Singer Gloria Estefan, who has been urging her fans to take Covid-19 precautions, said she tested positive for the virus last month.

“In the past few weeks I have been one of the victims of Covid,” Estefan said on Instagram.

Estefan said she thinks she caught the coronavirus on Oct. 30 from a fan who was not wearing a mask and who “tapped me on the shoulder” while she was eating outdoors with a small group of family members at a local restaurant.

“I even held my breath, quite honestly, through their talk but something must have happened there,” she said.

The 63-year-old performer said she got tested on Nov. 8 after she lost her senses of taste and smell and developed a mild cough.

Estefan said she isolated at her home on Star Island, which is just off Miami Beach, for two weeks and has tested negative twice since then.

But even before the diagnosis, Estefan said she and her family were careful about wearing masks and isolating at home and that the restaurant outing was “the only time I ever went out.”

The World Health Organization on Wednesday tightened guidelines on wearing face masks, recommending that, where Covid-19 is spreading, they be worn by everyone in health care facilities and for all interactions in poorly-ventilated indoor spaces.

The WHO said that, where the epidemic was spreading, people, including children and students aged 12 or over, should always wear masks in shops, workplaces and schools that lack adequate ventilation, and when receiving visitors at home in poorly ventilated rooms.

Masks should also be worn outdoors and in well ventilated indoor spaces where physical distancing of at least three feet could not be maintained.

In areas of Covid-19 spread, it also advised “universal” wearing of medical masks in health care facilities, including when caring for other patients. The advice applied to visitors, outpatients and to common areas such as cafeterias and staff rooms.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber criticized the Florida governor’s Covid-19 response on Wednesday, saying “the one thing we're missing is a leader.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close Trump ally, “seems just entrenched in following the convenient ideology rather than established science,” Gelber, a Democrat, said on MSNBC. 

Gelber said DeSantis needs to be doing more to encourage mask-wearing. 

He “won't position himself as a leader” on Covid-19, the mayor said. “In fact, he's doing the opposite right now…I think it's creating infections and therefore, you know, ruining people's lives.”

The mayor’s statement comes as DeSantis announced Monday that he was ruling out any further Covid-19 restrictions, saying “no lockdowns, no fines, no schools closures.”  Florida has recorded more than 1 million Covid-19 cases and almost 19,000 deaths as of Tuesday, according to an NBC News tally. 

The White House coronavirus task force is warning that the risk from Covid-19 to Americans is at “a historic high” and urging public health officials to “alert the state population directly” if local governments balk at doing so, according to a copy of the latest task force report obtained by NBC News.

“We are in a very dangerous place due to the current, extremely high COVID baseline and limited hospital capacity,” the report, which was distributed to the states earlier this week, says. “A further post-Thanksgiving surge will compromise COVID patient care, as well as medical care overall.”

Notably, the task force is directing health officials to take matters into their own hands and circumvent state and local policies if they “do not reflect the seriousness of the current situation” by making sure the media is “saturated with public health messaging.”

The message? Avoid social gatherings. Wear masks and practice social distancing. Report businesses and organizations that fail to comply with health regulations.

More specifically, the report states, “It must be made clear that if you are over 65 or have significant health conditions, you should not enter any indoor public spaces where anyone is unmasked due to the immediate risk to your health; you should have groceries and medications delivered.”

Echoing what Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci have stressed in recent days, the report also states: “If you are under 40, you need to assume you became infected during the Thanksgiving period if you gathered beyond your immediate household.”

“Most likely, you will not have symptoms; however, you are dangerous to others and you must isolate away from anyone at increased risk for severe disease and get tested immediately,” it states.

LOS ANGELES — People magazine has named George Clooney, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Selena Gomez and Regina King as the “2020 People of the Year.”

The magazine revealed its list Wednesday morning as part of a year-end double issue with four covers. The four will be celebrated for their positive impact in the world during a challenging 2020.

Clooney, Fauci, Gomez and King will be separately featured on the magazine covers of the issue, which is out Friday.

The U.S. reported 2,380 Covid-19 deaths Tuesday, the most since 2,415 were reported June 26, when New Jersey added probable deaths to its count.

Before that, it's the most deaths since May 7, when 2,578 fatalities were reported. Tuesday's tally brought the nation's overall death toll to 271,165.

The U.S. is averaging 1,502 reported deaths per day in the last week. Four weeks ago, the U.S. averaged 1,111 deaths per day.

According to NBC News' tally, the U.S. counted 181,112 new cases of the coronavirus Tuesday.

Several states hit single-day records Tuesday:

• Arizona, 10,322 cases
• Delaware, 689 cases
• Louisiana, 5,326 cases
• Maine, 20 reported deaths
• New Hampshire, 772 cases
• Oregon, 24 reported deaths
• Washington, 68 reported deaths
• Wisconsin, 117 reported deaths

The British government may have been the world's first to formally approve a Covid-19 vaccine Wednesday, but it has also been heavily criticized for attempting to use that milestone for nationalistic ends.

Minutes after the U.K. announced it had approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Business Secretary Alok Sharma tweeted, "In years to come, we will remember this moment as the day the U.K. led humanity's charge against this disease."

Plenty of people pointed out that the vaccine was developed in Germany by BioNTech, a company led by the children of Turkish immigrants, before being scrutinized in mass trials by the U.S. pharma giant Pfizer and then manufactured in Belgium.

"Why is it so difficult to recognize this important step forward as a great international effort and success?" Andreas Michaelis, the German ambassador to the U.K., responded to Sharma's tweet. "I really don't think this is a national story. In spite of the German company BioNTech having made a crucial contribution, this is European and transatlantic."

Health Secretary Matt Hancock was among those to suggest Brexit had helped the U.K.'s rapid vaccine response. "Because we've left the E.U., we’ve been able to move faster," he said. This was later contradicted by Dr. June Raine, chief executive of the U.K.'s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency — the body responsible for approving the vaccine — who told a news conference that this had not been a factor.