Live Coronavirus News and Updates
“We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Mr. Trump said in remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
The declaration was a major escalation of his efforts to blame China and the W.H.O. for the spread of the virus and deflect blame from his handling of a crisis that has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States. Last week, Mr. Trump threatened to pull funding if the W.H.O. did not “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days.”
The United States is the single largest donor to the W.H.O., contributing about 20 percent of its budget in 2018 and 2019. The world’s pre-eminent global health organization, the W.H.O. has been targeted by the Trump administration for its handling of global data as the virus spread.
Other member nations of the W.H.O. had rebuffed the president’s demands, instead deciding to conduct an “impartial, independent” examination of the W.H.O.’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Friday he expected New York City, one of the global centers of the pandemic, would begin reopening on June 8, the first step in ending one of the country’s strictest lockdowns. That would allow for nonessential stores to open for curbside pickup and nonessential construction and manufacturing to resume.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who expressed confidence at the timeline when he appeared virtually at Mr. Cuomo’s briefing, said 5 percent of those tested in the city for the virus on Thursday tested positive. That was the lowest daily figure the city has yet recorded, indicating the virus is spreading more slowly. At the height of the outbreak in early April, more than 70 percent of those tested in the city were positive.
Both officials cautioned that New Yorkers needed to keep taking precautions, however. More than 5,000 people in the city tested positive last week, a steep drop from the peak in early April but still a significant number. The mayor said this week that at least 200,000 idled workers would return to their jobs when the city started reopening.
“Remember, reopening does not mean we’re going back to the way things were,” Mr. Cuomo said. “People will be wearing masks. People will be socially distant.”
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged commuters nationwide who return to their jobs not to take mass transit. Mr. de Blasio this week said that he understood that many would feel uncomfortable returning to mass transit and that some would walk or bike, while others would drive or take cabs. But he offered little further guidance.
Patrick J. Foye, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the buses and subways, forcefully objected to the C.D.C.’s recommendation on Friday.
“We will continue to take every possible action to protect public health and safety,” he said in a statement. “The federal government telling people not to ride mass transit sets us back decades.”
Mr. Foye also sent a letter to business leaders requesting they stagger work hours, allow flexible start times and extend telecommuting plans as part of the agency’s effort to reduce crowding.
Upstate, five areas were cleared to enter the second phase of reopening, the governor said, allowing for the restricted reopening of offices, stores and personal-service businesses like barber shops. Statewide, there were an additional 67 deaths, he said, the lowest one-day figure in over two months.
Major cities like Washington D.C. and Los Angeles were set to continue easing restrictions, with Washington reopening outdoor seating at restaurants. The number of diners in a party will be limited to six people and tables will have to be spaced at least six feet apart. Hair salons and barbershops were also permitted to open for appointment-only haircuts with stations six feet apart. The city’s parks are open, but not its playgrounds.
The northern suburbs of Virginia also began limited reopenings on Friday, while suburban counties in Maryland remain shut. Earlier this week, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House virus response coordinator, singled out the Washington region as among a handful of metropolitan areas where positive test rates remained high.
Illinois is expected to enter its third phase of reopening in the coming days, bringing barbershops, salons, retail stores and other businesses back with some limitations. Gatherings of more than 10 people remain banned. New cases in the state continue to mount, with an average of more than 1,800 new cases a day over the past week.
In New Jersey, the governor said that over the next several weeks the state would permit child care services to fully open and some summer programs for children to begin operating.
“As more and more workers prepare to get back out to their jobs, we must ensure a continuum of care for their children,” he said.
Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said central bankers had seen the need to use their tools “to their fullest extent” as coronavirus restrictions shuttered economies around the globe and caused United States unemployment to soar
“We crossed a lot of red lines, that had not been crossed before,” Mr. Powell said in a webinar on Friday. He added that he was comfortable with what the Fed had done, because “this is that situation in which you do that, and you figure it out afterward.”
The Fed cut interest rates to near-zero and rolled out unlimited bond purchases to soothe markets, while setting up emergency lending programs to keep credit flowing to businesses and state governments. Several of those tiptoe into uncharted territory for the central bank, including programs to buy corporate bonds and purchase debt from states and large cities.
But even with that extraordinary support, the Fed chair made it clear that there is uncertainty about what will happen next, acknowledging that “a full recovery of the economy will really depend on people being confident that it’s safe to go out.”
Economists say that the path ahead for the economy is wildly uncertain, as massive questions loom over whether additional virus outbreaks will shutter the economy again, and over whether and when consumers will come back to stores. While a quick “V”-shaped recovery seems unlikely — and an “L” in which growth fails to rebound also seems off the table — what path the rebound will follow is a question mark.
“We’re all prefacing what we say with: We’re not epidemiologists,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. macro strategist at TD Securities.
When experts recommend wearing masks, staying at least six feet away from others, washing your hands frequently and avoiding crowded spaces, what they’re really saying is: Try to minimize the amount of virus you encounter.
A few viral particles cannot make you sick — the immune system would vanquish the intruders before they could. But how much virus is needed for an infection to take root? What is the minimum effective dose?
A precise answer is impossible, because it’s difficult to capture the moment of infection. Scientists are studying ferrets, hamsters and mice for clues but, of course, it wouldn’t be ethical for scientists to expose people to different doses of the virus, as they do with milder cold viruses.
“The truth is, we really just don’t know,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York. “I don’t think we can make anything better than an educated guess.”
So-called super-spreaders seem to be particularly gifted in transmitting the virus, although it’s unclear whether that’s because of their biology or their behavior.
On the receiving end, the shape of a person’s nostrils and the amount of nose hair and mucus present — as well as the distribution of certain cellular receptors in the airway that the virus needs to latch on to — can all influence how much virus it takes to become infected.
The crucial dose may also vary depending on whether it’s ingested or inhaled.
But the virus’s uncertainties will weigh on American employers as they contemplate sweeping new recommendations from the C.D.C. on the safest ways to reopen their offices.
The recommendations include temperature and symptom checks for arriving employees; keeping desks six feet apart; and the wearing of face coverings at all times.
If followed, the guidelines would lead to a far-reaching remaking of the corporate work experience. They even upend years of advice on commuting, urging people to drive to work by themselves, instead of taking mass transportation or car-pooling, to avoid potential exposure to the virus.
Trump is planning to resume attending in-person fund-raisers next month under new restrictions.
Mr. Trump is expected to begin fund-raising again for his re-election campaign in the coming weeks, with two high-dollar, in-person events scheduled for June, according to Republican party officials.
Mr. Trump will headline a June 11 fund-raiser at a private home in Dallas, and a June 13 fund-raising event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
The Dallas event will cost $580,600 per couple to attend, a party official said, and the Bedminster event will be held outdoors and cost $250,000 per person to attend.
Only about 25 attendees are expected at each of the events, in order to keep the events safe. Each attendee will also have to take a virus test, complete a wellness questionnaire, and pass a temperature screening. The cost of the tests will be covered by Trump Victory, a joint fund-raising effort between the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign.
“Trump Victory’s top priority is ensuring the safety of President Trump and our attendees, and that includes testing all attendees as well as several other safety measures,” an R.N.C. official said.
Mr. Trump has been eager not only to reopen the country’s economy, but resume the campaign rallies that energized him. The campaign has continued to raise money through smaller donations online.
The push comes as the House of Representatives plans to pull back from its usual activities. Democratic leaders there announced on Friday that they expect to call the chamber into session for votes for only three weeks over the next three months — a substantially scaled back summer schedule.
In a letter to Democrats, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, laid out a new calendar with no votes scheduled before June 30. He said the month would instead be devoted to committee work.
Mr. Hoyer warned lawmakers to be prepared for five-day work weeks with earlier mornings and later nights than usual to accommodate the compressed schedule, as well as health precautions that have made voting recently a more drawn-out process.
The Senate is set to return Monday for a five-week session ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.
Also on Friday, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, disclosed that he had tested positive for antibodies, the second senator to make such an announcement and the third now known to have contracted Covid-19.
Republicans planning their party’s convention traded demands with North Carolina’s Democratic governor this week over holding the event in Charlotte in August, as Mr. Trump pressures Democratic leaders in the state to allow him to host the kind of convention he wants despite public health concerns.
In a joint letter to Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, and the president of the convention committee, Marcia Lee Kelly, laid out a deadline of June 3 to approve safety measures to prevent the spread of the virus during the event.
On Friday, Mr. Cooper’s administration shot back with a letter of its own, asking Ms. McDaniel and Ms. Kelly to detail the R.N.C.’s plans to protect participants, and to specify whether the president was still set on holding a large-scale nominating event where crowds would not wear face masks.
The president has tried to force Mr. Cooper and Mayor Vi Lyles of Charlotte to commit quickly to a Republican plan for the event in the biggest city in a state Mr. Trump won in 2016. The two officials, both Democrats, have cited public health concerns, saying it is too soon to determine whether the event can be held safely.
The Republicans’ letter also appeared to be an effort to put the onus on Mr. Cooper and Ms. Lyles if Republicans end up trying to stage their convention in another state.
“We still do not have solid guidelines from the state and cannot in good faith, ask thousands of visitors to begin paying deposits and making travel plans without knowing the full commitment of the governor, elected officials and other stakeholders in supporting the convention,” Ms. McDaniel and Ms. Kelly wrote.
In the Cooper administration’s letter, the state’s secretary of health and human services requested that the R.N.C. tell the state specifically how many people it expected to admit into the venue for each night of the convention.
The letter also asked the R.N.C. to detail how they would implement health screenings, social distancing and the wearing of face masks — and for clarification over whether the R.N.C. was still considering testing attendees.
The state also asked for details on what additional precautions the R.N.C. planned to take, given evidence of asymptomatic spread. And made it clear that while North Carolina still supported hosting the convention “if it can be done safely,” there needed to be “several scenarios planned that can be deployed depending on the public health situation.”
In an open letter addressed to The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, and the paper’s authors, they asked the journal to provide details about the provenance of the data and called for the study to be independently validated by the World Health Organization or another institution.
Use of the malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to prevent and treat Covid-19 has been a focus of intense public attention. Mr. Trump has promoted hydroxychloroquine despite the absence of gold standard evidence from randomized clinical trials to prove its effectiveness, and he recently said he had taken the drug himself in hopes of preventing a virus infection.
The experts who wrote the letter to The Lancet also criticized the study’s methodology and the authors’ refusal to disclose information on the hospitals that contributed their data, or even to name the countries where they were located. The company that owns the database is Surgisphere.
“Data from Africa indicate that nearly 25 percent of all Covid-19 cases and 40 percent of all deaths in the continent occurred in Surgisphere-associated hospitals which had sophisticated electronic patient data recording,” the scientists wrote. “Both the numbers of cases and deaths, and the detailed data collection, seem unlikely.”
A spokeswoman for The Lancet, Emily Head, said in an email that the journal had received numerous inquiries about the paper, and had referred the questions to the authors. “We will provide further updates as necessary,” she said.
Dr. Sapan S. Desai, the owner of Surgisphere and one of the paper’s authors, said in a statement that the database was an aggregation of the anonymous electronic health records of hospitals that are customers of QuartzClinical, a machine learning and analytics company. He also said that contractual agreements with the hospitals bar the sharing of patient-level data, though it is available to qualified scientists for research purposes.
“Our strong privacy standards are a major reason that hospitals trust Surgisphere and we have been able to collect data from over 1,200 institutions across 46 countries,” the statement said.
As restrictions eased across the country, new measures were issued and under consideration in some cities and states where protests were growing over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer held his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for eight minutes.
The Minnesota authorities said Friday afternoon that the officer, Derek Chauvin, who was fired after the episode, had been arrested and charged with third-degree murder.
Earlier, large crowds of demonstrators had gathered against the backdrop of a pandemic that had kept many residents from engaging with one another directly for months. Last week, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House virus response coordinator, said that Minneapolis was considered a hot spot for virus cases.
As many businesses across the country resume, some states are allowing day care centers and preschools to reopen.
But for millions of working parents, the choice to send their children back to a place known for spreading germs, even in more normal times, is not easy. And in an industry operating on razor-thin margins, the survival of many child care centers is in doubt.
The virus cost the industry — which typically serves more than 12 million children in the United States under 6 — more than 355,000 jobs in March and April. And a survey by an industry group showed that many providers were so short of cash that they could go out of business permanently.
Democrats in Congress are introducing bills that would spend $50 billion to keep centers afloat, provide tuition relief to families and help put in place new safety measures. But for those balancing professional and economic pressures with health concerns, the idea of re-enrolling their child can be anxiety-provoking, even with new sanitation and social-distancing practices.
Mandy Zaransky-Hurst, a corporate executive in Chicago, has been missing her 4-month-old’s day care.
She said her current arrangement, which required her to frequently rise at 4 a.m. to begin a 10-hour workday, while also caring for her 6-year-old was “not sustainable.” But she worries that day care is not safe.
“What true flexibility and understanding will companies give to employees who can’t send their kids back to day care?” Ms. Zaransky-Hurst asked.
Experts now worry that if licensed centers disappear, more families will resort to ad hoc arrangements, such as relying on relatives, friends or neighbors who lack experience, let alone formal training in safety or education.
The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to seize private property for Mr. Trump’s border wall, taking advantage of the pandemic to survey land while its owners are confined indoors, residents along the Rio Grande say.
“Is that essential business?” asked Nayda Alvarez, 49, who recently found construction markers on land in Starr County, Texas, that has been in her family for five generations. “That didn’t stop a single minute during the shelter in place or stay at home.”
The federal government brought a flurry of lawsuits against landowners in South Texas to survey, seize and potentially begin construction on private property in the first five months of the year as the administration rushed to deliver on Mr. Trump’s promise to build 450 miles of wall by the end of the year, which he downgraded on Thursday to 400. Mr. Trump has built less than 200 of those miles, and his administration has brought 78 lawsuits against landowners on the border, Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported. Thirty of those suits were filed this year.
The increased litigation against the landowners, despite the pandemic, is evidence of the administration’s sense of urgency to deliver on a symbol of Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. The president has said the pandemic is proof of the wall’s necessity, though there is no real evidence it will have any effect on public health.
Some of the landowners sued have kept the properties in their families for generations. But some say the government’s timing has left them further disadvantaged in a process in which the administration already has the law on its side. Social distancing and other virus restrictions have made it difficult for landowners to meet with relatives and lawyers to discuss the government’s offers, and some have questioned why the push to access their properties is coming as the virus spreads.
Landowners can choose to allow the government to access and survey their land and, if the administration wants it, accept compensation that is supposed to be based on fair market value. But if they refuse, they are likely to be taken to court, where the government can use eminent domain powers to argue that the wall is an emergency and eventually take possession of their land. The government can then begin construction, even while continuing to argue with the landowners over compensation.
Global updates: Countries are opening up, even as their caseloads rise.
There have been nearly 700,000 new known cases reported in the past week as the virus spreads in Latin America. But many countries are sputtering into reopenings at what experts fear may be the worst time.
Here’s what you need to know about flying.
Airplane travel is inching back, but staying safe remains a concern and safety protocols are changing. We have tips for approaching your next flight.
Reporting was contributed by Katie Rogers, Eileen Sullivan, Alan Blinder, Emily Cochrane, Mike Baker, Karen Barrow, Julie Bosman, Ben Casselman, Apoorva Mandavilli, Nicholas Fandos, Andrew Das, Dana Goldstein, Jenny Gross, Maggie Haberman, Annie Karni, Matt Richtel, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Andy Newman, Dagny Salas, Roni Caryn Rabin and Marc Santora.
