The cases topped Friday’s record of 13,005 infections, bringing the total to almost 1.1 million. The number of deaths increased by 86 to 18,643, state data showed. The increased patient load left California’s hospitals with just 1,921 intensive-case unit beds available, near the low in July.

A 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew will be imposed in most counties for a month to ease the rate of infection, affecting areas that encompass 37 million people, or 94% of the population.

Only 10 countries globally have more cases than California, where the number of cases now exceeds those in Mexico and Germany, which have been hot spots for the pandemic.

Governor Gavin Newsom said earlier in the week that the curfew will stop nonessential work and gatherings to “flatten the curve again,” reflecting growing alarm among state officials as the third wave of coronavirus infections to hit the state gathers momentum.

The world-famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, known for helping scientists peer into deep space and listen for distant radio waves, is set to be decommissioned and demolished after engineers concluded that the facility’s structure is at risk of a collapse. While teams will try to salvage some parts of the observatory, the decommission will bring an end to the popular 57-year-old telescope, which has been featured in numerous films and television shows.

The decision comes after two major cables failed at the facility within the last few months, causing significant damage to the observatory. The National Science Foundation (NSF), which oversees Arecibo, assessed the impact of the cable breaks and found that the facility’s other cables could also fail soon. If some of the remaining cables break, engineers fear that the 900-ton suspended platform above the facility could come crashing down on Arecibo’s iconic 1,000-foot-wide dish. It’s also possible that three surrounding towers, which stand at more than 300 feet tall, could topple over in any direction, potentially hitting the visitor’s center or other important nearby buildings.

Dr. Henry Walke, the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager, said there is “no more important time than now for each and every American to redouble our efforts to watch our distance, wash our hands and, most importantly, wear a mask.”

“CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period,” he said. “For Americans who decide to travel, CDC recommends doing so as safely as possible by following the same recommendations for everyday living.”

Walke added that the CDC is concerned “about the transportation hubs.” He said he’s worried people won’t be able to maintain social distancing while waiting in line, for example, to board buses and planes.

Hospitals in at least 25 states are critically short of nurses, doctors, and other staff as coronavirus cases surge across the United States, according to the industry’s trade association and a tally conducted by STAT. The situation has gotten so bad that in some places, severely ill patients have been transferred hundreds of miles for an available bed — from Texas to Arizona, and from central Missouri to Iowa.

Many of these hospitals spent months building up stockpiles of medical equipment and protective gear in response to Covid-19, but the supplies are of little use without adequate staffing.

“Care is about more than a room with a hospital bed. It’s about medical professionals taking care of patients,” said John Henderson, chief executive of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH). “If you don’t have the staff to do that, people are going to die.”

Scientists have developed a new interactive map that shows the risk of contracting coronavirus anywhere in the US in real-time.

The COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool tells Americans their odds of encountering at least one person with the virus in every county at an event with a crowd size ranging from 10 people to 5,000 people.

This means you can assess the risk of one coronavirus-positive individual being at a 10-person dinner party, a Thanksgiving gathering with 25 guests, a 100-person wedding or a concert with 1,000 attendees.

Even if human-caused greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced to zero, global temperatures may continue to rise for centuries afterward, according to a scientific study published Thursday.

"The world is already past a point of no return for global warming," the study authors report in the British journal Scientific Reports. The only way to stop the warming, they say, is that "enormous amounts of carbon dioxide have to be extracted from the atmosphere."

The burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to increase and sea levels to rise.

The scientists modeled the effect of greenhouse gas emission reductions on changes in the Earth's climate from 1850 to 2500 and created projections of global temperature and sea level rises.

Parents whose adult children still live at home have revealed whether they charge their kids rent, and how much money they expect for their board.

Many parents responding to the thread explained that they charge their children a 'percentage of every bill' in order to teach their kids about the cost of living.

'I charge mine about $100 per week, dependent on their situation, which covers utilities and basic foods,' one mum posted.

'They pay for their phone and personal items, and generally pick up the little things for the house like milk and toilet paper if we run out.'

Coronavirus could age the brain by ten years or cause IQ to fall, a study has suggested.

Researchers have warned that survivors of the worst cases of the virus could be at risk of lasting mental damage, equivalent to an 8.5-point drop in IQ or the brain ageing a decade.

This 'brain fog' has already been reported by sufferers for weeks, even months after recovering from Covid-19.

Some have told of losing the ability to recall everyday facts or hold a conversation.

Mouthwashes may help lower the transmission and spread of the coronavirus, according to a new study.

In the study, published in the Journal of Medical Virology, researchers investigated over-the-counter mouthwashes and nasal rinses commonly found in drug stores and supermarkets, since both types of products “directly impact the major sites of reception and transmission of human coronaviruses (HCoV)” — namely, the mouth and nose — and “may provide an additional level of protection against the virus.”

To find out whether mouthwashes and nasal rinses would be effective against the coronavirus, the researchers tested a common human coronavirus known as 229e — one of several strains that typically only cause mild infections like the common cold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — not SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus associated with COVID-19.

Ten states reported their highest single-day tallies of new Covid-19 infections Friday, and the country reported its highest one-day total since July, as experts say a dangerous fall surge of coronavirus infections is well underway.

"This really is a harrowing time, and people have to be careful," epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed told CNN on Saturday.

"When we saw this kind of transmission earlier in the pandemic, in March and April, the virus hadn't seeded everywhere ... This surge has the potential to be way worse than it was than either the spring or the summer," El-Sayed, Detroit's former health director, said.

The US reported more than 69,100 new Covid-19 infections Friday -- the most in a single day since about 71,300 were reported July 29, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Downing Street representatives told a briefing of Westminster journalists that partners are free to meet outdoors, but must still adhere to social distancing guidelines, the Evening Standard newspaper reported.

While singles have suffered months of loneliness and asking themselves, “Do I really need this boyfriend pillow?” under the so-called “casual sex ban”, some couples may be barred from seeing one another under certain tiers.

In the raft of new pandemic policies, the first tier duplicates the country’s most recent restrictions. The second tier bars people from different households from socialising together indoors.

A new report estimates that 29 million women and girls are victims of modern slavery, exploited by practices including forced labour, forced marriage, debt-bondage and domestic servitude.

Grace Forrest, co-founder of the Walk Free anti-slavery organisation, said Friday that means one in every 130 women and girls is living in modern slavery today, more than the population of Australia.

"The reality is that there are more people living in slavery today than any other time in human history," she told a U.N. news conference.

Walk Free defines modern slavery "as the systematic removal of a person’s freedom, where one person is exploited by another for personal or financial gain," she said.

According to the report, titled "Stacked Odds," women account for 99% of all victims of forced sexual exploitation, 84% of all victims of forced marriage, and 58% of all victims of forced labour.

For Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar, Covid-19 brought an onslaught of symptoms from chest pains to an 11-day migraine, three positive test results, and a period in hospital.

Seven months later, the rollercoaster is far from over: the 36-year-old from Byron Bay, Australia is still experiencing symptoms – including difficulties with thinking that are often described as “brain fog”.

“Brain fog seems like such an inferior description of what is actually going on. It’s completely crippling. I am unable to think clearly enough to [do] anything,” says Nicholson-McKellar, adding that the experience would be better described as cognitive impairment.

The consequences, she says, have been enormous.

“I can’t work more than one to two hours a day and even just leaving the house to get some shopping can be a challenge,” she says. “When I get tired it becomes much worse and sometimes all I can do is lay in bed and watch TV.” Brain fog has made her forgetful to the point that she says she burns pots while cooking.

“It often prevents me from being able to have a coherent conversation or write a text message or email,” she adds. “I feel like a shadow of my former self. I am not living right now, I am simply existing.”

Hundreds of thousands of people with mental health conditions in 60 countries are still being chained, according to a comprehensive and damning new study.

Human Rights Watch says that men, women and children – some as young as 10 – are regularly shackled or locked in confined spaces for weeks, months, and even years, across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.

The report, Living in Chains: Shackling of People with Psychosocial Disabilities Worldwide, examines how people with mental health conditions are often shackled against their will by families in their own homes or in overcrowded and unsanitary institutions because of widespread stigma and a lack of mental health services.

Do not waste your time and emotional energy planning around an imminent game-changing injection or pill in the coming months. A pandemic is not a problem that will be fixed in one move, by any single medication or a sudden vaccine. Instead, the way forward involves small, imperfect preventive measures that can accumulate into very effective interventions. Groups of practices that minimize the spread of disease are sometimes known as prevention bundles. Our COVID-19 bundle includes important drugs, such as dexamethasone and remdesivir, which seem to help certain patients in specific situations. It also involves behaviors, too, such as distancing and masking. “Any action you take has the potential for numerous secondary and tangential benefits,” Thomas said.

On april 13, Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared on the Today show and assured viewers that the worst was nearly behind us.

By July, the number of daily cases had doubled. The death total had shot past 100,000. As Redfield looked ahead, his tone became more ominous. The fall and the winter, he said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association, “are going to be probably one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health.”

A vaccine will be part of our bundles, hopefully before too long. But it will not instantly eliminate the need for everything else. If we can accept that masks will be a part of our lives indefinitely, we can focus on improving their effectiveness and making them less annoying to wear, Yale’s Ko said. “And it’s not just the design of masks themselves; we can come up with more innovative ways to promote face-mask use.” For one thing, they could be made more ubiquitous by employers and state agencies. Governments could even, as Luxembourg’s did, send masks to everyone by mail.