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California is the fourth state with at least 100,000 known cases.
California has become the fourth American state with at least 100,000 known coronavirus infections, joining Illinois, New Jersey and New York in a grim group as the nation approaches 100,000 deaths from the virus.
The rising case counts in some California counties have come as other sections of the country, including the Minneapolis area, Wisconsin and parts of the South, have reported more infections. And the increasing number of infections is certain to intensify debates over when and how the country should ease the restrictions that public officials imposed to try to slow the spread of the virus.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to be moving closer to handing the reins of reopening to county public health officials.
At least 47 of California’s 58 counties have filed their “county variance attestations” to prove that they meet the state’s criteria to reopen more quickly than the rest of the state, Mr. Newsom said. And he has been in talks with leaders in Los Angeles County, by most measures the hardest-hit part of the state, about the possibility of allowing some areas of the county to reopen more quickly than others.
For now, Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles announced on Tuesday evening that “lower risk” in-store shopping could resume, many pools could open and houses of worship could avail themselves of the new state guidelines.
The growing emphasis on local influence — on Monday, state officials announced that places of worship across the state could reopen at lower capacity only with the approval of their county public health department — could help Mr. Newsom mute his critics, some of whom have gone to court to challenge California’s restrictions.
The gradual changes in California reflect a national shift as states that had previously been among the most locked down begin loosening restrictions, often on a regional basis.
After months of lockdown, Illinois plans to lift restrictions on retail stores, gyms and personal care services in some areas on Friday, though the Chicago area will reopen on its own timeline. Washington D.C., which has also been locked down, is also tentatively planning to open certain businesses on Friday.
In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced on Wednesday that the city would move to the second phase of its reopening plan and allow private gatherings of no more than 10 people, as long as they follow social distancing guidelines.
“Data shows that we are in a position to move forward,” the mayor said in a statement. “We encourage Atlantans citywide to continue to follow all precautionary guidelines as community transmission of Covid-19 still poses a threat to our city.”
Renters entered the pandemic at a disadvantage, and now laws safeguarding them are expiring.
The United States, already wrestling with an economic collapse not seen in a generation, is on the precipice of a compounding crisis of evictions, as protections and payments extended to millions of people out of work begin to run out.
Many have been scraping by thanks to temporary government assistance and emergency orders that put many evictions on hold. But evictions will soon be allowed in about half of the states, according to Emily A. Benfer, a housing expert and associate professor at Columbia Law School who is tracking eviction policies.
“I think we will enter into a severe renter crisis and very quickly,” Professor Benfer said. Without a new round of government intervention, she added, “we will have an avalanche of evictions across the country.”
That means more and more families may soon face displacement at a time when people are still being urged to stay at home.
In many places, the threat has already begun. The Texas Supreme Court recently ruled that evictions could begin again. In the Oklahoma City area, sheriffs apologetically announced that they planned to start enforcing eviction notices this week. And a handful of states had few statewide protections in place to begin with, leaving residents particularly vulnerable as eviction cases stacked up.
Take a look at dismal profits, bullish investors and the Fed’s hidden hand.
First-quarter profits shrank at the fastest rate in over a decade, and analysts don’t like what they see coming. In fact, they think things will get worse before they get better, and have revised their forecasts accordingly. Yet investors keep pushing stocks higher.
Any finance textbook’s section on equity prices holds that the direction of the stock market is determined, to a large extent, by the profits and dividends that shareholders expect companies to produce in the future. And academic research has repeatedly shown that when Wall Street analysts revise their forecasts for a company’s profits, it can move share prices.
So going by the conventional wisdom, the current collapse in profit expectations — and analysts’ woeful prognoses for future earnings — should be clobbering share prices. But investors don’t appear to be taking their cues from analysts. The S&P 500 has soared more than 30 percent over the past two months.
It’s been a turbulent period for stocks, with the S&P 500 alternating between gains and losses on a daily basis last week. Wall Street’s turbulent stretch continued Wednesday, and an early rally faded, as shares of large technology stocks declined.
The S&P 500 was slightly lower, giving back some of its gains from the day before. The drop in large technology stocks like Amazon and Microsoft was particularly evident in the Nasdaq composite, which fell about 2 percent.
A retreat in oil prices also weighed on shares of energy producers. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, fell about 6 percent to just above $32 a barrel.
On Wednesday, investors were initially cheered by the news of fiscal stimulus proposals from the European Union and Japan. In Japan, the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved more than a trillion dollars in stimulus money. In Brussels, the European Commission seemed on the verge of introducing expansive financial measures to support the bloc.
Washington will begin to loosen virus restrictions on Friday.
The mayor of Washington, D.C., said Wednesday that the city on Friday would begin to loosen stay-at-home restrictions, even though the chief White House official overseeing the virus response said this week that the suburban region around the nation’s capital remains among the most worrisome metropolitan areas in the country.
“The bottom line we do want to emphasize is this virus is still in our city and our region and our country,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said as she announced that restaurants would be able to allow outdoor seating for groups or six or fewer, hair styling salons could provide services by appointment only and stores could open curbside pickup. Gatherings of more than ten people will remain prohibited.
On Tuesday, the city had 72 new cases, bringing the total to 8,406, and five new deaths for a total of 445. Although Ms. Bowser said that the city had maintained 14 days of sustained decline in community transmission, there was a one-day increase last weekend.
“I want to make sure we all understand that moving into phase one means that more people can get infected,” Ms. Bowser said, emphasizing that residents were expected to use masks, maintain social distancing and maintain aggressive hand washing. “We know that without a vaccine or a cure that we will see new infections.”
She added that City Hall would continue to encourage remote work for city businesses and the federal government. “It cannot be said enough every single one of us has a role to play,” she said.
Minneapolis demonstrators put aside virus concerns to protest a death in police custody.
When hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Minneapolis on Tuesday night to protest the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while in police custody, the large crowd was both a powerful call for action in the case and a precarious act at a time when the virus is still flaring in the region.
The number of newly reported virus cases continues to climb in Minnesota, and the counties that make up the Minneapolis-St. Paul area lead the state in both total and newly reported cases. The Twin Cities metro area also accounted for a surge in patients requiring hospitalization in intensive care.
Still, demonstrators gathered for a rare large protest since the pandemic began.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said he understood and supported the rights of people who would protest the episode but asked that protesters wear masks and respect social distancing procedures.
“I encourage people to voice their opinions and anger, their heartbreak and their sadness, because undoubtedly it will be there,” he said.
Many people wore face coverings, and some brought hand sanitizer to help keep people safe. But the group as a whole seemed to send a message that their desire for justice had outweighed any potential safety concerns, as they gathered at the intersection where Mr. Floyd, 46, had been pinned down by the police a day earlier and captured on video saying, “I can’t breathe.”
Protesters yelled full-faced and full throated about Mr. Floyd’s death, and some pulled their masks aside to be fully heard. One woman said, “anyone worried about social distancing should have just stayed home.”
Trump administration demands that coronavirus rescue funds also go to private schools.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said she will direct public school districts to share a large portion of federal rescue funding with private school students, regardless of income.
“The CARES Act is a special, pandemic-related appropriation to benefit all American students, teachers and families,” Ms. DeVos wrote in a letter Friday, referring to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act. “There is nothing in the act suggesting Congress intended to discriminate between children based on public or nonpublic school attendance, as you seem to do. The virus affects everyone.”
A range of education officials say Ms. DeVos’s guidance would divert millions of dollars away from disadvantaged students and force districts to support even the wealthiest private schools.
The association representing the nation’s schools superintendents told districts to ignore the guidance, and at least two states — Indiana and Maine — said they would.
Private school leaders say they too are in crisis. Many of those schools serve low-income students whose parents have fled failing public schools. About 5.7 million students attend private schools, 30 percent of them from families with incomes below $75,000 a year. Private school groups say those families are most at-risk without federal aid.
Under federal education law, school districts are required to use funding they receive for their poorest students to provide “equitable services,” such as tutoring and transportation for low-income students attending private schools in their districts. But Ms. DeVos’s guidance would award private schools more services than the law would normally require.
Democratic leaders called on Ms. DeVos to revise her guidance.
Disney World will reopen in July.
Walt Disney World in Florida, one of the world’s largest tourist sites which draws 93 million people a year, will reopen to the public on a limited basis in mid-July.
Disney presented its reopening plan on Wednesday to the Orange County Recovery Task Force in Orlando. Two of Disney World’s four main theme parks, the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, will reopen on July 11 with reduced capacity and numerous safety precautions, including mandatory face masks for all visitors and employees. Disney World’s remaining major parks, Epcot and Hollywood Studios, will reopen on July 15. The resort has been closed since March 15.
Disney said its “thoughtful, methodical and phased” approach to reopening would include increased use of plexiglass barriers and contactless payment systems. All visitors will need a reservation. Temperature checks will be conducted at entrances. Disney also said its parades, fireworks displays and character meet and greets would be suspended because of crowd control concerns.
Disney did not give reopening dates for its two water parks, Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon. Disney Springs, an adjacent 120-acre shopping mall, began to reopen on May 20.
Tourism is Orlando’s largest industry, supporting 41 percent of the city’s work force, according to the trade organization Visit Orlando. Disney’s 25,000-acre, six-park resort southwest of Orlando attracts the bulk of visitors, as millions of people flock to Disney World annually.
With medical masks in short supply, hospitals turn to industrial models.
Government-supported research predicted over a decade ago that a pandemic would cause a dire shortage of disposable masks, and multiple federal agencies urged hospitals and policymakers to consider stockpiling elastomeric respirators, which are made of silicone, designed to be cleaned and reused for years and are government-certified to protect at least as well as N95s.
Last year, researchers simulating a pandemic found that health care workers could be rapidly fitted and trained to use the masks, and last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published guidance on deploying them in response to the virus.
But only a handful of U.S. hospitals are using the masks widely, and the federal government — including the agency that manages the Strategic National Stockpile — has made no effort to boost production or facilitate their distribution, an examination by The New York Times found.
At the same time, the shortage of disposable N95s is so severe that federal regulators have taken the extraordinary step of allowing them to be used multiple times with little-tested decontamination methods.
As the virus continues to spread and medical centers plan for a predicted second wave of infections, health workers who use elastomerics expressed bewilderment at their untapped potential.
“I don’t think that there’s anything we’re doing that is markedly unique that would be difficult to implement anywhere else,” said Dr. Richard Martinello, Yale New Haven Health’s medical director for infection prevention.
Idled industrial facilities likely have elastomerics sitting unused, and more could be produced relatively quickly by repurposing manufacturing lines, according to occupational health experts and industry officials. At least one manufacturer, MSA Safety, has hired additional workers and increased production at a factory in Jacksonville, N.C., and the company says it has the capacity to ramp up further.
Should the child care industry get a bailout?
The sector was already fragile: Unlike public education, the child care industry operates almost entirely on private tuition payments, and most providers are barely profitable. With closings, many cannot continue to pay landlords or teachers.
Now that more states are allowing child care centers to reopen, those that survived face higher expenses because of additional rules about sanitation and new limits, like no more than 10 children per classroom. In some cases, enrollment is down because parents can no longer afford to pay, or because they are worried about the health risks.
“You really can’t talk about reopening the economy without a conversation about how children are going to be taken care of,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, one of the lead sponsors of a bill — to be introduced in the House today — that would spend $50 billion to cover operating expenses, new safety measures and tuition relief for families. “We cannot let this pandemic set back the next generation.”
Top House Republicans sue to try to block remote voting.
The House of Representatives was moving forward on Wednesday with its first ever votes using a new proxy voting system designed to allow for remote legislating during the pandemic, despite a lawsuit filed by Republicans on Tuesday asking a federal judge to declare it unconstitutional.
In a lawsuit that names Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House clerk and sergeant-at-arms as defendants, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, and about 20 other Republicans argue that new rules that allow lawmakers to vote from afar amid the virus outbreak would be the end of Congress as it was envisioned by the nation’s founders, Nicholas Fandos and Michael Schmidt report.
Democrats pushed the plan through this month over unanimous Republican opposition. The Republicans asked a federal judge in Washington to strike down the practice immediately — leaving uncertain the fate of legislation the House planned to take up this week using the new procedures — and to invalidate it permanently.
Republican leaders laid out their case anew on Wednesday, telling reporters ahead of the planned votes that there would be a cloud of suspicion over anything passed under the arrangement and the Republican Senate might simply refuse to take it up.
“Whatever the Democrats move forward probably will never become law,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader. He urged House members to come back in person.
Democrats plan to use proxy voting beginning Wednesday to consider an array of legislation, including one bill aimed at punishing China for human rights abuses against the Uighurs. Ms. Pelosi dismissed it as a “sad stunt” and accused Republicans of simply trying to grind the business of the House to a halt to score political points. She said that she was comfortable the plan was on solid constitutional footing.
The suit will face an uphill battle in the federal courts, where judges have been reluctant to second-guess Congress’s ability to set its own rules. And it comes as the Supreme Court has been hearing arguments remotely, by telephone. But it fits into a broader push by Republicans, led by President Trump, to put a cloud of suspicion over Democratic efforts to find alternative ways to vote during the pandemic and to portray them as fraudulent attempts to gain political advantage.
On Sunday, the Republican Party sued California’s governor and the state’s secretary of state in an attempt to strike down an executive order dispatching mail-in ballots to every registered voter there, deriding it as an “illegal power grab” and part of Democrats’ “partisan election agenda.”
The new procedures adopted by the House allow any absent lawmaker to designate another member who is physically present to record a vote on his or her behalf during periods when the speaker, the clerk and the sergeant-at-arms agree there is a state of emergency because of the virus.
Cuomo met with Trump at the White House.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York met with Mr. Trump at the White House on Wednesday. The governor had earlier said one of his priorities would be discussing unfinished infrastructure projects in need of federal approval, including an AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport and a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River.
“You want to restart the economy, you want to reopen the economy, let’s do something creative,” Mr. Cuomo said, appealing to the president’s push to reopening businesses around the country. “You have an infrastructure that’s crumbling, you need to jump start the economy, you need to create jobs, do it now.”
The president and Mr. Cuomo have had an acrimonious relationship during the course of the virus’s rapid spread across New York City, which still remains the center of the disease in the country. On Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo held his daily briefing from Washington and reported an additional 74 deaths statewide from the virus, about the same reported as the previous day.
Mr. Cuomo has recently begun easing some restrictions around most of the state, while leaving the city on what he has labeled a “pause.” New York City’s mayor has said he hoped it could begin reopening in the first half of June. The city has yet to meet two benchmarks, on available hospital beds and contact tracers, though the mayor said on Wednesday that the city would have more than 1,700 contact tracers working by June 1.
Democratic lawmakers ask the Trump administration to shelve plans for a big Fourth of July event.
A group of Democratic lawmakers from the Washington area told the Trump administration this week that they believed it would be “impossible” to safely stage a major celebration around Independence Day in the nation’s capital this summer.
“Given the current Covid-19 crisis, we believe such an event would needlessly risk the health and safety of thousands of Americans,” the lawmakers — two senators, seven representatives and the District of Columbia’s non-voting House delegate — wrote in a letter to the defense and interior secretaries.
Mr. Trump, a vocal proponent of patriotic displays that critics have sometimes condemned as extravagant or politically motivated, suggested in April that Fourth of July festivities in Washington would have more limited attendance.
“This year, most likely, we’ll be standing six feet apart,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll have to do that in a very, very interesting way. And we’ll even do it greater, so we’ll leave a little extra distance.”
This week, though, the lawmakers asked the administration to shelve any plans entirely. The Washington area has struggled to contain the virus, and they warned that holding a mass gathering along the National Mall would be perilous.
Thousands of people attended a “Salute to America” event last year, which Mr. Trump had pledged would be a “show of a lifetime.” The president was flanked by Bradley armored vehicles and M1A2 tanks at the event, held at the Lincoln Memorial.
“The administration, including your agencies, should be focusing on helping American families, not on a vanity project for the president,” the lawmakers wrote.
College football edges toward a fall season.
For months, college sports leaders have declared that if classes do not resume on campus this fall, football and other sports would not be played. But even then, some believe exceptions can be made if there is other limited student activity, and there is increasing pressure to find ways to play.
Though campuses remain largely shuttered for the summer, signs of reopening for football have emerged in the last two weeks.
The Southeastern and Big 12 conferences voted Friday to open their training facilities in early June for voluntary workouts, following the end of an N.C.A.A. ban on on-campus sports activities. The Pac-12 joined them Tuesday, after Commissioner Larry Scott suggested in a CNN interview that athletes would be safer on campuses than at home. The expectation is that by mid-July, teams could begin practicing.
This push to reopen, coming when about two-thirds of states are not showing a decline in cases, demands extraordinary steps: sanitizing facilities, widespread testing and social distancing in a sport whose very essence is contact.
And there’s no guarantee that if the season begins on time, it will finish as scheduled.
As Bob Bowlsby, the Big 12 commissioner, said in a webinar with other college administrators, in which he described college campuses as petri dishes for the transmission of infectious diseases: “It isn’t a matter of when we’re going to have outbreaks, it’s a matter of how big they are and how we go about triaging.”
Other sports executives have been grappling with how they can stage competitions. On Wednesday, the National Women’s Soccer League laid out an ambitious, and potentially risky, plan to return to the field late next month for its first games since the pandemic interrupted the start of its 2020 season.
Under the schedule that league officials outlined Wednesday morning, the nine teams would gather in Utah in late June and complete their entire seasons as a 25-game tournament over 30 days.
The tournament — the first game is set for June 27 — will be the league’s first competition since last October’s championship game, and will succeed only through a mix of careful planning, extensive virus testing, strict health protocols and no small amount of good fortune.
And all of it hinges on the players’ willingness to participate, the absence of new outbreaks and hundreds of tests before and after the games arrive in Utah.
France is no longer allowing hydroxychloroquine, a drug promoted by Trump, as a treatment.
France revoked the authorization allowing the use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 patients on Wednesday, a day after halting its use in clinical trials.
The drug, which has been heavily promoted by Mr. Trump despite the lack of evidence that it is effective against the virus, was temporarily removed from global safety trials earlier this week by the World Health Organization, which called for a review of new safety concerns.
In France, the drug was promoted as a miracle cure by a maverick infectious diseases specialist based in Marseille, Didier Raoult, who rose to prominence by conducting several questionable experiments that he said had proved its efficacy in combating the virus.
France had authorized limited use of the drug on patients in serious condition and had included it in several clinical trials. But now the country has joined the ranks of others moving away from the use of the drug.
An observational study published in the The Lancet last week found that virus patients who received the drug were more likely to have abnormal heart rhythms, and also more likely to die.
The president of El Salvador on Tuesday said that he is taking the drug in hopes of warding off the coronavirus.
“I use it as a prophylaxis, President Trump uses it as a prophylaxis, most of the world’s leaders use it as a prophylaxis,” Reuters quoted the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, as saying on Tuesday. (In fact, few if any other world leaders have said they take the drug.)
Global updates: Japan and Europe have major stimulus plans.
Two of the world’s biggest economies said today that they would pump trillions of dollars into propping up hard-hit businesses, industries and individuals.
“Everything has been ended”: How college students are dealing with the pandemic.
“The sheer volume of panic attacks, nightmares and tears that have been related to me in the past two weeks is staggering,” Joshua McCartney, a senior at Denison University, wrote to the school provost in a letter signed by 23 other students.
Stress and college seem to go hand in hand, but the sudden emptying out of campuses has increased the anxiety for many students, who find themselves isolated from peers, packed together with parents and worried about the future.
Most people are resilient, and sadness and anxiety can be an understandable reaction to this wrenching moment.
Still, Mr. McCartney said his friends could testify to these feelings.
“I have lost my support network,” one said. “I just spent an hour crying,” said another. “I don’t think I can do this much more,” said a third.
The provost responded to Mr. McCartney, telling him that she, too, was having adjustment problems.
Mr. McCartney is sheltering in a little room in an empty summer camp his family operates. In some ways, it is a cozy setup. But he still feels trapped.
“I spend all day in this room,” he said.
About a week ago, Mr. McCartney celebrated his commencement online, with family members dropping in remotely. It was a happy event, but he felt anxious as soon as it was over. Medical school beckons in the future, but he is not sure what to do right now.
“Everything has been ended — closed or canceled or disallowed,” he said.
Is your family more “together,” or less?
All this time together with your family may have led to greater feelings of connectedness. Or maybe you are experiencing more moments of the complete opposite: more bickering, fighting and frustrations. Here is some advice for getting through those rough patches.
Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Eileen Sullivan, Brookes Barnes, Maggie Astor, Jennifer Steinhauer, Erica L. Green, Karen Barrow, Lindsey Rogers Cook, Jill Cowan, Andrew Das, Nicholas Fandos, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, Anemona Hartocollis, Winnie Hu, Julia Jacobs, Sarah Mervosh, Chris Hamby, Claire Cain Miller, Matt Phillips, Michael S. Schmidt, Mitch Smith, Kaly Soto, Matt Stevens, David Waldstein and Billy Witz.
