Here’s what you need to know:
- Virus cases surpassed 2 million in the U.S., and are increasing in 21 states amid efforts to reopen.
- Researchers around the world are developing more than 125 vaccines. Here’s where they stand.
- The global economy faces the worst downturn in a century, a new report says.
- Mnuchin says more financial help for the economy will be needed.
- Fauci says protests could cause a spike and the gatherings are the ‘kinds of things we were concerned about.’
- As U.S. jury trials resume, courts confront virus logistics.
- $130 billion in small-business aid still hasn’t been used.
Virus cases surpassed 2 million in the U.S., and are increasing in 21 states amid efforts to reopen.
The United States surpassed 2 million coronavirus cases on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database, which showed that the outbreak is continuing to spread, with cases rising in 21 states as governments ease restrictions and Americans try to return to their routines.
Total case numbers in Yakima County, Wash., surpassed 5,000 on Tuesday, with 1,100 since the beginning of June. And new cases continue to be identified by the hundreds each day in the Phoenix area. More than 4,000 of Maricopa County’s 14,374 total cases are from June alone. One of the state’s largest health systems, Banner Health, is reporting an increase in patients on ventilators since the beginning of the month. Across the state in the past week, there have been more than 7,000 new cases with upticks in Yuma and Santa Cruz Counties.
Our ICUs are very busy caring for the sickest of the sick who are battling COVID-19. Since May 15, ventilated COVID-19 patients have quadrupled. Banner Health also recently reached capacity for patients receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment. (2/3)
— Banner Health (@BannerHealth) June 8, 2020
In Alaska, where new case reports had slowed to a trickle in May, the number of new cases is among the state’s worst since the start of the pandemic. There have been more than 100 new cases in the past week alone, bringing the state’s total since the beginning of March to 620. Recent outbreaks have been reported among seafood workers and ferry crew members. The state reported its first coronavirus death in more than a month on Tuesday.
Some parts of the South are finally showing signs of progress. New case reports have started trending downward in Alabama and have leveled off in Mississippi. But persistent growth continues in Arkansas, North Carolina and Florida. And in South Carolina, there have been nearly 1,000 new cases in the past two days.
Researchers around the world are developing more than 125 vaccines. Here’s where they stand.
Researchers around the world are developing more than 125 vaccines against the coronavirus. Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but scientists are hoping to produce a safe and effective vaccine by next year.
The New York Times is following the status of those that have reached trials in humans.
There are three phases before a vaccine is approved for use, but some projects have combined early phase trials to speed up the process. Some coronavirus vaccines are now in Phase I/II trials, for example, in which they are tested for the first time on hundreds of people.
Additionally, the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program has selected five vaccine projects to receive billions of dollars in federal funding and support before there’s proof that the vaccines work.
Work began in January with the deciphering of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The first vaccine safety trials in humans started in March, but the road ahead remains uncertain. Some trials will fail, and others may end without a clear result. But a few may succeed in stimulating the immune system to produce effective antibodies against the virus.
The global economy faces the worst downturn in a century, a new report says.
The world economy is facing the most severe recession in a century and could experience a halting recovery with a potential second wave of the virus and as countries embrace protectionist policies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned in a new report.
A grim economic outlook released by the O.E.C.D. on Wednesday depicted a world economy that is walking on a “tightrope” as countries began to reopen after three months of lockdowns. Considerable uncertainty remains, however, as the prospects and timing of a vaccine remain unknown. Health experts fear that the spread of the virus could accelerate again later this year.
“Extraordinary policies will be needed to walk the tightrope towards recovery,” said Laurence Boone, the O.E.C.D.’s chief economist.
The O.E.C.D., which comprises 37 of the world’s leading economies, predicts that the global economy will contract by 6 percent this year if a second wave of the virus is avoided. If a second wave does occur, world economic output will fall 7.6 percent, before rebounding by 2.8 percent in 2021. The two scenarios are viewed as equally plausible.
The report is slightly more ominous than other recent forecasts from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Mnuchin says more financial help for the economy will be needed.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers on Wednesday that the next round of economic stimulus legislation must be targeted to help industries that have been hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic and that the focus must be on creating incentives to get jobless workers rehired.
Testifying before the Senate’s small business committee, Mr. Mnuchin said that he was pleasantly surprised that the economy added 2.5 million jobs last month and that he believed the economy would improve dramatically in the second half of the year.
But the Treasury secretary also said that there is still “significant damage” to parts of the economy that need to be addressed.
The White House has held off on negotiating with Congress over another economic relief package, saying that they want to more thoroughly assess how the existing measures are working. However, Mr. Mnuchin made clear that the work of stabilizing the economy is not done.
“There’s no question that small businesses in many industries are going to need more help,” he said.
Mr. Mnuchin said that the administration will be looking at measures that will encourage businesses to rehire. It is also considering the need for more direct payments to Americans and adjustments to unemployment insurance benefits to ensure that people don’t have incentives to remain jobless. The Treasury secretary sounded cool to the idea of a capital-gains-tax holiday.
The Treasury secretary appeared with Jovita Carranza, the administrator of the Small Business Administration, to update lawmakers on the status of the Paycheck Protection Program, a lending initiative that was created in March as a lifeline for small businesses but that was initially plagued by glitches, delays and changing rules.
Fauci says protests could cause a spike and the gatherings are the ‘kinds of things we were concerned about.’
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, warned on Wednesday that the protests sweeping the nation could lead to a spike in infections — and said that it is not enough that many people marching against police violence are wearing masks.
“Masks can help, but it’s masks plus physical separation and when you get congregations like we saw with the demonstrations, like we have said — myself and other health officials — that’s taking a risk,” Dr. Fauci said on the ABC program “Good Morning America.” He added, “Unfortunately, what we’re seeing now is just an example of the kinds of things we were concerned about.”
Dr. Fauci said a report that members of the D.C. National Guard had become infected after the protests “is certainly disturbing but is not surprising.”
The host, Robin Roberts, later said, “People are very passionate about what they’re fighting for and it’s very evident that they feel it’s worth the possible risk.” Dr. Fauci nodded his head.
A group of more than 1,000 people working in health and medicine have argued recently that the protests are “vital” to public health as the longtime discrimination of black Americans is itself a public health crisis. Some protesters have said they weighed the health risks against the need to protest and decided the movement against police brutality and racism was worth the risk.
In California, Jarrion Harris, 32, wore a cloth mask for a march in Hollywood on Sunday.
“I’m definitely not out here because I think Covid-19 has gone into the shadows,” Mr. Harris said. “It’s worth the risk.”
And at least 15 cases nationally have been linked to protests, including five National Guard members and one police officer in Nebraska. Health officials on Tuesday in Parsons, Kan., and Stevens Point, Wis., also announced new cases involving people who attended protests.
Typically, symptoms of the virus can take up to two weeks to appear after a person is exposed, and it is too soon to see any real change in the number of cases in areas where there have been large gatherings.
As U.S. jury trials resume, courts confront virus logistics.
Oregon and other states have begun holding jury trials again, leading to courtroom drama that may have nothing to do with the criminal charges.
Court administrators across the country have turned to measuring tapes, diagrams and various other calculators to determine how many people a jury box can safely hold or how long it will take to transport a socially distanced jury pool by elevator. They have installed plexiglass barriers for witness stands and pondered texting as a means of client-lawyer communication.
Masks pose a number of conundrums. How would a lawyer help choose a jury without being able to see the fleeting smirks or scowls that are normally tipoffs about bias?
Other questions involve more fundamental principles of jurisprudence. Would the jury pool reflect the community if people in groups hit harder by Covid-19, like older residents, African-Americans and Latinos, were more reluctant to show up? Can a trial truly be considered public if the public has been told to stay at home?
“There’s an inherent conflict between the rights of someone on trial and our social-distancing policies,” Dylan Potter said after one of his clients became the first defendant to be tried by jury in Multnomah County, Ore., since the pandemic began. “As smooth as this went, at no point would I ever advise a client to go through with it in these times.”
$130 billion in small-business aid still hasn’t been used.
In April, when the federal government offered $349 billion in loans to small businesses reeling from government shutdown orders to combat the pandemic, the funding ran out in just 13 days, prompting Congress to swiftly approve a second round of $310 billion.
Small businesses have since grown more wary of taking the money.
As of Monday, more than $130 billion was left in the fund, known as the Paycheck Protection Program. Even more striking was the fact that on many days last month, more money was being returned than borrowed, according to data from the Small Business Administration, which is overseeing the program.
For some owners, the program’s terms were too restrictive; for others, the criteria for loan forgiveness was too murky. Some public companies that received these loans returned them after a public outcry, and in the initial rush, some borrowers accidentally got duplicate loans that they, too, returned.
The turn of events is notable for a signature program of Congress’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package. After all, small businesses are still in distress, and millions of storefronts around the country remain shuttered.
On Wednesday last week, Congress moved to loosen the program’s rules and give businesses more flexibility in spending their aid, and President Trump signed the bill on Friday.
The amended rules could help the remaining $130 billion move faster. However, having the terms of their loans revised on the fly again is a nightmare for borrowers, and for many small businesses that depend on foot traffic, like restaurants and nail salons, even the more relaxed relief terms might not be enough.
The Fed will release economic projections and is expected to leave interest rates near zero.
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to leave interest rates near zero on Wednesday while pledging to continue buying bonds, but economists are watching for any hint about how the central bank might adjust policy in the longer run.
Officials are set to release their first set of economic projections of 2020, having skipped the quarterly summary in March as the pandemic gripped the United States, sowing uncertainty. The forecasts will show how they expect unemployment, inflation and growth to shape up in the years ahead.
Many Fed watchers expect officials to use the interest rate projections and their post-meeting statement, released at 2 p.m. Eastern time, to clearly signal that borrowing costs will remain at rock-bottom for some time. Policymakers could also use the statement to make clear they will try to goose the economy through their bond-buying program. The Fed has been snapping up government-backed bonds to keep markets functioning normally, but conditions have calmed, so they could make that program explicitly focused on stimulating the economy.
But the more significant moment may come when Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, holds an online news conference at 2:30 p.m. While he has sounded wary about the path ahead, analysts are curious to hear his take on the economy as states gradually open and the job market stages an early rebound.
Republicans are expected to move the convention to Jacksonville from Charlotte.
Republicans expect to move their national convention from Charlotte, N.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., a shift planned after Mr. Trump told officials in North Carolina that he did not want to use social distancing measures aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus, according to three senior Republicans.
The decision could change, the Republicans cautioned, but as of now, officials are on track to announce the new location as early as Thursday.
Jacksonville has been Republicans’ top choice for days, after Mr. Trump told the governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, a Democrat, that he needed an answer about whether Charlotte could accommodate the convention in August with a promise that there would not be social distancing.
Once they decided to uproot the convention, Mr. Trump’s aides and Republican officials had wanted to relocate to a state and city controlled by Republicans. Jacksonville is the most populous city in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, a Republican and an ally of Mr. Trump, is the governor. Jacksonville’s mayor, Lenny Curry, is a longtime Republican official.
New reported cases of the coronavirus are on the rise in both North Carolina and Florida.
What exactly the event will look like remains unclear. Conventions normally last for four days, with thousands of party officials, delegates, donors, members of the news media and others coming together for speeches and votes.
Mr. Cooper had repeatedly told Mr. Trump that it was too early to make any promises about social distancing, and state health officials said the Republican National Committee and the host committee in Charlotte provided a requested plan for safely holding the event.
The virus has upended the usual campaign cycle. Jon Huntsman Jr., Republican candidate for governor in Utah, said on Wednesday he had tested positive for the virus, becoming the latest politician to do so.
New York Roundup
‘I’ve never seen it like this’: The pandemic has transformed the experience of riding N.Y.C.’s subway.
Subway cars lurched through a system eerily devoid of stray plastic bags, unidentifiable liquids and, notably, people. In stations, the loop of prerecorded announcements that seep into New York City’s collective subconscious (“Stand clear of the closing doors, please”) offered a new message to riders: “Please, do your part to reduce crowding.”
The pandemic drained more than 90 percent of the subway’s usual ridership and transit officials remain uncertain whether all 5.5 million weekday riders will ever return.
Now the ability of the subway to regain riders’ confidence will play a crucial role in the city’s recovery. In the interim, though, the subway’s transformation serves as a vivid reminder of the outbreak’s aftershocks.
“All my life, I’ve never seen it like this,” Melody Johnson, a nurse who lives in Brooklyn, said while riding an uptown No. 2 train one recent morning. “Look around — we’re empty.”
After hitting a low of 7 percent of the usual passenger load in April, ridership levels have recently crept up to around 15 percent. On Monday, as the city started reopening, around 113,000 more riders rode the subway compared to the same day the previous week, officials said.
Here’s a look at other developments:
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Statewide, there were an additional 53 virus-related deaths.
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At the governor’s daily briefing on Wednesday, one of his aides said the state would soon issue guidance for municipalities about how and whether to reopen public pools.
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New York City’s mayor said Wednesday that he would like 50,000 residents to be tested for the virus each day; the city had reached a high of 33,000.
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Early this spring at Brooklyn Hospital Center, a cheering section would materialize outside every evening as 7 p.m. and exhausted hospital workers would come out at the end of their shifts to soak up the love. On Monday night, with the city’s outbreak diminished, the organizers threw a farewell party.
GLOBAL ROUND UP
Britain’s limited travel advisory may have hurt its virus response, a report finds.
A study indicates Britain, where more than 40,000 have died from the virus, may have missed a chance to slow its assault.
Only “a tiny fraction” of the first virus cases in Britain came directly from China while a vast majority came via Europe, a study of the genetic lineages of virus samples has found.
The results suggest that Britain could have slowed the arrival of the virus by moving faster to advise against all nonessential overseas travel instead of only counseling against travel to mainland China, where the virus originated. Britain advised against nonessential travel to China on Jan. 28. But the government did not advise until March 17 against nonessential travel overseas.
The study was posted on a virology website on Tuesday and has not yet been peer reviewed.
The study comes as Britain, along with the rest of the world, is taking steps to reopen. At a news conference Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to ease lockdown restrictions, including allowing single-adult households to form a “support bubble” with one other household without practicing social distancing. “We’re making this change to support those who are particularly lonely,” he said.
Here are other developments from around the world.
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Greece, a country that largely managed to contain the virus, is seeing a spike in cases, just days before it opens its borders to tourists. On Monday, the government announced that in the past four days 97 people had tested positive for the coronavirus since Thursday; 30 of them had traveled from abroad. The government said on Tuesday that it would increase testing and localized restrictions, according to local reports.
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Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, resigned Wednesday from the committee to respond to the pandemic in the province of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a position he was appointed to two months ago. Dr. Mukwege said he was resigning because of difficulties in testing procedures and disorganization in efforts to fight the virus. Congo has reported 4,259 cases and 90 deaths, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, said Wednesday that most travel restrictions on incoming European Union and Swiss citizens would be lifted as of June 16. Controls at German land borders would also be eased. E.U. or Swiss citizens arriving from European coronavirus hot spots — regions where at least 50 coronavirus infections per 100,000 people were registered in the previous seven days — would still have to quarantine when traveling to most German states. Controls on flights coming from Spain will be lifted on June 21.
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Brazil on Tuesday reinstated the reporting of coronavirus death numbers after a Supreme Court ruling. President Jair Bolsonaro had faced scorching criticism for his administration’s decision to stop reporting comprehensive data about the Covid-19 outbreak. On Wednesday, as he approached a group of supporters, one woman who said she worked on his campaign reminded the president of the current death toll. “I feel you betrayed our people, sir,” she said. “The people are dying, Mr. President.” Mr. Bolsonaro walked away silently.
A Syrian pharmacist shares his story fighting the virus.
Hosam al-Ali is an activist who has supported the democracy protests against Syria’s authoritarian president since they began nine years ago, and he knows a thing or two about battling adversity. But Mr. al-Ali, 35, is more than a little worried about his new adversary: the coronavirus.
A pharmacist in Idlib, the last province still in the hands of Syrian opposition groups, Mr. al-Ali volunteered to be the main virus-response coordinator in his region.
As he set to work, Mr. al-Ali began keeping an audio diary, which he shared day by day with Carlotta Gall, the Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times.
Indonesia’s new concern? A post-pandemic baby boom.
The government vehicles began appearing in Indonesian towns and cities in May, equipped with loudspeakers blaring a blunt message:
“You can have sex. You can get married. But don’t get pregnant,” health workers read from a script. “Dads, please control yourself. You can get married. You can have sex as long as you use contraception.”
Indonesian officials are worried about a possible unintended consequence of the country’s coronavirus restrictions: a post-pandemic baby boom.
In April, as people across Indonesia stayed home, about 10 million married couples stopped using contraception, according to the National Population and Family Planning Agency, which collects data from clinics and hospitals that distribute birth control.
Many women couldn’t get access to contraceptives because their health care provider was closed. Others did not want to risk a visit, for fear of catching the virus. Now, officials are expecting a wave of unplanned births next year, many of them to poor families who were already struggling.
“We are nervous about leaving home, not to mention going to the hospital, which is the source of all diseases,” said Lana Mutisari, 36, a married woman in a suburb of Jakarta, the capital, who has been putting off an appointment to get an IUD. “There are all kinds of viruses there.”
Hasto Wardoyo, an obstetrician and gynecologist who heads the family planning agency, has estimated that there could be 370,000 to 500,000 extra births early next year, in a country that typically sees about 4.8 million a year.
That would be a setback for Indonesia’s extensive efforts to promote smaller families, a key aspect of its fight against child malnutrition. Many poor and young married women in Indonesia get free contraceptives, many through hormone shots. But their clinic visits were disrupted by the virus.
Here’s how the virus compares with 100 years of deadly events.
Only the worst disasters completely upend normal patterns of death, overshadowing, if only briefly, everyday causes like cancer, heart disease and car accidents.
The Times reviewed the numbers of deaths in 25 cities and regions around the world during their most devastating months of the outbreak, setting those figures against their normal mortality levels, and then compared the increases to other disasters in history.
Demographers who study patterns of death call these deviations “mortality shocks,” sudden spikes in the number of fatalities not seen in the weeks before and not likely to be seen after the event is over. They’re often attributed to natural disasters, a severe flu season, famines or wars.
Among the findings: Denver had a monthly mortality increase that exceeded New York City’s in the period around Sept. 11, 2001. The rise in deaths in Paris was greater than the increase related to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. In Madrid, where more than 14,000 people died from mid-March to mid-April (compared with the typical 3,000 at that time of year), the increase was greater than the one in New York City during the flu pandemic in 1918.
These figures reflect only deaths through May. In many cities in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the outbreak is still getting worse.
“Oh my goodness,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the United States, said Tuesday. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of it.”
The pandemic puts a spotlight on medical waste.
If you live in a city, you’ve probably seen a lot of discarded face masks lying around on sidewalks over the last month or two. They’re also ending up in the sea.
In a posting on Facebook in late May, a French environmentalist said there soon could be “more masks than jellyfish” in the sea.
It’s hard to say how much of that waste comes from hospitals and how much comes from households. But, over all, some doctors and hospital managers say, the pandemic has raised awareness of a growing medical waste problem in America and exposed an urgent need to make the system more sustainable.
Currently, the country’s health care system generates roughly 30 pounds of waste per hospital bed every day and accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s because, in the last decade or so, hospitals have increasingly favored equipment intended for single use, much of it, like scopes and staplers, that could possibly be reusable.
“I’ve never met a clinician who is OK with the amount of garbage we produce,” said Dr. Cassandra Thiel, an ophthalmologist and professor of population health at NYU Langone hospital.
Reporting was contributed by Manuela Andreoni, Choe Sang-Hun, Michael Cooper, Jonathan Corum, Stacy Cowley, Abdi Latif Dahir, Shaila Dewan, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Sheri Fink, Christina Goldbaum, Maggie Haberman, Josh Katz, David D. Kirkpatrick, Iliana Magra, Allison McCann, Andy Newman, Richard C. Paddock, Alan Rappeport, Tatiana Schlossberg, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dera Menra Sijibat, Natasha Singer, Jeanna Smialek, Mitch Smith, Kaly Soto, Matt Stevens, Eileen Sullivan, Jin Wu, Carl Zimmer and Karen Zraick.
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