The U.S. National Football League, after at least three weeks with no new COVID-19 cases, saw three teams with positive cases, this time including two senior management officials. A statement from the Denver Broncos said General Manager John Elway and team Chief Executive Officer Joe Ellis each tested positive for the virus early this week. The team said after their review of contact-tracing data with the league, they “are confident these cases originated independently outside team facilities.” Both executives are reported to have minor symptoms. The Baltimore Ravens and the Green Bay Packers each had a player with a positive test result Monday, though the tests for both players were given before they played in games Sunday. Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey and Packers running back A.J. Dillion each were tested before their respective games Sunday. Through contact tracing, two other Packers players — running back Jamaal Williams and linebacker Kamal Martin — were determined to be high-risk after close contact with Dillion. All three will be quarantined and ineligible to play in the Packers game with the San Francisco 49ers scheduled for Thursday night. That game will be played as scheduled. Humphrey will not play in Sunday’s game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts. NFL reporter Tom Pelissero says the team noted Tuesday that six players were found to have had game-day contact with Humphrey and have been added to the team’s COVID-19 list. They also will not play in Sunday’s scheduled game. The team has not yet released the other players’ names. After discovery of infected Packers and Ravens players on the field Sunday, the NFL issued a memo announcing new game-day protocols for players, including the strong recommendation for all players and personnel to wear masks or double-layered neck gaiters when not actively participating in the game. The memo said, “Wearing a mask or approved face covering may be the difference between being designated a ‘High Risk Close Contact’” and not being required to miss games.
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Day: November 3, 2020
Nicaragua is bracing for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Eta. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the potentially catastrophic hurricane could make landfall early Tuesday, with winds in excess of 248 kilometers per hour. Thousands of people on Monday began evacuating Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, where a hurricane warning is posted from the Honduras-Nicaragua border to Sandy Bay Sirpi. The hurricane is located 75 kilometers east of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. Forecasters warn of flooding and landslides, especially in central and northern Nicaragua and most of Honduras. Eastern Guatemala, southern Belize and Jamaica are also expected to get heavy rain. Eta is already impacting life in Honduras. Cancellations are said to be coming in ahead of a five-day national vacation aimed at bolstering tourism and bringing some financial help to the pandemic weary economy. Eta is the eighth Atlantic storm of the hurricane season, which ends November 30.
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As U.S. voters wait to hear who the next president will be, Twitter, Facebook, Google and other internet firms will be busy doing something else: Monitoring their sites and deciding if and when to stop the spread of misinformation. After the 2016 U.S. election, in which internet firms were criticized for allowing foreign-sponsored actors to use their networks to spread misinformation, they vowed to take steps to better protect their sites. Once the coronavirus pandemic hit, companies began to more directly tackle misinformation related to the health crisis, observers say, and turned to more automated ways to moderate content, such as artificial intelligence. Those practices have carried over to efforts to address misinformation around the election, said Spandana Singh, a policy analyst with New America’s Open Technology Institute. “A number of the policies and practices that they adopted for the U.S. elections were largely informed by their COVID-19 response,” she said. FILE – The Facebook application is displayed on a mobile phone at a store in Chicago, July 30, 2019.Now that they’ve signaled more of a willingness to address misinformation, the tech firms are walking a tightrope: Take steps to stop misinformation about the election from spreading or allow people to express themselves, whether it’s sharing truth or falsehoods. Are they ready? Singh said the internet companies approach content moderation now in a more nuanced way, beyond just taking down harmful or misleading content. They are labeling some content that is questionable and, in some cases, “algorithmically downgrading content,” she said. But it’s impossible to know how prepared they are for Election Day, she said. “Because they don’t provide a lot of transparency and accountability around their efforts and what impact these efforts are having, it is really difficult to understand whether they are actually ready,” she said. ‘Break-glass’ option Twitter has started labeling some factually questionable tweets about election issues to give people a way to find credible information and has said candidates won’t be permitted to claim they’ve won the election before a declared result. FILE – People wearing face masks during the coronavirus pandemic walk by the Twitter logo outside the New York City headquarters in Manhattan, Oct. 14, 2020.Facebook said it could turn to its so-called “break-glass options.” What that exactly means, the company hasn’t said. But the Wall Street Journal reported that the company may turn to measures taken in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, such as possibly deactivate hashtags related to false information about election results or suppress viral posts that spread messages of violence or fake news. “This election cycle is a really good testing ground for a number of new policies and practices,” Singh said. “Should they be effective, I definitely think they will be rolled out globally.” One problem with online misinformation is that it can spread widely before internet sites, which are also sensitive to claims they are suppressing certain viewpoints, decide to act, said Shannon McGregor, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “I worry if they will break the glass as quick as it might need to be done depending on what is happening in our post-election period,” she said. While U.S. voters chart the future course of the nation, this Election Day is another test case of whether social media helps or hurts the democratic process.
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A key member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force says the nation is entering a “deadly phase” of the nearly year-long COVID-19 pandemic. News outlets say Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force’s coordinator, issued a memo Monday urging administration officials to undertake “an aggressive balanced approach” between lockdowns and taking steps to control the virus, including urging Americans to wear masks, observe social distancing and launch an aggressive testing program. FILE – Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator speaks during press briefing with the Coronavirus Task Force, at the White House, March 18, 2020, in Washington.Dr. Birx’s memo contradicts President Trump’s assertions during his re-election campaign speeches that the country is “rounding the corner” of the pandemic, which has claimed more than 230,000 lives and sickened more than 9.2 million citizens, including 84,089 new cases and 557 deaths on Monday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Pregnant women at greater risk
Pregnant women are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than nonpregnant women, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC found that expectant women infected with the novel coronavirus are more likely than non-pregnant women to require intensive care and are at increased risk of death. They are also most likely to need the use of a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe and to be connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine. The CDC study also discovered that minority pregnant women were at greater risk of being infected and falling seriously ill to COVID-19. A separate CDC study also found that COVID-19 positive pregnant women were at increased risk of delivering premature babies. Dr. Denise Jamieson, the head of the gynecology and obstetrics department at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said the studies show that pregnant women need to take extra precautions to avoid exposure to the virus, such as wearing maks and practicing social distancing, and even going so far as to avoid social gatherings. Cellular immunity
Meanwhile, British scientists have discovered that cellular immunity to the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is likely to be present in most patients for six months after they were first infected, suggesting they could be protected from a second bout of the virus. The scientists made the discovery after analyzing blood samples of 100 non-hospitalized patients who were asymptomatic or had mild COVID-19 symptoms. While some of the patients’ antibody levels had declined, the response of their so-called “T-cells,” a type of white blood cell that makes up the human body’s immune system, were still detectable.
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Nicaragua is bracing for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Eta. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the potentially catastrophic hurricane could make landfall early Tuesday, with winds in excess of 248 kilometers per hour. Thousands of people on Monday began evacuating Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast, where a hurricane warning is posted from the Honduras-Nicaragua border to Sandy Bay Sirpi. The hurricane is located 75 kilometers east of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua. Forecasters warn of flooding and landslides, especially in central and northern Nicaragua and most of Honduras. Eastern Guatemala, southern Belize and Jamaica are also expected to get heavy rain. Eta is already impacting life in Honduras. Cancellations are said to be coming in ahead of a five-day national vacation aimed at bolstering tourism and bringing some financial help to the pandemic weary economy. Eta is the eighth Atlantic storm of the hurricane season, which ends November 30.
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The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has surpassed 1.2 million people as many countries around the world contend with rising infection rates from the virus. The fatalities are among the 46.8 million total cases compiled in the ongoing pandemic collected by the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center and comes as the European continent reaches its own grim threshold of more than 10 million confirmed coronavirus cases. Europe is in the grip of a second wave of the virus, with a number of nations, including Belgium, Britain, France and Germany, imposing a new set of lockdowns in an effort to contain the surge. In Spain, the number of coronavirus infections rose by 55,019 on Monday, the biggest increase since the start of the pandemic, according to health ministry data. FILE – Guardia Civil officers stop vehicles at a checkpoint in Somosierra, Spain, Oct. 30, 2020.Greece said it would shut restaurants and bars in the most populous areas of the country, including capital Athens, for one month, beginning Tuesday, to try to stem a rising number of coronavirus cases. Italy announced a tightening of restrictions Monday, including a nighttime curfew and limited regional travel, but stopped short of reintroducing a nationwide lockdown. “The evolution of the epidemic in the last few days is very worrying,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said. Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said on Monday he was considering declaring a state of emergency to counteract the spread of the coronavirus, while the Hungarian government said it will decide later this week whether to impose new restrictions. A shopping street in Bonn is empty at the beginning of a month-long COVID-19 lockdown in Germany, Nov. 2, 2020.Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, after one of his bodyguards tested positive for the illness, which is caused by the coronavirus. “The prime minister feels well and will continue treatment at home,” his office said. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director of the World Health Organization, announced Sunday that he is in self-quarantine after he was identified as a contact of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Tedros said in a tweet that he is well “and without symptoms” but will sequester himself “in line with @WHO protocols, and work from home.””It is critically important that we all comply with health guidance,” he wrote. “This is how we will break chains of #COVID19 transmission, suppress the virus, and protect health systems.”It is critically important that we all comply with health guidance. This is how we will break chains of #COVID19 transmission, suppress the virus, and protect health systems.— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 1, 2020Britain’s Prince William was one of the 10 million coronavirus cases in Europe, according to British media reports Sunday. The 38-year-old prince was reportedly diagnosed in April, just weeks after his father, Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, announced he was entering self-isolation after coming down with mild symptoms of the virus. The illnesses of Prince Charles and Prince William occurred during the same month British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was diagnosed with COVID-19, which eventually led to his being hospitalized and put in intensive care for several days. In the U.S.In the United States, Texas surpassed California in recording the highest number of positive coronavirus tests in the country, according to Johns Hopkins data. Confirmed cases in Texas numbered more than 937,000, based on Sunday’s data, with California registering more than 936,000 cases, followed by Florida with more than 807,000. In total, the United States has more than 9.2 million cases of the virus and more than 231,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. One bright spot in the global pandemic is Australia, where health authorities said Sunday there were no new COVID-19 cases in the country, the first day of no new confirmed cases in five months.
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