CDC Updates Exposure Guidance; N. Dakota Suspends Contact Tracing

ACROSS AMERICA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its close-contact guidance to include more people who could have been exposed to the coronavirus.

The new guidance clarifies that any person who was within 6 feet of someone with the virus for a total of at least 15 minutes within a 24-hour time frame should get tested for the virus.

The CDC’s new guidance applies to exposures up to two days before the sick person’s symptoms began or two days prior to a positive test result in an asymptomatic person.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his wife have been exposed to the coronavirus and will self-quarantine through the weekend, communications director Mahen Gunaratna announced on Wednesday.

The governor and first lady tested negative for the virus on Monday and Wednesday but will remain in quarantine until they are tested again at the end of the weekend.

“From the beginning, the Governor's Office has taken every precaution to limit the spread of COVID-19," Gunaratna said in a statement. "Today's exceedingly cautious steps are part of that ongoing commitment.”

Officials in New York said they will not enforce a travel quarantine order on people crossing the state lines from nearby New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut despite each state meeting the qualifications to be restricted.

New York’s travel quarantine requirement applies to visitors from any state that has had a positivity of more than 10 per 100,000 residents over a seven-day rolling average or a 10 percent or higher positivity rate.

On Wednesday, New Jersey reported a rate of 11.4 cases per 100,00 residents.

In Boston, schools have halted in-person learning for all students after the city's positivity rate rose to 5.7 percent.

The decision was announced by Mayor Marty Walsh and Superintendent Brenda Cassellius, who said students will continue learning remotely until there are two weeks of falling infection rates.

Students with more significant needs will be allowed to return to classrooms when the city's positivity rate stays at or below 5 percent for two weeks. Other students will return in phases when the positive test rate falls to or below 4 percent for two consecutive weeks.

As cases climb across the U.S., there is hope that a vaccine could be on the horizon.

Moderna and Pfizer, two drugmakers leading the effort to release an effective vaccine against the coronavirus, are expected to report early results from human trials this month or in November, the Washington Post reported.

Food and Drug Administration independent advisers will meet later this week to discuss if they will recommend specific vaccines for public use. The decision will ultimately be based on findings from FDA advisory committees.

North Dakota officials on Wednesday announced the state will temporarily suspend contact tracing while workers, including National Guard soldiers, work through a three-day backlog of positive tests, the New York Times reports.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said residents who test positive will be asked to notify close contacts of their positive test on their own.

In response to the rise in cases, Fargo became North Dakota’s first city to issue a mask mandate, according to the Washington Post. To date, no statewide mask order exists in the hot spot state, which saw the highest number of new cases per capita this week.

North Dakota was among 31 states in the White House’s “red zone” for positivity this week, with more than 10 positive cases of the COVID-19 virus for every 100,000 residents.

It is also in the red zone for deaths, a 13-state list that includes states seeing more than two deaths per 100,000 residents.

Across the United States, new cases average 117 per 100,000 residents, putting the country in a theoretical red zone of its own.

Meanwhile, it appeared increasingly unlikely that a new economic stimulus bill will be passed before the Nov. 3 general election.

As discussions continued Wednesday between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats in the Senate blocked a narrow relief bill put forth by Republicans, the Washington Post reports.

Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hamill, wrote on Twitter that she and Mnuchin plan to speak again on Thursday about the $2 trillion bill.

“Differences continue to be narrowed on health priorities, including language providing a national strategic testing and contract tracing plan, but more work needs to be done to ensure that schools are the safest places in America for children to learn,” Hamill wrote.

Meanwhile, masks could soon be sold with labels describing how effective they are, assuming governmental and business partners can reach an agreement.

Since early in the pandemic, Americans have been encouraged to wear simple paper surgical masks or homemade masks when in public. Cloth neck gaiters have also been greenlit, although the effectiveness of such face coverings has been called into question.

A set of standards is expected to be sent out to personal protective equipment experts by the end of the month, according to the Washington Post. The experts would then vote on the standards and suggest changes.

A platform for mask discussions has been provided by ATSM International, formerly the American Society for Testing and Materials.

Ultimately, face covering standards will likely be voluntary, allowing manufacturers to advertise effectiveness on product labels should they so choose.

At least 929 new coronavirus deaths and 60,598 new cases were reported in the United States on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database. Over the past week, there have been an average of 60,160 cases per day, an increase of 36 percent from the average two weeks earlier.

As of Wednesday, 34 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

More than 8.32 million people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus as of Wednesday evening, and more than 221,800 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

Read More From Across America:

• The Differences Between Flu And Coronavirus: 5 Things To Know
• Pandemic Pushes U.S. Child Hunger To The Brink
• How You Will Know If A Coronavirus Vaccine Is Safe And Effective
  
• Potential COVID-19 Vaccines Will Be Verified By Illinois: Pritzker
• COVID-19 Exposure Alerts Now Available On Smartphones In DC
• Was Trump Rally A Superspreader For COVID-19? KCHD Investigating
• As Coronavirus Cases, Deaths Climb In CT, Talk Turns To Vaccines
• NJ's COVID Quarantine List Biggest Yet; NY, PA Travel Discouraged
• NJ Will Release 3,000 Prisoners After Election To Fight COVID-19
• Maryland Returns To No-Travel List, Coronavirus Cases Spike
• Boston Suspends All In-Person Learning In Schools
• Over 200 Arizona School Families Told To Quarantine
• Masks, Social Distancing Likely Into 2022, Fauci Tells PA Doctors
• Coronavirus Life: You Can Vote Safely In Person Despite Coronavirus. Here's How.