The coronavirus doesn't care who you are. Whether you're an essential worker, a single mother, or an NBA player, the virus doesn't take your athletic ability, your social status, or your wealth into consideration when deciding who to claim. Karl Anthony-Towns is proof of this. Towns, a player for the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team, has lost seven family members to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. His mother was first to die. Towns reportedly told ESPN he hasn't "been in a good place" since his mother went to a hospital back in March. Jacqueline Cruz, Towns' mother, died a month later from coronavirus complications after she was placed into a medically-induced coma. In a video posted in early November, the NBA All-Star said he was leaning on friends and family to get through life. "I think for me, I think if I was to say how am I coping and how am I healing from this, I'm trying to heal myself through others," Towns said. "I'm trying to do as much as I can for my sister and my father. Trying to take care of my friends, and I'm trying to heal myself through them. It's helped, but I think that one day, and I know it's creeping up, I feel it every day, it's gonna creep up, and I'm going to have to find a way to deal with it, actually. The Latest Heading into the weekend, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 278,000. Meanwhile, a recent outbreak that's killed 21 residents at a New Hampshire veterans home is shining a spotlight on a growing surge of cases in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states — a surge that in many places is exceeding the one last spring. New Hampshire is now averaging almost 600 cases a day, according to The New York Times, roughly six times its highest previous average reached in May. Hospitalizations are also at record levels. Cases are escalating across the region. Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey all set single-day case records on Thursday, and Pennsylvania and New Jersey did so on Friday as well. More than 50,000 cases have been identified in Pennsylvania in the past seven days, the most in any week of the pandemic. The Midwest, on the other hand, is showing signs of progress as the virus spread there slows. Seven states in the Midwest have seen a sustained decrease in case numbers over the past 14 days, according to the Times, something health experts say is not necessarily definitive but undeniably encouraging. Cases in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota all began climbing after Labor Day, as cold weather pushed people in the Midwest indoors. Nationally, things are looking worse. The United States reported more than 229,000 new cases and nearly 2,600 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday. As the virus spreads, new data suggests it's leaving an uneven mark on the country, according to a Times report. Nursing home deaths have consistently represented about 40 percent of the country's COVID-19 deaths since midsummer. Underlying conditions have also played a pivotal role in determining who survives the virus. Americans who have conditions like diabetes, hypertension and obesity — about 45 percent of the population — are more vulnerable. Also, new evidence shows that people in lower-income neighborhoods experienced higher exposure risk to the virus because of their need to work outside the home. Studies suggest that the reason the virus has affected Black and Latino communities more than white neighborhoods is tied to social and environmental factors, not any innate vulnerability. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging Americans to practice "universal" mask use when indoors anywhere outside their homes. In a new report, the CDC recommended that officials at the state and local level "issue policies or directives mandating universal use of face masks in indoor (nonhousehold) settings" as one strategy to combat the virus. The CDC again called mask use a key step to fighting the virus, warning the United States has "entered a phase of high-level transmission." New data from the Associated Press shows Americans just couldn't resist traveling over Thanksgiving, driving only slightly less than a year ago and largely ignoring the pleas of public health experts who begged them to forgo holiday travel. While vehicle travel in early November was as much as 20 percent lower than a year earlier, it surged around the holiday and peaked on Thanksgiving Day at only about 5 percent less than the same pandemic-free period in 2019, according to StreetLight Data, which provided an analysis to AP. Finally, the island kingdom of Bahrain said Friday it has become the second nation in the world to grant an emergency-use authorization for the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, AP reported. The state-run Bahrain News Agency made the announcement on Friday night. Bahrain follows the United Kingdom, which made a similar announcement on Wednesday. Bahrain did not say how may vaccines it has purchased, nor when vaccinations would begin. It did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press. Newest Numbers At least 2,393 new coronavirus deaths and more than 214,026 new daily cases were reported on Saturday, according to a Washington Post database. Over the past seven days, the United States has averaged more than 181,100 cases each day. As of Sunday, 45 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 14.5 million people in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Sunday morning, and more than 281,000 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Source
