Here’s what you need to know:
- The C.D.C. director, facing criticism, now says testing ‘may be considered’ for anyone exposed to the virus.
- Pelosi and Meadows are set to talk Thursday for the first time since stimulus discussions stalled.
- Education systems are failing to reach many children, resulting in a ‘global education emergency.’
- As Hurricane Laura slams the U.S., evacuation shelters adjust for the virus.
- Weekly unemployment claims in the U.S. again exceed one million.
- The Justice Department says it may investigate four Democratic-led states over nursing-home outbreaks.
- Republicans try to rewrite the history of the Trump administration’s pandemic response.
The C.D.C. director, facing criticism, now says testing ‘may be considered’ for anyone exposed to the virus.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has walked back the agency’s recommendation advising some people who had contact with someone infected by the coronavirus not to get tested, now saying “testing may be considered for all close contacts of confirmed or probable Covid-19 patients.”
The statement by Dr. Robert R. Redfield was issued to some news outlets late Wednesday, and more broadly Thursday morning, after a storm of criticism over the new C.D.C. guidelines, which were the product of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — and not C.D.C.’s own scientists. Dr. Redfield made the statement in an effort to clarify the new policy, an official said. However, the guidelines issued earlier this week remained on the C.D.C.’s website as of Thursday morning, and it appears unlikely that the agency will change them.
“Testing is meant to drive actions and achieve specific public health objectives,” Dr. Redfield wrote. “Everyone who needs a Covid-19 test, can get a test. Everyone who wants a test does not necessarily need a test; the key is to engage the needed public health community in the decision with the appropriate follow-up action.”
In guidelines posted on Monday, the agency said close contacts of Covid-19 patients “do not necessarily need a test” unless they are vulnerable or their doctor or a state or local public heath official recommended it. On a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Admiral Brett M. Giroir, the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, said the new policy mirrored the existing recommendation for health care and other front line workers, and the task force had simply decided to extend it to the general population.
But the guidance was met with protest from public health experts, who said the nation needs more testing, not less, and that it made no sense to advise anyone exposed not to get a test, particularly because the virus is transmitted by asymptomatic people.
Mr. Trump has suggested that the nation should do less testing, arguing that administering more tests was driving up case numbers and making the United States look bad. But experts say the true measure of the pandemic is not case numbers but test positivity rates — the percentage of tests coming back positive.
In an interview on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a member of the task force and the government’s top infectious disease expert, said he was concerned that it could be misinterpreted. Dr. Fauci had signed off on an early iteration of the rule but was undergoing surgery for removal of a polyp on his vocal cord when it was finalized last Thursday.
In the statement, Dr. Redfield said the agency is “placing an emphasis on testing individuals with symptomatic illness, individuals with a significant exposure, vulnerable populations including nursing homes or long term care facilities, critical infrastructure workers, healthcare workers and first responders, or those individuals who may be asymptomatic when prioritized by medical and public health officials.”
Pelosi and Meadows are set to talk Thursday for the first time since stimulus discussions stalled.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, are set to speak on Thursday afternoon for the first time since talks on an economic recovery package collapsed earlier this month, holding out the possibility of jump-starting negotiations on another round of pandemic stimulus.
Since the discussions broke down weeks ago, top Democrats and administration officials have barely spoken, even as the toll of the coronavirus continued to mount on families, small businesses and schools. Mr. Meadows appeared at the Capitol unannounced last weekend and said he had sought without success to meet with Ms. Pelosi, apparently trying to portray the speaker as unwilling to speak with him.
The two were set to speak by phone at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the plans.
After weeks of fruitless negotiations, President Trump took a series of executive actions he said would deliver relief across the country, though officials acknowledged that the moves were small in scope and impact without new funds allocated by lawmakers. His plan to use a FEMA disaster fund to pay for aid to laid-off workers is also facing fresh scrutiny as Hurricane Laura bears down on the Gulf Coast with another storm in tow, raising the possibility that the money will be needed for a major recovery effort.
Just over 1 million American workers filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week, while students are returning to schools that do not have the aid promised by lawmakers. A federal eviction moratorium has also expired, leaving millions of Americans without federal support.
House Democrats passed a $3.4 trillion relief measure in May, but the Republican-led Senate refused to consider it, instead pressing a $1 trillion plan that would slash jobless aid and omit money for state and local governments whose budgets have been devastated amid the pandemic. With Senate Republicans wary of embracing more federal spending and the White House proposing a much narrower package, Democrats scaled back their request this month, asking Mr. Trump’s team to accept a $2 trillion plan — a notion they also rejected.
With the impasse persisting into the annual August recess, many lawmakers and aides have concluded that any additional pandemic relief would have be tied to a stopgap spending bill to fund the entire federal government. That measure must pass by the end of September to avert a shutdown.
Education systems are failing to reach many children, resulting in a ‘global education emergency.’
Over the past six months, about 1.5 billion children around the world have been told to stay home from school to help minimize transmission of the coronavirus. More than 30 percent of these students — around 463 million — were unable to gain access to remote learning opportunities when their schools closed, according to a report on Wednesday by Unicef, the United Nations agency for children.
“The sheer number of children whose education was completely disrupted for months on end is a global education emergency,” Henrietta Fore, the executive director of Unicef, said in a statement. “The repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come.”
Schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa have been the most affected, the report said, as education systems there have failed to reach about half of all students through television, radio, internet or other forms of remote learning. Many children in the region have gone without classes of any kind since March, according to a separate report published Wednesday by Human Rights Watch.
In part to address this unequal access, education officials in Kenya said last month that they were canceling the academic year and making students repeat it.
Forty percent of students in the Middle East and North Africa, 38 percent in South Asia and 34 percent in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have also been unable to learn remotely, according to the Unicef report, which said children in rural areas had been disproportionately affected.
In general, students from higher-income households with more-educated parents seem to be faring better at studying at home, researchers around the world have found. This has reinforced concerns that school closures may be yet another way that longstanding inequalities will be exacerbated by the pandemic.
As Hurricane Laura slams the U.S., evacuation shelters adjust for the virus.
Hurricane Laura pounded the Louisiana and Texas coasts as it made landfall as a Category 4 storm early Thursday, after days of dire warnings that included the need to continue taking virus precautions.
With winds of 150 miles per hour, Laura was among the strongest storms to ever hit the United States, according to data compiled by Philip Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University who studies hurricanes. Forecasters have also warned of an “unsurvivable” storm surge that could push as far as 40 miles inland.
The hurricane was preceded by tough decisions about fleeing and an urgent push to get people out of harm’s way, with more than 500,000 residents in Louisiana and Texas urged to leave their homes.
Although large shelters have been set up throughout the hurricane zone, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas had encouraged evacuees to consider booking rooms in hotels and motels instead of using shelters, as a safer way to isolate themselves from others who might be infected with the coronavirus.
Officials said buses used for evacuations would carry fewer people than in the past, to let riders stay a safe distance from one another. Planners were bringing in more buses than in previous disasters, to make up for having fewer people on each bus.
Traditional shelters like gymnasiums and convention centers that have hosted hundreds of evacuees in past disasters would be set up to provide “layers of separation” between the occupants, Mr. Abbott said. The shelters and buses will be supplied with hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment like face masks, and state officials plan to dispatch testing teams to the larger shelters.
“The state and local governments are fully aware that they are dealing with a pandemic while they are responding to Hurricane Laura,” the governor said.
Weekly unemployment claims in the U.S. again exceed one million.
Just over one million Americans filed new claims for state jobless benefits last week, the latest sign that the economy is losing momentum just as federal aid to the unemployed has been pulled away.
Weekly claims briefly dipped below the one million mark earlier this month, offering a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy job market. But filings jumped back above one million the following week, and stayed there last week, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Another 608,000 people filed for benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which offers aid to independent contractors, self-employed workers and others not covered by regular state programs. That number, unlike the figures for state claims, is not seasonally adjusted.
Other recent indicators also suggest that the recovery is faltering. Job growth slowed in July, and real-time data from private-sector sources suggests that hiring has slumped further in August. On Tuesday, American Airlines said it would furlough 19,000 workers on Oct. 1, the latest in a string of such announcements from major corporations.
“It is worrying because it does signal that these large companies are pessimistic about the state of the recovery and don’t think that we are going to be returning to normal anytime soon,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at the career site Glassdoor.
Unemployment filings have fallen sharply since early April, when 6.6 million applied for benefits in a single week. But even after that decline, weekly filings far exceed any previous period. Roughly 30 million Americans are receiving benefits under various state and federal programs.
The continued high rate of job losses comes as government support for the unemployed is waning. The $600-a-week federal supplement to state unemployment benefits expired at the end of July, and efforts to replace it have stalled in Congress. President Trump announced this month that he was using his executive authority to give jobless workers an additional $300 or $400 a week, but few states have begun paying out the new benefit, and the $44 billion allocated to the program is expected to last only a few weeks.
Economists warn that the loss of federal support could act as a brake on the recovery. Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist for the forecasting firm Oxford Economics, estimated that the lapse in extra unemployment benefits would reduce household income by $45 billion in August. That could lead to a drop in consumer spending and further layoffs, she said.
The Justice Department says it may investigate four Democratic-led states over nursing-home outbreaks.
The Justice Department has asked New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania for information about steps their governors took in response to the pandemic to determine whether they may have contributed to the spread of the disease in nursing homes.
The department said that directives by the governors, all Democrats, may have allowed people admission to elder-care facilities without adequate testing.
It cited a March 25 order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York that no nursing home resident could be denied admission or readmission “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19.”
The department said that it might open a formal investigation, depending on the information it receives from the states.
“The Civil Rights Division seeks to determine if the state orders requiring admission of Covid-19 patients to nursing homes is responsible for the deaths of nursing home residents,” the department said in a statement Wednesday.
The request for information comes at a delicate time for Mr. Cuomo.
Republicans in the state Legislature and in Washington have said that his policies were to blame for 6,500 coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes and other care facilities, a death toll that is much higher than those in other states.
About 40 percent of the nearly 180,000 deaths in the United States attributed to the coronavirus have been connected to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to a New York Times database.
According to Mr. Cuomo’s office, New York, New Jersey and Michigan are in a group of eight states that include presumed Covid-19 fatalities, rather than just confirmed ones, in their total of nursing home deaths.
The questions, and any subsequent federal investigation, would apply only to facilities run or owned by the state, the governor’s office said, which is a small percentage of the total.
Mr. Cuomo said that infected health care workers, not his policies, helped spread the virus among the state’s nursing homes.
He issued a joint statement with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan calling the effort “nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention.”
The statement also noted: “At least 14 states — including Kentucky, Utah and Arizona — have issued similar nursing guidance all based on federal guidelines, and yet the four states listed in the D.O.J.’s request have a Democratic governor.”
The statement also suggested that the department should send a similar letter to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “since the state’s advisories were modeled after their guidance.”
Republicans try to rewrite the history of the Trump administration’s pandemic response.
Vice President Mike Pence and other speakers on the third night of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday sought to rewrite the history of how President Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 180,000 Americans and counting, including at least 1,193 new deaths on Wednesday.
“Before the first case of the coronavirus spread within the United States, the president took unprecedented action and suspended all travel from China, the second-largest economy in the world,” Mr. Pence said, speaking to a crowd at Fort McHenry in Baltimore that did not appear to be socially distanced or wearing masks.
Yet by April, 40,000 people had traveled to the United States from China since Mr. Trump imposed his travel ban on Jan. 31, which did not apply to Americans and some others. Many of those passengers received minimal health screening.
Mr. Pence also said Mr. Trump had “marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset,” adding, “He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties.”
This would come as a surprise to Democratic governors in Illinois, New York and Washington State, among others, who were attacked by Mr. Trump after they criticized the federal government over its lack of assistance.
Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, a rising star in the Republican Party, praised Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for providing his district in Suffolk County and New York City with personal protective equipment for medical workers caring for coronavirus patients.
“Jared Kushner and I were on the phone late” one Saturday night, Mr. Zeldin said. “The very next day, President Trump announced he was sending us 200,000 N95 masks. He actually delivered more than 400,000.”
Mr. Zeldin’s praise for the Trump administration neglects to mention what was a nationwide shortage in medical-grade masks and other protective equipment for doctors and nurses. He also said that New York’s hospitals were able to handle all the patients affected by the pandemic — a claim that does not comport with how the pandemic played out in New York this spring.
France now requires face masks in all public places in Paris.
Face masks are now required in all public places in Paris amid a recent surge in the number of coronavirus cases, as the prime minister of France on Thursday vowed that the government was ready for a second wave but that the French would have to learn to “live with the virus.”
Until now masks were required only in certain areas of the French capital, but city authorities announced on Thursday that they would become mandatory in all public places starting on Friday morning at 8 a.m.
A growing number of France’s largest cities, including Marseille, Nice and Toulouse, have required face masks outdoors and in public places over the past week.
The prime minister, Jean Castex, has sought to reassure the French that the country was now much better equipped to face the virus. Unlike this spring, he noted, widespread testing is detecting more cases, many in young people. And he said the elderly or vulnerable populations are better protected. Over 800,000 people were tested over the past seven days, and Olivier Véran, the health minister, said on Thursday that the authorities had set one million weekly tests as a new goal.
But Mr. Castex also warned the French against complacency, asking them to avoid large gatherings and to wear masks, and said the local authorities could tighten restrictions if needed.
global roundup
As the epidemic surges, the South Korean government blames churches and striking doctors.
South Korea reported 441 new cases on Thursday, its highest daily total since early March, as the government criticized what it called two great obstacles in fighting the virus: doctors on strike and churches obstructing epidemiological efforts.
The country has reported three-digit daily jumps in infections since Aug. 14, and its National Assembly came to a halt on Thursday with more than a dozen senior members of the governing Democratic Party in self-isolation after contact with a photojournalist who tested positive for the virus.
About half of the infections discovered this month have spread from churches, including 959 found among members of Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul and their contacts. The government ordered all churches to shut down and switch to online prayer services starting last Sunday, but some churches defied the order.
On Thursday, President Moon Jae-in voiced anger and frustration with Sarang Jeil Church, a center of right-wing, faith-based political activism against the government. Some of the church members have claimed that the health authorities manipulated test results to keep government critics in quarantine. The church’s chief pastor, the Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, claimed that the outbreak at his church was the result of a “terrorist attack.”
The government called the claims “disinformation.”
Mr. Moon also excoriated doctors who went on strike Wednesday over plans to increase the number of medical students by 4,000 over the next decade. Hospitals in Seoul reported bottlenecks on Thursday because of the strike.
Also on Thursday, South Korea’s central bank cut its economic growth outlook, forecasting a 1.3 percent contraction in 2020. That would be its worst performance since after the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.
In other developments around the world:
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In Britain, the government said it would start to pay people in low income areas with high numbers of coronavirus cases who have to quarantine and cannot work from home. Payments of up to 182 pounds (about $240) will be made to people who have tested positive for Covid-19 as well as to their contacts if they meet certain criteria. A trial will start on Tuesday.
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European countries grappling with a surge in virus infections face a “tricky” autumn when reopening schools may combine with seasonal factors to push up hospitalizations and deaths, Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s top European official said on Thursday. Thirty-two of the 55 countries and territories in the W.H.O.’s European region had recorded a 14-day rise of more than 10 percent in new infections, Dr. Kluge noted.
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Hamas on Wednesday extended its lockdown of the Gaza Strip by three days, The Associated Press reported. The densely populated territory, which had not recorded a case of community transmission of the coronavirus before this week, has seen 22 local cases and three virus-related fatalities since Monday.
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Doctors in the public hospitals in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, have ended their weeklong strike over shoddy protective gear, lack of insurance coverage and delayed salaries. The return to work announcement came after the Nairobi county government and the doctors’ union struck a deal that saw the resolution of most of the health workers’ concerns.
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One of Belgium’s most famous virologists, Marc van Ranst, said he was being sued by six entrepreneurs for making what they said were reckless claims about the pandemic that hurt the economy. Among the examples, he said, was his advice last month that people should postpone a visit to Antwerp until the pandemic there was more under control.
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The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s most prominent English-language newspaper, is preparing to lay off more than half its staff because of financial problems aggravated by the pandemic. In a memo to the staff, the employees’ council noted that the newspaper’s print circulation had fallen to 6,000 and said that layoffs would begin as early as this week.
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The ventilation system of a nursing home in the Netherlands was not the most likely source of an outbreak at the facility in June, a study found. The findings contradicted an earlier, confidential government report that said the ventilation system was a probable source of the outbreak, in which six residents died. Transmission of the virus was most likely attributed to interactions between employees and residents, according to the new study, which was conducted by a group including Dutch health officials, hospitals and a research agency.
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The British Museum in London reopened on Thursday after a closure of more than five months because of the coronavirus. The museum, where the number of visitors is being capped at 2,000 per day, now features a one-way route through its most renowned exhibits and hand-sanitizing stations dotting the walls.
Berlin cancels protests against virus restrictions as Germany considers more rules.
Planned demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions scheduled for the weekend in Berlin were canceled after city authorities said on Wednesday that the gatherings would likely break social-distancing rules. Far-right extremist groups and the AfD, the far-right parliamentary party, had advertised the demonstrations.
“I am not prepared to accept that Berlin is misused as a stage for Corona deniers, Reich citizens and right-wing extremists for a second time,” said Andreas Geisel, the city official responsible for public safety, referring to a group of extremists that doesn’t accept the legitimacy of the modern German state. Several thousand protesters marched at a similar demonstration in Berlin on Aug. 1.
The city’s move has been criticized by those who think a ban could energize those who already think the state is overreaching on restrictions related the virus and could ultimately lead to more dangerous illegal demonstrations.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with state governors on Thursday to discuss new virus rules as the number of cases has grown over the last month. The officials are expected to agree on stricter quarantine rules for people entering the country from “high risk” areas. The government also plans to discontinue free tests for travelers arriving from states not considered high risk for the virus.
Last week the country’s health authority found that nearly 40 percent of new cases came from abroad. On Wednesday, 1,507 new infections were registered. Last Friday, the country registered more than 2,000 infections in a single day, a figure last seen at the end of April. Germany has had at least 237,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 9,285 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
Reporting was contributed by Katie Benner, Chelsea Brasted, Aurelien Breeden, Alexander Burns, Ben Casselman, Emily Cochrane, Choe Sang-Hun, Nick Cumming-Bruce, Abdi Latif Dahir, Reid J. Epstein, Alex Marshall, Jonathan Martin, Jesse McKinley, Claire Moses, Heather Murphy, Richard C. Paddock, Campbell Robertson, Rick Rojas, Dana Rubinstein, Christopher F. Schuetze, Dera Menra Sijabat, Jenna Smialek, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan and Carl Zimmer.
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