Coronavirus

The Walt Disney Company's theme parks, resorts and cruises have been devastated by COVID-19. Tuesday Disney announced it is laying off 28,000 workers from its Parks, Experiences and Products division.

If baseball played in empty ballparks seems a little too surreal, then you might prefer Blaseball. It's an online baseball game that takes the surreal and combines it with a teaspoon of bizarre, a quarter cup of insanity and a pinch of weird.

Back in April, when social distancing was first becoming a thing in the U.S., Blaseball co-creator Sam Rosenthal was looking for a way for people to stay connected during the pandemic.

In a survey of data published on the health department websites of 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, a total of 624,890 child cases of COVID-19 were reported from the start of the pandemic through Sept. 24, or 10.5% of all cases in states reporting infections according to age.

A smaller subset of states reported hospitalizations and mortality by age. The data from those states indicate "COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death is uncommon in children," according to the survey.

The Yellowstone County health department is on-boarding school staff to track down the close contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19.

RiverStone Health says this week it trained roughly 100 staff members at several schools to assist with contact tracing efforts.

Positive cases of COVID-19 statewide have spiked since schools reopened in August, and RiverStone Health currently rates its case investigation capacity as red on a stoplight scale.

The executive board of the union representing more than 6,400 of New York City's school leaders passed a unanimous vote of no confidence against Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza on Sunday for what it called officials' "failure to lead New York City through the safe and successful reopening of schools."

The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators is calling on the mayor to cede control of the city's education department for the duration of the public health crisis, and for both officials to seek swift intervention from New York state.

The number of new daily coronavirus infections in the U.S. continued to rise this past week, driven by upward trends in nearly half the states that have pushed total cases in the country past 7 million. At the same time, a recent study suggests the vast majority of Americans haven't been exposed, far below what's required to quell the virus's spread through "herd immunity."

Daily cases were largely on a downward trend through August and early September from highs in July, but are now going up again.