South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Biden tests negative for virus but will still isolate, doctor says
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 on Saturday but will continue to isolate at the White House until a second negative test, his doctor said.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor wrote in his latest daily update that the president, “in an abundance of caution,” will abide by the “strict isolation measures” in place since his “rebound” infection was detected July 30, pending a follow-up negative result.
Biden, 79, came down with the virus a second time three days after he had emerged from isolation from his initial bout with
COVID-19, reported on July
21. There have been rare rebound cases documented among a small minority of those, who like Biden, were prescribed the antiviral medication Paxlovid, which has been proved to reduce the risk of serious illness and death from the virus among those at highest risk.
O’Connor wrote that Biden “continues to feel very well.”
Biden’s travel has been on hold as he awaited a negative test. He plans to visit Kentucky on Monday to view damage from catastrophic flooding and meet with families.
Biden was “doing great,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Saturday when asked about his health. She said that when she speaks to the president, he tells her to “tell folks I’ve been working eight-plus hours a day.”
During his first bout with the virus, Biden’s primary symptoms were a runny nose, fatigue and a loose cough, his doctor said at the time. During his rebound case, O’Connor said only Biden’s cough returned and had “almost completely resolved” by Friday.
Regulators are still studying the prevalence and virulence of rebound cases, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May warned doctors that it has been reported to occur within two days to eight days after initially testing negative for the virus.
China resort lockdown:
Some 80,000 tourists are stranded in the southern Chinese beach resort of Sanya, after authorities declared it a COVID-19 hot spot and imposed a lockdown.
The restrictions came into force Saturday morning, as authorities sought to stem the spread of COVID-19 in the city on tropical Hainan Island. There were 229 confirmed cases Friday and an additional 129 Saturday.
China’s ruling Communist Party sticks steadfastly to a “zero-COVID” approach that is increasingly at odds with the rest of the world.
Railway authorities banned all ticket sales in Sanya while all flights were also canceled on Saturday.
Tourists wanting to depart Sanya have to test negative for the coronavirus on five PCR tests over seven days, authorities said.
Twitter takeover: Elon Musk said Saturday his planned $44 billion takeover of Twitter should move forward if the company can confirm some details about how it measures whether user accounts are “spam bots” or real people.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO has been trying to back out of his April agreement to buy the social media company, leading Twitter to sue him last month to complete the acquisition.
Musk countersued, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of
its user base and other problems he said amounted to fraud and breach of contract.
Both sides are headed toward an October trial in a Delaware court.
“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk tweeted early Saturday. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
Drug-dealing ex-dean: A former dean at a Boston high school known affectionately by students as “Rev” has been ordered by a federal judge to pay more than $10 million in damages to a former student he was convicted of trying to kill in a dispute over drug sales.
The default judgment Friday against former English High School Dean Shaun Harrison includes $7.5 million in damages for pain, suffering and emotional distress; $2.5
million in punitive damages; and more than $80,000 for the victim’s medical bills.
The victim, who had been recruited by Harrison to sell marijuana, was 17 when he was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range on a snowy Boston street in March 2015.
It’s unclear whether the victim will ever get any money from Harrison, who was convicted in state court in 2018 of assault and other charges, and sentenced to up to 26 years in prison.
Life-support battle ends:
A 12-year-old boy who had been in a coma for four months died Saturday at a London hospital after doctors ended the life-sustaining treatment his family had fought to continue.
Archie Battersbee’s mother, Hollie Dance, said her son died at 12:15 p.m., about two hours after the hospital began withdrawing treatment. British courts had rejected both the family’s effort to extend treatment
and a request to move Archie to a hospice, saying neither move was in the child’s best interests.
The legal battle is the latest in a series of very public British cases in which parents and doctors have sparred over who is better qualified to make decisions about a child’s medical care.
Archie was found unconscious at home with a ligature over his head April 7.
His parents believe he may have been taking part in an online challenge that went wrong.
Doctors concluded Archie was brain-stem dead soon afterward and sought to end the long list of treatments that kept him alive, including artificial respiration, medication to regulate his bodily functions and roundthe-clock nursing care.
Croatia bus crash: A bus registered in Poland and carrying pilgrims to a shrine in Bosnia skidded from a highway in northern Croatia early Saturday, killing at
least 12 people and injuring several others, police and officials said.
Croatian police said on Twitter that the bus was carrying 43 people.
Croatia’s state HRT television reported that about 30 people were injured, many seriously.
It said the most likely cause of the crash was the driver falling asleep.
The broadcaster showed video of a smashed blue bus in a ditch next to the highway. The bus was traveling in the direction of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, and the accident occurred some 30 miles north of there.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the bus was headed to the Catholic shrine in Medjugorje in southern Bosnia.
The shrine is Europe’s third-most popular pilgrimage destination after Lourdes and Fatima, although the Vatican has not verified any of the reported miracles that witnesses claimed to have seen there.