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Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as voluntary shelter-in-place, quarantines, and other steps taken to control the novel coronavirus can reduce the peak number of infections, daily infection rates, and overall deaths, say researchers, "High compliance with voluntary quarantine, where the entire household stays home if there is a person with symptoms or risk of exposure in the household has a significant impact on reducing the spread," said study author Pinar Keskinocak from Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

After shelves were emptied of goods like toilet paper, canned food and hand sanitizer at the start of the pandemic, Chicago-area grocery stores and suppliers are stocking up to avert shortages as coronavirus cases rise in Illinois. On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a 10 p.m. curfew on all nonessential city businesses and a prohibition on indoor service at bars without food licenses. Gov. J.B. Pritzker also announced stricter rules for some counties, including DuPage, Kane, Will and Kankakee.

Nevada’s rate of coronavirus infections is steadily rising again. But state officials are reluctant to blame relaxed guidelines and say there is no reason yet to consider stricter measures. “We’re not at that point now,” Gov. Steve Sisolak said Tuesday. “I don’t want to get to that point ... I don’t want to see that happen, so we are working to loosen things up more and get people back to what their new normal is,” he said at a news conference in Las Vegas. 

Allan Lichtman, the distinguished political scientist from American University, has demonstrated an uncanny knack to forecast who will win U.S. presidential elections. Using an earthquake forecasting model adapted to election forecasting, he uses 13 simple true/false questions, labelled the “Keys to the White House,” with six or more false keys indicating that the challenger will defeat the incumbent.