Here’s what you need to know:
- The U.S. reports another record number of cases, as hard-hit states retreat from reopening.
- As Fauci pleads for more caution, the E.U. aims to bar U.S. travelers.
- Florida reports more than 8,900 new daily cases and bans drinking in bars.
- China says it has tamed an outbreak in Beijing, at least for now.
- California’s governor tells counties to consider pausing their reopenings, but doesn’t commit to rolling them back.
- Norway partially reopened some gyms as an experiment. Here’s what happened.
- Online learning in U.S. schools is here to stay for some students this fall.
The U.S. reports another record number of cases, as hard-hit states retreat from reopening.
As the United States reached its third consecutive day with a record number of new infections, officials on Friday were urgently rethinking their strategies to head off new infections.
The U.S., which leads the world in total cases and deaths, reported more than 45,000 new infections on Friday, according to a Times database. Before this week, the country’s largest daily total was 36,738 on April 24.
Globally, countries reported more than 191,000 new infections — a single-day record as the total number of cases neared 10 million. India’s caseload surged past 500,000.
At least six U.S. states — Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah — reported their highest one-day case totals, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, also warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country.
Dr. Fauci said in a brief interview on Friday that officials were having “intense discussions” about a possible shift to “pool testing,” in which samples from many people are tested at once in an effort to quickly find and isolate the infected.
European Union officials said the bloc was ready to bar most travelers from the U.S. and other countries considered too risky because they have not controlled the outbreak.
And for the first time, some U.S. governors were backtracking on reopening their states, issuing new restrictions for parts of the economy that had resumed.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Dilemma in Texas
The governor was insistent about reopening. And then the cases soared.In Texas and Florida on Friday, leaders abruptly set new restrictions on bars, a reversal that appeared unthinkable just days ago. Near the end of the day, Mayor Carlos Giménez of Florida’s Miami-Dade County said he would sign an emergency order closing down beaches from July 3 to July 7, citing the surge of new cases and fears about mass gatherings during the July Fourth holiday weekend.
In California, which had one of the earliest stay-at-home orders in the nation, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on Imperial County, which has the state’s highest rate of infection.
“This disease does not take a summer vacation,” he said.
The decisions in Texas and Florida represented the strongest acknowledgment yet that reopening had not gone as planned. Only days ago their Republican governors were adamantly resisting calls to close back down.
“If I could go back and redo anything, it probably would have been to slow down the opening of bars,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in an interview with KVIA-TV in El Paso on Friday evening.
But even leaders outside the new hot zones in the South and West expressed mounting anxiety.
“This is a very dangerous time,” Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said in an interview on Friday, as cases were trending steadily upward in his state after appearing to be under control. “I think what is happening in Texas and Florida and several other states should be a warning to everyone.”
Yet a few hours earlier in Washington, at the White House coronavirus task force’s first public briefing in almost two months, Vice President Mike Pence sought to take a victory lap for the Trump administration’s pandemic response.
“We slowed the spread, we flattened the curve, we saved lives,” Mr. Pence said, making a claim that was true in earlier months but has become outdated after the seven-day average of new cases climbed in recent weeks.
Unlike the health officials around him, Mr. Pence did not wear a mask.
As Fauci pleads for more caution, the E.U. aims to bar U.S. travelers.
After Dr. Fauci warned on Friday that coronavirus outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country, European Union officials emphasized the perils they saw in the situation in the United States: The bloc said it was ready to bar most U.S. travelers because it considers them too risky.
The exclusion of the United States, an important source of tourism for the European Union, would represent a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s management of the virus.
Dr. Fauci pleaded for social distancing and mask wearing as “a societal responsibility.”
“You have an individual responsibility to yourself, but you have a societal responsibility, because if we want to end this outbreak, really end it, and then hopefully when a vaccine comes and puts a nail in the coffin, we’ve got to realize that we are part of the process,” Dr. Fauci said, noting that some states are doing better than others.
“If we don’t extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread,” he said.
Dr. Birx said that rising positive test rates in states across the South, including Texas, Arizona, Florida and Mississippi, were causing significant concern among health officials, and that the officials had created an “alert system” to track the test results.
E.U. officials first disclosed on Tuesday that the United States, which has reported more virus-related deaths and infections than any other country, was highly unlikely to make a final list of countries whose residents would be permitted to enter. The bloc is also likely to bar most travelers from Russia and dozens of other countries it sees as threats to its safety, officials said Friday.
European Union officials tried to base their decision on scientific criteria, in part to depoliticize the process and shield themselves from diplomatic pressures. But it’s proven to be difficult, and officials said the United States and other nations had been lobbying intensely to get on the list of safe countries.
The United States, which barred most European Union travelers in March as the virus was raging there, has not eased its own restrictions since then, even though infections and deaths in the bloc have dropped.
U.S. Roundup
Florida reports more than 8,900 new daily cases and bans drinking in bars.
As cases rise around the United States, Florida reported more than 8,900 new cases on Friday, after counting more than 10,000 new cases over the previous two days, pushing its total past 120,000.
The eye-popping numbers came as hospitals and local leaders warned about rampant complacency.
“When I go out, I see fewer and fewer people wearing masks and practicing safe, physical distancing,” said Dr. Lawrence Antonucci, chief executive of the Lee Health hospital system in Fort Myers. “The threat of this virus is as real as it’s ever been.”
On Friday night, Mayor Carlos Giménez of Miami-Dade County said he would sign an emergency order closing down beaches from July 3 to July 7, citing the surge of coronavirus cases and fears about mass gatherings during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Parks and beaches will be closed to fireworks displays, and gatherings of more than 50 people, including parades, will be banned.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who has resisted rolling back the economic reopening, said on Friday that drinking had been banned in bars because many businesses were not following social distancing and capacity restrictions. Bars can remain open to sell takeout alcohol and food if they have an appropriate license.
“There was widespread noncompliance, and that led to issues,” he said at a news conference in Fort Myers. “If folks just follow the guidelines, we’re going to be in good shape. When you depart from that, it becomes problematic.”
Mr. DeSantis attributed the spike in cases to more socializing among young people rather than businesses being open.
“Beginning of May, we went to this, you didn’t see any problems,” he said of the reopening, which started on May 4.
Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami said city officials are considering whether to restore even more restrictions, although they may first try to stiffen penalties he said were not harsh enough against businesses that fail to comply with existing rules. He added that it should be possible to restore some restrictions.
“This is a pendulum,” he said. “There’s a point where people all coalesce behind that idea if it becomes necessary. We’re in a far more precarious position than we were a month ago.”
But in Palm Beach County, Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said going back to a more stringent phase of reopening might be difficult.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said. “We’d get huge pushback from the public in trying to do that.”
Across the state, long lines have returned at testing sites that just a few weeks ago were seeing limited demand. Florida also reported an unusually high number of tests results on Friday — more than 71,000 — according to a daily Department of Health case report, and Mr. DeSantis noted that “we had a big test dump,” but did not go into detail or offer any details.
Elsewhere in the United States:
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A federal judge on Friday ordered the release of children held with their parents in U.S. immigration jails and denounced the Trump administration’s prolonged detention of families during the coronavirus pandemic. The order by District Judge Dolly Gee applies to children held for more than 20 days at three family detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some have been detained since last year. There were 124 children living in those facilities on June 8, according to the ruling.
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In Illinois, where the governor described a “trajectory of relative success,” museums, zoos and bowling alleys were set to reopen on Friday, along with indoor dining.
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Infections among Latinos in the United States have far outpaced those among the rest of the population during the country’s surge in recent weeks, a testament to the makeup of the nation’s essential work force.
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Tennessee health officials on Friday announced sweeping changes to guidelines on who would get lifesaving treatments if resources fell dramatically short during a crisis. The new plan weighs how likely patients are to survive their immediate illness.
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Alaska Native corporations, for-profit businesses which serve tribal villages in Alaska, will receive a portion of the $8 billion pot of funds set aside for tribal governments, dealing a blow to tribes in the lower 48 states who had argued that they should not be made eligible for the aid.
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Morehouse, one of the country’s most celebrated historically black colleges, said Friday that it had canceled its fall sports of football and cross country, making it one of the first to publicly abandon its football season outright, though a handful of other schools have canceled games.
Global Roundup
China says it has tamed an outbreak in Beijing, at least for now.
Fears of a second wave of infections in China have receded, after the government responded to an outbreak of nearly 300 cases in Beijing with a partial lockdown and a push to test millions of people.
But while the number of new reported cases has mostly tapered in past weeks, Beijing’s recent surge has confirmed fears of sporadic flare-ups even after countries tame their outbreaks.
Beijing’s new infections emerged two weeks ago, after officials discovered a cluster in people who had worked or shopped at the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale market, which supplies most of the city’s fruits and vegetables.
Within days, officials had locked down dozens of residential complexes, prohibited taxis from leaving Beijing and postponed school reopenings. As of June 22, the authorities had taken samples from more than 2.9 million people over the previous 10 days, the state news media reported.
But officials stopped short of a full lockdown in the style of Wuhan, the Chinese city where the virus is believed to have originated. The central government has emphasized the need to restart the country’s economy, and even health officials have said that sustained, repeated lockdowns are not practical.
As of Saturday morning, the authorities had reported 297 confirmed cases in Beijing, and cases tied to the city had been found in at least four provinces. The partial measures appeared to be working: The Beijing Health Commission reported 17 newly confirmed cases in the previous 24 hours, down from a peak of nearly 60 positive tests on June 14.
Wu Zunyou, the head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, said last week that the outbreak was “under control.” In an interview this week with the state news media, he predicted the number of cases would not exceed 400.
Still, even the state media outlets acknowledged that it might be too early to claim victory, given long lines for testing and a potential delay in results.
“We’ve had two outbreaks in half a year, so it is highly possible that the outbreak will make a comeback in the near future,” Zeng Guang, an expert at the National Health Commission, told Global Times, a nationalistic state-controlled tabloid.
In other international news:
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The Hong Kong police on Saturday banned an annual pro-democracy march planned for the anniversary of the Chinese territory’s handover from British rule, citing concerns about the virus and potential street violence. Mainland China’s top legislative committee could pass a sweeping security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, a day before the march would have taken place.
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As coronavirus lockdowns loosen around the world, city leaders are scrambling to address a new problem: gridlock. They worry that people will avoid public transit for fear of catching the virus, and decide to drive instead.
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Officials in Britain have warned of enhanced measures to restrict gatherings after many residents abandoned caution during the country’s attempt to reopen. London’s police chief said on Friday that patrols would increase over the weekend, dispersing unauthorized gatherings, and the health secretary threatened to close the country’s beaches if social distancing measures continued to be violated.
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In Italy, the health authorities are monitoring a surge in Mondragone, a town of nearly 30,000 some 35 miles north of Naples, that has set off unrest. More than 40 people in a cluster of low-income apartment buildings tested positive this week, mostly Bulgarian farm workers, and violent tensions flared with Italian residents, prompting the interior minister to send an army contingent.
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The World Health Organization said Friday that it needed $27.9 billion over the next year to speed up the production of a vaccine and to develop other tools in the fight against the virus.
California’s governor tells counties to consider pausing their reopenings, but doesn’t commit to rolling them back.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said Friday that counties across the state should heed rising case counts and consider dialing back or postponing reopening, as San Francisco did.
But he stopped short of saying whether the state would reimpose restrictions that have been lifted. Instead, he said, the state had simply paused issuing more reopening guidelines.
And Mr. Newsom said the state reserves the right to “toggle back” if it becomes necessary in days ahead, once again pleading with residents to follow the state’s mask order and stay away from loved ones.
Officials in California, where stay-at-home orders were imposed particularly early in the pandemic, acknowledged the challenges of managing a constantly shifting situation when, as the governor put it, the state “is not one-size-fits-all.”
After more than 5,500 new cases were announced on Thursday, thousands more were identified on Friday. The state surpassed 200,000 total cases on Thursday, as its number of infections doubled over the past month. That is the second highest total for any state, though California’s cumulative per capita infection rate remains far lower than New York’s.
The governor reported that there was a 3.3 percent increase in hospitalizations and a 4.4 percent increase in cases requiring intensive care. The state’s positivity rate increased to 5.3 percent over the past two weeks.
He also laid out how the state and federal governments have sent extra resources to Imperial County, an impoverished agrarian valley along the border, that has notched a 23 percent positivity rate and where an influx of Americans returning from Mexico have been hospitalized. More than 500 people have been transferred to other hospitals around the state from the area.
Norway partially reopened some gyms as an experiment. Here’s what happened.
Like many countries, Norway ordered all gyms to close in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But unlike any other nation, Norway also funded a rigorous study to determine whether the closings were really necessary.
It is apparently the first and only randomized trial to test whether people who work out at gyms with modest restrictions are at greater risk of infection than those who do not. The tentative answer after two weeks: no.
This week, responding to the study it funded, Norway reopened all of its gyms, with the same safeguards in place that were used in the study.
The trial, begun on May 22, included five gyms in Oslo with 3,764 members, ages 18 to 64, who did not have underlying medical conditions. Half of the members — 1,896 people — were invited to go back to their gyms and work out.
Another 1,868 gym members served as a comparison group; they were not permitted to return to their gyms.
The researchers found only one coronavirus case, in a person who had not used the gym before he was tested; it was traced to his workplace. Some participants visited hospitals, but for diseases other than Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Is there hope for gymgoers in other parts of the world?
“I personally think this is generalizable, with one caveat,” said Dr. Michael Bretthauer, a cancer screening expert at the University of Oslo who led the study with Dr. Mette Kalager. “There may be places where there is a lot of Covid, or where people are less inclined to follow restrictions.”
Norway is bringing its epidemic under control, and the number of new infections has fallen.
Online learning in U.S. schools is here to stay for some students this fall.
A handful of school districts across the United States have started announcing plans for the upcoming school year, forcing parents to grapple with the reality that it is unlikely many schools will return to a normal schedule in the fall. This means learning will take place at home and online, and emergency child care arrangements will continue indefinitely.
On Thursday, the Seattle Public Schools announced that its goal was to provide at least two days of in-person instruction per week to elementary students and one day per week to middle and high school students. Children with disabilities, those learning English and those living in poverty would be the priorities for receiving additional in-school support.
In the Washington suburb of Fairfax County, Va., students will have either four days of remote learning per week, with the promise of live teaching over video, or an in-person schedule of at least two days per week, with online learning the rest of the time.
In New Jersey, the new school year will likely look different in each district, with some expected to resume in-person learning, the governor said on Friday. School staff will be required to wear masks, and students will be encouraged to do so.
Many of the nation’s largest school districts have yet to announce concrete reopening plans. Some states, like California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have issued guidelines, but district policymakers will have the final say.
On Friday, New York City’s mayor described a list of considerations that would determine how many children can be in a classroom in the fall and said staggered schedules and online learning would be part of any plan.
Many districts are surveying parents to better understand their comfort level with reopening school buildings. The Marietta City Schools in Georgia, for example, announced Thursday that families could choose between regular in-person schooling, beginning Aug. 4, and full-time online instruction. Temperature checks will be required for those returning to school.
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Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen, Wilson Andrews, Brooks Barnes, Ronen Bergman, Julie Bosman, Damien Cave, Choe Sang-Hun, Emily Cochrane, Jill Cowan, Abdi Latif Dahir, Melissa Eddy, Marie Fazio, Manny Fernandez, Alan Feuer, Jacey Fortin, Sheri Fink, Thomas Fuller, Carlotta Gall, Dana Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Katie Glueck, Maggie Haberman, Rebecca Halleck, Ben Hubbard, Shawn Hubler, Jonathan Huang, Mike Ives, Miriam Jordan, Juliette Love, Apoorva Mandavilli, Mike Mason, Patricia Mazzei, Jesse McKinley, Donald G. McNeil Jr, Sarah Mervosh, Zachary Montague, Elian Peltier, Nicole Perlroth, Brad Plumer, Alan Rappeport, Frances Robles, Amanda Rosa, David E. Sanger, Nelson D. Schwartz, Somini Sengupta, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Anjali Singhvi, Daniel E. Slotnik, Mitch Smith, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, David Waldstein, Declan Walsh, Vivian Wang, Noah Weiland, David Yaffe-Bellany, Sameer Yasir, Elaine Yu and Ceylan Yeginsu.
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