Florida reports 2,500 new Covid-19 cases

Florida health officials reported 2,583 new Covid-19 cases and 14 additional resident deaths on Sunday, according to the Florida Department of Health (DOH).  

This is the lowest daily death figure reported by the state since June 22 when 12 deaths were reported, CNN's tally showed.   

The state has reported 614,753 positive cases among Florida residents and 621,586 total cases across the state, DOH data showed.         

There are 11,119 Florida residents who have died from the virus, the DOH said.

One thing to note: These numbers were released by Florida’s public health agency and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project   

Jordan announced its highest daily number of locally transmitted Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic with 67 cases reported on Sunday. 

There were 61 cases in the capital Amman, according to the Jordanian health ministry. 

The country recorded 73 cases in total registered over the past 24 hours with six “imported” positives, according to the health ministry. Five of the imported cases were repatriated citizens who tested positive while in government quarantine and the sixth is a Jordanian truck driver who tested positive on arrival from Saudi Arabia. 

Some context: The government has ruled out a countrywide lockdown, opting for more localized shut downs, stricter enforcement of measures that include an extended nighttime curfew, and an increase in the number of contact tracing teams. 

In March, Jordan implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to combat the spread of the virus. 

Jordan is facing a “new wave” of the pandemic, Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said in a televised address last week. 

The number of cases began to surge this month with more than 700 positives recorded in August. The Jordanian government attributed the rise in infections to its land border crossings with Syria and Saudi Arabia which had remained open to commercial traffic. 

There are at least 5,969,916 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 182,841 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.

As of Sunday afternoon, 8,820 new cases and 80 new deaths have been reported in the US since midnight.    

The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.   

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Brazil's Health Ministry issued a correction on Sunday regarding its daily Covid-19 death-toll figures for Saturday. 

On Saturday, Brazil surpassed 120,000 Covid-19 related deaths when the country's health ministry reported 758 new deaths, bringing the national death toll to 120,262. 

However, on Sunday, the ministry corrected these figures to 958 new Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, with a new total death toll of 120,462. 

According to the ministry, Saturday's original report was incorrect due to an error in the death toll reported by the Federal District (DF). Despite the mistake in death toll numbers, the ministry's report of 41,350 new cases for a total of 3,846,153 Covid-19 cases countrywide still stands.

Reports of Sunday's Covid-19 data have not yet been published. 

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If elected president, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden pledged that he would re-launch "PREDICT," a program launched after the 2005 H1N1 virus that was designed to help detect and combat potential pandemic threats like Covid-19. 

The program, which was shut down in 2019, focused specifically on the detection and discovery of "zoonotic diseases." 

Some context: Biden has continually criticized President Trump on the campaign trail for shuttering the pandemic response office established under President Obama — officially called the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — and promised to restore it if elected, so it is not surprising that he is now adding the "Predict" program to the list of pandemic response mechanisms he would reinstitute. 

Biden's statement continued, "I will re-launch and strengthen U.S. Agency for International Development's pathogen-tracking program called PREDICT, which Donald Trump eliminated."

The New York Times was first to report that Biden would restart this specific program. 

A player scheduled to play in this week’s US Open has tested positive for coronavirus and has been withdrawn from the tournament, United States Tennis Association (USTA) has announced. 

In a statement issued on Sunday, the USTA revealed the player is asymptomatic and has “advised” the player to self-isolate for at least 10 days. In addition, the USTA has begun conducting contact tracing to determine if anyone else will need to “quarantine for 14 days.” 

The statement did not identify the player by name.

The 2020 US Open is set to begin Aug. 31 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York. 

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The Oakland Athletics and Houston Astros game scheduled for Sunday has been postponed "out of an abundance of caution" following a positive coronavirus test in the Athletics' organization, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced.

MLB said additional testing and contact tracing will be conducted. 

The game was slated to be played at Minute Maid Park in Houston.

Operation Warp Speed officials cannot peek early at any data coming out of clinical trials of experimental coronavirus vaccine, an official told reporters Friday.

Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the US Department of Health Human Services, sought to reassure reporters that the process of approving any eventual coronavirus vaccine will be the same as for any vaccine.

Adverse reactions to the vaccine could also trigger the DSMB to stop the trial.

Makers of vaccines in advanced clinical trials in the US are seeking to enroll at least 30,000 volunteers so they can tell whether the vaccine is really safe and protects people from infection. But there could be enough data even before 30,000 people are enrolled, Mango said.

“What we are really looking for is cases — the number of positive cases from both the placebo and the vaccine group,” Mango said. “Once we get to 150 or so, statistically that is significant regardless of how many enrollees we have in the trial." 

“That may be surprising to some, but really the number of events that have to occur … is relatively small,” added US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield.

For a few hours every Saturday, Los Angeles' Skid Row -- home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of homeless people -- transforms into an outdoor beauty salon.

There, where tents line city blocks, people gather to get makeovers from Shirley Raines, or one of her team of volunteers, made up of licensed hair stylists, barbers, makeup artists.

Raines came up with the idea for her non-profit, Beauty 2 The Streets, after recognizing that a haircut, a new hair color and makeup can help homeless people to thrive.

When California ordered all its residents to stay at home in late March due to the coronavirus, Raines and her volunteers complied. But the following Monday, she found messages on her social media from community members who were alone and hungry. 

"I realized that we didn't have the luxury of self isolating because we built this relationship with the community so we need to still go out there and help them." 

Homeless people are very vulnerable to Covid-19 because they live in close quarters and have limited access to cleaning facilities. So the team began handing out food, hand sanitizer and water, while adhering to distancing guidelines and wearing masks.

Still, the desire for beauty products is there, Raines said, so they have been slowly bringing out wigs, makeup, combs and brushes so homeless people can style themselves.

She said if there's anything to learn from the pandemic, it's that "any one of us could be them (homeless) at any given time." 

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