Category: Breaking News

As coronavirus outbreaks spike in some areas of the United States, Apple is planning to close retail stores located in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Apple began reopening stores in the United States in May, and as of this week, 154 of the company’s 271 stores had been reopened. Coronavirus cases are climbing in some places in the U.S., however, and Apple is reclosing locations in affected areas. Apple will be closing eleven of its retail stores, but it’s not yet clear which stores are being closed. Apple had reopened all 18 of its stores in Florida, five in Arizona, three in North Carolina, and one in South Carolina. Apple in a statement said that it is temporarily closing stores in “an abundance of caution” and is closely monitoring the situation. Apple’s retail chief, Deirdre O’Brien in a letter to customers amid of store openings said that Apple will only reopen stores when its confident it can safely serve customers. Decisions to close or reopen stores are based on data evaluation, such as local cases, near and long-term trends, and guidance from national and local health officials. O’Brien warned that Apple would not hesitate to close stores again if coronavirus cases spiked. “These are not decisions we rush into — and a store opening in no way means that we won’t take the preventative step of closing it again should local conditions warrant,” O’Brien said. In stores that have reopened, Apple is implementing safety measures that include mandatory masks, social distancing, frequent cleaning, temperature checks, and more. In some locations, stores are open only for repairs and curb-side pickup, while others are open but with a limited number of people allowed in at one time.

The coronavirus pandemic will “fade away” even without a vaccine, but researchers are close to developing one anyhow, President Donald Trump said. “We’re very close to a vaccine and we’re very close to therapeutics, really good therapeutics,” Trump said Wednesday night in a television interview with Fox News. “But even without that, I don’t even like to talk about that, because it’s fading away, it’s going to fade away, but having a vaccine would be really nice and that’s going to happen.” President Donald Trump said that he believed the coronavirus pandemic would “go away without a vaccine,” contradicting countless warnings from the medical community and his own White House task force. “I feel about vaccines like I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine, it’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time.” Trump added that while the U.S. may see “some flare-ups” of the virus, and while the virus could remain throughout the year, he believed states should lift restrictions and let Americans go back to work. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, does not think COVID-19 will suddenly go away. “I don’t think there’s a chance that this virus is just going to disappear,” he said recently. “It’s going to be around, and if given the opportunity, it will resurge.” He said he was “almost certain it will come back because the virus is so transmissible and it’s globally spread.”

China raised its emergency warning to its second-highest level and canceled more than 60% of the flights to Beijing on Wednesday amid a new coronavirus outbreak in the capital. It was a sharp pullback for the nation that declared victory over COVID-19 in March and a message to the rest of the world about how tenacious the virus really is. New infections spiked in India, Iran and U.S. states including Florida, Texas and Arizona as authorities struggled to balance restarting economic activity without accelerating the pandemic. European nations, which embarked on a wide-scale reopening this week, looked on with trepidation as the Americas struggled to contain the first wave of the pandemic and Asian nations like China and South Korea reported new outbreaks.

Chinese officials described the situation in Beijing as “extremely grave.” “This has truly rung an alarm bell for us,” Party Secretary Cai Qi told a meeting of Beijing’s Communist Party Standing Committee.

After a push that began June 14, the city expects to have tested 700,000 people by the end of the day, said Zhang Qiang, a Beijing party official. About half of them were workers from the city’s food markets, nearby residents and close contacts. The party’s Global Times said 1,255 flights to and from the capital’s two major airports were scrapped by Wednesday morning, about two-thirds of those scheduled. Since the virus emerged in China late last year and spread worldwide, there have been more than 8.1 million confirmed cases and at least 443,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the true toll is much higher, due to the many who died without being tested and other factors. Continue reading “Beijing outbreak raises coronavirus fears for rest of the world”

The United States may be at a crucial point in the coronavirus pandemic, with cases rising again and officials deciding whether to stay the course on reopening. At least 19 states have seen new cases go up in the last two weeks and six states on Tuesday reported record increases, CBS News’ Manuel Bojorquez reports.

Florida reported 2,783 new cases. Texas reported 2,622, and Arizona reported a one-day jump of 2,392 new cases. Oklahoma, Oregon and Nevada also reported their highest single-day spikes in cases yet. Continue reading “6 states report record-high jumps in coronavirus cases as reopening plans weighed”

I’m Barking At Everybody

I’m really in a bad mood and pissed. And I realized that I’m really angry because the assholes have decided to let the pandemic spread so they can win an election. I thought leadership was supposed to lead and do what’s in the best interest of the country even in the difficult times when the masses don’t understand.

A Harvard health expert said he expects an additional 200,000 deaths in the US by September. Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the current data shows that somewhere between 800 to 1,000 Americans are dying from the virus daily, and even if that does not increase, the US is poised to cross 200,000 deaths sometime in September. “I think that is catastrophic. I think that is not something we have to be fated to live with,” Jha told CNN. “We can change the course. We can change course today.” Jha stressed that the numbers he’s predicted are only for the next several months.

“The pandemic won’t be over in September,” Jha said. “So, I’m really worried about where we’re going to be in the weeks and months ahead.”

The main model used by officials to estimate the impact of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States revised its death toll this week to 193,347 COVID-19 deaths by October 1. As of June 10, the number of US coronavirus infections was just shy of 2 million. More than 20 states have reported an increase in infections since lockdowns began to be lifted, and nine have seen their hospitalizations climb since Memorial Day, Business Insider previously reported.

“We’re really the only major country in the world that opened back up without really getting our cases as down low as we really needed to,” Jha told CNN.

He also said that the US is the only advanced country to not have a proper contact tracing system, and all of those obstacles made reopening riskier. Jha said people should continue to maintain social distancing, wear masks, and to “put pressure” on the government to advance testing and contact tracing efforts.

All movement in and out of the city will be ‘strictly controlled’ as dozens more test positive for Covid-19 amid fears of a second wave

China’s capital has raised its emergency level as dozens of new coronavirus cases emerged and residents were barred from any “unessential” travel outside Beijing following a new outbreak of the virus that is yet to be brought under control. Hundreds of flights were cancelled, schools suspended and all residential compounds ordered to reinstate strict screening after authorities raised the city’s four-tiered Covid emergency response level from three to two on Tuesday evening. All movement in and out of the city will be “strictly controlled”, officials said at the briefing. Authorities reported 31 new cases of the virus in Beijing as of Tuesday, bringing the total number of infections to 137 over the past six days. The new outbreak, linked to a sprawling wholesale food market in the south-eastern district of Fengtai, has spread to nine of the city’s 17 districts. On Tuesday, at least 1,255 inbound and outbound flights were cancelled, according to state media. Chen Bei, deputy secretary general of the Beijing Municipal People’s Government said: “Beijing faces serious danger of imported cases and spread in the city and the country.” Officials stopped short of ordering businesses and factories to shut under the new emergency level, which had been lowered just two weeks ago. Authorities called on employers to continue regular operations but encourage remote working and ask employees to stagger their arrivals at work.

All primary and secondary schools were ordered to stop attending classes on Tuesday, while kindergartens and universities were also suspended. Officials also ordered that traffic to parks as well as indoor public spaces like museums and libraries be limited. Continue reading “Beijing coronavirus outbreak: city raises emergency level and grounds hundreds of flights”

Experts voice concern over an uptick of Covid-19 cases in the southern part of the state where resources are scarce

The number of coronavirus deaths in California surpassed 5,000 over the weekend, even as malls, museums and movie theaters began to reopen across the state.

The rise in cases has left epidemiologists and healthcare providers uneasy about whether the Golden State – which until now has been considered a national leader in aggressively containing the pandemic – will start to regress.

California has now recorded about 153,500 Covid-19 cases, with cases increasing by more than 2,000 over the weekend. Much of that can be attributed to increased testing, health officials say. But the grim statistics also reflect an explosion of cases in Imperial county, which borders Mexico, as well as a spike in Los Angeles. “The continued growth of the epidemic in southern California is of huge concern,” said George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at UC San Francisco. “We can’t turn the corner of this epidemic until we turn a corner there.” In Los Angeles, coronavirus hospitalizations have slowed, but per a tracker developed by the Mercury News, Los Angeles county saw nearly 1,000 new cases by Sunday night, and 17 deaths – more than half of the daily total of reported deaths in the state.

As cases and deaths continued to rise in Imperial county, more than 1,600 residents signed a letter asking the California governor Gavin Newsom and state officials to intervene, even as local supervisors pushed to reopen more businesses despite the health crisis. Continue reading “States see Covid-19 surges as they reopen, need to intervene right now: Fmr. FDA chief”

It’s an outcome no one wants, but could become a “harsh reality”: a second wave of shutdowns.

But the pandemic is far from over. More than 115,000 Americans have died from coronavirus, and hundreds more are dying from the virus every day. “COVID’s not taking a summer vacation,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert and professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “It’s actually having new opportunities to spread.” Murray said the “biggest and most difficult choice” states could face in the coming months is managing a potential second shutdown. And the consequences of another shutdown would be wide-ranging, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. “We can’t shut down the economy again,” Mnuchin told CNBC. “I think we’ve learned that if you shut down the economy, you’re going to create more damage. And not just economic damage, but … medical problems and everything else that get put on hold.” But the federal government hasn’t been in control of shutdowns and reopenings. Those have been at the discretion of each state. “If you run out of hospital beds, and you run out of ICU beds … (states would) have to shut down,” said Reiner.