The Latest: Tennessee: 2,100 confirmed school virus cases

By The Associated Press 22 August 2020, 12:00AM

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee had 2,100 confirmed coronavirus cases in children ages 5 to 18 during the past two weeks, according to state data.

So far, 131 of Tennessee’s roughly 140 public schools have restarted, with 129 districts operating or planning to run on a hybrid model. Most of those are opening in person with a virtual option, according to Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.

Eighteen districts are operating fully remotely, and nine individual schools were closed due to at least one COVID-19 case, Schwinn says.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee says his administration is asking federal officials how specific Tennessee can get in disclosing cases of COVID-19 in schools. School districts currently have the choice of releasing information on cases on their own.

Tennessee has nearly 1,500 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus.

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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— Utah Republican Gov. Herbert: Wear masks or let kids learn at home

— Virus cases reported at 41 schools in Berlin two weeks after children return

Wisconsin extends ban on utility disconnections during coronavirus pandemic

— The European economy’s rebound from coronavirus lockdowns slowed in August, suggesting the reopening of businesses is proceeding slowly and the outlook for jobs is precarious.

— Lebanon has began a two-week partial lockdown and nighttime curfew after coronavirus cases increased sharply following an explosion in Beirut that killed and injured thousands.

— Saved by suburbs: Food trucks hit by virus find new foodies. The food trucks have long been seen as an urban treasure but are finding new customers during the coronavirus pandemic.

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— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Department of Public Health is reporting 1,832 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 27 deaths.

The number of confirmed cases Thursday comes from the state conducting 51,612 tests in the previous 24 hours. The state has confirmed 213,721 cases and 7,833 deaths.

The age of cases ranges from under 1 to older than 100. Public health director Dr. Ngozi Ezike says the statewide positivity rate during the last week was 4.4%.

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NICOSIA, Cyprus — The Cyprus education ministers says all public and private school students must wear a face mask to protect against the spread of coronavirus.

Students return to classrooms on Sept. 7. Minister Prodromos Prodromou says mask wearing also will be mandatory for kindergarten and preschool kids, along with teachers and other school staff.

The maximum number of students in each classroom will be 25 and random coronavirus tests will be conducted on both students and teachers. Prodromou say classes could move online if there’s a spike in coronavirus infections inside schools.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou has extended until Jan. 15, 2021, a ban on outdoor festivals, concerts and exhibitions in places without seating where social distancing rules can’t be enforced.

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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Gary Herbert says parents who don’t want to follow his health mandate by requiring their children to wear masks when returning to school should keep them home.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports the Republican says students without face coverings should not return to classrooms and should instead take part in online school or homeschooling during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The comments follow confirmation by Herbert’s office on Wednesday that K-12 students and staff who refuse to wear masks without a legitimate medical exemption can be charged with a misdemeanor under his mandate.

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MADISON, Wis. — State regulators have extended a ban on utility disconnections in Wisconsin during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Public Service Commission voted 2-1 Thursday to continue a moratorium on shutoffs until Oct. 1. That will temporarily prevent more than 93,000 customers from losing their utility service next month.

A PSC survey of nearly 200 utilities shows about a third of Wisconsin’s 1.4 million households are behind on their utility bills. In comparison, 13% of residential customers were behind in April of the two previous years. Last month the PSC voted to extend the moratorium to Sept. 1.

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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — Slovakia has registered the highest day-to-day increase of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

Health Ministry figures show 123 were infected in the last 24 hours. The second-highest number was 114 cases on April 15.

Overall, Slovakia has a relatively low number of infections. A confirmed total of 3,225 have tested positive for the virus and 33 have died.

Officials didn't immediately offer an explanation for the jump in cases but numbers have been increasing in neighboring countries, driven by returning vacationers and social events.

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HONG KONG — Hong Kong will offer free, universal testing to its residents starting Sept. 1.

The testing program, which will last two weeks, is on a voluntary basis.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says universal testing was possible due to support from Beijing, which provided resources such as laboratory staff to boost capacity in the semi-autonomous city.

The program is aimed at identifying individuals who are infected but have exhibited no symptoms. The city, with a population of 7.5 million, has conducted over 1.2 million tests so far.

Critics of the universal testing program say there may be potential privacy concerns, given the program is supported by the Chinese Communist Party.

Lam brushed aside such concerns, stating no matter what the government did, there will always be people who come up with conspiracy theories.

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BERLIN — At least 41 schools in Berlin have reported students or teachers are infected with the coronavirus — not even two weeks after they reopened in the German capital.

The daily Berliner Zeitung published the numbers on Friday and the city’s senate for education confirmed them to The Associated Press.

Hundreds of students and teachers are in quarantine, the newspaper reported. Elementary schools, high schools and trade schools are affected. There are 825 schools in Berlin.

The reopening of schools and the risk of virus clusters building up there and spreading to families and into communities has been a matter of concern.

Berlin was one of the first places in Germany to reopen schools after summer holidays. Children are obliged to wear masks in hallways, during breaks, and when entering the classroom, but they can take them off once they sit down.

Some critics say the measures in Berlin are too relaxed and both students and teachers should wear masks.

Coronavirus cases in Germany have been going up again since late July, driven by returning vacationers and social events.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday there are too many different regulations in place across the country and “people simply don’t understand” why they’re allowed to do one thing in Berlin that may be banned in Bavaria.

On Friday, Germany’s disease control center registered 1,426 new cases. According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, Germany ranks No. 20 in the world in confirmed cases with 231,626 and No. 16 in deaths with 9,264.

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LISBON, Portugal — Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has welcomed as “great news” the U.K.’s decision to end the mandatory quarantine for travelers arriving from Portugal on Saturday.

British authorities added Portugal to a safe list of destinations. The southern European country is reporting between 200 to 300 new daily cases this week, although the spread of contagion seems to have receded since early July.

Rebelo de Sousa, who is on a work holiday tour visiting all Portuguese regions to show his support for the tourism sector, says the move will benefit the industry, especially in the southern Algarve region where he expects that U.K. citizens will make bookings for the late summer season in September and October.

The president says the measure would benefit some 300,000 Portuguese citizens who live and work in the U.K.

Portugal acted swiftly in the pandemic’s early days but experienced significant clusters when it ended its lockdown. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the country has confirmed nearly 55,000 infections and 1,788 deaths.

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TOKYO — The governor of Iwate in northern Japan has criticized the national government’s “GoTo” campaign to encourage travel with discounts, noting the growing number of coronavirus cases.

Gov. Takuya Tasso says to start it in July was “a bit too soon” as preparations weren’t complete. He says the tourism campaign “was carried out too soon, and so I think it can be called a failure.”

Iwate has had the fewest cases of COVID-19 among Japan’s prefectures at 11 confirmed cases. The first case was reported just a month ago.

Since then, worries have been growing about the infection being brought in from outside Iwate, as well as about discrimination toward infected people.

Tasso credited low population congestion, lack of travel from abroad and the rest of Japan, and the cautious nature of residents for Iwate’s success.

Tasso says the experience of the 2011 tsunami made the Iwate people more in tune with crisis management.

Japan, which has never imposed a lockdown, has about 1,100 deaths and 60,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. It is trying to keep the outbreak under control while keeping the economy going. Tokyo has reported several hundred confirmed daily cases.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A health official in the United Arab Emirates is warning nighttime curfews and lockdowns could resume in parts of the country as coronavirus case numbers spike.

Dr. Saif al-Dhaheri of the UAE’s National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority made the comments late Thursday in an interview aired on a state-owned television channel.

Asked if those measures could be taken, al-Dhaheri said: “Yes. If we found that the number of cases is increasing in a specific area, we could.”

Returning to lockdowns could hurt Dubai, the skyscraper-studded city that’s reopened for tourists just a few weeks ago. It also could affect the UAE’s efforts to host the Indian Premier League next month.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the UAE discovered more than 400 confirmed cases of the virus, its highest numbers in about a month amid an aggressive testing campaign. Officials have blamed the rise in infections on the public not taking wearing masks and social distancing.

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CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s prime minister says his government has avoided a major second wave of coronavirus infections on the scale of France, Germany or Britain by limiting international travel.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison described infection rates in those three countries as “rather alarming.”

He says they occurred because “people left, went to areas on leave, on holiday, where the virus was moving again and now they’re bringing it back.”

He says the Australian government has created “some real hardship” by restricting numbers of Australians allowed to come and go.

The government is blocking three out of four applications for Australians to leave the country for fear they could spread COVID-19 when they return.

Australians who want to return home are limited to 4,000 a week.

Morrison says, “As we’ve just seen in Europe, I think the wisdom of that approach has been borne out. That is not one problem that we have at the moment.”

Australia’s main coronavirus hot spot, Victoria state, on Friday recorded its lowest daily tally of new infections in more than six weeks.

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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has reported 324 new cases of the coronavirus, its highest single day total since early March as the recent surge of COVID-19 in the greater capital area now appears to be spreading nationwide.

Friday was the eighth consecutive day that South Korea has reported a triple-digit daily increase, for an eight-day total of 1,900 infections.

Most of the recent new cases have been in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan region. But officials said Friday the latest new infections were recorded in practically all major cities nationwide.

The daily increase was the highest since 367 cases were reported March 8. The country’s caseload stands at 16,670, and 309 confirmed deaths.

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HONOLULU — Hawaii’s unemployment rate declined slightly last month but large numbers of people are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations says Hawaii had a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 13.1% in July, down from 13.4% in June. The state's jobless rate was just 2.4% in March.

The pandemic has forced many hotels to close, crippling the tourism industry that is Hawaii’s biggest employer. The labor department says the tourism industry continued to shed jobs in July but the education and health services sectors added workers.

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MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia’s hard-hit Victoria state is reporting its lowest tally of new coronavirus cases in more than six weeks, following two weeks of unprecedented lockdown of the state capital, Melbourne.

Victoria’s Health Department reported on Saturday that the state had 179 new infections and nine deaths in the latest 24-hour period. That is the lowest count since 131 new infections were reported July 8. Victoria had recorded 240 new cases Thursday and 216 Wednesday.

State authorities say the daily infection rate will have to fall to single digits or low double digits before Melbourne’s lockdown is relaxed.

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ROME — The Venice Film Festival is requiring participants at the first in-person cinema showcase of the COVID-19 era to wear facemasks during screenings and take a coronavirus test if they’re arriving from outside Europe.

Fans and the general public will be kept away from the red carpet during the Sept. 2-12 festival. Movie-goers will have to buy tickets and reserve seats online to ensure every other seat is left vacant. Nine gates set up at various points around the Venice Lido will take temperatures of movie-goers and media. Festival-goers attending indoor events will be tracked to guarantee contact tracing, if necessary.

Venice is the first film festival to get under way since the pandemic. The guidelines were worked out with local health officials.

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BATON ROUGE, La. — U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana says he has tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing some symptoms of COVID-19. The Republican senator is in quarantine in Louisiana.

His spokesperson says the 62-year-old senator is experiencing “mild symptoms that began this morning.” Cassidy, a physician, says in a statement he was tested after being notified Wednesday night that he’d been exposed to someone infected with the coronavirus.

The senator says he is adhering to medical guidance and notifying people with whom he may have come into contact. Cassidy is running for reelection on Nov. 3.

Cassidy’s announcement came a day after he was in north Louisiana, visiting a veterans hospital in Shreveport.

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By The Associated Press 22 August 2020, 12:00AM

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