Coronavirus Live Updates: U.S. Nears 4 Million Cases as Multiple States Set Records

Senate Republicans are expected to unveil a roughly $ 1 trillion virus aid plan.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday that a payroll tax cut would not be a centerpiece of the upcoming economic relief bill.

The payroll tax cut, which was a priority for President Trump, emerged as an obstacle as Senate Republicans have tried to coalesce around a stimulus plan this week. Mr. Mnuchin said that the idea, which he thinks would help stimulate the economy over the longer term, will not be in the “base bill” but that it could still emerge in future legislation.

“We think the payroll tax cut is a very good pro-growth policy,” Mr. Mnuchin said on CNBC. “The president’s focus is he wants to get money into people’s pockets now.”

Critics have said that cutting the payroll tax, which funds programs like Social Security and Medicare, would not benefit the 18 million unemployed Americans.

Senate Republicans on Thursday are expected to unveil a roughly $ 1 trillion coronavirus relief measure that will allocate more than $ 100 billion to schools, new aid for states to conduct testing across the country and liability protections for schools, hospitals and businesses.

Mr. Mnuchin said that Republicans had agreed to a plan for continuing expanded unemployment insurance, which is set to expire at the end of the month. He said that the proposal would replace about 70 percent of a worker’s lost wages so that the policy does not create incentives for people not to return to their jobs. Other provisions include sending additional checks directly to families, providing more assistance for small businesses and allocating $ 105 billion for schools, according to officials who have seen the proposal.

“We want to make sure that the people who are out there that can’t find jobs do get a reasonable wage replacement,” Mr. Mnuchin said. He added that there would be tax credits to encourage businesses to rehire workers. The plan would also replenish the Paycheck Protection Program so that small businesses with revenue down by 50 percent or more can apply for second loans.

The Treasury secretary also said that the Republican plan would include liability protections for businesses that are seeking to reopen to shield them from “frivolous lawsuits.”

The agreement comes after three days of marathon talks, in which Republicans struggled to reconcile their own differences with the president of their own party, even before they try to negotiate with Democrats, who have already panned the proposal as inadequate.

Even though top Republicans insisted on Wednesday that they were on the same page, the debate had exposed rifts within a party torn between fiscal conservatives angry about spending more federal dollars and moderate Republicans eager to hold on to their seats and show voters that they are responding to the pandemic, all in an election year as their party’s president continues to flounder in the polls.

The result is an election-year brawl over what is likely the last coronavirus relief package before the November election, with tens of millions of Americans set to lose their unemployment benefits in the coming days and the coronavirus continuing to ravage cities and states across the country.

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 four 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.

And Louisiana, which is in the midst of its second case surge of the pandemic, surpassed New York as the state with the most known cases per capita in the country, though testing was scarce when cases peaked in New York this spring.

A map of coronavirus hospitalizations in the U.S.

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.”

New unemployment claims in the U.S. rose last week for the first time since early in the pandemic.

After more than three months of slow declines, the number of people filing new claims for state unemployment benefits in the United States rose last week. The Labor Department reported Thursday another 1.4 million new state applications.

The uptick comes just days before an extra $ 600-a-week jobless benefit is set to expire.

An additional 975,000 claims were filed by freelancers, part-time workers and others who do not qualify for regular state jobless aid but are eligible for benefits under an emergency federal program, the Labor Department announced. Unlike the state figures, that number is not seasonally adjusted.

The stubbornly high rate of new weekly claims more than four months into the pandemic “suggests that the nature of the downturn has changed from early on,” said Ernie Tedeschi, a policy economist at Evercore ISI. It may mean that businesses are shutting down again as cases surge in some places, or that funds from emergency small business loans through the Paycheck Protection Program are running out, he said — or worse, something more fundamental.

“It might be that businesses are running through their first line of credit,” he said, “and now they’re facing the music of an economy that has recovered a little bit but nearly enough.”

During the worst of the Great Recession in 2009-9, the weekly number of claims never exceeded 700,000. Since mid-March, new state unemployment applications have yet to fall below a million.

Congressional lawmakers and the White House are negotiating a roughly $ 1 trillion coronavirus relief package that would include extending some benefits for unemployed workers.

For workers who juggle jobs, the pandemic has exposed holes in the safety net.

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.

When economic shutdowns began rolling through the country, Congress focused on the existing unemployment insurance system as the primary vehicle for assistance. Lawmakers moved quickly to fill in some of the holes and created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, a temporary benefit for the ranks of freelancers and part-timers, as well as contract, self-employed and gig workers, who are ineligible for normal state benefits.

The emergency federal program, which expires at the end of the year, provided a lifeline for millions of people, but it has struggled with a slow rollout and complicated rules, as well as overburdened administrators and computers. Organized fraud has further bedeviled the process.

In most states, regular state benefits replace less than half of lost wages, and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefit is half of that average state benefit. What’s more, there are at least 20 million people unemployed but only five million job openings.

Belgium orders masks to be worn outside, and warns of harsher restrictions.

Belgium’s prime minister issued broad new mask-wearing requirements on Thursday, including for pedestrians outdoors, and warned of even stricter measures if coronavirus infections continued to rise in the country.

The policy change reflects growing European fears of a second wave. As infections declined on the Continent and attention turned to the out-of-control spread in parts of the United States, many Europeans have grown more complacent about socializing.

Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès said that visitors to outdoor markets and pedestrians on commercial streets must wear masks. Masks were already mandatory in indoor public spaces. Ms. Wilmès also required restaurants, bars and hotels to collect phone numbers from all customers to help contact-tracing efforts.

“The future will depend on the behavior of everyone,” Ms. Wilmès said at a news conference. “These are not suggestions, but orders.”

Other European countries have also reinstituted some restrictions, including Slovenia and Spain, where regional health officials have urged millions of people in and around Barcelona to stay home.

Belgium has had one of the world’s highest death tolls in proportion to its population, largely because of outbreaks in nursing homes. A strict lockdown appeared to bring the spread of the virus under control, but after a phased reopening, new cases have begun rising sharply again, with most infections linked to social settings like parties.

“The second wave has started,” Marc Van Ranst, a virologist and government adviser, said last week.

Landlords are jumping the gun as an eviction moratorium wanes.

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 imposed by the act is not set to expire until the end of this week. But landlords in Tucson, Ariz., filed dozens of eviction cases last month without waiting for the federal moratorium to end. And advocacy groups say the same thing has happened in other states.

Some state and local governments have also imposed eviction moratoriums, but the CARES Act’s moratorium is the widest, covering as many as 12.3 million renters who live in apartment complexes or in houses financed with a federally backed mortgage. However, the CARES Act does not penalize landlords who violate the moratorium.

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a consumer advocacy group, said it had 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.

China issues new guidelines on meat imports.

China’s National Health Commission issued new safety guidelines on Thursday for the country’s meat processors, citing coronavirus outbreaks at plants in the United States, Germany and Britain, and the high risks of transmission in enclosed, crowded processing plants.

All imported meat must be certified as having passed nucleic acid tests that check for the virus before it is processed in the country, according to the guidelines. Environmental samples must be collected daily at facilities in medium- and high-risk regions and weekly in low-risk areas.

China recently halted imports from a range of overseas suppliers because of virus concerns, including Tyson in the U.S., Tönnies in Germany and three Ecuadorean seafood companies. 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’s health authorities recorded 22 new confirmed cases on Thursday, including 18 cases in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The owner of Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant files for bankruptcy.

The owner of Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant, which just a few years ago was one of the country’s largest clothing retailers for women and girls, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, after declining sales and high debt were made worse by coronavirus shutdowns.

The company, Ascena Retail Group, will close “a select number” of Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant, LOFT and Lou & Grey stores as well as all of its Catherines locations, the company said in a Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The pandemic has taken a heavy toll on retailers, especially apparel sellers and other mall-based chains. Ascena, based in Mahwah, N.J., is at least the ninth prominent retailer to file for bankruptcy since early May, following Brooks Brothers, Sur La Table, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus Group, J.C. Penney, Lucky Brand, Stage Stores and GNC.

Two cafeterias in the White House complex close after an employee tests positive.

Two cafeterias used by White House staff members were closed, and contact tracing was conducted, after an employee tested positive for the coronavirus, a Trump administration official said on Wednesday.

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.

A U.N. report calls for a temporary basic wage for the world’s poorest people.

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.

They worked and lived together at a Michigan convent, some for more than a half century. In the end, 13 Catholic nuns, ranging in age from 69 to 99, would also die in the same way, of Covid-19 and its effects — 12 of them within a month of one another, according to their order.

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 at the Convent of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Livonia, Mich.

The deaths cut deep in the communities where the sisters worked in schools, libraries and the medical field, their order, the Felician Sisters, said in a statement.

For example, Sister Celine Marie Lesinski, who died at 92, worked for 55 years in education, including 27 years as a librarian. 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 order’s mission in Haiti.

The wait for baseball is over. Now what?

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, Julia Echikson, Nicholas Fandos, Manny Fernandez, Gillian Friedman, Lazaro Gamio, Matthew Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Maggie Haberman, Christine Hauser, Tyler Kepner, Iliana Magra, Sapna Maheshwari, Sarah Mervosh, Katie Rogers, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Daniel Victor, Neil Vigdor, Allyson Waller and Elaine Yu.