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What you need to know about the coronavirus today

Biden rejects Trump claim that vaccine is imminent
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden bluntly contradicted President Donald Trump’s suggestion that a coronavirus vaccine may be only weeks away, warning Americans they cannot trust the president’s word.

“The idea that there’s going to be a vaccine and everything’s gonna be fine tomorrow - it’s just not rational,” Biden said during a CNN town hall in Moosic, Pennsylvania. Trump again said on Wednesday that a vaccine for COVID-19 could be ready for distribution ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Most health experts, including Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have said a vaccine will likely not be widely available until mid-2021.

Track the spread of the virus with this state-by-state and county map.

Israel imposes second lockdown
Israel will enter a second nationwide lockdown on Friday at the onset of the Jewish high-holiday season, forcing residents to stay mostly at home amid a resurgence in new coronavirus cases. The country’s initial lockdown was imposed in late March and eased in May as new cases tapered off, reaching lows in the single digits. But in the past week, new cases have reached daily highs of over 5,000, and Israeli leaders now acknowledge they lifted measures too soon.


UK COVID hospital admissions double every eight days
Britain’s health minister said that the coronavirus was accelerating across the country, with hospital admissions doubling every eight days, but he refused to say if another national lockdown would be imposed next month. The United Kingdom has reported the fifth-highest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine.


China reports highest new cases since Aug. 10
Mainland China reported 32 new COVID-19 cases, marking the highest daily increase in more than a month and up sharply from nine cases reported a day earlier. Although the latest increase still remains well below the peaks seen at the height of the outbreak in China early this year, it is the biggest since Aug. 10 and suggests continued COVID-19 risks stemming from overseas travelers coming into the country as the pandemic rages on in other parts of the world.


Canada’s Ontario clamps down on parties
Canada’s most populous province will clamp down on social gatherings to prevent “reckless careless people” from spreading the coronavirus at illegal parties, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said. His warning came as the nation’s top medical officer said authorities could potentially lose the ability to manage the pandemic.

From Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Vaccine hedge, UK lockdown, Gloves.
A drug from Roche may be a stopgap if the COVID-19 vaccine race slows, and Malaysia’s $15 billion Top Glove rides the global latex boom. Catch up with the latest financial insights.

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U.S.

A federal judge blocked controversial changes to the United States postal service, saying they were “a politically motivated attack” that had slowed the nation’s mail and likely would slow the delivery of ballots in the upcoming presidential election.

Pennsylvania’s top court ruled that state officials dealing with a surge in mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic can accept them up to three days after the Nov. 3 election, as long as they were mailed by Election Day.

Nicole West steered her bulldozer through the smoldering forest, pushing logs into the underbrush and away from the wildfires ripping through Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Her border collie, Oink, rode shotgun as West and a volunteer crew raced to clear a fire line. Behind West, on the front lines of the 136,000-acre Riverside fire, two young men pulled a water tank behind their pickup truck, struggling to douse the flames. These are the men and women of the “Hillbilly Brigade” - about 1,200 people who came together this past week to fight the wildfires.

A former White House aide who helped coordinate the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic sharply criticized President Trump in a video and said she planned to vote for Joe Biden. Olivia Troye, who was an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, served as a top organizer for the White House Coronavirus Task Force that Pence leads.