Coronavirus Live Updates: Travelers Are Flouting Quarantine Rules

But in the absence of broad enforcement, many travelers to New York seem to be making their own rules.

Social media has been capturing the exploits of these quarantine scofflaws as they risk generating another outbreak in a state that has lost more than 32,000 residents to the virus, twice as many as any other state.

Olivia Awe, a figure skating coach and pastry chef, noticed on social media that an acquaintance from college was returning to New York City after temporarily living with her parents in Florida. The acquaintance stopped in Virginia, another high-risk state, on her way back, to attend a wedding that did not require masks.

After the woman arrived in New York, Ms. Awe said she saw a post from the woman on social media saying she had received a piece of paper about the need to quarantine. Soon after, there were posts of the acquaintance bar hopping, eating out at restaurants and hosting a group of people at her apartment.

“This person is putting so many people at risk and putting our state at risk,” Ms. Awe said.

New York’s approach stands in contrast to countries and regions that strictly monitor new arrivals or bar them completely. In many Asian countries, everyone is tested upon arrival and then required to quarantine for 14 days, sometimes in government facilities or wearing electronic monitoring devices. Western Australia, which includes the city of Perth, has been closed even to domestic travelers since April. Travel between provinces in South Africa will be allowed starting Monday for the first time since March.

At least 97,000 children tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks of July, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, bringing the total number through the end of that month to 338,000.

The reports of increased cases come as states across the country are trying to reopen schools safely. Some districts have already had to implement quarantines or close their doors after students tested positive. The state of Georgia announced on Sunday that it would switch to online instruction two days a week after reporting at least nine cases among students.

Many teachers are worried. A district in Arizona canceled classes that were set to start Monday after teachers staged a sick-out in protest.

The effect of the virus on children has been a matter of debate and uncertainty since the pandemic began. On Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, said on CBS’s program “Face the Nation” that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, would be sending their children to school for in-person instruction. “Our school is not opening up five days a week,” he said. “I wish they were, but we absolutely will be sending our kids back to school and I have no fear in doing so.”

But several studies from other countries have also suggested that children under 10 are much less likely to spread the virus to others. Children seem to be less likely than adults to develop severe Covid-19 symptoms, although the C.D.C. reported 570 cases of a related inflammatory syndrome among young people from infancy to age 20, from early March through late July. Those stricken were disproportionately Black and Latino.

The C.D.C.’s updated guidelines, which were addressed to pediatric health care providers, said that 7.3 percent of all reported Covid-19 cases through Aug. 3 were in people 17 or younger, who make up 22 percent of the U.S. population.

“Due to community mitigation measures and school closures,” the report stated, transmission of the virus to and among children “may have been reduced in the spring and early summer of 2020. This may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults.”

The report added: “Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to in-person school and other activities may provide additional understanding about infections in children.”

U.S. ROUNDUP

Pelosi weighs bringing the House back early to address the Postal Service crisis, a threat to mail-in voting.

Accounts of slowdowns and curtailed service have emerged across the country since Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and an ally of President Trump’s, took over as postmaster general in May. Mr. DeJoy has been pushing cost-cutting measures like reduced hours and the elimination of overtime pay that he says are intended to overhaul an agency sustaining billion-dollar losses.

Mr. Trump has tried to pin Postal Service funding troubles on Democrats, and he rails almost daily against voting by mail. Voting-rights advocates and postal workers have warned that the growing crisis could disenfranchise millions of Americans who plan to cast their ballots by mail in November because of the pandemic.

Among the legislative options under consideration is a measure that would require the Postal Service to maintain current service standards until after the pandemic ends. Lawmakers are also discussing adding language that would ensure that all ballot-related mail is treated as first-class mail.

While Democrats have been fighting to include funding for the Postal Service in a coronavirus relief package, it is unlikely that party members will act on a stand-alone funding bill, said the two people, who asked for anonymity to disclose details of private discussions.

In other developments around the U.S.:

• A heat wave rolling through the Southwest has forced intermittent power shut-offs in California, a state already struggling with wildfires and a recent surge in coronavirus cases, while devastating windstorms just before harvest left Iowa reeling, adding more pain to a series of economic challenges compounded this year by the effects of the virus.

• A school district outside Phoenix has canceled its plans to reopen schools on Monday after teachers staged a “sick out” in protest. The the J.O. Combs Unified School District “cannot yet confirm when in-person instruction may resume,” Superintendent Gregory A. Wyman said in a letter to families posted online Friday. Virtual classes were also canceled for the time being, though breakfasts and lunches will be available for pickup.

• The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization on Saturday for a new saliva-based test to detect the virus. The new test, SalivaDirect, was developed by researchers at Yale University with some of the funding coming from the N.B.A. and the National Basketball Players Association, the university announced on Saturday in a news release. A lab affiliated with Rutgers University received emergency authorization in May for a similar test

global roundup

South Korea warns of another outbreak tied to a church.

Members of Sarang Jeil were reportedly among thousands who attended an antigovernment rally in Seoul on Saturday. On the same day, Kwon Jun-wook, the deputy director of the government’s Central Disease Control Headquarters, warned of “early signs of a large-scale resurgence of the virus.”

Over the weekend the government tightened social-distancing rules in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, limiting indoor gatherings to below 50 and outdoor gatherings to below 100. The new rules also bar spectators from professional baseball and soccer games and empower the authorities to shut down high-risk facilities like bars, karaoke rooms and buffet restaurants if they do not take stricter preventive measures.

Virus fears also prompted South Korea and the U.S. on Sunday to delay an annual joint military drill, rescheduling it to begin on Tuesday after a South Korean Army officer who was expected to participate tested positive.

In other developments around the world:

• The Australian state of Victoria has extended its state of emergency until Sept. 13. The state of emergency, which gives health officials broad powers to quarantine people, restrict movement and declare lockdowns, has been in effect since March. Victoria, which is the center of the outbreak in Australia, on Sunday reported 279 new cases and 16 deaths.

• New Zealand on Sunday reported 13 new cases, all but one of them locally transmitted, amid a new outbreak in Auckland, its most populous city.

• South Africa, reporting a drop in cases from 12,000 a day to about 5,000, will lower its alert status to a so-called Level 2 at midnight on Monday. Bans on the sale of tobacco and alcohol will be scrapped, travel between provinces will be allowed, and bars, restaurants and taverns will return to normal business, subject to strict hygiene regulations.

It is hardly unusual for embattled industries to seek help from Washington. But instead of relying only on trade associations, some of the country’s largest nursing-home companies have assembled a fleet of lobbyists, many with close ties to the Trump administration. Among these companies are some with long histories of safety violations and misusing public funds.

One of the industry’s biggest goals is for the federal government to block residents and their families from suing nursing homes for wrongful deaths and filing other malpractice claims — even those that have nothing to do with Covid-19.

The industry has successfully lobbied at least 20 states to gain immunity from lawsuits in state courts. But the federal Safe to Work Act would also apply to deaths that occurred months before the virus began spreading.

“The industry is using this epidemic to win a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Toby Edelman, a senior lawyer at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit legal assistance group for the elderly.

The tribute, which features 88 specially made lights used to create the projections that tower over the city until dawn on Sept. 12, has memorialized the attacks on the Twin Towers since 2002. The lights create two ghostly towers that are beamed into the sky from near ground zero. On a clear night they can be seen from 60 miles away.

A drop in ticket sales, prompted by the pandemic, drove the organization to institute layoffs and furloughs in June. The outdoor memorial reopened on July 4, but the museum remained closed.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is the chairman of the museum, said on Twitter Saturday that he was “glad we will continue this tradition and remind the world of NY’s strength.”

High-profile events at Disney’s theme parks and Knott’s Berry Farm have been canceled, and in places like Salem, Mass. — where the holiday accounts for more than 30 percent of the city’s annual tourists — officials are trying to figure out what Halloween looks like during a pandemic.

“The sales that the businesses generate during October are what carry them through the quiet winter months,” said Kate Fox, the director of Destination Salem, the city’s marketing organization.

“It’s just really a catastrophic year from the business perspective,” she said, noting that with five weekends in October this year, two full moons, and the end of daylight saving time falling during Halloween night, 2020 had been “on track to be our biggest year for tourism ever.”

The City of Salem released its first Covid-adjusted plans for this year’s Haunted Happenings events in early August under the assumption that by October, Massachusetts would still be in Phase 3 of its reopening, which prohibits indoor gatherings of more than 25 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 100 people. Days after the city’s announcement, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts tightened restrictions on Phase 3 after a rise in cases.

“I think one of the greatest fears for anyone is becoming a Covid hot spot or cluster location,” Ms. Fox said, “and to some extent we’re always prepared for the worst.”