Vice President Mike Pence said that fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections were “overblown” as hospitalizations rise in several states.
“While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable,” Pence wrote Tuesday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
He also touted the Trump administration’s efforts to combat the virus and cited improved testing capacity, which has covered about 7% of the U.S. population. He added that the total U.S. test-positive rate is about 6%, though public health experts maintain that the ideal positivity rate is 5% or lower.
Yet, 21 states have seen a rise in new daily coronavirus cases this month, and at least 12 have seen increased COVID-19 hospitalization rates since Memorial Day. For example, Texas reported its highest daily number of hospitalizations on Monday, the fourth consecutive day of record highs.
Of the dozen states with high hospitalization rates, all but two states, Kentucky and Utah, are running low on available space in intensive care units, according to data maintained by COVID Exit Strategy. Ten of the 12 states also have increased rates of positive diagnostic tests, a sign that the increase in identified cases is not merely a result of greater testing.
“The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success,” Pence wrote. “That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.”
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise is demanding answers from Democratic governors about policies mandating nursing homes and long-term care facilities that admit COVID-19 patients from hospitals, policies that are blamed for the 50,000 deaths due to the coronavirus in nursing homes.
At the same time, a House panel overseeing the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic launched an investigation Tuesday into COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes focused on the actions of the nation’s five largest for-profit nursing home companies and the Trump administration’s response.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who chairs the coronavirus panel, pressed the companies, which collectively operate more than 850 skilled nursing facilities in 40 states, for documents related to coronavirus cases and deaths, testing, personal protective equipment, staffing levels and pay, legal violations, and efforts to prevent further infection. Clyburn is also demanding that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides more information about its “lax oversight” that may have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus in nursing homes.
An inexpensive and widely available steroid is an effective treatment for COVID-19 patients, researchers have found. Dexamethasone, a low-dose steroid treatment, reduces the risk of death by one-third for COVID-19 patients on ventilators. For patients on oxygen, the risk of death is reduced by one-fifth. “This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality — and it reduces it significantly. It’s a major breakthrough,” said Peter Horby, chief investigator at Oxford University.
Deaths from COVID-19 could reach 200,000 in the United States by October, according to an epidemiological model that has been influential in policymaking. The model, maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, now projects 201,129 deaths by Oct. 1, with a range of 171,551 to 269,395. The Trump administration has relied heavily on the IHME model. It has come under heavy criticism, though, regarding its accuracy.
According to the New York Times, the number of prison inmates infected with the coronavirus has doubled in the last month to over 68,000. The number of COVID-related deaths in prisons has increased 73% since mid-May.
At least four members of Congress have benefited from small-business loans allocated by the federal government as part of the Paycheck Protection Program, which they helped create. A bipartisan group of House members acknowledged that their family businesses or businesses where their spouses are senior employees received loans from the $670 billion program. Each member who benefited from the loans said that the money was acquired through legal and fair channels as part of the goal to keep people employed, as the program was set up to do.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott rebuked young Texans Monday for not wearing masks and for taking the coronavirus pandemic too lightly. Twenty-somethings in Texas, he said, are catching the virus in greater numbers, though his administration could not provide statistics, according to the Dallas Morning News.
“What we’re seeing there is that people of that age group, they’re not following these appropriate best health and safety practices,” he said. “They’re not wearing face masks, they’re not sanitizing their hands, they’re not maintaining the safe distancing practices.”
Beijing officials have imposed a lockdown on the entire city Tuesday after city health officials reported over 100 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases over the past five days, CNN reported. The city raised its alert level from Level 3 to Level 2, ordering schools to close and urging people to work from home.
Retail sales jumped a record 18% in May, according to a Tuesday report from the U.S. Census Bureau, a sign that newly reopened states are boosting the U.S. economy. Last month’s jump in sales beats the previous record set in 2001 when retail sales increased 6.7% in October as people resumed shopping after 9/11.
