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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department arrested 182 people on Jan. 9, the agency announced on its Facebook page Monday. 
The arrests were made by the agency’s superspreader task force at two underground parties, which violated the county’s Covid-19 safety protocols. All 182 people who were arrested were cited and released, the department said. 
“Sheriff Alex Villanueva has made it clear he will seek out & take law enforcement action against ALL underground party events occurring anywhere within Los Angeles County,” the department wrote on its Facebook page. “The goal of these enforcement actions is to reduce the spread of #COVID19 and the risk to our vulnerable populations.” 
Los Angeles County is currently seeing a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths. The county has reported more than 945,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths from the virus.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., received a positive rapid Covid-19 test Monday after what she said might have been her exposure to the coronavirus while sheltering in place with lawmakers who did not wear masks during the rioting at the Capitol last Wednesday, her office announced. 
“I received a positive test result for COVID-19, and am home resting at this time. While I am experiencing mild, cold-like symptoms, I remain in good spirits and will continue to work on behalf of my constituents," Watson Coleman said in a statement. 
The congresswoman is isolating and waiting for the results of a PCR test, which is known to be more accurate than rapid tests. 
This comes a day after the Capitol physician warned members and congressional staff that they could have have been exposed to someone infected with the virus when they were sheltering in place. A video circulated last week that showed a House Democrat in a secure room offering face masks to a group of her fellow Republicans, who were seen turning them down.

Wall Street continued its rise Thursday, capping a 24-hour period of record highs despite an assault on the Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an intra-day high of just over 31,000 on Thursday, the S&P 500 rose by 1.4 percent to trade above 3,800, and the Nasdaq breached 13,000 for the first time.
Investors mostly rebuffed Wednesday's chaos in Washington, D.C., as an "isolated event," rather than a larger movement that would affect the economy. "The market is looking forward to earnings and growth down the road,” Peter Tchir from Academy Securities told CNBC on Thursday.
The rally comes after Democrats swept both seats in Georgia’s critical runoff elections, giving the party control of the Senate. That has cemented investor confidence that the new administration will introduce more fiscal stimulus and bring about economic growth.
“The Democrats sweeping the Georgia elections means that stimulus ... and confidence in the economy, is going to remain the main story,” said Alec Young, chief investment officer at Tactical Alpha.
Investors also parsed the week's labor market data: Wednesday's ADP payroll report showed a sharp decline in company employees, down 123,000 in December, while economists had predicted a gain of around 60,000. The Labor Department said last week's initial jobless claims totaled 787,000, down from one week earlier but still four times their pre-pandemic level. The crucial monthly employment snapshot from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due at 8:30 a.m. Friday, and is expected to show just 50,000 jobs added in December and an unemployment rate that has ticked up to 6.8 percent.
“There should be no mystery as to why the markets didn’t care about what happened in the Capitol yesterday, however disturbing, disgraceful, and embarrassing it was,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, told CNBC. “It’s because it has no bearing on the direction of the economy, earnings and interest rates. It’s that simple.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles health officials have told first responders to stop bringing adult patients who cannot be resuscitated to hospitals for treatment, citing a shortage of beds and medical staff, as the latest COVID-19 surge threatened to overwhelm the city’s healthcare systems.
The orders, issued late on Monday and effective immediately, marked a further escalation of measures being taken nationwide by state and local officials due to alarming increases in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.
“Patients in traumatic full arrest who meet current Ref 814 criteria for determination of death shall not be resuscitated and shall be determined dead on scene and not transported,” Marianne Gausche-Hill, medical director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, said in the directive.
Ref 814 refers to the county’s policy on determining and pronouncing death in a patient who has not been transported to a hospital.
California, the most populous U.S. state, has been hit particularly hard by the latest coronavirus surge that some public health officials attribute to Thanksgiving holiday gatherings in November. Los Angeles is one of two counties reporting a shortage of intensive care unit beds.
The state of some 40 million residents reported 72,911 COVID-19 cases on Monday, a single-day record since the pandemic began.
Los Angeles County EMS Director Cathy Chidester has called the situation a “hidden disaster,” not plainly visible to the public in a county where COVID-19 patients were dying last week at the rate of one very 10 minutes.
Ambulances have in some cases been forced to wait several hours to unload patients, causing delays throughout the county’s emergency response system.
The United States has reported a total of 20.8 million cases and 355,00 COVID-19 deaths. A record 129,000 COVID-19 patients were in hospitals as of Tuesday.
The worsening situation has put increasing pressure on state and local officials to speed up distribution of the two vaccines approved for emergency use to protect against the coronavirus.
Federal health officials said on Monday that more than two-thirds of the 15 million coronavirus vaccines manufactured by Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc and shipped within the United States have yet to be administered.
But some healthcare workers began getting their second shots of the Pfizer vaccine this week. Both vaccines require two doses three or four weeks apart.
The governors of New York and Florida have said they would penalize hospitals that fail to dispense shots quickly.

A medical expert has lamented the care-free attitude of Nigerians to the COVID-19 pandemic, which she has described as a Tsunami.
The Founder and Chief Executive of Paelon Memorial Hospital, Ngozi Onyia, has lamented over Nigerians’ care-free attitude to the COVID-19 pandemic, which she described as Tsunami.
To the Medical Practitioner, the virus has grown beyond a second wave stage to a Tsunami.
Onyia, who disclosed this on her LinkedIn page, explained that as far as Paelon Memorial Hospital is concerned, the development is no longer a second wave but a Tsunami.
She said,“My phone ringing of the hook, patients crowding in and around the tent, making tough calls, who to take in our treatment centre, who to put in one of our four vents. I have to take ethical decisions that i have not taken in over 38 years of practice. It is therefore simply infuriating to see people wearing masks on their chins, crowding together with no respect for social distancing, and carrying on, business as usual.”

New Mexico authorities levied $10,000 fines against two Albuquerque megachurches after their "pro-virus" clergy violated Covid-19 safety protocols, officials said Wednesday.
Viral videos and pictures of Christmas Eve services at Legacy Church and Calvary Church showed tightly packed worshippers with virtually no masks in sight.
Houses of worship are limited to 25 percent capacity in New Mexico as the state fights the spread of coronavirus.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham minced no words, saying these services could spark mass spread of the deadly virus.
"In violating both the state public health order and common sense, these two churches and their leaders endangered the lives, livelihoods and health of not only their parishioners but their entire communities — and, given how quickly this virus can spread, potentially our state as a whole," Gov. Grisham said in a statement.
A little more than 2,400 people in New Mexico have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic hit the United States earlier this year, according state data.
And as of Wednesday morning, New Mexico residents over the past seven days are testing positive for coronavirus at a rate of about 8.25 percent, according to data collected by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. That's more than the generally accepted 5 percent rate to safely relax restrictions against businesses, but better than how a majority of states are doing now.
"We all wish this pandemic were over, but it’s not, and no pro-virus pastor may deem it so. So many New Mexicans have sacrificed — and lost — so much in this pandemic," Grisham said. "These illegal and selfish gatherings will directly contribute to more suffering and illness in our state. These church leaders should reflect on the danger they’ve unleashed in their communities."
In a statement to NBC News on Wednesday, Legacy Church didn't deny the state allegations but said authorities were exceeding "their constitutional authority" and were contradicting "what we are called on by God to do."
"It's tragic that what we do for thousands of shut-ins, those in despair, and kids who go without meals gets no state notice, but fixation on one service can net us large fines," according to the Legacy statement.
A rep from Calvary Church could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

The number of people who died of COVID-19 in Nigeria this month has more than doubled compared to the figure in November, amid a second wave of the virus, local media reported Monday.
Critical infections over the novel virus have also witnessed a spike in the country while Nigerian states continue to take stricter measures to halt the spread of the disease, local news website The Nation reported.
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in December, as of Saturday, has confirmed 74 coronavirus-related deaths, going up from 27 in November, it cited.
During the same period, 15,949 infections have also been confirmed in the country, according to the report.
The NCDC voiced that following a progressive drop in the number of COVID-19-related deaths reported from September to November, the tally of deaths due to the virus regained momentum this month, which however is not the highest monthly death rate so far. In June, 305 deaths were confirmed in the country, according to The Nation.
In its daily update, the NCDC announced seven more COVID-19-related deaths and 838 new cases countrywide within the last 24 hours.
“Till date [Sunday], 84,414 cases have been confirmed, 71,034 cases have been discharged and 1,254 deaths have been recorded in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory,” the NCDC added.
The first COVID-19 case was reported in China’s Wuhan city last December before spreading all around the world. More than 80.83 million people have contracted the virus, while over 1.76 million have died, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University.

Hard-hit California eclipsed 2 million coronavirus cases on Christmas Eve as the U.S. headed into a holiday season of travel and family gatherings that threaten to fuel the deadly outbreak across the nation.
Despite warnings from public health experts to stay home, over 1.19 million travelers passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints Wednesday — down by about 40% from a year ago, but the highest one-day total since the crisis took hold in mid-March.
Airports also recorded around 1 million travelers on each of the five days between last Friday and Tuesday.
Ember McCauley, a 21-year-old nursing student at Missouri Western in St. Joseph, was headed Tuesday from Kansas City, Missouri, to Austin, Texas, to go wedding dress shopping with a cousin, who is getting married in November. She was returning home on Christmas Eve.
She said she was "kind of" anxious about traveling during the pandemic. But she added: "I feel like I eat healthy and I take a lot of precautions, like sanitizing and washing my hands and wearing my mask all the time. I feel like I will be OK, even if something does happen."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, said he is particularly worried about travel between Christmas and New Year's. Fauci, who turned 80 on Thursday, said he and his wife would be celebrating his birthday and the holidays with their children on Zoom.
"We have a big problem," Fauci told The Washington Post. "Look at the numbers — the numbers are really quite dramatic."

A United Airlines passenger who fell ill on a flight from Orlando to Los Angeles a week ago died of acute respiratory failure and COVID-19, according to a coroner's report.
The report was released Monday by Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich of the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office in Louisiana.
United flight 591 from Orlando to Los Angeles diverted to New Orleans for the medical emergency.
The coroner's report says the passenger was a 69-year-old man from Los Angeles. It says he died at 9:09 p.m. Dec. 14 at Ochsner Medical Center-Kenner in Kenner, where Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport is located.
The United flight, which had 154 passengers, departed Orlando at 7:30 p.m. and landed in New Orleans at 8:10 p.m. local time.
The plane continued on to Los Angeles despite the medical emergency and comments from fellow passengers on social media that the ill passenger had COVID-19 symptoms.
"At the time of the diversion, we were informed he had suffered a cardiac arrest, so passengers were given the option to take a later flight or continue on with their travel plans,'' United said in a statement on Friday.
The airline did not mention COVID-19 until it released the statement, saying it had been contacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a list of passengers so the CDC could work with local health officials on contact tracing. United officials confirmed the passenger had COVID-19 symptoms but did not reveal a cause of death. The airline said he had acknowledged United's "ready to fly'' pandemic health checklist, which asks passengers to certify they aren't COVID positive and don't have symptoms.
As of Monday, one passenger on the flight told USA TODAY he has not been contacted by the CDC.
A woman in her 30s died from COVID-19 while on a Spirit Airlines flight in July, according to airport officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico.           
The late-July flight from Las Vegas to Dallas-Fort Worth was diverted to Albuquerque when the crew reported an unresponsive female on board, Stephanie Kitts, a spokesperson for Albuquerque International Sunport, said in an email to The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network.

The United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF) has decried incessant attacks on schools and pupils in the country describing such happenings as “far too often.”
While reacting to the release of the Kankara boys who were kidnapped nine days ago in Katsina State, the UNICEF’s Country’s Representative, Mr. Peter Hawkins said that “attacks directly targeting children in the middle of the night, in a place where they should feel safe, was an outrage. Schools should be safe. Children should never be the target of attacks – and yet, far too often in Nigeria, they are precisely that – victims of attacks on their schools,” he said.
Hawkins, who stated that attacks on educational facilities were a grave violation of children’s rights, added that the incident was a disturbing reminder of the heavy toll that violence has taken on civilians in northwest Nigeria, including children.
“Such attacks deprive children of the right to education. They make children fearful of going to the classroom, and parents afraid to send their children to school. Schools must be safe places to study and develop, and learning cannot become a perilous endeavour.
“It has been now almost one week exactly since the appalling attack on the Government Boys Science Secondary School in the Kankara Local Government Area of Katsina State – an attack that shocked the country.
“If any are still being held, we call on the attackers to release all children immediately. Any other children still being held captive in Nigeria should also be released.
“For one week, parents were awake at night, crying and awaiting the return of their sons. My thoughts and solidarity are with these children, their families, and the Kankara community – who have endured an unimaginable ordeal this past week.”
“Interventions must be put in place to ensure that schools are safe and that all Nigerian children can learn without fear. These interventions should take into account the important role that communities can play in ensuring the safety of schools, including through support for school-based management committees (SBMCs),” the statement continued, adding, “no cause justifies attacks against children and schools. Such cruel disregard for humanity must come to an end.”

The Minister of State for petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Sylva says the federal government is strategising to ensure efficient oil and gas sector in the post COVID-19 era.
Sylva made this known while presenting a keynote address at the 13th Annual International Conference of the National Association of Energy Economics (NAEE) in Abuja on Thursday.
The theme of the Conference is “Energy and Petroleum in post COVID-19 world’’
“Our strategy to strengthen the Nigerian oil and gas industry in a post-COVID-19 world is to transform our national oil company into a diversified energy holding company.
“This will enable us respond swiftly to the twin challenges of a future crash in crude oil prices and decarbonization, by moving rapidly to becoming an energy holding company with more diverse interests.
“Consequently, we have strategically focused on our vast natural gas resources, as a critical transition fuel to help battle global warming and function as bridge between the dominant fossil fuel of today and the renewable energy of tomorrow.
“Natural gas has the intrinsic ability to meet the increasing global requirement for cleaner primary energy use, while at the same time, enabling much needed domestic industrialisation for rapid economic growth in very few endowed countries, such as Nigeria,’’ he said.
He noted that substituting traditional white products with gas would cushion the effect of the deregulation of the downstream petroleum sector and stimulate economic growth.
He added that it would further improve Nigeria’s energy mix; drive investments and create enormous job opportunities for Nigeria.
“Recently we declare 2021 to 2030, the decades of gas in Nigeria, after making laudable achievements and successes in 2020.

While the CDC recommends ordering groceries for delivery or curbside pickup to help minimize the spread of COVID-19, it is not providing delivery of groceries or cleaning supplies.
Bert Kelly, a spokesperson for the CDC, confirmed to USA TODAY via email that the claims are not accurate.
The CDC's role is to prevent diseases, detect and respond to new emerging health threats, and promote healthy and safe behaviors, according to its site.
The CDC does provide guidance on meal kits and food delivery safety, as well as recommendations for delivery drivers and food and grocery pickups that include wearing a face covering, limiting contact and developing contactless delivery policies.
Resources on the CDC's site also include hotlines for families or individuals that are seeking food assistance programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Further, the phone numbers in the post claiming to be a CDC hotline are Philadelphia numbers that lead to the voicemail of a health care center.

As the virus surges, outbreaks are starting to re-emerge in ports across the United States.
In interviews with over a dozen longshoremen, their families and maritime officials at multiple ports in the country, all urged government officials to recognize the essential nature of longshore work and protect individuals from conditions that make it ripe for the virus to spread.
They say longshore workers should be provided rapid testing and early access to the vaccine so they can remain on the job and prevent outbreaks from shutting the nation’s ports.
“We’re hidden,” said Kenneth Riley, the president of the local longshoremen’s union in Charleston, S.C. “But if you think some of the store shelves were empty as we got into this pandemic, let these ports shut down and see how empty they’ll be.”
Longshore work is exhausting, and often requires close contact with others. The trade is essential to the economy, with longshore workers serving as a crucial link between moving goods from a shipping vessel onto trucks and trains that send them to their final destination, experts said.
Over 95 percent of overseas trade for the United States flows through one of around 150 deepwater ports in the country, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.
The workers at highest risk of being exposed to the virus are deep sea longshoremen, who are primarily Black and do most of the work that requires the lifting and moving of goods, union officials noted.
Many officials note that since the nature of longshore work is day labor, workers may look for any reason to escape getting tested unless they show symptoms to prevent going weeks without pay as they isolate.
“There are people who know they’re sick, and go into work,” said Alan A. Robb, the president of the longshore union’s Gulf Coast district office, in Texas. “They can’t afford to miss a day.”

The Federal Government of Nigeria on Monday said the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak presented the opportunity to structure and even rebuild the country’s health system.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, made the assertion at the Ministerial Health Sector Media Engagement on the Path to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) on Monday in Abuja.
He added that the outbreak brought resilient health systems to their knees.
Ehanire disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari had in this second tenure, set a nine-point health sector next level agenda, that would propel the country toward the attainment of the UHC for Nigerians.
The minister noted that the National Health Act (2014) established the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) as one of the key drivers to attaining equitable health for all Nigerians.
“Access to quality health care by all is a necessity for any nation that wants to tap the full potential of its people.
“Under the administration of President Buhari, the BHCPF implementation began with the appropriation and release of at least one percent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund as provided by the Act.
“This has set in motion the mechanism to fast track achieving UHC for all,” he said.
Ehanire noted that the ministry was responsible for the national health system and its performance.
“The Federal Ministry of Health ( FMOH) is working to strengthen accountability and transparency with the establishment of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) at Federal Tertiary hospitals for efficiency and accountability in service delivery.
According to him, a lot of efforts have gone into the activity and it will be the first of many such activities going forward.
Also, Sen. Ibrahim Oloriegbe, Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, said that the challenges of COVID-19 were well-known.
“Let us take this opportunity to demand more funding for our health sector. We need to do more for Nigerians,’’ he said.
In his remarks, Dr Peter Hawkins, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Country Representative, said that the event played a critical role in achieving UHC to all Nigerians, regardless of where they lived.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the unveiling of the revised Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) implementation guideline was a highlight of the event.
The National Health Act (2014) established the BHCPF as one of the key drivers to attaining equitable health for all in Nigeria.
Under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the BHCPF implementation began with the appropriation and release of at least one per cent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund as provided by the Act.
This has set in motion the mechanism to fast track achieving UHC for all.

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for Covid-19, the president said Sunday, the latest member of his inner circle to contract the disease.
It was unclear whether Giuliani was experiencing symptoms, but at age 76 the former New York mayor is considered part of a high-risk group.
He has been seen frequently without a mask – CNN showed film of him Thursday in Atlanta walking maskless down a hall chatting with several other people whose faces were uncovered – and other members of his legal team presumably have been exposed.
“Giuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the US, has tested positive for the China Virus,” Trump tweeted, using a term he applies to the coronavirus that has outraged Beijing.
Giuliani’s diagnosis comes as he has been leading the president’s defiant – and unsuccessful – effort to undo Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov 3 presidential election.
If the legal team hews to health guidance, anyone thus exposed should self-quarantine for at least a week, which could cripple Trump’s already fading efforts to challenge his election loss.
The diagnosis was also a day after Trump, who long played down the severity of the pandemic and even mocked those who wore masks, held his first big political rally since the election – before a tightly packed crowd of thousands of largely unmasked supporters in Georgia.
The US – the country with the most coronavirus cases and deaths in the world – has seen a dramatic resurgence in its epidemic in recent weeks.
For the third day in a row, the US on Saturday notched a record number of coronavirus cases in 24 hours, reaching nearly 230,000 new infections, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
A series of members of Trump’s inner circle have contracted the disease since the president himself caught it weeks before the election.
They include his wife Melania, his son Donald Jr, his son Barron, his press secretary, some of his advisors, his campaign manager as well as several Republican members of Congress.
Many of them, including Giuliani, followed Trump’s example, often ignoring health experts’ guidance and attending White House and political events without masks.
Giuliani’s son Andrew, who works in the White House, tested positive for the virus late last month.
David Gergen, a senior advisor in four US administrations, noted on CNN that while dozens of people around Trump had now contracted the virus, only one or two in Biden’s camp had done so.
The lesson, Gergen said: “The cavalier attitude taken by the Trump people is only going to get you closer to catching this stuff…
“It’s just as plain as it can be.”

More than 100,000 people are currently in hospitals across the U.S. sick with Covid-19, as the pandemic pushes doctors, nurses and other health workers to their limits.
The current number of hospitalized patients underscores the scope and severity of the current phase of the U.S. outbreak. Never before had the number of hospitalized Covid patients surpassed 60,000, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic.
In fact, Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said in a phone interview with CNBC that she doesn’t recall any disease sickening so many Americans all at once ever before.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen this number. We certainly never saw this number with HIV or any of the other new diseases that we’ve had,” Orlowksi said. “It’s an astonishing, astonishing number and the shame of it is it’s a number that we could have impacted and we didn’t.”
Earlier this week, Orlowski’s organization, the AAMC, announced that it is encouraging all health systems to prepare to deploy “Crisis Standards of Care,” which is typically used in severe situations such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
Orlowski explained that crisis care essentially means the rationing of care in hospitals. The goal is “to provide the best care possible to the largest number of people with the resources available,” AAMC said. But it also means difficult decisions will be made about whom to use scarce resources on, Orlowski added.
Hospitals in some parts of the country are already at the point of crisis care, Orlowski said, such as El Paso, Texas, parts of Utah, North Dakota and parts of Nebraska. She added that “most hospitals are going to be there in the next two weeks” if current trends persist or get worse, owing to a surge driven by Thanksgiving travel and gatherings.