Spread of COVID-19 appears to slow in U.S.

Since the beginning of the month, the number of new coronavirus cases cropping up each day in the United States has fallen by more than 20 percent. Health officials reported about 33,000 newly confirmed COVID-19 infections on Monday, the lowest number of new daily cases since late June, according to Johns Hopkins University. Some experts credited increased mask-wearing and social distancing, while others blamed a lack of testing in certain areas. Florida, which recorded tens of thousands of cases earlier in the summer, dropped its daily count to less than 3,000 this week.

Any word on a cure? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration trumpeted plasma from recovered patients as a breakthrough treatment over the weekend. But FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Tuesday retracted his claim that 35 more patients out of 100 would survive COVID-19 if they took the treatment. “What I should have said better is that the data show a relative risk reduction, not an absolute risk reduction,” he tweeted.

Dig deeper: Read Steve West’s report in Liberties on the battle over religious schools during the coronavirus lockdowns in California.