Overnight Health Care: Trump says White House will pressure governors to open schools | Administration formally moves to withdraw US from WHO | Fauci warns against ‘false complacency’ on COVID-19
Welcome to Tuesday’s Overnight Health Care.
Anthony Fauci warned not to take comfort in a falling death rate. The CDC found 87 percent of workers with COVID-19 at meat processing plants are minorities. And President Trump said he is going to pressure governors to open schools in the fall.
Let’s start with schools …
Trump says White House will pressure governors to open schools
President Trump on Tuesday said his administration would put pressure on governors to get schools opened in the fall amid rising coronavirus cases in the United States.
At a White House summit, Trump signaled the full-court press, saying Democrats only want to keep schools closed to play politics.
“We don’t want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed. No way,” Trump said during a White House event with government officials and school administrators.
“We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everyone else to open the schools,” Trump added, after again claiming that the increase in cases is a result of increased testing.
Read more here.
Trump administration formally moves to withdraw US from WHO
The White House has officially moved to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a senior administration official confirmed Tuesday, breaking ties with a global public health body in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
The U.S. has submitted its withdrawal notification to the United Nations secretary-general, the official said. Withdrawal requires a year’s notice, so it will not go into effect until July 6, 2021, raising the possibility the decision could be reversed.
Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted that the administration informed Congress of the withdrawal plans.
“To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic & incoherent doesn’t do it justice. This won’t protect American lives or interests — it leaves Americans sick & America alone,” the senator tweeted.
Flashback: The formal notification of withdrawal concludes months of threats from the Trump administration to pull the United States out of the WHO, which is affiliated with the United Nations. President Trump has repeatedly assailed the organization for alleged bias toward China and its slow response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
Read more here.
Fauci warns against ‘false complacency’ on COVID-19
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned Tuesday the U.S. should not fall into “false complacency” because COVID-19 death rates have dropped, noting the virus can cause other severe health outcomes.
“It’s a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death,” Fauci said Tuesday during a livestreamed press conference hosted by Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.)
“There’s so many other things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus, don’t get yourself into a false complacency,” he added.
Context: The rate of COVID-19 deaths has dropped in the U.S. since mid-April when New York was the epicenter of the outbreak.
While infections have surged in the South and West, with several states seeing single-day highs recently, death rates have not increased. That could be because younger adults are making up a higher percentage of new cases compared to the early days of the epidemic.
Experts anticipate deaths, a lagging indicator in an outbreak, will eventually rise, as people generally don’t die until weeks after they become sick.
But Trump has touted the falling death rate as a sign the U.S. is succeeding in its fight against the virus, claiming 99 percent of cases are “totally harmless.”
Read more here.
Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 cases at meat plants were minority workers: CDC
At least 17,000 meat and poultry processing facility workers in the U.S. have been infected with COVID-19, the vast majority being racial and ethnic minorities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed in a new analysis released Tuesday.
The report is the broadest look yet at the impact of the pandemic on these workers, who are disproportionately low-wage Hispanics, though it is a known undercount, as less than half of states reported data to the CDC.
Overall, the CDC identified 17,358 cases of COVID-19, including 91 deaths, among workers at 264 meat and poultry processing plants through May 31. Of the 9,919 cases where race and ethnicity information were reported, 87 percent were minorities.
About 56 percent were Hispanic, 19 percent were Black, 13 percent were white and 12 percent were Asian, “suggesting Hispanic and Asian workers might be disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in this workplace setting,” the authors of the report wrote.
Read more here.
Federal testing ‘surge’ is coming for three cities in Texas, Florida and Louisiana
The Trump administration is launching new “surge” coronavirus testing sites in some of the hardest-hit communities in Florida, Texas and Louisiana.
The Department of Health and Human Services said the free COVID-19 testing sites will be located in Jacksonville, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., and Edinburg, Texas, beginning Tuesday. They will last between five to 12 days, and perform 5,000 diagnostic tests per day.
Jacksonville is the site of the Republican National Convention, but testing czar Adm. Brett Giroir said that did not enter into the decision. The sites were chosen because of the worsening outbreak, but also because each already had a well-developed state or local capability to perform coronavirus testing, Giroir said.
The goal is to help the areas in identifying the mostly young, asymptomatic carriers of the virus who previously would have gone undetected, in order to flatten the infection curve.
Read more here.
The latest in Operation Warp Speed: US awards Regeneron $450 million to manufacture potential coronavirus treatment
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced it is awarding $450 million to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to help ramp up manufacturing of a potential coronavirus treatment the company is developing.
The funding is part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which is providing funding for the manufacturing of potential coronavirus vaccines and treatments, even before they are approved, in a bid to be prepared if they are shown to work.
Big picture: The program has already awarded money to potential vaccines, but this is the first funding for a potential treatment, which could be ready sooner than a vaccine.
The first doses of the vaccine under the agreement with the federal government could be ready “as early as end of summer,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release. The company estimates that between 70,000 and 300,000 treatment doses could be available from the agreement. The government would then distribute those doses at no cost to the patient.
Read more here.
Congress pushes back on possible Trump administration Medicaid change
The health spending bill released by House Democrats on Monday would block a proposal floated by the Trump administration to allow states not to pay for transportation for Medicaid patients for non-emergency medical care.
“For the thousands of people in Georgia that need dialysis or COVID-19 testing, access to non-emergency medical transportation is a matter of life and death,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), who pushed for the provision.
The transportation benefit has received bipartisan support as well, including from Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), who sponsored a bill to codify the benefit last year.
What we’re reading:
Protective gear runs low for medical workers again as virus surges (AP)
Sweden has become world’s cautionary tale (The New York Times)
‘Please tell me my life is worth A LITTLE of your discomfort,’ nurse pleads (Kaiser Health News)
Philip Morris allowed to say IQOS reduces harmful exposure (Bloomberg)
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro tests positive for Covid-19 after months of dismissing the seriousness of the virus (CNN)
State by state
Coronavirus cases increase in Washington region after lowest number in months (Washington Post)
GOP governors in Florida and Texas split as coronavirus cases surge (CNN)
Younger people hit hard as Orange County sets coronavirus record (Los Angeles Times)
In Kansas and Missouri, coronavirus numbers took a wrong turn in June. Here’s how (Kansas City Star)