Tag Archives: COVID

The Hill reports: Celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky, famously known as “Dr. Drew,” revealed this week that he has tested positive for COVID-19. The diagnosis comes months after Pinsky apologized for downplaying the threat of the pandemic in a video that went viral on social media. The video included clips of Pinsky on his online show “Ask Dr. Drew,” his podcast …

Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended international flights and closed its land and sea borders to prevent the spread of an infectious new coronavirus strain first identified in Britain. The covid-19 variant has now been detected in at least five other countries, prompting several countries to ban flights from Britain. In a report late Sunday, the official Saudi Press …

The Washington Post reports: White House testing czar Brett Giroir on Tuesday tamped down calls from many public health experts for the federal government to approve and fund more cheap antigen tests that can be taken regularly at home. But while in the past Giroir has suggested that kind of widespread coronavirus screening would be unhelpful, he now says it …

Warren Throckmorton reports: With three lab confirmed cases and one probable case of COVID-19, Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, CO has been declared a COVID-19 Outbreak site. The CO Dept of Public Health defines an outbreak as two or more cases confirmed by a lab test found in a location. Focus on the Family has declared itself …

The South Florida SunSentinel reports: More than 10,000 people have now died from COVID-19 in Florida, according to the latest state pandemic data released Wednesday. The updated death toll comes after the state Department of Health reported 174 more resident deaths that happened in recent weeks but were just confirmed, following a surge of coronavirus cases this summer. Florida, which …

The New York Daily News reports: New York’s coronavirus infection rate fell below 1% Wednesday as the state continues to stave off a second wave of the deadly respiratory illness. Gov. Cuomo said only 636, or 0.87%, of the more than 70,000 test results that came back Tuesday were positive as hospitalizations fell by four patients to 564 people statewide. …

The Texas Tribune reports: Gov. Greg Abbott will skip the Republican National Convention later this month in North Carolina as he continues to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in Texas, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will instead chair the state’s delegation to the scaled-down gathering. Abbott announced the plan in a letter dated Friday to the national GOP chairwoman, Ronna …

Atlanta’s Fox affiliate reports: A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details a large coronavirus outbreak at an overnight camp in Georgia that resulted in 260 sick campers and staffers. Researchers say this seems to indicate children are susceptible to COVID-19 and have the ability to spread it. According to the report, the camp in question, …

ABC News reports: President Trump, who has pressed for schools to open this fall despite the coronavirus pandemic, said Thursday that he couldn’t offer assurances that holding in-person classes would be safe. “Can you assure anybody of anything?” Trump said in response to a question about how he could assure people that schools can safely be reopened. At the same …

Reuters reports: Johnson & Johnson on Thursday kicked off U.S. human safety trials for its COVID-19 vaccine after releasing details of a study in monkeys that showed its best-performing vaccine candidate offered strong protection in a single dose. When exposed to the virus, six out of six animals who got the vaccine candidate were completely protected from lung disease and …

The Athens Banner reports: Congressman Jody Hice, R-Ga., has entered a 14-day quarantine after possibly being exposed to COVID-19. Hice has entered the quarantine period out of an “abundance of caution” after learning Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TX, tested positive for COVID-19 and a second person, who he recently came into contact with, had developed symptoms and was awaiting test results. …

Weren’t we told that everybody that gets near Glorious Leader must be tested? Attorney General William Barr will be tested for coronavirus one day after he came into close contact with a GOP lawmaker who since tested positive for the virus, a Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed. Barr, who testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, came within …

Mediaite reports: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 less than 24 hours after attending the House Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Attorney General William Barr, according to Politico. Gohmert has not been wearing a mask around the hill, he told CNN, because he’s been tested regularly. “I don’t have the coronavirus, turns out as of yesterday I’ve …

The Huffington Post reports: The “beloved” chief of critical care at a Baltimore hospital died Saturday of COVID-19 after caring for the facility’s “sickest patients” during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the facility. Dr. Joseph Costa, 56 — who a colleague likened to “an older brother that [staff] admired and revered” — was the intensive care unit chief at Mercy …

Axios reports: FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver said on ABC’s “This Week” that while President Trump’s reelection bid is “clearly in trouble” due to his dismal coronavirus approval ratings and polling in swing states, he does not believe the president’s “fate is sealed.” “We found historically that when there are lots of major news events and economic disruptions, an election becomes …

The Hill reports: Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of Health and Human Services who is leading the administration’s coronavirus testing efforts, said Sunday that nobody on the White House coronavirus task force is afraid to press President Trump on the need to expand testing. “Everyone at the administration understands the importance of testing. Nobody in the task force is …

The New York Daily News reports: An embattled North Carolina professor who sparked furious backlash over a series of controversial tweets in recent months, including one comparing coronavirus restrictions to living in a “slave state,” was found dead Thursday. Police discovered the body of Mike Adams, a tenured sociology and criminology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, while performing …

The Associated Press reports: Nearly half of Americans whose families experienced a layoff during the coronavirus pandemic now believe those jobs are lost forever, a new poll shows, a sign of increasing pessimism that would translate into roughly 10 million workers needing to find a new employer, if not a new occupation. It’s a sharp change after initial optimism the …

The Associated Press reports: In early April, when government scientists learned of a proposal to spend millions in federal research funding to study Pepcid, they found it laughable, according to interviews, a whistleblower complaint and internal government records obtained by The Associated Press. But that didn’t stop the Trump administration from granting a $21 million emergency contract to researchers trying …

Mother Jones reports: This month, Stephen Miller, the extremist anti-immigrant adviser to President Donald Trump who has promoted white nationalist ideas, lost a relative to the coronavirus pandemic, and his uncle tells Mother Jones that the Trump administration is partly to blame for this death. In response to a request seeking comment from Miller, a White House spokesperson sent Mother …