U.S. reports more than 1,000 coronavirus deaths for fourth consecutive day

The Supreme Court on Thursday shut down a lower court’s decision that cited the coronavirus pandemic as reason to ease the rules on gathering signatures for a citizens ballot initiative.

The case from Idaho was the latest example of the high court deferring to state officials, rather than lower court judges, in how to deal with election-related issues caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The justices put on hold a lower-court order that Idaho officials either put on the ballot an education initiative promoted by a group called Reform Idaho or allow the group to gather signatures electronically, although the deadline had passed.

It is unclear exactly how the court’s vote broke down, although at least five of the nine justices had to agree with the action.

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The United States tallied 1,249 coronavirus-related deaths on Thursday, the fourth day the country has reported a death toll in the four digits.

New cases also increased Thursday to 69,312 confirmed infections, the highest count since Friday. Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio and Hawaii reported record new coronavirus cases.

Five states and Puerto Rico reported new highs or tied with their records for seven-day case averages: Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Oregon and Alaska.

Twelve states and Puerto Rico reached their highest seven-day averages for new deaths.

Florida, Arizona and Mississippi counted record single-day death numbers Thursday. Florida reported the highest toll at 252 deaths.

Texas health officials announced an “automation error” with its death toll this week and said there were 225 fewer deaths on Wednesday.

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Children may have as much of the coronavirus in their respiratory systems as adults, a new study says, complicating President Trump’s assertion that children are safer from the virus than older people.

“The lower they are in age, the lower the risk in terms of the age group itself,” Trump told reporters Thursday at a news conference. “Children are at the lowest risk of any age group from the virus.”

But the study, published Thursday in JAMA Pediatrics, suggests that although children tend to experience milder symptoms than adults, their throats still carry significant amounts of the virus. In fact, the study found that children under 5 carry 10 to 100 times more virus than adults.

The study is limited by the fact that it detected viral RNA — genetic material — rather than infectious virus, the researchers wrote. Still, they noted that other studies have shown a correlation between levels of RNA and live virus.

Therefore, “young children can potentially be important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population,” the researchers wrote, using the scientific acronym for the novel coronavirus.

“Behavioral habits of young children and close quarters in school and day care settings raise concern for SARS-CoV-2 amplification in this population as public health restrictions are eased,” they added.

The U.S. government’s response to the pandemic has been impugned as slow and haphazard, with at times baffling messages from President Trump.

But the story of a secretive Pentagon agency is a counterexample of U.S. government foresight, one that began more than a decade ago with the aim of finding super-fast ways to protect American troops if they were to confront a deadly new virus in the field.

If it weren’t for the agency’s investments over the past decade and earlier, largely outside the glare of Washington’s partisan politics, the American race toward a vaccine and antibody therapy to stop the coronavirus most likely wouldn’t be moving as quickly as it is today.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is far from exclusively responsible for the fast pace. But it played a significant role in advancing the science that is making the quick pace possible and setting a North Star for researchers.

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Major League Baseball’s long-odds struggle to weave a 60-game regular season through a global pandemic suffered another damaging blow Thursday, when the Philadelphia Phillies announced two staff members had tested positive — raising fears that the recent outbreak within the Miami Marlins organization had jumped to a second team.

While there was no clear evidence the Phillies’ infections — which the team said were of a coach and a member of the home clubhouse staff — came from the Marlins, the teams had played three games over the weekend at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, even as the Marlins’ outbreak grew from one player on Friday to four by Sunday. By Thursday, with both teams temporarily shut down, infections among the Marlins were up to 17 players and two coaches.

No Phillies players have tested positive, and MLB has reported zero positive tests of any player in baseball, outside of the Marlins, since July 24. However, three Phillies staff members have now tested positive since the weekend, including a visitors’ clubhouse attendant.

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President Trump issued a national call to action Thursday, exhorting people who have recovered from covid-19 to donate blood plasma to help others fight the disease and boost the nation’s supply.

“If you’ve had the virus, if you donate, it would be a terrific thing,” Trump said on a visit to the American Red Cross headquarters. “We really need donations of the plasma. To those that have had the virus, you’ve gotten through this. And I guess that means you have something very special there.”

The call for donors is based on a simple, but powerful fact about the immune system. People who recover from a coronavirus infection typically have virus-blocking antibodies circulating in their blood in the weeks after they recover. Those antibodies can be harvested in plasma donations and transfused to the next people who get sick, helping boost their immune systems. In contrast, developing treatments for a new virus is an uncertain and time-consuming process.

Blood plasma from people who have successfully recovered from the coronavirus infection has been widely used in the United States, even though researchers are still gathering evidence to definitively show it works. About 50,000 people have been transfused with the treatment, called convalescent plasma, under an expanded access program sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration.

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Wisconsin residents will now have to wear face masks indoors under a new order that Gov. Tony Evers (D) announced Thursday in response to significant community spread of the coronavirus.

The mandate, which takes effect Saturday, applies with few exceptions to anyone age 5 and older who is inside any building, besides a private home, where people from multiple households are present. The order “strongly recommends” face coverings in other settings.

“This is another tool in the toolbox in reducing the spread of COVID-19, and the sooner we work together to box in this virus, the sooner we can get back to work, school, sports, restaurants, and get our state and our economy back on the right track,” Evers said in a tweet.

Some of the state’s Republican lawmakers quickly expressed opposition to the mandate. State Sen. Steve Nass called for an emergency session to overturn the rule, which he described as “illegal and unnecessary,” the Associated Press reported. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the AP that he expected citizens’ organizations to challenge the order’s constitutionality.

The mask mandate will take effect the same day that liberal judge Jill Karofsky joins the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which in May sided with the state’s Republican lawmakers to invalidate Evers’s stay-at-home order. Karofsky’s addition will narrow the court’s conservative majority from 5-2 to 4-3, local news reports say.

Wisconsin joins more than 30 states that have implemented mask rules to try to prevent community spread of the contagious virus. Health officials in Wisconsin reported 1,059 infections on Wednesday, the state’s second-highest total since the pandemic began.

Evers also declared a public health emergency, saying the numbers of cases and deaths in the state “drastically increased” in July. Wisconsin has tallied 919 deaths, 135 of which have come this month.

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During a visit to the American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington on Thursday afternoon, President Trump wore a mask in public for the third time.

He donned it while touring the Red Cross facilities, where he met with a man who was donating plasma.

The president had long resisted wearing a mask in public and would often ridicule journalists and others for wearing them during the pandemic. But he appears to have shifted slightly on the issue in recent weeks; he wore one for the first time during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center earlier in the month, and wore one again Monday during a trip to North Carolina.

Later Thursday, during a roundtable at the Red Cross headquarters, Trump declared that things in many areas of the country are “getting much better,” even though some states are recording record levels of new coronavirus cases and the U.S. death toll is approaching 150,000.

Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams also gave Trump a message from supporters he said he met with recently in Miami.

“I was in Trump country,” Adams said. “They told me to deliver you a message, Mr. President. They told me to tell you [that] you look badass in a face mask. I promised them I would tell you that."

“Miami,” Adams added, “I told the president he looks badass in a face mask.”

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