Protests may have spread virus in US

PHONE DATA SUGGESTS

Anti-lockdown protesters could have potentially contributed to the spread of coronavirus in the US as they often travelled to hundreds of kilometres, sometimes to different states, to attend protests, according to an analysis of data gleaned from location tracking of cellphones of the protesters.

But the analysis of the anonymised location data by Votemap and reported by The Guardian news publication, does not directly link the protests to new infections or surges. It only flags the possibility of protesters carrying the virus back from highinfection areas. Dr Rob Davidson, of the Committee to Protect Medicare that provided the data to the Guardian, told the publication, “it’s hard to draw a straight line between devices, individuals at these protests, and cases”.

CDC LET COUNTRY DOWN: WHITE HOUSE Meanwhile, the White House adviser Peter Navarro rebuked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the top US health agency, on Sunday, saying “it let the country down” on providing testing crucial to the battle against Covid-19. “The CDC... really let the country down with the testing because not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test. And that did set us back,” Navarro told NBC news.

Testing has continued to be an

issues. The federal government says every American who needs to be tested, according to CDC checklist of symptoms, can be tested and critics say more kits are needed to scale up surveillance in view of the reopening. New governor Andrew Cuomo took Covid-19 test at his daily briefing on Sunday to make the point. “This is a very big advantage for us, because testing originally was used to control the virus,” Cuomo said. “Now testing is going to be helpful in monitoring the virus.”

The number of US fatalities from Covid-19 went up by 808 over the past 24 hours to 89,567 and reported infections went up by 18,937 to 1.48 million.