Germany lifts blanket warning against travel to all countries outside the EU
From Nadine Schmidt in Berlin
Germany lifted its blanket warning against traveling to all countries outside the European Union, the country’s foreign ministry announced Thursday.
Germany imposed a global travel warning at the beginning of March when the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy, lifting travel restrictions for most European countries in June.
But due to rising coronavirus infections in Europe, the foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that it had extended an existing travel warning for parts of Belgium to cover the entire country. The same applies to most of France.
The ministry also warned against travel to Wales, Northern Ireland as well as Gibraltar and Iceland.
Early in September, the federal government re-issued travel warnings for regions in Europe where infection levels rose above the level of 50 cases per 100,000 people a week.
On Thursday, cases rose by 2,503 to 291,722 within the past 24 hours, according to data from the country’s infectious disease agency, the Robert Koch Institute.
The death toll increased by 12 to 9,500. The country’s reproduction rate currently stands at 0.96.
Peru to resume international flights to seven countries from next week
From CNN’s Claudia Rebaza in London
Peru will resume international flights to seven South American countries from October 5, President Martin Vizcarra announced on Wednesday, state news agency Andina reported.
According to Andina, the government has approved the resumption of international air travel with flights no longer than four hours to these destinations: Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile.
Peru closed its border in March after declaring a national state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only humanitarian flights, returning Peruvians stranded abroad, were allowed.
Peru’s government will ask all passengers leaving and arriving to the country to submit a negative coronavirus test done in the last 48 hours, President Vizcarra announced earlier this week.
On Wednesday evening, Peru’s Health Ministry reported 3,061 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the country’s total to 814,829. Its death toll is 32,463.
Italy to extend its state of emergency, says PM
From CNN’s Hada Messia
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he will ask parliament to extend the country’s Covid-19 state of emergency until the end of January.
Speaking during an impromptu press conference in Caserta, Conte said that the Covid-19 situation requires “maximum attention,” even though the “spread is under control.”
Italy was the first major European country to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak, and among the first countries to impose a strict national lockdown. It has the second highest death toll in Europe, after the UK, with 35,894 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
In the past few months, the country has managed to dodge a second wave unlike its European neighbors, though confirmed cases are rising. On Wednesday, authorities reported 1,851 new cases and 19 deaths.
In new record, Israel records nearly 9,000 new cases Wednesday
From CNN’s Oren Liebermann and Amir Tal
Israel recorded 8,919 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, according to Ministry of Health data, breaking the old record of 8,315 new cases in a day registered last week.
There are now 810 patients in serious condition, with 206 patients on ventilators, the ministry said.
A total of 1,571 people have died from the disease.
According to the Ministry of Health, Israel’s daily per million death rates is now higher than the United States, the UK, South Korea, Italy, Austria, and France.
US records at least 42,000 coronavirus cases in 24 hours
According to Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) tally of cases in the US, there were at least 42,812 new cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 7,233,042 confirmed infections.
There were 946 new fatalities reported on Wednesday, bringing the US coronavirus death toll to at least 206,932 people.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
The figures are a slight increase from Tuesday, which saw 42,185 new cases and 914 reported deaths, according to JHU.
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Two-thirds of Americans miss cancer screenings amid Covid-19, survey suggests
From CNN Health’s Andrea Diaz
Two-thirds of Americans have delayed or skipped scheduled cancer screenings — such as a mammogram, colonoscopy, skin check, or Pap/HPV test – because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey out Thursday.
More than a third of Americans had some sort of cancer screening due during the pandemic this year, but nearly 64% of those surveyed said they had put it off or skipped it altogether, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) found.
“While delaying recommended screenings for a few months is not necessarily dangerous, our biggest concern is that a significant number of Americans might stop getting preventive care for long periods of time or altogether,” said ASCO chief medical officer Dr. Richard Schilsky.
“Cancer screenings are critical for detecting cancer early, and early detection is key to successfully treating many cancers.”
Plus, fewer than half of Americans are doing any of the things known to prevent cancer, such as staying out of the sun or using sunscreen when outside; maintaining a healthy weight; and limiting alcohol, the survey of 4,000 adults found.
The survey, conducted online from July 21 to September 8, also found 59% believe racism can affect the health care a person receives, with Black people (76%), Hispanic people (70%), and Asian people (66%) more likely than White people (53%) to hold these views.
“Despite evidence of worse cancer outcomes for Black Americans, few Americans are aware of the established relationship between race and cancer survival,” ASCO said in a statement.
“Fewer than one in five (19%) believes race has an impact on the likelihood a person will survive cancer, with Blacks (27%) and Hispanics (22%) significantly more likely than Whites (16%) to be aware of the link.”
Half a million more girls at risk of child marriage in 2020 due to Covid-19, charity warns
The pandemic has put 500,000 more girls at risk of being forced into child marriage this year, reversing 25 years of progress that saw child marriage rates decline, according to a new report by the charity Save the Children.
Before the global outbreak, 12 million girls married each year, now the charity warns that up to 2.5 million more girls could be at risk of child marriage over the next five years.
With up to 117 million children estimated to fall into poverty in 2020, many will face pressure to work and help provide for their families.”
The pandemic means more families are being pushed into poverty, forcing many girls to work to support their families, to go without food, to become the main caregivers for sick family members, and to drop out of school — with far less of a chance than boys of ever returning,” Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children International, said in a press release.
The pandemic led to school closures and “experience during the Ebola outbreak suggests many girls will never return” to class due “to increasing pressure to work, risk of child marriage, bans on pregnant girls attending school, and lost contact with education,” the charity wrote.
Who is at risk? This year, 191,200 girls in South Asia will be disproportionately affected by the risk of increased child marriage, the report says. It is followed by West and Central Africa, where 90,000 girls are at risk of child marriage, Latin America and the Caribbean (73,400), and Europe and Central Asia (37,200).
Girls affected by humanitarian crises, such as wars, floods and earthquakes, face the greatest risk of child marriage, the report notes. Before the pandemic, data showed child marriage was increasing among refugee populations. In Lebanon, child marriage among Syrian refugee girls rose by 7% between 2017 and 2018.
“Every year, around 12 million girls are married, 2 million before their 15th birthday,” Ashing said. “Half a million more girls are now at risk of this gender-based violence this year alone — and these only are the ones we know about. We believe this is the tip of the iceberg.”
Big contact-tracing study shows role of kids and superspreaders in coronavirus pandemic
From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox
Children can spread coronavirus among themselves efficiently, but young adults are the primary source of coronavirus spread, according to a study published Wednesday.
The study, based on a giant contact-tracing effort involving more than 3 million people in India, shows most Covid-19 patients never infect anyone else — the researchers found that 70% of infected people did not infect any of their contacts.
Instead, the study found that 8% of patients accounted for 60% of observed new infections.
The study also contradicts the widely held belief that children are unlikely to catch coronavirus.
“We find otherwise. They are getting infected in significant numbers,” study leader Ramanan Laxminarayan of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in New Delhi, and also of Princeton University, told CNN.
The team wrote in their report, which was published in the journal Science, that “while the role of children in transmission has been debated, we identify high prevalence of infection among children who were contacts of cases around their own age.”
And that’s despite schools being closed in India since March, Laxminarayan noted.
The study was based on the universal contact-tracing efforts undertaken in two large states in the south of India.
Authorities tracked down and tested more than 575,000 people exposed to nearly 85,000 confirmed coronavirus cases from March until August.
“This is the largest contact-tracing study in the world, and by a long shot,” Laxminarayan said.
“We were surprised to find that just 8% of the infected primary cases were responsible for 60% of the contacts that were infected,” he said. “That’s a hugely disproportionate effect. Superspreading has been suspected, but not really documented.”
Most of the index cases – the first patient in a chain of transmission — were adults aged 20 to 45, the team found.
US CDC extends no-sail order for cruise ships through October
From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that the no-sail order for cruise ships would be extended through to October 31.
“This order continues to suspend passenger operations on cruise ships with the capacity to carry at least 250 passengers in waters subject to US jurisdiction,” the CDC said in a statement. The previous order expired on Wednesday.
“Cumulative surveillance data reported to CDC from March 1 through September 29, shows at least 3,689 Covid-19 or Covid-like illness cases on cruise ships in US waters, in addition to at least 41 reported deaths. We recognize these numbers are likely incomplete and an underestimate.”
On Tuesday, a federal health official told CNN that CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield failed to convince the White House to extend it into next year.
The CDC’s statement said that recent outbreaks on cruise ships had proven that the vessels could be used to “transmit and amplify” the spread of the coronavirus, raising the chance of new infections in US communities.
“Recent passenger voyages in foreign countries continue to have outbreaks, despite cruise ship operators having extensive health and safety protocols to prevent the transmission of (coronavirus) on board,” the statement said.
