NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday ordered people arriving from an additional three states to quarantine for 14 days amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The three additional states are Delaware, Kansas and Oklahoma, all of which are seeing ‘significant’ community spread of the virus, Cuomo said in a statement.
Travelers arriving to New York from a total of 19 U.S. states are now required to quarantine for 14 days.
(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials are considering other venues in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for President Donald Trump’s first campaign rally since the coronavirus shutdown, Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday, as virus cases climb in Oklahoma and other states.
Pence acknowledged the health risks of bringing so many people together – the campaign said it had received more than 1 million ticket requests – during an interview with Fox News.
“It’s all a work in progress. We’ve had such an overwhelming response that we’re also looking at another venue. We’re also looking at outside activities, and I know the campaign team will keep the public informed as that goes forward,” Pence said. “But it’s one of the reasons that we’re going to do the temperature screening and we’re going to provide hand sanitizers and provide masks for people that are attending.”
Pence said officials were discussing options with Oklahoma’s governor.
The campaign rally will be Trump’s first since early March, when the coronavirus pandemic led to quarantines and the shuttering of the U.S. economy. Trump is seeking re-election in November against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“One of the reasons we chose Oklahoma is because Oklahoma has done such a remarkable job in reopening their state,” Pence said.
However, coronavirus infections are on the rise in the state, particularly around Tulsa. The city’s chief health officer has expressed concern about holding such a large indoor and said he wished the rally could be postponed.
An editorial in Tulsa’s largest newspaper said the rally will risk lives and bring no benefit to the city. It called Trump “a divisive figure” who is likely to attract protests and said there was no reason to think a rally would affect the November election in the state, which is heavily Republican.
“This is the wrong time and Tulsa is the wrong place for a Trump rally,” the Tulsa World said.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Chris Canipe and Lisa Shumaker
(Reuters) – New cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled in Alabama and South Carolina in the second week of June compared to the prior seven days, a Reuters analysis found, as 17 U.S. states reported weekly increases in the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Alabama’s new cases rose 97% to 5,115 for the week ended June 14, with 14% of COVID-19 tests coming back positive compared to 6% in the prior week, according to the analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak.
New cases in South Carolina rose 86% to 4,509, while the positive test rate rose to about 14% from 9% over the same period, according to the analysis and state data.
When asked to comment on the increases, South Carolina and Alabama health officials said some residents were not following recommendations to maintain social distance, avoid large gatherings and wear a mask in public.
In Oklahoma, where President Donald Trump plans to hold an indoor campaign rally on Saturday, new cases rose 68% to 1,081 in the second week of June, while the positive test rate increased to 4%, from 2% the previous week.
Oklahoma officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The three states are among hot spots throughout the South and Southwest that helped push the total number of new infections in the United States up 1% in the week ended June 14, the second increase after five weeks of declines, Reuters found.
(Open https://tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser for a Reuters interactive)
The state that reported the largest number of new cases was California at 20,043, up 10% from the previous week.
Nationally, the rate of positive tests has hovered around 5% for several weeks, according to the analysis. More than 583,000 tests were reported in a single day last week, a new record.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended states wait for new COVID-19 cases to fall for 14 days before easing social distancing restrictions.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have met that criteria, the analysis showed. Pennsylvania and New York lead with nine straight weeks of declines, followed by Rhode Island and Indiana.
Graphic – Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.:
Graphic – World-focused tracker with country-by-country interactive:
(Reporting by Chris Canipe in Kansas City, Missouri, and Lisa Shumaker in Chicago; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
By Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. states from Minnesota to Mississippi this week prepared to join other states that have eased coronavirus restrictions to try to revive their battered economies, although some business owners voiced reluctance in the face of health warnings.
Colorado, Montana and Tennessee were also set to allow some businesses deemed nonessential to reopen after being shut for weeks even as health experts advocated for more diagnostic testing to ensure safety.
Georgia, Oklahoma, Alaska and South Carolina previously restarted their economies following weeks of mandatory lockdowns that have thrown millions of American workers out of their jobs.
The number of known U.S. infections kept climbing on Monday, topping 970,000 as the number of lives lost to COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory illness caused by the virus, surpassed 54,800.
Public health authorities warn that increasing human interactions and economic activity may spark a new surge of infections just as social-distancing measures appear to be bringing coronavirus outbreaks under control.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said in a Twitter message late on Sunday that he would announce a roadmap for “responsibly reopening” the state at a Noon ET (1600 GMT) news conference on Monday.
Although unprecedented stay-at-home orders have put many businesses in jeopardy, many owners have expressed ambivalence about returning to work without more safeguards.
‘I WOULD STAY HOME’
“I would stay home if the government encouraged that, but they’re not. They’re saying, ‘Hey, the best thing to do is go back to work, even though it might be risky,’” Royal Rose, 39, owner of a tattoo studio in Greeley, Colorado, told Reuters.
The state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has given the green light for retail curbside pickup to begin on Monday. Hair salons, barber shops and tattoo parlors may open on Friday, with retail stores, restaurants and movie theaters to follow.
Business shutdowns have led to a record 26.5 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits since mid-March and the White House has forecast a staggering jump in the nation’s monthly jobless rate.
President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters on Sunday the jobless rate would likely hit 16% or more in April, and that “the next couple of months are going to look terrible.”
On Monday, White House adviser Peter Navarro said the Trump administration is focusing on protocols to keep U.S. factories open as the country grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, including screening workers for potential cases.
“You’re going to have to reconfigure factories,” Navarro told Fox News. “You’re going to have to use things like thermoscanners to check fever as they come in.”
Trump was scheduled to hold a video call with the country’s governors on Monday afternoon before the White House coronavirus task force’s daily briefing.
The rise in the number of U.S. cases has been attributed in part to increased diagnostic screening. But health authorities also warn that testing and contact tracing must be vastly expanded before shuttered businesses can safely reopen widely.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Nicholas Brown and Brendan O’Brien; Writing by Maria Caspani; Editing by Howard Goller)
By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) – Severe storms and a tornado swept through the U.S. states of Oklahoma and Texas, killing at least six people and injuring dozens, officials said on Thursday.
Three people died and at least 20 were injured when a tornado touched down in Onalaska, Texas, on Wednesday, emergency officials said. Onalaska is about 90 miles north of Houston.
Two people were also killed in southern Oklahoma, while local media reported that a woman died in storm in Louisiana.
“On April 22, a tornado struck the city of Onalaska and other portions of Polk and San Jacinto counties, and possibly even far eastern Walker County”, Houston’s National Weather Service (NWS) said in a statement.
The tornado touched down near Oklahoma’s border with Texas around Wednesday evening. NWS said it will be sending crews on Thursday morning to survey the path of the “Onalaska tornado”.
Polk County, where Onalaska is located, issued a declaration of disaster on Wednesday night after the tornado hit.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the state had deployed response teams and medical resources to provide assistance.
“The state will continue to do everything it can to support those affected by this severe weather,” Abbott said in a statement.
Several homes were damaged in the storms and thousands were left without power. More than 7,000 people across Oklahoma and about 9,000 people in Onalaska faced power outages.
Images in local media showed the devastation caused by the storms, including damage to homes, downing of power lines and twisted billboards.
The development comes as most Americans are under “stay-at-home” orders due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier this month, at least six people were killed as a strong storm system swept across the southern states of Mississippi and Louisiana, spinning off more than a dozen tornadoes and leaving behind a path of destruction.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Toby Chopra and Nick Macfie)
By Andrew Hay
GUYMON, Okla., March 28 (Reuters) – On red cobbled Main Street in Guymon, the biggest town in Oklahoma’s panhandle, Jesus Ruiz gives “high and tight” hair cuts as a red, white and blue barber’s pole turns lazily outside.
About half the customers in the barber shop work at the busy pork processing plant in Guymon, a majority Hispanic/Latino community which rises like an island in a sea of corn and grass. Ruiz hopes this remoteness protects it from the coronavirus encroaching on all sides.
“I love it that nobody knows we’re here,” says Ruiz, 33, a Mexican-American who said the crime rate in Riverside, California, prompted him to quit the city near Los Angeles two years ago and move to this close-knit town of 11,500, where people often leave their doors unlocked when they go out.
In contrast to shuttered businesses and tens of millions of people confined to their homes across America, life seems fairly normal in Guymon, the closest case of coronavirus still more than 100 miles (160 km) away. There is nevertheless fear that COVID-19 may already be here, or will find its way in as workers from Texas, Kansas and other areas of the state commute to jobs in meat processing, feedlots and farms.
Guymon has not been spared the panic buying seen elsewhere and its library and recreation center are closed. All Oklahoma schools are shut for the remainder of their year.
But locally-owned small businesses and restaurants remain open, albeit limiting customers, many owners more fearful of the economic impact of the virus than the virus itself.
Unlike in neighboring New Mexico and Colorado, most Oklahomans do not face a stay-at-home order, but adults over 65 and people with underlying conditions are asked not to go out.
City Manager Joe Dunham said, under an order by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, it will take just one COVID-19 case in Guymon’s Texas County for non-essential businesses to close.
“I was hoping to keep restaurants open as long as possible just to create a sense of normalcy and not have panic,” said Dunham, who is still getting used to not shaking hands with visitors to city hall. “It’s a little bit quieter, the highway still seems pretty busy though.”
CRITICAL FOOD BUSINESS
There is nothing quiet about the Seaboard Foods SEB.A pork processing plant three miles up U.S. Highway 64. It is operating at full capacity with nearly 2,600 workers, more than 80 percent of whom live in Guymon or the county.
People from at least four continents speaking about 19 languages and dialects process more than 20,000 hogs a day. This “critical” food operation, by far Guymon’s biggest employer, has been ordered to stay open.
As hundreds of workers change shifts, four Spanish speaking employees pile out of a Chevy Caprice after car-pooling the 40-miles from Liberal, Kansas. One has worked at the plant for a week, another several months, two of them for years.
“Of course we’re scared of coronavirus,” said a 61-year-old woman from Mexico, who asked that her name not be used. “It’s really cold in there and there are a lot of people with flu.”
Plant employees are asked to stay home if they feel sick and Seaboard is offering two weeks paid leave to any worker told to self-quarantine or isolate due to COVID-19, said spokesman David Eaheart. The company is giving extra pay to employees who meet attendance requirements in the busy weeks ahead.
Thirteen coronavirus tests have come back negative in the county, with zero positive and 10 results pending, Texas County Memorial Hospital reported.
‘DETACHED FROM REALITY’
Back on Main Street, Kalye Griffin, 42, arranges shirts at her Top Hand western store and trusts in God to safeguard families in this county where eight in ten voters backed President Donald Trump in 2016.
Services have not stopped at Griffin’s Victory Center Church and other houses of worship.
“We are very grounded in our faith and know we are protected,” said Griffin, who has seen sales dwindle as rodeos and dances are canceled. “The fear is doing more damage than the virus.”
A few blocks north, hairdresser Rick French, 66, is skeptical about shutting businesses to fight a virus he believes may only be as deadly as the flu.
At the same time, he says there is some denial in Guymon that anything as nasty as coronavirus could ever come to town.
“It’s almost like we’re detached from reality. Nobody can believe it is going to happen here,” said French, who plans to vote for Trump again this year. He said his business has dropped off as older female customers stay home. “We watch it on TV and just hope it doesn’t come here.”
(Reporting By Andrew Hay in Guymon, Oklahoma; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Daniel Wallis)
By Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) – Oklahoma intends to resume executions of condemned inmates using lethal injections after suspending capital punishment in 2015 following a series of botched executions, state officials said on Thursday.
The state had been developing a new execution protocol in which it would instead asphyxiate inmates using nitrogen gas, a plan Attorney General Mike Hunter unveiled in 2018.
But development of the new gassing protocol was taking too long and the state has since found a new supply of lethal drugs, Hunter said at a news conference in Oklahoma City alongside Governor Kevin Stitt.
“It is important that the state is implementing our death penalty law with a procedure that is humane and swift for those convicted of the most heinous of crimes,” said Stitt, a Republican.
Lawyers for death-row inmates said the announcement would revive their ongoing challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol, which they say lacks transparency and breaches the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment in its current form.
“Oklahoma’s history of mistakes and malfeasance reveals a culture of carelessness around executions that should give everyone pause,” Dale Baich, a federal defender representing some of the inmates, said in a statement.
Until 2015, Oklahoma had one of the busiest execution chambers in a country where a majority of states and the federal government allow capital punishment, a practice most countries have abolished.
The state’s executions stopped after serious errors. In 2014, an inmate convulsed and took more than 40 minutes to die after the state used an untested combination of three lethal drugs. In 2015, another inmate was executed using the wrong drug.
Oklahoma is returning to the same three-drug combination used in the botched 2014 execution, Hunter said, but has updated its protocol to include better training and oversight. The drugs are midazolam, a sedative; vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.
Hunter declined to say how the drugs were being obtained, citing state secrecy laws. He said development of the gassing method would continue in case lethal injection drugs again become unavailable.
The European Union bans the sale of drugs for use in executions, and pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell such drugs to U.S. prison systems. Several states have complained that they are no longer able to obtain the drugs.
There are 47 inmates on Oklahoma’s death row, Hunter said. A federal court ordered the state to give those inmates at least 150 days notice of a new protocol, and no execution dates have been set.
Death-penalty experts criticized the state for not changing the drugs it planned to use.
“No improvement in the protocol will address the fact that midazolam is an inappropriate drug to use in executions,” said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit watchdog group. “Midazolam is not capable of knocking somebody out and keeping them insensate during the period in which other drugs are administered.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)
By Alex Dobuzinskis
(Reuters) – The United States recorded 971 cases of measles in the first five months of 2019, surpassing the total for any year since 1992, which was before the disease was declared eradicated in the country, federal officials said on Thursday.
The United States declared measles eradicated from the country in 2000, but officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Thursday that the country risks losing its measles elimination status.
There were a total of 2,126 U.S. cases of measles in 1992, the CDC said in a statement.
The disease has spread mostly among school-age children whose parents declined to get them vaccinated.
Public health officials blame the resurgence on the spread of misinformation about vaccines. A vocal fringe of parents opposes vaccines, believing, contrary to scientific studies, that ingredients in them can cause autism.
“Measles is preventable and the way to end this outbreak is to ensure that all children and adults who can get vaccinated, do get vaccinated,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a statement.
“Again, I want to reassure parents that vaccines are safe, they do not cause autism,” Redfield said.
When measles was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000, it meant the virus was no longer continually present year-round although outbreaks have still happened via travelers coming from countries where measles is common.
Communities in New York City’s Brooklyn borough and Rockland County, an area of New York state about 30 miles (50 km) north of Manhattan, are dealing with measles outbreaks that have lasted nearly eight months.
Other measles cases have occurred in Oklahoma and Washington state.
Decades ago, before widespread use of the measles vaccine, about 3 million to 4 million people a year became sick with the disease in the United States with 400 to 500 deaths a year.
(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang and Diane Craft)
By Alex Dobuzinskis and Rich McKay
(Reuters) – Thousands of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana residents braced for more flooding on Thursday as swollen rivers continued to rise, although the threat of rain was expected to ease by the afternoon, officials said.
Many in the U.S. Southern states have already evacuated homes, as of further flooding drove fears that decades-old levees girding the Arkansas River may not hold.
There were no reports of major levee breaks early on Thursday, said Dylan Cooper, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“The rivers and tributaries are still rising from all that water flowing downstream from up north,” said Cooper.
“We call it the bathtub effect. There’s only so much water that the levees and reservoirs can hold before that water just spills over,” he said.
The only good news is that it looks like the area is going to have a dry few days into the weekend, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
“They can use any dry weather they can get,” said Oravec.
More than a week of violent weather, including downpours and deadly tornadoes, has lashed the central United States, bringing record-breaking floods in parts of the states, turning highways into lakes and submerging all but the roofs of some homes.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson told a news conference on Wednesday, that the state is experiencing a “flood of historic magnitude.”
Flooding has already closed 12 state highways, he said, and 400 households have agreed to voluntary evacuations.
Hutchinson sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday asking for a federal emergency declaration for Arkansas.
The levee system along the Arkansas River “has not seen this type of record flooding” before, Hutchinson said in his six-page letter.
Hutchinson said Trump had promised assistance in an earlier conversation, several media outlets reported.
Rivers were expected to crest by early June to the highest levels on record all the way down to Little Rock, Arkansas, forecasters said.
“We’ve had river highs of 44.9 feet in places,” said Cooper of the Arkansas River. “We’re blowing through records.”
In Tulsa, Oklahoma’s second largest city, Mayor G.T. Bynum warned that the city’s levees were being tested “in a way that they have never been before.”
He said the 20-mile (32 km) levee system, which protects some 10,000 people, was working as designed so far and being patrolled around the clock by the Oklahoma National Guard.
At least six people have died in the latest round of flooding and storms in Oklahoma, according to the state’s Department of Health.
More than 300 tornadoes have touched down in the Midwest in the past two weeks. Tornadoes pulverized buildings in western Ohio on Monday, killing one person and injuring scores.
In Louisiana, the Mississippi River was also at record flood levels due to record-breaking rainfalls this spring, forecasters said.
Trump authorized emergency aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the state late on Wednesday.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Mississippi rose above flood stage in early January and has remained there since, forecasters said.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Rich McKay in Atlanta, and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
(Reuters) – Communities along the swollen Arkansas River in Oklahoma and Arkansas prepared on Wednesday for further flooding, with the mayor of Tulsa urging thousands of residents behind the city’s aging levees to be ready to evacuate in the event of a “worst-case scenario.”
More than a week of stormy weather, including violent downpours and deadly tornadoes, has devastated the central United States, bringing record-breaking floods in parts of the two states, turning highways into lakes and submerging all but the roofs of some homes.
More rain is forecast, and the floods are expected to spread, according to the National Weather Service (NWS) and local officials.
A tornado and storm cloud is seen in Eudora, Kansas, U.S. in this still from a video taken May 28, 2019 obtained from social media. AJ SCOTT /via REUTERS
“The rain has been coming fast and furiously and it all has to drain through the rivers,” Patrick Burke, a meteorologist at the NWS Weather Prediction Center, said in an interview on Wednesday. More heavy downpours were forecast through Wednesday night over much of the two states, with between 1 and 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 cm) expected, he said.
By early June, rivers are expected to crest to the highest levels on record all the way down to Little Rock, Arkansas, Burke said.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma’s second largest city, Mayor G.T. Bynum warned that the city’s 70-year-old levees were being tested “in a way that they have never been before.”
“Please prepare for the worst-case scenario that we’ve had in the history of the city,” he said on Tuesday. So far, he added, the 20-mile (32 km) levee system, which protects some 10,000 people, was working as designed.
At least six people have died as a result of the latest round of flooding and storms in Oklahoma, according to the state’s Department of Health.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has raised the release of water from the Keystone Dam, in northeastern Oklahoma on the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers about 23 miles from Tulsa, into the river system to 275,000 cubic feet per second to stop the dam from overflowing.
A plague of extreme weather has upended life in the region, with more than 300 tornadoes touching down in the Midwest in the last two weeks.
Several tornadoes touched down on Tuesday evening in Kansas, damaging homes, uprooting trees and ripping down power lines, according to the NWS. Tornadoes also pulverized buildings in western Ohio, killing one person, and injuring scores of others.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Jeffrey Benkoe)
