Coronavirus Live Updates: Cases in the U.S. Top 2 Million and Are Rising in 21 States

KEY DATA OF THE DAY

Cases surpass 2 million in the U.S., with new hot spots emerging.

The United States surpassed two million coronavirus cases on Wednesday, according to a New York Times database, which showed that the outbreak was continuing to spread, with cases rising in 21 states as governments eased restrictions and Americans tried to return to their routines.

Despite improvement in states that were initially hit hard, such as New York, new hot spots have emerged in others, including Arizona, where an increase in cases and hospitalizations has alarmed local officials.

The state’s health director wrote a letter to hospitals over the weekend urging them to “fully activate” emergency plans, The Arizona Republic reported.

Cases in Arizona, one of the earliest states to ease restrictions, have been rising in recent days, with the state reporting 1,556 cases on Wednesday, a new daily high.

Banner Health, a major hospital system, warned this month that hospitalizations in the state had been increasing and that “most concerning is the steep incline of Covid-19 patients on ventilators.” A PowerPoint the hospital prepared showed new cases mounting two weeks after the state’s stay-at-home order was lifted and social distancing eased.

In early May, Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona began easing restrictions, starting with retail businesses and then barbershops and restaurants. President Trump traveled to Phoenix on May 5 and spoke at a Honeywell mask production facility, where he praised the nation’s move toward reopening: “So, reopening of our country — who would have ever thought we were going to be saying that?” The state’s stay-at-home order ended May 15.

Dr. Joe Gerald, a researcher at the University of Arizona, analyzed recent virus trends and wrote that “the true pace of viral transmission likely increased around the first week of May,” when social-distancing orders began to be relaxed. He added that there was compelling evidence of increasing community transmission, driven by trends in Yuma, Maricopa, Pima and Santa Cruz Counties.

More states have had increases in cases over the last two weeks than decreases, according to the Times database. Here’s a look around the country:

• In Alaska, where new case reports had slowed to a trickle in May, the number is among the state’s worst since the start of the pandemic. There have been more than 100 new cases in the last 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 on Tuesday its first virus death in more than a month.

• Some parts of the South are finally showing signs of progress. New case reports have started trending downward in Alabama and 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 last two days.

Infections were rising in 21 states on Wednesday, but Washington had other business.

The coronavirus may not be done with the United States, but the nation’s capital seems to be done with the coronavirus. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers in both parties were examining police brutality. The Senate health committee was contending with getting children back to school. The White House, which halted its daily virus briefings more than a month ago, was wrestling with race relations.

As the pandemic’s grim numbers continue to climb, President Trump and lawmakers in both parties are exhibiting their usual short attention span, alarming public health experts who worry that a second wave of infections could deliver a punch more brutal than the first while the nation’s political leaders are looking the other way.

In May, as he pressed to reopen the country, Mr. Trump announced that he planned to wind down the coronavirus task force, only to reverse himself, saying that he had not realized how “popular” it was. But its public presence has largely disappeared since then. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that it had met this week, albeit without the public news conference that used to follow such meetings.

Public health experts and communications strategists say that regular, clear and consistent messages to the public are essential. They say the absence of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who had been a steady presence on television, and the administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, has created a confusing and potentially harmful void. (Dr. Fauci made brief reappearances this week, talking with biotech executives on Tuesday and appearing on the ABC program “Good Morning America” on Wednesday.)

Inside the White House, Mr. Trump has attended significantly fewer meetings and briefings with the coronavirus task force, according to senior administration officials. He has begun plotting his return to the campaign trail, even as cases are climbing in key swing states.

For nearly two weeks now, the United States has been convulsed by the twin crises of the pandemic and civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody after gasping for air with an officer’s knee against his neck.

Congress continues to address the coronavirus crisis — in addition to a health committee hearing Wednesday, the treasury secretary appeared before the Senate Banking Committee, where he defended the administration’s decision to reopen the economy. But the big news on Capitol Hill was the testimony of Mr. Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, before the House Judiciary Committee.

In one sense, the shifting emphasis is a sign that the nation is no longer on a war footing, but has come to accept that the pandemic is not going away anytime soon and must be incorporated into Americans’ daily lives. Politicians and health officials are now simply trying to minimize its effects, knowing that Americans will continue to get sick and die.

ECONOMIC ROUNDUP

The Federal Reserve said unemployment would remain high as it left interest rates near zero.

The economic devastation wrought by the virus in the United States and around the world is not likely to bounce back swiftly, several grim new forecasts warned Wednesday.

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.

And in the United States, officials at the Federal Reserve indicated that they expected the unemployment rate to end 2020 at 9.3 percent and remain elevated for years, as the Fed left interest rates unchanged and near zero. Output is expected to be 6.5 percent lower at the end of this year than it was in the final quarter of 2019.

The new forecasts predict a much slower path back to economic strength than the Trump administration — and perhaps the stock market — seems to expect as the economy begins to climb out of a virus-spurred downturn. The Fed skipped its quarterly economic summary in March as the pandemic gripped the United States, sowing uncertainty as business activity came to a near standstill.

“The ongoing public health crisis will weigh heavily on economic activity, employment, and inflation in the near term, and poses considerable risks to the economic outlook over the medium term,” the Fed said in the post-meeting statement that accompanied the data outlook. Here are some other key economic developments:

• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Senate’s small business committee 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.

• A loan program for small businesses that ran through its initial $349 billion in loans in just 13 days, prompting Congress to swiftly approve a second round of $310 billion, has slowed down and some businesses have 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. 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.

Global Roundup

Lockdowns are ending in many developing countries, even as cases rise.

Even as virus cases mount, leaders across the world — particularly in developing countries — say they cannot sustain punishing lockdowns without risking economic catastrophe, especially for their poorest citizens. In India, Mexico, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, among other countries, officials say they have had no choice but to prioritize the economy and relax lockdowns.

A glimpse from the streets reveals a sharp rise in person-to-person contact in recent days even as the World Health Organization is warning that daily infections from this highly contagious virus are reaching new peaks.

• India is now reporting more new daily infections, around 10,000, than all but two countries: the United States and Brazil. New Delhi and Mumbai, the two biggest cities, are overloaded with infections, and experts said the peak was several weeks away. Government officials have proposed commandeering some of New Delhi’s fanciest hotels to turn into hospitals.

• In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador kicked off the reopening in early June with a tour of the country. “We have to head toward the new normality, because the national economy and the well-being of the people depends on it,” he said during a stop in Cancún.

• Health experts say Pakistan will soon be overwhelmed with cases, but it has relaxed restrictions. Outside the cities, almost no one is making attempts to socially distance, and testing remains scarce. The prime minister, Imran Khan, wrote on Twitter in April: “We sought a total lockdown without thinking about the consequences for the daily wage earners, the street vendors, the laborers, all of whom face poverty and hunger.”

• Iran decided to open up the country last month in an attempt to salvage its economy, which was already suffering under international sanctions and huge budget deficits. Iran’s leaders said the coronavirus pandemic was a reality that Iranians had to learn to live with. Now a second surge of infections has arrived.

• Russia’s number of new infections has hovered around 8,000 to 9,000 each day. But the mayor of Moscow, a hot spot that had been under a strict lockdown, lifted many restrictions this week. Analysts said the reopening was partly aimed at ensuring high turnout for a July 1 vote on an amendment to extend President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule.

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.”

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 with the same day the previous week, officials said.

Here’s a look at other developments:

• Statewide, there were an additional 53 virus-related deaths.

• 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.

• 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.

• The New York Philharmonic announced that it was canceling its fall season and would not perform until Jan. 6, 2021, at the earliest.

• 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.

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.

Journalists in Latin America say they’re facing grave risks to cover the pandemic.

For some journalists in Latin America, covering the pandemic has meant putting their lives at risk.

In Peru, the National Journalists Association has identified at least 22 journalists who were believed to have died of Covid-19, including 11 who covered the outbreak, said Zuliana Laínez, its general secretary. Many were freelancers without access to protective equipment, Ms. Laínez said.

“They did their coverage using homemade masks and working in unsafe conditions,” she said in an interview. “Many feel they are invisible to the eyes of the government.”

The region is confronting outbreaks rivaling those in Europe at the peak of its crisis, but without robust health and social welfare systems to rely on. At the same time, the devastating economic fallout of lockdowns has spurred layoffs at media organizations, and freelancers have seen gigs dry up. Many journalists have struggled to find adequate protective gear while in the field.

In Ecuador, one of the hardest-hit countries, the press freedom organization Fundamedios said that 11 journalists who had symptoms of the virus had died. Many were never tested, said Desirée Yépez, the group’s director of content.

In both countries, journalists have protested firings and demanded delayed payments and other benefits. Ms. Yépez said that many media workers had not received government aid and were struggling.

The pandemic has also raised the specter of new threats to press freedom. A report published in April by Reporters Without Borders concluded that President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil had stepped up his attacks on the media amid the pandemic, blaming them for “hysteria.”

On May 31, a television station in Guayaquil, the center of Ecuador’s outbreak, was targeted by an assailant who lobbed a stick of dynamite at its entrance. The attack may have been linked to the station’s reporting on corruption linked to sales of protective equipment during the pandemic. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called it “a clear message of intimidation.”

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 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.

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.

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 N.Y.U. Langone hospital.

Reporting was contributed by Manuela Andreoni, Choe Sang-Hun, Michael Cooper, Jonathan Corum, Stacy Cowley, Abdi Latif Dahir, Shaila Dewan, Farnaz Fassihi, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Sheri Fink, Jeffrey Gettleman, Christina Goldbaum, Maggie Haberman, Andrew Higgins, Josh Katz, David D. Kirkpatrick, Hari Kumar, José María León Cabrera, Iliana Magra, Salman Masood, Allison McCann, Brent McDonald, Andy Newman, Aimee Ortiz, Richard C. Paddock, Alan Rappeport, Tatiana Schlossberg, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dera Menra Sijibat, Natasha Singer, Jeanna Smialek, Mitch Smith, Kaly Soto, Matt Stevens, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Shalini Venugopal, Noah Weiland, Jin Wu, Carl Zimmer and Karen Zraick.