BitGou: Friday Morning Briefing: Trump and Melania test positive for COVID-19

Trump and Melania test positive for coronavirus

Trump and Melania test positive

President Donald Trump said he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19 and were going into quarantine, upending the race for the White House. “We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” the president tweeted.

Trump, 74, is at high risk with the deadly virus both because of his age and because he is considered overweight. He has remained in good health during his time in office but is not known to exercise regularly or to follow a healthy diet.

Trump’s physician, Sean Conley, said he expected the president to carry out his duties “without disruption” while he recovers. Vice President Mike Pence could temporarily assume control if Trump becomes incapacitated.

Get well messages for Trump and Melania poured in from foreign capitals. In his own words: Here is a timeline of some of the U.S. president's comments on the outbreak.

Trump's positive COVID test throws markets pre-election curveball.

Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now.

Track the spread of the virus with this state-by-state and county map.

Pandemic risks overwhelming Wisconsin
Wisconsin registered a record increase in new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, while New York state reported an uptick of positive coronavirus tests in 20 “hot spots.” The 3,000 new infections reported in Wisconsin fanned fears that the sheer number of new patients could overwhelm hospitals. Florida, which has four times as many people as Wisconsin, reported 2,628 new cases.

Paris in danger of restaurant shutdown
Paris is set to be placed on maximum COVID alert as soon as Monday, Health Minister Olivier Veran said, a move likely to force the closure of restaurants and bars and impose further restrictions on public life. Veran said the wider Paris region had now passed all three of the government’s criteria for being put on the highest level of alert. In the past 24 hours, the coronavirus infection rate had surpassed 250 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants.

AstraZeneca’s Japanese vaccine trial back up
Clinical trials of AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine have resumed in Japan, almost a month after being put on hold due to an illness of a British volunteer. Global trials of the vaccine were halted on Sept. 6 after a study participant fell ill with what was believed to be a rare spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.

Australia to open up to New Zealanders
New Zealanders will soon be able to travel to Australia without having to self-quarantine as COVID-19 infections slow. Australian Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said New Zealand citizens and residents would be allowed to travel to Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales and its remote Northern Territory from Oct. 16, without having to undergo the two-week quarantine required of Australians returning from other nations, McCormack said.

From Breakingviews: Breakingviews - Corona Capital: State loans, Pubs.
Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe.

Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources.

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Top Stories

Exclusive: New global lab network will compare COVID-19 vaccines head-to-head. A major non-profit health emergencies group has set up a global laboratory network to assess data from potential COVID-19 vaccines, allowing scientists and drugmakers to compare them and speed up selection of the most effective shots.

The House of Representatives approved a $2.2 trillion Democratic plan to provide more economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic, as a bipartisan deal continued to elude House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House.

The Republican governor of Texas said each county in the state will be limited to a single site for dropping off absentee ballots, drawing condemnation from Democrats and voting rights advocates. Governor Greg Abbott’s order will close more than a dozen satellite locations in at least two counties: Harris, which includes Houston, had opened 12 sites to collect early mail ballots, while Travis, which includes Austin, had four.

In battleground Wisconsin, some Latinos feel ignored by Biden. As the race to the November election enters the home stretch, appeals to Latino voters have taken on new urgency for Joe Biden and incumbent President Trump. Both campaigns are pouring resources into the battleground states of Florida and Arizona, as well as increasingly competitive Nevada, whose large Latino populations could determine the outcome in those states. Even in Wisconsin, where 87% of the population is white, the state’s 230,000 eligible Latino voters could prove critical.

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