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As U.S. coronavirus cases continue to rise at a rapid pace, states are either pausing or rolling back their reopening plans. Despite the continued spread and a dire warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci on potential case numbers, Vice President Mike Pence wants to press forward, telling CNBC this week that the Trump administration would "keep opening up America." We have the latest, and what's to come, from our team below.
Check out Meg Tirrell's latest "Healthy Returns: The Path Forward" livestream interview here with Brown University Economics Professor Emily Oster. You can tune in Wednesdays at 4:30pm EDT on cnbc.com, CNBC's Facebook or the CNBC Events Twitter to join live.
Note: The Healthy Returns newsletter will be on hiatus next week, returning July 17.
| | Accuracy of tests questioned after PGA golfer tests positive, and then negative | Professional U.S. golfer Cameron Champ withdrew from the PGA Tour's Travelers Championship last Tuesday and announced plans to self-quarantine for 14 days after testing positive for the coronavirus. But five days later, he said he tested negative three times, raising questions about the accuracy of the tests being administered by professional sports to screen players before competitions. Five PGA Tour golfers have tested positive for the coronavirus since June and eight withdrew from the Travelers tournament. However, PGA Tour spokeswoman told CNBC that Champ's test wasn't a false positive, something infectious disease specialists say is rare.
-Jasmine Kim | | | | U.S. Hospitals could lose $323 billion this year | Last spring Congress allocated $100 billion in Covid relief for hospitals, clinics and doctors. The American Hospital Association estimates that hospitals collectively will lose three times that this year. AHA CEO Rick Pollack says hospitals are going to need more help from Washington and some of the safety net hospitals in rural and urban areas which are treating communities hit hard by Covid face the most dire financial straits.
-Bertha Coombs | | | | Pfizer/BioNTech early vaccine results show promise as phase 3 trials set to start this month | "Preliminary data look good. Now all we have to do is wait to see whether it actually works in a phase 3 trials." That was vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit's assessment of the first human data on Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine program, and the companies are barrelling toward the start of a 30,000-participant phase 3 trial this month, joining Moderna and AstraZeneca at the head of the vaccine race. NIH Director Francis Collins told a Senate committee Thursday it will take a few months to enroll such large trials, but efficacy could be proven quickly in areas with lots of infection. Pfizer research chief Mikael Dolsten was more optimistic on timelines: he told us on Squawk on the Street the company may have efficacy and safety data by September.
-Meg Tirrell | | | | Feeling stressed out amidst the pandemic? You're not alone | A group of researchers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Harvard Medical School released results from a survey they conducted in the second half of May this week. The study found that 55% of people were more stressed than in January, before the coronavirus was perceived to be a widespread threat. "It can be stated with certainty based on these survey findings that at least a quarter of U.S. adults is presently in a condition of high emotional distress directly attributable to the pandemic," the study reads. One of the researchers, Harvard psychologist Dr. Sarah Gray, told us that she hopes clinicians and public health will invest more into emotional health and wellbeing, and not just physical health.
-Chrissy Farr | | | | More states roll back or pause reopenings as U.S. posts record new cases | More governors in states like California, Arizona, New York, Michigan and New Jersey have delayed or rolled back their reopening plans as coronavirus outbreaks continue to surge across the country. The U.S. reported more than 50,600 additional coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the largest single-day increase since the beginning of the outbreak, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
-Noah Higgin-Dunn | | | | U.S. could top 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day, Dr. Fauci says | If the U.S. coronavirus outbreak continues on its current trajectory, the country could report more than 100,000 new cases per day eventually, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before lawmakers earlier this week. "I can't make an accurate prediction but it's going to be very disturbing," he said Tuesday in a hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "We are now having 40-plus-thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around, and so I am very concerned." He added that about half of all new cases in the country are coming from four states: Florida, California, Texas and Arizona.
-Will Feuer | | | | U.S. death toll is a substantial undercount, Yale study finds | A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found the number of confirmed U.S. deaths due to the virus could be undercounted by as much as 28%. Researchers at Yale University, compared the number of excess U.S. deaths with the reported number of U.S. Covid-19 deaths from March 1 through May 30. Deaths from the virus reached 95,235, about 28% less than the excess number. However, state reporting discrepancies and a sharp increase in U.S. deaths amid a pandemic suggest the number of Covid-19 fatalities is actually undercounted, the researchers said. "Our analyses suggest that the official tally of deaths due to Covid-19 represent a substantial undercount of the true burden," Dan Weinberger, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health, told me.
-Berkeley Lovelace Jr. | | @Work Summit | October 6, 2020
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