Reuters US Domestic News Summary

After Trump tests positive, Biden campaign seeks to keep focus on COVID-19 response With President Donald Trump undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at a military hospital, Democratic challenger Joe Biden's campaign is looking to keep its focus on the nation's response to the pandemic in the final month before the Nov. 3 election.

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. After Trump tests positive, Biden campaign seeks to keep focus on COVID-19 response

With President Donald Trump undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at a military hospital, Democratic challenger Joe Biden's campaign is looking to keep its focus on the nation's response to the pandemic in the final month before the Nov. 3 election. Biden, who tested negative on Friday, three days after debating Trump, has repeatedly wished the president a speedy recovery. But the former vice president and his aides have used his Republican rival's positive test to underline a consistent campaign message: Biden would handle the pandemic better than Trump. White House acknowledges Trump's condition had been worse than revealed

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows revealed that President Donald Trump's condition on Friday was far worse than officials had made public, saying doctors recommended the president go to the hospital after seeing he had a fever and his blood oxygen level dropped rapidly. Meadows made the comments in an interview with Fox News broadcast Saturday night that capped two days of conflicting and opaque assessments of the 74-year-old president's health. Record California wildfires burn over four million acres

Wildfires in California have burned more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) in 2020, over twice the previous record for any year and an area larger than Connecticut, the state's fire agency reported on Sunday. The most-populous U.S. state has suffered five of its six largest wildfires in history this year as heat waves and dry-lightning sieges coincided with drier conditions that climate scientists blame on global warming. Experts raise questions about severity of Trump's COVID-19

Doctors not involved in treating President Donald Trump for COVID-19 said the fact that he has been started on dexamethasone - a generic steroid widely used in other diseases to reduce inflammation - is evidence his case is severe. Trump's medical team on Sunday said the president was started on the steroid after experiencing low oxygen levels, but his condition was improving and he could be discharged from the hospital on Monday. Factbox: White House staff, top Republicans who have tested positive for COVID-19

A growing number of White House staff and senior Republicans have tested positive for COVID-19 since President Donald Trump revealed he had contracted the respiratory disease. The infections have roiled the presidential campaign, now in its final month, rattled financial markets and slowed the work of Congress, with the Senate vowing to delay any votes now that three members of the Republican majority have tested positive. Doctors monitoring Trump's lungs, giving steroid to fight COVID-19

Doctors treating President Donald Trump for COVID-19 are monitoring the condition of his lungs after he received supplemental oxygen, they told reporters on Sunday, hours before Trump surprised supporters outside the hospital by riding past in a motorcade. Trump, 74, wore a mask as he waved from the back seat of a black SUV that crawled in a caravan of vehicles in front of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, while supporters waving Trump 2020 flags chanted "USA! USA!" Twitter users flood #ProudBoys hashtag with gay pride images

Twitter users are flooding the #ProudBoys hashtag on social media with images of LGBTQI+ pride, displacing posts made by neo-Nazis and white supremacists using the tag. Proud Boys, a far-right group founded in 2016, calls itself a "white chauvinist" organization but is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As cold weather arrives, U.S. states see record increases in COVID-19 cases

Nine U.S. states have reported record increases in COVID-19 cases over the last seven days, mostly in the upper Midwest and West where chilly weather is forcing more activities indoors. On Saturday alone, four states - Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin - saw record increases in new cases and nationally nearly 49,000 new infections were reported, the highest for a Saturday in seven weeks, according to a Reuters analysis. Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming also set new records for cases last week. U.S. CDC reports 703 coronavirus deaths

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sunday reported 7,359,952 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 49,327 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 703 to 208,821. The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19 as of 4 p.m. ET on Oct. 3 compared with its previous report a day earlier. (https://bit.ly/3kZDvsN) Biden leads by 10 points as majority of Americans say Trump could have avoided coronavirus: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Democrat Joe Biden opened his widest lead in a month in the U.S. presidential race after President Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, and a majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday. The Oct. 2-3 national opinion poll gave little indication of an outpouring of support for the president beyond Trump's core group of followers, some of whom have gathered outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where the president has been hospitalized.