This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the global outbreak. Sign up here to get the briefing by email.
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Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, 73, tested positive for the coronavirus just before he was set to greet President Trump in Cleveland.
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Nearly 1.2 million U.S. workers filed for unemployment last week — the lowest level since March, but the 20th straight week that jobless claims topped one million.
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Mr. Trump signed an executive order today to encourage the domestic manufacturing of critical health care supplies by requiring the federal government to buy them from U.S. factories.
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Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and trackers for U.S. metro areas and vaccines in development.
Europe fears a second wave
Some European countries are seeing resurgences of the coronavirus, setting off fears of a potential second wave. Among them are Germany and France — this week they both reported their highest numbers of new daily cases in months.
In Germany, where the case count fell steadily from mid-March to early July, new infections topped 1,000 on Wednesday. Officials are concerned not only by the rising numbers, but also by how widespread the new cases are.
“Before, we had these spikes that were really concentrated, so they could lock that area down,” Melissa Eddy, a Times correspondent based in Berlin, told us. “Right now, because they’re so dispersed, it’s not that easy to get a handle on them.”
There are some concerns that Germans are becoming lax about social distancing and other mitigation measures. Some also fear that outsiders are bringing the virus into the country. Voluntary testing at borders and airports began last week, and about 2 percent of the tests have come back positive, compared with the national positivity rate of less than 1 percent. Germany’s response: Starting Saturday, coronavirus tests will be required for citizens, residents and travelers arriving from countries with large outbreaks.
And France has averaged 1,242 daily new cases since the beginning of August — nearly the same level as in early May, when the country was under lockdown. The number of coronavirus patients in intensive-care units has also risen. Officials have asked large cities to prepare home-confinement measures.
But among the world’s affluent nations, none are struggling as much as the U.S., which stands alone in its severe, sustained outbreak. A team of Times journalists, led by David Leonhardt, interviewed scientists and public health experts to reconstruct the country’s unique failure.
The U.S. response, the team found, has been undermined by two main factors: a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions, which has contributed to inadequate state measures and a partisan divide on masks, and a lack of leadership from the Trump administration.
Have a clean trip
The pandemic has plunged the travel industry into a devastating downturn. To lure back customers, companies are shifting their priorities to focus on one of the industry’s most important new words: “clean.”
In the past, hotels might have tidied up at night, so customers didn’t see people cleaning. These days, many hotels are putting on an overt show of sanitation. Housekeepers linger and conspicuously wipe down surfaces, and hotel chains prominently display logos of cleaning products like Lysol and flaunt consulting agreements with medical centers like Johns Hopkins Medicine International and the Mayo Clinic.
However, hotels face an uphill battle. A study posted in an early release on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people infected with the coronavirus shed it on pillow cases, duvet covers, sheets and light switches, as well as on bathroom door and faucet handles.
Airlines are also trying the reassurance route. They are cleaning planes more frequently and employing new techniques like “fogging,” which disperses disinfectant with an electrostatic sprayer. Our reporter recently watched an airplane being cleaned from start to finish and concluded that “it was meticulous — enough to delight even a hardened germophobe.”
But who will still fly? According to a new survey, 52 percent of Americans who flew within the last year said they were not ready to get on a plane again. Young travelers and Republicans were more willing to fly than older adults and Democrats. But only 21 percent of respondents were open to a flight that lasted more than six hours, confirming the industry consensus that international flights will take longer to recover than shorter, domestic trips.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated August 6, 2020
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Why are bars linked to outbreaks?
- Think about a bar. Alcohol is flowing. It can be loud, but it’s definitely intimate, and you often need to lean in close to hear your friend. And strangers have way, way fewer reservations about coming up to people in a bar. That’s sort of the point of a bar. Feeling good and close to strangers. It’s no surprise, then, that bars have been linked to outbreaks in several states. Louisiana health officials have tied at least 100 coronavirus cases to bars in the Tigerland nightlife district in Baton Rouge. Minnesota has traced 328 recent cases to bars across the state. In Idaho, health officials shut down bars in Ada County after reporting clusters of infections among young adults who had visited several bars in downtown Boise. Governors in California, Texas and Arizona, where coronavirus cases are soaring, have ordered hundreds of newly reopened bars to shut down. Less than two weeks after Colorado’s bars reopened at limited capacity, Gov. Jared Polis ordered them to close.
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I have antibodies. Am I now immune?
- As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.
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I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?
- The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.
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What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?
- Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees -- without giving you the sick employee’s name -- that they may have been exposed to the virus.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
Resurgences
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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that the seven-day average of cases in his state had fallen by about 20 percent, but officials now say that a broken health reporting system puts that decline into question.
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Los Angeles may cut off electricity to homes and businesses that host large gatherings in defiance of public health guidelines.
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Even as cases rise in South Dakota, an annual motorcycle rally beginning on Friday may draw about 250,000 people. It might be the largest public gathering in the country since the pandemic began and a potential superspreader event.
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With Hong Kong’s isolation wards and testing facilities overwhelmed by the city’s largest wave of infections so far, China has offered to send a team of medical officials to help expand testing — prompting new fears of the Chinese Communist Party’s reach.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What else we’re following
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The C.D.C. has issued a formal warning about the dangers of drinking hand sanitizer after four people died and nearly a dozen others became ill after doing so. Some had consumed it for the alcohol content. It was not immediately clear if any of the people were trying to disinfect their bodies.
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About 20 percent to 50 percent of people in some places might carry immunity assassins called T cells that recognize the new coronavirus despite never having encountered it before, recent studies have found.
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For the first time, Facebook took down a video posted by Mr. Trump’s campaign that spread misinformation about the virus; the president claimed in the video that children are “virtually immune” to it.
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Mr. Trump speculated that a vaccine could be ready before the November election, a time frame that isn’t backed by public health experts.
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Facing a loss of hours, inconsistent paychecks and slow reopenings, some unemployed Britons are trying new careers.
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Fifty million face masks bought by the British government for the National Health Service will not be used over concerns that they do not fit properly, the BBC reported.
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Early supplies of coronavirus vaccines will most likely be too limited to cover all high-risk Americans, leading officials and drugmakers to grapple with who should get them first, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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“The photo does not look good”: Widely shared images of unmasked students crowding through the hallways of a Georgia high school have quickly come to symbolize a chaotic return to U.S. classrooms.
What you’re doing
Stuck at home since April, I have been working my way through BBC Culture’s list of the top 100 greatest British novels of all time.
— George Mutwiri Murithi, Nairobi, Kenya
Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.
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