As more colleges reopen, more campuses are reporting dozens and sometimes hundreds of new coronavirus cases each day.
Recently returned college students represent 19 of the 25 communities dealing with the worst outbreaks, such as Lafayette County, where the University of Mississippi is located, according to an analysis from USA Today.
Harrisonburg, Virginia, home of James Madison University, topped the list, with 1,562 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people within the last two weeks.
In just the past week, American colleges have recorded more than 36,000 additional infections, bringing the total to 88,000 cases since the pandemic began, according to New York Times tracking.
Yet only about 60 of the campus cases have resulted in death, mostly among older staff, and only a small number have resulted in hospitalizations.
Colleges are limited in their capacity to contain outbreaks, with several having already shifted from in-person instruction to virtual such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, just slightly over a week after reopening in August. Washington State University, another school seeing an uptick in cases, shifted instruction to virtual platforms, but students are still gathering in local bars.
Local health officials said they fear both for students getting infected as well as the cities and counties where they go to school, according to USA Today.
“What I’m really afraid of is we’re going to have another episode where it gets into a nursing home and a lot of people die,” said Dr. John Paschen, the chairman of the health board of Story County, Iowa, where Iowa State University is located.
Despite the uptick in cases, the Trump administration has pushed for colleges and universities to remain open. President Trump said at the White House Thursday that it is “much safer for students to live on campus.”
The United States has reported more than 6.4 million cases and over 192,000 deaths.
Schools in Florida have begun reporting new COVID-19 cases among students and staff in defiance of state health officials, who say new case data in K-12 schools should remain confidential, Politico reported.
It is up to local leaders to decide how and when to report COVID-19 cases in their districts, resulting in a mix of daily and weekly reports, with some counties not reporting any data to the general public.
“We don’t want to get into any trouble, but we think transparency is the best way to go,” Bay County, Florida, Superintendent Bill Husfelt said in an interview.
Top government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the soonest a coronavirus vaccine could reach a majority of the population would be fall of 2021, even if the Food and Drug Administration were to approve a vaccine by November.
“I think it’s going to be a combination of a vaccine that has been around for almost a year and good public health measures” before people can safely return to pre-pandemic normal life, Fauci told actress Jennifer Garner in an Instagram Live Thursday.
Even if a vaccine were to be approved by late 2020 or early 2021, Fauci told Garner, it would take about a year for the vaccine developers to manufacture and distribute “a couple of hundred million doses,” enough to immunize the majority of the U.S. population.
Fauci said Friday that the country won’t return to pre-pandemic normal and resume activities, such as concerts, moviegoing at indoor theaters, and other large gatherings, for at least another year.
“If you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality which resembles where we were prior to COVID, it’s going to be well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,” Fauci said on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mandated that public transit riders in New York will face $50 fines if they don’t wear masks at all times. A mask mandate in New York has been in effect since April, but Cuomo said that too many people have started going without them and putting others at risk.
“Achieving universal mask compliance is our goal,” MTA President Patrick Foye said during a news briefing with Cuomo.
Florida bar owners may now reopen at 50% capacity Monday after more than two months of being forbidden from selling alcoholic drinks.
“I would say that’s one of the best bits of news I’ve heard in a while,” Orlando Brewing President John Cheek told the Orlando Sentinel. “It would be good to get back to some sense of normalcy.”
Halsey Beshears, the secretary of Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, enacted the alcohol sales ban in June after several bars violated the capacity limits as the state entered phase three of its reopening plan.
Israel is barreling toward a second nationwide lockdown that would shutter schools, restaurants, event venues, and more as coronavirus cases spike in several parts of the country.
Cabinet ministers approved the second lockdown late Thursday, and the plan will be up for final approval Sunday with a full Cabinet vote. The lockdown would last for two full weeks, followed by two more weeks of stringent economic and social restrictions starting Sept.18, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Pharmaceutical company China National Biotec Group Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Sinopharm, has given two experimental vaccine candidates to hundreds of thousands of people in China under an emergency-use condition approved by Beijing in July, the Wall Street Journal reported. Another Chinese drugmaker, Sinovac Biotech, said it has inoculated around 3,000 of its employees and their family members, as well as the company’s CEO. The three vaccine candidates are still undergoing phase three clinical trials, which involve testing a vaccine’s safety and effectiveness on thousands of people.
Warner Bros. has postponed the release of the sequel to big-budget superhero movie Wonder Woman by about two months after company executives decided that moviegoers would be too hesitant to return to theaters in sufficient numbers to justify releasing the movie, according to Variety. The studio announced Wonder Woman 1984 will premiere in theaters on Christmas Day.
After the onset of the pandemic shut down movie theaters, most have begun reopening, with the exception of important markets such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Box office analysts recommended that it would be unwise to release big-budget movies until those areas can reopen.
