The latest on the coronavirus pandemic from around the U.S. and the world.

PARIS — A mother and her three children scanned the school supplies in a Paris supermarket, plucking out multicolored fountain pens, crisp notebooks – and plenty of masks. Despite resurgent coronavirus infections, similar scenes are unfolding across Europe as a new school year dawns.

Virus or no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back into classrooms, to narrow the learning gaps between haves and have-nots that deepened during lockdowns – and to get their parents back to work.

Facing a jump in virus cases, authorities in France, Britain, Spain and elsewhere are imposing mask rules, hiring extra teachers and building new desks and classrooms.

While the U.S. back-to-school saga has been politicized and chaotic, with a hodgepodge of fast-changing rules and a backlash against President Trump’s insistence on reopening, European governments have faced less of an uproar.

And even though the virus has invaded classrooms in recent days from Berlin to Seoul, and some teachers and parents warn that their schools aren’t ready, European leaders from the political left, right and center are sending an unusually consistent message: Even in a pandemic, children are better off in class.

France’s prime minister promised Wednesday to “do everything” to get people back to school and work. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called reopening schools a “moral duty,” and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep kids at home. Italy’s health minister abruptly shut down discos this month with one goal in mind – “to reopen schools in September in complete safety.”

Read the full story on schools in Europe here.

Virus aid talks restart on Capitol Hill, but no deal is in sight

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows resumed talks Thursday over a stalled COVID-19 aid package, but the outlook for any swift resolution appeared bleak as President Trump’s team and congressional Democrats have been unable to agree on a compromise.

Pelosi said she told Meadows the Democrats would be willing to meet halfway — at $2.2 trillion — a slight reduction from her last proposal before talks collapsed earlier this month. The White House, which has stuck with its initial $1 trillion offer, had no immediate response.

“We have said again and again that we’re willing to meet them in the middle — $2.2 trillion. When they’re willing to do that, we’ll be willing to discuss the particulars,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol.

Their 25-minute afternoon call was the first attempt to kick-start negotiations since talks fell apart. The stalemate comes as jobless claims hit 1 million Thursday and households are struggling, with the mounting virus toll now above 180,000 deaths, higher than any other country.

House Democrats’ opening bid was the $3 trillion-plus Heroes Act, a sweeping aid package approved in May. It proposed money for cash-strapped states, housing and jobless assistance, to help schools reopen and to conduct more widespread virus testing.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hit “pause” on that package of new spending, eventually came up with a $1 trillion counter-offer a few weeks ago. But he acknowledged Thursday that talks are in a “stalemate.”

Congress is on recess until September and it appears unlikely lawmakers will be recalled to Washington unless there is a deal ready for voting. Talks are nowhere near resolution and in fact broadening to include Postal Service funds before the November election. Also, a need for new disaster aid is expected with the Gulf state hurricanes and California wildfires.

In contrast to recent U.S. flip-flop, UN backs testing people without symptoms

GENEVA — The World Health Organization said Thursday that countries should actively test people to find coronavirus cases even if they don’t show symptoms — a stance that comes after the U.S. health agency switched its policy to say that asymptomatic contacts of infected people don’t need to be tested.

At a press briefing, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, said when officials are investigating clusters of COVID-19, “testing may need to be expanded to look for individuals who are on the more mild end of the spectrum or who may indeed be asymptomatic.”

Yet new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s not necessary for people who have been in close contact with infected people but who don’t feel sick to get tested. The agency had previously advised local health officials to test people who’d been within about 6 feet of an infected person for over 15 minutes.

Van Kerkhove said countries were free to adapt WHO’s testing guidance for their individual needs and while testing itself was important, it was equally critical to get testing results back fast.

“What’s really important is that testing is used as an opportunity, to define active cases so that they can be isolated and so that contact tracing can also take place,” she said. “This is really fundamental to breaking chains of transmission.”

Van Kerkhove also expressed concerns about public behavior, saying she’s growing “a little bit concerned” that the use of masks is leading some people to think they don’t need to keep safe distances from others.

Read the full story about the World Health Organization’s update here.

Six feet may not be enough to protect against coronavirus, experts warn

Public health experts are reevaluating guidelines for safe social distancing amid growing evidence that the novel coronavirus can travel farther than six feet under some conditions.

A team of infectious-disease experts argues in a new analysis, published this week in the journal BMJ, that six-feet protocols are too rigid and are based on outmoded science and observations of different viruses. Other researchers say six feet is a start – but only a start – warning that more space is almost always better, especially in poorly ventilated areas indoors.

Factors such air circulation, ventilation, exposure time, crowd density, whether people are wearing face masks, and whether they are silent, speaking, shouting or singing should be part of assessing whether six feet is sufficient, experts say.

“I think six feet is a fine number, but we need to convey that this is a starting point,” said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech civil and environmental engineering professor who has studied airborne viruses and was not involved with the BMJ report. “Beyond six feet doesn’t mean there’s zero risk.”

The conventional wisdom behind six-foot separations originated from research by a German biologist, Carl Flügge, who in the late 1800s suggested that was as far as microbe-containing droplets could travel. His hypothesis missed farther-flung particles invisible to the naked eye – in particular, the tiny gobs of bodily fluid and virus that float on the air as aerosols.

If the novel coronavirus can float in the air as a vapor, earlier assumptions of its range are inadequate. Airborne transmission is still not conclusively proved, but a growing number of experts see persuasive evidence in super-spreading events that have transmitted the virus to people scores of feet away from the infection source.

“Distance alone will never solve the aerosol problem. If you are in the same room, you can get infected,” said University of Colorado aerosol expert Jose-Luis Jimenez. The infection reached a person 45 feet away at a March choir practice in Washington state, where a singer spread the coronavirus to 52 people.

“Outdoors, distanced and with well-fitted masks,” Jimenez said, “is the only thing close to a silver bullet.”

Yet six feet, and sometimes less, remains the default guide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines social distancing as “at least six feet (about two arms’ length) from other people who are not from your household in both indoor and outdoor spaces.” The World Health Organization has recommended at least one meter, or three feet. Some countries in Europe set social distances at 1 1/2 meters, almost five feet; others at two meters, or 6 1/2 feet.

The United Kingdom earlier in the pandemic implemented a two-meter mandate for diners and drinkers. Under pressure from pubs that feared this rule would limit patrons to unprofitably low numbers, Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July compressed that to a “one-meter-plus” separation.

Because U.S. public health officials have so frequently recommended six-foot separations, the measurements have been mistaken for goal lines beyond which exists total safety. But that does not reflect how this virus spreads, numerous researchers said.

Read the full story here.

FDA warns against hand sanitizer packaged as food and beverages

The Food and Drug Administration is issuing a warning to consumers: If the packaging looks like food or drink, check twice to ensure it isn’t hand sanitizer.

Some makers of alcohol-based hand sanitizers are packaging their products in water bottles, beer cans, baby food pouches and liquor bottles, the FDA said in a Thursday news release. Some hand sanitizers also have food flavors, such as chocolate or raspberry.

This was a strange adventure for me today. If you don't want me to drink your hand sanitizer, please don't put it in a beer can with a picture of a guy holding beer on it. pic.twitter.com/nA5qrjOKOY

— Ian Fortey and Bigfoot Hanging Out (@IanFortey) June 2, 2020

If consumers ingest hand sanitizer, they could be at risk for serious injury or even death. The FDA said it has witnessed an increasing number of links between hand sanitizer consumption and cardiac effects, impact on the central nervous system, hospitalizations and death.

“It’s dangerous to add scents with food flavors to hand sanitizers which children could think smells like food, eat and get alcohol poisoning,” FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn said in the release. “Manufacturers should be vigilant about packaging and marketing their hand sanitizers in food or drink packages in an effort to mitigate any potential inadvertent use by consumers.”

The FDA said it receives reports from consumers and retailers of potentially dangerous products and will continue to work with manufacturers to recall such items or strongly encourage them to remove them from retail shelves. The agency has published an updated list of hand sanitizers to avoid.

Woman probably contracted coronavirus in airplane bathroom, researchers say 

A woman evacuated from Italy in March contracted the coronavirus on her flight back to South Korea — most likely in the airplane’s restroom, researchers say.

The evacuation flight “was conducted under strict infection control procedure,” with roughly 300 passengers undergoing interviews, physical exams and temperature screenings before they were allowed to board, according to an early edition of an article scheduled to be published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal. Passengers were given N95 respirator masks, and kept six feet apart before boarding.

After the 11-hour flight, six passengers who had shown no symptoms before boarding tested positive for the coronavirus. The others were placed in quarantine. After eight days, a 28-year-old woman who had sat three rows away from one of the asymptomatic passengers developed a cough, runny nose and sore muscles. She later tested positive.

“Given that she did not go outside and had self-quarantined for 3 weeks alone at her home in Italy before the flight and did not use public transportation to get to the airport, it is highly likely that her infection was transmitted in the flight via indirect contact with an asymptomatic patient,” the researchers wrote.

The woman had only taken off her mask to use the toilet, according to the researchers. Since the asymptomatic passenger had used the same bathroom, “the most plausible explanation” is that she became infected there, the scientists said.

While the study is based on only a small group of people, it is one of the first that appears to demonstrate how asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus can occur on airplanes. Many researchers had already theorized that might be the case, given that other respiratory viruses have spread that way, and coronavirus is known to circulate in confined spaces.

Many airlines are beginning to deploy new sanitizing technologies in addition to requiring masks and providing more space between passengers. But some health and chemical experts question the safety and efficacy of a disinfectant just approved by the EPA.

WHO warns of risk of young infecting the old

GENEVA — The World Health Organization’s chief for Europe has warned COVID-19 is a “tornado with a long tail” and says increased case counts among young people could ultimately passed on to more vulnerable older people and cause an uptick in deaths.

Dr. Hans Kluge said younger people are likely to come into closer contact with the elderly as the weather cools in Europe.

“We don’t want to do unnecessary predictions, but this is definitely one of the options: That at one point there would be more hospitalizations and an uptick in mortality,” he told reporters from Copenhagen, the WHO Europe headquarters.

Kluge said 32 out of 55 state parties and territories in WHO’s European region have seen a 14-day incidence rate increase of more than 10%, calling that “definitely an uptick which is generalized in Europe.”

But he also suggested health authorities and other officials are better positioned and more prepared than in February, when the continent was on the cusp of a huge surge in cases and deaths.

Members of a tiny tribe on a remote Pacific island test positive for virus

NEW DELHI — An Indian government official says four members of the Great Andamanese tribe have tested positive for the coronavirus and are recovering in a hospital in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Senior health officer Avijit Ray said they were among 59 members of the dwindling tribe who live in the Strait Island.

Ray said they apparently got the virus during a recent visit to Port Blair, the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a federally-administered Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. They tested positive on Saturday,

Ray said all were recovering, adding that they tribal welfare department was looking after them.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a chain of islands with a population of nearly 400,000, has reported 41 deaths and 2.944 positive cases so far.

French government says 21 regions are now in the ‘red zone’

PARIS — The government says the coronavirus is now actively circulating in about a fifth of France’s regions and is allowing new local restrictions to avoid another national lockdown.

Despite the resurgence, the government is pushing ahead with plans to reopen all French schools next week, and to welcome workers back to their jobs after summer vacations blamed for spreading the virus.

France “must do everything to avoid a new confinement,” Prime Minister Jean Castex told reporters Thursday. The government’s main mantra this fall will be learning to “live with the virus.”

He acknowledged that the rising cases this summer — attributed notably to vacation gatherings of families and friends — came earlier than authorities expected.

France is now seeing more than 50 positive tests per 100,000 people in Paris, Marseille and other areas.

The government announced Thursday that 21 administrative regions, or departments, are now in the “red zone” where the virus is actively circulating, and where local authorities can impose stricter rules on gatherings and movements.

Cases decrease by 20% in Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Africa’s top public health official says the continent has seen a 20% decrease in confirmed coronavirus cases in the past week, but he warns that “we shouldn’t go home celebrating that our pandemic is over.”

John Nkengasong with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells reporters that testing and other efforts to contain the virus are largely working, but just one or two cases could reignite infections.

He says 23 of Africa’s 54 countries have reported a sustained decrease in new confirmed cases in the past couple of weeks.

The African continent has reported more than 1.2 million confirmed cases, roughly half in South Africa. More than 11 million tests for the virus have been conducted across the continent of 1.3 billion people, and Nkengasong says the new goal is an additional 20 million tests by November.

North Korea says all coronavirus tests are negative

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has told the World Health Organization it tested 2,767 people for the coronavirus as of Aug. 20 and that all have tested negative.

In an email to the Associated Press Thursday, Edwin Salvador, WHO’s representative to North Korea, said the country is currently monitoring 1,004 citizens placed under quarantine. Salvador said the North told WHO that it has released 29,961 people from quarantine since December 31, including 382 foreigners.

The North has yet to confirm a single-case of COVID-19, but outsiders have widely doubted its virus-free claim.

In late July, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered a lockdown of Kaesong, a city near the border with South Korea after the North reported it found a person with COVID-19 symptoms.

The North later told the World Health Organization the person’s test results were inconclusive. Salvador said the WHO has yet to receive detailed information about the suspected case.

India continues to see record numbers of new coronavirus cases

NEW DELHI — India has recorded another single-day record of new coronavirus cases, reporting 75,760 new confirmed infections in the past 24 hours.

The Health Ministry on Thursday also reported 1,023 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total fatalities up to 60,472.

India’s previous highest daily count was 70,488 on Aug. 22. India has been recording more than 60,000 new infections per day for the last two weeks and now has reported 3.3 million cases since the pandemic began.

With an average of more than 800,000 tests every day, India has scaled up testing per million to more than 27,000, the ministry said.

It also said India’s recovery rate is now around 76% with a fatality rate of 1.84%

India has reported the third most cases in the world after the United States and Brazil, and its reported fatalities are the fourth-highest in the world.

UN says a third of the world’s children couldn’t access remote learning when schools closed

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. children’s agency says at least a third of the world’s children couldn’t access remote learning when the pandemic closed schools, creating “a global education emergency.”

UNICEF said in a report released Wednesday night that nearly 1.5 billion children were affected by school closures at the height of nationwide and local lockdowns.

“For at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, there was no such a thing as remote learning,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

“The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency,” she said in a statement. “The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come.”

South Korea seems headed towards lockdowns as virus cases rise

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea has reported 441 new cases of the coronavirus, its highest single-day total in months, as fears grow that lockdown-like restrictions are becoming inevitable.

The country has added nearly 4,000 infections to its caseload while reporting triple-digit daily jumps in each of the past 14 days, prompting health experts to warn about possible strain on hospitals.

The 441 cases reported Thursday was the biggest daily increase since the 483 reported on March 7.

The National Assembly in Seoul was shut down and more than a dozen ruling party lawmakers were forced to isolate Thursday following a positive test of a journalist covering the parliament.

If the viral spread doesn’t slow, health authorities have said they will consider elevating social distancing measures to the strongest “Level 3,” which could include banning gatherings of more than 10 people and advising private companies to have their employees work from home.

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