Thursday Morning Briefing: Concerns grow that kids spread COVID-19

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August 20, 2020 Reuters News Now What you need to know about the coronavirus today Concerns grow that kids spread virus U.S. students are returning to school in person and online in the middle of a pandemic, and the stakes for educators and families are rising in the face of emerging research that shows children could be a risk for spreading the new coronavirus. Several large studies have shown that the vast majority of children who contract COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have milder illness than adults. And early reports did not find strong evidence of children as major contributors to the deadly virus that has killed more than 780,000 people globally. Grave situation in renewed South Korea outbreak. Novel coronavirus infections have spread nationwide from a church in the South Korean capital, raising fears that one of the world's virus mitigation success stories might yet suffer a disastrous outbreak, a top health official said on Thursday. Brazil sees signs spread is slowing. The spread of the coronavirus in Brazil could be about to slow, the Health Ministry said, amid reports the transmission rate has fallen below a key level and early signs of a gradual decline in the weekly totals of cases and fatalities. The cautious optimism comes despite figures again showing a steady rise in the number of confirmed cases and death toll in the last 24 hours, cementing Brazil's status as the world's second biggest COVID-19 hot spot after the United States. Trump touts convalescent plasma as treatment. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19 and suggested a reported decision by regulators to put on hold an emergency authorization for its use could be politically motivated. "I've heard fantastic things about convalescent plasma," Trump told a briefing. China backs Wuhan park after pool party. Chinese state newspapers threw their support behind an amusement park in the central city of Wuhan on Thursday after pictures of a densely packed pool party at the park went viral overseas amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19. Videos and photos of an electronic music festival at the Wuhan Maya Beach Water Park on July 11 raised eyebrows overseas, but reflected life returning to normal in the city where the virus causing COVID-19 was first detected, the official English-language China Daily newspaper said in a front-page story. From Breakingviews: Corona Capital - EQT, Australia, Defaults, Drugs Read concise views on the pandemic’s financial fallout from Breakingviews columnists across the globe. Reuters reporters and editors around the world are investigating the response to the coronavirus pandemic. We need your help to tell these stories. Our news organization wants to capture the full scope of what’s happening and how we got here by drawing on a wide variety of sources. Here’s a look at our coverage. Are you a government employee or contractor involved in coronavirus testing or the wider public health response? Are you a doctor, nurse or health worker caring for patients? Have you worked on similar outbreaks in the past? Has the disease known as COVID-19 personally affected you or your family? Are you aware of new problems that are about to emerge, such as critical supply shortages? We need your tips, firsthand accounts, relevant documents or expert knowledge. Please contact us at coronavirus@reuters.com. We prefer tips from named sources, but if you’d rather remain anonymous, you can submit a confidential news tip. Here’s how. Top News In the biggest speech of his nearly 50 years in public life, Joe Biden will spell out his vision for the presidency on Thursday when he accepts the Democratic nomination to challenge Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 U.S. election. Biden’s speech on the fourth and last night of the Democratic National Convention will be a crowning moment in a long political career for the former U.S. senator and vice president, who fared poorly in two previous runs for the White House in 1988 and 2008. Biden’s vice presidential choice, Kamala Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American on a major presidential ticket, accepted her nomination on Wednesday and accused Trump of failed leadership that had cost lives and livelihoods. Former President Barack Obama, who Biden served as vice president for eight years, delivered his harshest critique of Trump yet at the convention, saying his hopes that Trump would grow into the job had been dashed. U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday will travel to the area in the swing state of Pennsylvania where Democratic rival Joe Biden was born to slam his decades of government service, hours before the former vice president accepts his party’s nomination. Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was in a coma in a Siberian hospital on Thursday after drinking a cup of tea that his spokeswoman said she believed was laced with poison. A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, Navalny started feeling ill when returning to Moscow from Tomsk in Siberia by plane on Wednesday morning. He was carried off the plane on a stretcher after it made an emergency landing at Omsk. COVID Science A small study in Britain suggests researchers should be on the look-out over whether COVID-19 increases the risk of type 1 diabetes. Cases of type 1 diabetes among children may have risen during the peak of Britain's COVID-19 outbreak, scientists said in the Diabetes Care journal in a study based on 30 cases at two hospitals. American Indians and Alaska Natives have been hit harder by COVID-19 than the U.S. white population and have been more likely to become infected by the novel coronavirus at a younger age, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed on Wednesday. The incidence of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases among people identified as American Indians or Alaska Natives was 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites, making them one of the racial and ethnic minority groups at highest risk, according to the study based on data from 23 U.S. states from Jan. 22 to July 3. Follow the money In U.S.-China tech war, investors bet on China's localisation push As the U.S.-China “tech war” widens, investors are betting on China’s efforts to replace U.S. technologies with indigenous applications to run networks in the state sector. 5 min read Facebook wins preliminary approval to settle facial recognition lawsuit Facebook won preliminary approval late on Wednesday from a federal court for settlement of a lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data of millions of users without their consent. 2 min read Global stocks fall as markets still rattled by Fed minutes Asian and European share markets fell on Thursday, after the U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest meeting minutes highlighted doubts about the recovery of the world’s largest economy and knocked Wall Street from recent record highs. 4 min read Airbnb files for IPO as short-term rental market rebounds Short-term home rental company Airbnb said on Wednesday it filed confidentially for an initial public offering with U.S. regulators, setting the stage for one of 2020’s marquee U.S. stock market debuts. 3 min read Top Stories on Reuters TV Extreme' California wildfire forces evacuations U.S.   1:54 The Beatles' Cavern Club in 'fight for survival' Entertainment   1:00 Real news for busy people More Newsletters Reuters News Reuters TV               © 2020 Thomson Reuters. 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