Italy records highest number of daily Covid-19 cases since start of the year

Italy recorded 28,632 new coronavirus cases on Friday, marking the highest number of daily cases since the beginning of the year, according to data from Italy’s health ministry.

“The number of daily Covid positive has steadily increased for the last eight weeks,” the Italian National Institute of Health said in its weekly report. 

The Delta variant is still dominant in Italy, which has confirmed only 55 cases of Omicron variant, health institute President Silvio Brusaferro said in a video address on Friday.

A total of 5,336,795 people in Italy have been infected since the start of the pandemic.

Italy also reported 120 deaths related to coronavirus in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll to at least 135,421 since the pandemic began. 

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly, who testified unmasked at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, has since tested positive for Covid-19, the airline said in a statement.  

Kelly testified at the hearing that he believes masks do not add substantial protection to airplane passengers and cited aircraft ventilation systems.  

“I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment,” he said. “It is very safe and very high-quality compared to any other indoor setting.” 

The hearing lasted about three hours. Five witnesses were seated in close proximity and went most of the hearing unmasked.  

Kelly was seated between American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby. Kirby tested negative, the airline said. American did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

Delta Chief of Operations John Laughter tested negative, his airline said, and Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson said she will follow testing protocols. 

The NCAA men’s basketball calendar has been turned upside-down, with more than a dozen games being canceled or postponed in recent days. 

Most notably, games between No. 2 Duke and Loyola and between No. 4 UCLA and North Carolina scheduled for Saturday have been canceled due to Covid-19 issues within the UCLA and Loyola programs, the schools announced on Friday. 

Duke had already been in jeopardy of not playing on Saturday after having to reschedule when their original opponent, Cleveland State, had to pull out due to Covid-19 issues. According to the Blue Devils, they will seek a replacement opponent to play on Saturday.

Other affected top 25 games scheduled for Saturday that had been previously canceled are No. 15 Ohio State against No. 21 Kentucky and No. 16 Seton Hall versus Iona.

With UCLA and Ohio State dropping out of their games in the CBS Sports Classic in Las Vegas, Kentucky will now play North Carolina on Saturday.

On Friday, Syracuse men’s basketball announced they postponed their next two games because of Covid-19 protocols. The games were scheduled to be played on Saturday, Dec. 18 and Tuesday, Dec. 21. In a statement, the school said they are re-evaluating their schedule to determine if the games could be made up.

“The Covid-19 pandemic continues to present challenges for intercollegiate athletics all over the country,” said Syracuse Director of Athletics John Wildhack. “Our top priority is safeguarding the health and well-being of our student-athletes, athletics staff, fans and the campus and Central New York communities. While it is disappointing to have to postpone any athletic event, this is the right decision given the increasingly difficult public health landscape.”

CNN’s Kevin Dotson contributed to this report

In the wake of Covid-19 upticks, the Ohio governor deployed more than 1,000 members of the state’s National Guard to hospitals to help assuage staffing issues plaguing Ohio hospitals, many of which have paused elective surgeries.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the National Guard should begin arriving in hospitals on Monday.

Of the 1,050 National Guard members, 150 are highly-trained medical personnel, nurses and EMTs, the governor said.

The medical personnel, the governor said, will be deployed strategically throughout the state — and, subsequently, will be placed within hospitals at administrators’ discretion.

The governor said the Cleveland, Canton, Akron and Wooster areas were the primary recipients of National Guard personnel given the high number of confirmed Covid-19 cases that these cities are currently seeing. DeWine added that he anticipates the 900 non-medical service members will “go anywhere in the state that they’re needed.” 

The governor also emphasized that with 4,723 patients currently hospitalized because of Covid-19, the state is seeing the highest number of Covid-19-related hospitalizations since Dec. 22, 2020. 

Given the stress placed on hospital staff, DeWine noted that “almost all hospitals in Zone 1 — the northern part, right across the northern part of the state of Ohio — have stopped elective surgeries.” He added that some hospitals in the state’s middle tier have already paused elective surgeries and that others in the area will be following suit in the near future. And, in the state’s southern tier, hospitals are currently making plans to halt elective surgeries as necessary, he said. 

The governor did stress that 294,000 Ohioans got the first vaccine dose in November and another 101,000 in the first two weeks of December.

Meanwhile, 945,000 Ohioans received their booster shots in November and 514,000 in the first two weeks of December, bringing the total number of Ohioans boosted in the last six weeks or so to 1.5 million, he said.

The Washington State Department of Health issued new Covid-19 guidance for “high contact indoor sports,” following a series of wrestling matches that resulted in about 200 new positive Covid-19 cases, the department said in a news release Friday.  

The new guidance requires all athletes, coaches, trainers and support staff to get tested at least three times a week regardless of vaccination status, the release said. At least one of those three tests must be completed “no sooner than the day before the competition,” the department added.   

“Please get vaccinated, boosted, wear a well-fitting mask, and maintain your distance to help our kids stay healthy, stay in the game, and stay in school,” said Lacy Fehrenbach, deputy secretary for Covid-19 response.  

On Wednesday, the department said dozens of recent Covid-19 outbreaks could be traced to high school wrestling matches. At least 13 counties sent wrestlers to four wrestling tournaments on Dec. 4, according to the department.

New evidence shows that “test-to-stay” works to keep children in school safely, even if they have been exposed to the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday.

“Test-to-stay is an encouraging public health practice to keep our children in school,” Walensky said during a virtual White House briefing. 

“CDC is updating our materials to help schools and parents know how to best implement this promising and now-proven practice, along with our multilayer prevention strategies that will help keep our children in the classroom safely,” Walensky said, adding that new data on test-to-stay will be released in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In the past few months, the CDC has collaborated with certain school districts to evaluate test-to-stay programs, which involve testing — instead of quarantining — students who may have been exposed to the virus at school. Two of the communities that collaborated with the CDC are Lake County, Illinois, and Los Angeles County, California.

“In order for test-to-stay to be implemented safely and correctly, some key prevention measures need to be included,” Walensky said. “In both studies, masks were worn consistently and correctly, close contacts of a positive case were monitored for symptoms and stayed home if they became ill, and those who did not develop symptoms had regular testing.”

Four shows of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular are canceled Friday “due to breakthrough COVID-19 cases in the production,” MSG Entertainment, which operates Radio City Music Hall in New York City, said in a news release. 

Those performances include the 11 a.m. ET, 2 p.m. ET, 5 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET shows.

Plans for future shows are “currently being assessed” and tickets will be refunded “at the original point of purchase,” they said.

While the Delta variant continues to circulate widely in the United States, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the Omicron coronavirus variant is “increasing rapidly” and expected “to become the dominant strain in the United States as it has in other countries in the coming weeks.” 

“And we know multilayer prevention strategies — masks in public indoor settings, practicing physical distancing, frequent hand washing, improving ventilation and testing to slow transmission — are vitally important, especially as we prepare for more Omicron and even if you are vaccinated and boosted,” she continued.

Walensky said the seven-day average of hospital admissions has increased about 4% over the prior week, while the seven-day average of daily deaths was up over 8% from the prior week.

Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said “this is not a moment to panic” and again urged people to get vaccinated.

“We know how to protect people, and we have the tools to do it. But we need the American people to do their part, to protect themselves, their children and their communities. The more people get vaccinated, the less severe this Omicron outbreak will be,” he said.

The UK reported a record high of Covid-19 cases for the third consecutive day on Friday, recording 93,045 infections — the highest number of daily cases since the pandemic began.

That is up from 88,376 new cases on Thursday and 78,610 new cases on Wednesday.

The UK also recorded 3,201 additional confirmed cases of the Omicron variant on Friday, bringing the total confirmed Omicron cases to 14,909.

The country reported a further 111 coronavirus deaths on Friday.