Immune To COVID? New Study Suggests Why

A day after Vice President Mike Pence announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would issue new guidance for school reopenings, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said the guidelines will not be revised but additional reference documents will be made available.

"Our guidelines are our guidelines, but we are going to provide additional reference documents to aid basically communities that are trying to open K-through-12s," Redfield said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "It’s not a revision of the guidelines; it’s just to provide additional information to help schools be able to use the guidance we put forward."

Redfield repeatedly referred to the recommendations as "guidances" and a "portfolio of strategies," and said the CDC wants to work with local jurisdictions to see how they could be implemented in their schools.

"The public health of the students is best served by getting these schools reopened," Redfield said. "It's a critical public health initiative right now to get these schools reopened and to do it safely."

Asked which guidelines are "tough" or "impractical," as President Donald Trump described them, Redfield said they are "intentionally non-prescriptive," and schools can choose the recommendations that work best for them.

He said it would "personally sadden" him if people were to use the guidelines and concerns about them as a reason to keep schools closed.

On Wednesday morning, Trump called the CDC guidelines "expensive" and "impractical."

Later that afternoon, Pence announced five new documents will be coming next week to give "even more clarity on the guidance going forward."

"We don’t want the guidance from CDC to be a reason why schools don’t open," Pence said during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. "I think that every American, every American knows that we can safely reopen our schools. ... We want, as the president said this morning, to make sure that what we’re doing doesn’t stand in the way of doing that."

At that same briefing, Redfield said, "Remember, it's guidance, it's not requirements, and its purpose is to facilitate the reopening and keeping open the schools in this country."

Wednesday morning, Trump had threatened to cut off federal funding for schools that don't reopen in the fall.

On Tuesday at a White House event called a "National Dialogue on Safely Reopening America's Schools," Trump said, "We hope that most schools are going to be open in the fall. 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. We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open."

The current CDC guidelines for schools, issued in May, recommend masks for all students over age 2, extra cleaning, placing desks 6 feet apart, staggered schedules and keeping small groups of students together for most of the day.

Redfield said the new recommendations would reflect the "variety of unique circumstances for different schools."

Late last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics said discussions about the coming school year should start with the goal of having students physically present in school.

"Schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being," the academy said in a guidance statement for educators, adding that physical distancing guidelines and limits on the number of students in a room should be weighed against the potential downside if remote learning is the only alternative. Other risk mitigation strategies, such as face coverings, staggered pickup and drop-off times, and keeping adult-to-adult interactions to a minimum, should be implemented, the academy recommended.

A record 62,751 new infections were reported across the U.S. on Wednesday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 3.1 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. There have been more than 133,000 deaths in the U.S.

Worldwide, more than 12.1 million infections have been reported with at least 552,043 deaths.

Latest Developments

United States:

-Kentucky is the latest state to require that face coverings be worn in public places. Gov. Andy Beshear issued a statewide mask mandate that goes into effect Friday. Beshear said inviduals who violate the rule could be fined and businesses who refuse to comply could be temporarily shut down, The Associated Press reported.

-Arizona has led the nation with the highest seven-day average of new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people for more than a month, CNN reported. On Thursday, the state was averaging 48.10 cases per 100,000 people. Florida has the second highest rate at 43.08 per 100,000 people.

-Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said DeSantis said while discussing returning children to school in the fall that he would send his three children, who are all younger than 4, to in-person classes if they were school-age. "I would not hesitate putting them in, in terms of the risk. Because the risk, fortunately for kids, is extremely, extremely low," he said. DeSantis also suggested the Republican National Convention, scheduled for late August in Jacksonville, Florida, could be held in an outdoor venue.

-Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suspended elective surgeries in 105 more counties. Elective surgeries are now suspended in 113 of Texas' 254 counties.

- Dr. Adrienne Battle, director of Metro Nashville Public Schools, said the city's schools will not return to in person learning on Aug. 4 and will instead fully implement virtual learning through “at least” Labor Day.

-States facing steep increases in new COVID-19 cases "should seriously look at shutting down," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, told the Wall Street Journal in a podcast. "Any state that is having a serious problem, that state should seriously look at shutting down. It’s not for me to say, because each state is different," he said. Some states "went too fast" in their reopening, Fauci said, while others followed the guidelines, "but the people in the state didn't listen and just threw caution to the wind." He said simple public health measures, such as closing bars, spacing out seating at restaurants, avoiding crowds and wearing masks, will curb the increase in cases.

-With states delaying or even reversing reopening plans, more than 1.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department reported. The figure has topped 1 million for 16 straight weeks. The total number of people currently receiving jobless benefits dropped 700,000 to 18 million. That suggests that some companies are continuing to rehire workers despite job cuts by other employers, according to the AP.

-At least 82 campers, counselors and staff from K-2, a summer camp for teenagers near Branson, Missouri, have tested positive for the coronavirus, the Washington Post reported.

-More than 1,000 Transportation Security Administration employees have tested positive for COVID-19, according to agency data released Thursday. At least six TSA employees have died because of the coronavirus, the agency said.

Worldwide:

-The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez Chavez, has tested positive for COVID-19. Chavez said a in video posted to Twitter that she is fine and will work in isolation.

-Following the Trump administration's official declaration that it intends to pull the U.S. from the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director-general, pleaded for international unity to fight the coronavirus, which he said "is not under control; it’s getting worse." Tedros, while seeming to tear up, said the true enemy was not the virus itself "but the lack of leadership and solidarity at the global level." He asked, "How difficult is it for humans to unite to fight a common enemy that’s killing people indiscriminately? Can’t we understand that the divisions and cracks between us are to the advantage of the virus?"

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.