October 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

narvikk/iStockBy MEREDITH DELISO, ABC News

(NOTRE DAME, In.) — Officials at the University of Notre Dame are sounding the alarm — and limiting the size of gatherings — after a recent spike in COVID-19 cases tied to parties.

The South Bend, Indiana, school saw a “significant increase” in positive cases this week, Rev. John Jenkins, the university’s president, said in a video address Thursday, “mostly due to social activity over the past weekend.”

After averaging fewer than five new cases for the past week as of Oct. 7, the university reported 31 new cases a week later, on Oct. 14, prompting Jenkins’ address. As of Friday, the seven-day average for new cases was 11.

School officials noted a “concerning” trend in positive cases as well as the number of close contacts identified through contact tracing this week. In a letter to students on Thursday, Vice President for Student Affairs Erin Hoffmann Harding and Vice President for Campus Safety and University Operations Mike Seamon said that the “number of close contacts for each positive case has also increased substantially, with as many as 10 to 15 close contacts needing to quarantine.”

They also noted that many of these cases were tied to “larger parties and gatherings last weekend.”

Notre Dame played Florida State University at home a week ago. The university didn’t find any cases in the spike tied to attending the game, though it did off campus, officials told the South Bend Tribune.

The spike followed relaxing rules around the size of informal gatherings, Harding and Seamon noted. To combat the recent increase in positive cases and the number of contacts needing to quarantine, the school is now restricting informal gatherings from groups of 20 to 10.

The officials also urged students to wear masks, socially distance, wash their hands regularly, participate in surveillance COVID-19 testing and avoid bars and restaurants where social distancing rules are ignored. “The St. Joseph County Health Department is concerned about local trends, and they have increased their enforcement efforts accordingly,” they said.

As of Saturday, the seven-day positivity rate was 1.6%, after jumping to 4.1% on Wednesday. It’s a far cry from when the school saw double-digit positivity rates and dozens of new cases each day amid off-campus outbreaks in August, prompting a two-week campus lockdown and increased disciplinary action.

It appears the school doesn’t want to take any chances this time, with the end of the fall semester a little more than a month away.

“I understand the weariness we all feel after a long semester under COVID restrictions, and this can lead to laxity as we socialize. Yet so many have worked so hard to bring us to this point,” Jenkins said in his video address. “We have come a long way, and we have just weeks to go. Let’s finish strong.”

Jenkins added that “if you made mistakes, as I certainly have, let us own the mistakes and resolve to do better going forward” — a nod to the criticism he recently faced over his behavior during a White House event last month.

Jenkins was seen in photos and videos not wearing a mask or social distancing while attending the SCOTUS nomination ceremony in the Rose Garden on Sept. 26. He issued an apology to the Notre Dame community for his behavior, and the university’s student senate passed a resolution last week “formally disapproving” of Jenkins’ “violations of university” health policy.

Jenkins subsequently was one of over a dozen attendees to test positive for COVID-19, along with President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others. He has since been symptom-free and ended his isolation, the university announced earlier this week.

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October 17, 2020 • No Comments • National News

Nathan Howard/Getty ImagesBY: JOSH MARGOLIN, OLIVIA RUBIN AND LUKE BARR, ABC NEWS

(NEW YORK) — Officials in multiple states are taking aggressive steps to protect voters from efforts by militias or other armed groups seeking to congregate near polling places on Election Day, as simmering online activity indicates that some groups are trying to register as campaign poll watchers for Donald Trump‘s campaign.

In Michigan, an open carry state, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on Friday announced a ban on open carry firearms at and near polls.

“Michiganders should know that law enforcement across multiple levels is working together to ensure that anyone who wishes to exercise their right to vote in person on Election Day can do so safely and without the threat of intimidation,” said Col. Joe Gasper, the state’s police director.

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a statement, also on Friday, that reiterated guidance for local law enforcement to help protect voters. Poll watchers “may not harass or intimidate voters, engage in electioneering, cause disturbances at polling places or challenge voters based on their race or ethnicity or how they are expected to vote,” the statement said.

Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo said at a Thursday press conference that she’s “putting security provisions in place” to assure voters “there’s no place for violence, there’s no place for threats.”

The measures come as online accounts tied to neo-Nazi sympathizers and “alt-right” groups such as the Proud Boys have been generating posts that encourage supporters to join the campaign’s Election Day operations, according to two new reports this week. That includes sending out links to poll-watching registration sites for the Trump campaign’s so-called Army for Trump, an effort working to recruit thousands of supports to sign up as poll watchers for the campaign on Election Day.

In one instance, a Proud Boys-affiliated user, in a group that claimed to circulate to 1,800 people affiliated with the Proud Boys, shared the link to sign up, writing that Democrats “don’t want us Republicans to be in their polls,” according to the report from SITE Intelligence Group, a non-governmental agency group that tracks potential security threats online, that was released on Tuesday. A separate SITE report released on Thursday said a link was shared within a neo-Nazi channel that claims to have about 5,000 members.

“The call to watch the polls, initially made by President Trump himself in the first presidential debate, has been answered by several far-right groups,” the SITE report said.

Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to ABC News on Friday that the president “has unequivocally denounced hate groups by name on numerous occasions but the media refuses to accurately cover it because that would mean the end of a Democrat Party talking point.”

Zager did not reject these groups’ apparent interest in joining the campaign’s poll watching team when specifically asked by ABC News.

Poll watchers are legal under strict rules that vary by state. In most states, both parties are permitted to have trained representatives observe the voting process, relay information back to their parties, and watch for irregularities. They are not supposed to interfere with voting aside from reporting issues through official channels.

ABC News previously has obtained videos of Trump campaign poll watcher training sessions, held in multiple battleground states, in which attendees explicitly were told to avoid interacting with voters.

The SITE report said efforts by the Proud Boys or similar groups to volunteer for Trump “have so far not been followed with direct threats of voter suppression,” but it could be “inferred” that their “presence at election locations as ‘poll watchers’ would potentially serve to intimidate, pressure and harass oppositional voters.”

“Some of these groups will be listening to his false claims of fraud, and you put that in combination with his refusal to condemn white supremacists and civil unrest — it really is a very thinly veiled call for his most militant supporters to go to the polls,” Mary McCord, a longtime national security official and Georgetown University Law professor, previously told ABC News.

Previously, at a debate, Trump urged his backers to “watch very carefully” at polls on Election Day, heightening already high political tensions. He later backtracked, saying at a Thursday town hall event, “I denounce white supremacy.”

Experts have told ABC News they’re concerned over the Trump campaign’s use of the word “Army” in recruiting poll watchers.

“An ‘army’ doesn’t sound like people just there to observe,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of voting rights and election programs at the Brennan Center for Justice. “An ‘army’ sounds like people there to engage in war with the enemy.”

ABC News’ Will Steakin contributed to this report.

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October 16, 2020 • No Comments • National News

narvikk/iStockBy ERIN SCHUMAKER, ABC News

(WASHINGTON) — Coronavirus cases in the United States are headed toward a third peak, as cases continue to climb throughout the Midwest, Mountain West, Northeast, South and West.

Back in April, the country hit a grim milestone, logging a record of 31,165 average new cases each day, according to data from The COVID Tracking Project. Those high numbers eased off until July, when the country broke its record, logging an average 66,143 new cases each day.

After a late-summer respite, the nation recorded an average 53,282 new cases Oct. 16, meaning the U.S. is on track to break its daily infection record for the third time.

Beyond grim national statistics, including 37,000 Americans currently hospitalized with COVID-19, there are worrying state-level indications that the outbreak is headed in the wrong direction as winter approaches.

Infections are increasing in 38 states, with eight reporting record numbers of new COVID-19 cases on Oct. 15. Hospitalizations are trending upward in 39 states, including in Utah, where Dr. Eddie Stenehjem, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare, said the uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations is straining the health care system.

“This is getting to a point where we’re going to be opening up overflow ICUs,” Stenehjem told told Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KTVX.

“We’re load-leveling like never before. We’re transferring patients,” Stenehjem added. In addition to concerns about patient care, the high level of COVID-19 hospitalizations is taking a toll on health care workers.

“We may have beds to take care of these patients, but our staff is getting incredibly tired and short and our ICU nurses are working around the clock,” Stenejhem said.

In addition to rising new cases and hospitalizations, 13 states are reporting an increasing number of COVID-19 deaths.

In Texas, two funeral homes told El Paso ABC affiliate KVIA they added extra mortuary refrigerators due to increasing COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.

“First, initially, we see the rise in positive cases,” Dr. Hector Ocaranza, the county health authority told KVIA. “Then we see the rise in hospitalizations, and unfortunately, we see the rise in deaths.”

ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Brian Hartman, Benjamin Bell and Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.

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