Coronavirus Watch: Trump, Biden to be tested before final debate

Tonight is the final presidential debate, and the Commission on Presidential Debates is getting serious about COVID-19 precautions.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will both be tested for COVID-19 before the debate, and all audience members will be required to wear masks throughout the event.

These assurances stand in stark contrast to the prior actions of Trump and the first family, who ignored a mask requirement at the first debate and inflamed confusion about if the president was tested beforehand.

Planning to watch? Follow along with our live fact checks. We'll be giving context on-screen here and posting live fact checks to our Twitter account here. You can also sign up for instant text updates.

It's Thursday, and this is the Coronavirus Watch from the Paste BN Network. Here's the most significant news of the day, as of 12:15 p.m. ET:

• What's "close contact"? For months, the CDC said "close contact" meant spending 15 minutes within 6 feet of someone who tested positive. On Wednesday, the CDC changed it to a total of 15 minutes or more – so that means shorter but repeated contacts that add up to 15 minutes over a 24-hour period now count.
• San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco, has been ordered to cut its population by half due to an outbreak that has killed 28 inmates and resulted in more than 2,200 infections.
• Both of Puerto Rico's 911 call centers were shut down Wednesday night after several employees tested positive for the coronavirus, officials announced.
• Spain is the first country in western Europe to reach 1 million cases of COVID-19 as the nation of 47 million struggles to contain a resurgence of the virus.
• Boston public schools are switching to all-remote learning starting Thursday in response to a rise in cases.

Worked to death: Latino farmworkers have long been denied basic rights. COVID-19 showed how deadly racism could be. Read the latest installment in Paste BN's series, Deadly Discrimination.

14 states set records for new cases in a week while six states had a record number of deaths in a week, a Paste BN analysis of Johns Hopkins data through late Wednesday shows. At the current rate, the U.S. could see its highest weekly average of new cases by Election Day.

Today's numbers: The U.S. has reported more than 8.3 million cases and 222,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Globally, there have been more than 41.3 million cases and 1.1 million fatalities. See the numbers in your area here, and check out where cases are rising here.

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– Grace Hauck, Paste BN breaking news reporter, @grace_hauck