Deborah Birx warns Covid-19 now ‘extraordinarily widespread’ in US – live

Donald Trump is back at the White House after another Sunday morning at Trump National in Potomac Falls, marking the 13th day he’s spent at one of his golf courses in the past 37 days.

Once again the presidential motorcade passed by several dozen supporters and protestors lining both sides of the street in front of the club as it departed.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 4,601,526 coronavirus cases, an increase of 58,947 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the country had risen by 1,132 to 154,002.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of Covid-19 as of 4 pm ET on 1 August, versus its previous report a day earlier.

Thousands of people in California were under evacuation orders Sunday after a wildfire in mountains east of Los Angeles exploded in size as crews battled the flames in triple-digit heat.

The blaze, dubbed the Apple Fire by local firefighters, was straddling Riverside and San Bernardino counties and consumed more than 23sq miles (about 60sq km) of dry brush and timber, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

There was zero containment early Sunday. The cause is under investigation.

The blaze began as two adjacent fires reported Friday evening in Cherry Valley, an unincorporated area near the city of Beaumont about 85 miles (137km) east of downtown Los Angeles.

Flames leapt along brushy ridge tops and came close to homes while firefighters attacked it from the ground and air.

Bands of heavy rain from Isaias lashed Florida’s east coast on Sunday while officials dealing with surging cases of coronavirus kept a close watch on the weakened tropical storm, the Associated Press reports.

Isaias was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, but was still expected to bring heavy rain and flooding as it crawled just off Florida’s Atlantic coast.

“Don’t be fooled by the downgrade,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis warned at a news conference after the storm spent hours roughing up the Bahamas.

“It’s a tale of two storms,” said Stacy Stewart, senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami on Sunday.

“If you live on the west side of the storm, you didn’t get much. If you live east of the storm, there’s a lot of nasty weather there.”

Florida is on the west side of Isaias.

Authorities closed beaches, parks and virus testing sites, lashing signs to palm trees so they wouldn’t blow away.

DeSantis said the state is anticipating power outages and asked residents to have a week’s supply of water, food and medicine on hand.

Officials wrestled with how to prepare shelters where people can seek refuge from the storm if necessary, while also safely social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus.

Isaias put another burden on communities already hit by other storms and sickness.

In Palm Beach County, about 150 people were in shelters, said emergency management spokeswoman Lisa De La Rionda, adding that the evacuees are physically distant from each other and wearing masks, due to the virus.

In Indian River County, north of West Palm Beach, Florida, emergency shelters were clearing out Sunday after Isaias was downgraded to a tropical storm.

Officials told TCPalm newspapers that 38 people registered at three schools used as shelters.

Those areas now must be cleaned to ensure no traces of the coronavirus remain as teachers and staff report Monday to prepare for the upcoming school year.

No one checked in with Covid-19 symptoms.

Temperature checks were done at the door, officials said, and isolation rooms were designated in case anyone came in with symptoms.

A record high percentage of US companies are beating analysts’ forecasts this earnings season, giving investors a glimmer of hope in what is still expected to be the slowest profit period since the financial crisis.

More than halfway through second-quarter earnings, 82.1% of companies reporting have surpassed profit expectations, which would be the highest in the history of Refinitiv IBES data going back to 1994, according to Reuters.

What’s more, the size of the beats is well above what is typical. S&P 500 companies have beaten earnings expectations by a whopping 21.7%, also set to be the highest on record since 1994, based on Refinitiv’s data as of Friday.

The latest big boost to numbers came late last week, when results from Facebook and trillion-dollar market value companies Apple, Amazon.com and Google parent Alphabet surpassed forecasts.

In many cases, estimates had been lowered so much ahead of earnings season that they were easier to beat, strategists said.

Still, the results bolster the case for investors betting that the impact of coronavirus-led lockdowns and layoffs on companies’ bottom lines may not be quite as dire as previously believed.

“What it’s saying is there are pockets of absolute strength in corporate America,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

Tech results in particular suggested “there is spending going on globally,” she said.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo said Covid-19 figures in his state are “all very good news” in a briefing on Sunday.

At the height of the pandemic in New York, the state was recording hundreds of deaths a day. On Sunday, three deaths were reported and 556 people were hospitalized with Covid-19, a figure that Cuomo said is “the lowest number since we began.” A total of 531 people tested positive for Covid-19 in the state over the last 24 hours, out of 58,951 tests.

As well as his appearance on CNN, Democrat congressman Jim Clyburn has also appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation.

He is asked whether the Democrats are hurting Americans by failing to agree a new deal with the Republicans to aid people taking an economic hit during the pandemic.

“I think what Democrats are doing, trying to keep ordinary people in focus, people who we depended on as so-called essential workers, the people seem not to think about- at least the Republicans,” Clyburn says. “Why would you put a 100% deduction for business lunches in this plan? That tells you a little bit what they’re thinking about.”

Clyburn worked as a teacher before entering politics, and he is asked whether he would be happy returning to school if he was still in the profession.

“Absolutely not, not until we have a national plan that the school district here in South Carolina ought to be coordinated,” he says. “We can’t have children going to school when we have not laid out a plan for there to be social distancing, for there to be everybody required a mask. I saw where a school district down in Georgia, I believe, they are saying well you’ve got to have a mask on the bus but in the classroom is optional. Come on. That’s not the way to run this stuff.”

He also says that broadband needs to be available to everyone, especially in rural communities, to help with distance learning.

“That’s why I have been such a long time proponent of having universal access to broadband,” he says. “Everything that’s great about this country, and the Internet is one of those great things, it ought to be accessible, ought to be affordable for everybody.”

House majority whip Jim Clyburn has compared the president to Mussolini during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.

After Trump’s suggestion earlier this week that he would consider delaying the election, Democrat congressman Clyburn compared Trump to the Italian dictator who was in power for 20 years.

“I don’t think [Trump] plans to leave the White House,” Clyburn said. “He doesn’t plan to have fair and unfettered elections. I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to office.”