Kali9/iStockBy IVAN PEREIRA, MARC NATHANSON, and JAMES SCHOLZ, ABC News
(WOLFE CITY, Texas) — The entire interaction between Texas police officer Shaun Lucas and the 31-year-old Black man he shot and killed Saturday was captured in police body camera footage, according to the arrest affidavit released by investigators Wednesday.
Lucas, who is white, is facing murder charges following the incident at a gas station in Wolfe City. The investigation is being handled by the Texas Rangers.
Lucas, 22, responded to a domestic dispute call at the gas station’s convenience store around 8:24 p.m. Saturday, according to the affidavit. Price’s family says Price was attempting to break up the dispute and didn’t threaten anyone.
Based on the bodycam footage, which has not been released to the public, the affidavit says that when Lucas arrived at the scene, Price greeted him and came “very close to Officer Lucas, asking ‘You doing good?’ multiple times while extending his hand in a handshake gesture.”
“Price apologized for broken glass on the ground and stated someone had tried to ‘wrap me up,'” the affidavit said.
Lucas told investigators that he thought that Price was intoxicated and attempted to detain Price, but Price allegedly stated, “I can’t be detained,” the affidavit said.
The officer then tried to detain Price “by grabbing his arm and using verbal commands,” but was unsuccessful, the affidavit said. He then produced his Taser, according to the affidavit.
Lucas warned Price to comply or he would use his Taser, and when Price walked away, the officer fired the Taser, the affidavit said.
While being tased, Price walked toward Lucas and tried to reach for the weapon, at which point the officer took out his service weapon and fired four times, according to the affidavit.
Price died later that night at the hospital.
The affidavit concluded that the officer “did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of Price by discharging a firearm.”
Lucas was arrested Monday night on murder charges and held on $1 million bond.
A statement released Monday by the Texas Rangers said that “The preliminary investigation indicates that the actions of Officer Lucas were not objectionably reasonable.”
On Tuesday, Lucas retained attorney Robert Rogers, who defended Dallas police officer Amber Guyger against similar charges last year.
Guyger was convicted of murder after she accidentally entered the apartment of her upstairs neighbor, Botham Jean, and fatally shot him when she mistook him for an intruder, on Sept. 6, 2018. Rogers argued that Guyger perceived Jean as a deadly threat and thus committed no crime.
In a statement on Saturday’s shooting, Rogers said, “Officer Lucas only discharged his weapon in accordance with Texas law when he was confronted with an aggressive assailant who was attempting to take his Taser.”
“It’s just — this is just — I can’t wrap my brain around this,” Lucas’ stepfather told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA Tuesday. “He’s a good kid. He’s devastated. He’s devastated for everybody involved.”
The Hunt County District Attorney’s office said Tuesday that the investigation into the incident is continuing.
narvikk/iStockBy MORGAN WINSOR and EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 1 million people worldwide.
Over 35.9 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The criteria for diagnosis — through clinical means or a lab test — has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.
Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.
The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 7.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 211,108 deaths.
California has the most cases of any U.S. state, with more than 838,000 people diagnosed, according to Johns Hopkins data. California is followed by Texas and Florida, with over 798,000 cases and over 720,000 cases, respectively.
More than 190 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least seven of which are in crucial phase three trials.
Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:
Oct 07, 12:50 pm Scotland bans indoor alcohol sales in pubs, cafes and restaurants
Pubs, restaurants and cafes in most of Scotland will be prohibited from selling alcohol indoors to try to curb the spread of COVID-19, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said, according to the Press Association.
The ban begins on Friday and will end Oct. 25.
Without taking action, the country risks “returning to the peak level of infection by the end of the month,” Sturgeon warned.
According to the BBC, after months of maintaining a positivity rate below 5%, it climbed to more than 10% by the end of September.
Scotland, which has recorded 1,054 new coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours, has seen at least 2,533 total fatalities.
Select areas also will be closing bowling alleys, pool halls and casinos, and suspending outdoor live events, contact sports and adult indoor exercise classes. Those closures will be in effect for two weeks beginning Oct. 10. ABC News’ Dimitrije Stejic and Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
Oct 07, 12:03 pm Committee for Tokyo Olympics cutting costs
The Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, looking to simplify the postponed 2021 Games, on Wednesday announced new initiatives that will help save an estimated $280 million.
The new initiatives include spending less on venues in the Olympic and Paralympic Village and optimizing the Olympic torch relay. ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report. Oct 07, 11:31 am Boston pauses school reopening plans as cases rise
Boston is pausing its school reopening plan as coronavirus cases rise in the city and across Massachusetts, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announced Wednesday.
Fourth through eighth grade classes were set to transition to a hybrid learning model the week of Nov. 5, and ninth through 12th grade classes the week of Nov. 16 — but now in-person start dates will be determined at a later date.
Preschoolers and kindergartners set to return to the classroom on Monday now will have to wait until at least Oct. 22.
Boston Public Schools began its first full week of hybrid learning last week for students with special needs, English language learners and for students who are homeless. These 1,300 high-need students will continue with in-person learning should their parents so choose.
The decision comes after Boston’s rate of positivity climbed over 4%. Coronavirus cases have been steadily rising in Massachusetts since early September, with the state’s seven-day average rising 109% over the last month.
The city will re-evaluate reopening schools later this month based on the data in the coming weeks. ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos contributed to this report.
Oct 07, 9:10 am COVID-19 patients fill 40% of ICU beds in Paris region
COVID-19 patients now take up more than 40% of all intensive care unit beds in hospitals across Ile-de-France, the region surrounding Paris, according to a spokesperson for the regional health agency.
“I can confirm that the occupancy rate of intensive care beds for COVID patients is 40.1% in Ile-de-France,” the spokesperson told ABC News on Wednesday.
France registered 10,489 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. An additional 65 coronavirus-related deaths were also recorded. The cumulative total now stands at 634,763 cases with 32,365 deaths, according to the latest data from country’s public health agency.
The country’s positivity rate of COVID-19 tests is currently at 9%.
Over the last week, 4,486 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 in France, including 911 patients in intensive care, according to the public health agency data.
France is among several countries in Europe seeing a rise in COVID-19 infections as a second wave of the pandemic hits the region.
Earlier this week, Paris and its inner suburbs were placed on the maximum COVID-19 alert level. Bars and cafes will be closed for two weeks from Tuesday under new measures to curb the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the French capital. Restaurants will remain open, so long as they adhere to new safety measures including providing sanitizing hand gel, limiting patrons to six a table with at least 1 meter between seats and allowing diners to remove their masks only for eating.
Oct 07, 7:49 am Fauci warns US could have 300-400k COVID-19 deaths
Between 300,000 and 400,000 people could die from COVID-19 in the United States, according to the nation’s top expert on the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, offered the grim prediction while speaking at a virtual event hosted by American University on Tuesday.
“The models tell us that if we do not do the kinds of things that we’re talking about in the cold of the fall and the winter, we could have from 300,000 to 400,000 deaths,” Fauci said. “That would be just so tragic if that happens.”
More than 210,000 people across the nation have died from the disease so far.
Oct 07, 7:25 am Germany sees highest single-day rise in cases since April
Germany confirmed 2,828 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, its highest daily caseload since mid-April.
An additional 16 coronavirus-related deaths were also recorded Tuesday. The cumulative total now stands at 306,086 cases with 9,562 deaths, according to the latest data from the country’s public health institute.
The number of daily cases recorded in Germany reached almost 7,000 during the height of the pandemic at the end of March and in early April. Although the figures have fallen significantly since then, Germany’s infections have been on the rise in recent months amid a second wave across Europe.
Oct 07, 6:17 am Cases rising in Czech Republic at fastest rate in Europe
The Czech Republic identified 4,457 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, its highest single-day rise yet.
It’s the first time the central European nation has registered more than 4,000 new cases in one day.
An additional 13 coronavirus-related deaths were also recorded Tuesday. The cumulative total now stands at 90,022 confirmed cases with 794 deaths, according to the latest data from the Czech health ministry.
More than 40,000 cases were active Tuesday, including 1,387 patients who remained hospitalized for COVID-19, while nearly 49,000 have recovered from the disease, according to the health ministry data.
The Czech Republic now has the highest rate of COVID-19 infection in Europe. Over the last past weeks, the country of 10.7 million people has reported 346.1 cases per 100,000, surpassing Spain for the first time, which has seen 305 cases per 100,000, according to data published Tuesday by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
Earlier this week, the Czech government declared another state of emergency due to the rapid increase in infections, with strident restrictions ranging from limitations on public gatherings to closures for some schools. Officials had relaxed almost all coronavirus-related restrictions over the summer.
The Czech Republic is among a handful of European countries, including France, Spain and the United Kingdom, that are grappling with an uptick in COVID-19 cases as a second wave of infections hits the region.
Oct 07, 4:55 am Analysis shows cases rising in 32 US states and Puerto Rico
An ABC News analysis of COVID-19 trends across all 50 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico found there were increases in newly confirmed cases over the past two weeks in 32 states plus Puerto Rico.
The analysis also found increases in the daily positivity rate of COVID-19 tests in 25 states plus Washington, D.C., increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations in 36 states and increases in daily COVID-19 death tolls in 19 states.
Six states — Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming — hit a record number of current COVID-19 hospitalizations in a day.
The trends were all analyzed from data collected and published by the COVID Tracking Project over the past two weeks, using the linear regression trend line of the seven-day moving average. Oct 07, 4:36 am US case count tops 7.5 million
There were 43,563 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Tuesday, driving the country’s cumulative total past 7.5 million, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The latest daily tally is far less than the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.
An additional 705 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Tuesday, down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.
A total of 7,501,816 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 210,909 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has hovered around 40,000 in recent weeks.
An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Tuesday night shows that the number of new cases recorded in the United States as well as the number of new deaths are both down in week-over-week comparisons.
(NEW YORK) — A New York man was arrested this week in the death of an 80-year-old bar patron stemming from a mask dispute last month, authorities said.
Donald Lewinski, 65, was arrested Monday in connection with the Sept. 26 incident in West Seneca, a suburb in Buffalo, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn announced.
The victim, Rocco Sapienza, allegedly confronted Lewinski twice for not wearing a mask at a bar, Flynn said.
“The defendant was not wearing his mask regularly at the bar,” per the bar rules, Flynn said during a press briefing Monday. “The victim was not happy that he was not wearing a mask, and the victim apparently let him know that, verbally.”
The two had a “verbal confrontation” before Sapienza went back to his seat, Flynn said. A video allegedly shows Sapienza again approach Lewinski, who then “stood up from the bar school and pushed him with two hands,” Flynn said.
“He pushed him pretty hard,” the district attorney said. “The victim went flying back and hit his head on the ground.”
The shove appeared to be without warning, he added.
Sapienza was unresponsive and had a seizure on the floor of the bar, authorities said. Responders took Sapienza to a nearby hospital, where he remained unresponsive until his death on Thursday, according to Flynn. The cause of death was blunt force trauma, he said.
At this time this is no indication that alcohol played a part in the dispute, the district attorney said.
“We have an extremely unfortunate incident that has occurred here,” Flynn said, referencing other recent confrontations over mask compliance in stores and on airplanes. “It’s unfortunate that we had an incident here now in Western New York where this escalated into an 80-year-old man passing away, allegedly at the hands of a 65-year-old.”
Lewinski was set to be arraigned Tuesday evening and charged with negligent homicide, a felony, the district attorney said. Lewinski, who has no prior charges, faces up to four years in prison if convicted, said Flynn.
In an email to the Associated Press, Lewinski’s attorney, Barry Covert, said his client plans to plead not guilty.
“I have watched the bar videotape, and it does appear that Mr. Sapienza does come from a different part of the bar to initiate the confrontation with my client, who was at a different section of the bar,” Covert said in his statement to the AP.
Both men were regulars at the bar but did not appear to know each other, Flynn said.
In a statement to Buffalo ABC affiliate WKBW, the owner of the bar, Pamp’s Red Zone Bar & Grill, said, “We are all deeply saddened by the loss of Rocco. He was a part of our Red Zone family and loved by all. Our deepest sympathies go out to Rocco’s family.”
The incident was one of several involving mask compliance in the region that week. In an eerily similar case, police responded on Sept. 22 to the report of a gym employee having a seizure following a physical altercation with a gym member “whom the employee had confronted over not wearing a proper face covering,” according to the West Seneca Police Department blotter. And on Sept. 26, a man allegedly trashed a store after a clerk refused to serve him because he was not wearing a mask, West Seneca police said.
The incident at the Buffalo-area bar is the nation’s latest mask-compliance confrontation to turn deadly.
In May, a Michigan security guard was killed after instructing a woman to leave a store because she was not wearing a mask, authorities said. In July, a security guard at a Southern California market was charged with murder after fatally shooting a man who refused to wear a mask, authorities said. Also in July, a man was fatally stabbed after allegedly confronting another man about not wearing a mask in a Michigan store. The suspect was shot and killed by police following the stabbing, authorities said.
(NEW YORK) — A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now killed more than 1 million people worldwide.
Over 35.5 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The criteria for diagnosis — through clinical means or a lab test — has varied from country-to-country. Still, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some national governments are hiding or downplaying the scope of their outbreaks.
Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the virus has rapidly spread to every continent except Antarctica.
The United States is the worst-affected country, with more than 7.4 million diagnosed cases and at least 210,237 deaths.
California has the most cases of any U.S. state, with more than 835,000 people diagnosed, according to Johns Hopkins data. California is followed by Texas and Florida, with over 794,000 cases and over 717,000 cases, respectively.
More than 190 vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are being tracked by the World Health Organization, at least seven of which are in crucial phase three trials.
Here’s how the news is developing Tuesday. All times Eastern:
Oct 06, 12:35 pm Cruise lines to test all passengers and crew before boarding
Cruise lines around the world have agreed to test all passengers and crew, if the ship carries 250 or more passengers.
The new policy goes into effect immediately.
“This is a travel industry first and an example of the cruise industry leading the way,” Cruise Lines International Association said in a statement.
CLIA ocean-going cruise line members have agreed to conduct 100% testing of passengers and crew prior to embarkation – a travel industry first. #WeAreCruisepic.twitter.com/DtBxaN3hnB
— Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) (@CLIAGlobal) October 6, 2020
There were 14,542 new cases of COVID-19 and 76 fatalities confirmed in the United Kingdom over the past 24 hours.
The latest daily tally is just short of the record set over the weekend when Public Health England revealed that 15,841 cases between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2 were not included in the United Kingdom’s reported daily case counts due to a technical issue. The unreported cases were added retroactively to reach Saturday’s count of 12,872 new case and Sunday’s 22,961 — the country’s highest single-day rise yet.
The cumulative total is now at 530,113 cases with 42,445 deaths, according to the latest data from the U.K. government.
The United Kingdom is among a handful of European countries grappling with an uptick in COVID-19 cases, as a second wave of infections hits the region. More than 1,000 students and staff at two U.K. universities — 583 at the University of Sheffield and 433 at the University of Nottingham — are currently isolating after testing positive for COVID-19. ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report. Oct 06, 11:54 am WTO sees less severe slump in goods trade this year
The World Trade Organization (WTO) now predicts a 9.2% drop in global merchandise trade this year.
The Geneva-based trade body released the estimate Tuesday, revising its forecast in April of a 12.9% decline this year, following “strong trade performance in June and July.”
The WTO also now expects a 7.2% rise in merchandise trade next year, compared to the previous estimate of 21.3% growth.
“Whether the recovery can be sustained over the medium term will depend on the strength of investment and employment,” the WTO cautioned. “Both could be undermined if confidence is dented by new outbreaks of COVID-19, which might force governments to impose additional lockdowns.” Oct 06, 11:33 am 15 clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines underway in Africa
There are 15 clinical trails of potential COVID-19 vaccines underway across the African continent, according to a comment by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
Five trials are being carried out in South Africa, four in Egypt and one each in Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
“We’ve seen a scramble for access to therapies before,” the Nature comment said. “It happened with HIV and H5N1 influenza, for example. And Africa has ended up at the end of the queue every time. Yet the global economy depends on the continent for its exports of raw materials, food, energy and labour.”
“This experience — and the fact that other infectious diseases will surely emerge — is why Africa needs a coordinated strategy to develop, finance, manufacture and deliver vaccines across the continent,” the comment added.
For the past few months, the Africa CDC has been working with African leaders and global health officials on a “whole of Africa” coordinated approach to do just that.
“Infectious agents span the globe in weeks: vaccinating people on one continent is essential to the health, wealth and well-being of those on the others,” the Nature comment said. “No region can be immune until a meaningful and equitable share of the world’s population is protected — by the tenets of good basic public health as well as a vaccine.”
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 1.5 million people across the African continent have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 37,000 of them have died. South Africa accounts for nearly half of all confirmed cases on the continent, according to the latest data from the Africa CDC.
Oct 06, 8:47 am Italy on verge of making face masks mandatory outdoors
Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza said Tuesday the government is working on a proposal to make the use of face masks outdoors mandatory nationwide, as COVID-19 infections have steadily increased in recent months.
Italy, once the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, gradually loosened restrictions during the spring and summer, following a nearly three-month lockdown that helped get its COVID-19 outbreak under control. But now the country — like several others across Europe — is seeing an uptick in infections.
On Saturday, Italy reported 2,844 new cases of COVID-19, its highest single-day jump since April, but still far less than the daily figures being recorded in France, Spain and the United Kingdom as Europe grapples with a second wave of infections.
“We must raise our guard with the awareness that our county is better off than others,” Speranza told the lower house of parliament on Tuesday.
The government is expected to announce the new measures by Wednesday. Several regions in Italy have already made mask-wearing compulsory, but there is currently no nationwide mandate.
“Italy, together with Germany, is the one that in the EU is holding up the second wave better,” Speranza said. “But we must not have any illusions.”
Since the start of the pandemic, Italy’s civil protection agency has recorded at least 327,586 confirmed cases with 36,002 deaths.
Oct 06, 7:54 am EU agency fast-tracks process on 2nd COVID-19 vaccine candidate
The European Union’s drug regulator has started reviewing a second potential vaccine for COVID-19, which is being developed by Germany’s BioNTech in collaboration with American pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Tuesday that it has begun a “rolling review” of the latest vaccine candidate in an accelerated regulatory approval process, examining the data as it becomes available rather than waiting for the trial to end.
“The start of the rolling review means that the committee has started evaluating the first batch of data on the vaccine, which come from laboratory studies (non-clinical data),” the EMA said in a statement. “This does not mean that a conclusion can be reached yet on the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, as much of the evidence is still to be submitted to the committee.”
The agency added that its decision to start the expedited approval process for the vaccine candidate was based on preliminary results from non-clinical and early clinical studies in adults which suggest that the drug triggers the body’s immune system to fight COVID-19.
Last week, the EMA began its first review process of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate — a rolling review of one being developed by U.K.-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in collaboration with England’s University of Oxford.
Oct 06, 6:55 am India records lowest single-day rise in cases since August
India confirmed another 61,267 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, its lowest single-day increase since Aug. 25.
An additional 884 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded. The country’s cumulative total now stands at 6,685,082 confirmed cases with 103,569 deaths, according to the latest data from the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
India is only the second country to surpass six million total cases, after the United States. The vast nation of 1.3 billion people has the highest COVID-19 infection rate of anywhere in the world, although it is now on a downward trend. India is on track to become the pandemic’s worst-hit nation within weeks, overtaking the United States, where more than 7.4 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
India also has the highest number of recovered COVID-19 patients in the world, with nearly 5.7 million people who have survived the disease. The country’s recovery rate stands at 84%, according to the health ministry.
Oct 06, 6:15 am Sacred Heart University suspends over 100 students for violating COVID-19 policies
Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, has suspended more than 100 students for violating the school’s COVID-19 policies, according to a report by New Haven ABC affiliate WTNH-TV.
University officials confirmed to WTNH that there have been at least 109 suspensions since the start of the fall semester due to various health and safety violations that include not wearing face masks, not social distancing and having unauthorized visitors in residence hall rooms.
The suspended students were informed that they cannot come back to campus for periods ranging from one week to the rest of the semester. They will continue to attend classes remotely in the meantime, according to WTNH.
University leaders hope the suspensions send a clear message that the coronavirus pandemic remains a very real threat and that safety is the number one goal for a successful semester back on campus.
“We want everyone to protect themselves and protect each other so that we can end the semester here on campus and have a full semester of on-campus, on-ground learning,” Larry Weilk, dean of students at Sacred Heart University, told WTNH. “Prior to the start of the year, we developed what we call a pioneer promise where we asked all students faculty and staff to promise to protect themselves, the campus community, and the greater Bridgeport and Fairfield community as well.”
“We’re all in this together,” he added. “We’re all trying to protect each other and stay healthy.”
Oct 06, 5:12 am 33 US states and territories in upward trajectory of new cases, FEMA memo says
An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Monday night shows that 33 U.S. states and territories are in an upward trajectory of COVID-19 infections, while four jurisdictions are at a plateau and 19 others are in a downward trend.
Both the number of new cases and the number of new deaths reported across the United States were down Monday in week-over-week comparisons. There were 301,308 new cases confirmed during the period of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, a 2.5% decrease from the previous week. There were also 4,871 coronavirus-related fatalities recorded during the period of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, a 8.2% decrease compared with the week prior, according to the memo.
However, the national positivity rate for COVID-19 tests increased slightly from 4.4% to 4.7% in week-to-week comparisons. Currently, 20% of hospitals across the country have more than 80% of beds full in their intensive care units. That figure was 17-18% during the summertime peak, the memo said.
In Alabama, COVID-19 cases accounted for 9.2% of the state’s inpatients during the week ending Sept. 29. The number of new cases nearly tripled in the western city of Tuscaloosa — from 562 to 1,549 — between the weeks ending Sept. 22 and Sept. 29, according to the memo.
In Colorado, there was a 42.2% relative increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases in Adams County between the weeks ending Sept. 22 and Sept. 29, driven by people under the age of 20. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of cases recorded in the northern city of Boulder since Aug. 24 have been linked to the University of Colorado, the memo said.
In Hawaii, there was a cluster of nine COVID-19 cases confirmed at the University of the Nations Kona campus in the town of Kailua-Kona, according to the memo.
Oct 06, 4:22 am US reports nearly 40,000 new cases
There were 39,562 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Monday’s tally is far below the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.
An additional 460 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Sunday, down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.
A total of 7,458,549 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 210,195 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country’s cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has hovered around 40,000 in recent weeks.
Glynn County Sheriff’s OfficeBY: JULIA JACOBO, ABC NEWS
(ATLANTA) — Georgia state prosecutors have requested that “racial” social media posts and text messages be used as evidence to show motive in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed while jogging in February.
The evidence the state wishes to use includes posts by all three of the suspects charged in Arbery’s murder, according to court documents filed by prosecutors in Glynn County on Friday.
Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shots, had sent a “racial” text message on March 16 and posted two “racial” posts on Facebook on June 15 and Aug. 22 — the latter of which was a highway video, according to the notice of intent to use the evidence.
The evidence prosecutors wish to use also includes “racial” Facebook posts by Gregory McMichael and “racial” text messages extracted from the phone of William Bryan, the court documents state.
Bryan repeatedly used the n-word in texts, prosecutor Jesse Evans said in a bond hearing in July, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The texts messages shown at the bond hearing, which Evans said contained “a ton of filth,” are the same that prosecutors wish to use as evidence, according to the court document.
Prosecutors requested that a hearing be scheduled on the matter.
Arbery, 25, was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, on Feb. 23 when he was killed. Arbery tried to run for his life before he was struck by a car, shot and then called a racial slur by one of the suspects, prosecutors say.
Both McMichaels and Bryan told authorities they thought Arbery was a suspect in a series of break-ins. They were charged in May after video showing the deadly struggle appeared online.
Travis McMichael and Gregory McMichael have been charged with felony murder and aggravated assault. Bryan has been charged with felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
Kali9/iStockBy IVAN PEREIRA, MARC NATHANSON, and JAMES SCHOLZ, ABC News
