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|Articles|March 31, 2020

Contagion Live News Network: Coronavirus Updates for March 31, 2020

Listen for a daily COVID-19 update.

Welcome to the Contagion Live News Network. I’m Grant Gallagher and this is the COVID-19 update for Tuesday, March 31st, 2020.

While the pandemic has not yet peaked in the United States, there are early signs that the rate of daily new infections may be slowing in some regions. Referring to social distancing, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday morning that “we’re starting to see glimmers that it is actually having some dampening effect.”

In other news, new guidelines on adapting long-term care facilities to the COVID-19 pandemic were released by the World Health Organization, as well as by organizations in the US such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More on these guidelines was published this morning on Contagion®.

We also shared new information on the risk to for Babies Born to Mothers With Coronavirus, as in a small cohort of pregnant, coronavirus-positive women in Wuhan, China, 9% of babies presented with early-onset coronavirus. It is not completely certain yet whether vertical transmission was responsible, but that is considered a possibility given cautious infection control measures were taken during deliveries.

The total number of cases globally has now passed 838,000 with over 41,000 deaths.

In the United States, there are more than 177,000 confirmed cases and 3,440 deaths. New York has the highest number of confirmed cases at nearly 75,800. New Jersey has 17,126 cases, and California has the 3rd highest number of cases with 7,477.

For other stories relevant to COVID-19 and the latest infectious disease news, visit ContagionLive.com. To track the spread of infectious diseases in the United States and abroad, be sure to use the Contagion Outbreak Monitor.

For the Contagion Live News Network, I’m Grant Gallagher. Thanks for listening.

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