President Trump will resume in-person campaign rallies this month despite a recent surge in new coronavirus cases in several states.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that his first rally will take place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19, saying, “They’ve done a great job with COVID, as you know, in the state of Oklahoma.” He will also hold rallies in Florida, Texas, and Arizona.
His rally in Tulsa will be the first of its kind since the coronavirus pandemic began in March when he and Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were forced to cease campaigning. Sanders has since suspended his campaign for president.
Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force have advocated for social distancing protocols since March, but Trump’s campaign has not indicated what kinds of social distancing measures will be enforced at his rallies.
Trump has said many times that he misses campaign rallies and speaking before large crowds. Oklahoma, in particular, has almost completely reopened, having started the reopening process in late April, and it would be difficult to enforce social distancing in an Oklahoma venue.
Over a dozen states have seen an alarming increase in new coronavirus cases since the beginning of the month but will continue to reopen in the hopes of revitalizing their economies.
Arizona hospitals are scrambling to handle an influx of new coronavirus cases. The state reported an additional 25 deaths and 1,556 cases Wednesday. On Tuesday, Arizona reported 1,243 current hospitalizations, nearly a 50% jump since Memorial Day.
Banner Health, the state’s largest hospital system, warned over the weekend that “ICUs are very busy,” and hospitals reached capacity in wards dedicated to providing breathing therapy for patients recovering from heart failure, lung failure, or heart surgery.
Even as California sees an increase in new coronavirus cases, Los Angeles County officials will allow gyms and fitness facilities to reopen, as well as day camps, museums, galleries, zoos, and campgrounds, the Los Angeles Times reported. Gov. Gavin Newsom said that he and state officials expected to see an uptick in cases once reopening began and that there are no plans to reverse progress in reopening the state.
“As we phase-in, in a responsible way, a reopening of the economy, we’ve made it abundantly clear that we anticipate an increase in the total number of positive cases,” Newsom said Tuesday. “But we’ve also made it abundantly clear the concurrent recognition and commitment that we are in a substantially different place than we were 90 days ago.”
Texas reported a record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations Wednesday for the third consecutive day. There were 2,153 coronavirus patients in Texas hospitals on Wednesday, representing a 42% increase since Memorial Day. On Monday, the number of patients rose to 1,935, eclipsing the previous high of 1,888 reached on May 5.
Top government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said epidemiologist Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization “was not correct” in claiming that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus is “very rare.”
“They walked that back because there’s no evidence that that’s the case,” Fauci said on Good Morning America Wednesday. “To make a statement that that’s a rare event was not correct.”
Kerkhove said Monday that “it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.” She revised her statement Tuesday during a Facebook Live event, saying, “I was responding to a question at the press conference. I wasn’t stating a policy of WHO or anything like that.”
Three vaccine candidates will enter phase three trials with human subjects this summer, marking the final stage of testing for vaccines that are moving through development at a rapid pace, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A vaccine candidate developed by Moderna will enter human trials in July, followed by a jointly developed vaccine with Oxford University and AstraZeneca in August, followed by a candidate from Johnson & Johnson in September.
Research led by scientists at Cambridge and Greenwich universities in the United Kingdom found that mandating widespread mask-usage could push COVID-19 transmission rates to controllable levels, Reuters reported Wednesday. The research suggests that lockdowns alone will not stop a second wave of the pandemic but that even homemade masks could drastically reduce transmission rates.
The Iowa State Fair has been canceled for the first time since 1945, the Des Moines Register reported. The 16-member fair board decided Wednesday that allowing the 11-day event to go on would put people at risk of getting sick. It was scheduled to begin on Aug. 13. State fairs in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have been canceled in the past two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, fair organizers in Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Michigan have said their events will go on as planned.
