Coronavirus Live Updates: Cases Rise as Trump Says Virus Is ‘Fading Away’

U.S. states struggle with a shifting pandemic as federal guidance falls silent.

The federal government’s leadership in the coronavirus pandemic has so waned that state and local health officials have been left to figure out on their own how to handle rising infections and navigate conflicting signals from the White House.

Covid-19 is still taking about 800 American lives a day — a pace that, if sustained over the next few months, would yield more than 200,000 total dead by the end of September. Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Oregon and Texas all reported their largest one-day increases in new cases this week.

On Wednesday, Oklahoma recorded 259 new cases, a single-day record for the second day in a row, and three days before President Trump is scheduled to hold an indoor campaign rally in Tulsa in defiance of his administration’s guidelines for “phased reopening.”

That rally is not the only confusing signal from Washington. The Trump re-election campaign is requiring rally-goers to sign a statement waiving their right to sue the campaign if they get sick.

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the virus was “fading away.”

While the president refuses to wear a mask, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams has spent this week doing a round of television interviews to implore Americans to do so.

Vice President Mike Pence said in a Wall Street Journal opinion column this week that panic over a second wave was “overblown.” But Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top epidemiologist, said the United States was not in a second wave because it was still in the first one.

The weekly tally of U.S. state jobless claims again exceeds a million.

Businesses are reopening in the United States, but the layoffs aren’t stopping.

For the 13th straight week, more than a million people have applied for state unemployment benefits. The Labor Department said on Thursday that 1.5 million people had claimed state benefits last week. Until the coronavirus pandemic, the most new claims in a single week was 695,000, in 1982.

Applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, an emergency federal program for self-employed workers, independent contractors and others ineligible for standard benefits, added another 760,000 claims on top of the states number.

Not all the unemployment claims reported on Thursday necessarily reflect new layoffs. Some states are still working through backlogs of claims filed earlier in the pandemic, and in other cases people filing under multiple programs may be counted twice.

Yet there is little doubt that layoffs remain elevated, and economists say that job losses could worsen if government support that has helped prop up the economy is allowed to lapse too soon.

Global Roundup

Beijing’s outbreak prompts a backlash against salmon.

When a new coronavirus outbreak emerged last week in Beijing, residents were jolted by reports that traces of the virus had been found on a cutting board used for imported salmon.

The backlash was swift. Within a few days, salmon was removed from the shelves of Beijing’s major supermarkets, reserves of the fish were dumped, and diners rushed to cancel reservations at local Japanese restaurants whose menus feature the fish.

“We were packed on Friday and now dead ever since,” said Alan Wong, the owner of a chain of Japanese restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai. “Totally empty.”

Chinese officials later said that imported salmon was not responsible for spreading the virus, but the damage to its reputation had already been done.

For months, China has waged a campaign to highlight its successes in taming the outbreak and deflect blame for the pandemic to outsiders. Officials have cast foreigners as public health risks, sowed doubt about the virus’s origins and even pushed an unfounded conspiracy theory that the U.S. military had deliberately brought the virus to China.

In that climate, salmon, which is mostly imported from Norway and Chile, was an easy target. Drew Thompson, a former director for China in the Pentagon, called the recent backlash a form of “‘xenopescophobia’ — the fear of foreign fish.”

Other news from around the world:

• Amid a partial lockdown in Beijing, the government said Thursday that the number of coronavirus cases in the recent outbreak had risen to 158, after an additional 21 cases were reported. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the city had brought the outbreak under control.

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain has praised the country’s efforts to track down people who are exposed to the virus as a “world-beating” operation. But as with much of the government’s response to the pandemic, the results have been inconsistent and fallen short of the promises.

• Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia called the economic blow from lockdowns “devastating,” as data showed that the country’s unemployment rate had surged to a 19-year high.

• New Zealand recorded its third new case of the week, days after declaring itself among the first countries to be free of the virus.

• In Germany, schools and day care centers in the northwestern district of Gütersloh remained closed on Thursday after more than 650 workers in a meatpacking plant tested positive for the coronavirus. Separately, a chicken processing plant in Wales was shut down for two weeks after several employees tested positive for the virus.

• India had at least 366,000 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Thursday, as efforts in New Delhi and Mumbai to account for previously unrecorded virus-related deaths led to a surge in numbers.

• The World Health Organization said it was halting its major trial of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug hailed by President Trump as a possible treatment for Covid-19. It said there was no evidence that the drug was effective against Covid-19.

• When Premier League soccer returned to England after a 100-day shutdown, players observed a minute of silence in memory of coronavirus victims and knelt in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

U.S. Roundup

Reversing course, Arizona and Texas allow some local governments to require masks.

Arizona did not record its first 20,000 coronavirus cases until June 1, but it took less than three weeks for the state to record 20,000 more. So on Wednesday, its governor, Doug Ducey, said he would switch gears and allow mayors to require mask wearing if they see the need.

“The trend is headed in the wrong direction,” he said at a news conference.

In Texas, which also had record case increases this week, similar tensions have arisen between local officials and the governor, whose statewide reopening orders take precedence. The mayors of nine cities sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott urging him to give them the authority to require masks.

Although Mr. Abbott has strongly urged people to wear face masks, the state’s policies do not require their use, and the governor has resisted calls to do so, saying that he believes in “individual responsibility” and not “government mandates.”

But at least one Texas county got permission to proceed with a limited mask requirement.

Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, is ordering businesses to require employees and customers to wear face masks when they are unable to observe social distancing. County Judge Nelson Wolff issued the order on Wednesday, a day after the county confirmed 436 new cases, its biggest single-day increase.

Other news from around the United States:

• Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said on Wednesday that she would extend her state-of-emergency order, joining at least five other governors — in Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina and Vermont — who took the same step during the past week. Along with control over travel restrictions and business closures, the emergency declarations provide a direct line to federal funding for disaster relief.

• The New York City panel that sets rents for the roughly 2.3 million residents of rent-regulated apartments froze those rents for a year, delivering a slight reprieve to tenants struggling in the worst economy in decades. Separately, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said New York City, once the center of the U.S. outbreak, was “on track” to enter its next phase of reopening as soon as Monday if there is no resurgence of cases.

• Four college football games involving historically black colleges and universities have been canceled because of the pandemic, the first cancellations of major college football leading up to a season that appears tenuous just over two months before its scheduled kickoff.

‘We can’t stay inside forever’: Stretching the rules in New York City.

New Yorkers who once ducked for cover at the sound of a cough a block away are stretching both their comfort levels and the rules, venturing out to lay claim to the parts of their lives they haven’t known since March.

And they are met by bars and businesses starved for income and doing their own feats of stretching — of their necks, as they look the other way as customers gather at uncomfortably close quarters.

New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus in its earliest weeks, is being observed as a barometer of recovery around the country, its slow-and-steady approach helping bring the number of daily deaths to just 19 on Tuesday from a high of 799 on April 8. But new surges of the virus in states like Florida, Arizona and Texas, which reopened more, quickly suggest the perils of letting down the collective guard.

In that way, too, New York City has become a barometer, of a nation of pent-up souls eager for a change no matter what their governors or mayors think.

It is as if the city is rebuilding itself, not with scaffolding and steel, but with cheeseburgers eaten at outside tables and fathers hoisting toddlers over the locked gates of closed playgrounds. It is a city built on festive, furtive and sometimes troubling pushing of boundaries. A lot more social, a lot less distancing.

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Heather Sumner, 32, repeated a phrase commonly heard these days: “We can’t stay inside forever.”

Small businesses face special challenges in reopening.

The percentage of American small businesses that were open in early June was nearly 16 points higher than it was in mid-April, according to Opportunity Insights, an economic tracker developed by researchers at Harvard using anonymized data from credit card processors, payroll firms and others.

But with a patchwork of rules and guidelines being issued at the city, county, state and federal levels, many smaller employers find themselves wondering when it will be safe to open and how to make that choice.

Slow rollouts are happening even in places that have not been Covid-19 hot spots. In Montana, which has the fewest cases in the nation, some owners are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Gov. Steve Bullock allowed bars and restaurants to reopen in early May with 50 percent capacity limits and layout restrictions, but Brett Evje held out until the end of the month before bringing customers back into Plonk, the restaurant he co-owns. It has locations in Bozeman and Missoula.

He used the downtime to refresh the Bozeman location, doing all of the projects he said could never complete with a restaurant open 365 days a year.

“Everybody wants to return back to normal, but from my standpoint you’re already closed, so you might as well wait and see what the reaction is going to be,” Mr. Evje said. “There’s nothing as hard as remobilizing and bringing everyone back and then having to close down again.”

Australian universities hope to fly in some international students.

Australia’s international borders could see their first major reopening next month, as two universities make plans to fly in some international students who have nearly completed their degrees.

The proposal is one of several plans being presented to Australia’s government by universities and states seeking travel exemptions that aim to be a model for others.

Under the plan, two Canberra universities would ask around 350 students to fly to a hub destination like Singapore and then connect to a charter flight. Upon arrival in Australia, the students would be quarantined for 14 days and would be tested for Covid-19 at the beginning and end of their stay.

Students with practical requirements or ongoing research projects would initially be given priority, and university officials said the goal was to create a process that could be broadened over time.

“We need a trial for Australia to build that confidence,” Paddy Nixon, the vice chancellor at the University of Canberra, told Australia’s main public broadcaster.

The state of South Australia also plans to bring up to 800 international students to Adelaide’s universities.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has emphasized that state borders will have to fully reopen before international students can return, and that has yet to happen.

China’s government has advised students to reconsider studying in Australia, citing “racist incidents targeting Asians,” but university officials say their students will not be deterred.

“Our students in China want to get back to campus as much as any of our students do,” said Brian Schmidt, the vice chancellor of Australian National University.

An audience in Madrid isn’t completely human.

When one of Madrid’s main public theaters reopened on Wednesday, the audience was limited to a third of the theater’s capacity because of virus-related restrictions.

The rest of the auditorium was filled with dummies.

Madrid is Spain’s last major city to be kept under a stricter version of a nationwide lockdown, ahead of the June 21 lifting of a state of emergency that was declared in mid-March.

Before the show, spectators lined up outside the Canal theater complex under the supervision of theater workers, in order to maintain social distancing and have their temperatures checked at the entrance.

A dance performance by Israel Galván, one of Spain’s most famous flamenco choreographers, lasted less than an hour. What took longer than usual, however, was leaving, as an employee used the sound system to tell each section of the auditorium exactly when to stand up.

Tips for wearing a mask while exercising.

Gyms are slowly reopening, outdoor fitness classes are starting up, and many people are hoping to get back to their typical workout routines. But wearing a mask while working out can be challenging.

Here are some ways to make it more tolerable.

Reporting was contributed by Jane Bradley, Chris Buckley, Ben Casselman, Damien Cave, Matthew Haag, Amy Haimerl, Tiffany Hsu, Sarah Mervosh, Raphael Minder, Benjamin Mueller, Elian Peltier, Amy Qin, David E. Sanger, Matt Stevens, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Noah Weiland, Michael Wilson, Billy Witz and Will Wright.