The Latest: Trump virus adviser says parties fueling spread

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — President Donald Trump’s top coronavirus adviser says families and friends holding parties is helping fuel the virus’ spread, issuing the warning as some colleges are dealing with outbreaks tied to parties.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, urged people to wear masks and socially distance after visiting with Gov. Asa Hutchinson and state health officials, pointing to the gatherings as a particular concern.

“We’re finding that the majority of community spread right now is happening from parties, either indoors or outdoors, where people are with their families or friends and believe there’s no one there … (who) has COVID,” Birx told reporters outside the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion. “And yet there is someone there that has the virus and they don’t know they have the virus because a significant number are asymptomatic.”

__

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:

— Japan’s economy shrinks at record rate, slammed by pandemic

— New Zealand delays election by four weeks after virus outbreak in Auckland

— South Koreans urged to stay home as cases jump

— Federal virus money slow to trickle to local public health in the U.S.

___

— Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

___

HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas has surpassed 10,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths as the lingering toll of a massive summer outbreak continues.

Texas on Monday joined New York, New Jersey and California as the other states to reach the grim milestone. Florida is also close behind.

Roughly four in every five of those deaths in Texas were reported after June 1. Texas embarked on one of the fastest reopenings in the country in May before an ensuing surge in cases forced Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to backtrack and impose a statewide mask order.

August has seen an improving outlook, including a sharp decline in hospitalizations. But Texas officials are now concerned that not enough people are seeking tests.

Health experts have also expressed concerns that recent encouraging trends could be fragile as Texas schools begin reopening for 5 million students across the state.

___

HELENA, Mont. — Actress Sharon Stone is criticizing the availability of COVID-19 testing in Montana, where her sister and brother-in-law are hospitalized with the respiratory virus.

Stone posted a video on Instagram Sunday expressing frustration that there aren’t enough tests for front-line workers and people who have had direct contact with someone who has COVID-19, “like my mother, who’s had two heart attacks, five stents and a pacemaker in the past five months.”

Her mother wasn’t tested because she wasn’t symptomatic, despite her underlying health conditions, Stone said.

Stone’s sister, Kelly Stone, also has lupus, “and is not doing well,” the actress said. Kelly Stone has been posting videos on Instagram from her hospital bed, where she is on oxygen.

Sharon Stone has not said where her sister is hospitalized.

___

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in New Orleans has refused to block the state from closing bars amid the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued his ruling Monday afternoon, handing a defeat to 10 bar owners in southeast Louisiana.

Even as his ruling was issued, a similar lawsuit in southwest Louisiana was being argued in Lafayette.

Gov. John Bel Edwards issued the closure order last month. He was expected to testify in that hearing, where 11 bar owners were challenging the closure order.

At the heart of the arguments has been whether statistics support the closures of on-site consumption at bars while restaurants that contain bars are not closed.

____

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says it’s switching all undergraduate classes to remote learning after the coronavirus spread in the first week since classes began.

University leaders posted online that all undergraduate classes will shift to online learning starting on Wednesday.

The university said that it was working on plans to transition students who want to leave out of campus housing. University leaders said in the statement: “We expect the majority of our current undergraduate residential students to change their residential plans for the fall.”

The statement added: “We have emphasized that if we were faced with the need to change plans – take an off-ramp – we would not hesitate to do so, but we have not taken this decision lightly.”

On Monday, UNC-Chapel Hill reported 130 new positive cases among students and 5 among university employees for the week ending Sunday.

___

HARRISBURG, Penn. — Pennsylvania plans to launch a coronavirus exposure-notification app in early September in an effort to more quickly break chains of transmission by using the new technology to notify people who may have been exposed, officials said Monday.

The state has a $1.9 million contract, using federal grant dollars, to deploy and maintain the app with software developer NearForm Ltd, the Ireland-based company whose app there has been downloaded by more than one-fourth of that country’s residents.

The app is based on smartphone technology developed by Apple and Google, and will undergo a pilot project next week, using state government employees and public health students, staff and faculty, officials told The Associated Press in an interview.

The app will be interoperable with the state of Delaware’s app, and it also is expected to be interoperable with those of two other states, although Pennsylvania state officials declined to name those states because they are still in discussions with the app developer.

___

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Monday that he has submitted an application for unemployed Oklahomans to receive an additional $300 in federal unemployment benefits.

Once the Federal Emergency Management Agency approves the state’s grant application, the federal government will fund the $300-per-week benefit and Oklahoma will fulfill the 25% state match through existing unemployment benefits, Stitt said.

“As we are months ahead of other states in our recovery and Oklahoma is open for business, many Oklahomans have returned to work or are in training to take on a new career,” Stitt said in a statement. “However, we also want to continue to help those who are still working to secure employment.”

For months, on top of their state benefit, unemployed Americans also collected $600 a week in federal jobless aid, but that expired at the end of July, and negotiations in Congress to extend it collapsed.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that would provide $300 a week to replace the expired $600.

___

CHICAGO — Illinois public health officials have launched a COVID-19 hotspot map for travelers to check before leaving the state.

The online map of the United States shows which states have an average daily case rate of at least 15 cases per 100,000 people, which are considered higher risk areas.

The Illinois Department of Public Health says the idea is to help people assess their risk before they travel outside the state.

Health officials announced 1,773 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 12 additional deaths.

___

QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. — The first day of school, a normally happy ritual, was fraught with conflict Monday at some schools opening in Arizona, echoing debates across the country over the risks of holding all in-person instruction amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In some districts, worried teachers resigned or called in sick. While Queen Creek Unified School District opened its doors, J.O. Combs Unified School District in neighboring Pinal County canceled its planned reopening Monday after an overwhelming number of staff said they planned to be absent.

The school board in the town of Queen Creek, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southeast of Phoenix, voted last week to offer in-person instruction full-time. Jacob Frantz, a chemistry teacher at the high school and head of the local education association, resigned soon after the vote. Frantz said he knows of a dozen others who quit since the vote and said roughly 30 others have left since June, when the district first proposed doing all in-person instruction.

Stephanie Ingersoll, a spokeswoman for the district, said media reports have inaccurately reported the number of teachers resigning. She said “a small number” gave notice after the school board vote.

___

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida reported its lowest number of new coronavirus cases since mid-June on Monday as the number of people hospitalized continued to fall.

The state reported 2,678 new confirmed cases, a level the state hasn’t seen since June 17 just as Florida began a month-long explosion of new infections that peaked at 15,300 on July 12. The seven-day average for new cases is now about 3,600, down from 11,000 a month ago.

Also, the number of people being treated in Florida hospitals for COVID-19 has been declining since highs above 9,500 on July 23. The number of patients in the late morning Monday stood at 5,657, according to a tally posted online by the state.

Still, since Aug. 1, Florida has been averaging 150 coronavirus deaths per day, which would make the disease the state’s No. 1 killer — cancer and heart disease each kill about 125 people per day on average, according to the state health department. Coronavirus deaths typically occur weeks or more after the disease is contracted and diagnosed.

___

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas has reported its biggest seven-day increase in novel coronavirus cases since the pandemic began. The state Department of Health and Environment said Monday that Kansas had another 1,282 confirmed and probable cases since Friday for an increase of 3.8% and a total of 35,167.

The state reported 3,437 new cases since Aug. 10, for a seven-day average of 491 new cases a day. Kansas has seen reported cases double over the past six weeks. However, fewer cases appear to be resulting in COVID-19-related deaths.

The state health department reported an additional three deaths Monday to bring the pandemic total to 405. Those deaths represent 1.15% of the total reported confirmed and probable cases, the lowest percentage since the state reported its first death in March.

___

SALT LAKE CITY — Hispanics and other people of color in Utah were disproportionately hit by workplace COVID-19 outbreaks, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Monday.

From March to early June, 12% of the state’s coronavirus cases were tied to workplace outbreaks, mostly in manufacturing, construction and wholesale trade. The report found that 73% of the cases in these outbreaks affected Hispanic or other people of color, even though they only make up 24% of the workers in those industries.

The report noted that minority workers typically have less flexible work schedules and fewer telework opportunities compared to white employees. That lack of flexibility along with unpaid sick leave policies may prevent workers from staying home when they’re ill, resulting in more workplace exposures and increased virus spread.

These racial disparities in work-related outbreaks in Utah are similar to those seen in meat processing facility outbreaks in other states throughout the U.S., according to the report.

___

ROCHICAGO: Illinois public health officials have launched a COVID-19 hotspot map for travelers to check before leaving the state. The online map of the United States shows which states have an average daily case rate of at least 15 cases per 100,000 people. They are considered higher risk areas. The Illinois Department of Public Health says the idea is to help people assess their risk before they travel outside the state. Health officials announced 1,773 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 12 additional deaths.ME — Italy’s day-to-day new case numbers dropped for a second straight day, but so did the number of swab tests performed to detect coronavirus infections.

According to Health Ministry figures on Monday, 320 coronavirus cases were registered since the previous day, and 30,666 swab tests were carried out at the end of Italy’s big summer holiday weekend. Two days earlier, when Italy registered 629 case —the first time the daily caseload had topped 600 since May— there were more than 53,000 swab tests performed.

From the start of August, the number of hospitalized patients has climbed from just over 700 to 810 on Monday. Still, the situation is dramatically different than in the first weeks of the pandemic, when thousands of people in Italy were being hospitalized daily with COVID-19.

Italy now records 254,235 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Four deaths were registered in the last 24 hours, raising the nation death toll in the pandemic to 35,400.

___

MADRID — Spain is reporting 16,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases since Friday, when the last official update post-lockdown brought a record of nearly 3,000 cases in one day.

Fernando Simón, head of Spain’s health emergency coordination center, said the country needs to focus on controlling the spread of the virus ahead of September’s resumption of school and work activity after lockdowns and summer vacations.

“The problem in September is that people from areas with different epidemiological status are going to gather together,” Simón told reporters at a press conference. “We have to try to minimize the risk of that explosive mix.”

Since Spain ended a three-month lockdown June 21, the country’s health ministry has recorded more than 112,00 confirmed virus cases. Health authorities say one reason for the resurgence is that testing capacity has both expanded and become more targeted.

In the past 14 days — a period that experts say reflects a more accurate picture of the situation— Spain has recorded nearly 60,000 new confirmed cases, an average tally of more than 4,200 new daily cases, ministry data showed.

The government says more than 28,600 people have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

___

ATHENS, Greece — Greece saw a slight drop in the number of new coronavirus infections Monday, with 150 new confirmed positive cases reported in the last 24 hours, compared to above 200 daily for the past five days.

Health authorities said two people died, bringing the total death toll to 230, and the overall confirmed infections to 7,222.

Greek authorities have imposed restrictions on some tourist hotspots as well as on Athens following an alarming increase in the number of daily infections, including ordering bars, restaurants and cafes to shut at midnight, and limiting the number of people at weddings and other gatherings to 50.

Greece had prided itself on successfully managing the initial outbreak of the pandemic, imposing an early lockdown that kept the numbers of infections and seriously ill people low. But the country has seen a spike in cases since restrictions were relaxed during the summer. Authorities say most are attributed to people ignoring protective measures such as social distancing.