Coronavirus News: Live Updates

N.Y.’s top officials urge caution and warn that protests could set off a second wave of infections.

After a fourth night of crowded and chaotic protests in New York City against racism and deadly police brutality, the mayor and the governor voiced strong concerns Monday that the demonstrations could set off a second wave of coronavirus infections. It echoed worries by public health officials about the six days of demonstrations across the United States after George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis.

“You turn on the TV, and you see mass gatherings that could potentially be infecting hundreds and hundreds of people after everything we have done,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said.

He noted that the state had just hit a big milestone: On Sunday, under 1,000 people tested positive, for the first time since March 16. The percentage of daily positive tests has fallen from over 50 percent to under 2 percent, and the latest daily death toll was 54, down from nearly 800 in April.

“How many super-spreaders were in that crowd?” Mr. Cuomo asked. “How many young people went home and kissed their mother hello, or shook hands with their father, or hugged their father or their grandfather or their grandmother or their brother or their sister, and spread a virus?”

The convergence of the pandemic and the nationwide demonstrations has forced many political leaders to try to strike a difficult balance between expressing support for the right to protest and safeguarding the public health.

“If you say, ‘Don’t come out because of the pandemic,’” Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said, “We don’t want people to hear about this as, ‘We are not hearing your concerns, or your concerns are not valid, or we don’t have to change things.’”

Still, he said, “for those who have made their presence felt, made their voices heard, the safest thing from this point is to stay home.” On Monday afternoon, Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio said a curfew in New York City would be in effect from 11 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Tuesday.

More than 100,000 Americans have already died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. People of color have been particularly hard hit, with rates of hospitalizations and deaths among black Americans far exceeding those of white people.

Public health officials urged anyone who does protest to wear face coverings, use hand sanitizer and maintain social distance. Though some experts said that the fact that the protests are held outdoors could reduce the risk of transmission, the leader of New York City’s contact-tracing effort said that everyone who attended a protest should get tested for the virus.

Mr. Cuomo noted that New York City was set to reopen on June 8 and that he did not want to endanger that effort. “Protest, just be smart about it,” he said. “With this virus you can do many things now as long as you’re smart about it.”

Officials elsewhere have slowed reopening because of the protests. Beaches had been scheduled to open on Monday in Miami-Dade County, Fla., but the mayor said they would stay closed until a curfew prompted by the protests is lifted.

Many of the nation’s governors have spoken in support of the protests, but President Trump, who has been besieged by protests and fires outside the White House, lashed out at them on Monday, warning them that they would look like “jerks” if they didn’t order demonstrators arrested and imprisoned.

“You have to dominate,” he told them on a conference call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.”

In New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who, like Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio, is a Democrat, expressed “solidarity” with the protesters. “It’s one thing to protest what day nail salons are opening,” Mr. Murphy said, “and it’s another to come out, in peaceful protest, overwhelmingly, about somebody who was murdered right before our eyes.”

Michigan’s governor lifts a stay-at-home order as other states take steps to reopen.

Michigan’s governor on Monday lifted a stay-at-home order for the state’s 10 million residents, as several other U.S. states announced steps to reopen businesses and public spaces.

Effective immediately, the governor said, groups of 100 people or less will be allowed to gather outdoors while social distancing. Restaurants will also be able to open starting Monday, though tables will be required to be six feet apart.

As the virus persists on a stubborn but uneven path, with meaningful progress in some cities and alarming new outbreaks in others, here is where other states and regions stand:

• New Jersey’s governor said retail stores there should be able to reopen on June 15, with limits, and restaurants could offer outdoor dining. Hair and nail salons could open June 22.

• Louisiana’s governor said the state would begin easing restrictions on Friday, allowing venues including churches, malls, bars and theaters to increase capacity to 50 percent, although distancing measures will be maintained. The mayor of New Orleans said on Twitter that the city would not follow the state’s lead.

• Despite ongoing outbreaks in parts of Mississippi, the governor announced that all businesses could reopen and travel restrictions had been lifted. Social-distancing rules remained in effect.

• The Midwest is still troubled by persistent outbreaks. Virus hospitalizations are on the rise in Wisconsin. New cases are consistently high in Minnesota, particularly around the Twin Cities, where health officials have warned that the escalating protests could increase the risk of infection.

• In the Northeast, the outlook has seesawed in the other direction. In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, case numbers have plunged significantly in recent days.

Across the United States, new cases are on a small but steady decline, to about 21,000 a day from more than 30,000 at the peak in April.

Congress’s budget agency projects the virus will cost the U.S. economy $7.9 trillion over the next decade.

The Congressional Budget Office projected on Monday that the pandemic would inflict a devastating long-term blow to the United States economy, costing $7.9 trillion over the next decade, or a 3 percent loss in “real” gross domestic product.

Without adjusting for inflation, the agency said, the pandemic would cost $16 trillion over the next 10 years. The estimates were an official tally of the damage from the crisis, reflecting expectations of dampened consumer spending and business investment in the years to come. Much of the diminished output was projected to be a result of weaker inflation, as prices for energy and transportation are expected to increase more slowly than they otherwise would have as Americans pull back on travel.

Phillip L. Swagel, the director of the budget office, cautioned that “an unusually high degree of uncertainty surrounds these economic projections,” because it remained unknown how the pandemic would unfold during the remainder of the year or how social distancing and any future relief measures enacted by the federal government might affect its impact.

“If future federal policies differ from those underlying C.B.O.’s economic projections — for example, if lawmakers enact additional pandemic-related legislation — then economic outcomes will necessarily differ from those presented here,” Mr. Swagel wrote in a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent.

The two senators had asked the budget office on Wednesday to examine the effect of the pandemic on the economy over the last few months as Democrats pressed for another quick and substantial round of federal aid to spur recovery.

In a joint statement after the release of the report, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Sanders said the estimate undercut Republican arguments that Congress should wait to approve another relief package, as well as Mr. Trump’s call to include tax cuts in the next measure.

“In order to avoid the risk of another Great Depression, the Senate must act with a fierce sense of urgency to make sure that everyone in America has the income they need to feed their families and put a roof over their heads,” the two senators said. “The American people cannot afford to wait another month for the Senate to pass legislation. They need our help now.”

The Metropolitan Opera cancels its fall season, while ‘Phantom’ plays on in South Korea.

The announcement by the Met, the largest performing arts organization in the United States, is sure to be watched closely by other presenters who are trying to gauge when it might be safe to invite audiences back for live performances, and how to survive in the meantime.

The Met, which last performed live on March 11, now hopes to return with a gala on New Year’s Eve after its longest interruption in more than a century. The gap is projected to cost the company close to $100 million in lost revenues, a figure that will be partly offset by lower costs and emergency fund-raising efforts.

A study in contrasts: As theaters around the globe were abruptly shuttered by the pandemic, “The Phantom of the Opera” has been soldiering on in Seoul, South Korea, playing eight shows a week for robust audiences.

The musical, with its 126-member company and hundreds of costumes and props, is believed to be the only large-scale English-language production running anywhere in the world. And it has remained open not through social-distancing measures, but an approach grounded in strict hygiene. (The performances are also a testament to South Korea’s rigorous system of test, trace and quarantine, which has kept the virus largely under control.)

The show’s composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, is arguing that its approach can show the way for the rest of the industry.

Airlines have declared flying safe, but it’s unclear whether their precautions are sufficient.

Airlines are requiring face masks for passengers and staff members; imposing new cleaning procedures; using social distancing to board flights; blocking middle seats on planes; and, in one case, even prohibiting passengers from lining up to use plane bathrooms.

As to the airports, they are screening passengers’ temperatures through high- and low-tech means; using biometric screening to speed check-in, security and customs and immigration processes; and using autonomous robots to clean terminal floors.

But none of it is consistent. And it’s unclear whether the measures are enough to ensure passengers’ safety.

Will social-distancing measures work, for instance, when travelers are sitting on planes for hours with strangers? Temperature checks may identify those already ill, but how do you screen for the virus when, by some estimates, 35 percent of people with it are asymptomatic and 40 percent of transmission occurs before people feel sick?

The International Air Transport Association has laid out what it called a road map for restarting aviation. But it rejected blocking off airplanes’ middle seats because, it said, “the risk of transmission of Covid-19 from one passenger to another passenger on board is very low.”

Robert Crandall, a former president and chairman of American Airlines, called that assertion “nonsense.”

Congo, already battling coronavirus and measles, has a second Ebola outbreak.

A fresh outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has flared up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that was already contending with the coronavirus as well as the world’s largest measles epidemic.

Congo’s health ministry said that the new Ebola outbreak has killed four people, and infected at least two more, in Mbandaka, a city of 1.2 million people on the country’s western side. A fifth person died on Monday, according to UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children.

Less than two months ago, Congo was about to declare an official end to an Ebola epidemic on the eastern side of the country that had lasted nearly two years and which killed more than 2,275 people. Then, with just two days to go, a new case was found, and the clock was reset.

It is unclear how Ebola emerged in Mbandaka, which is about 700 miles west of the nearly-vanquished outbreak. Congo has been under travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

People with other illnesses have been affected by the pandemic, too.

Data from two leading health organizations — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. and the World Health Organization — show how people with non-coronavirus illnesses have been affected by the pandemic.

New York and New Jersey have had more than 44,000 deaths above normal from mid-March to May, according to analysis of data from the C.D.C. While Covid-19 is the leading cause of these excess deaths, more people have also died from other causes like heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease in recent weeks than for the same period in previous years.

The C.D.C. data shows that heart disease — the leading cause of death in the United States — has surged from March 15 until May 2. In New York City, deaths from heart disease were nearly three times the normal, and about 800 deaths above normal rates in the two states have been attributed to diabetes.

The W.H.O. collected data from 155 countries over a three-week period, and found that the pandemic has disrupted prevention and treatment of diseases like hypertension, diabetes and cancer around the world, endangering the very patients who are most vulnerable to the virus. The disruptions are most severe in low-income countries.

Treatments of hypertension and diabetes have been interrupted in about half of the countries surveyed. In just over 42 percent, cancer treatments have been disrupted, and in nearly one-third, so have cardiovascular cases.

“We already know that people with these noncommunicable diseases are more vulnerable to becoming severely ill or dying from Covid-19,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the W.H.O., said on Monday.

Rehabilitation services, which are crucial to patients recovering from Covid-19, have also been disrupted in about 63 percent of the countries.

Hong Kong police deny permission for the Tiananmen Square vigil for the first time in 30 years.

The Hong Kong police halted plans for a vigil on Thursday in memory of the people who died during the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, citing the need to enforce social-distancing rules.

It is the first time the June 4 vigil, which has been held annually since 1990, has been blocked. Fears about limits on free speech and political expression have grown in Hong Kong after Beijing announced last month that it would impose new national security laws on the semiautonomous city, and some democracy advocates in the city had wondered whether this year’s event might be the last.

The vigil organizers said they still planned to go to Victoria Park, where the event is regularly held, even though they expected the police to break up any gathering. They have asked supporters in Hong Kong and around the world to light candles in their homes or other private places and post the images online.

The organizing body, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, also plans to set up booths around the city to observe the event, said Lee Cheuk-yan, the group’s chairman. A handful of churches are to hold special services, he said.

“This is one of the characteristics of Hong Kong. We all came out to support democracy in China in 1989,” Mr. Lee said. “We have continued for 30 years, and people are really shocked that we can be persistent.”

Protesters in Hong Kong have regularly been fined in recent weeks for violating social-distancing rules that prevent gatherings of more than eight people. They have accused the police of enforcing the rules against government critics while ignoring gatherings by establishment supporters or large crowds in bar districts.

Mr. Trump said last week he would begin the process of ending the U.S. relationship with Hong Kong in response to Beijing’s move to impose broad new national security legislation. The Trump administration has provided little details on the timing and scope of the plans, and the Chinese government has cast the plans as the latest attempt by a foreign government to interfere in Hong Kong. Investors have kept a sharp eye on the tensions between the two countries.

A U.S. State Department official on Saturday attacked the ruling Communist Party on Twitter for moving to impose national security legislation to quash dissent in Hong Kong, prompting a spokeswoman for the Chinese government to fire back on Twitter saying “I can’t breathe,” a popular refrain among the U.S. protesters.

Hong Kong has been widely praised for its success in controlling the spread of the virus. The city, with 7.5 million people, has recorded 1,085 cases and four deaths.

Countries around the world haltingly restart daily life.

Several countries where the pandemic appears to be ebbing marked the beginning of June by easing restrictions. They included South Africa, which lifted its ban on alcohol sales. A drop in murders and traffic accidents had been attributed to the measure, but bootleggers quickly stepped in to meet demand.

Other measures that went into effect on Monday:

• Students were allowed to return to some elementary schools in England, but many parents decided to keep their children home, concerned that the risks remain too high. Schools also resumed in Greece.

• A pigeon race involving 4,000 birds marked the reopening of some sports events in Britain, and it was soon followed by a horse race held without spectators.

• Beaches in Spain reopened, except those near Barcelona, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao became the country’s first major cultural institution to again allow visitors. Ireland also allowed bathers to return to some beaches.

• Cinemas began screening films again in Thailand, although their audiences were limited to 200 people and customers must be separated by at least one empty seat. Portugal also reopened movie theaters along with some other businesses. Bars reopened in the Netherlands, Finland and Norway.

• The Adriatic state of Montenegro, which has declared itself free of the virus, reopened its border to foreigners. The prime minister of Pakistan also lifted restrictions on foreign visitors. Lithuania ended a 14-day quarantine requirement for visitors from dozens of countries.

• Visitors were allowed into two of Italy’s biggest tourist attractions: the Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel, and the Colosseum.

A major debt crisis looms for poor countries.

The president of Tanzania has called on “our rich brothers” to cancel his country’s debt. Belarus veered toward a default when a promised $600 million loan from Russia fell through. Russia couldn’t spare the money because the ruble had taken a nose-dive, along with oil and gas prices. Lebanon, troubled even before the pandemic, has embarked on its first debt restructuring. And Argentina has defaulted for the ninth time in its history.

The low interest rates of the last decade allowed poor countries to raise money relatively cheaply to finance their growth. As a result, developing countries now owe record amounts of money to investors, governments and others outside their borders: $2.1 trillion for countries ranked as “low income” and “lower-middle income” by the World Bank.

As economic activity has ground to a halt, governments are on the hook for billions of dollars in interest and principal repayments. Volatility in the currency markets has now made those payments suddenly more expensive. And lenders are not in a forgiving mood.

“The last time we had this many countries likely to go under at the same time was in the 1980s,” said Mitu Gulati, a law professor at Duke University who studies the debts of countries.

Resolving those debts took years of negotiations, austerity measures and stalled economic development. But the brewing debt crisis could be even harder to sort out.

The New Delhi police, condemned for their role in anti-Muslim violence, use the pandemic to rehab their image.

The police in India’s capital, New Delhi, were roundly criticized for their role in anti-Muslim violence earlier this year. Now they’re on the front line of the city’s fight against the virus.

They are manning hundreds of checkpoints and running patrols across the city. They are often the first to respond to calls for potential cases and coordinate the medical response. They are preparing and serving meals to desperately poor people in many locked down communities.

The force has used these efforts to rehabilitate its image, which had been tarnished by evidence of police brutality during nationwide protests over a divisive citizenship law.

The criticism that followed was demoralizing to rank-and-file officers. M.S. Randhawa, a commissioner of the New Delhi police force, said the virus campaign was “a morale booster for the staff.”

States warn that the virus may doom climate projects.

Projects in 13 cities and states, which were part of the Obama administration’s push to protect Americans from climate change after the devastation from Hurricane Sandy, are now in jeopardy because of the pandemic, state and local officials warn. And they need Congress to save those projects.

On Monday, officials are expected to tell lawmakers that the virus will prevent them from meeting the conditions of a $1 billion Obama-era program for large-scale construction projects that defend cities and states against climate-related disasters. That money must be spent by the fall of 2022.

Missing that deadline, which officials say is likely because of virus-related delays, would mean forfeiting the remaining money, scuttling the projects. States and cities have been moving swiftly in the design phases and to secure permits since the Obama administration awarded the funds in 2016. Officials will ask Congress to extend the deadline for construction by three years, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.

“Without an extension, any funds not spent by the deadline will be canceled and projects will remain unfinished,” the letter reads.

With the U.S. preoccupied by events at home, rivals are testing the limits of American influence.

Russian fighter jets have roared dangerously close to U.S. Navy planes over the Mediterranean Sea, while the country’s space forces conducted an antisatellite missile test clearly aimed at sending the message that Moscow could blind U.S. spy satellites and take down GPS and other communications systems. Russia’s military cyberunits were busy, too, the National Security Agency reported, with an attack that may portend accelerated planning for a strike on email systems this election year.

The North Koreans said they were accelerating their “nuclear deterrent,” moving beyond two years of vague promises of disarmament and Kim Jong-un’s warm exchanges of letters with Mr. Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Iran was re-establishing the infrastructure needed to make a bomb — all a reaction, the Iranians insist, to Mr. Trump’s decision to reimpose sanctions and dismantle the Obama-era nuclear deal.

The virus may have changed almost everything, but it did not change this: Global challenges to the United States spin ahead, with American adversaries testing the limits and seeing what gains they can make with minimal pushback.

Stocks on Wall Street edge higher.

U.S. stocks posted modest gains on Monday, continuing a recent climb that had left the S&P 500 with its best two-month gain in 11 years.

The gains were small, though, and came after a weekend of violence and unrest in the United States. The S&P 500 rose less than half a percent. Shares of some retailers that said they were temporarily closing some stores in response to protests took a hit. Target was down more than 2 percent.

European markets closed about 1 percent higher on Monday, though markets in Germany and a number of other countries were closed for a holiday. Asian markets rose strongly, paced by an increase of more than 3 percent in Hong Kong and more than 2 percent in mainland China shares.

The rally in stocks has come as investors have bet the worst of the economic damage caused by the pandemic could be over. In another sign of this on Monday, an index of U.S. manufacturing activity rose in May. The index was 43.1 last month, up from 41.5 in April, which was the lowest level in more than a decade, the Institute for Supply Management said. However, it was still below 50, which connotes an economy still in contraction.

Investors were also watching for more details on Mr. Trump’s response to China’s crackdown on Hong Kong. On Friday, Mr. Trump had said the United States would begin rolling back the special trade and financial status it grants to the former British colony but did not go into specifics.

As Moscow eases lockdown, Russia schedules a vote on allowing Putin to remain in power until 2036.

A referendum on changes to Russia’s Constitution that would allow President Vladimir V. Putin to remain in office for another 16 years was rescheduled for July 1, after a long delay because of the pandemic.

Russia is the third hardest-hit country after the United States and Brazil. Moscow, the capital, has accounted for more than 40 percent of total reported infections, which numbered 414,878 on Monday, and more than half the deaths in the country.

To calm concerns that the Kremlin was gambling with public health in pursuit of its political agenda, Anna Popova, the head of the state agency leading efforts against the virus, spoke at a video conference of officials along with Mr. Putin and offered assurances that holding the referendum on July 1 would be safe for the public.

The head of the Central Election Commission, Alla Pamfilova, suggested that the vote could be spread over six days to avoid crowds at polling stations.

Moscow city authorities on Monday also helped to prepare the way for the vote, the centerpiece of the Kremlin’s political plans for the year. After nine weeks in lockdown, Moscow reopened parks, shopping malls, car dealerships and many other businesses but restricted entry to people wearing masks and gloves.

Bad weather and confusion over the rules kept many residents indoors nonetheless, and provoked mockery on social media.

An experimental drug treatment may be effective with a shorter course.

The experimental antiviral drug remdesivir may be as effective in treating coronavirus patients when given for five days instead of the usual 10, its maker, Gilead Sciences, announced on Monday.

Because supplies of the drug are limited, infectious disease experts have been hoping that a shorter course would be just as effective.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted an emergency authorization to remdesivir, allowing doctors to prescribe it even though the drug is not yet formally approved. The authorization came after a large federal trial showed the medication sped recovery in seriously ill patients who received it intravenously for 10 days.

The data indicate that remdesivir is not a miracle drug. But it is the only treatment that a large, controlled trial has shown helps hospitalized Covid-19 patients.

The small study by Gilead has not yet been published nor peer-reviewed. It also did not involve the use of a placebo, as is normally the case.

The study involved 584 moderately ill Covid-19 patients who were hospitalized but who did not have pneumonia. All the patients were given standard-of-care treatment. But 191 were randomly assigned to receive remdesivir for five days, while 194 were given the drug for 10 days.

The researchers measured clinical improvement and found that the five-day course of treatment was modestly better than the usual patient care alone. The 10-day course was not measurably better than normal care, perhaps because of side effects.

Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen, Julie Bosman, Emily Cochrane, Michael Cooper, Stacy Cowley, Antonio de Luca, Jeffrey Gettleman, Christina Goldbaum, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Christopher Flavelle, Jacey Fortin, Jack Healy, Andrew Higgins, Caroline Kim, Patrick Kingsley, Gina Kolata, Hari Kumar, Su-Hyun Lee, Jane L. Levere, Denise Lu, Apoorva Mandavilli, Raphael Minder, Andy Newman, Matt Phillips, Roni Caryn Rabin, Alan Rappeport, Rick Rojas, David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt, Jennifer Schuessler, Dionne Searcey, Karan Deep Singh, Mitch Smith, Eileen Sullivan, Umi Syam, Dave Taft, Carlos Tejada, Mary Williams Walsh, Edward Wong, Ceylan Yeginsu and Karen Zraick.