Live Coronavirus News Updates

More than 300,000 people in the United States have tested positive for the virus, and officials believe that the number of people who have been infected is far higher. More than 8,000 people have died, including at least 3,565 in New York, the hardest hit state.

Globally, cases passed 1.1 million and deaths passed 59,000. The British government reported 708 deaths — a grim national record for a 24-hour period.

“Nobody can tell you the number at the top of the mountain,” Mr. Cuomo said, but he estimated that it would be “in the seven-day range.”

According to Dr. Joe Bresee, deputy incident manager of the agency’s Covid-19 response, testing will focus on three groups: people in areas with a high concentration of cases; people in a representative sample of other areas from around the country; and special groups of people who are likely to have had a higher risk of exposure, like health care workers.

And while some countries, like Italy and Britain, have raised the possibility of giving people with antibodies permits to allow them to return to the work force, officials with the C.D.C. said their testing was to determine the virus’s trail and to plan ahead.

The C.D.C. also said on Saturday that it had expanded the coronavirus information it publishes online, adding a weekly report that will include figures on outpatient and emergency department visits, hospitalizations, deaths and data on testing for the virus.

The first report confirms an aspect of the epidemic that has already been noted: People 65 and over are most likely to become severely ill if infected. Those 50 and older also have a somewhat higher than average risk of serious illness.

Nearly 40,000 of them have come in the two months since President Trump imposed travel restrictions.

In total, 279 passenger flights have arrived from China since the restrictions, carrying Americans and others exempt from them. Even this past week, data show, the flights have continued.

And even with the restrictions, screening procedures have been uneven, interviews show.

“I was surprised at how lax the whole process was,” said Andrew Wu, 31, who landed at Los Angeles International Airport from Beijing on March 10. “The guy I spoke to read down a list of questions, and he didn’t seem interested in checking out anything.”

At least 17 Egyptian doctors and nurses have tested positive for the coronavirus, the National Cancer Institute in Cairo said on Saturday, raising fears the pandemic could have a devastating effect on health facilities in the Arab world’s most populous country.

The outbreak was the first reported among medical workers in Egypt, which recorded an increase in the rate of infections over the weekend: The health ministry recorded 120 cases on Friday, raising the total to 985, with 66 deaths.

Cairo University, which runs the cancer hospital, said in a statement that all medical workers at the facility were being tested, and that the hospital would be closed and sanitized.

The Egyptian medical syndicate, an association representing hundreds of thousands of medical workers, said in a statement that it was “shocked” by the number of cases and urged the authorities to supply protection equipment and apply strict testing protocols.

It said in a post on Facebook that the infected medical workers had been placed in quarantine.

• Spain: The country reported 7,026 new cases, for a total of 124,736, surpassing Italy as the nation with the most infections in Europe. Spain said that 809 coronavirus patients, including a 5-year-old, had died overnight. It was the lowest toll in a week, bringing total deaths to 11,744. Also on Saturday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that the nationwide lockdown would be extended another 15 days.

• France: Officials reported 68,605 test-confirmed cases of Covid-19 around the country and 7,560 deaths, as well as 6,838 patients in intensive care. In an encouraging sign, the country has recorded fewer and fewer new patients in intensive care each day over the past week — on Saturday there were 176 new patients, versus 486 a week ago.

• Britain: Thousands of prisoners in Britain will be granted early release within weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the virus in cells and facilities where social distancing rules are impossible to maintain, the Ministry of Justice said. The announcement comes as the country reported a record 708 deaths overnight, bringing the total to more than 4,300.

• Ecuador: The health minister said there was a “sharp rise” in coronavirus deaths on Friday in Guayaquil, the center of the country’s outbreak, with the toll rising to 1,500 from 700. The government has said it is building a “special camp” for coronavirus patients in Guayaquil, where residents are under strict quarantine and curfew measures, leaving police officers and soldiers to collect the bodies of the dead from homes — as many as 150 a day — and have been tasked with burying the dead.

• Republic of Georgia: A 79-year-old woman in the South Caucasus region became the country’s first reported death related to the pandemic. Medical officials said she had other underlying conditions. Georgia, a nation of 3.7 million people, reported a total of 157 confirmed cases.

• Germany: The country has identified 91,000 coronavirus infections, more reported cases than all but the United States, Spain and Italy. But thanks to widespread testing and other measures, its percentage of fatal cases has been remarkably low — 1.3 percent. By contrast, the reported rate is about 10 percent in Spain, France and Britain, 4 percent in China and 2.5 percent in the United States. Even South Korea, a model of flattening the curve, has a rate of 1.7 percent.

The weeks of locking down Italy, which has had the world’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, may be starting to pay off, as officials announced this week that the numbers of new infections had plateaued and, on Saturday, that ICU cases had gone for the first time.

An experimental vaccine is ready to test in people as soon as the Food and Drug Administration grants permission, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said.

“Testing in patients would typically require at least a year and probably longer,” Dr. Louis D. Falo Jr., a member of the research team, said. “This particular situation is different from anything we’ve ever seen, so we don’t know how long the clinical development process will take. Recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be able to advance this faster.”

Another vaccine, made by Moderna, is already in a clinical trial, which started March 15. Dozens more candidates are being developed by other companies.

The University of Pittsburgh’s vaccine will be given in an unusual way: through a small patch dotted with 400 “microneedles” made of sugar mixed with a coronavirus protein. The microneedles penetrate the skin and the sugar melts, releasing the full protein dose in 10 minutes or less, and alerting the immune system to start making antibodies to fight the virus.

“It’s not painful,” Dr. Falo said in an interview. “The needles don’t reach any nerves, nor do they reach blood vessels. They’re a little more than half a millimeter long, and the width of a human hair.”

This approach takes advantage of the skin’s ability to set off a powerful immune response. Skin is the body’s first line of defense against a constant bombardment of bacteria and viruses from the environment, and it is teeming with cells that act like scouts for the immune system, looking for things that shouldn’t be there.

A vaccination with microneedles uses a smaller dose than the usual shot in the arm requires, allowing more people to be immunized, Dr. Falo said. The vaccine, unlike most, does not have to be frozen or refrigerated, making shipping and storage easier and cheaper.

“Once we have been given approval, we will be ready to go” with testing, Dr. Falo said.

Oil giants delay meeting, threatening to roil markets again.

A meeting planned for Monday between officials of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other oil producers, which had buoyed hopes for a deal to end the turmoil in energy markets, has been put off, according to two OPEC delegates.

The news comes as lingering tensions have resurfaced between Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader, and Russia over who is to blame for the recent collapse in oil prices. On Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia partly blamed Saudi Arabia for the price drop; the Saudi ministers of foreign affairs and energy then responded angrily, blaming Russia.

The OPEC delegates indicated that further talks would be required before moving ahead with a meeting, which could be rescheduled for later in the week. Saudi Arabia had called for the meeting last Thursday, responding to pressure from President Trump.

U.S. invokes law to force 3M’s hand on surgical masks.

The Trump administration is using a Korean War-era law to redirect to the United States surgical masks manufactured by 3M in other countries as part of a heated pressure campaign to force the Minnesota company to cut off sales of surgical masks abroad.

But in this case, the administration is invoking the law to compel 3M to send the masks it makes in factories overseas to the United States, and to stop exporting U.S.-made masks. Those moves, some trade and legal experts fear, could backfire, possibly prompting foreign governments to clamp down on the flow of desperately needed medical necessities to the United States.

The Trump administration’s new executive order directs federal emergency management and health officials to use the law’s authority to preserve respirators, surgical masks and surgical gloves for domestic use.

The United States was crippled by the brutal flu that swept through the country in the midst of World War I, but nowhere was hit more forcefully than the powerhouse industrial cities of Pennsylvania.

In Philadelphia alone, 20,000 people died — 7,500 in the first six months, 4,500 in one week and 837 in a single day. And then, as now, holding large public events in defiance of scientific advice to stay at home had shattering consequences.

By the end of last week, coronavirus cases in Philadelphia had reached 2,430, with 26 deaths. And officials there were scrambling to secure the needed equipment, including ventilators.

But memories of the 1918 epidemic had already prompted an aggressive response from Philadelphia’s public health authorities. One result: Unlike some American cities, they expect to have enough hospital beds to withstand even a worst-case scenario.

“The state has handled it very differently, and the city handled it radically differently,” said Dr. Tony S. Reed, chief medical officer at Temple University Hospital. “Frankly, for us it’s going to make all the difference in the world.”

The Chinese government held a nationwide day of mourning on Saturday, the day of the annual Tomb Sweeping Festival, a traditional time for honoring ancestors. Flags flew at half-staff, and alarms and horns sounded for three minutes starting at 10 a.m. Xi Jinping and other leaders of the ruling Communist Party attended a ceremony in Beijing.

It will probably not be enough to soothe many families in the city of Wuhan, who have chafed against the state’s efforts to assert control over the grieving process.

The police in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, have been dispatched to break up groups on WeChat, a popular messaging app, set up by relatives of coronavirus victims. Government censors have scrubbed social media of images that showed relatives lining up at Wuhan funeral homes to collect ashes. Officials have assigned minders to relatives to follow them as they pick burial plots, claim their loved ones’ remains and bury them, grieving family members say.

Liu Pei’en, whose father died after contracting the coronavirus in a Wuhan hospital, said officials had insisted on accompanying him to a funeral home to pick up his father’s remains. Later, they followed him to the cemetery where they watched him bury his father, he said. Mr. Liu saw one of his minders take photos of the funeral, which was over in 20 minutes.

A leading researcher who fought a different virus; a prodigious songwriter still in his prime; the first black president of the Marseille soccer club; a jazz patriarch.

• Gita Ramjee: In South Africa, Dr. Gita Ramjee led AIDS studies and drug trials, hoping to overcome not only H.I.V. but also cultural barriers to stopping its spread. On Tuesday, another epidemic claimed her: She died of Covid-19 at a Durban hospital. She had fallen ill shortly after returning from a visit to her sons in London, local news accounts said. She was 63.

• Adam Schlesinger: He made suburban characters shine for the band Fountains of Wayne and brought pop-rock perfection to the film “That Thing You Do!” Adam Schlesinger, an acclaimed performer who had an award-winning second career writing songs for film, theater and television, died on Wednesday at 52.

• Pape Diouf: Mababa “Pape” Diouf, who became the only black president of a top-tier European soccer club when he was appointed to lead France’s Olympique de Marseille, died at 68 on Tuesday. He was a gifted orator and a defender of the club’s passionate fan base.

• Ellis Marsalis: His sons Wynton and Branford gained national fame embodying a fresh-faced revival of traditional jazz. But Ellis Marsalis had been an influential musician and teacher in New Orleans long before that. He died on Wednesday at 85.