Coronavirus Live Updates: U.S. Nears 4 Million Cases
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California and Texas are among the states setting new daily records.
California recorded new highs in both coronavirus deaths and total number of cases on Wednesday, as troubling data emerged across the United States and more than 1,100 deaths were reported for the second consecutive day.
Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia recorded their highest daily case numbers on Wednesday, while Alabama, Idaho and Texas reported daily death records, according to a New York Times database.
Nationwide, 69,707 new virus cases were reported on Wednesday. Total confirmed cases in the United States were expected to pass 4 million on Thursday.
And 59,628 people were being treated at hospitals on Wednesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That is near the peak of 59,940 on April 15, when the center of the outbreak was New York. Experts have warned that the data likely undercounts both cases and deaths.
Some, including President Trump, have said that more testing explains the increase in the number of cases, but The Times has found that the recent rise in cases far outpaces a rise in testing.
After warning on Tuesday the virus would get “worse before it gets better,” Mr. Trump shifted back on Wednesday to saying that virus testing was “overrated” and “makes us look bad.” He accused Democrats of sounding the alarm over the virus for political reasons.
“Watch,” Mr. Trump said, “on Nov. 4, everything will open up.”
The 1,130 deaths announced on Wednesday across the United States were the highest single-day death total since May 29, with the exception of two anomalous days in June when large numbers of deaths from unknown dates were reported.
In Texas, which recorded 201 deaths on Wednesday, a steady climb in daily death tolls has matched a similar increase in reported cases.
California recorded at least 155 deaths and 12,162 cases on Wednesday, both records. With more than 422,000 cases, the state has now reported more cases than New York, the early center of the pandemic in the United States.
About as many people are now known to be hospitalized with the coronavirus in the United States as during any other time in the pandemic, matching the previous peak in April.
Public health experts say detailed local data on where people are hospitalized — a real-time measure that does not depend on levels of testing — is crucial to understanding the epidemic, but federal officials have not made this data public. The New York Times gathered data for nearly 50 metropolitan areas, including 15 of the 20 largest cities in the country, from state and local health departments to provide the first detailed national look at where people are falling seriously ill.
The data, as well as interviews across the country, show a far-reaching crisis. The worst-hit areas in Texas and Florida have approached the peak rates of hospitalization that New York, New Orleans, Chicago and other cities hit in the spring. A wide and growing expanse of hot spots around the country — including Las Vegas, Nashville and Tulsa, Okla. — have worsened over the past two weeks.
Not every hospital system is overwhelmed, and new treatments have improved the chances of survival for seriously ill people. But experts say a small but significant proportion of those currently hospitalized will die, and those who survive may face serious long-term health issues.
Months ago, the urgency of the virus outbreak was concentrated in the New York City area. Now, the scale of the crisis is dispersed and harder to grasp.
“There’s this pandemic fatigue,” said Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at Harvard University. “All eyes were on New York. Houston is New York now. Miami is New York now. Phoenix is New York now. We need that shared collective urgency.”
As the number of coronavirus cases has grown across the United States, another disturbing trend has emerged: landlords commencing eviction proceedings even though the federal CARES Act still protects millions of tenants. The four-month pause in eviction cases is set to expire at the end of this week.
Yet landlords in Tucson, Ariz., filed dozens of eviction cases last month despite the federal moratorium, which was put in place because of the pandemic.
State and local governments have also issued eviction moratoriums, but the CARES Act is the furthest reaching, covering as many as 12.3 million renters living in apartment complexes or single-family homes financed with a federally backed mortgage. But like other moratoriums, it is about to expire: After Friday, landlords can file eviction notices for failure to pay rent. It will be at least 30 days after that before any tenants are kicked out.
The CARES Act does not penalize landlords who violate the moratorium.
The Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a consumer advocacy group, found more than 100 eviction filings in apparent violation of the CARES Act in Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts and Texas.
And in a survey of 100 Legal Aid lawyers in 38 states, all but nine said they knew of illegal eviction attempts in their cities. That prompted the group to create a draft complaint to challenge a violation of the CARES Act moratorium.
Having multiple jobs has become business as usual for millions of Americans. But many cobbled-together employment arrangements, which enabled people to get by when the jobless rate skimmed along at record lows, collapsed after the pandemic froze large sectors of the economy.
People who rely on paychecks from different employers are already more likely to have shifting schedules and unpredictable weekly paychecks, low hourly wages and the absence of benefits like sick days and health insurance. And when hard times hit, they are excluded from regular state unemployment benefits.
The latest government unemployment figures will be released Thursday. For 17 straight weeks, there have been more than one million new jobless claims, and this morning’s tally is expected to extend that streak. The question is whether the number of claims will grow as lockdown restrictions have been put back in place to stop the virus’s spread.
Senate Republican leaders and White House officials expressed confidence on Wednesday that they had reached an agreement in principle on a coronavirus relief package that would send additional checks directly to Americans. But some of the biggest issues, including what to do with enhanced unemployment insurance and President Trump’s proposal to cut the payroll tax, were not finalized.
China’s National Health Commission on Thursday issued new guidelines for the country’s meat processors, citing outbreaks at plants in the United States, Germany and Britain, as well as the higher risks of transmission in the closed, crowded and low-temperature environments at such facilities.
All imported meat must be certified as having passed nucleic acid tests that check for the coronavirus before being processed in the country, according to the guidelines. And five environmental samples must be collected for those tests daily from meat-processing facilities in medium- and high-risk regions. In low-risk areas, such tests should be conducted at least once a week.
The guidelines were released after China has recently halted imports from a range of overseas suppliers. A worker at a seafood processing plant in the northeastern city of Dalian tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, Chinese state media reported.
China has already suspended imports from major meat producers such as Germany’s Tönnies and American meat giant Tyson. And it banned imports from three Ecuadorean companies after the coronavirus was detected on a container and on packages of frozen shrimp from Ecuador.
China’s health authorities on Thursday recorded 22 new confirmed cases in the previous day, including 18 cases in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Two cafeterias in the White House complex close after an employee tests positive.
The cafeterias are in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the New Executive Office Building, which are part of the White House complex and are next to the West Wing.
It was not immediately clear whether the employee was a cafeteria worker, and the White House did not say what kind of symptoms the person showed.
The White House notified employees about measures in an email and said that there was no need for them to self-quarantine, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation.
In May, a military aide who had contact with President Trump tested positive for the virus, as did Katie Miller, the press secretary for Vice President Mike Pence.
The surge of coronavirus cases could be slowed if the world’s poorest people receive a temporary basic income, enabling them to stay at home, according to a United Nations report released on Thursday.
The pandemic is spreading by more than 1.5 million new virus cases a week, but in some places it may not be possible for workers to take measures like isolating. In developing countries, seven out of 10 workers can’t earn money if they are at home, according to the United Nations Development Program report, “Temporary Basic Income: Protecting Poor and Vulnerable People in Developing Countries.”
It would cost at least $199 billion a month to provide fixed-term basic income to 2.7 billion people in 132 developing countries, the report said, allowing these people to pay for their food, and health and education expenses.
Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said the introduction of a temporary basic income might have seemed impossible a few months ago, but “unprecedented times call for unprecedented social and economic measures.”
“Bailouts and recovery plans cannot only focus on big markets and big business,” he said in a statement.
Adding that up to 100 million more people have so far been forced into extreme poverty this year, the report suggested that countries could pay for this measure by repurposing the funds they would use to service their debt.
A convent in Michigan has lost 13 sisters to the virus, a dozen of them in just one month.
They worked and lived together at a Michigan convent: some for more than a half century, many pursuing higher education and each with a variety of interests. In the end, 12 Felician sisters, ranging in age from 69 to 99, would also die in the same way — of Covid-19 and its effects — within a month, according to their order.
After the first 12 deaths from April 10 to May 10, a 13th sister at the convent, the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Livonia, Mich., died of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, on June 27.
The virus, which preys on the elderly and thrives anywhere people are in close contact, may have posed a particular danger to the sisters, who live communally.
The deaths cut deep in the communities where the sisters worked in schools, libraries and the medical field, the order said in a statement.
The women were all members of the Felician congregation for at least 50 years, according to obituaries provided by Suzanne English, executive director for mission advancement for sisters.
For example, Sister Celine Marie Lesinski, who died at 92, worked for 55 years in education, including 27 years as a librarian. And a former director of nursing, Sister Victoria Marie Indyk, who died at 69, was a nursing professor at Madonna University and was known for leading nurses on mission trips to support the Felician sisters’ mission in Haiti.
Major League Baseball begins a shortened season on Thursday, and the Times columnist Tyler Kepner writes that the only certainty is lots of uncertainty:
Baseball makes you wait. That is part of its old-world charm. The story takes time to reveal itself, pitch by pitch, inning by inning, game by game by game by … well, you get the idea. Players weather a rigorous six-month schedule, with few days off. No other professional athletes spend as many days performing.
So what will it look like now, after more than four months in hibernation since the coronavirus pandemic shut down spring training in mid-March? We will find out Thursday, when Major League Baseball begins its 60-game schedule with two games: the Yankees at the Nationals in Washington, and the Giants at the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Get ready for rule changes, extensive safety protocols and a whole lot of unknowns.
“It’s hard for those of us in baseball because we want to be knowledgeable about what’s going on,” said the longtime broadcaster Jim Kaat, 81, who pitched for 25 seasons in the majors, “and sometimes the toughest thing to say is, ‘I don’t know.’”
Reporting was contributed by Emily Cochrane, Patricia Cohen, Keith Collins, Matthew Conlen, Nicholas Fandos, Manny Fernandez, Lazaro Gamio, Matthew Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Maggie Haberman, Christine Hauser, Tyler Kepner, Iliana Magra, Sarah Mervosh, Katie Rogers, Jim Tankersley, Daniel Victor, Neil Vigdor, Allyson Waller and Elaine Yu.