The Latest: Federal prison hit hard by coronavirus outbreak
The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
—Germany experts say vaccine, herd immunity vital.
—US to let federal social distancing guidelines expire.
—Britain's death toll jumps over 26,000 with nursing home deaths.
—As lockdowns ease, health officials urge virus vigilance.
___
LOS ANGELES — More than half the inmates at a federal prison in Los Angeles have tested positive for the coronavirus and two of them have died, officials said.
As of Wednesday, 570 of the 1,055 inmates at Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island had the virus, as did 10 staff members, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Two inmates have died of complications related to COVID-19, the agency said.
Many of the inmates are asymptomatic, said Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer. Prison officials began testing inmates for the virus on April 23 at the facility in Los Angeles Harbor, she said.
To the north in Santa Barbara County, 36 inmates and 10 staff have tested positive at Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc, according to the prisons bureau. At nearby U.S. Penitentiary, Lompoc, 83 inmates and 15 staff have the virus and one inmate has died, the agency said.
“The Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice must act immediately to reduce the incarcerated population and to protect those in BOP custody — as well as correctional officers and staff — from this deadly virus,” U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris said in a statement.
___
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he is planning to travel to Arizona next week and is looking forward to resuming campaign rallies after spending more than a month mostly cooped up at the White House because of the coronavirus.
Trump says he is looking forward to his Arizona trip next week and also hopes to visit Ohio soon despite the fact that much of the nation remains on some sort of lockdown as the virus continues to spread.
He says: “We’re going to start to move around and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, we’ll have some massive rallies and people will be sitting next to each other.”
Trump wouldn’t say exactly when he expects to be able to resume his rallies, but said it will depend, in part, on the state.
___
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations humanitarian chief says 44 cases of COVID-19 and four deaths have been announced in Syria.
Mark Lowcock tells the U.N. Security Council that a health care system decimated by nine years of war can’t be expected “to cope with a crisis that is challenging even the wealthiest nations.”
Lowcock says 43 confirmed cases and three deaths have been announced by Syrian authorities in Damascus and its surroundings, and a first case and death has been confirmed in Syria’s northeast.
He says “testing capacity remains very limited,” efforts are being made to set up isolation areas in camps, and measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 are already hurting the most vulnerable.
___
MOSCOW — Russian officials say more than 1,000 coronavirus cases have been found among workers building a liquefied natural gas facility in the far northern Murmansk region.
The Interfax news agency cited regional officials as saying 80 cases were found Wednesday at the Belokamenka work site, bringing the total there to 1002 — more than 1% of all the cases reported in Russia.
The infections were found in a camp housing about 4,500 construction workers working for a project contractor.
There also are concerns about a similar outbreak among workers at a gas field under construction in the far-northeast Sakha region. The regional governor, Aisen Nikolayev, said this week that all the workers had been tested and the number of infections was significant, although he did not give figures.
___
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida’s restaurants and retail stores will be allowed to reopen Monday at 25% capacity, if the local government allows it.
The governor specifically excluded hard-hit, heavily populated Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, saying their businesses will begin phase one when it is safer.
The governor also will allow hospitals and surgical centers to restart nonessential, elective procedures — but only if they have sufficient medical supplies and agree to help nursing homes and assisted living facilities prevent and respond to coronavirus outbreaks. Parks, golf courses and other outdoor recreation areas already began reopening in some counties Wednesday.
DeSantis, a Republican, is being more cautious than the neighboring state of Georgia, as well as the task force DeSantis formed last week to study how to get people back to work.
___
UNITED NATIONS — Climate activist Greta Thunberg is launching a campaign with a Danish foundation to help finance the U.N. childrens’ agency’s emergency program to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Thunberg said in a statement that “like the climate crisis, the coronavirus pandemic is a child-rights crisis” that will affect youngsters now and in the long-term, especially the most vulnerable.
She urged people everywhere “to step up and join me in support of UNICEF’s vital work to save children’s lives, to protect health and continue education.”
The campaign is being launched with $100,000 from the Greta Thunberg Foundation and $100,000 from Denmark’s Human Act Foundation.
___
GENEVA — A top World Health Organization official says the U.N. health agency is looking into whether grandparents can safely hug their grandchildren without risk of contracting the coronavirus.
The comments from Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s emergencies program, come after a top Swiss health official this week suggested that grandparents could hold young grandchildren — under age 10 — close without risk of contracting COVID-19 disease.
Most statistics show the elderly and people with pre-existing health conditions have been the overwhelming majority of victims who have died from the pandemic.
At a WHO news conference, Van Kerkhove acknowledged that many grandparents “are dying to hug their children, grandchildren” and said the issue was one of the “living reviews” conducted by WHO.
___
DETROIT — The city of Detroit has passed 1,000 deaths due to complications from the COVID-19 virus.
Chief Public Health Officer Denise Fair says 1,008 people in Detroit have died. The city has 8,954 confirmed coronavirus cases.
Of the last 16 deaths, 14 of the victims were over age 70, while eight of those were over age 80 according to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
___
HELSINKI — Finland says it will gradually reopen schools from May 14 following closures that started last month to stem the spread of new coronavirus.
Prime Minister Sanna Marin says elementary, mid-level and junior high schools will be opened “in a controlled manner” in accordance with health officials’ recommendations and guidance.
Among other things, that will include keeping classrooms separate from each other possibly in different shifts.
Public schools in Finland have been closed since March 18. Education Minister Li Andersson stresses the government cannot continue the closure “because it’s not sustainable epidemiologically."
Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, has recorded 206 COVID-19 deaths and 4,906 confirmed cases.
___
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus’ president has unveiled a road map for gradually lifting a strict, stay-at-home order that has successfully contained the spread of COVID-19.
But Nicos Anastasiades says the “danger hasn’t passed” since the virus won’t completely go away any time soon. He warns that “deviations from or acts of ill discipline” to authorities’ guidelines would lead to a return to lockdown conditions “that nobody wishes.”
Restrictions on movement will start to be rolled back on May 4, with excursions outside the home increased from once per day to three. A night-time curfew will remain in place until restrictions are completely lifted on May 21, when restaurants, hair and beauty salons will also re-open.
Anastasiades made no mention when airports will become fully operational in the tourism-reliant country. A ban on all flights remains in effect until May 17.
Cyprus, with a population of around 880,000, has recorded 843 confirmed coronavirus cases and 15 deaths.
___
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s prime minister says restrictions on leaving the house will be gradually lifted, especially in the countryside areas where there are fewer coronavirus infections. Restrictions will remain in place in Budapest and its surroundings.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban says in a Facebook video that the first phase of defending against the pandemic is over and Hungary’s health sector was now prepared to handle mass infections, as well.
Without giving a specific date, Orban says in the countryside, stores would be able to extend opening hours and that restaurants and cafes will be allowed to reopen terraces and gardens.
Orban says measures allowing only those over 65 to shop in food stores and pharmacies in the morning hours will remain in place.
Hungary has registered 2,727 coronavirus cases and 300 deaths.
___
PRAGUE — Hundreds of people have been protesting what they say is a chaotic response by the Czech government to the coronavirus pandemic.
The organizers, who were behind the recent massive demonstrations against Prime Minister Andrej Babis, have asked the participants to keep the two-meter (two-yard) distance from one another in line with the government’s rule.
Wearing mandatory face masks, the protesters in Prague’s Letna park are carrying banners with their questions and messages to the Cabinet.
They read like “Let our children get back to schools!” or ”Why did we have to make our face masks by ourselves?”
The day-to-day increase in new cases of COVID-19 in the Czech Republic has been under one hundred for a week, according to Health Ministry figures.
___
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka will re-impose a 24-hour countrywide curfew as part of the country’s stringent measures designed to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
According to the government’s decision, the curfew will be from effective from Thursday at 8 p.m. until May 4.
The government’s decision to go for a blanket curfew across the island comes after a surge of confirmed cases in the last three days. There are now 630 COVID-19 cases in Sri Lanka, including seven deaths.
The country had been under a 24-hour curfew since March 20. The curfew was lifted during daytime hours in more than two thirds of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday.
There has been intermittent lifting of the curfew recently in selected areas which were not seen as dangerous.
Police strictly enforce curfew and have arrested more than 41,000 violators since last month.
___
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says the federal government will not be extending its social distancing guidelines when they expire Thursday at the end of the month.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the coronavirus guidelines will be “fading out” because of work that governors are doing in their states.
Vice President Mike Pence said the guidelines issued 45 days ago have been incorporated into guidance provided to the states on how they can begin the process of gradually reopening their economies.
The guidelines – which were originally supposed to last 15 days and were then extended another 30 - included encouraging Americans to work from home and avoid restaurants and discretionary travel as well as telling older Americans and those with serious underlying health conditions to isolate themselves.
___
LONDON — Britain’s official death toll from the coronavirus has jumped to more than 26,000, after deaths in nursing homes were added to the daily total for the first time.
The government says 3,811 more people died after testing positive for the coronavirus than had been previously reported.
The death toll now stands at 26,097, up from the 21,678 announced Tuesday.
Until now, hospital deaths have been reported daily, while deaths in nursing homes and other settings were reported separately on a weekly basis.
The new total is the second-highest official toll in Europe after Italy, although countries do not use exactly the same measures.
It is still likely is an underestimate because testing has not been routinely carried out in nursing homes until recently.
___
BERLIN — Four leading scientific research organizations in Germany say some measures imposed to curb the rate of coronavirus infections will need to remain in place until a vaccine is found or herd immunity is achieved.
They say in a joint statement that their mathematical models independently show the reproduction rate of the outbreak has been below 1 in Germany since the end of March. This means every person confirmed with COVID-19 infected fewer than one other person over the past month.
The Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association, the Leibniz Association and the Max Planck Society say the drop in new cases in Germany was thanks to restrictions and behavior changes. But they warned “the situation is not stable, even a small increase in the reproduction rate would lead us back into a phase of exponential growth.”
They say striving for herd immunity, where so many people acquire immunity that the virus is effectively stopped from spreading through the population, would require “several years” and some restrictions would need to be maintained. Experts say a vaccine likely won’t be available until next year.
The institutions urged a focus on three areas: continued hygiene measures; expanded testing and tracing capacity; and adjusted contact restrictions.
___
ROME — Italy’s head of the coronavirus pandemic strategy says the country is prepared for a second wave of infections “even bigger than the first” if its gradual reopening leads to a surge in new cases.
Domenico Arcuri told the lower Chamber of Deputies that Italy’s 20 regions now have twice as many ventilators than currently needed and the 5,200 intensive care beds Italy had before the pandemic had nearly doubled to 9,000.
Italy, the European epicenter of the pandemic with more than 27,000 dead, entered the crisis with a fraction of the ICU capacity compared to other developed nations.
Arcuri told lawmakers that beds in sub-intensive care had increased six-fold, the same increase in Italy’s bed capacity in infectious disease and pneumology wards.
Italy’s planned reopening begins May 4.
___
Follow AP news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak