5 Major Coronavirus Developments — Sweden Admits Mistakes, RI Now 15,000 Cases — June 3, 2020
GoLocalProv News Team
5 Major Coronavirus Developments — Sweden Admits Mistakes, RI Now 15,000 Cases — June 3, 2020
Now, the country that took a different strategy is now admitting their strategy has not worked as they hoped.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"The architect of Sweden’s controversial lighter lockdown policy for dealing with coronavirus has for the first time conceded the Scandinavian country should have imposed more restrictions to avoid having such a high death toll. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, agreed with the interviewer on Sveriges Radio that too many people had died in the country," reports the Financial Times.
Sweden did not close schools or businesses. It tried to achieve "herd immunity" quickly but despite promises by government officials - it failed to hit milestones.
“'If we would encounter the same disease, with exactly what we know about it today, I think we would land midway between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did,' said Tegnell in the interview broadcast on Wednesday morning.
Tegnell’s admission is striking as for months he has criticized other countries’ lockdowns and insisted that Sweden’s approach was more sustainable despite heavy international scrutiny of its stubbornly high death toll. Sweden’s centre-left government on Monday said it would appoint a commission to investigate the country’s approach to coronavirus before the summer, bowing to pressure from opposition politicians," according to the FT.
WATCH AT NOON: Former Director of Health Dr. Michael Fine on GoLocal LIVE
See Slideshow: 5 Major Coronavirus Developments Below
5 Major Coronavirus Developments — June 3, 2020
Bail Hearing for ICE Detainees at Wyatt Due to COVID-19
In advance of bail hearings beginning at 10 AM Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy to consider the release of ICE detainees at the Wyatt Detention Center, the judge has released a 15-page decision explaining her decision to order the hearings.
According to the ACLU of RI, the hearings are in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by ACLU attorneys two weeks ago seeking urgent relief for immigration detainees at the facility facing the increasing spread of COVID-19 there.
In addition, ICE officials yesterday voluntarily agreed to release three of the detainees, obviating the need for bail hearings for them. Before this case was filed, the ACLU separately won a lawsuit that secured the release of three other medically vulnerable ICE detainees from Wyatt.
The ACLU claims that in her explanatory order, Judge McElroy said that “conditions at Wyatt, combined with the fact that COVID-19 is present in the institution, constitute emergency circumstances for every detainee housed there.” She criticized “the fact that several months into this pandemic and with widespread infection in the detention facility and surrounding community, the government has not undertaken any real effort to ascertain the underlying medical conditions of the detainees in this case.” The judge concluded by stating that conditions at Wyatt “present a case for a substantial claim of constitutional error and present facts which may lead the Court to conclude that their continued detention under these circumstances presents a substantial risk of serious harm of death.”
Las Vegas Will Be Impacted for Years
The Wall Street Journal is reporting:
"The pandemic hit Nevada’s workforce harder than any other U.S. state and poses a potentially existential threat to Las Vegas’s business model based on bringing people together for gambling, entertainment and conventions.
Even as some casinos and other venues prepare to partially reopen, questions linger about how willing Americans will be to fly, grab a pair of dice from a stranger and dance in a nightclub."
SATs Going Online Canceled
"The College Board said on Tuesday that it would postpone plans to offer an online version of the SAT for high school students to take at home this year, further muddying a ritual of the college application process that had already been thrown into chaos by the coronavirus.
After canceling test dates this spring, the board announced in mid-April that it was developing a digital version of the SAT to be introduced if the pandemic continued to require social distancing in the fall, which would make it hard for the nonprofit organization to provide enough testing dates and centers," according to the New York Times.
Numbers
15,112 Cases in Rhode Island
101,163 Cases in Massachusetts
732 Deaths in RI
7,085 Deaths in Massachusetts
1,881,344 Cases in the United States
108,064 Deaths in the United States
6,479,493 Global Cases
383,015 Global Deaths
2,879,532 Global Recoveries
GoLocal LIVE -- Wednesday, June 3, 2020
12:00 PM - Dr. Michael Fine, Former RI Director of Health
2:30 PM - Governor Gina Raimondo Briefing
EDITOR'S NOTE: Gov. Raimondo has reversed her policy and is now allowing reporters to attend press conferences and directly ask questions. For more than 6 weeks she had blocked reporters from directly asking questions for the public to hear.
