Coronavirus 2020 Outbreak: Latest Updates

The White House on Monday urged all Americans to follow a new set of guidelines for the next 15 days aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus that has now killed more than 70 people in the U.S.

President Donald Trump, joined by members of his coronavirus task force, said the guidelines urge people across the country to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people, to avoid eating at or visiting bars, restaurants, and food courts, and to avoid discretionary travel. In places "with evidence of community transmission," bars and restaurants should close, the guidelines say.

Trump also, however, said he was not yet ready to call for a nationwide quarantine or curfew.

“We've made the decision to further toughen the guidelines and blunt the infection now,” Trump said. “We'd much rather be ahead of the curve than behind it.”

Following the guidelines, dubbed "15 Days to Slow the Spread," will help, he said.

“With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner,” he said. Yet Trump also warned that the outbreak could last until "August, could be July, could be longer than that."

Officials also said they will reconsider the guidelines after 15 days and that they may need to be extended.

The new guidelines come just a day after the CDC recommended that all gatherings and events of 50 or more people be canceled or postponed over the next 8 weeks. The situation is changing so rapidly that officials on Monday said they chose to tighten those guidelines further.

“Large events and mass gatherings can contribute to the spread of COVID-19 in the United States via travelers who attend these events and introduce the virus to new communities,” the CDC said.

The guidance came the same day Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that the first human trials of a potential vaccine began in Seattle.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced efforts it said will bring coronavirus testing into a new phase this week. Vice President Mike Pence said at a Sunday news briefing that more than 1.9 million tests will become available and more than 2,000 labs are ready to process them quickly.

At the same time, the U.S. Public Health Service is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to set up drive-through and walk-up sites in all 50 states. Tests will be prioritized for health care workers, first responders, and people in the highest risk groups, including anyone over 65 years old and people with compromised immune systems. The new sites should be able to conduct 2,000 to 4,000 tests a day and will be set up on a rolling basis, officials said.

They warned that the ramped up testing will cause a spike in the number of positive cases. The number of COVID-19 cases tops 167,000 worldwide, including 3,700 in the U.S., as well as 64 deaths. For the first time since the outbreak began in December, China no longer has a majority of the world's cases as Europe and the U.S. see rapid growth.

“The worst is yet ahead for us,” said Fauci. “It is how we respond to the challenge that is going to determine what the ultimate endpoint is going to be.”

Earlier in the day, Fauci had urged Americans to “hunker down” and avoid going to places like restaurants and traveling. Governors in several states, including Illinois and Ohio, ordered all bars and restaurants shut down. Most will be allowed to remain open for take-out and delivery.

When asked if the U.S. might look at more restrictive measures nationwide, Fauci said “anything and everything” is on the table.

Trump also met with leaders of grocery store chains and food companies and ensured Americans that food and supplies will not run out. Panicked Americans have emptied store shelves of cleaning supplies and many food staples.

“We have no shortages other than people are buying 3 to 5 times what they normally would buy,” Trump said while asking people to buy less. “There's no need for anyone in the country to hoard essential food supplies.”

“With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner,” he said. Yet Trump also warned that the outbreak could last until "August, could be July, could be longer than that."

Officials also said they will reconsider the guidelines after 15 days and that they may need to be extended.

There are more than 4,300 cases in the U.S. of COVID-19 and more than 70 deaths. That number includes 46 cruise ship passengers that tested positive among the more than 300 evacuated by the U.S. last month and another three cases in people repatriated to the U.S. from China.

Washington state: 48. Twenty-nine are associated with the Life Care Center skilled nursing facility in King County, Washington.

Florida: 4. They include a patient in Santa Rosa County who had recently been on an international trip; a person in their 70s who tested positive in Lee County after an international trip, and a 77-year-old man from Lee County.

California: 6. One was in an elderly person from Placer County who had recently gone on a Princess cruise to Mexico. The other was a woman in her 60s from Santa Clara County. The third was in a woman in her 90s who lived in assisted living. The fourth was in a woman in her 60s who had traveled overseas. She died in Los Angeles County but is not a resident there.

Georgia: 1. The state's first death was in a man in his 60s with underlying conditions.

Kansas: 1. A man in his 70s was taken to a hospital and died shortly after. He tested positive for COVID-19 afterward. The man had been living in a long-term care facility in Wyandotte County, which shares a border with Missouri.

New Jersey: 2. The state's first death was in a man in his 60s from Bergen County. The second is a woman in her 50s from Monmouth County.

New York: 7. One, a 65-year-old man from Suffern, northwest of New York City, had significant health problems, officials said. The second, an 82-year-old woman, died in Brooklyn on Friday. Others include a 79-year old woman with heart failure and lung disease, a 78-year-old man with multiple underlying conditions, a 56-year-old man with diabetes, and a 53-year-old woman with diabetes and heart disease.

Louisiana: 3. The first was a 58-year-old from the New Orleans are who had underlying health conditions. Second was a 53-year-old from New Orleans, also with underlying medical conditions. Third was an 84-year-old.

Virginia: 1. The patient was a man in his 70s. The source of his infection is not known.

The U.S. is banning all foreign travel to the United States from most of Europe for the next 30 days beginning midnight Friday, March 13. American citizens are not included in the ban. On Saturday, Trump said he would extend the ban to include the UK and Ireland.

The CDC said it has worked with states to expand testing for the virus. The agency says that 79 state and local public health labs in 50 states and the District of Columbia are currently using COVID-19 tests.

Robert Redfield, MD, director of the CDC, said during congressional testimony this week that the cost of the coronavirus tests and treatment will both be covered by private insurance, something both President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have said would happen, too. It differs, however, from what private insurance companies have publicly committed to doing. The FDA, which must approve new medical tests, gave emergency approval to Roche for a fast-response test the testing giant has developed. The company says its equipment can examine more than 1,400 tests in 24 hours.

All of these developments came after the WHO called the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, acknowledging worldwide spread of the disease. At a news briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was alarmed by the spread and severity of the disease along with “alarming levels of inaction” in how some countries are dealing with it.

He said while he was concerned about fear the word might cause, he hoped to galvanize response by calling it a pandemic. Spread of the virus can still be contained, he said.

Describing the outbreak as a pandemic doesn't change what the WHO is doing and it shouldn't change what countries are doing, he said.

“We should double down and be more aggressive,” Tedros said.

In addition to testing people who have symptoms and have recently traveled to areas where the infection is spreading, like China, Italy, and Japan, the CDC also plans to begin testing people with pneumonia that isn't caused by the flu through it's influenza-like illness surveillance network.

Previously, the agency would only accept a test if the patient had traveled to China or had close contact with someone who had been there.

Officials and businesses are working together to halt the spread of the virus. Sports leagues have suspended or canceled play; conferences, festivals, and events are canceled; and many schools and universities have closed or are doing online classes.

The U.S. is banning any foreign visitors who have come from China and Iran from entering the country, and this week Trump extended that ban to most foreign nationals traveling from Europe.

The quarantining of people returning to the U.S. from China appears to have succeeded, as there have limited reports of the evacuees contributing to the skyrocketing number of U.S. cases.

PREDICTION: Biden will be asked NOT to run in Nov. and ANDREW CUOMO will step in. He’ll step in because he’s been doing a relatively good job in NY with this virus (in the eyes of many), and the Dems will be desperate to beat Trump - and who better to put against Trump than another “Loud-Mouth New Yorker”? Even Fox News is giving Cuomo a lot of airtime. Let’s see if my prediction comes to fruition.

Northern Italy so population density, Italian European population age might be on the older side of the ledger, air pollution, many Italians smoke plus starting roughly in the 1990s they brought in up to 100,000 Chinese guest workers to labor in the textile industry (I wonder why Italians weren’t good enough! Probably because they would unionize!). This was done to produce designer clothes/accessories that tariffs wouldn’t apply to.

Now its irrelevant as to the fact that they were Chinese. It is relevant that they were predominantly from the Wuhan area & there were I think daily direct flights from Wuhan to Northern Italy (Milan). Also these flights continued unabated through the critical time that the virus broke out in Wuhan. So Northern Italy became a European Wuhan in miniature population-wise.

There are two different variants of SARS-CoV-2 they have identified so far, “S” and “L”. Some virologists that are studying the virus are claiming that the “L” variant, a downstream mutation, is less deadly than the “S” variant but that has not been conclusively determined.

It does appear that what’s going around in in the United States is not nearly as deadly as what has been infecting the Chinese and the Italians. Let’s hope that is the case.

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