Coronavirus Updates: Latest News and Analysis

U.S. cases surge toward May’s high, with clusters among young people linked to bars and fraternity parties.

The United States reported more than 30,000 new infections on Friday, its highest total since May 1, with cases rising in 19 states across the South, West and Midwest.

Florida reported 4,049 new cases on Saturday, breaking Friday’s record (3,822) and Thursday’s record (3,207). The state now has had 93,797 cases and 3,144 deaths.

South Carolina also broke its record for the third day in a row, with 1,155 new cases.

The new infections have skewed younger, with more people in their 20s and 30s testing positive, Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Southern officials in particular are speaking out with increasing alarm about the large number of cases turning up in young adults.

At least 100 cases were linked on Friday to employees and customers of bars in the Tigerland nightlife district near the Louisiana State University campus. In South Carolina, cases among people who are 21 to 30 have grown 413 percent since April 4. And in Mississippi, state officials said several cases had been tied to fraternity rush parties in Oxford, home to the University of Mississippi. More than 80 percent of new cases in Oxford involved people 18 to 24.

“Early information suggests that they’re violating the law in the number of people who are at these parties,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, who noted that indoor gatherings without social distancing were supposed to be limited to 20 people.

In South Carolina, officials warned that some young people had become seriously ill from the virus and that those without serious symptoms could still infect family members and friends.

“The increases that we’re seeing serve as a warning that young adults and youth are not immune to Covid-19,” said Dr. Brannon Traxler of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. “They also tell us that younger South Carolinians are not taking social distancing seriously.”

global roundup

Reopenings multiply around the world, as do resurgences in Turkey, the Palestinian territories, Australia and others.

Gradual reopenings are continuing globally this weekend, including the lifting of a state of emergency that Spain imposed nearly three months ago. But a return to public life has been accompanied by rises in coronavirus cases — and sometimes a return of restrictions to curb the virus’s spread.

The Palestinian prime minister, Muhammad Shtayyeh, announced on Saturday that the city of Hebron in the West Bank and its surrounding villages would be placed under lockdown for at least five days following a sharp rise in the number of coronavirus infections in those areas.

Medical professionals recorded 103 new virus cases in the Hebron region on Saturday, bringing the total number of infections in the area to 356 since the pandemic first emerged in the West Bank in March, according the health ministry of the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Shtayyeh told a news conference in front of his office in Ramallah that movement into and out of the Hebron region would be barred with the exception of those transporting goods. He also said that people would not be permitted to move inside the city and its surrounding villages unless they are going to places such as supermarkets and pharmacies.

Since early March, there have been only three fatalities in the West Bank and 712 known cases of the virus. The prime minister also announced that movement into and out of the city of Nablus would be restricted for two days following an increase in cases there.

In Turkey, which has the world’s 12th largest known outbreak, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged losing ground against the virus two weeks after the country allowed businesses to reopen and people to travel.

The daily rate of infection has now rebounded from below 1,000 a day to about 1,500. The government announced new lockdown periods for this weekend and next while high school students take specially scheduled exams. Masks were made compulsory in three of the largest cities, Istanbul, Izmir and Bursa, which have been hit badly.

Here are other developments around the world:

• More than 1,029 workers in one of Germany’s largest meatpacking plants have been infected, according to Sven-Georg Adenauer, a regional commissioner in North Rhine-Westphalia. The plant is closing for 14 days, and all 6,500 workers are in quarantine, while contact tracers try to identify chains of infection. Schools and day care centers in the area have been closed, angering families who had just begun to return to a cautious normalcy after more than two months into Germany’s lockdown.

• In Italy, Pope Francis held one of his first audiences for a group since the country lifted its lockdown. In his comments on Saturday at the Vatican, the pope thanked the attendees, who included masked health care workers from the hard-hit Lombardy region, for their work. He also warned against reverting back to individualism once the crisis faded.

• In Australia, which has been widely praised for containing the virus, the state of Victoria said on Saturday that it was bringing back tighter restrictions on gatherings. The state, which includes Melbourne, on Wednesday recorded 21 new cases, its largest single-day increase in over a month. Premier Dan Andrews said in a statement that “the numbers are largely being driven by families — families having big get-togethers and not following the advice around social distancing and hygiene.” At least three cases also involved protesters who participated in recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

• Beijing is scrambling to track and contain a new outbreak that has raised fears of broader contagion. While some limits were imposed, the authorities did not turn to the kind of widespread strict lockdowns introduced in January after the coronavirus emerged late last year in the city of Wuhan. The change is in part a recognition that it is not feasible to shut down societies for the duration of the pandemic, which shows no signs of disappearing.

• In Afghanistan, which is grappling with a rapidly growing outbreak and a raging war, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said on Saturday that infections had spread among diplomats, contract workers and local employees. The spokesman offered no numbers, but The Associated Press reported up to 20 cases.

• The removal of Spain’s state of emergency, which will officially take place at midnight, means that the country’s 47 million residents will be free to travel within the country. Spain is preparing to reopen its borders to almost all European Union member countries Sunday and travelers arriving from Britain will no longer have to quarantine starting on June 21. Other restrictions remain, including limits on the numbers of people allowed inside cafes and shops. Masks remain compulsory nationwide in public places, including on mass transit. Spain registered 40 coronavirus deaths and about 1,500 new infections in the past week, a huge drop from early April, when deaths rose by more than 900 a day.

• Saudi Arabia is set to lift a nationwide curfew on Sunday morning, allowing “all economic and commercial activities” to restart, the state-run SPA news agency reported on Saturday, despite a resurgence in infections since the kingdom began reopening over the last several weeks. Nearly 4,000 new cases were reported on Saturday, bringing the total to 154,233. Large gatherings, international flights and land entries are banned.

Anticipation for Trump’s rally in Tulsa is building, as are worries about public health.

Concerns that President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday night could spread the coronavirus were amplified hours before the event, when his campaign acknowledged that six staff members working on the rally had tested positive.

“Six members of the advance team tested positive out of hundreds of tests performed, and quarantine procedures were immediately implemented,” said a campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh. “No Covid-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees and elected officials.”

Mr. Trump, made aware of the sick campaign aides before departing for the rally, was incensed the news was made public, according to two people familiar with his reaction.

There have been at least 10,037 cases of the coronavirus in Oklahoma, according to a New York Times database. As of Saturday afternoon, at least 368 people had died.

Tulsa health officials have expressed concerns that the rally, in a large, indoor arena, has the potential to become a “superspreader” event. But Trump supporters gathered in Tulsa appeared less worried about the virus and more exuberant over the president’s return to the campaign trail. A few hundred gathered at Fourth and Cheyenne, the first rally checkpoint. Almost none wore masks.

“If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus, that is the will of the Almighty,” said Robert Montanelli, a resident of a Tulsa suburb. “I will not live in fear.”

“I don’t feel sick,” said Mike Pellerin of Austin, Texas, who wore a T-shirt saying “Are we dead yet?” and proudly noted his age, 68. “I don’t have the virus. I’m not going to give it to anyone.”

The campaign stressed that all rally attendees are receiving temperature checks before going through security, and are then given wristbands, face masks and hand sanitizer. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that using the masks would be optional. Mr. Trump has eschewed masks in public, and Ms. McEnany said that she would not wear one at the rally.

In the afternoon, local black leaders held a news conference to plead with Mayor G. T. Bynum, a Republican who has cast himself as supportive of the black community, to cancel the rally.

In the city’s historic Greenwood neighborhood, the leaders stood in front of a memorial dedicated to the victims of the 1921 massacre of black Tulsans by a white mob and made a two-pronged argument: The rally would wound a city that has worked hard at creating a shared language of racial reconciliation, and the city’s black community may bear the brunt of any coronavirus surge the rally might create.

Some businesses and residents had also sued, in vain, to block the rally unless social distancing guidelines were followed. But the city itself has been accommodating. City officials rescinded a three-night curfew after Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he had spoken with Mr. Bynum, “who informed me there will be no curfew tonight or tomorrow for our many supporters.”

And Tulsa’s police chief said this week that his department was planning for “a mass amount of people that probably Tulsa has never seen before.”

The president, who has been determined to signal a return to normal as states reopen, announced on Friday that he would hold a Fourth of July celebration for a second consecutive year, including “music, military demonstrations and flyovers.”

The event, which is expected to culminate in a speech by Mr. Trump, comes as Democratic lawmakers in the area urged against such a gathering, saying it would “needlessly risk the health and safety of thousands of Americans.”

In another setback for hydroxychloroquine, the National Institutes of Health halts two clinical trials.

The National Institutes of Health said on Saturday that it had stopped two clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that President Trump has promoted to treat the virus with scant evidence of its efficacy.

One trial, which had enrolled close to 500 patients, ended because the drug was unlikely to be effective and the other did not have enough patients enrolled. Both are the latest indications scientists are increasingly concluding that the drug’s promise has fallen far short of early expectations.

“In effect, the drug didn’t work,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said of the first trial, which the medical community had been watching closely because it was federally funded, placebo-controlled and run by respected investigators. “I think we can put this drug aside and now devote our attention to other potential treatments.”

Mr. Trump had called the drug a “game changer” and said he had been taking it.

The N.I.H. said Saturday that an oversight board that monitors safety met Friday and “determined that while there was no harm, the study drug was very unlikely to be beneficial to hospitalized patients with Covid-19.” Later on Saturday, the N.I.H. said it had closed another trial — of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin — because only about 20 patients had enrolled in the planned study of 2,000 people.

The initial trial, which was being run by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of the N.I.H., was one of several placebo-controlled studies that had been organized to test the drug after a series of small, poorly controlled trials showed early signs of a benefit.

Since then, several other large trials have been halted or have not shown the drug to be effective against the virus.

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration revoked the emergency authorization it had given hospitals to give hydroxychloroquine and a related drug, chloroquine, to hospitalized patients. The agency said that the drugs were “unlikely to be effective” and could carry potential risks.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it was stopping the hydroxychloroquine arm of a large clinical trial that was testing several treatments against the virus because evidence showed it did not reduce mortality rates of hospitalized patients.

Several U.S. states and cities will begin allowing indoor dining at restaurants.

Even as states like Texas and Florida have seen considerable spikes in new coronavirus cases in recent days, other corners of the United States where the virus has so far been mostly contained are planning to let patrons eat in restaurants again.

On Friday, the mayor of Baltimore said the city would join the rest of Maryland in allowing restaurants and bars to open for indoor dining with certain restrictions. Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., are enacting similar plans on Monday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers restaurants that allow indoor dining to be one of the riskier environments among those establishments that have opened so far. As scientists’ understanding of the virus has evolved, crowded indoor spaces with poor airflow have been identified as one of the likeliest situations in which the virus can spread, particularly as people laugh, talk and take off their masks to eat.

Businesses will still have to comply with restrictions. In both Massachusetts and Washington, dining establishments will have to keep tables six feet apart, and parties at any table cannot exceed six people. Washington will also limit restaurants to seating people at 50 percent capacity.

The C.D.C. has warned that even with these restrictions, indoor dining still brings together in tight spaces people who may not live with one another, and has urged individuals to take extra precautions.

Other cities are experimenting with novel ways to allow people to dine together more safely, such as encouraging them to stay in designated areas outside. This weekend, Grand Rapids, Mich., put in place four new “social zones,” where it planned to grant permits allowing people to congregate and eat outside on demarcated streets and sidewalks.

“The idea is simply to let restaurants serve more customers while allowing those who don’t want to go indoors yet to feel safe,” said Lou Canfield, the city’s acting assistant director of design, development and community engagement in a news release. “It’s a new concept for us and will be experimental in some ways.”

The Belmont Stakes will be run today, without spectators or horse owners.

The Belmont Stakes, traditionally the last leg of the Triple Crown, will instead kick off the series for the first time in history on Saturday. The race signals the return of big-time sports to New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., but in the most small-scale way allowed.

Instead of 150,000 fans filling the grandstands, there was only a skeleton crew of grooms, trainers and assistant starters — fewer than 100 in all, or just enough to get the horses and their jockeys through the day. The staff members wore masks or bandannas and gloves, making the paddock look like a cross between a medical center and a waiting room for desperadoes.

“If you do not have a shank or bucket in your hand, you can’t come in,” said Pat McKenna, a spokesman for the New York Racing Association. “Only essential personnel.”

Essential, included Sam “The Bugler” Grossman, who will sound the call to post before each of the 12 races. The post time for the Belmont is 5:42 p.m. Eastern.

There is no beer or hot dogs being sold; no buffets in the dining room to graze. No betting windows are open, either. But fans can still watch on NBC and bet online.

When the pandemic forced organizers to move both the Preakness Stakes and the Kentucky Derby to the fall, the Belmont Stakes was also delayed. And that is not the sole change it faced. The race was shortened, and the start was placed on the backstretch, which means the horses and riders will have to navigate only one turn.

Protesters douse France’s Health Ministry with red paint symbolizing ‘blood on their hands.’

Demonstrators in France on Saturday doused the entrance to the country’s Health Ministry with bright red paint symbolizing blood, in protest over inadequate resources and poor working conditions in the country’s public hospitals.

The group of about 30 protesters also placed a giant fake “Medal of Contempt” on the steps of the ministry, in central Paris.

“It’s been years, months that health workers have been mobilizing to denounce the lack of resources in terms of staffing, beds and equipment,” said Aurélie Trouvé, a spokeswoman for ATTAC, a left-wing activist group.

“This government, and the previous ones, are responsible for thousands of deaths during this crisis,” she said. “They have blood on their hands.”

Over 29,500 people have died from the coronavirus in France. President Emmanuel Macron has praised French doctors and nurses as heroes during the pandemic, and the government has given bonuses of 1,500 euros (about $1,680) to public health care workers. The government is also in talks with unions over an investment plan for hospitals.

But French health workers say the government has not made concrete promises on issues like pay raises, increased hiring and a moratorium on plans to downsize or close hospitals.

The protesters also expressed anger at the government’s handling of a much larger demonstration of health workers last week in Paris, where violence broke out and the police used tear gas.

Ines Pujol, a spokeswoman for L’Inter-Urgences, a group of emergency health care workers, said at Saturday’s protest that “it took a pandemic, a global health crisis for the government and its institutions to take a look at public hospitals” and “for our suffering to be heard.”

The Yankees and Mets are moving their preseason training out of Florida as cases there continue to rise.

After several Major League Baseball teams reported positive coronavirus tests for players and staff members, the Yankees and Mets decided to move their preseason training from Florida, where cases have been spiking, to their home stadiums in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Saturday afternoon.

The announcement came soon after M.L.B. temporarily closed all of its spring training facilities, which are in Florida and Arizona, for deep cleanings and asked people to be tested for the virus before returning.

Five teams — the Philadelphia Phillies, the Los Angeles Angels, the San Francisco Giants, the Toronto Blue Jays and Houston Astros — have confirmed that players, other employees or people connected to them had tested positive or exhibited symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

M.L.B. suspended its spring training on March 12 and indefinitely postponed the start of the regular season. But as the league and its players’ union recently appeared to make progress in their protracted talks over returning to the field — with the regular season possibly starting in July — some players returned to the training facilities for limited, voluntary workouts.

The Yankees’ spring training facility is in Tampa, Fla., and the Mets’ is in Port St. Lucie.

While Florida has reported a record number of new cases three days in a row, including 4,049 on Saturday, the number of new cases in New York has tapered off since it peaked in April, with the governor reporting only 716 on Saturday.

Mr. Cuomo said Mets players would begin to train next week at Citi Field in Queens. It was unclear when the Yankees would arrive at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, but the team confirmed that the stadium would become its preseason training site.

Unlike other sports leagues, such as the N.B.A. or M.L.S., which planned to resume play in sequestered bubbles near Orlando, M.L.B. has been aiming to play its regular season at its home stadiums.

Recent reports of new cases of the coronavirus among professional and college athletes have heightened concerns about the resumption of competition.

On Friday, just over a week after the PGA Tour restarted, the golfer Nick Watney withdrew from the RBC Heritage tournament in South Carolina after testing positive for the coronavirus.

Clemson University also confirmed on Friday that 28 people had tested positive across its athletics department, including 23 football players.

Latin America’s devastation is compounded by a wave of fraud.

As Latin America has emerged as an epicenter of the pandemic, with deaths and infections soaring, efforts to contain the virus have been undermined by several corruption scandals.

Investigations into fraud have reached the highest levels of government. The former Bolivian health minister is under house arrest awaiting trial on corruption charges after the ministry paid an intermediary millions more than the going rate for 170 ventilators — which did not even work properly.

Dozens of public officials and local entrepreneurs are accused of exploiting the crisis for personal enrichment by peddling influence to price-gouge hospitals and governments for medical supplies including masks, sanitizer and ventilators.

In Brazil, which has the second highest number of coronavirus deaths after the United States, government officials in at least seven states are under investigation over the misuse of more than $200 million in public funds during the crisis.

Peru’s police chief and interior minister resigned after their subordinates bought diluted sanitizer and flimsy face masks for police officers, who then began dying of infections from the virus at alarming rates.

In Colombia, the attorney general is investigating reports that more than 100 political campaign donors received lucrative contracts to provide emergency supplies during the pandemic.

“People are dying in the streets because the hospital system collapsed,” said Diana Salazar, Ecuador’s attorney general. “To profit from the pain of others, with all these people who are losing their loved ones, it’s immoral.”

The many uses for food scraps.

Feeling crafty? Want to have less waste? There are many things that can be done with the bottoms of carrots, beets, egg shells and even meat waste. Or start a compost bin. We’ll show you how.

Reporting was contributed by Livia Albeck-Ripka, Aurelien Breeden, Nancy Coleman, Joe Drape, Melissa Eddy, Tess Felder, Ben Fenwick, Carlotta Gall, Matthew Haag, Maggie Haberman, Astead Herndon, Tyler Kepner, Natalie Kitroeff, Iliana Magra, Mujib Mashal, Patricia Mazzei, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Raphael Minder, Zach Montague, Adam Rasgon, Mitch Smith, Mitra Taj, Katie Thomas, Anton Troianovski and Vivian Yee.