Coronavirus daily news updates, September 8: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the world – Seattle Times

BERGAMO, Italy — The first wave is over, thousands have been buried, and in a city that was once the world’s coronavirus epicenter, the hospital is calling back the survivors. It is drawing their blood, examining their hearts, scanning their lungs, asking them about their lives.

Twenty people per day, it is measuring what the coronavirus has left in its wake.

Six months ago, Bergamo was a startling warning sign of the virus’s fury, a city where sirens rang through the night and military trucks lined up outside the public hospital to ferry away the dead. Bergamo has dramatically curtailed the virus’s spread, but it is now offering another kind of warning, this one about the long aftermath, where recoveries are proving incomplete and sometimes excruciating.

Those who survived the peak of the outbreak in March and April are now negative. The virus is officially gone from their systems.

“But we are asking: Are you feeling cured? Almost half the patients say no,” said Serena Venturelli, an infectious-disease specialist at the hospital.

The Washington state Department of Health (DOH) won’t report updated COVID-19 numbers this afternoon, as it usually does each day.

The DOH says severe windstorm damage brought down its website, including its COVID-19 dashboard, as well as its phone lines.

“We are working to resolve this and have services back online ASAP,” the agency wrote in a news release about the outage.

The state’s main COVID-19 resource page, coronavirus.wa.gov, remains active, as does its COVID-19 information line (1-800-525-0127 or text 211-211) and its Washington Listens live stress-support line (1-833-681-0211).

LONDON — Britain’s government is banning gatherings of more than six people in England, as officials try to keep a lid on daily new coronavirus infections after a sharp spike across the U.K. that has been largely blamed on party-going young adults disregarding social distancing rules.

Downing Street said urgent action was needed after the number of daily laboratory-confirmed positive cases hit nearly 3,000 on Sunday. The figure dipped Tuesday to 2,460.

Officials said that starting Monday, the legal limit on all social gatherings in England will be reduced from the current 30 people to six. The new law applies both indoors and outdoors, including private homes, restaurants and parks. Failure to comply could result in a 100-pound ($130) fine.

Weddings, school, funerals and organized team sports are exempt, and larger gatherings will also be allowed if the household or “support bubble” is larger than six.

LODGE GRASS, Mont. — When Lauri Dawn Kindness was growing up, her hometown on the Crow Indian Reservation had an arcade, movie theater, gas stations and family cafe along streets shaded by towering cottonwood trees near a bend in the Little Bighorn River. Today, there’s only a small grocer and a propane dealer among the deserted lots scattered through downtown Lodge Grass.

Kindness is back here after more than a dozen years in the U.S. Army, including four combat tours, and she wants to help her people. One essential step, she said, is an accurate count on the once-a-decade U.S. census, which will determine how much federal money flows in for housing, schools, health care and other dire needs.

Reaching a full count on most reservations now looks nearly impossible. Less than a month before the Sept. 30 deadline, just a fraction of people have been counted on Crow land, where the coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll.

The Trump administration has pushed the Census Bureau to speed up the timeline for the count, and the Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass an extension allowing it to continue into next year. That has exacerbated concerns by civil rights groups and others of hard-to-count communities getting missed, especially people of color like Native Americans.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Democratic candidate Amy McGrath laid the mounting toll of coronavirus cases in the U.S. at the feet of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday while declaring that the country needs people in power who “take responsibility again.”

During a campaign event in Georgetown, Kentucky, the retired Marine pilot who is trying to block a seventh term for McConnell zeroed in on the senator’s response to the ongoing health crisis, calling it a “dereliction of duty.” McGrath said an improved federal response is needed in testing and contact tracing to combat the virus.

“We still don’t have a plan to tackle it,” McGrath said. “And he is the leader … that drove the train off the tracks. And he’s got to go.”

McGrath called out McConnell by name but made no mention of Republican President Donald Trump in her stinging critique. Trump remains popular in Kentucky, and McGrath will have to win over some Trump supporters to have a chance of defeating McConnell.

Despite trailing McConnell in the polls, McGrath’s blistering campaign fundraising pace continued in August, when she raised $8.7 million, her campaign said Tuesday. It was the most she has raised in any single month of the campaign.

Due to the poor air quality caused by wildfires in the region, the Snohomish Health District has closed its drive-thru testing operations at two sites until Thursday.

The sites are located at the Lynnwood Food Bank and 3900 Broadway.

Staff is notifying all individuals with appointments to reschedule for later this week, and to contact their healthcare provider if symptoms worsen.

The Health District hopes to reopen Thursday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., but will continue to monitor air quality over the next 24 to 36 hours.

The District recommends that people monitor the website at www.snohd.org/testing or the Health District’s social media channels for any further changes to the testing schedule.

Forty hours after treating her first coronavirus patient, on March 30, Angela Aston came home to her family with a cough. “Gosh, your throat is scratchy,” her husband told her. Right away she knew she had likely been infected with COVID-19. As a nurse practitioner, Aston, 50, was confident she knew how to handle her symptoms, and disappeared to her bedroom to quarantine and rest.

By day 50 of her illness, that confidence had disappeared. In late May, she was still experiencing daily fevers and fatigue. She went to bed each evening worried that her breathing would deteriorate overnight. Particularly frustrating was the difficulty she felt explaining to her colleagues, friends and family that after eight weeks she was still sick.

“I felt this stigma like, ‘I’ve got this thing nobody wants to be around,’” Aston said. “It makes you depressed, anxious that it’s never going to go away. People would say to my husband, ‘She’s not better yet?’ They start to think you’re making it up.”

Read the full story here.

ATHENS, Greece — A major testing and contact-tracing operation at Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern island of Lesbos has so far detected 35 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the overcrowded facility’s 12,500 residents, authorities said Tuesday.

Health and migration ministry officials said medical teams have carried out 1,900 tests for the coronavirus on migrants at the Moria facility, which was initially designed to hold 2,800 people. Another 100 staff members have been tested, and none were found to have COVID-19.

Gkikas Magiorkinis, a member of a scientific committee advising the government, told a media briefing Tuesday that some optimism was allowed by the fact that most of the 35 migrants were relatively young and didn’t belong to high-risk groups.

“Although this doesn’t mean we should pay less attention and strive less to fight the epidemic” in Moria, he said. Out of the 35 cases, 18 were recorded Tuesday.

The camp has been quarantined until Sept. 15, with a police cordon to enforce the entry and exit ban.

Read the full story here.

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, under pressure from GOP senators in tough reelection races, said Tuesday the Senate would vote on a trimmed-down Republican coronavirus relief package, though it has a slim chance of passage in the face of Democrats’ insistence for more sweeping aid.

“The Senate Republican majority is introducing a new targeted proposal, focused on some of the very most urgent healthcare, education, and economic issues,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.

The GOP leader acknowledged the package he will be putting forward “does not contain every idea our party likes.” And he said it was far less than what Democrats are seeking.

“Yet Republicans believe the many serious differences between our two parties should not stand in the way of agreeing where we can agree,” he said.

The move comes as lawmakers straggle back to Washington for an abbreviated pre-election session, as hopes are dimming for another coronavirus relief bill — or much else.

Read the full story here.

NEW YORK — In the early days of the pandemic, doctors noticed something about the people severely ill from COVID-19: Many were obese.

The link became more apparent as coronavirus swept across the globe and data mounted, and researchers are still trying to figure out why.

Excess weight increases the chances of developing a number of health problems, including heart disease and diabetes. And those are among the conditions that can make COVID-19 patients more likely to get very sick.

But there’s some evidence that obesity itself can increase the likelihood of serious complications from a coronavirus infection. One study of more than 5,200 infected people, including 35% who were obese, found that the chances of hospitalization rose for people with higher BMIs, even when taking into account other conditions that could put them at risk.

Scientists are still studying the factors that might be at play — the way obesity affects the immune system may be one — but say it’s another example of the pandemic illuminating existing public health challenges.

Read the full story here.

MEXICO CITY — The Salon Los Angeles had been crowded every weekend since 1937 with couples twirling to mambo, cha-cha-cha, salsa and danzon. Everyone from slum-dwellers to movie stars and millionaires have danced at the fabled hall that boasts, “Anybody who hasn’t been to the Salon Los Angeles doesn’t know Mexico.”

But the Mexico City dance hall, like other bars and nightclubs, has been fully or partially shuttered for more than five months due to the coronavirus pandemic and its owners say they are in debt and may have to close and demolish it.

Patrons, some of whom show up in the zoot suits of the 1940s, say the loss to the city’s social and cultural life would be irreparable. This past weekend, the dance hall was reduced to holding bake sales and a craft fair and asking for sponsors to save the venue where Cuban musicians like Pérez Prado and Beny Moré helped popularize mambo. Its owners say they understand the need for social distancing but feel they have received scant help from officials.

“We are last in line in priority, in terms of strategic businesses” the government helps, said Miguel Nieto, the third generation of his family to run the business started by his grandfather. “But I have to call attention to the fact that we are a priority in terms of mental health.” The dance hall is a way, he says, to reduce the stress, isolation and domestic violence the lockdown has engendered.

Read the full story here.

The top executives of nine drugmakers likely to produce the first vaccines against the new coronavirus signed an unprecedented pledge meant to boost public confidence in any approved vaccines.

The companies said Tuesday that they will stick to the highest ethical and scientific standards in testing and manufacturing and will make the well-being of those getting vaccinated their top priority.

The announcement comes amid worries that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be under political pressure to approve a vaccine before tests to prove it is safe and effective are finished.

Read the full story here.

A kid-friendly hike with a natural waterslide isn’t far away. Denny Creek is a Northwest childhood classic.

Riverbend Golf Complex in Kent offers a solid course that can be enjoyed by players of all levels, particularly if you’re accompanied by a footlong rubber snake named Arnold.

Pillowy cinnamon rolls are the way to start this school year, teen chef Sadie says.