White House Slams Dr. Fauci As Outbreak Slows; Australia Sees First COVID-Free Day In 5 Months: Live Updates

Summary:

• US new cases retreat after back-to-back records
• White House slams Dr. Fauci after latest interview
• Australia sees first COVID-free day in 5 months
• Netherlands extends run of declines
• French government has plan for store owners
• Germany won’t close borders
• Iran imposes 5-day ban on non-essential travel

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Yesterday,  British PM Boris Johnson declared a new one-month “lockdown light” would begin starting late next week in a swift follow-up to a media trial balloon floated earlier in the day.

On Sunday, the focus shifted back to the US, which saw a sudden drop in new cases during the Halloween holiday. Only 81,227 new cases (according to Johns Hopkins count from its COVID dashboard) were added to the countrywide total on Saturday, after 2 straight days of national records.

As of Sunday morning, the US had 9,127,708  new cases, and 230,566 deaths, after crossing the 230k mark on Saturday.

As administration officials fanned out to various TV studios for the last round of Sunday Show interviews before the election, the White House released a statement Sunday morning slamming Dr. Anthony Fauci, after Dr. Fauci sat for a lengthy interview with the Washington Post that was published last night.

America’s top infectious-disease official has seemingly seized every opportunity to raise questions and criticisms of the Trump Administration’s coronavirus response in interviews with the press and town halls with other ‘experts’.

During the interview, Dr. Fauci warned that the US is “in for a whole lot of hurt” from COVID-19 over the fall and winter.

“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease expert, said in a wide-ranging interview late Friday. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

Once again, Dr. Fauci predicted that the US could see cases surge to more than 100k new cases a week, and that deaths might finally climb, unless the US makes “abrupt changes” to its response. A couple days ago, Dr. Fauci finally openly endorsed a nationwide mask mandate, despite myriad evidence that masks don’t markedly low transmission.

Dr. Fauci also said he has “real problems” with Dr. Scott Atlas, a new advisor to President Trump who has in many ways supplanted Dr. Fauci as the president’s go-to advisor.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement that Dr. Fauci’s comments were “unacceptable”.

“It’s unacceptable and breaking with all norms for Dr. Fauci, a senior member of the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce and someone who has praised President Trump’s actions throughout this pandemic, to choose three days before an election to play politics,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

Deere added that Fauci was “choosing to criticize the president in the media and make his political leanings known by praising the president’s opponent — exactly what the American people have come to expect from The Swamp.” Dr. Fauci has praised Joe Biden’s campaign for allowing its candidate to sit in the basement, while claiming President Trump is tackling the outbreak from a different perspective, one focused on “the economy”.

Additionally, “Dr. Fauci may have just admitted that he is afraid the cure will be worse than the disease and that unlike the president he has no confidence in the American people to make the best choice for themselves armed with CDC best practices,” Deere said.

The CDC on Saturday reported 9,024,298 new cases, an increase of 99,750 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,009 to 229,109.

For the first time in 5 months, Australia reported zero new cases nationwide, the result of some of the most restrictive coronavirus-suppression efforts imposed anywhere outside mainland China.

The state of Victoria, the country’s biggest coronavirus hot spot which accounts for more than 90% of Australia’s 907 coronavirus-related deaths, saw zero new daily infections and no deaths for the second straight day.

Interestingly, Queensland voters on Saturday handed a victory to the incumbent Labor Party for a third term, a vote that signaled support for keeping the state’s internal borders closed, a measure which has put local authorities at odds with the federal government. Last week, the state of Victoria ended most of its 111-day-plus lockdown, one of the world’s longest and most restrictive (despite Australia’s relatively low infection numbers). Though the measures inspired protests, polls suggest that the public backs them by a slight majority. Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said on Sunday that the state may see more movement restrictions eased in the coming days, though he offered few specifics.

“What allowances come…will absolutely be informed by what this week looks like,” Sutton said at a televised press conference. “To see 50,000 cases a day in France, to see Belgium sending patients outside the country because they’re so overwhelmed – that’s what we might have faced if we hadn’t been able to get on top of it.”

With a population of more than 20 million, Australia has seen fewer than 30k cases reported since the start of the pandemic. On Friday, federal officials warned citizens not to travel to the US, or most of Europe, due to heightened infection risks.

Here’s some more COVID-19 news from Sunday morning and overnight:

The Netherlands reported 8,740 new cases in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, extending a recent run of daily declines, the ANP news agency reported, citing data from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. That’s down from 9,819 cases reported on Saturday (Source: Bloomberg).

Iran will introduce a five-day ban on non-essential travel to and from 25 major cities, including the capital Tehran, from midday on Monday, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The new restriction comes after the country recorded its highest daily death toll yet from Covid-19 (Source: Bloomberg)..

The French government plans to address the concerns of store owners affected by the country’s partial lockdown by imposing limits on supermarkets’ sale of non-essential items and the number of shoppers allowed at any one time, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in a BFM TV interview. Le Maire said that if the outbreak slows, the government will try to find a way to allow stores to open in the coming weeks, possibly by using an appointment system for shoppers. He said online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. shouldn’t be “the clear winner of this crisis to the detriment of local shops or even supermarkets.” The finance minister, who contracted coronavirus last month, said he had been “scared” for his own health.“I felt things could change dramatically for the worse,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone — and I’m 51 and I’m in good health” (Source: Bloomberg)..

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the country won’t close its borders even if the coronavirus numbers get worse, according to the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel. Infections rose by 11,614 in the 24 hours through Sunday morning, down from Thursday’s record of 23,553, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The country is set to enter a partial one-month lockdown on Monday as Chancellor Angela Merkel tries to bring the outbreak under control (Source: Bloomberg).