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Friday 26 June 2020

Coronavirus Live Updates: Fauci Warns That New Outbreaks Could Engulf the U.S.

Trump’s virus task force gave its first briefing in nearly two months, as new daily cases in Florida shot past 8,900. The outbreak in Turkey is spreading beyond its cities.
At the first task force briefing in nearly two months, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, urged the public to stay vigilant while Vice President Mike Pence struck a more positive tone.CreditCredit...Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times

26 June 2020

Fauci warns that outbreaks in South and West could spread across the U.S.

The nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delivered an urgent warning on Friday that coronavirus outbreaks largely in the South and West could engulf the country and pleading for social distancing and mask wearing as an obligation to others.

Dr. Fauci invoked “a societal responsibility” as he spoke during the first public briefing of the White House coronavirus task force in nearly two months.

“You have an individual responsibility to yourself but you have a societal responsibility because if we want to end this outbreak, really end it and then hopefully when a vaccine comes and put as a nail in the coffin, we’ve got to realize that we are part of the process,” Dr. Fauci said, noting that some states are doing better than others.

“If we don’t extinguish the outbreak, sooner or later, even ones that are doing well are going to be vulnerable to the spread,” he said.

Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the response coordinator for the task force, said that rising positive test rates in states across the South, including in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Mississippi, were causing significant concern among health officials, and that they had created an “alert system” to track them.

She singled out Texas as a state where higher positive test rates indicated a more complicated kind of spread that could not be explained by higher rates of testing. Texas, she said, was part of a group of states with positive testing rates above 10 percent, a threshold the White House has used to identify areas of particular concern.

“Throughout May, after opening, their test positivity continued to decline as their testing increased. It was in the last two and a half weeks that we saw this inflection of rising test positivity along with rising testing,” she said of Texas, displaying slides on television monitors in an auditorium at the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Trump and Mr. Pence have explained recent spikes in cases as evidence of more testing, without acknowledging higher positive test rates and hospitalizations across the South.

Pence defends the administration response and Trump’s rallies.

Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at the same briefing as Dr. Fauci, defended Mr. Trump’s crowded campaign rallies and often maskless supporters and sought to take a victory lap for the administration’s response even as cases spike around the country.

“We slowed the spread, we flattened the curve, we saved lives,” Mr. Pence said.

He maintained a positive tone as task force members acknowledged surging cases in Texas and elsewhere. Mr. Pence described the revelation that half of new cases are affecting Americans under 35 as “good news” because younger people are less likely to fall seriously ill. However, Dr. Fauci has noted that infected young people can still suffer serious effects and infect the more vulnerable.

Mr. Pence said he and Dr. Birx will visit hot spots next week, including Texas and Arizona, to get an “on-the-ground report.” And he said the task force would have its 26th weekly call with the nation’s governors on Monday.

Addressing questions about the safety of Trump campaign events, Mr. Pence praised the exercises of free speech and assembly.

“The freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States,” he said, “and we have an election coming up this fall.”

Florida reports more than 8,900 new daily cases and bans drinking in bars.

 
Image Credit...Eve Edelheit for The New York Times
 
As cases rise around the United States, Florida reported more than 8,900 new cases on Friday, after counting more than 10,000 new cases over the previous two days, pushing its total past 120,000.

The eye-popping numbers came as hospitals and local leaders warned about rampant complacency.

“When I go out, I see fewer and fewer people wearing masks and practicing safe, physical distancing,” said Dr. Lawrence Antonucci, chief executive of the Lee Health hospital system in Fort Myers. “The threat of this virus is as real as it’s ever been.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who has resisted rolling back the economic reopening, said on Friday that drinking had been banned in bars because many businesses were not following social distancing and capacity restrictions. Bars can remain open to sell takeout alcohol and food if they have a an appropriate license.

“There was widespread noncompliance, and that led to issues,” he said at a news conference in Fort Myers. “If folks just follow the guidelines, we’re going to be in good shape. When you depart from that, it becomes problematic.”

Mr. DeSantis attributed the spike in cases to more socializing among young people rather than businesses being open.

“Beginning of May, we went to this, you didn’t see any problems,” he said of the reopening, which started on May 4.

Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami said city officials are considering whether to restore even more restrictions, although they may first try to stiffen penalties he said were not harsh enough against businesses that fail to comply with existing rules. He added said that it should be possible to restore some restrictions.

“This is a pendulum,” he said. “There’s a point where people all coalesce behind that idea if it becomes necessary. We’re in a far more precarious position than we were a month ago.”

But in Palm Beach County, Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said going back to a more stringent phase of reopening might be difficult.

“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said. “We’d get huge pushback from the public in trying to do that.”
Florida’s problems with issuing unemployment benefit checks will make it even more difficult for elected officials to put people out of work again, Ms. McKinlay said. She said that some people have returned to work, if at reduced wages, without having received any unemployment checks.

“Can you imagine if you’re a worker who’s tried to apply for 60, 90 days to get an unemployment check and never got anything, she said. “And we’re going to try to close that again and you haven’t gotten your unemployment from the first time?”

But she emphasized the reopening cannot move forward: “I’m not ready to do anything further at this time until we get these numbers under control.”

Across the state, long lines have returned at testing sites that just a few weeks ago were seeing limited demand. Florida also reported an unusually high number of tests results on Friday — more than 71,000 — according to a daily Department of Health case report, and Mr. DeSantis noted that “we had a big test dump,” but did not go into detail or offer any details.

Most U.S. travelers will be barred from the E.U. when the bloc reopens.

Credit...Felix Schmitt for The New York Times
 
The European Union will bar most travelers from the United States, Russia, and dozens of other countries considered too risky because they have not controlled their outbreaks, E.U. officials said Friday.

By contrast, travelers from more than a dozen countries that are not overwhelmed by the virus will be welcomed when the bloc reopens after months of lockdown on July 1. The acceptable countries also include China — but only if China allows European Union travelers to visit as well, the officials said.

The list of safe countries was completed by E.U. senior diplomats in Brussels after tortuous negotiations on how to reopen the 27-member bloc to commerce and tourism under a common set of standards after months of lockdown.

The list was backed in principle by most E.U. ambassadors and does not require unanimous support, but still needs to be formalized in member states’ capitals as well as in the central E.U. bureaucracy before taking effect July 1. Diplomats did not expect the list to change.

E.U. officials first disclosed on Tuesday that the United States, which has reported more virus deaths and infections than any other country, was highly unlikely to make the final list.

The exclusion of the United States, an important source of tourism to the European Union, represented a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s management of the virus scourge.

After pausing its reopening, Texas closes bars and Houston-area officials call for more restrictions.

Tasia Markantonis, the manager of West Alabama Ice House, in Houston closing the tab of a customer after the governor announced bars had to close by noon on Friday.
Credit...Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times

The governor of Texas and the leader of its largest county moved separately Friday to respond to a sharp surge in cases, with Gov. Greg Abbott ordering bars closed statewide and Judge Lina Hidalgo of Harris County calling for the region to return to stay-at-home conditions to avoid “a catastrophic and unsustainable situation.”

The moves came just a day after Mr. Abbott, a Republican, put the reopening of the nation’s second largest state on pause, while remaining firm that going “backward” and closing down businesses was “the last thing we want to do.”

By Friday, he said, “it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars.”

Under the order, bars were required to close effective 12 p.m. Friday locally, but they can remain open for takeout. Restaurants, which had been operating at 75 percent capacity, must reduce capacity to 50 percent starting Monday.

In Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the third-largest county in the U.S. with nearly 5 million residents, officials had created a four-level threat system to gauge the spread of the virus. On Friday, Ms. Hidalgo, a Democrat, announced that she was setting the county’s threat level to red, the highest level.

Ms. Hidalgo also issued a stay-at-home advisory for the county, urging residents to avoid nonessential personal and business travel. Local officials in Texas can only issue advisories and not orders, because the governor, whose virus orders supersede local ones, previously lifted a statewide stay-at-home mandate.

“Today, we find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and unsustainable situation,” Ms. Hidalgo said at a news conference, adding that the current hospitalization rate was on pace to overwhelm the hospital system “in the near future.” Since June 13, she said, the number of Covid-19 patients in county hospitals has doubled, including patients in both intensive care and in the general population.
“The curves that show our capacity running out in a matter of days or just a few weeks are conservative estimates,” she said.

Ms. Hidalgo wore a mask during her announcement, and equated the response to the spread of the virus with the response to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. “This pandemic is like an invisible hurricane, where all of a sudden your neighborhood is flooding, your next-door neighbor’s house is under water, and nobody knows why,” she said.

The changes come as the percent of positive tests in Texas exceeded 10 percent, a benchmark that Mr. Abbott had previously set as a warning sign of a more urgent crisis.

Texas set several single-day records for new cases this week, including a high of 6,584 on Wednesday. Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, ordered businesses to require customers and employees to wear face masks. The order, which went into effect on Friday, comes days after a similar policy went into effect in neighboring Dallas County.

In other Texas news:
  • The Supreme Court rejected a request by Texas Democrats to require the state to let all eligible voters vote by mail this year.
  • Texas Tech University announced that of 197 football student athletes and staff tested, 23 tested positive for Covid-19. The school in Lubbock said that 21 of the 23 people with the virus had recovered and none required hospitalization.

New state restrictions send U.S. stocks sliding lower.

Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
 
Stocks slid on Friday after Texas said it would reinstate some measures to curb the outbreak, a move that added to investors’ concerns that a recent surge in cases could halt the economic recovery.
The S&P 500 was down more than 2 percent, a loss that erased any remaining gains the index had for the month of June.

Though stocks started the day only slightly lower, the selling quickly accelerated after the governor of Texas ordered all bars to close.

“The Texas response to close bars and restaurants is a the real driver of lower markets today, as it portends to a possible second shutdown across the country if we see Covid spikes,” said Doug Rivelli, president of institutional brokerage firm Abel Noser in New York. “And a second shutdown would be devastating to the overall economy.”

Shares of big banks led the declines, dropping a day after the Federal Reserve said it would put a temporary cap on their dividend payments to keep the banks capitalized.

The decision to limit payouts is an admission by the Fed that large financial institutions, while far better off than they were in the financial crisis, remain vulnerable to an economic downturn unlike any other in modern history.

Still, investors are also seeing signs of recovery in the economic data. Consumer spending data released on Friday by the Commerce Department showed a sharp increase of 8.2 percent in May, as businesses started to reopen.

The decision to limit payouts is an admission by the Fed that large financial institutions, while far better off than they were in the financial crisis, remain vulnerable to an economic downturn unlike any other in modern history.

Still, investors are also seeing signs of recovery in the economic data. Consumer spending data released on Friday by the Commerce Department showed a sharp increase of 8.2 percent in May, as businesses started to reopen.
Worshippers preparing for prayers on Friday at the Grand Camlica Mosque in Istanbul.Credit...Murad Sezer/Reuters

The shape of the pandemic appears to be shifting in Turkey, which has the world’s 13th largest known outbreak. Cases have been rising in the country’s east, southeast and center since national restrictions were eased as June began.

Turkey’s official figures do not break down national figures by region. It is mostly doctors who are reporting cases in the areas that are raising the alarm about the shift. Hospitals outside of the larger cities have limited capacity to cope with case surges.

Turkey has recorded 193,000 infections and just over 5,000 deaths since the pandemic first erupted in March, though, as in many countries, experts suggest the true counts are higher. The government had claimed success in curbing the virus, and when it relaxed an intercity travel ban several weeks ago, many workers left the cities to return to their home provinces.

Since then, daily national counts have increased from around 900 to 1,500, even as Turkey’s health minister said that infections are declining in the large western cities, including Istanbul, where 60 percent of infections have occurred. He has acknowledged that cases have started to rise in central and eastern Turkey.

In Ankara, the Parliament has suspended work after an infections among staff members and one legislator. And members of the Turkish Medical Association, an independent professional association, said the number of cases is rising rapidly and hospitals are filling up in several eastern cities.

In the southeast, the president of the Diyarbakir Medical Chamber, Mehmet Serif Demir, said that the city had registered 900 Covid-19 patients in the first two and a half months starting in March, but that the number had doubled in the last few weeks, reaching more than 2,000.

His counterpart in the neighboring district of Sirnak, Dr. Serdar Kuni, said in an interview that hospitals there “are almost full.” And the town of Cizre, he said, was a “red alarm,” with patients being quarantined in student dorms for lack of hospital space or being taken by their families to bigger cities to try to find care.

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