7 states in South, West see covid-19 ebbs

Seven of the nine states along the nation’s southern and western rim are seeing drops in three important covid-19 gauges — new deaths, new cases and the percentage of tests coming back positive.

Alabama is the only state in the region still seeing all three numbers rising. Mississippi’s deaths are up, but positive rates and overall cases are dropping.

Separately Tuesday, the Trump administration said it will use its quarantine authority to keep renters in their homes during the pandemic as a way to prevent an eviction crisis that could worsen economic strains.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to temporarily halt evictions of people earning less than $99,000 a year to help prevent the virus from spreading, a senior administration official said Tuesday. The policy will take effect immediately.

To obtain the relief, renters must assert that they are incapable of paying their rent or are likely to become homeless if kicked out of their lodgings, the administration official said.

Individuals who received a coronavirus stimulus check earlier this year also qualify for the protection, as do couples who jointly file their taxes and expect to earn less than $198,000.

In Florida, where reported deaths from covid-19 are averaging about 114 a day, down from a peak of 185 in early August, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that he is easing the state’s 5-month ban on nursing home visitors.

“Part of having a healthy

society is understanding that human beings seek affection,” a visibly emotional DeSantis said, his voice cracking at times as he wondered aloud whether his actions contributed to the suffering by separating the elderly from their loved ones.

“Many of the folks understand that they have loved ones who are in the last stage of their life. They’re not demanding a medical miracle. They’re not having unrealistic expectations. They just would like to be able to say goodbye or to hug somebody.”

The governor paused to collect himself, and silence filled the room for about 20 seconds.

DeSantis said he would lift the ban on visitations in an executive order later Tuesday, following recommendations from a nursing home task force.

The governor’s order is expected to allow family members to visit their loved ones no more than two at a time, wearing protective gear including masks. Facilities would need to go 14 days without any new cases of covid-19 among the staff or residents to allow the visits. Children under the age of 18 are not yet allowed.

The governor also said the number of people in the hospital in Florida with covid-19 is down nearly 60% from its peak in July, and new cases on Monday dropped below 2,000, the lowest daily total since mid-June.

FLORIDA FACILITIES

Nearly two-thirds of Florida’s facilities have not had new cases since Aug. 11, said Mary Mayhew, who led a governor-appointed task force that recommended a lengthy set of rules last week, giving wide leeway for nursing homes on how to implement them. Mayhew heads the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

The biggest sticking point was over physical contact, with debates between the task force’s health experts and an advocate for families. The task force ultimately recommended that essential caregivers be allowed to touch and hug loved ones. But some members, including state Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees, repeatedly expressed grave concerns during task force meetings.

“The more people that are coming in, that really increases the risk,” Rivkees said last week.

Task force member Mary Daniel pleaded on behalf of hugs for residents, who she said are dying from loneliness. Daniel took a part-time job as a dishwasher just to be allowed to visit her husband, who has Alzheimer’s.

“I’m turning in my two weeks’ notice today. I’m not going to be a dishwasher anymore. I’m going back to being just a wife,” Daniel said Tuesday. She represents the group Caregivers for Compromise Because Isolation Kills Too.

South Carolina took a similar step Tuesday, with Gov. Henry McMaster announcing that visitations at nursing homes could resume after nearly six months, but only outdoors and with no hugs or kisses.

“As expected, the months of separation and isolation have caused loneliness, de- pression, stress, anxiety among the residents. I worry about them, like you do, every day,” McMaster said in Columbia.

U.S. INFECTIONS

The U.S. leads the world in coronavirus deaths and confirmed infections after a spring outbreak centered on New York, followed by the flareup across the Sun Belt over the summer.

As of Tuesday, there were more than 25.6 million confirmed cases and more than 853,000 deaths worldwide, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, with the U.S. accounting for more than 6 million infections and 184,600 of the dead.

About 68,000 of the U.S. deaths have come since the start of summer, with the number of infections among Americans nearly tripling in the same period.

“It’s been a summer of fire, not ice,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “If anything, we’ve learned that this virus is even nastier than we thought it was in the spring.”

Texas alone amassed more than 10,000 virus deaths in July and August, Florida added more than 7,600, and California recorded nearly 7,000. The Sun Belt also includes Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

States across the region began to make progress against the virus after suspending or rolling back business reopenings and taking a harder line on mask-wearing and social distancing.

Americans are now heading into the Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer, knowing that the threat isn’t gone as fall brings a return to school, college and sports.

“We’ll be struggling with covid. I don’t know whether it will surge in the winter, but it certainly will stick around,” Schaffner said.

Health experts pinned some of the blame for the summertime surge on Memorial Day and Fourth of July gatherings, and now they worry that Labor Day will contribute to the virus’ spread.

LABOR DAY FEARS

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and the state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Paul Byers, held a news conference Monday in which they implored people to avoid big Labor Day parties.

“I think all we are is just a moment away from us all forgetting and getting tired of doing the things that have gotten us this far,” Byers said.

Elsewhere around the South, Alabama recorded more than 1,200 deaths in July and August. Deaths are down from their late July peak but are trending upward again, running at an average of about 23 a day.

Dr. Donald Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, said the state is seeing several warning signs since the return of students to schools and colleges and the resumption of high school football. He said the question is whether the state can avoid a spike that fills intensive care beds in hospitals.

“If we were to see the same effect from Labor Day, we would be in worse shape than we were after July Fourth,” Williamson said. “It’s a higher baseline.”

Diego Lozano, 28, of Phoenix, is among those who had his summer travel plans changed by the outbreak. Each year, he joins his parents and grandfather in visiting relatives in the Mexican state of Morelos. But for his grandfather, 75-year-old Lorenzo Lomas Perez, it was his final journey.

Perez died in late July at a Phoenix hospital of complications from covid-19, and his family took his remains with them to Mexico.

Because of coronavirus restrictions, there was no traditional open casket ceremony inside a church. The rites were held outside in the cemetery. Only relatives were allowed to attend, when normally the entire village would be expected to be at the funeral.

“We put him in an urn and then we buried the urn,” Lozano said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

Among other coronavirus developments Tuesday:

■ New York City, with 1.1 million public school students, delayed the start of in-person instruction for a week and a half until Sept. 21 to give teachers more time to prepare, under a deal with the union.

That time is to be spent finishing virus-safety steps that were already planned and working out some new provisions, including random testing of 10% to 20% of all students and staff members per month. That’s intended to get a handle on whether people without symptoms might be in schools and potentially infectious.

The teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, had said Monday that it was negotiating with the city but could authorize a strike vote if no deal was reached by Tuesday afternoon, though New York state bars teachers and other public employees from striking.

By Tuesday morning, the heads of the teachers’ and other school unions joined New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to herald the new agreement. He said it addressed “real concerns that have been raised about how to do things the right way, how to do them the safe, healthy way.”

■ Public tours of the White House, halted nearly six months ago, are to resume Sept. 12.

■ A mandate to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus will not be imposed statewide in Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt said Tuesday, despite the White House coronavirus task force’s recommendation for such a rule.

“We believe that you should wear masks,” Stitt said during a news conference in Stillwater in which he called for residents to also follow recommendations to socially distance and frequently wash hands.

“A mask mandate is something that I believe we should leave to the local communities. … I believe that’s a local control [decision], and I’m not going to mandate something statewide,” Stitt said. “Every community is different.”

■ Apple and Google said Tuesday that they’re expanding coronavirus warning software so that state health agencies can participate without having to create customized apps.

The new option, called “exposure notifications express,” removes one of the key barriers to adoption that led to a slow start to the software, which can warn people when they come in close contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. So far, only six U.S. states have created apps that work with Apple and Google’s software.

The software, which is built into the operating systems on Google’s Android phones and Apple’s iPhones, uses Bluetooth to tell whether people have spent significant time near one another. If a participant in the exposure notification program tests positive for the coronavirus, that person’s close contacts may get a notification.

Information for this article was contributed by Matt Sedensky, Terry Tang, Emily Wagster Pettus, Kelli Kennedy, Bobby Caina Calvan, Karen Matthews, Jennifer Peltz, Ted Shaffrey, Deepti Hajela, Ken Miller and Nicky Forster of The Associated Press; by Jennifer Jacobs and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News; and by Reed Albergotti of The Washington Post.