Local news station WESH reports that the woman tried to enter the Walmart in Winter Springs, Florida over the weekend without wearing any kind of face covering.
When she refused to wear a mask after being asked by employees to do so, she began yelling at them.
"You guys are a f*cking cult!" she shouted. "Never! I'm not wearing a mask! F*ck you!"
As she storms off the parking lot, employees can be heard laughing at her.
According to WESH, officials in Seminole County recently voted for a mask order that states "people working, living, visiting or doing business in Seminole County will be required to wear a face covering consistent with CDC guidelines while at all businesses, places of assembly and other places open to the public."
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, announced on Wednesday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 just weeks after attending President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa.
"The first-term Republican governor has backed one of the country’s most aggressive reopening plans, has resisted any statewide mandate on masks and rarely wears one himself," the AP noted.
On Wednesday, KDVR reported that the Republican Party of Douglas County, Colorado, is apologizing for posting a racist cartoon on Facebook comparing Democratic Gov. Jared Polis' COVID-19 restrictions to the police killing of George Floyd.
The cartoon depicts a police officer labeled "Polis" with a boot on a masked man labeled "Colorado" above the caption "we can't breathe" — a reference to the arrested former Minneapolis police officer who suffocated Floyd by kneeling on his neck for almost 9 minutes.
"On behalf of the Board of Douglas County Commissioners, the above referenced image distributed by a person with access to the Douglas County GOP social media, is reprehensible and is not represent [sic] our values," tweeted Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas.
The cartoon has sparked outrage. “The leadership of the Douglas County Republican Party responsible for this posting should resign immediately," said Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock. "It’s disgusting and not representation of Douglas County Republican."
Axios reports that new data from the National Federation of Independent Business and investment bank UBS show that small businesses appear to be in dire straits even as big businesses such as Amazon benefit from the collapse of competitors.
A recent survey conducted by NFIB found that "23 percent of small businesses... would be able to operate under current economic conditions for no more than six months," while "another 21 percent said no more than a year."
Holly Wade, NFIB's director of research, tells Axios that the survey data present "a bleak picture."
Separately, UBS global equity strategist Keith Parker tells Axios that a recent survey of small businesses' chief financial officers has found that their expectations for earnings "have essentially collapsed."
Mohamed Kande, the U.S. and global advisory leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicts that all of this will result into massive industry mergers with just a few large players left standing.
"What happens when you have changes like that is you start to see a wave of consolidation," he said. "It's hard for small companies to survive because they don’t have the balance sheets, they don’t have the capital to sustain a crisis for a long time."
Even by the standards of the national pandemic spike, Arizona has a serious coronavirus problem.
On Monday morning the state's health department reported 1,357 new coronavirus cases, including eight additional deaths. It now has more cases per capita than any other state besides New Jersey, whose outbreak peaked months ago. Moreover, the rate at which new cases have been reported has surpassed the rate at which testing has been increased, which means the existing data almost certainly does not reflect the true extent of the outbreak.
Further complicating matters, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, only authorized local governments to implement mask requirements on June 17 — and public health officials say it will take several weeks for the impact of those requirements to be evident. Ducey has also been criticized for personally setting a bad example after a photograph was published showing him at a social event practicing neither distancing nor mask-wearing. (Ducey's office disputes the timeline involving when the photograph was taken.)
Arizona has also had a series of high-profile coronavirus cases. Last month a teacher in the state died after contracting the coronavirus while she was forced to share a classroom with two other teachers, both of whom also contracted the disease. On Monday a group of school board members and medical professionals signed an open letter to Ducey urging him to delay opening schools until at least October, citing concerns about the safety of both educators and students. (Officials in Phoenix, the state's largest city, has made clear public schools will be online-only as the fall term begins.)
Ducey was also called out in an impassioned obituary written by Kristin Urquiza, whose father, Mark Anthony Urquiza, died from COVID-19 last month.
"Mark, like so many others, should not have died from COVID-19," Urquiza wrote. "His death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to jeopardize the health of brown bodies through a clear lack of leadership, refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize risk."
So what exactly has gone wrong in Arizona — and what can be done to make it right?
"It is impossible to say whether [Ducey] is ignoring advice, is unaware of it, or doesn't believe it," Dr. Elizabeth Jacobs, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona, told Salon by email. "There have been numerous editorials published that have strongly recommended intensive actions, such as a statewide mandate on masking and improved testing speeds. The latest actions by the governor aim to increase testing capacity by the end of August. With considerations such as reopening schools and universities under discussion, this will not be soon enough. It is distressing that we do not have adequate testing in the state even now."
When asked about specific mistakes made by Arizona's government, Jacobs pointed to overly ambitious economic reopening that was too rapid, the lack of a statewide mandate on masking and incompetent or inadequate testing, which she described as "the biggest concern I have personally right now."
"We need rapid testing available to everyone, with testing sites equally distributed in all neighborhoods, regardless of socioeconomic status," Jacobs explained. "We need tests that are sensitive and specific, with rapid turnaround. We need supports in place for those who may be most vulnerable to COVID-19, such as our Native American Nations and among our Latinx population. We also need to ensure that legislation to protect individuals from evictions is renewed during this emergent epidemic, and that we provide financial support for those who are being hit hardest by social distancing." Jacobs also called for "sensible and reasonable recommendations" for school reopening and said that Arizonans need to know that authority figures "care about them and will be here to support them."
A recent poll suggests that Jacobs' views are held by a large number of her fellow Arizonans. A poll by the COVID-19 consortium found that Ducey has the lowest ranking among all American governors for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and in fact is the only governor to rank below President Trump. (Ducey has a 32 percent approval rating compared to Trump's 34 percent approval rating.)
As of Sunday Arizona has reported 2,245 deaths a total of 122,467 cases. In an open letter to Ducey, the mayors of Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tempe, Tolleson and Tucson said that "our economy will not recover until we are able to slow the spread and rebuild consumer confidence. The longer we wait to act, the longer and more severe the blow to our economy will be, the longer it will take to safely send our children back to school, and more lives will be needlessly lost."
A recent article in Vox echoed some of these observations. As German Lopez wrote, Arizona's coronavirus spike "is the result, experts say, of Arizona's missteps at three crucial points in the pandemic. The state reacted too slowly to the coronavirus pandemic in March. As cases began to level off nationwide, officials moved too quickly to reopen in early and mid-May. As cases rose in the state in late May and then June, its leaders once again moved too slowly."
As Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, told Vox, the state reopened too aggressively. "It was a free-for-all by May 15," Humble said, later adding that the state effectively "went from phase 0 to phase 3."
Unfortunately the errors made by Arizona's leaders are likely to be have long-lasting consequences regardless of how the state tries to make up for things now.
"Even if I put in 100 percent face mask use and everybody complied with it in Arizona right now, there would still be weeks of pain," Cyrus Shahpar, a director at the global health advocacy group Resolve to Save Lives, told Vox. "There are people out there spreading disease, and it takes time [to pick them up as cases], from exposure to symptom onset to testing to getting the testing results."
The U.S. is pinning its hopes on a COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine, but will a vaccine alone be enough to stop the pandemic and allow life to return to normal?
The answer depends on a how “good” the vaccine ends up being.
In a study published July 15 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, my colleagues and I used a computer simulation of every person in the country to show how effective a vaccine would have to be and how many people would have to get vaccinated to end the pandemic. We found that a coronavirus vaccine’s effectiveness may have to be higher than 70% or even 80% before Americans can safely stop relying social distancing. By comparison, the measles vaccine has an efficacy of 95%-98%, and the flu vaccine is 20%-60%.
That doesn’t mean a vaccine that offers less protection would be useless, but it would mean social distancing in some form may still be necessary.
However, it is important to remember that a vaccine is like many other products: What matters is not just that the product is available but also how effective it is. Take clothing for example. If you are going to a formal dinner, underwear alone may partially cover you but probably not well enough for the occasion. This doesn’t mean underwear is useless.
Similarly, different vaccines may offer different levels of protection. Scientists talk about this as the vaccine’s efficacy or effectiveness. If 100 people who haven’t been exposed to the virus are given a vaccine that has an efficacy of 80%, that means that on average 80 of them would not get infected.
The difference between efficacy and effectiveness is that the former applies when vaccination is given under controlled circumstances, like a clinical trial, and the latter is under “real-world” conditions. Typically, a vaccine’s effectiveness tends to be lower than its efficacy.
Computer simulations show what could happen
Since COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines are still under development, now is the time to set vaccine efficacy levels to aim for, as well as to manage expectations. Running computer simulations is really the only way to ethically do this.
For the study, our PHICOR team at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, working with scientists from the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, developed a computer simulation model of the entire United States and its population interacting with each other. Using that model, we were able to introduce the COVID-19 virus into this virtual population in different ways and have it spread from person to person in various pandemic scenarios. Each simulated person who gets infected has probabilities of being hospitalized, placed on a ventilator or dying based on the severity of the problems just as in the real world.
Experiments using this simulated population can represent the different vaccines and what is likely to happen if different proportions of the population are vaccinated at different times during the pandemic. The results show how vaccines with different levels of efficacy would affect the pandemic and can be used to estimate the impact on things such as number of people who get infected, health outcomes and costs. In this case, we assumed that only one vaccination would be required.
What will it take to stop the pandemic?
Typically, in an epidemic or pandemic, as more people are exposed to the virus, the number of new infections per day steadily increases until it reaches a peak and begins to drop. Of course, how long this takes depends upon how the virus and the response to it may evolve over time.
To stop the pandemic, the number of new infections per day needs to drop to zero, or at least to a very low number, as quickly as possible.
If the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning and the population infected was close to 0%, the simulations show that vaccine efficacy would have to be at least 60% to stop the coronavirus if the entire population was vaccinated. Given the number of susceptible people who couldn’t be vaccinated because of age or health problems and the number who would refuse to be vaccinated, that’s probably impossible.
If only 75% of the population gets vaccinated, the vaccine efficacy would have to be around 70%. If only 60% of people get vaccinated, the threshold goes even higher, to around 80%. It’s all about making sure the virus can’t find more people to infect.
Those numbers assume that a person infected with the virus infects 2.5 other people on average. If the virus is more contagious, the vaccine has to be more efficient.
Now, the further along the pandemic is, the less the height of the peak can be reduced. It’s like climbing a mountain – you are already at a certain height. Plus, it is harder to shut a pandemic down when there are more infectious people running around.
So, when 5% of the population has already been infected with the virus, the best that you can do is reduce the peak by around 85%. The difference between 0% and 5% can add up to millions of infections. So far, about 1% of the U.S. population has been confirmed to have been infected, but officials estimate the actual percentage is much higher.
How many people get vaccinated is crucial
Based on these findings, a vaccine with an efficacy as low as 60% could still stop the pandemic and allow society to return to normal. However, most if not all of the population would have to be vaccinated.
With fewer people protected, a vaccine would have to have an efficacy of at least 80% to be able to stop the pandemic by itself, meaning social distancing could be completely relaxed. This can provide a target to aim for when developing COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines.
Again, all of this doesn’t mean that a vaccine with a lower efficacy would not be useful. It would mean that social distancing and mask-wearing likely would have to continue until the pandemic runs its course or a vaccine that is actually “good enough” arrives.
As states struggle to get the COVID-19 balance right – between eased restrictions and rising infection rates – it falls to individuals to abide by mask-wearing rules and to maintain six feet of distance between themselves and others when out and about.
Some people dutifully endure the hardships of coronavirus lockdown, while others can’t be bothered to keep their distance. Why?
As a cognitive researcher, I’m interested in how what psychologists call the “Big Five” personality traits influence the ways individuals deal with social distancing rules in daily life. Who is more likely to mask up every time they leave their home? And who is more likely to flout these evolving behavioral expectations?
Personal space, territorial invasion
How comfortable you are being near to other people has a big cultural component. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall made a study of what he called proxemics, measuring personal space expectations around the world.
Pandemic response means the personal space bubble is now bigger than the previous norm.
Touching or whispering happens in the closest zone. From about 1.5 to 4 feet away is the distance reserved for communicating with friends. Now public health recommendations have extended that zone to 6 feet or more, the distance that had been normal for interactions with those you don’t know well.
When people violate proximity norms, it can feel like they’re invading your territory. And nowadays, the stakes are higher than just your personal comfort – these distance guidelines are meant to protect you from infectious germs.
Subconsciously, everyone knows the traditional spatial zones. The “wait here” foot emblems now found at a store’s checkout line are necessary to help rewrite the cognitive script for where you stand until it becomes a mindless habit. You are forced to “unlearn” subconscious behavior; old dogs must learn new tricks.
Strangers who invade your social distance are being aggressive if they’re aware of what they’re doing. But if it’s done mindlessly or subconsciously, then personality traits are helping drive the behavior.
For more than four decades, psychology researchers have divvied people up by personality types based on an individual’s combination of five key traits. They’re used to predict how people make purchases, behave at work, even long-term life outcomes like marriage stability and career achievement. Paul Costa and Robert McRae popularized the acronym OCEAN, for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Everyone varies from high to low on each of the five personality traits.
An open individual is inclined to be curious, imaginative, creative, original, artistic and flexible. Openness reflects a tendency to think in abstract, complex ways. People high in openness tend to be adventurous and intellectual and enjoy the arts, while those on the opposite end of the spectrum tend to be practical, conventional and focused on the concrete. The more open your personality is, the better you might cope with uncertainty over a long, sustained period – as in the case of a global pandemic.
Conscientiousness is the tendency to be habitually careful, reliable, hard-working, well-organized and purposeful. A conscientious person controls, regulates and directs their impulses. They would likely be early adopters of mask-wearing, even without direction to do so. This trait makes someone less willing to violate territorial space and social distancing guidelines.
Extroversion is characterized by being outgoing and drawing energy from interacting with others, compared to introverts who get their energy from within themselves. Behavioral neuroscience research has revealed two subtypes of this trait.
Agentic extroversion is about being comfortable in the limelight and taking a leadership position. These people are less likely to feel a strong bond with others and have more interest in going for rewards in social or workplace contexts.
On the other hand, affiliative extroverts don’t seek out leadership roles as much and have close social bonds with a lot of people from which they gather happiness and meaning.
Both types of extroverts would likely enjoy virtual networking during isolation, while probably struggling with isolation if sheltering alone.
Agreeableness reflects compliance. It is the opposite pole of antagonism and reflects a tendency to be good-natured, acquiescent, courteous, helpful and trusting. People high in this trait would probably go along with mask-wearing right away and be more likely to follow social distancing guidelines as soon as they’re announced without grumbling about the rules.
Neuroticism is characterized by impulsivity and a tendency to experience negative emotions including anxiety, worry, fear, anger, depression or sadness, hostility, self-consciousness and loneliness. This trait is associated with wishful thinking and disengagement in order to escape feelings of distress. Presumably people high on neuroticism would tend to react to the pandemic with avoidance and denial.
The dark triad of personality traits
Personalities can have their dark sides, too.
Narcissism involves loving oneself obsessively; it goes along with grandiosity and vanity.
Machiavellianism is about manipulating others; it’s characterized by cynicism and long-term, calculating strategies.
Finally there’s psychopathy, meaning a lack of empathy. Psychopathic people are usually impulsive and have cold interpersonal relations. Individuals at the higher end of the continuum are deceptive, aggressive, sexually promiscuous and coercive.
All of these dark triad traits, as psychologists group them, would likely be associated with more social distancing violations.
Personality traits influence who’s fine with masks and who isn’t.
Everyone varies on all of those personality traits from high to low. It’s possible to deduce a personality profile for someone more likely to rampantly violate social distancing guidelines.
Pulling from meta-analyses of how personality affects pro-social behaviors, I’ve come up with this formulation. I have in mind coronavirus-mitigating behaviors in the U.S., but it could be tested cross-culturally and in other contexts.
Social distancing violator = Low openness + Low conscientiousness + Low agreeableness + High neuroticism + High Machiavellianism + High narcissism + High psychopathy + Error
My model predicts that a person who scores lower in openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness would be more likely to violate social distancing guidelines. Same for someone higher in neuroticism, Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.
The error term in the equation is a bit of a fudge factor; it represents all the variation in social distancing that is not explained by the personality traits. For example, political ideology influences social distancing compliance, with Republicans less likely to adhere to social distancing orders.
Psychology researchers are starting to collect data during the pandemic that supports this model. In one study, for instance, Pavel Blagov found that people with lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness were less likely to endorse health recommendations related to social distancing and hygiene during the coronavirus pandemic.
Personality is not fixed; it can evolve over one’s lifespan. As the coronavirus crisis drags on, I’ll be interested to see how adherence to social distancing guidelines changes over time – and wondering how much personality traits are changing too.
President Donald Trump is hearing mixed messages inside his own administration about focusing on the coronavirus pandemic.
The president and his campaign want to hold rallies in spite of the deadly virus, and his chief of staff Mark Meadows and son-in-law Jared Kushner are urging him to move on past COVID-19 and talk about what he'd do in a second term, but some administration officials have begged him to focus on the pandemic, reported Politico.
“If you solve the virus problem, almost everything else will solve itself,” said one senior administration official.
A solid majority of Republicans are increasingly concerned about the deadly virus, and more than a quarter of voters say the pandemic, and not the economy, is the top factor in deciding their choice in the election.
But the president and his campaign are desperate to get back in front of large crowds at rallies, although state and local officials have cautioned against that and Trump supporters themselves have proven reluctant to potentially expose themselves to the virus at those events.
“President Trump was a machine in 2016 and he wants to be that same candidate this cycle. Unfortunately, coronavirus has interfered with our plans to contrast his tremendous stamina with Sleepy Joe’s,” said a person involved with the president’s re-election.
CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Wednesday ripped Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro for writing an op-ed attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The op-ed, which was published just one day after White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that there was no effort within the administration to undermine Fauci, accused the nation's foremost infectious disease expert of being consistently "wrong" about the novel coronavirus.
Reacting to this, Gupta called the editorial "unseemly and dangerous," while also noting that its core allegations against Fauci were flat-out wrong.
"The idea of undermining someone like Fauci or undermining the faith in public health, overall, at this point, is ridiculous," he said.
Gupta went on to say that it was emblematic of the Trump administration's entire approach to science.
"This is not new," he said. "There has been this long battle against science, I think, that's been going on for some time. But the urgency of the matter right now, people look at the numbers on the right side of the screen and see what's happening... is really dangerous."
The city of McKinney, Texas has traditionally been a Republican stronghold in the Lone Star state.
However, some voters in the city told CNN this week that they are completely fed up with the way the president is handling the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Failure," said local resident Greg Evans. "Total failure. His actions and lack of actions have exacerbated the effects of the pandemic on all Americans."
"He's not taking responsibility for anything he does," explained Wanda Phillips, who will be supporting former Vice President Joe Biden this fall. "He always blames someone else."
Amir Haddad, meanwhile, hammered the president for saying the virus would "just go away by itself."
"Those are the things that really bother me as a citizen," he said. "He really takes it very lightly."
However, Trump supporter Cecilia Levings told CNN that many people are simply second guessing the president and playing "armchair quarterback."
"While many governments suppress the virus, the U.S. suppresses information about the virus."
Public health experts are warning that coronavirus statistics will soon be newly vulnerable to political manipulation after the Trump administration ordered hospitals to send Covid-19 patient data directly to a Department of Health and Human Services system rather than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which usually receives the information and releases it to the public.
The New York Timesreported Tuesday that the HHS database now positioned to collect daily Covid-19 information from hospitals "is not open to the public, which could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers, and health officials who rely on CDC data to make projections and crucial decisions."
"Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust."
—Dr. Nicole Lurie
"Health and Human Services said that going forward, hospitals should report detailed information on a daily basis directly to the new centralized system, which is managed by TeleTracking, a health data firm with headquarters in Pittsburgh," the Times noted.
The administration's new directive came in the form of a document (pdf) quietly posted online last week by HHS, an agency headed by former pharmaceutical executive and Trump appointee Alex Azar.
"As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site," the directive states, referring to the CDC's data-gathering system.
Dr. Nicole Lurie, who served in former President Barack Obama's HHS, told the Times that "centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust."
"It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like CDC to do its basic job," said Lurie.
HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo confirmed in a statement to NBC News that the CDC will "no longer control" coronavirus data collection but said the agency will still participate in the process.
While administration officials portrayed the order as part of an attempt to streamline data-collection efforts, health experts were alarmed by the move given President Donald Trump's public attacks on the CDC and his complaints about how the recent surge in coronavirus cases "makes us look bad."
"Speechless—Trump White House is now muzzling, bypassing, and kneecapping the CDC," tweeted epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding. "No other ways to spin this."
Dr. Leana Wen, a visiting professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said in an interview on MSNBC late Tuesday that the decision to cut the CDC off from crucial Covid-19 patient data could undermine the U.S. response to the pandemic as infections surge across the nation.
"The CDC is supposed to analyze the data coming from different regions of the country," said Wen. "I'm really deeply concerned about what we've seen with the attacks on science and public health in recent days, because public health hinges on public trust. And when politicians—including the top public official, the elected official of our country, President Trump—start attacking public health, it really undermines of all of local, state, and federal response to this pandemic."
The administration's order came just hours after four former CDC directors wrote in a Washington Postop-ed Tuesday that "no president ever politicized [the CDC's] science the way Trump has."
"Trying to fight this pandemic while subverting scientific expertise is like fighting blindfolded," wrote Tom Frieden, Jeffrey Koplan, David Satcher, and Richard Besser. "It is not too late to give the CDC its proper role in guiding this response. But the clock is ticking."
In a column for Esquire Tuesday, Charles Pierce urged hospitals to ignore the Trump administration's directive and "send the data to the CDC anyway."
"It's time for hundreds of little rebellions," Pierce wrote.
Police in Chile are training dogs to detect people that may be infected with the novel coronavirus by sniffing their sweat.
The dogs -- three golden retrievers and a labrador -- are between the ages of four and five. Until now they have been used to sniff out illicit drugs, explosives and lost people, police say.
The training program is a joint effort by Chile's national police, the Carabineros, and specialists at the Universidad Catolica de Chile.
It follows in the footsteps of similar efforts taking place in France, said Julio Santelices, head of the police school of specialties.
Dogs have 330 million olfactory receptors, and an ability to detect smells 50 times better than humans. They can also smell 250 people per hour.
"The virus has no smell, but rather the infection generates metabolic changes" which in turn leads to the release of a particular type of sweat "which is what the dog would detect," Fernando Mardones, a Universidad Catolica professor of veterinary epidemiology, told AFP.
According to Santelices, tests in Europe and Dubai shown a 95 percent efficiency rate in canine detection of COVID-19 cases.
Medical Detection Dogs, a British charity set up in 2008 to harness dogs' sharp sense of smell to detect human diseases, also started training canines to detect COVID-19 in late March.
- Four-legged biodetectors -
"The importance of this scientific study is that it will allow dogs to become biodetectors, and detect this type of illness at an early stage," Santelices told AFP.
Mardones said that there is already evidence that dogs can detect diseases such as tuberculosis, parasite infections, and even early stages of cancer.
Canines can detect subtle changes in skin temperature, potentially making them useful in determining if a person has a fever.
According to the World Organisation for Animal Health, the possibility of contagion from a dog is remote.
The canine trainees began their education one month ago, and will use sweat samples taken from COVID-19 patients being treated at the Universidad Catolica's clinic.
The experts hope to have the dogs trained and working in the field by August.
The plan is to deploy them with an officer in pedestrian-heavy areas such as train stations and airports, and at health control stations.
Chile on Tuesday reported 1,836 new cases of COVID-19 -- the lowest figure in two months -- bringing the total of cases since March 3 to 319,493.
The viral infection has killed more than 11,000 people, according to the most recent Health Ministry official report, which includes "probable" COVID-19 victims.
On CNN Tuesday, Chris Cuomo slammed President Donald Trump's aides for attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci — and their boss for allowing it to continue despite knowing Fauci is correct.
" Trump knows Fauci is a trusted source," said Cuomo. "Given what just came out of his mouth, we have to ask why is he trying to destroy Fauci? And the answer is because Fauci keeps telling you the truth about COVID-19."
"If the president isn't behind it, why is his campaign pushing out a staffer like Stephen Moore, who is openly trying to smear Fauci's decades-long service?" said Cuomo. "The guy is supposed to be an economic analyst. What about this from Peter Navarro, another Trumper? Now he's a Fauci critic? These guys want to talk about being trustworthy and records of getting things wrong, and they work for Trump and never admit his legendary lies? And Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff for communications, he posted this cartoon, mocking the top infectious disease specialist on his Facebook page as he calls him his colleague."
"So, yes, Trump is behind this. And, yes, this is how Trump and his trolls treat colleagues," said Cuomo. "The truth is, the man who promised to 'drain the swamp' has created more stench and added more alligators. That's what Trump has done. If i'm wrong, why doesn't Captain Carnage tell his sycophants to shut up? If he likes Fauci and believes he's a trusted source, why doesn't he say stop? Why doesn't he correct it? Because he likes what they're saying. He wants them to say it because he doesn't want you to believe the truth, unless it benefits him."
