(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
Trump social media post removed
Facebook Inc on Wednesday took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus. The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” a Facebook spokesman said.
A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign’s @TeamTrump account and shared by the president was also later hidden by Twitter Inc for breaking its COVID-19 misinformation rules. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During a briefing at the White House, Trump repeated his claim that the virus had little impact on children.
Checkpoints into New York City
New York City announced checkpoints at bridges and tunnels to ensure that travelers from 35 other U.S. states on a list of coronavirus hot spots comply with New York’s 14-day quarantine mandate. Fines for not observing the quarantine order could be as high as $10,000.
A fifth of all new cases in New York City are from out-of-state travelers, said Dr. Ted Long, who oversees the city’s contact tracing program.
New York City, which at one point of the pandemic reported more than 800 deaths in a single day, has seen no COVID-19 fatalities for the past three days.
Fauci says politics and vaccine won’t mix
U.S. regulators have assured scientists that political pressure will not determine when a coronavirus vaccine is approved, the country’s leading infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday, even as the White House hopes to have one ready ahead of the November presidential election.
Convalescent plasma lowers risk of death
Infusions of antibody-rich blood plasma from people who have recovered from the new coronavirus, known as convalescent plasma, can lower the risk of death for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, according to a pooled analysis of data from eight earlier studies of more than 700 hospitalised patients around the world.
Researchers found that mortality rates were roughly 13% in patients who received convalescent plasma versus about 25% for those who did not get the treatment.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, could not account for differences in factors such as how sick patients were, how much plasma they received, how long they were sick before they received it, and how long doctors followed them afterward.
Melbourne enters 6-week lockdown
Australia’s second-biggest city of Melbourne began the first day of a six-week total lockdown on Thursday with the closure of most shops and businesses raising new fears of food shortages, as authorities battle a second wave of coronavirus infections.
Abattoirs are one of the few businesses allowed to stay open in the city of about 5 million people, though with a reduced workforce, under the “stage four” lockdown which took effect at midnight on Wednesday.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh)
