Over the weekend, Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma saw the biggest increases in positive COVID-19 tests, according to the Washington Post, a harbinger that the current phase of the pandemic seems to be moving up and out from the Sun Belt.
The pandemic, according to Deborah Birx, MD, lead adviser to the White House's coronavirus task force, has entered a new phase. No longer are hot spots or outbreaks contained to densely populated metro areas like New York City; instead, urban and rural areas are seeing similar rates of spread.
Appearing on morning news shows yesterday, Birx offered her warning. "To everybody who lives in a rural area, you are not immune or protected from this virus," she said. "If you're in multi-generational households, and there's an outbreak in your rural area or in your city, you need to really consider wearing a mask at home, assuming that you're positive, if you have individuals in your households with comorbidities."
Birx emphasized the need for Americans across the country to stop attending ‘super-spreading events’ and continued to recommend the closures of bars and social events where people gathered, unmasked, in large groups. She also said some communities with high case counts will have to use distance learning at the start of the school year.
Today, President Donald Trump took a jab at Birx on Twitter and said her comments were politically motivated. This is the first time Trump has publicly criticized Birx.
According to a model cited by the Washington Post, 37 states and Puerto Rico will see rising daily death tolls during the next 2 weeks compared with the previous 2 weeks.
As of today, the United States has 4,698,244 cases and 155,101 deaths, per the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracker.
HHS releases testing details
According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), more than 59 million COVID-19 tests have now been completed in the United States—averaging more than 810,000 per day over the past 7 days. Over the past month, the percentage of lab tests completed within 3 days was 45%, and over the last week, it was over 56%.
"We continue to see signs of progress across the country and across the Sunbelt," said Admiral Brett P. Giroir, MD, HHS assistant secretary for health, said in a press release. "We have hot spots in which we are aggressively intervening, but our message is clear and the Administration is in alignment: We can control outbreaks by avoiding crowded indoor spaces, like bars and restaurants.
"It is critically important to wear face masks and practice good hand hygiene. All of these actions, along with deployments of surge testing and public health strike teams to hotspot areas, are beginning to show lower prevalence of the virus."
As the virus has spread this summer, many counties have complained that testing has echoed the situation in early March, with test shortages and long wait times. HHS said it is taking several steps to shorten testing turnaround times, including sending point-of-care tests to every nursing home in the country and setting up federal testing surge sites.
HHS currently operates such sites in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; New Orleans; Bakersfield, California; and Miami.
Schools and distance learning
Though private schools, including parochial schools, across the country have moved forward with plans to start the 2020-21 school year in person, a Montgomery County, Maryland, health officer has ordered schools in his county to switch to online learning — a move that has drawn criticism from Larry Hogan, the state's governor. Today, Hogan issued an emergency order contradicting the initial order and said private schools may open if they follow health guidelines.
Across the country, schools are grappling with how to begin the academic year, which is set to begin this month throughout most of the country. According to the New York Times, some major metro areas, including Dallas and Tampa, Florida, are sticking with plans to open in person, and New York City has committed to a hybrid model.
According to Education Week, 11 of the nation’s 15 largest school districts (which include 2.8 million students) have committed to starting the school year online, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.
But already some schools, including Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana, which reopened last week, are seeing their first cases of the virus, prompting 14-day quarantines of exposed students and staff.
Antibody treatment, MLB outbreak, plasma donations
In other domestic COVID-19 news:
- Eli Lilly announced today the launch of a phase 3 trial of its antibody treatment for COIVD-19, which will be tested in nursing home residents. The study will involve 2,400 participants, including residents and staff who live or work at facilities that have had a recently diagnosed case of COVID-19 and are now at a high risk for exposure, the company said in a press release.
- Major League Baseball announced another team outbreak of COVID-19, this time in the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals' schedule has now been delayed. The Miami Marlins are facing a large outbreak, in which 18 players and 2 coaches tested positive last week. The Marlins are expected to resume play tomorrow.
- Four former commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration, Mark McClellan, Margaret Hamburg, Robert Califf, and Scott Gottlieb, wrote an op-ed in today's Washington Post touting the use of blood plasma from recovered coronavirus patients—also known as convalescent plasma—as a treatment that could be used to fight COVID-19 as the world waits for a vaccine. The commissioners say that plasma must be tested in clinical trials.
