California reached a melancholy milestone, announcing it has more than 600,000 coronavirus cases, the most in the nation.
The state reported a total of 603,396 coronavirus cases Friday, according to Los Angeles Times tracking data. The state has also reported over 11,000 deaths. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the rate of transmission has stopped rising. The seven-day average positive test rate in California has remained relatively flat at 6.7%, according to COVID Exit Strategy.
While California leads the country in coronavirus cases, the number of new daily cases is lower than in Florida, Texas, and other Sun Belt states. Texas confirmed another 7,018 new cases Friday, bringing the state’s total to 520,593. Florida confirmed 6,218 new cases Friday, bringing the state’s total to 557,397, second only to California. The average positive test rates in Florida and Texas remain high at 17.7% and 16.1%, respectively.
With a total of 11,022 reported fatalities, California now ranks third in the country, behind New York and New Jersey, for the highest death toll. Florida, meanwhile, surpassed 9,000 deaths Friday. The state health department confirmed 228 new deaths, bringing the statewide death toll to 9,141.
Roughly 5.3 million COVID-19 cases have been confirmed across the United States, with more than 168,000 fatalities.
New York, the former coronavirus epicenter, is showing more progress than other states in drastically lowering the number of daily cases and increasing testing. New York’s seven-day average number of tests conducted has ranged between 65,000 and 75,000 for over two weeks, with average new cases each week below 1000, the COVID Tracking Project reported Friday.
“While the other states are seeing real trouble, we are doing very well,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters Friday.
Meanwhile, Texas and Florida have seen a decline in daily testing rates in recent weeks. The number of tests conducted daily in Florida since Aug. 1 has consistently fallen short of 50,000. In Texas, the number of daily tests performed has varied, from 87,000 on Aug. 3 to 13,000 just six days later.
U.S. government researchers will create a strain of the coronavirus that could be used in possible vaccine trials called human challenge experiments, a controversial type of study in which healthy volunteers would be vaccinated and then intentionally infected with the virus, Reuters reported Friday.
The experiment to manufacture the virus for human trials would not replace large-scale phase three vaccine trials such as those currently underway. Typically, researchers immunize people in trials with either the vaccine candidate or a placebo and wait to see who develops symptoms of the disease in daily life. In this case, researchers would purposely infect healthy volunteers with a lab-produced strain of COVID-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued updated guidance for self-quarantining that applies even to people who have previously tested positive for COVID-19, saying that immunity after testing positive may last only as long as three months. It’s the first acknowledgment from the agency that infected people may gain immunity for a period of time.
“People who have tested positive for COVID-19 do not need to quarantine or get tested again for up to three months as long as they do not develop symptoms again,” the CDC reported.
It is unclear what the CDC based that recommendation on. Only two studies have examined the duration of immunity for people who have recovered from a coronavirus infection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top government infectious disease expert, told National Geographic “there’s no reason” not to vote in person as long as people wear masks and practice social distancing.
“I mean, obviously, if you’re a person who is compromised physically or otherwise, you don’t want to take the chance,” Fauci said. “There’s the situation of mail-in voting that has been done for years in many places. So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to vote in person or otherwise.”
President Trump announced Friday that the federal government will partner with drug supplier McKesson to distribute a coronavirus vaccine once it becomes available, the Washington Post reported. However, the federal government has not indicated that it has a plan for allocating doses of the vaccine and determining who will get it first.
Retail sales increased 1.2% in July, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Friday, a record high but a deceleration from the stronger recovery seen in recent months. The decrease in sales in July from prior months came as several states experienced surges in new coronavirus infections, forcing several states to shutter much of their economies to slow the spread of the disease.
Friday’s finding fell short of economists’ expectations for a 2% increase. Sales had seen major month-over-month increases recently as retailers began recovering from the collapse in shopping during the onset of the pandemic.
