Coronavirus outbreak

As health officials warned that gatherings on the upcoming Labor Day holiday weekend in the United States could fuel the spread of coronavirus, political observers are closely watching attitudes about the virus in the midwest, where Donald Trump and Joe Biden are locked in a struggle that could decide the presidential election.Two new national polls published on Wednesday found that Trump retained the support of 40%-41% of voters – within the narrow band of support he has held since he took office, even as the confirmed death toll from Covid-19 in the United States approaches 200,000.One of the polls, for Grinnell College by the highly reputed Selzer & Company, found that Trump enjoys a 49-45 lead over Biden among voters ages 55 and older – precisely the group most vulnerable to serious complications or death from coronavirus.But in midwestern states such as Iowa and Minnesota, in particular, new warnings about coronavirus are being sounded just as the presidential election enters its final weeks and absentee voting begins.“We cannot afford to have this Labor Day weekend further accelerate the community spread, because if that happens, what comes next is going to be worse,” Jan Malcolm, the Minnesota health commissioner, told local MPR News on Monday. “For a while now, we feel we’ve been kind of walking on the edge of a cliff.”A White House coronavirus taskforce sent Iowa health officials a report this week warning that the state has the highest rate of cases in the United States, according to the Des Moines Register.The state has recorded just over 1,000 deaths from Covid-19, and the more than 65,000 confirmed cases have disproportionately affected communities tied to regional packing plants.Biden was scheduled to speak on Wednesday about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and on Thursday the former vice-president planned to hold a community meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of protests after the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer last month. More