Live updates: Elected officials blame rush to reopen as coronavirus cases hit record for 27th day

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said Sunday that protests against racial injustice are to blame for the state’s rising coronavirus caseload, contradicting statements made days earlier by his top health official.

In his Sunday Twitter and Facebook posts, Reeves wrote that the “liberal media” was “trying to claim the increase of Coronavirus was just caused by family BBQ’s on Memorial Day.” Reporters were completely ignoring the fact that the uptick of cases in Mississippi and other states “began within days of massive protests all over — which they celebrated,” he claimed.

But as the Clarion-Ledger pointed out, epidemiologists have yet to link surging case numbers in Mississippi to rallies against police brutality that drew thousands to cities like Jackson and Oxford in early June.

“We don’t have any evidence to that effect,” the state’s health officer, Thomas Dobbs, said in a Wednesday briefing that Reeves attended.

With data still trickling in, it was still conceivable that scientists could find clusters of cases linked to the protests, but no clear connection had emerged yet, Dobbs said. At an earlier briefing in June, he said that he had been “heartened” to see so many protesters in masks, which could have potentially minimized the risk of a large crowded gathering.

Coronavirus-related hospitalizations in Mississippi began trending upward in early June, a little over a month after some restrictions were eased. All businesses were allowed to reopen on June 1, but plans to fully reopen the state at the start of July have been placed on hold as the number of new cases and hospitalizations continue to steadily rise.

Mississippi surpassed 30,000 coronavirus infection over the weekend, and has reported approximately 1,034 cases for every 100,000 people. On July 4, the state witnessed its second-highest single day total of new cases, with 990 new infections, according to the Clarion-Ledger.

For decades, crossing the border and heading to the Mexican beach resort of Puerto Peñasco, or “Rocky Point,” has been a summertime tradition for Arizona residents desperate to escape the heat.

But over the Fourth of July weekend, tourists ran into literal roadblocks. Frustrated residents of the border town of Sonoyta used their cars to block all southbound traffic from Arizona, the Associated Press reported, while the town’s mayor put out a statement “inviting U.S. tourists not to visit Mexico.” Though the barricade didn’t last long, it highlighted the tensions on display as worsening coronavirus outbreaks in border states like Arizona and Texas potentially jeopardize efforts to control the virus in Mexico.

Last week, as record-shattering numbers of new covid-19 cases and hospitalizations cemented Arizona’s status as a coronavirus hotspot, the neighboring Mexican state of Sonora announced plans to block all nonessential travel from the United States. But tourism officials in Puerto Peñasco, which reopened to visitors in mid-June, said doing so would decimate the economy. Days later, Sonora’s governor announced an exception for travelers with hotel reservations in Puerto Peñasco, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

That decision didn’t go over well in Sonoyta, the small landlocked town where beach-bound tourists typically cross into Mexico on their way from Phoenix or Tucson. On Saturday, residents blocked off the border to protest the fact that American travelers were allowed to visit Puerto Peñasco while Mexicans from outside the city remained banned, the AP reported. They also demanded more covid-19 testing and stronger screening protocols for border-crossers

More than 9,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in Sonora, and some hospitals in the state have already reached capacity, the Daily Star reported last week. But Kiko Munro, the mayor of Puerto Peñasco, told the paper that the alternative to reopening was “starvation and social chaos.”

NEW DELHI — When Mukul Garg learned that one member of his family had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, he immediately knew it was only the beginning.

His extended family had stayed inside for weeks during a nationwide lockdown, eating together and playing together in the home they share in India’s capital. They were 17 people in all, ranging in age from 3 months to 90 years.

Mukul, 33, was struck by a simple, devastating question: How many would they lose?

“We knew we would all be positive,” he said. “We were quite sure that someone would be sacrificed.”

Michael Hickson, a 46-year-old father of five from Texas, was sick with covid-19 when doctors reached a crossroads in his treatment. He had pneumonia in both lungs, a urinary tract infection and sepsis — a dangerous immune response leading to multisystem organ failure.

He needed a ventilator to help him continue breathing, but the hospital felt further intervention for the disabled man was futile. A doctor explained to the family that there was little hope Hickson would survive or regain “quality of life.”

Hickson’s sister, a physician, agreed. So did the agency acting as his legal guardian. But his wife, Melissa Hickson, was horrified. She worried doctors were placing less value on her husband’s life because he was a black man who was disabled. After going into cardiac arrest in 2017 and suffering complications, he had been left quadriplegic and brain-damaged.

As coronavirus cases rise in cities across the country, many people chose to stay home and local leaders closed beaches, canceled parades, and sacrificed the fireworks shows that usually mark the July 4 holiday. But some U.S. residents still gathered in large numbers to celebrate over the holiday weekend, raising fears that the virus may spread farther in the coming weeks.

Images and videos of crowds at water parks, lakes, beaches and boardwalks spread on social media and in local news reports over the weekend, as people sought out cool water and fun activities over the long weekend.

In California, where coronavirus cases have been rising, many beaches were closed, but one left open in San Diego saw typical crowds over the holiday weekend, with few wearing masks. People filled the beaches and boardwalks at Coney Island in New York City and along the Jersey Shore. Business owners in Virginia Beach said their shops were filled with customers over the holiday weekend. And one county on Florida’s west coast saw larger-than-usual crowds on its beaches as people traveled from other parts of the state where local beaches had been barricaded for the weekend.

Similar crowds over Memorial Day weekend received heavy criticism at the time. In the weeks after that holiday, several states saw increases in new coronavirus cases.

Sunday marked the 27th straight day in the United States that the seven-day average for daily new cases set a record.

More than 800 professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology are protesting plans to reopen for the fall without making masks mandatory, saying that doing so ignores scientific consensus and puts lives at risk.

As Georgia Public Broadcasting first reported, the open letter to the Board of Regents and University System of Georgia has been signed by some of the most celebrated faculty members at Georgia Tech, as the prestigious public university is better known. The university has roughly 1,100 faculty members in total, meaning that more than two-thirds have voiced opposition.

“At no university where I have been have I ever seen the faculty take a position as unified as this one,” Randall Engle, a renowned psychologist and member of the Georgia Tech faculty, told GPB.

Fall classes won’t resume at Georgia Tech in mid-August, but a number of athletes and students in Greek housing have already tested positive for covid-19 as the statewide caseload surges. The campus reopening plan makes masks mandatory for professors, and says that students are “strongly encouraged” to follow suit. Many faculty members find that absurd, pointing out that professors have a higher risk of adverse consequences due to being significantly older than the students.

In addition to making masks mandatory, the Georgia Tech professors want most classes to take place remotely in the fall. They also want to see more autonomy granted to the university’s president. Currently, key decisions about reopening are made by the statewide Board of Regents, whose members are appointed by the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

Under Kemp’s leadership, Georgia has taken an aggressive approach to lifting coronavirus-related restrictions, outpacing virtually every other state in the country.

The Board of Regents has yet to respond to the letter, but previously told the Athens Banner-Herald that it was following guidance from state and federal public health officials.

LONDON — In the global race to beat back the coronavirus pandemic, scientists in Britain, Germany, China and the United States are pushing to develop, and possibly manufacture, vaccines in a completely new way.

This promising — but unproven — new generation of vaccine technologies is based on deploying a tiny snip of genetic code called messenger RNA to trigger the immune system. It has never before been approved for use.

But almost overnight, these cutting-edge RNA vaccine efforts have leaped forward as top candidates to fight covid-19. Some developers plan to have tens of millions of doses ready by the end of the year.

Nick Cordero, a Canadian actor who earned a Tony nomination for the 2014 musical “Bullets Over Broadway” and seemed on the cusp of an even more prominent career before being hospitalized with the coronavirus, died July 5 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 41.

Mr. Cordero had been hospitalized in late March and was subsequently diagnosed with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. He reportedly had no underlying health conditions but, after being put on a ventilator, developed blood clots that forced doctors to amputate his right leg.

Standing 6-foot-5, with dark hair and a baritone voice, Mr. Cordero was a menacing presence on TV shows such as “Lilyhammer,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and the police drama “Blue Bloods.” But he was best known for his work on Broadway, playing charismatic brutes in musicals including “Bullets Over Broadway” and “A Bronx Tale” — two shows in which his character was previously portrayed on-screen by Bronx-born actor Chazz Palminteri.

More than 200 scientists from over 30 countries are urging the World Health Organization to take more seriously the possibility of the airborne spread of the novel coronavirus as case numbers rise around the world and surge in the United States.

In a forthcoming paper titled “It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Covid-19,” 239 signatories attempt to raise awareness about what they say is growing evidence that the virus can spread indoors through aerosols that linger in the air and can be infectious even in smaller quantities than previously thought.

Until recently, most public health guidelines have focused on social distancing measures, regular hand-washing and precautions to avoid droplets. But the signatories to the paper say the potential of the virus to spread via airborne transmission has not been fully appreciated even by public health institutions such as the WHO.

The Independence Day weekend concluded with dire predictions about the surge of coronavirus cases around the country and with national and local officials saying a rush to reopen fueled the spread of the novel coronavirus and outpaced efforts to care for its victims.

“We’re right back where we were at the peak of the epidemic during the New York outbreak,” former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “The difference now is that we really had one epicenter of spread when New York was going through its hardship, now we really have four major epicenters of spread: Los Angeles, cities in Texas, cities in Florida, and Arizona. And Florida looks to be in the worst shape.”

New coronavirus cases in that state on Sunday exceeded 10,000 in a day for the third time in the past week, after the state posted a record of 11,458 the previous day. The new infections pushed the state’s total caseload past 200,000, a mark passed by just two other states, New York and California.