Coronavirus cases on the rise again in the U.S. as summer gives way to fall
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The days are getting shorter, the leaves are changing color, and the average number of new Covid-19 cases being reported across the United States is now double what it was in June, the latest figures showed Friday.
In other coronavirus news:
- There is no evidence that hydroxychloroquine is the Covid-19 "game changer" that Trump and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro touted, researchers at the University of Oxford have concluded.
- The lights on Broadway will remain dimmed at least until May because of the pandemic, Charlotte St. Martin of the Broadway League said. "With nearly 97,000 workers who rely on Broadway for their livelihood and an annual economic impact of $14.8 billion to the city, our membership is committed to reopening as soon as conditions permit us to do so," she said.
- Health officials in Italy, once the world's coronavirus hot spot, reported 5,372 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours. That's the biggest daily number since March. Europe has been hit by a surge of new infections, the World Health Organization reported earlier.
- The pandemic didn't just wreck the U.S. economy. Extreme poverty is expected to rise this year around the world for the first time in 20 years. "The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction,” the World Bank warned.
- The angry demonstrations by Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Covid-19 clampdown were fueled by "a robocall purporting to be at the behest of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign," The New York Daily News reported. Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager told the newspaper the campaign “had no involvement with this.”