U.S. coronavirus deaths top 70,000; Pence says White House task force might be disbanded

New York’s nursing homes may be even deadlier than previously thought.

On Tuesday, health officials reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at the state’s nursing homes and adult-care facilities, according to the Associated Press. Those patients were believed to have had the virus but had not been officially diagnosed.

The data dramatically expands the death toll in New York facilities by more than half. As of Sunday, more than 4,800 people had died of the virus in homes for the elderly, which for months have faced heavy scrutiny for failing to curb or report outbreaks.

Gary Holmes, a spokesman for the New York Health Department, told the New York Times that the state’s system for gathering and evaluating data on nursing home fatalities had been revised and would probably continue to change.

“This crisis and our response to it continues to evolve,” he said. “And the unprecedented amount and specificity of data we are providing to the public will continue to evolve with it.”

With the new deaths added to the state’s totals, nursing homes make up about one quarter of all fatalities in New York, though some experts have said that figure could rise to as much as 50 percent.

The number of nursing homes reporting fatalities nationwide has also seen similar, sudden jumps, as newly released information drives those figures upward.

Late last month, officials in New York state said they would release the names of only homes with at least five deaths, citing patient confidentiality.

As Major League Baseball plots its way forward through the most disruptive crisis in its modern history, hoping to salvage a 2020 season amid a global pandemic that has delayed Opening Day by five weeks and counting, one thing is already clear: Barring a miraculous development, MLB will almost certainly experience some degree of economic devastation that could take years to dig out of.

The only questions: How bad it is going to get? And who will share in its toll?

“We’re going to lose billions of dollars this year, no matter what,” said one high-ranking baseball official. While all of the major North American professional sports are experiencing some degree of disruption and financial pain, baseball in many ways has it the worst.

Read more here.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit blocked a judge’s order forcing Miami-Dade County to give soap, masks and cleaning supplies to inmates at a Miami jail that has been plagued by the coronavirus.

The Tuesday ruling was in regard to the “adequacy of the measures implemented by Metro West [Detention Center] to protect its prisoners from the spread of covid-19.”

On April 5, seven Metro West inmates filed a class action complaint that challenged the conditions of the inmates’ confinement. The class-action complaint alleged that inmates at Metro West did not have enough soap or towels to wash their hands properly, waited days for medical attention and were “denied basic hygienic supplies.”

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered the Miami-Dade jail system to provide individual soap and cleaning supplies to inmates, in addition to ensuring access to proper testing for anyone displaying known symptoms of covid-19 and to ensure social distancing. Additionally, Williams ordered that jail officers frequently wash their hands, wear masks and gloves, and change gloves each time they interact with an inmate.

Tuesday’s decision stays Williams’s order, but allows litigation between the parties to continue.

“The injunction hamstrings MDCR officials with years of experience running correctional facilities, and the elected officials they report to, from acting with dispatch to respond to this unprecedented pandemic,” the majority wrote.

Judge Charles Wilson, who dissented, said he failed to “see an abuse of discretion” in Williams’s ruling.

“To avoid contempt, then, MDCR must allocate limited testing resources to Metro West at the expense of other county facilities,” the majority wrote. “In short, the district court assumed the role of ‘super-warden’ that our decisions repeatedly condemn.”

According to the Miami Herald, 163 inmates have tested positive for covid-19 at Metro West.

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Starbucks plans to reopen 85 percent of its U.S. coffee shops by the end of this week, with an emphasis on mobile ordering, contactless pickup and cashless payments, as more cities and states ease lockdown restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

The company’s mobile app — which is already used by roughly 20 million customers — will include new options for voice ordering and curbside pickup, chief executive Kevin Johnson wrote in a letter to customers on Monday.

The new protocols, he said, will be a natural fit for Starbucks, where more than 80 percent of U.S. orders were placed “on the go” via drive-through or mobile app, even before the pandemic. The company is also applying the lessons it has learned in China, where more than 98 percent of its stores have reopened, and is ramping up investments in artificial intelligence that will help make “data-driven decisions” about store reopenings and other changes.

Read more here.

A research paper from scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, not yet peer-reviewed, reports that one strain of the novel coronavirus has emerged in Europe and become dominant around the planet, leading the researchers to believe the virus has mutated to become more contagious.

The bold hypothesis, however, was immediately met with skepticism by many infectious-disease experts, and there is no scientific consensus that any of the innumerable mutations in the virus so far have changed the general contagiousness or lethality of covid-19, the disease caused the coronavirus.

Read more here.

Inside a Louisiana correctional facility for women, almost every inmate has tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

According to state figures, the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel has 192 positive cases, including 126 who carried the virus without showing symptoms. A spokesman for the state Department of Corrections told the Associated Press that the unit houses approximately 195 inmates, though that number can vary.

The women’s prison accounts for 63 percent of the positive covid-19 cases inside Louisiana correctional facilities. One inmate inside the Louisiana Correctional Institute has died because of complications of the covid-19 disease.

On Monday, a small group of advocates held a rally and prayer outside the prison, calling for the state to take more action in protecting the health of those incarcerated.

“If we don’t give attention to this crisis on the inside of prison, it’s not going to be good and the numbers are showing this,” Ivy Mathis, a former inmate, told Baton Rouge TV station WAFB 9.

The spread of the virus has affected other prison populations. In San Pedro, Calif., a sixth inmate inside the Terminal Island federal prison died Monday of the virus, according to reports. On Tuesday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced 625 new positive cases in the state, the highest number in a single update. More than 300 of those cases come from the Green River Correctional Complex, where a third inmate recently died.

As of Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported 2,066 federal inmates and 359 staffers nationwide with confirmed positive test results.

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Disney is bringing its theme park business back to life — but only in China.

The company announced plans Tuesday to reopen Shanghai Disneyland on May 11, months after shuttering it in late January as the novel coronavirus spread in China, with new health and safety measures in place.

In an announcement, the entertainment giant said the Shanghai park will have “limited and pulsed attendance,” meaning visitors will only be able to buy tickets for specific dates and annual pass holders will need to make a reservation before getting there.

Walt Disney Co. chief executive Bob Chapek said during an earnings call Tuesday afternoon that the government is limiting capacity to about 24,000 visitors a day, or 30 percent of normal attendance. The park will wait a few weeks to get to that number, however.

Guests will undergo temperature screening and have to use the government’s health QR code system for early detection and contact tracing, and high-touch areas such as railings, turnstiles, rides and handlebars will be sanitized more frequently.

The Wisconsin state Supreme Court’s conservative judges forcefully questioned Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s extension of stay-at-home orders, in a suit brought by Republican state lawmakers who challenged the administration’s power to decide.

“I’ll direct your attention to another time in history, in the Korematsu decision, where the court said the need for action is great and time is short, and that justified ‘assembling together and placing under guard all those of Japanese ancestry’ in assembly centers during World War II,” said Justice Rebecca Bradley, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court case in 1944 that upheld internment camps.

Bradley said, “Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work among other ordinarily lawful activities?”

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