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AUBURN, Ala. (AP)– White House coronavirus reaction organizer Dr. Deborah Birx on Thursday pushed back against a report that stated she was distressed over the instructions of the task force and was thinking about leaving.

During a livestreamed press conference at Auburn University in Alabama, Birx was inquired about a CNN report that stated she was irritated with what she viewed as a lessened function and questioned how long she might remain in the role. Birx said she was ruling out leaving.

” Do I look like an individual that is lessened?

” We are in the middle of a pandemic that is impacting Americans. As an American, I believe I can do the best service to my nation right now by serving in this role, working throughout the agencies since that is the experience that I have,” Birx stated.

Birx said it would be “on me if I was distressed? Since I’m supposed to be coordinating the groups.”

Birx stated she has been on a heavy travel schedule, however stated that is vital to comprehending the country’s response. She stated she had been in about 28 states, consisting of more than 15 universities, in the last 3 months.

” Yes, I have actually been on the roadway.

Birx has actually just recently toured Southern universities that are starting the fall semester. She met Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in the morning.

Birx praised Ivey for issuing a statewide mask required. She stated she thinks the order, which is set to expire Oct. 2, ought to be extended.

” Within 2 weeks of the mask required, you can see the remarkable decline in cases here in Alabama,” Birx said.

She said it is necessary for individuals to keep their mitigation efforts in the fall.

As Birx prompted the extension of the mask order, a new claim was filed challenging it.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on Thursday announced a new federal suit challenging the constitutionality of the mask required and past state health orders that closed services or directed people to stay at home.

” Our economy has been decimated, tasks lost, schools closed, church doors shut, and we have actually been informed we must stay at home and use masks in public places. Individuals are tired of such abuse,” Moore said in a declaration.

The lawsuit was filed by Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law on behalf of seven complainants.

Ivey spokeswoman Gina Maiola said the governor and the state health officer are keeping an eye on the state’s progress and will announce a choice on the mask mandate before Oct. 2.

The governor’s workplace credited a decline in daily new cases to the mask order and individuals’s altering habits.

” Our state’s success is mostly in part to Alabamians stepping up to the plate when it pertains to working together with the mask ordinance,” Maiola stated.

For over half a year now, the nation has been grappling with a litany of illness, deaths, lost jobs and shuttered businesses as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

But COVID-19 has also disrupted families’ familiar and beloved rituals—Sunday dinners, birthday parties, holiday celebrations and vacations to visit loved ones overseas.

The first blow hit Manuel Iguina, 59, a restaurateur and chef in Washington, D.C., in the early spring. Business was dying at his brasserie in Georgetown, the High Street Café. The bills were mounting. The virus was spreading through Washington.

“When I saw this was coming, I let go of some of my staff, with a heavy heart, gave them two weeks’ pay, all I could do,” he said. At the end of March, he said he knew the business was not sustainable, sold everything in the restaurant and shut it down.

“I was affected immensely. I was depressed the whole month of April a lot of May, I didn’t want to see anyone.’’ His grown daughters from a previous marriage, Daniela and Francisca, had helped him run the restaurant and now were “heartbroken, devastated.”

“I had to get over it,” he says. “I had to bite the bullet.”

He and Karla, 48, his wife and business partner, canceled their 10th anniversary celebration in her native Mexico, and with schools shut down, they had to learn how to give lessons to their children, Carlos Manuel, 8, and Julieta Deidre, 6, while at the same time working from home, she with the International Development Bank and he consulting with restaurant industry entrepreneurs.

“The one thing we didn’t want to feel was isolation,” Karla says. They started FaceTime visits with relatives and occasionally threw socially distanced backyard picnics at their home in Springfield, Virginia, a suburb of Washington.

In July, they made their annual summer holiday trip to Puerto Rico. “It’s a beautiful family thing, going to paradise,’’ he says. They want their children to know relatives and love the island where Manuel was born. On quiet beaches free of tourists, their small family alone, they left the pandemic gloom behind for a few weeks.

“We are resilient, we always have been,” Karla says. Now, they are making plans for life after Covid-19. Things are beginning to take shape. The children are back in school and they are laying out plans for another venture, a casual dine-in and takeout place they call Casa Piko, Manuel’s nickname. And Karla is trying to figure out how to bring her 83-year-old mother, who lives in Chiapas, Mexico, to Washington for Christmas.

“The hardest thing”

“I’ve not hugged or kissed my mother for five months!” Emil Infante, an international lawyer based in Miami, his voice breaking.

His everyday life, at his office downtown and at home with his wife, Lourdes, and their three children, changed overnight in the spring when the coronavirus hit Florida and everything shut down.

“It was different to suddenly be at home all the time,’’ he says on the phone from his home in suburban Pinecrest. “I miss the lack of movement. I miss my clients. Personally, it’s been very difficult, having to interact constantly with family 24 hours a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner and time in between.

Jade Kerr Dupler, a psychotherapist who deals with these issues at Westchester Psychological Services, in Mount Kisco, N.Y., calls it “mutual exhaustion.”

“The pandemic is a double-edged sword. Parents who are now working from home can spend more time with each other and their children, but too much time together can produce more tension and conflict,” Dupler said. “Everyone is at home, all the time, in everyone’s spaces.’’

Infante, 50, says his teenage daughter took it hardest. “She was stuck at home, with no friends, no one her age to talk to. She was angry at the world, frustrated.” His younger twin children adjusted more easily. “They have each other, they play together, they talk.”

To escape from the grind, they had occasional backyard parties with close friends and drove south to the Florida Keys. “It was a safe haven,” he said.

“I can’t complain,” he said, saying he’s privileged to have a comfortable house, a job, “and can get away to the Keys.”

No hugs, no visits to family abroad

Infante’s mother admits it takes a toll. “I am a very social person. Being closed up is terrible for me. I feel very alone.” Ivette, 72, a manufacturer’s representative, said she misses her frequent trips to see lifelong friends and relatives in Puerto Rico, where she lived most of her life.

To break the monotony, she gets together with a few friends and visits her son often to swim a few laps in the pool and see her grandchildren — but socially distanced. “It kills me I can’t hug and kiss them.”

“What I missed most was my summer with family in Spain,” Arnold Ramirez, 76, a Costa Rican who has lived in New York most of his life. He and his wife, Julia, 74, spend most every summer with their grown children, grandchildren and cousins in Cercedilla, a small hill town outside Madrid, where Julia is from.

This year, there was no visit to Spain, no fresh mountain air to enjoy and no big family dinners to attend. Instead, he and Julia take 3-mile walks in their neighborhood, Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, and he entertains himself watching international soccer, posting game commentaries on Facebook, and talking via WhatsApp with players and coaches he knows around the world from his 40 years coaching.

Once a week they drive to Armonk, a hamlet in the Westchester suburbs, to visit their daughter, Liane Ramirez Swierk, 50, executive vice president at Goodman Media International, her husband, Jeff, 52, a marketing executive, and their teenage son, Derek. They lounge in the backyard, snack and catch up, but a basic family ritual is missing. No hugs and kisses. Arnold says, “I miss that.”

The pandemic came soon after Liane and her family moved from their longtime apartment in New York City’s Washington Heights, three blocks from her parents. Just as they were adjusting to their son’s new school, the new house and the suburbs, everything shut down.

“Virtual home schooling began in March,’’ she says. “We were all learning how to adjust on the fly. In addition to having a full-time job, working from home, we had to make sure that Derek was checking his school schedule, participating in Zooms and doing his homework. It was exhausting and made us cranky.”

That’s not uncommon, says Dupler, the psychotherapist. “Some of the most common family conflicts we’ve noticed involve remote learning, getting kids motivated … The daily tensions impact many family relationships.”

At the same time, Jeff’s mother, Celeste, 74, was suffering a respiratory illness that put her in the high-risk category. Before Covid-19, they visited her twice a month in New Jersey for leisurely lunches. That stopped with the virus and for three months they didn’t visit her.

Missing family visits is only one kind of loss. “I recently went back to the office in midtown to retrieve a few items to bring to my home office and it was a ghost town,” Liane said. “I was overcome with a brief wave of sadness for what was no more.”

That is not all she misses. “I have a tight-knit group of longtime girlfriends, so not being able to see them in person has been very hard.”

She missed her best friend’s birthday, a woman she has known for over 35 years. “She had a social-distanced gathering. But I was scheduled for minor surgery that week and couldn’t be around people. We Zoom, FaceTime and text to stay in touch, but I look forward to the day when we can convene again and pick up where we left off, over a cocktail!”

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Tottenham have been given a bye into the Carabao Cup fourth round after their tie with Leyton Orient was called off when a number of Orient’s players tested positive for Covid-19.

Orient’s league game at Walsall on Saturday has also been postponed.

Spurs will now face top-flight rivals Chelsea in the last 16 on Tuesday.

It will be sandwiched between their home Premier League game against Newcastle on Sunday and a Europa League meeting with Maccabi Haifa on Thursday, 1 October.

• Premier League awaits EFL proposals for £250m ‘bailout’

BBC Sport has learned that Orient returned 17 positive tests for the virus.

Chairman Nigel Travis told BBC Radio 5 live on Tuesday that they should not be punished for carrying out tests, which were paid for by Spurs.

“This is an incentive not to test and is bad for football and bad for health and safety,” he added.

An EFL statement said: “In accordance with Carabao Cup rules, Tottenham Hotspur have been awarded with a bye and will now play Chelsea on Tuesday, 29 September.

“The round three tie scheduled for Tuesday, 22 September between Leyton Orient and Tottenham Hotspur could not take place following the issue by Waltham Forest Borough Council of an order preventing the match being played as planned.

“The EFL Board has determined that in line with Carabao Cup Rule 5.1, the club was unable to fulfil its obligations to complete the fixture by virtue of the council’s order and shall therefore forfeit the tie.”

Orient head coach Ross Embleton said: “We’re devastated this has happened, but this club is used to setbacks.

“It’s really important that players, staff and supporters stick together through tough times.”

Tottenham had planned to donate their match shirts to the foundation set up in memory of their former player Justin Edinburgh, who was manager at Orient when he died at the age of 49 in June 2019 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

“Everyone at Tottenham Hotspur sends their best wishes to Leyton Orient for the health and wellbeing of their players and staff, their families and all those affected at this time,” a club statement said.

“We remain committed to helping to raise funds in aid of the JE3 Foundation, set up in the memory of Justin Edinburgh, and shall update in due course on auctioning match-worn shirts from a different fixture.”