The Latest: British PM unveils rules as virus cases spike
LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appealed to a “spirit of togetherness” as he unveiled a series of new restrictions on everyday life to get on top of a dramatic spike in new coronavirus cases.
Warning that the new restrictions could last for six months through the winter and into the spring, Johnson said pubs, restaurants and other entertainment venues in England will have to close at 10 p.m.
In a speech with deliberate echoes of wartime communal spirit, Johnson said that “never in our history has our collective destiny and our collective health depended so completely on our individual behavior.”
The prime minister told lawmakers that if the new curbs did not slow the outbreak, “we reserve the right to deploy greater firepower, with significantly greater restrictions.”
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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK
— US death toll from coronavirus hits 200,000
— India confirms 75,000 coronavirus cases, 1,000 deaths in one day
— Madrid may extend virus measures despite outcry
— Mobile apps for tracing coronavirus cases get mixed reviews
— England will order pubs and restaurants to close at 10 p.m. People who can work from home will be encouraged to do so.
— Virus infections and deaths in French nursing homes are on the rise again. Nearly half of the 31,000 people confirmed to have died in France with the virus were nursing home residents.
— The only thing more difficult than staging next year’s Tokyo Olympics in a pandemic might be convincing sponsors to keep their billions of dollars on board. Tokyo needs to convince sponsors the Olympics will really happen.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump hasn’t offered an immediate public response to the United States crossing the grim milestone of 200,000 coronavirus deaths, but the White House says he is taking the toll seriously.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tells reporters at a briefing Tuesday that the president has said before that it keeps him up at night thinking of even one life lost.
McEnany says Trump has worked hard to fight the impact of COVID-19. She says that decreasing mortality rates and what she described as the largest mobilization of the private sector since World War II are a result of his efforts.
Retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, who serves as a national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, tells reporters of the nation’s COVID-19 deaths, “do not think for a minute that that has not bothered us” and “it bothers the president.”
The bleak milestone, by far the highest confirmed death toll from the virus in the world, was reported by Johns Hopkins, based on figures supplied by state health authorities. But the real toll is thought to be much higher, in part because many COVID-19 deaths were probably ascribed to other causes, especially early on, before widespread testing.
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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island was added Tuesday back to the list of states whose residents are required to quarantine for 14 days when traveling to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Those three states add states to their travel advisory lists if new daily cases hit 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day average, or if a state has a 10% test positivity rate.
Rhode Island had been added to the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut travel advisory list in August, but was taken off a week later.
Rhode Island was added because the total number of new cases is on the rise, which is a result of the state’s aggressive virus testing, according to a statement from a spokesperson for the state Department of Health.
“Rhode Island is doing more testing than any other state in country,” Joseph Wendelken said. “We are the only state with a dedicated, centralized K-12 testing system, and we have a very high proportion of college students in Rhode Island, almost all of whom are being tested."
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COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette has returned to public life after being diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this month.
Evette came to the South Carolina House chambers on Tuesday, meeting with members, giving hugs and telling the story of how she recovered from the virus over and over again. She was wearing a mask.
Evette, 53, had a sore throat and a headache on Sept. 10 and sought out a COVID-19 test that came back positive a day later.
House Speaker Jay Lucas welcomed Evette back to the House chamber. The Hartsville Republican joked from his location presiding over the House on the other side of the room “if it’s OK with you, I’ll just wave.”
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LONDON — Pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi have agreed to provide Canada with up to 72 million doses of their potential COVID-19 vaccine as governments buy up supplies of unproven treatments in hopes of ensuring supplies of whatever works.
On Tuesday, the companies reiterated their commitment to make the vaccine affordable and available globally.
“Both companies have significant R&D and manufacturing capability worldwide and are already working hard to scale up production,” Roger Conner, president of GSK’s vaccine unit, said in a statement. “This announcement from the Government of Canada supports our ongoing efforts.”
The agreement with Canada follows earlier deals with the U.S., European Union and U.K. governments.
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PRAGUE — The new Czech health minister says all bars and restaurants will have to close sooner as part of new restrictions to contain a new wave of coronavirus pandemic in his country.
A day after he was appointed, Roman Prymula said Tuesday that bars and restaurants will have a new closing hour at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT).
The new measure will become effective on Thursday. So far, the closing hour was set at midnight.
Prymula told the Czech public television further measures to limit the number of spectators at sport events will be announced on Wednesday. He says he expects up to 2,000 fans still be allowed at the stadiums to watch soccer games.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says he has “done an amazing” and “incredible job” handling the coronavirus, even as the country surpasses 200,000 virus deaths.
Trump boasted of his administration’s efforts in an interview with WJBK FOX 2 Detroit at the White House Tuesday just before Johns Hopkins University announced the confirmed U.S. death toll now tops 200,000 people -- the highest in the world.
He claims, “We’ve done an incredible job between the ventilators and now the vaccines and everything else and the therapeutics” and insisted, “The only thing we’ve done a bad job in is public relations because we haven’t been able to convince people - which is basically the fake news - what a great job we’ve done.”
Trump claimed the country could have had two to three million deaths had his administration taken no action, while brushing off suggestions – backed by models – that if he had shut down the country sooner, thousands of lives could have been saved.
And he appeared to be trying to rewrite history as he insisted that when he recommended certain lockdown measures, “everybody said there’s no reason to shut down,” including the nation’s top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci. That is not the case.
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ROME — Italy added another 1,392 coronavirus cases to its confirmed toll, holding steady in its daily increases as other European countries impose new restrictions amid a surge in infections.
Another 14 people died, bringing Italy’s official death toll to 35,738, the highest in Europe after Britain.
Every Italian region reported new cases Tuesday, bringing Italy’s official count over 300,000. The Lazio region around Rome leading the country with the most at 238. Hard-hit Lombardy, which was the onetime epicenter of the outbreak in Europe, reported 182.
While hospitalizations and intensive care admissions are ticking up nationwide, Italy has so far managed to keep its infections per 100,000 people far lower than France, Spain or Britain, which on Tuesday imposed new restrictions including closing pubs early and urging people to work from home.
Italy, which imposed a strict, three-month lockdown in spring that largely tamed the virus, can only process around 100,000 tests per day. Individual regions are authorizing rapid tests in a bid to broaden the number of people who can be screened at least with a preliminary test.
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HOLYOKE, Mass. — A judge has ruled that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration wrongfully fired the head of a home for aging veterans where nearly 80 people sickened with the coronavirus have died.
The Hampden Superior Court judge’s ruling on Monday invalidates the firing of former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh, Masslive.com reported.
Walsh was fired in June after investigators released a report outlining “utterly baffling” decisions made by the superintendent and his leadership team that helped the disease run rampant at the home.
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BERLIN — A lobby group representing major airlines is calling for the development of a rapid coronavirus test that can be used to systematically screen all passengers before departure and avoid quarantining on arrival.
The International Air Transport Association said Tuesday that creating such a test could help “re-establish global air connectivity.”
Airlines have begged governments for billions in bailouts after being hit hard by travel restrictions imposed due to the pandemic.
IATA said that while some governments have re-opened their borders, demand for flights is still limited “because either quarantine measures make travel impractical or the frequent changes in COVID-19 measures make planning impossible.”
It said that systematic testing of all travelers before departure would “give governments the confidence to open their borders without complicated risk models that see constant changes in the rules imposed on travel.
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LONDON — The U.K. has recorded nearly 5,000 new coronavirus cases, in the latest spike of the epidemic that has seen restrictions tightened across the country.
Figures from the Department for Health and Social Care show a daily increase of 4,926 new cases, up from Monday’s figure of 4,368. The U.K. has not recorded 5,000 daily cases since early May.
Though more testing is taking place now, the government’s scientific advisers say the proportion of the tests turning out positive for the virus is much higher than it was earlier this month, when around 1,500 new daily cases were reported.
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HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s new coronavirus exposure-notification app is now available on app stores.
The release of the app Tuesday is part of Pennsylvania’s effort to more quickly break chains of transmission by using the new technology to notify people who may have been exposed.
The state has a $1.9 million contract, using federal grant dollars, to deploy and maintain the app with software developer NearForm Ltd, an Ireland-based company whose app there has been downloaded by more than one-fourth of that country’s residents.
The app is based on smartphone technology developed by Apple and Google. A handful of other states have also launched apps using the Apple and Google technology.
The app will work with the state of Delaware’s app, which released last week, and it will also be compatible with those of other states when they launch on the NearForm platform, state officials say.
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NEW YORK — The death toll in the U.S. from the coronavirus has topped 200,000, a figure unimaginable eight months ago when the scourge first reached the world’s richest nation.
That’s according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, based on figures from state health authorities. The real number of dead is thought be much higher, in part because many COVID-19 deaths, especially early on, were probably ascribed to other causes.
The number of dead in the U.S. is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama.