Ready for reliable and friendly service in a towing company? Combined with competitive rates? Call Force 1 Towing and Auto Body in Catasauqua at 610-266-6721
The Governor's Daily Brief - 8/27/20
TODAY'S TAKEAWAYS |
14th straight day with COVID positivity rates below 10%
Theme Parks should start to increase attendance capacity
Numbers continue moving in the right direction
14th straight day with COVID positivity rates below 10%
Theme Parks should start to increase attendance capacity
Numbers continue moving in the right direction
Downward trend of COVID-19 in Florida and on the Suncoast
ABC 7
SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - We are seeing a downward trend in COVID-19 cases across the state and on the Suncoast. Since this decrease in numbers has consistently stayed this way for about two weeks, health officials say it looks like we have gotten COVID-19 under control - for now.
“I would like to think it is driven primarily by people taking personally responsible to care for one another and practice social mitigation. It shows that we don’t have to have an extreme lockdown if everyone chips in and does the right things,” explained Dr. Jason Salemi, Epidemiologist and Professor at the University of South Florida.
Dr. Salemi says not only are the numbers of new cases important, but the positivity rate gives us an even better estimate –that has also dropped immensely. On the Suncoast, we are now at about 2% in Sarasota County and 3% in Manatee County. Public health experts say the virus is under control when that rate is 5% or below.
“And it’s not just about who is getting infected, but about how much severe illness is in our population. For that, we look at current people hospitalized with COVID-19, as well as deaths. When you look back at July, we were in the area of 9 to 10,000 people. Now, we are in the range of 4 to 6,000 people, so we have come down quite a bit in just the last couple of weeks,” Dr. Salemi said.
However, that doesn’t mean our fight against COVID-19 is over. Doctors say in order for us to continue on this path, we cannot let our guard down.
“Everybody wants to get back to normal. We are starting to see kids go back to school. We’re seeing reduced community transmission, fewer hospitalizations, fewer deaths, and we all have COVID fatigue. We’re learning about this on a daily basis. We’re exhausted from it. There is a big desire to exhale and try to go back to our normal lives, but now is the time for us to hunker down and continue doing what we have been doing,” expressed Dr. Salemi.
Doctors say masks and social distancing are obviously working in preventing the spread of COVID-19, so we must continue these practices until the curve is completely flattened.
Florida’s COVID-19 cases continue to fall
News4Jax
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida’s cases of coronavirus continue to grow, but at a slower pace than they had since early this summer.
The Department of Health reported 2,258 new cases of COVID-19 in the state on Monday and 72 deaths, including one each in Clay and St. Johns counties.
The number of total cases and deaths continues a downward trend that began five weeks ago.
Florida reported 2,258 new cases on Sunday, only the third time since June 15 that fewer than 2,500 new cases were n tallied in a day. The daily total peaked July 15 when more than 15,000 cases were reported, but has been declining since.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have also been declining. Late Sunday morning, 4,578 patients were being treated for the disease in Florida hospitals compared to Saturday’s 4,773. It is a drop of almost 800 since Thursday. Hospitalizations peaked at above 9,500 on July 23. The state’s positivity rate on tests returned Sunday was 5.2% after averaging about 10% for the past week.
Overall, the state has now reported 602,829 confirmed cases. The state has reported 10,534 deaths since the pandemic began appearing in Florida at the beginning of March. Last week the state has reported an average death rate of 125 per day and an average of 151 deaths per day during August. Only Texas, at 203 deaths, has a higher daily average over the past week. It has about 50% more residents.
The two most recent deaths reported in Northeast Florida are a 86-year-old woman in St. Johns County and a 71-year-old man in Clay County. According to FDOH, neither had contact with a positive case or known exposure from travel.
COVID-19 numbers in Florida, Bay Area trending down
Fox 13
TAMPA, Fla. - The state of Florida's COVID-19 numbers are trending downward, from new cases to hospitalizations. Florida's percent positivity, the rate of new positive tests, is half of what it was just six weeks ago.
It's encouraging news when just weeks ago, Florida was breaking national records and not for good reasons. But health experts urge everyone to not let their guard down.
Governor Ron DeSantis, encouraged by Florida's COVID-19 data, announced Monday that the Miami Dolphins can soon allow a limited number of fans inside Hard Rock Stadium to watch.
"I think it is something that will give people a little bit of hope," DeSantis said.
That hope, of course, is driven by the numbers. He said that COVID-positive hospitalizations are down 50% in Florida. Sunday's number of 128 COVID-19 admissions was the lowest since late June.
Florida governor supports Disney, Universal and state theme parks easing COVID-19 capacity limits
Fox News
Florida theme parks should be allowed to start allowing more visitors, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis said Wednesday that Florida is getting more “comfortable” with the idea of expanding capacity at its theme parks, including Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Orlando Resort, and will support those parks in the easing up of COVID-19 capacity restrictions as cases in the state appear to be declining.
DeSantis made his remarks at a roundtable with theme-park executives in Orlando, applauding their health and safety measures and claiming that the parks have not been hot spots for spreading the coronavirus.
He also said he believed "a lot" more guests would be willing to visit the parks if capacity regulations were relaxed.
“We think that the capacity can be increased,” DeSantis said. “When you have the protocols that they have in place, you know, we’re very comfortable at the state level.”
The Left’s Covid Memory Hole
The Wall Street Journal
Last week’s Democratic convention sought to make four points: Joe Biden is a decent man, Donald Trump is horrible, the president bungled the pandemic and Mr. Biden would have handled it better because he grasped the threat from the start.
Whatever you think of the first three, the last is a fabrication. But the former vice president likes to say it anyway. In June he claimed President Trump “did not listen to guys like me back in January saying we have a problem, a pandemic is on the way.”
A National Mask Mandate Isn’t Necessary to Save Lives
The Daily Signal
“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum,” said former Vice President Joe Biden at a recent press briefing.
“Outside” encompasses a lot, including places where a mask would have exactly zero effect. Normally, this kind of rhetoric is a merely simplified admonition to wear masks generally, but in this press briefing, Biden also endorsed a nationwide mask-wearing mandate, adding this gloomy justification: “The estimates by the experts are it will save over 40,000 lives in the next three months.”
More on that estimate in a moment. But first: Would such a mandate even be a good idea?
In short, no. The primary purpose of the broad masking guidelines is to reduce the transmission of the virus among asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic persons who do not know they are infected but are already contagious.
Coronavirus deaths are declining
Washington Examiner
New daily deaths due to the coronavirus had fallen below 1,000 for three straight days from Saturday to early Tuesday, the first stretch of lower daily deaths in over a week.
The seven-day average number of new coronavirus deaths in the United States had dropped precipitously since the week ending Aug. 16, when the average was 1,061, according to data compiled by the New York Times. The average number of deaths reported in the week ending Aug. 23 was 968.
The single-day death toll rose on Tuesday, with 1,212 new deaths reported.
Average daily death tolls had declined from highs of about 2,000 in April to lows below 1,000 at the end of June. Yet cases surged in the Sun Belt over the summer and led to jumps in deaths.
Several hot-spot states have also seen declines in daily death rates. Deaths in Texas in the past seven days have dropped 14%. In Florida, the death rate has fallen 32%, while the death rate in Arizona fell 19%, according to Washington Post tracking data.
Other hot-spot states, however, are seeing rising daily deaths. California saw its seven-day rolling average of daily new deaths increase by 5%. The average increased by 6% in Georgia, by 32% in Tennessee, and by 4% in Mississippi.
The total death toll in the U.S. surpassed 178,000, and more than 5.7 million cases have been confirmed.
American Airlines will furlough 19,000 employees in the fall when federal aid that has bolstered the travel industry runs out, according to the New York Times. When combined with the thousands of employees who have taken buyout packages or agreed to take long-term leave, the airline will have roughly 40,000 fewer workers on Oct. 1 than it did before the pandemic began, a decline of about 30%. American Airlines executives urged Congress to extend more support to the aviation industry to protect jobs.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn admitted that he overstated the benefits of convalescent plasma as a coronavirus treatment during a White House press briefing Sunday. He and President Trump cited preliminary findings from Mayo Clinic research, saying the treatment has been shown to reduce mortality by 35%.
What the researchers actually said was that patients who received plasma with a high level of COVID-19 antibodies within three days of diagnosis were about 35% more likely to survive another 30 days, compared with patients who received plasma with a low level of antibodies.
“What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction,” Hahn said, adding that criticism of his statements was “entirely justified.”
South Korea has ordered all schools in the greater Seoul area to close and switch to remote learning until Sept. 11 as health authorities have warned that the country is on the verge of a large-scale COVID-19 outbreak, the Associated Press reported. South Korea has reported 12 consecutive days of triple-digit increases in coronavirus cases, pushing the entire caseload to 17,945, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said Tuesday that at least 193 students and teachers have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past two weeks in the capital region, where a renewed outbreak is threatening to erase progress the country made in the spring to contain the virus.
The Spanish government has authorized the military to shore up the country’s case tracing program as new clusters of infections have cropped up just days before the school year is set to begin, the Associated Press reported.
“There are 2,000 soldiers who have specific training in early detection and epidemiological surveillance,” Spain’s President Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday.
The Cabinet meeting took place after Spain’s health ministry announced more than 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the past week, the largest weekly increase since the end of March.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt has tested positive for the coronavirus after attending his birthday party in Jamaica on Friday, according to the Washington Post. Several pro athletes and celebrities attended the party, where guests did not wear masks or social distance. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a press conference that the police are investigating the circumstances surrounding Bolt's party.
Two European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, were found to have been reinfected with the coronavirus, just one day after scientists in Hong Kong confirmed the first case of COVID-19 reinfection.
Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said the patient in the Netherlands was an older person with a weakened immune system, according to ABC News. Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst said the Belgian case was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 for the first time in the second week of March and for a second time in June.
Northern Irish singer Van Morrison, 74, slammed the “pseudoscience” backing socially distanced concerts and launched a campaign to rally musicians and producers to resume live shows with full-capacity audiences, the Guardian reported.
Morrison will reluctantly perform socially distanced concerts in England next month: “This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs, this is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums. This is also not the answer going forward. We need to be playing to full-capacity audiences going forward.”
ABC 7
SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) - We are seeing a downward trend in COVID-19 cases across the state and on the Suncoast. Since this decrease in numbers has consistently stayed this way for about two weeks, health officials say it looks like we have gotten COVID-19 under control - for now.
“I would like to think it is driven primarily by people taking personally responsible to care for one another and practice social mitigation. It shows that we don’t have to have an extreme lockdown if everyone chips in and does the right things,” explained Dr. Jason Salemi, Epidemiologist and Professor at the University of South Florida.
Dr. Salemi says not only are the numbers of new cases important, but the positivity rate gives us an even better estimate –that has also dropped immensely. On the Suncoast, we are now at about 2% in Sarasota County and 3% in Manatee County. Public health experts say the virus is under control when that rate is 5% or below.
“And it’s not just about who is getting infected, but about how much severe illness is in our population. For that, we look at current people hospitalized with COVID-19, as well as deaths. When you look back at July, we were in the area of 9 to 10,000 people. Now, we are in the range of 4 to 6,000 people, so we have come down quite a bit in just the last couple of weeks,” Dr. Salemi said.
However, that doesn’t mean our fight against COVID-19 is over. Doctors say in order for us to continue on this path, we cannot let our guard down.
“Everybody wants to get back to normal. We are starting to see kids go back to school. We’re seeing reduced community transmission, fewer hospitalizations, fewer deaths, and we all have COVID fatigue. We’re learning about this on a daily basis. We’re exhausted from it. There is a big desire to exhale and try to go back to our normal lives, but now is the time for us to hunker down and continue doing what we have been doing,” expressed Dr. Salemi.
Doctors say masks and social distancing are obviously working in preventing the spread of COVID-19, so we must continue these practices until the curve is completely flattened.
Florida’s COVID-19 cases continue to fall
News4Jax
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Florida’s cases of coronavirus continue to grow, but at a slower pace than they had since early this summer.
The Department of Health reported 2,258 new cases of COVID-19 in the state on Monday and 72 deaths, including one each in Clay and St. Johns counties.
The number of total cases and deaths continues a downward trend that began five weeks ago.
Florida reported 2,258 new cases on Sunday, only the third time since June 15 that fewer than 2,500 new cases were n tallied in a day. The daily total peaked July 15 when more than 15,000 cases were reported, but has been declining since.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have also been declining. Late Sunday morning, 4,578 patients were being treated for the disease in Florida hospitals compared to Saturday’s 4,773. It is a drop of almost 800 since Thursday. Hospitalizations peaked at above 9,500 on July 23. The state’s positivity rate on tests returned Sunday was 5.2% after averaging about 10% for the past week.
Overall, the state has now reported 602,829 confirmed cases. The state has reported 10,534 deaths since the pandemic began appearing in Florida at the beginning of March. Last week the state has reported an average death rate of 125 per day and an average of 151 deaths per day during August. Only Texas, at 203 deaths, has a higher daily average over the past week. It has about 50% more residents.
The two most recent deaths reported in Northeast Florida are a 86-year-old woman in St. Johns County and a 71-year-old man in Clay County. According to FDOH, neither had contact with a positive case or known exposure from travel.
COVID-19 numbers in Florida, Bay Area trending down
Fox 13
TAMPA, Fla. - The state of Florida's COVID-19 numbers are trending downward, from new cases to hospitalizations. Florida's percent positivity, the rate of new positive tests, is half of what it was just six weeks ago.
It's encouraging news when just weeks ago, Florida was breaking national records and not for good reasons. But health experts urge everyone to not let their guard down.
Governor Ron DeSantis, encouraged by Florida's COVID-19 data, announced Monday that the Miami Dolphins can soon allow a limited number of fans inside Hard Rock Stadium to watch.
"I think it is something that will give people a little bit of hope," DeSantis said.
That hope, of course, is driven by the numbers. He said that COVID-positive hospitalizations are down 50% in Florida. Sunday's number of 128 COVID-19 admissions was the lowest since late June.
Florida governor supports Disney, Universal and state theme parks easing COVID-19 capacity limits
Fox News
Florida theme parks should be allowed to start allowing more visitors, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis said Wednesday that Florida is getting more “comfortable” with the idea of expanding capacity at its theme parks, including Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Orlando Resort, and will support those parks in the easing up of COVID-19 capacity restrictions as cases in the state appear to be declining.
DeSantis made his remarks at a roundtable with theme-park executives in Orlando, applauding their health and safety measures and claiming that the parks have not been hot spots for spreading the coronavirus.
He also said he believed "a lot" more guests would be willing to visit the parks if capacity regulations were relaxed.
“We think that the capacity can be increased,” DeSantis said. “When you have the protocols that they have in place, you know, we’re very comfortable at the state level.”
The Left’s Covid Memory Hole
The Wall Street Journal
Last week’s Democratic convention sought to make four points: Joe Biden is a decent man, Donald Trump is horrible, the president bungled the pandemic and Mr. Biden would have handled it better because he grasped the threat from the start.
Whatever you think of the first three, the last is a fabrication. But the former vice president likes to say it anyway. In June he claimed President Trump “did not listen to guys like me back in January saying we have a problem, a pandemic is on the way.”
A National Mask Mandate Isn’t Necessary to Save Lives
The Daily Signal
“Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months at a minimum,” said former Vice President Joe Biden at a recent press briefing.
“Outside” encompasses a lot, including places where a mask would have exactly zero effect. Normally, this kind of rhetoric is a merely simplified admonition to wear masks generally, but in this press briefing, Biden also endorsed a nationwide mask-wearing mandate, adding this gloomy justification: “The estimates by the experts are it will save over 40,000 lives in the next three months.”
More on that estimate in a moment. But first: Would such a mandate even be a good idea?
In short, no. The primary purpose of the broad masking guidelines is to reduce the transmission of the virus among asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic persons who do not know they are infected but are already contagious.
Coronavirus deaths are declining
Washington Examiner
New daily deaths due to the coronavirus had fallen below 1,000 for three straight days from Saturday to early Tuesday, the first stretch of lower daily deaths in over a week.
The seven-day average number of new coronavirus deaths in the United States had dropped precipitously since the week ending Aug. 16, when the average was 1,061, according to data compiled by the New York Times. The average number of deaths reported in the week ending Aug. 23 was 968.
The single-day death toll rose on Tuesday, with 1,212 new deaths reported.
Average daily death tolls had declined from highs of about 2,000 in April to lows below 1,000 at the end of June. Yet cases surged in the Sun Belt over the summer and led to jumps in deaths.
Several hot-spot states have also seen declines in daily death rates. Deaths in Texas in the past seven days have dropped 14%. In Florida, the death rate has fallen 32%, while the death rate in Arizona fell 19%, according to Washington Post tracking data.
Other hot-spot states, however, are seeing rising daily deaths. California saw its seven-day rolling average of daily new deaths increase by 5%. The average increased by 6% in Georgia, by 32% in Tennessee, and by 4% in Mississippi.
The total death toll in the U.S. surpassed 178,000, and more than 5.7 million cases have been confirmed.
American Airlines will furlough 19,000 employees in the fall when federal aid that has bolstered the travel industry runs out, according to the New York Times. When combined with the thousands of employees who have taken buyout packages or agreed to take long-term leave, the airline will have roughly 40,000 fewer workers on Oct. 1 than it did before the pandemic began, a decline of about 30%. American Airlines executives urged Congress to extend more support to the aviation industry to protect jobs.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn admitted that he overstated the benefits of convalescent plasma as a coronavirus treatment during a White House press briefing Sunday. He and President Trump cited preliminary findings from Mayo Clinic research, saying the treatment has been shown to reduce mortality by 35%.
What the researchers actually said was that patients who received plasma with a high level of COVID-19 antibodies within three days of diagnosis were about 35% more likely to survive another 30 days, compared with patients who received plasma with a low level of antibodies.
“What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction,” Hahn said, adding that criticism of his statements was “entirely justified.”
South Korea has ordered all schools in the greater Seoul area to close and switch to remote learning until Sept. 11 as health authorities have warned that the country is on the verge of a large-scale COVID-19 outbreak, the Associated Press reported. South Korea has reported 12 consecutive days of triple-digit increases in coronavirus cases, pushing the entire caseload to 17,945, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said Tuesday that at least 193 students and teachers have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past two weeks in the capital region, where a renewed outbreak is threatening to erase progress the country made in the spring to contain the virus.
The Spanish government has authorized the military to shore up the country’s case tracing program as new clusters of infections have cropped up just days before the school year is set to begin, the Associated Press reported.
“There are 2,000 soldiers who have specific training in early detection and epidemiological surveillance,” Spain’s President Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday.
The Cabinet meeting took place after Spain’s health ministry announced more than 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the past week, the largest weekly increase since the end of March.
Eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt has tested positive for the coronavirus after attending his birthday party in Jamaica on Friday, according to the Washington Post. Several pro athletes and celebrities attended the party, where guests did not wear masks or social distance. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a press conference that the police are investigating the circumstances surrounding Bolt's party.
Two European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, were found to have been reinfected with the coronavirus, just one day after scientists in Hong Kong confirmed the first case of COVID-19 reinfection.
Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said the patient in the Netherlands was an older person with a weakened immune system, according to ABC News. Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst said the Belgian case was a woman who had contracted COVID-19 for the first time in the second week of March and for a second time in June.
Northern Irish singer Van Morrison, 74, slammed the “pseudoscience” backing socially distanced concerts and launched a campaign to rally musicians and producers to resume live shows with full-capacity audiences, the Guardian reported.
Morrison will reluctantly perform socially distanced concerts in England next month: “This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs, this is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums. This is also not the answer going forward. We need to be playing to full-capacity audiences going forward.”
COViD-19 by the numbers | COVID -19 Fatalities
ICUs and hospital beds by the numbers | Current as of 8/27/2020
19.80%% of ICU Beds Available Statewide
40.32%% of Pediatric ICU Beds Available Statewide
23.86%% of Available Hospital Beds Statewide
19.80%% of ICU Beds Available Statewide
40.32%% of Pediatric ICU Beds Available Statewide
23.86%% of Available Hospital Beds Statewide
Are you looking for a shipping solution? Maybe you need to change freight carriers? Find out what the hard working and reliable people at Team Worldwide can do over land, sea and air
