Live updates: Trump holds large indoor rally in Nevada, defying coronavirus restrictions

A top Australian public health officer has become the latest global official to face death threats over her response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, prompting the deployment of a police security detail.

Jeannette Young, the chief health officer in the Australian state of Queensland, said the threats had taken an “enormous toll” on her, The Australian reported.

She faced a backlash after Queensland decided to close its borders with neighboring states to curb the spread of the virus, making it impossible for several Australian citizens to attend relatives’ funerals.

Among the move’s critics was Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who said the country risks “losing its humanity.”

“We can’t see a clear end to this. So, we’re going to all have to work this through together and work out how we can manage this as well as go forward,” Young said Monday, countering the threats she has faced, according to The Guardian.

The attacks on her follow similar cases in other countries. The United States’ top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci told CNN in August that he had faced death threats and that his family was exposed to harassment. German government health advisers Karl Lauterbach and Christian Drosten similarly revealed threats against them earlier this year.

Shortly before President Trump took the stage on Sunday night in Henderson, Nev., for his first indoor rally in months, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak blasted the president for flouting the state’s coronavirus restrictions by packing hundreds of supporters, many without masks, into a building.

The Democratic governor noted that Trump and his campaign were violating Nevada’s ban on gatherings of 50 people or more, tweeting that the president’s rally at Xtreme Manufacturing was “shameful, dangerous and irresponsible.”

“Tonight, President Donald Trump is taking reckless and selfish actions that are putting countless lives in danger here in Nevada,” the governor said. “The President appears to have forgotten that this country is still in the middle of a global pandemic.”

The indoor rally, which featured mask-less supporters standing shoulder-to-shoulder inside the industrial facility, came as the United States approaches almost 200,000 dead from covid-19. In Nevada, where Trump held multiple events over the weekend, there have been more than 73,500 cases and at least 1,570 deaths related to the virus.

Europe should expect to see an increase in coronavirus-related fatalities this fall, the World Health Organization’s director for the region said Monday, according to Agence France-Presse.

Caseloads across the continent have been rising while deaths remain relatively stable, a development that experts say could be a result of the fact that the virus is now appearing more often in young people, rather than nursing homes. More testing availability has also been cited as a contributing factor, as has the fact that hospitals are now better prepared to handle an influx of patients.

Nonetheless, the WHO expects that the rise in infections will be followed by a corresponding rise in deaths in the fall.

“It’s going to get tougher,” WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told Agence France-Presse on Monday. “In October, November, we are going to see more mortality.”

More than 51,000 new cases were reported across WHO Europe’s 55 member nations on Friday, according to the organization. That figure represents the highest daily total to date, outstripping previous records set when the region was hit hard by the virus in April.

Kluge also told the AFP that he often hears people suggest that the pandemic will end when a vaccine is developed, a suggestion that he dismissed outright.

“We don’t even know if the vaccine is going to help all population groups,” he said. “We are getting some signs now that it will help for one group and not for the other.”

In a Monday address to WHO Europe’s annual summit, Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the latest resurgence in cases means that many countries run the risk of having to reintroduce lockdown measures, which would come at a steep financial cost. He also called for a vaccine to be distributed equitably while emphasizing that leaders needed to be thinking about how they can be better prepared for the next global pandemic, which will involve instituting social-welfare measures like universal health coverage.

“This pandemic will end but it will not be the last one,” he said.

Ever since the pandemic started, dentist Jennifer Herbert says she has seen a surge in problems related to tooth-grinding and jaw-clenching.

“It’s astronomical,” she says. “I’ve seen more patients with problems from grinding in the last few months than I have in the rest of my career.”

The technical term for disordered teeth-grinding and jaw-clenching is bruxism. There is bruxism that happens while awake and bruxism that happens during sleep. For most people, jaw movements during sleep don’t cause problems.

But as clenching and grinding become more powerful and more frequent, people can start to experience symptoms such as jaw pain, headaches, temperature sensitivity in their teeth or damage to teeth or fillings.

DUBAI — Beginning Tuesday, international travel will once again be allowed to and from Saudi Arabia for certain categories of people six months after links were cut.

The announcement by the Interior Ministry late Sunday added that full restrictions will not be lifted until January 2021 due to the lack of a vaccine for covid-19 and the resurgence of the coronavirus in many parts of the world.

According to the new regulations, diplomats, members of international organizations, businessmen, athletes and students will all be allowed to travel out of the country once more if their work requires it. Expatriates with proof of residence outside the country will also be able to leave the country.

Exceptions will also be granted for those seeking to reunite with family outside the country as well as attend funerals for deceased loved ones. Members of neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council nations will also be allowed in and out of the country as well as those with residency permits or visas.

Entry will still be subject to a test result less than 48 hours old showing the absence of the covid-19 disease.

With 325,651 total cases and more than 4,000 deaths, Saudi Arabia was the hardest hit country in the Arab world. At one point over the summer it was reporting between 3,000 and 4,000 new cases a day on a regular basis and several cities were put on total lockdown.

The number of new cases has steadily declined, however, since August with only 600 to 700 new ones found per day.

Five deaths have now been linked to a Maine “super-spreader” wedding that spawned more than 160 infections, health officials said Sunday.

At least four of the deaths have taken place at a nursing home more than 200 miles away from the Mount Katahdin region, where the August reception took place. According to the Bangor Daily News, a sibling of an employee at the Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center attended the wedding and passed the virus along to a parent, who in turn spread it to the staffer. At least 28 people at the facility have since tested positive for covid-19.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that the fifth fatality was a woman in her 80s who lived in Somerset County, where Maplecrest is located, but did not clarify if she was a resident of the nursing home.

The fallout from the wedding has led to a growing backlash against Todd Bell, the pastor who officiated the wedding and later went on to denounce remote learning and downplay the importance of masks while defiantly branding himself a “liberty lover.” For months, Bell has pushed back against public health regulations by holding mask-free indoor church services, according to the Maine Monitor. After the first death was linked to the wedding outbreak, he continued to take an unapologetic tone in sermons that were posted to his church’s YouTube channel.

Those videos are no longer publicly accessible, and Bell’s social media accounts have been set to private. His attorney told WMTW that death threats were being sent to the church.

While Bell is not facing a lawsuit or criminal charges, the Maine CDC has said that they are investigating an outbreak linked to his church. According to the Associated Press, he has hired David Gibbs III of the National Center for Life and Liberty, an attorney with a nationwide reputation for defending churches in religious liberty disputes.

PITTSBURGH — Since 1959, Al’s Cafe has been known for cold beer, hearty hoagies and the occasional coconut shrimp platter. But since the coronavirus outbreak, the Bethel Park eatery has become the staging ground for an unlikely anti-government rebellion.

First came complaints that owner Rod Ambrogi and his patrons were failing to abide by a statewide mask mandate imposed in July by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D). Ambrogi has since put on a mask, but he refuses to prevent customers from bellying up to the bar in defiance of state rules strictly limiting indoor dining.

Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, restrictions on dining have left restaurants and taverns across the nation struggling to stay afloat. But in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state Trump carried by just 44,000 votes in 2016, a debate is raging over whether the Republicans in Washington or the Democrats in Harrisburg bear more responsibility for the industry’s economic pain.

Seven months after Latin America diagnosed its first case of covid-19, the region continues to rack up some of the worst numbers in the world — failing to flatten its curve as it reels from persistently high infection levels and devastating mortality rates.

Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia and now Argentina make up half the global top 10 in total coronavirus cases. Add Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador, and Latin America accounts for eight of the 12 countries suffering the most deaths per capita. (The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths.)

Austria’s leader warned Sunday that the country is starting to see a “second wave” of infections as it logs some of its highest daily tallies of new cases since March.

Many European nations have witnessed a resurgence in coronavirus in recent weeks, this time fueled largely by younger people and summer travel. In Austria, 869 new infections were reported on Friday, the highest total since late March, according to the Associated Press. The government has blamed the uptick on tourists returning home from vacation destinations like Spain and Croatia.

“What we are experiencing at the moment is the beginning of the second wave in Austria,” Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Sunday, according to the AP. While the virus is primarily spreading at social events like birthday parties and family gatherings, he added “these infections are often taken to work.”

Austria was home one of Europe’s first superspreader events in March but fared better than many of its neighbors as the virus battered the continent throughout the spring. Authorities have now reinstated mask mandates for public spaces, and are urging companies to allow their employees to work from home. Kurz predicted a return to normalcy next summer, but said that “until then, autumn and winter will be very challenging.”

Since February, 33,159 coronavirus cases and 756 deaths have been reported in Austria, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 3,500 new cases were reported in the last week alone, an increase of 12 percent.

The recommendation to resume human testing of the vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca was made by an independent safety review committee and by the British health regulator. Authorities made no further information available about the nature of the participant’s illness, citing privacy protections.

“Globally some 18,000 individuals have received study vaccines as part of the trial. In large trials such as this, it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety,” the University of Oxford said in a statement.

A top-rated Massachusetts high school abruptly dropped plans to bring students back to classrooms on Monday after police broke up a large party that dozens attended over the weekend.

In a letter to parents, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School principal and superintendent Bella Wong said that the crowded Friday night gathering took place both indoors and outdoors, and “involved alcohol and complete lack of safety precautions.” After police were called to the scene, roughly 15 students ran into the woods and disappeared, she said. The officers collected names from another 32 students, but later discovered that 13 of those names were made up.

As a result, more than two dozen students who were at the party “are unaccounted for” and cannot be isolated, monitored and tested, Wong wrote. Local health officials then decided that all classes should take place remotely when the semester begins on Monday, and continue to take place online for the next two weeks. After the quarantine period is over, the Boston-area school district plans to switch to a hybrid model that will involve in-person classes.

Based on the assumption that most people at the party were juniors or seniors, Wong said that she asked if just ninth and tenth graders could begin in-person classes on Monday. “The answer is no, because we don’t know that no younger students were involved or that students involved were not siblings of younger students,” she wrote, adding that she agreed that delaying the return of all students was “the most prudent course of action.”

“If one person assumes risky behavior upon themselves it is not fair or safe to bring that risk upon others in a shared community,” she said.

BALTIMORE — “Ladies and gentlemen, here come the Ravens!” the public address announcer blared at M&T Bank Stadium, despite the fact that there were no ladies or gentlemen in any of the 71,008 purple seats. Baltimore Ravens players sprinted through two rows of faux-marble pillars billowing smoke. Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” boomed, unaccompanied by the usual cacophony. When the music stopped, only players’ shouts and coaches’ exhortations pierced the silence.

Federal regulators knew about serious safety problems in dozens of the nation’s meat plants that became deadly coronavirus hot spots this spring but took six months to take action, recently citing two plants and finally requiring changes to protect workers.

The financial penalties for a Smithfield Foods plant in South Dakota and a JBS plant in Colorado issued last week total about $29,000 — an amount critics said was so small that it would fail to serve as an incentive for the nation’s meatpackers to take social distancing and other measures to protect their employees.

Meat plant workers, union leaders and worker safety groups are also outraged that the two plants, with some of the most severe outbreaks in the nation, were only cited for a total of three safety violations and that hundreds of other meat plants have faced no fines. The companies criticized federal regulators for taking so long to give them guidance on how to keep workers safe.

Restrictions began to relax. Restaurants reopened their doors. And, slowly, people crept out from their homes in the middle of a pandemic.

But Madisyn Hess, 21, a senior at Christopher Newport University, still hasn’t seen many of her friends in person since March. Hess, from McGaheysville, Va., is paralyzed from the waist down. Her lungs are damaged.

“My diaphragm is partially paralyzed, so respiratory illnesses are very dangerous for me,” said Hess, who is studying psychology. “Flu season, pneumonia season, I’m already at high risk.”

Hess’s school in Newport News, Va., like hundreds throughout the country, reopened in August for a mix of in-person and online classes. Many of the students who have returned are eager to restart their social lives. At CNU, officials reported six active coronavirus cases, all students, on Friday.

“I’ve been invited to a few parties, which, obviously, I declined,” said Hess, who lives in an off-campus apartment with her boyfriend. She can’t risk contracting the novel coronavirus. “It’s just not in the cards for me this year.”