Here’s what you need to know:
- As numbers remain dangerously high in much of the U.S., Washington deliberates relief.
- Here’s what’s coming up today: Senate negotiations, baseball uncertainty, teetering states.
- Trump shares a video containing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine.
- The Venice Film Festival will return, with masks and without blockbusters.
- A concert in the Hamptons is being criticized for a lack of social distancing.
- 35 lifeguards were infected in an outbreak at the Jersey Shore.
- Germany, an early model for containing the virus, is confronting a surge. Its top health experts urge masks.
As numbers remain dangerously high in much of the U.S., Washington deliberates relief.
As the coronavirus continued to take a lethal toll across much of the South and West, governors were again forced to make tough decisions about limiting businesses and imposing protection measures to help slow the spread of the virus.
The economic pain that comes with any decision to reinstitute pandemic protection measures, and the aftermath of earlier closures, has put Washington in the spotlight as lawmakers grapple over what kind of relief to offer.
Among the most heated issues is the $600 weekly jobless benefit that is set to expire at the end of the month, which Republicans have proposed cutting by two-thirds, to $200. Democratic leaders left a nearly two-hour meeting with White House officials on Monday saying they were unsatisfied with the Republicans’ opening bid.
“If they’re not even getting to the fundamentals of food and rent and economic survival, they’re not really ready to have a serious negotiation,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said after meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; Mark Meadows, the chief of staff; and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader.
Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, a Democrat, was among the governors who had a decision to make. Facing a surge in cases, Mr. Beshear heeded the advice of federal health officials and ordered bars in the state to close again for two weeks, starting Tuesday. He also mandated that restaurants reduce their seating capacity from 50 percent to 25 percent and recommended that schools delay opening until the third week of August.
President Trump, who had seemed last week to acknowledge the severity of the situation in the United States, urged further reopenings again on Monday.
During a visit to a North Carolina biotechnology lab, Mr. Trump said that “a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening, and we’ll see what happens with them.”
There were glimmers of good news on Monday. New cases leveled off in Florida, Texas and Arizona.
In Texas, which on Monday joined California, New York and Florida to become the fourth state with more than 400,000 known cases, the seven-day average of new cases has tapered from a high of 10,461 on July 19 to 8,243 on July 26. Florida’s seven-day average of new cases hit a high of 11,870 on July 17 and fell to 10,544 on July 26.
In Arizona, another hot spot, the seven-day average of new cases is also down, from 3,849 on July 6 to 2,628 on July 26. Oklahoma and New Mexico broke state records on Monday for single-day cases.
Also, one of the first large studies of safety and effectiveness of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States began Monday.
Here’s what’s coming up today: Senate negotiations, baseball uncertainty, teetering states.
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Lawmakers will continue negotiations over a virus relief package. The Republicans’ $1 trillion opening bid will have to be reconciled with Democrats, who were pushing a much larger recovery package that would extend $600 per week in extra unemployment aid through the end of the year. The Republican plan would reduce the benefit to $200. Here are the differences between the two bills.
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In Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies don’t know if they’ll play tonight. The Phillies are awaiting test results after their weekend series with the Miami Marlins, which had 14 people in their traveling party test positive and will not play a scheduled game Tuesday night against the Baltimore Orioles. Additional postponements threaten to undermine the season, which began last week.
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States to watch include Oklahoma, which has set single-day records for new cases two days in a row and will hope to avoid a third. Virginia, which set its single-day case record in late May but improved in June, has seen cases rising again to near-record levels. Arizona has seen a downward trend in cases but an increase in deaths.
Trump shares a video containing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine.
President Trump shared on his Twitter account Monday night a viral video containing a series of false or misleading medical claims about the coronavirus, as social media companies scrambled to halt the video’s rapid spread.
Facebook and YouTube removed versions of the video, and Twitter later removed the post shared by the president. At least one version, which was shared on Facebook by the right-wing Breitbart news site, had garnered over 13 million views before it was removed. Other versions of the video, including shorter, edited clips, were still online Monday night.
The video featured what appeared to be a group of doctors in white coats, standing in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., in what appeared to be a news conference. The doctors made a series of misleading claims, including that hydroxychloroquine could be taken as a preventive measure.
The use of the drug to treat or prevent coronavirus has been widely disputed by the medical establishment. The Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency authorization in June after deeming it “unlikely to be effective” while carrying potential risks, and the National Institutes of Health halted clinical trials of the drug in June. But Mr. Trump repeatedly boosted the drug in the early months of the crisis, and said in May (not in June, as an earlier post said) that he was taking it himself.
It was the most recent example of misinformation that has spread about the coronavirus, at times being shared by Mr. Trump and others in the White House. A YouTube spokesman said in a statement that the video had been removed for “violating Covid-19 misinformation policies.”
GLOBAL ROUNDUP
The Venice Film Festival will return, with masks and without blockbusters.
The Venice Film Festival announced the lineup on Tuesday for its 77th edition, setting out precautions including temperature checks and new outdoor screening sites for one of the first large international festivals held since the pandemic began.
The festival will run from Sept. 2 to Sept 12, with a reduced schedule. Between 55 and 60 films will be screened, as opposed to last year’s 80.
“The show must go on and the world must go on,” said Roberto Cicutto, the president of La Biennale di Venezia, which runs the festival, in a phone interview, adding that it was important “to watch and to discuss movies together, to live this art the way we used to live it.”
Films in contention for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, include Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” starring and produced by Frances McDormand; Mona Fastvold’s “The World to Come,” starring Vanessa Kirby and Casey Affleck; and “Pieces of a Woman,” directed by Kornel Mundruczo and starring Shia LaBeouf.
Screening in the festival’s nonfiction section will be “Salvatore Ferragamo: The Shoemaker of Dreams,” a documentary directed by Luca Guadagnino, as well as “City Hall” from Frederick Wiseman, a look at Boston’s administrative center.
Though Shanghai’s international film festival went ahead in July, the pandemic has forced the cancellation or postponement of most of the gatherings that traditionally structure the year for filmmakers in Hollywood and elsewhere in the West, including Cannes and the Tribeca Film Festival.
Here are other developments from around the globe:
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Spain’s prime minister said that Britain had made “an error” by imposing a quarantine on everyone arriving from his country, a decision that blindsided British vacationers and dealt another blow to Spain’s tourism industry. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in an interview with the news outlet Telecinco on Monday, said that Britain should have taken into account the regional divergences in Spain’s coronavirus cases and not issued a blanket order.
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Joran van der Sloot of the Netherlands, who is in prison in Peru for killing Stephany Flores, 21, and who is the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, has Covid-19, Dutch news outlets report. The prison has four inmates and seven workers with confirmed infections, according to a Peruvian rights group.
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Vietnam suspended domestic flights into and out of the tourist destination of Danang for 15 days after discovering at least 14 coronavirus cases, according to Reuters. International travel was halted months ago, but domestic tourists still traveled to Danang, a coastal city. About 80,000 people, mostly tourists, were ordered to evacuate on Monday after the discovery of the country’s first local transmissions in 100 days.
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China recorded 68 new virus infections on Monday, its National Health Commission said on Tuesday, including six in Liaoning Province and 57 in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where a flare-up since mid-July has shown little sign of abating. As China battles the surge, the authorities in the northeastern port city of Dalian, in Liaoning, have said they will test all 6 million residents after an outbreak. Samples have been collected from about 1.68 million Dalian residents as of Sunday night, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A concert in the Hamptons is being criticized for a lack of social distancing.
A charity concert Saturday night in the Hamptons that featured performances from the chief executive of Goldman Sachs and the D.J. duo the Chainsmokers drew outrage and a state investigation after video footage showed attendees appearing to ignore health precautions.
The concert, called Safe & Sound, was supposed to involve guests sitting outside near their vehicles in spaced-out areas to watch the performances, including one from the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David M. Solomon, also known as D.J. D-Sol.
Tickets cost up to $25,000, according to Billboard.
The event generated angry social media posts, and on Monday, criticism from state officials. In a letter to the supervisor of Southampton, where the concert was held, New York’s health commissioner, Howard A. Zucker, wrote that he was “greatly disturbed” by reports of thousands of people standing close and “generally not adhering to social-distancing guidance.”
“I am at a loss as to how the Town of Southampton could have issued a permit for such an event, how they believed it was legal and not an obvious public health threat,” Dr. Zucker wrote.
The town supervisor, Jay Schneiderman, who was also listed as an opener for the concert, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday night. The event organizers did not answer questions about whether they knew that people were breaking the rules.
Several people who went to the concert told Buzzfeed News that they felt safe and that people were social distancing.
35 lifeguards were infected in an outbreak at the Jersey Shore.
Long Beach Island, a popular summertime destination along the Jersey Shore, is now a different kind of hot spot.
Thirty-five lifeguards from two boroughs on the barrier island — Surf City and Harvey Cedars — recently tested positive for the coronavirus, the island’s health department announced on Monday.
Public health officials said that half of the lifeguards had mild symptoms and the rest had none. None were hospitalized, the officials said.
The outbreak was traced to two gatherings on July 12 and July 14, according to the Long Beach Island Health Department, which said it dispatched nurses to investigate cases and issue quarantine orders.
“Based on our investigation so far, the workplace was not the source of transmission and practices likely prevented additional cases,” the Health Department said in a news release. “The youth and young adults should recognize they are not immune to this virus.”
During a daily briefing on the pandemic on Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey mentioned the outbreak on Long Beach Island and said he was troubled by reports of large gatherings of young people.
“This is among us, folks,” Mr. Murphy said. “Any of us who thinks we can just put our feet up and relax and let this take its course is not paying attention, particularly congregating inside, in close proximity, poor ventilation, without face coverings. You’re looking for trouble. You’re absolutely looking for trouble, no matter how old you are.”
Germany, an early model for containing the virus, is confronting a surge. Its top health experts urge masks.
The German federal agency in charge of disease control sounded an alarm on Tuesday over a rising number of cases across the nation.
Lothar Wieler, the leader of the agency, the Robert Koch Institute, urged Germans for the first time to wear masks outdoors if a distance of 1.5 meters, or about 5 feet, cannot be maintained.
Germany reported 633 new cases on Monday, and four deaths. Though Germany’s daily death count has been in the single digits for most of this month, there have been more than 3,000 new cases over the past week.
“The new developments in Germany make me very worried,” Mr. Wieler said, adding, “The rise has to do with the fact that we have become negligent.”
When the virus began spreading in March, Germany imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. It was seen as a model for other countries. Since it began reopening, there have been flare-ups that have spurred local lockdowns, including one in June.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Wieler said he wondered if this latest uptick was a harbinger of something more.
“We don’t know if this is the beginning of a second wave, but of course it could be,” he said. But he added, “I am still optimistic that we can prevent this.”
‘Not sparing anyone’: A Texas funeral home sees the toll of the virus all around.
Johnny Salinas Jr., the owner of Salinas Funeral Home typically handles five funerals a week. But on a recent day, with the virus tearing through his community, he saw that many grieving families in a single day.
A sixth family was waiting, too. His own.
Mr. Salinas changed from a polo shirt into a crisp black suit and left his office for the chapel next door. The light blue coffin of his great-uncle, who died of Covid-19, sat at the front of the room, adorned with white flower arrangements and a wooden crucifix.
“The virus is not sparing anyone,” Mr. Salinas said. “Not even my family.”
In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, funeral homes — like hospitals — are overloaded and struggling to carry out basic services and keep up with the expanding crisis. Local funeral homes, officials said, have not experienced such demand in decades.
About one in 60 residents of Hidalgo County is known to have had the virus, and about one of every 2,000 people has died from the virus, a New York Times database shows. Hidalgo County now has one of the highest per capita death rates in the state.
At the start of July, fewer than 50 deaths in Hidalgo County had been attributed to the virus, according to the database. By Saturday, there had been more than 450.
“It’s like a bad dream,” said Linda Ceballos, a co-director of Ceballos Funeral Home in McAllen. “You want to wake up, but you can’t.”
The death toll is forcing funeral directors to bypass traditional services like velorios, viewings that sometimes last for days and are filled with prayers, hugs and sorrowful Spanish-language songs. Instead, many funeral homes are shortening viewing times and limiting attendance. Some have ordered large refrigerator trucks to store bodies until they can get to them.
Transit workers were New York City’s pandemic lifeline. These three paid a price.
When the virus engulfed New York, it pummeled the transit work force: So far, 131 transit workers have died from the virus and more than 4,000 have tested positive, making the Metropolitan Transportation Authority one of the hardest-hit government agencies in New York.
For many, the pandemic has left an indelible mark. Pan Chan, a bus driver, moved out of his family’s home for months to shield his wife and children. Sally Lutchman, a train conductor, worried that she might have infected her husband, who was hospitalized with Covid-19 for months. Cesar Torres Jr., a second-generation bus operator, watched his father die.
Now, as riders trickle back, these workers are facing the prospect of a second wave, even as they are coping with the trauma from the peak of the outbreak.
The pandemic takes an extra toll on families with special needs.
Missing social contacts and altered routines can be particularly intense for children with developmental challenges. Disturbed sleep and eating habits, too, can make life more challenging for the children and their families. Here are some strategies to cope better.
Reporting was contributed by Sheera Frenkel, Raphael Minder, Claire Moses, Edgar Sandoval, Anna Schaverien, Kaly Soto, Eleanor Stanford, Daniel Victor, Neil Vigdor, Elaine Yu and Mihir Zaveri.
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