Despite an earlier failed attempt, Democrats tried again Friday to adopt a massive expansion of voting by mail during the coronavirus outbreak, including $3.6bn in funding for states to adjust their election systems to deal with the pandemic, AP reports.
The money was included in a $3tn coronavirus response bill that was passed Friday by the Democratic-led House. But it has no chance of moving forward. The Republican-led Senate opposes the bill, and the White House has vowed to veto it.
AFP news agency
(@AFP)#BREAKING New $3 tn recovery package clears US House, fate uncertain in Senate pic.twitter.com/VwGUFykZhm
The most controversial aspect of the election funding section of the bill is another round of mandates that Democrats wish to place on states to ensure they have fair and safe elections at a time when crowded polling stations are a potential health risk.
The bill would require states to end requirements that voters get a legal excuse to request an absentee ballot, mandate 15 days of early voting and order states to mail a ballot to every voter during emergencies.
The Senate blocked similar requirements in a coronavirus relief bill in March.
Five sailors on the US aircraft carrier sidelined in Guam due to a Covid-19 outbreak have tested positive for the virus for the second time and have been taken off the ship, according to the Navy.
The resurgence of the virus in the five sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt underscores the befuddling behavior of the highly contagious virus and raises questions about how troops that test positive can be reintegrated into the military, particularly on ships.
All five sailors had previously tested positive and had gone through at least two weeks of isolation. As part of the process, they all had to test negative twice in a row, with the tests separated by at least a day or two before they were allowed to go back to the ship.
The Roosevelt has been at port in Guam since late March after the outbreak of the virus was discovered. More than 4,000 of the 4,800 crew members have gone ashore since then for quarantine or isolation. Earlier this month hundreds of sailors began returning to the ship, in coordinated waves, to get ready to set sail again.
Mexico sees highest daily confirmed infections
As Mexico moves toward a gradual reactivation of its economy Monday, the number of new coronavirus infections grows higher every day, raising fears of a new wave of infections that other countries have seen after loosening restrictions, AP reports.
There were 2,437 new coronavirus test confirmations Friday, the highest daily total yet and the second straight day with over 2,000 new cases. There were 2,409 on Thursday.
The numbers suggest the pandemic has not yet peaked in Mexico, while the daily number of deaths rose by 290, below the one-day peak of 353 deaths reported Tuesday. Mexico has seen a total of 4,767 deaths so far.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is straddling the issue, telling the public that the fight against the virus depends on continued social distancing in many places while describing how other areas will begin to return to work Monday.
“We’re at the point where we begin to have fewer cases,” López Obrador said Friday. “But in these days we have to be more careful, not relax the discipline, don’t trust ourselves.”
The comments came on the same day the government clarified guidelines for the construction, mining and automotive industries to return to work Monday. The next two weeks will serve as a period to formalise their protocols to keep workers safe, but if they do so and get approval they can open any time before 1 June.
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UK lockdown causing ‘serious mental illness in first-time patients’
People with no history of mental illness are developing serious psychological problems for the first time as a result of the lockdown, amid growing stresses over isolation, job insecurity, relationship breakdown and bereavement, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has disclosed.
Adults and children are having psychotic episodes, mania and depression, with some taken to hospital because of the heavy toll on their mental wellbeing.
Men aged 18-25 are reported to have been badly affected by first-time mental health issues. Previous research has suggested they feel the worst affected by restrictions on their movement, and are most likely to flout the lockdown.
Eight weeks into lockdown measures, the Royal College of Psychiatrists is warning that services could be overwhelmed by “a tsunami of mental illness”.
Hundreds of people in Aden, southern Yemens main city, have died in the past week with symptoms of what appears to be the coronavirus, local health officials said in interviews with The Associated Press.
The officials fear the situation is only going to get worse: Yemen has little capacity to test those suspected of having the virus and a 5-year-long civil war has left the health system in shambles.
One gravedigger in Aden told AP he had never seen such a constant flow of dead even in a city that has seen multiple bouts of bloody street battles during the civil war.
Officially, the number of coronavirus virus cases in Yemen is low 106 in the southern region, with 15 deaths. Authorities in the Houthi rebel-controlled north announced their first case on May 5 and said only two people had infections, one of whom a Somali migrant died.
But doctors say the Houthis are covering up an increasing number of cases to protect their economy and troops. And the surge in deaths in Aden more than 500 in just the past week, according to the city registrar has raised the nightmare scenario that the virus is spreading swiftly in a country with almost no capacity to resist it.
The upswing in suspected Covid-19 cases in Yemen is sounding alarms throughout the global health community, which fears the virus will spread like wildfire throughout the worlds most vulnerable populations such as refugees or those impacted by war.
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As Donald Trump spoke to the press in his Rose Garden on Friday, a low hum could be heard from outside the White House grounds.
The president said the sound was truckers “showing support” and insisted: “They love their president.”
In fact, the noise, which grew to include the honking of airhorns, was a protest.
According to a long-haul trucking industry website, the Trucker, the protest has been active for 15 days.
The drivers involved say they have not received targeted support in any coronavirus stimulus package and do not have adequate access to protective equipment and healthcare.
They have also voiced serious concerns about the rates they are getting through brokers who connect them with people needing to ship goods.
UK researchers hope dogs can be trained to detect coronavirus
Dogs are to be trained to try to sniff out the coronavirus before symptoms appear in humans, under trials launched with £500,000 of government funding.
Dogs have already been successfully trained to detect the odour of certain cancers, malaria and Parkinson’s disease, and a new study will look at whether labradors and cocker spaniels can be trained to detect Covid-19 in people.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will carry out the first phase of a trial in collaboration with Durham University and the charity Medical Detection Dogs.
The initial stage of the research will see odour samples collected from coronavirus patients in London hospitals. Six specialist dogs will then undergo training to identify the virus from the samples.
The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June
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The number of deaths in the US is projected to exceed 100,000 by 1 June, according to the CDC director Robert Redfield.
The agency came to the conclusion after tracking 12 different forecasting models; all of which predicted at least that number of deaths.Trump has oscillated, but has previously said the toll would be lower.
The US toll, the highest in the world, currently stands at 87,493.
Brazilian health minister resigns as record cases confirmed again
Brazil’s health minister resigned Friday after less than a month on the job in a sign of continuing upheaval over how the nation should battle the coronavirus pandemic, quitting a day after President Jair Bolsonaro stepped up pressure on him to expand use of the antimalarial drug chloroquine in treating patients.
Dr. Nelson Teich, an oncologist and health care consultant, took the job 17 April faced with the task of aligning the ministry’s actions with the presidents view that Brazil’s economy must not be destroyed by restrictions to control spread of the virus.
Brazil confirmed 15,305 new cases on Friday; a record for a 24-hour period, as well as 824 related deaths, according to data from the country’s Health Ministry.
Teich’s predecessor, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, also had rejected the use of chloroquine, which also had been touted by US President Donald Trump as a treatment.
“Life is made up of choices and today I decided to leave,” Teich told journalists in capital Brasilia. He did not explain why he left the job and refused to answer questions.
Officials say almost 15,000 people have died in Brazil from Covid-19, though some experts say the figure is significantly higher due to insufficient testing. The peak of the crisis has yet to hit Latin Americas largest nation, experts say.
General Eduardo Pazuello, who had no health experience until he became the Health Ministry’s No 2 official in April, will be the interim minister until Bolsonaro chooses a replacement.
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