Governors of states that were the first capvirus hot spots are taking competitive measures to save you a wave of viruses.
Connecticut, New York and New Jersey added Rhode Island to the state list on a notice Tuesday calling visitors from highly infected states to isolate themselves for two weeks upon arrival in one of the 3 states. Other states covered through realization are Florida, California, Texas, North Carolina and Washington.
Resolution is one of the many steps that the 3 states have taken to tighten restrictions on viruses in recent days.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has stepped up efforts to end giant meetings of others across the state, especially in New York. He said Monday that outbreaks of new instances across the country, namely in Texas and Florida, can spread smoothly to the three-state area, which has controlled the coronavirus.
“It’s Florida, it’s Texas, it’s the Midwest, it’s California, ‘oh, it’s back to New Jersey’ is on the rise, ‘oh, it’s back to Massachusetts’ is on the rise,” Cuomo said Monday. “It will continue, this ricocheting across the country, because that’s what viruses do.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy scaled back indoor group size limits to 25 people Monday, with exceptions for events such as weddings and funerals. The limit for indoor gatherings had increased to a maximum of 100 people in June, up from the previous maximum of 50 people.
States under the travel advisory, such as Florida, Texas, and Mississippi, have some of the highest test positive rates in the country — 18.4%, 13.8%, and 23.3%, respectively. Meanwhile, test positive rates in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are all under 2%, according to data collected and published by COVID Exit Strategy.
New York and New Jersey were once the epicenters of the coronavirus. Deaths in New York have exceeded 25,000, with about 19,000 deaths in just New York City. In New Jersey, about 14,000 people have died, and about 4,400 people in Connecticut have died.
As of Tuesday afternoon, over 4.7 million COVID-19 infections have been confirmed nationwide, and more than 156,000 people have died.
Senate Republicans said Tuesday that the negotiations for a new round of federal coronavirus aid have stalled because Democrats won’t compromise on the cost or scope of a package and are raising the price tag instead.
“It’s been really frustrating,” Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, told the Washington Examiner after White House negotiators briefed the Republican conference on the stalemate. “It’s not budging at all. They came up.”
The Trump administration and Democratic leaders have not gotten anywhere after days of closed-door discussions on a new spending bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that White House officials and Democratic leaders would continue negotiating on a larger package.
New York’s public fitness commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot resigned Tuesday, expressing his sadness with the city’s government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I leave my post today with deep sadness that the ultimate critical physical fitness crisis of our lives, the Department of Health’s unprecedented experience of disease control has not been used to the extent that it could have been used,” he said in his resignation letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Barbot and others in the city’s public health department have taken issue with de Blasio’s May decision to delegate virus tracking and tracing efforts, which have long been handled by the health department, to the agency that manages public hospitals.
“Our experts are world-renowned for their paintings on epidemiology, surveillance and intervention,” Barbot said Tuesday. “The people would be well served by hitting them in the strategic center of the reaction and deep down.”
Many Catholic schools will open for in-person classes this fall, even as a wide sweep of public schools will begin the semester online. California Gov. Gavin Newsom in July announced the closure of all schools public and private, a move that drew backlash and lawsuits from many parents. More recently, Montgomery County, Maryland, Health Officer Travis Gayles announced that all private schools would be forced online for the beginning of the year. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, overruled the order on Monday. But in most states, many Catholic and private schools are planning to reopen without incident.
Hyperbaric oxygen cure may be just a remedy for other people with COVID-19, according to two doctors at NYU’s Winthrop Hospital. Scott Gorenstein and David Lee conducted an examination of 20 COVID-19 patients who placed in a hyperbaric chamber. 90% of those patients survived. Of 60 patients who had no remedy, 78% survived. Dr. Lee said the next step would be to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the remedy.
The governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Louisiana, Michigan, and Virginia (three Republicans and three Democrats), have teamed up to work with private manufacturers of rapid coronavirus tests, such as Becton Dickinson and Quidel, in an effort to scale up production, circumventing the federal government.
“With severe scarcity and delays in verification and the federal government seeking to cut check funding, states are joining forces to get millions of faster checks to save lives and slow the spread of COVID-19,” Hogan said.
The most commonly used diagnostic tests produce results in about seven days and as many as 10 to 15 days in some states, rendering tests useless as a means to prevent community transmission. Rapid antigen tests can detect the coronavirus within 20 minutes, mitigating the risk of spreading the virus in the time between getting tested and getting results.