But even when a vaccine is ready, health officials like Fauci have said there will still be room for the virus to spread, as it’s unlikely the vaccine will be 100% effective or taken by 100% of the population.

“I think if we can get 75 to 80% of the population vaccinated, I think that would be a really good accomplishment,” Fauci said last week.

Construction workers are seen on a job site in Miami, Florida on September 4.

America’s jobs recovery continues, albeit at a slow pace, as another 837,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, on a seasonally adjusted basis. 

That was slightly fewer from the prior week, although last week’s figures notably do not include updated numbers from California, which paused processing initial claims for two weeks. The state is working on a large backlog in benefits claims and implementing fraud prevention. The Labor Department estimated California’s initial claims numbers by duplicating the prior week’s reported claims figures.

Claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that Congress created to help workers who wouldn’t usually be eligible for benefits, such as the self-employed, stood at 650,120.

Adding these together, there were 1.4 million total first-time claims for benefits last week, roughly even with the prior week.

Continued claims, which count workers who have filed for benefits for at least two consecutive weeks, stood at 11.8 million on a seasonally adjusted basis.

 The slowing pace of the decline in initial jobless claims is another piece of evidence that the economic recovery is running out of steam.

Thursday’s Labor Department report on jobless claims is just the latest in this week’s report card on the labor market: the government’s jobs report — the last before the election — is due on Friday.

Economists expect 850,000 jobs were added back in September, bringing the unemployment rate to 8.2%, down from 8.4% in August.

Families across the US are struggling to pay rent and face evictions despite an eviction moratorium until the end of the year.

In September, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order to temporarily halt evictions through the end of 2020.

Umu Conteh told CNN’s Kyung Lah that she contracted Covid-19 in June at a nursing home where she worked. The Columbus, Ohio, resident was out of work for two months and is now working as a home health care aid making $12 an hour. She said she has now been given 30 days to pay the rent she owes.

Melissa Benson of the Legal Aid Society of Columbus said the moratorium “absolutely [does] not” mean that cases aren’t being filed against tenants.

The order puts the responsibility on the renter to ensure they meet the criteria and to provide a signed written statement to their landlord in order to invoke the protection. It doesn’t freeze rent or relieve tenants from having to pay back rent.

Kyung Lah reported that about half the people she spoke to in one day in Columbus worked in health care, “the ones who walk by those hashtag signs that say ‘heroes work here.’” 

Watch:

TNO employees work during the opening of a COVID-19 testing site in Amsterdam, on September 30.

After successfully tamping down the first surge of infection and death, Europe is now in the middle of a second coronavirus wave as it moves into winter.

UK: England’s largest study of coronavirus infections show the spread of the disease may be slowing, according to a team at Imperial College London, who analyzed samples from 84,000 people taken between September 18 to 26.

The study suggests that the latest R-value (the reproductive number) had decreased from 1.7 to 1.1 – but that a range of values from 0.7 to 1.5 mean that an accurate figure is hard to gauge. 

The findings, however did point to an increase in the spread of the virus in the community. The study estimated that 1 in 200 people across England have the virus, amounting to 0.55% of the population.

This is an increase in previous round of testing from the middle of August to the beginning of September, where the figure was 0.13% of the population. 

Netherlands: More than 10,000 people in the Netherlands died from Covid-19 in the first wave of the pandemic, new statistics released on Thursday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) show.

In the months March through June, there were 7,797 deaths in which a doctor listed Covid-19 as the cause of death, and an additional 2,270 in which Covid-19 was listed as the suspected cause of death, totaling 10,067.

Germany: Germany lifted its blanket warning against traveling to all countries outside the European Union, the country’s foreign ministry announced Thursday. 

Germany imposed a global travel warning at the beginning of March when the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy, lifting travel restrictions for most European countries in June. 

Spain: The government announced new coronavirus restrictions last night, which would put the capital Madrid into a form of lockdown.

Gatherings will remain restricted to no more than six people, in both public or private spaces.

Spain reported 11,016 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday. Madrid alone reported 1,586 new infections, accounting for more than 40% of the national increase.

Italy: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he will ask parliament to extend the country’s Covid-19 state of emergency until the end of January.

Speaking during an impromptu press conference in Caserta, Conte said that the Covid-19 situation requires “maximum attention,” even though the “spread is under control.”

Italy was the first major European country to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak, and among the first countries to impose a strict national lockdown.

Travelers register at a Covid-19 test center in Germany's Duesseldorf Airport on Wednesday, September 30.

Germany lifted its blanket warning against traveling to all countries outside the European Union, the country’s foreign ministry announced Thursday. 

Germany imposed a global travel warning at the beginning of March when the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy, lifting travel restrictions for most European countries in June. 

But due to rising coronavirus infections in Europe, the foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that it had extended an existing travel warning for parts of Belgium to cover the entire country. The same applies to most of France.  

The ministry also warned against travel to Wales, Northern Ireland as well as Gibraltar and Iceland. 

Early in September, the federal government re-issued travel warnings for regions in Europe where infection levels rose above the level of 50 cases per 100,000 people a week. 

On Thursday, cases rose by 2,503 to 291,722 within the past 24 hours, according to data from the country’s infectious disease agency, the Robert Koch Institute.

The death toll increased by 12 to 9,500. The country’s reproduction rate currently stands at 0.96.

An airport worker is seen at the Jorge Chavez international airport in Lima, Peru, on July 17.

Peru will resume international flights to seven South American countries from October 5, President Martin Vizcarra announced on Wednesday, state news agency Andina reported. 

According to Andina, the government has approved the resumption of international air travel with flights no longer than four hours to these destinations: Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile.

Peru closed its border in March after declaring a national state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only humanitarian flights, returning Peruvians stranded abroad, were allowed. 

Peru’s government will ask all passengers leaving and arriving to the country to submit a negative coronavirus test done in the last 48 hours, President Vizcarra announced earlier this week. 

On Wednesday evening, Peru’s Health Ministry reported 3,061 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the country’s total to 814,829. Its death toll is 32,463. 

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is pictured at a press conference in Rome on September 29.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he will ask parliament to extend the country’s Covid-19 state of emergency until the end of January.

Speaking during an impromptu press conference in Caserta, Conte said that the Covid-19 situation requires “maximum attention,” even though the “spread is under control.”

Italy was the first major European country to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak, and among the first countries to impose a strict national lockdown. It has the second highest death toll in Europe, after the UK, with 35,894 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In the past few months, the country has managed to dodge a second wave unlike its European neighbors, though confirmed cases are rising. On Wednesday, authorities reported 1,851 new cases and 19 deaths.

Medical staff work in the Covid-19 isolation ward at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, on September 30.

Israel recorded 8,919 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, according to Ministry of Health data, breaking the old record of 8,315 new cases in a day registered last week.

There are now 810 patients in serious condition, with 206 patients on ventilators, the ministry said.

A total of 1,571 people have died from the disease.

According to the Ministry of Health, Israel’s daily per million death rates is now higher than the United States, the UK, South Korea, Italy, Austria, and France.

Healthcare workers collect a test sample from a motorist at a drive-through coronavirus testing center at M.T.O. Shahmaghsoudi School of Islamic Sufism on September 29 in Los Angeles, California.

According to Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) tally of cases in the US, there were at least 42,812 new cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 7,233,042 confirmed infections.

There were 946 new fatalities reported on Wednesday, bringing the US coronavirus death toll to at least 206,932 people. 

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

The figures are a slight increase from Tuesday, which saw 42,185 new cases and 914 reported deaths, according to JHU.

For regular updates, please follow CNN’s map, which is refreshed with new data every 15 mins: 

Two-thirds of Americans have delayed or skipped scheduled cancer screenings – such as a mammogram, colonoscopy, skin check, or Pap/HPV test – because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey out Thursday.

More than a third of Americans had some sort of cancer screening due during the pandemic this year, but nearly 64% of those surveyed said they had put it off or skipped it altogether, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) found.

Plus, fewer than half of Americans are doing any of the things known to prevent cancer, such as staying out of the sun or using sunscreen when outside; maintaining a healthy weight; and limiting alcohol, the survey of 4,000 adults found.

The survey, conducted online from July 21 to September 8, also found 59% believe racism can affect the health care a person receives, with Black people (76%), Hispanic people (70%), and Asian people (66%) more likely than White people (53%) to hold these views.

The pandemic has put 500,000 more girls at risk of being forced into child marriage this year, reversing 25 years of progress that saw child marriage rates decline, according to a new report by the charity Save the Children.

Before the global outbreak, 12 million girls married each year, now the charity warns that up to 2.5 million more girls could be at risk of child marriage over the next five years.  

With up to 117 million children estimated to fall into poverty in 2020, many will face pressure to work and help provide for their families.”

The pandemic led to school closures and “experience during the Ebola outbreak suggests many girls will never return” to class due “to increasing pressure to work, risk of child marriage, bans on pregnant girls attending school, and lost contact with education,” the charity wrote.

Who is at risk? This year, 191,200 girls in South Asia will be disproportionately affected by the risk of increased child marriage, the report says. It is followed by West and Central Africa, where 90,000 girls are at risk of child marriage, Latin America and the Caribbean (73,400), and Europe and Central Asia (37,200).  

“Every year, around 12 million girls are married, 2 million before their 15th birthday,” Ashing said. “Half a million more girls are now at risk of this gender-based violence this year alone – and these only are the ones we know about. We believe this is the tip of the iceberg.”

A health worker on a mobile testing van takes a nasal swab from a man in New Delhi, India on August 5.

Children can spread coronavirus among themselves efficiently, but young adults are the primary source of coronavirus spread, according to a study published Wednesday.

The study, based on a giant contact-tracing effort involving more than 3 million people in India, shows most Covid-19 patients never infect anyone else – the researchers found that 70% of infected people did not infect any of their contacts.

Instead, the study found that 8% of patients accounted for 60% of observed new infections.

The study also contradicts the widely held belief that children are unlikely to catch coronavirus.

The team wrote in their report, which was published in the journal Science, that “while the role of children in transmission has been debated, we identify high prevalence of infection among children who were contacts of cases around their own age.”

And that’s despite schools being closed in India since March, Laxminarayan noted. 

The study was based on the universal contact-tracing efforts undertaken in two large states in the south of India.

Authorities tracked down and tested more than 575,000 people exposed to nearly 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases from March until August.

Most of the index cases – the first patient in a chain of transmission – were adults aged 20 to 45, the team found.

A man walks with his dog at the Marina Long Beach with cruise ships docked at the port due to a no-sail order in Long Beach, California on April 11.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that the no-sail order for cruise ships would be extended through to October 31.

On Tuesday, a federal health official told CNN that CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield failed to convince the White House to extend it into next year.

The CDC’s statement said that recent outbreaks on cruise ships had proven that the vessels could be used to “transmit and amplify” the spread of the coronavirus, raising the chance of new infections in US communities.

“Recent passenger voyages in foreign countries continue to have outbreaks, despite cruise ship operators having extensive health and safety protocols to prevent the transmission of (coronavirus) on board,” the statement said.

Most US families with children under 18 across all racial and ethnic groups are facing “serious financial problems” as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, NPR and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The survey found 61% of households in the US with children under 18 were dealing with financial hardships due to the pandemic. The poll also found more than half of US households experienced pay cuts or lost jobs over the same period of time.

The poll was conducted from July 1 to August 3 and involved 3,454 respondents, 18-years-old and above, of whom 1,000 reported having children under 18 in their homes.

The survey also found 44% of households with children reported spending all or most of their savings during the pandemic. 11% said they did not have any savings before the outbreak.

Six out of 10 families with children reported an adult in the home had lost a job, a business, was furloughed or faced reduced wages or hours since the pandemic began, the poll found, leading to “serious financial problems.” 

Since the start of the pandemic, 59% of households with children had problems caring for their children and 36% had trouble keeping their kids schooling intact, the survey revealed. 

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

Female doctors get paid less than male doctors, but a new study shows it’s not because they work less.

In fact, female doctors spend more time with patients, order more tests and spend more time discussing preventive care than their male counterparts, a team of researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Ganguli and colleagues looked at billing and time data covering more than 24 million visits to primary care doctors in the US in 2017.

Read more here:

Related article Study finds female doctors work harder for less money

A general view of AstraZeneca is seen during Prime Minister Scott Morrison's visit on August 19 in Sydney, Australia.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine trial in the United States is still on hold after a participant developed a serious illness, but the Food and Drug Administration commissioner won’t say why.

At the US Pharma and Biotech Summit hosted by the Financial Times Wednesday, US FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn was asked why the trial was still on pause in the US, even though it has resumed in Europe. Hahn said he couldn’t answer.

Hahn said he could not talk about a “specific issue” that may involve the AstraZeneca trial. 

An AstraZeneca spokesperson told CNN earlier that regulators in Britain, Brazil and South Africa had all decided to resume the trials. “We are continuing to work with the FDA to facilitate review of the information needed to make a decision regarding resumption of the US trial,” the spokesperson said.

A United Airlines passenger checks in for a flight at San Francisco International Airport on September 02.

United Airlines said it will begin to furlough more than 13,000 employees Thursday.

Like American Airlines, which announced earlier this evening that it too will begin furloughing workers tomorrow, United said it would recall furloughed employees if Congress reached a stimulus deal soon.

The letter added: “To our departing 13,000 family members: thank you for your dedication and we look forward to welcoming you back.” 

Some context: Earlier this evening, American Airlines announced it will begin to furlough 19,000 workers tomorrow.

The health department in King County, Washington, said at least 25 cases of Covid-19 have been connected to a spa in the city of Snoqualmie, near Seattle.

The outbreak was reported at Salish Lodge & Spa and includes 23 staff members and two guests.

The health department has asked anyone who visited the spa between Sept. 16 and Sept. 30 to get a coronavirus test and avoid contact with others for 14 days. The agency said Salish is cooperating and has agreed to temporarily suspend operations. Contract tracing has been hampered by the fact that the spa does not keep records of its visitors, except for those who stay overnight.

The University of Denver has suspended 38 swimming and diving athletes from all team activities for violating state and public health order, and university policies “designed to address the spread of Covid-19,” according to a message on the university’s website. 

According to the message, possible outcomes for the violations could include suspension from the university for one or more academic terms. 

“We will continue to swiftly pursue disciplinary action if members of our community disregard the protocols and public health orders designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” read the message. 

All 38 student-athletes are required to retest for Covid-19, according to the website. The university “imposed location restrictions until negative test results are received.”

American Airlines says it is poised to furlough 19,000 workers starting tomorrow. But, the airline says it is ready to reverse the furloughs should Congress strike a deal soon. 

In a new letter to employees, American CEO Doug Parker says he was hopeful that Wednesday talks between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would result in an 11th hour deal to extend airline payroll support by six months, avoiding furloughs. 

Some context: A CNN analysis found that roughly 50,000 flight attendants, pilots, mechanics, and gate agents will face losing their jobs at the stroke of midnight. 

The latest forecast from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects between 219,000 and 232,000 Americans will have died from coronavirus by Oct. 24.

The so-called ensemble forecast, based on more than three dozen other forecast models, shows a large variation in predictions of how many people are likely to die in the coming three weeks.

Some of the variation depends on how people are expected to comply with social distancing measures.

The last CDC ensemble forecast, released Sept. 24, projected 214,000 to 226,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by Oct. 17.

Unlike some individual models, the CDC’s ensemble forecast only offers projections a few weeks into the future. 

According to Johns Hopkins University, 206,825 people have died from coronavirus in the US, with 7.2 million reported cases.