Health

Coronavirus Live Updates: Governors Seek to Reduce Testing Times in U.S.


After parents and teachers opposed a hybrid model, Chicago schools will reopen online only.

Public school students in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest district, will begin the academic year remotely in September, leaving New York City as the only major school system in the country that will try to offer in-person classes when schools start this fall.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Dr. Janice Jackson, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, made the announcement Wednesday morning, as the Chicago Teachers Union was in the midst of tentative preparations for a strike over school safety.

“We have to be guided by the science, period,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “When we announced the potential for a hybrid model some weeks ago, we were in a very different place in the arc of the pandemic.” She added, “This was not an easy decision to make.”

The school district had originally planned to open using a hybrid model, with students divided into pods of 15 children each and attending in-person classes two days a week.

But many parents and teachers were opposed to that plan, arguing that it would spread coronavirus in schools and neighborhoods. In Chicago, the number of new coronavirus cases has steadily increased in recent weeks, with more than 250 new cases confirmed each day over the last several days.

Of the nation’s 25 largest school districts, only five now plan to open the school year with any form of in-person learning. Six of the seven largest will be online.

New York City schools, the nation’s largest district, are scheduled to reopen in about a month, with students having the option of attending in-person classes one to three days a week. But the city is confronting a torrent of logistical issues and political problems that could upend Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to bring students back to classrooms.

Among them: There are not yet enough nurses to staff all city school buildings, and ventilation systems in aging buildings are in urgent need of upgrades. There may not even be enough teachers available to offer in-person instruction. Some teachers are threatening to stage a sickout, and their union has indicated it might sue over reopening.

Chicago faced the same resistance from its union, but city leaders said their decision to start remotely was based on health concerns and parent feedback.

More than six months into the pandemic, the bipartisan plan highlights the depth of the testing problems in the United States as well as how the lack of a federal testing program has left municipalities and states to fend for themselves. The Trump administration has offered new support to hard-hit regions by providing free testing in cities through a “surge testing” program, but the bulk of government-sponsored testing has been provided by cities, counties and states that hire third-party contractors. As a result, the length of the delay varies between states, and within them.

The United States is testing about 755,000 people a day, up from about 640,000 per day a month ago, and far more than in April and May, according to the Covid Tracking Project. But numbers alone do not tell the whole story. With testing chemicals in short supply, and an increase in cases nationwide leading to skyrocketing demands, many people still have to wait many days for results, in effect rendering those tests useless.

Most who are tested for the virus do not receive results within the 24 to 48 hours recommended by public health experts to effectively stall the virus’s spread and quickly conduct contact tracing, according to a new national survey by researchers from Harvard University, Northeastern University, Northwestern University and Rutgers University.

The survey — representing 19,000 people from 50 states and Washington, D.C., who responded to an online questionnaire last month — found lengthy wait times among those who had been tested for the virus, about 18 percent of all respondents. Respondents in a vast majority of states reported a median turnaround time of at least three days, including residents of California, Florida, Texas and other hot spots. The survey also found disparities across racial groups, an indication that people who are hit hardest by the pandemic are also having to wait longer for test results.

“Testing is just not quick enough,” said Matthew A. Baum, a professor of public policy at Harvard University and one of the researchers in the group, which found that wait times were “strikingly similar” across the country. “This is an enormously widespread problem.”

Negotiators on Wednesday will reconvene on Capitol Hill to continue hammering out the details of a coronavirus relief package, having agreed to work toward an agreement by the end of the week and have legislative text prepared for the following week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California is expected to again host Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary; and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, in her Capitol Hill suite. The four are also expected to meet with Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, to “explain to us why there’s so many delays and how that might affect the election,” Mr. Schumer said on Tuesday.

The meeting with Mr. DeJoy, a Trump campaign megadonor, comes as mail delays fuel concerns over the politicization of the Postal Service and the administration’s moves to undermine mail-in voting ahead of the general election in November. Democrats are fighting for the inclusion of aid for the Postal Service and election security in an overall coronavirus relief package, while Republicans did not include any such funding in their $1 trillion proposal.

White House officials and Democratic leaders acknowledged some progress in talks on Tuesday. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, signaled he may be open to accepting a compromise measure, even if it contained provisions that he — and members of his conference — disagreed with, such as the extension of $600-per-week jobless-aid payments.

But it remains unclear whether negotiators would be able to adhere to the timeline they had agreed to, given the number of remaining policy divisions. Several Senate Republicans, particularly moderates facing tough re-election campaigns, have urged Republican leadership to keep lawmakers in Washington until a deal is reached, instead of departing for a scheduled monthlong recess at the end of this week.

In other news from around the world:

Johnson & Johnson to receive $1 billion from Operation Warp Speed for its experimental vaccine.

Biden will accept his party’s nomination virtually.

Democrats are once again dialing back plans for their party convention, announcing on Wednesday that the event will effectively be entirely virtual.

On the advice of health officials working for the party, no national Democratic officials — not even former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — will travel to the event from out of state to participate in events. Mr. Biden will accept the party’s presidential nomination from his home state, Delaware.

Maybe you are an altruist looking for a way to help fight the virus. Maybe you are hoping to be among the first to try an experimental vaccine. Or maybe you are just bored or could use a few hundred dollars.

Whatever your reasons, scientists, bioethicists and current volunteers say participating in a vaccine trial can be meaningful. And without hundreds of thousands of volunteers, there will be no vaccine for anyone.

Insurance companies do not see it that way. Most business interruption policies include highly specific language stating that for a claim to be paid out, there has to be “direct physical damage” — say, a flood that washes away a building or a fire that burns down inventory, forcing a business closure.

On top of that, after SARS swept through Asia nearly two decades ago and caused widespread economic damage, many insurers began to write in language that excluded business interruption caused by viral epidemics.

Insurers say they are not being stingy but that they simply do not have enough capital to cover all coronavirus-related claims and would suffer enormous losses if they had to pay out.

Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell that is also often accompanied by a loss of taste, is viewed as one defining symptom, but it is not foolproof. Even a symptom as common as fever can be tricky; in a European study of 2,000 Covid-19 patients with mild to moderate illness, 60 percent never had a fever.

“The problem is that it depends on who you are and how healthy you are,” said Dr. Mark Perazella, a kidney specialist and professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine. “If you’re healthy, most likely you’ll get fever, achiness, nasal symptoms, dry cough and you’ll feel crappy. But there are going to be the oddballs that are challenging and come in with some symptoms and nothing else, and you don’t suspect Covid.”

About one-third of Afghanistan’s population, or roughly 10 million people, have likely been infected by the coronavirus and recovered, Afghanistan’s health ministry said on Wednesday, based on a survey that deployed rapid tests for antibodies.

Ahmad Jawad Osmani, Afghanistan’s acting health minister, said the infection rate varied across the country according to the “cross-sectional survey,” conducted with the help of the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins University. Crowded urban centers showed higher rates than the rural areas. The ministry said about 9,500 people were tested for the survey.

“The survey showed that 31.5 percent of the population of Afghanistan has been infected by coronavirus according to rapid tests which show antibodies in the blood, and that they have recovered,” Mr. Osmani said.

Kabul, the capital city of more than five million people, has been worst hit, with about 53 percent of the residents infected. The rate of infection in the east of the country was nearly 43 percent, the west 34 percent, and the northeast 32.4 percent.

“In Kabul, 46 percent of children were infected by the virus, but they don’t have symptoms. And 57 percent of adults were also infected in Kabul,” Mr. Osmani said. “The infection rates were lowest in central parts of the country with 25 percent of adults and 14 percent of children infected.”

The country’s nascent health system has been overwhelmed by the virus at a time when the war continues to bring large numbers of casualties to the hospitals as well. Testing has been extremely limited, casting doubt on official numbers.

There have been 36,782 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Afghanistan and 1,288 deaths, according to a New York Times database.

Job hunting tips for today.

It is no longer about a firm handshake and confident eye contact, but some of the usual job interview tips do still apply when you take your job hunt online.

Reporting was contributed by Fahim Abed, Alan Blinder, Julie Bosman, Emily Cochrane, Reid J. Epstein, Nicholas Fandos, Manny Fernandez, Hailey Fuchs, Katie Glueck, Michael Gold, Virginia Hughes, Juliana Kim, Lisa Leher, Mujib Mashal, Sarah Mervosh, Raphael Minder, Tara Parker-Pope, Amy Qin, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Kaly Soto, Eileen Sullivan, Katie Thomas, Kenneth P. Vogel, Mary Williams Walsh, Noah Weiland and Billy Witz.



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