As global cases keep soaring, the virus rebounds in places that seemed to have tamed it.
As the pandemic continues to grow around the world — new cases have risen more than 35 percent since the end of June — troubling resurgences have hit several places that were seen as models of how to respond to the virus.
An outbreak in Melbourne, Australia, has rattled officials after extensive testing and early lockdowns had limited outbreaks for months. Hong Kong — where schools, restaurants and malls were able to stay open — has announced new restrictions in the face of its largest outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic. And cases have surged in Tokyo, which has avoided a full lockdown and relied on aggressive contact tracing to contain flare-ups.
Spain’s reopening has stumbled in the month after it lifted a national lockdown. New cases have quadrupled, with high infection rates among young people, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to return to temporary lockdown.
As governments around the world look to relax rules put in place to combat the virus, the experiences show how difficult it will be to keep outbreaks at bay. And they reflect, in some places, a weakening public tolerance for restrictions as the pandemic drags on.
The scattered resurgences are not driving the pandemic. The biggest sources of new infections continue to be the United States, Brazil and India; the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted this week that almost half of all cases worldwide came from just three countries.
But the quick turn for the worse in places that once seemed to have gained the upper hand shows the range of vulnerabilities the virus is able to exploit.
After Spain’s strict lockdown ended, the national government put regional governments in charge of reopening. That led to a patchwork of rules and regulations that varied widely in strictness and enforcement, much as they have in the United States. While the most serious outbreaks have been in northeastern Spain, only two regions — Madrid and the Canary Islands — reimposed requirements to wear face masks outdoors.
In Tokyo, where the recent spikes in cases were attributed to young people congregating in nightlife districts, there have been unnerving signs that infections are now spreading to older people, too — as they have in Florida.
In Hong Kong, which succeeded early on by tightening borders and imposing quarantines, the resurgence has forced the government to re-close some businesses, reimpose mask orders and ask some workers to stay home.
“Once you loosen the restrictions too much,” warned David Hui, the director of the Stanley Ho Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, “you face a rebound.”
Nearly 70,000 coronavirus cases were recorded in the United States on Thursday, the third-most of any day in the pandemic. The total number of known cases in the country surpassed four million, according to a New York Times database, and the United States also recorded its third consecutive day of at least 1,100 deaths from the virus.
In other news around the nation:
-
Republicans struggled on Thursday to find agreement on a new proposal to lift the economy, with Senate leaders and the Trump administration at odds over multiple provisions, including how to extend unemployment benefits and White House requests for spending unrelated to the pandemic.
-
President Trump reversed course and canceled the portion of the Republican National Convention to be held in Jacksonville, Fla., just weeks after he moved the event from North Carolina because state officials wanted the party to take health precautions there.
-
Officials in Washington State announced new restrictions on gatherings at restaurants, bars, weddings, funerals and other businesses. “This is not the easy thing to do, but it is the right thing to do,” Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement.
-
Alabama set a daily record for cases on Thursday, with 2,390. Four other states — Hawaii, Indiana, Missouri and New Mexico — also hit their single-day peak for new cases, while Florida and Tennessee had more virus-related deaths than on any other day.
-
Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader who died July 17, will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda next week, before a public viewing outside. Mr. Lewis’s family discouraged people from traveling to Washington for the event during the pandemic, instead asking for “virtual tributes” using the hashtags #BelovedCommunity or #HumanDignity.
-
The actor and director Mel Gibson was hospitalized in California in April after testing positive for the virus but has since recovered, his representative said on Thursday.
In Cochabamba, high in the Bolivian Andes, people line up daily outside pharmacies on the central plaza, eager to buy the scarce elixir they hope will ward off Covid-19: chlorine dioxide, a kind of bleach used to disinfect swimming pools and floors.
Experts say drinking it is pointless at best and hazardous at worst. But in Bolivia, where people have been hospitalized after ingesting chlorine dioxide, regional authorities are testing it on prison inmates, the national Senate last week approved its use and a top lawmaker has threatened to expel the World Health Organization for opposing its medical use.
Julio César Baldivieso, a local soccer hero and former national team captain, told a local television station that because Cochabamba’s hospitals “don’t have tests, they don’t have materials, they don’t have protective equipment,” he and his family had turned to chlorine dioxide to treat their coronavirus symptoms.
Bolivians have a lot of company in resorting to unproven and even dangerous treatments to prevent or treat infection. In every part of the world, hard science has had to compete for attention with pet theories, rumors and traditional beliefs during this pandemic, as in the past. Even in the United States, President Trump has promoted treatments that scientists say are useless.
But interest in dubious medicines has been especially high recently in Latin America, where the virus is raging uncontrolled and many political leaders are promoting them, whether out of genuine faith or a desire to offer hope and deflect blame.
In a region where few people can afford quality medical care, alternative treatments are widely touted on social media and exploited by profiteers.
“The people feel desperate when confronted with Covid-19,” said Santiago Ron, an Ecuadorean biology professor, who has clashed with proponents of supposed treatments. “They are very vulnerable to pseudoscientific promises.”
One of New Zealand’s secrets to its successful coronavirus response may be a simple one: trust.
In a national survey of more than 1,000 people, researchers found that nearly all New Zealanders have adopted hygiene practices known to deter the virus, and their belief in the authorities was at almost nearly 100 percent.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been praised internationally for her government’s pandemic response and for her leadership through the crisis, which saw the country institute a total national lockdown when cases were just beginning. To date, the country has had just 1,556 cases and 22 deaths, and has gone 83 days without community transmission of the virus.
Almost all New Zealanders correctly understand important facts about the coronavirus, with nearly nine in 10 aware of the symptoms, protective behaviors and asymptomatic transmission.
The survey, led by Dr. Jagadish Thaker and Dr. Vishnu Menon of the Massey University School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, also noted widespread approval for how the government has handled the pandemic and praise for Ms. Ardern and the director general of health, Dr. Ashley Bloomfield.
“There was a feeling of unity and a sense that we had a leader looking after us, which was in sharp contrast to other leaders in the U.S. and U.K.,” Dr. Thaker said in a statement.
Dr. Thaker noted that the success of New Zealand’s response had become “the envy of the world as our lives return to normality.”
France sees a sharp uptick in new coronavirus cases, and health officials point to ‘recent habits.’
France reported a sharp uptick in confirmed new coronavirus cases on Thursday, with more than 1,000 new infections recorded in 24 hours.
This increase confirms an upward trend over the past few weeks. There were about 800 new cases per day on average over the past seven days, compared with 500 per day in the previous week, according to a New York Times database.
Health officials said that cases on France’s mainland have increased by 66 percent in the past three weeks, with a 26 percent increase in the past week alone. They added that such a trend could not be explained only by an increase in testing, meaning that the country was facing a slow but real resurgence of the epidemic.
“The figures aren’t good, they’re worrying,” Jean-François Delfraissy, the head of the scientific council appointed by President Emmanuel Macron to help fight the epidemic, told French media this week.
Mr. Delfraissy mentioned “a series of particularly important clusters” of cases that could help foster a second wave of infection. There are currently 120 clusters of infections in France.
In a statement on Thursday, French health authorities said that “this basic trend indicates that our recent habits have been facilitating the circulation of the virus for several weeks.”
Authorities said people had been less vigilant about taking steps to protect themselves and others from the virus. The problem is expected to worsen as France enters its vacation season, leading to crowds thronging beaches and other popular tourist areas, often at the expense of basic gestures such as social distancing.
The increase in cases prompted the French government to impose mandatory mask-wearing in enclosed public places this week. On Thursday, Olivier Véran, the health minister, said the government would send 40 million washable masks to seven million people who are considered most in need.
On Friday, Mr. Macron met with French defense officials to consider new measures to combat the resurgence, including a tightening in border controls.
Masks are now the rule in shops and supermarkets in England.
Masks are now required in shops, supermarkets, transportation hubs and when picking up food and drink from restaurants in England. Those who refuse to wear a face covering could be fined up to 100 pounds, or $127.
Workers in shops and supermarkets are not required to wear face coverings. British authorities only said they “strongly recommend that employers consider their use where appropriate.”
But as the new guidelines came into force on Friday, some supermarkets and coffee shop chains said they would not challenge customers who enter their businesses unmasked.
The new guidelines come after months of equivocation on the matter from the British government, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to kick-start Britain’s economy. The government has also been trying to contain upticks in virus cases, in one case by imposing a local lockdown in Leicester.
According to the guidelines, the police can forcibly remove individuals from a venue if they refuse to wear a mask, but supermarket chains Sainsbury’s and Asda, along with Costa Coffee, said they wouldn’t challenge customers who enter their businesses without a mask, as “they may have a reason not to wear” one.
Children under 11, and people with disabilities or certain health conditions are exempt, and face coverings are not required in pubs and cafes, hairdressers or cinemas. They were already mandatory on public transportation.
The guidelines on masks bring England into line with European countries including Germany, Italy and Spain. Britain has been the hardest-hit country in Europe, with at least 45,500 coronavirus deaths, and nearly 300,000 cases.
The quiet planet: A locked-down Earth is making a lot less noise, geologists report.
Heavy traffic, football games, rock concerts, fireworks, factories, jackhammers — all help make up the pulse of human activity, and in a world forced into lethargy by pandemic, that pulse is measurably quieter.
A team of 76 scientists from more than two dozen countries, drawing on readings from earthquake-detection equipment, reported that lockdowns have led to a drop of up to 50 percent in the global din tied to humans.
“The length and quiescence of this period represents the longest and most coherent global seismic noise reduction in recorded history,” the scientists wrote in the journal Science.
That quiet, they said, resulted from social distancing, industrial shutdowns and drops in travel and tourism. The decline far exceeded what is typically observed on weekends and holidays.
The seismometers used by geologists to listen for underground movement are highly sensitive. Apart from earthquakes and human activity, they can detect waves crashing onto shorelines and the impacts of rocky intruders from outer space. In 2001, when the World Trade Center in New York City collapsed, the vibrations registered in five states.
For this study, the team assembled data from 337 seismometers run by citizen scientists and 268 stations run by government, university and corporate geologists.
They found that the quieting began in China in late January and spread to Europe and the rest of the world in March and April. By the end of the monitoring period, in May, the vibration levels in Beijing remained lower, suggesting that the pandemic was still restricting activity there, the researchers said.
Nearly four months after the pandemic’s peak in New York, the city is facing such serious delays in returning coronavirus test results that public health experts are warning that the problems could hinder efforts to reopen the local economy and schools.
Despite repeated pledges from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio that testing would be both widely accessible and effective, thousands of New Yorkers have had to wait a week or more for results, and at some clinics the median wait time is nine days. One prominent local official has even proposed the drastic step of limiting testing.
The delays are caused in part by the outbreak’s spike in states like California, Florida and Texas, which has strained laboratories across the country and touched off a renewed national testing crisis.
But officials have also been unable to adequately expand the capacity of state and city government laboratories in New York to test rapidly at a time when they are asking more New Yorkers to get tested to guard against a second wave.
As capacity expanded, New York City authorities began encouraging everyone to get tested, and urged people to get tested repeatedly, setting a target of 50,000 tests per day.
In recent weeks, about 20,000 to 35,000 people are tested most weekdays, a demand that has put a strain on local labs.
City public health officials said they were growing increasingly alarmed by the delays, pointing out that widespread testing and quick turnaround times were needed to reduce transmission by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic patients, who are believed to play a major part in the virus’s spread.
“This is becoming a problem,” said Dr. Jay Varma, a City Hall adviser who has a critical role in the city’s testing and contact-tracing program. “Any lag in this process can make it more difficult to have case and contact tracing be effective.”
President Trump this week expressed a new level of concern about the outbreak, saying things would “probably, unfortunately, get worse,” but despite broad public opposition, he continues to insist that schools must reopen in person this fall.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump argued that schools ought to be able to “reopen safely,” even as he abandoned plans to hold the Republican National Convention in Florida because of concerns over spreading the virus.
“We cannot indefinitely stop 50 million American children from going to school, harming their mental, physical and emotional development,” he said, arguing that federal funding should be rerouted away from schools that don’t reopen in person and put toward voucher programs. “Reopening our schools is also critical to ensuring that parents can go to work and provide for their families.”
But polls show that Americans — parents in particular — remain gravely worried about sending students back to school.
An Associated Press/NORC poll this week found that most Americans said they were very or extremely concerned that reopening K-12 schools for in-person instruction would contribute to spreading the virus. Altogether, 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned, including more than three in five Republicans.
“I have yet to see any data where there are appreciable numbers of people who say, ‘Yes, I want my kids back in school,’” Ed Goeas, a veteran Republican pollster, said in an interview. “They want their kids back in school, but not right now. I think safety is taking priority over education.”
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released on Thursday, 60 percent of parents with children in elementary school said that they would rather schools reopen more slowly to ensure safety, versus 34 percent who said they wanted schools to prioritize reopening swiftly so that parents can get back to work and students can return to a normal learning environment.
On a personal note for the president, the school attended by Mr. Trump’s son Barron, 14, said in a letter to parents that it was still deciding whether to adopt a hybrid model for the fall that would allow limited in-person education or to resume holding all classes completely online as was done in the spring.
Reporting was contributed by William J. Broad, José María León Cabrera, Emily Cochrane, Michael Cooper, Joseph Goldstein, Maggie Haberman, Annie Karni, Josh Keller, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Patricia Mazzei, Patrick McGeehan, Jesse McKinley, Constant Méheut, Raphael Minder, Elian Peltier, Alan Rappeport, Giovanni Russonello, Nate Schweber, Mitch Smith, Megan Specia, Kaly Soto, Jim Tankersley, María Silvia Trigo and Daniel Victor.