California reported 4,317 new coronavirus cases Friday, the most cases recorded in a single day in the state since the start of the pandemic, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
This comes just one day after the state previously reported an all-time daily record-high of 4,084 cases.
To date, California has 165,416 confirmed cases after conducting a total of 3,155,702 tests, according to state data.
There were also 70 new deaths reported in California Friday, bringing the total fatalities in the state to 5,360.
The New Orleans Health Department is investigating two clusters of Covid-19 cases after a high school graduation party and a large gathering at a bar outside the parish, the agency said.
Both clusters appear to be impacting young people who live in Orleans Parish.
The health department warned residents, especially young people, to take immediate precautions to prevent the spread of Covid-19, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
"Activities that pose the highest risk for transmission are large, uncontrolled gatherings like those that take place at a party or bar," the health department said in a statement. "These activities can fuel a rapid rise in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. This is why there are strict gathering size and capacity limitations for planned events in the State of Louisiana and Orleans Parish. When individuals participate in high-risk activities, not only can they become sick, but they can also transmit the virus to their loved ones who may be at higher risk for severe illness or death."
The health department has urged anyone who has taken part in a non-physically distant gathering without masks or proper precautions to quarantine for 14 days.
The chief of the Houston Police Department, Art Acevedo, told CNN that the police department has recorded a huge spike in Covid-19 cases due to protests.
"Our own department, because of what went on with all these protests, we have seen a huge spike," Acevedo said. "We've had about 50 or 60 positive tests come back here in a very short period of time."
Acevedo said that in less than two weeks, the cases in the department have doubled due to "close proximity."
"Take the lesson from us, please wear your mask. It is the right thing to do. It is not about politics, it's about common courtesy and personal responsibility," he added.
Intensifying anti-science sentiments that have led people to ignore public health guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic are “disturbing” and “disappointing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CBS Radio Friday.
CBS’s Steven Portnoy had asked the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force specifically about his level of concern for the people who will be attending President Trump’s rally in Tulsa on Saturday.
“Rather than specifically pointing out any individual gathering, I think it applies to all gatherings,” Fauci said. “The best way to protect yourself and to prevent acquisition of and spread of infection is to avoid crowds.”
Fauci thinks some members of the public harbor an anti-science mentality that has intensified in the current situation and stems from a mistrust of authority. He sees the anti-vaccination movement in this vein. “It’s all part of that trend, which is very disturbing,” Fauci said.
Fauci said he gets concerned about the increased risk of spreading infection when he sees crowds or sees people not wearing masks.
“If in fact, for one reason or other, you feel compelled to do that, which we don’t recommend, then wear a mask at all times,” Fauci said.
Pressed again on the risk of the virus widely spreading at a mass gathering, Fauci said he couldn’t put a number on it. “But it’s very clear that the risk exists,” Fauci said.
The SBA, which manages the $660 billion emergency lending program, will disclose business names, addresses, loan amount ranges and demographic data, among other things, as part of an agreement with bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the SBA and Treasury announced in a joint statement.
Fatal cardiac arrests soared in the streets and homes of New York at the peak of the coronavirus epidemic there in March and April, researchers reported Friday.
While coronavirus likely caused many of these deaths, others were probably a consequence of an overwhelmed medical system, the researchers reported in the journal JAMA Cardiology.
They found a three-fold increase in the number of people needing emergency resuscitation in 2020 as compared to the same time period last year. And 90% of these people died, the team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Health System found.
“It shows the immense impact of Covid-19 in the city of New York,” said Dr. David Prezant, a professor of medicine at Einstein and the chief medical officer for the Fire Department of New York.
“Three-fold is actually a conservative number because on April 6 it was a 10-fold increase,” Prezant told CNN. On that day in 2019, EMTs responded to 30 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. On April 6, 2020, there were 305.
For the whole time period of March and April, there were 3,989 cardiac arrests outside of the hospital in 2020, compared to 1,336 in 2019. That’s 2,653 more deaths in 2020 compared to 2019.
Prezant and colleagues analyzed the available information on these victims. They were mostly older, Black or Hispanic, and more likely to have diabetes or high blood pressure. Many were also physically frail, Prezant said.
Plus, when EMTs arrived, they found that the patients had what are called non-shockable arrhythmias. They could not be rescued by CPR or defibrillation.
“The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic is not just the number of patients infected, but the large increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and deaths,” Prezant and colleagues concluded.
“This catastrophe transpired despite similar rates of bystander CPR, similar EMS response times, and similar durations of resuscitation efforts, compared with 2019.”
Brazil’s health ministry has reported 54,771 new cases of Covid-19 on Friday, a record daily spike that brought the nationwide total to 1,032,913.
The newly reported cases make Brazil the second country worldwide to record more than a million virus cases, following the United States, which passed that mark on April 28.
Brazil also reported 1,206 new deaths from the virus, bringing the country’s total to 48,954.
The United Kingdom and Brazil are behind only the United States in reported virus deaths.
Arizona Department of Health reported 3,246 Covid-19 cases on Friday, the state's highest total reported in a single day.
There have been at least 46,689 Covid-19 cases in the state and at least 1,312 people have died from the virus.
So far on Friday, Johns Hopkins reported 23,944 new cases and 546 deaths.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.