Here’s what you need to know:
- 17 states join legal effort to block a rule that revokes visas from foreign students taking virtual classes.
- A new week begins with a grim outlook: More than 100,000 new cases were identified over the weekend.
- As Fauci becomes more vocal, Trump aides are moving to undercut him.
- Hong Kong closes gyms, cinemas and bans gatherings of more than four people to stem outbreak.
- Here’s how some are reducing health risks by shifting life outdoors.
- After Trump first wore a mask in public, administration officials urge the public to do so, too.
- A health worker in Italy raised concerns about the virus. Then he lost his job.
17 states join legal effort to block a rule that revokes visas from foreign students taking virtual classes.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to block a new rule that would revoke the visas of foreign students who take classes entirely online in the fall.
The rule, issued a week ago, would upend months of careful planning by colleges and universities, the lawsuit says, and could force many students to return to their home countries during the pandemic, where their ability to study would be severely compromised.
“The Trump administration didn’t even attempt to explain the basis for this senseless rule, which forces schools to choose between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses,” Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which accuses the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act.
The action, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, is the latest legal effort to contest the federal edict, which has been described by states and universities in court filings as a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to force universities to hold in-person classes this fall, even as many have announced they will remain largely online because of health concerns.
California filed its own lawsuit last week, after Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had already gone to court seeking to block the new rule. Arguments in the Harvard and M.I.T. case are scheduled to be heard on Tuesday, also in the district court in Boston.
The federal guidance issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which says foreign students earning their degrees entirely online cannot stay in the United States, has sent students scrambling to enroll in in-person classes that are difficult to find. Many universities are planning to offer a mix of online and in-person classes to protect the health of faculty, students and their surrounding communities during the pandemic.
The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, defended the administration’s actions at a news conference earlier last week.
“You don’t get a visa for taking online classes from, let’s say, University of Phoenix. So why would you if you were just taking online classes, generally?” she told reporters, adding, “Perhaps the better lawsuit would be coming from students who have to pay full tuition with no access to in-person classes to attend.”
The area represented by the 17 states and the District of Columbia contains 1,124 colleges and universities that had a combined 373,000 international students enrolled in 2019, who contributed an estimated $14 billion to the economy that year, according to the complaint.
About 40 higher education institutions filed declarations in support of the lawsuit, including Yale, DePaul, the University of Chicago, Tufts, Rutgers and state universities in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Key Data of the Day
A new week begins with a grim outlook: More than 100,000 new cases were identified over the weekend.
More than 100,000 new coronavirus cases were identified. Seven states set daily case records. Florida added more cases in a day than any state had previously known to, and on Monday reported more than 12,600 additional cases, its second-highest total recorded for a single day in the pandemic.
And that was just over the past few days.
The U.S. outbreak — once centered in the densely packed northeastern hubs of New York and New Jersey — is now growing across 39 states, from the worsening hot spots in the South and West to those emerging in the Midwest. Restrictions on business operations, mass gatherings and mask-wearing have become debate fodder in an increasingly polarized election year.
As a new week begins, the country’s outlook is exceptionally grim. Case numbers are rising in all but a handful of states. Hospitals are running out of beds. And some of the country’s biggest urban centers — Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, Jacksonville, Fla. — have seen out-of-control growth with few concrete signs of progress.
“Put politics aside and wear a mask,” Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville, a Republican, said on Twitter.
As new cases continue to mount in the Southeast and West, troublesome signs are emerging elsewhere in the country. The county that includes Oklahoma City has been averaging twice as many cases as it was just two weeks ago. Case numbers have started increasing again around Minneapolis after weeks of progress. And Wisconsin and Ohio are averaging more new infections than at any previous point in the pandemic.
In Miami-Dade County, Fla., six hospitals have reached capacity as virus cases spike. The increase in cases caused the mayor there to roll back reopening plans by imposing a curfew and closing restaurants for indoor dining.
As Fauci becomes more vocal, Trump aides are moving to undercut him.
President Trump’s advisers undercut the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, over the weekend, anonymously providing details to various news outlets about statements he had made early in the outbreak that they said were inaccurate.
The move to treat Dr. Fauci as if he were a warring political rival comes as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in cases. He has also noted his lack of access to Mr. Trump.
Aides to Mr. Trump released to The Washington Post and other news outlets a list of remarks Dr. Fauci made about the virus when it was in its early stages. It featured several comments White House aides had privately complained about for months.
An official told The Post that several other officials were concerned about how often Dr. Fauci had been wrong.
For example, White House officials pointed to a statement he made in a Feb. 29 interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”
But they omitted a warning Dr. Fauci delivered right after.
“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”
Dr. Fauci works for the Trump administration, but the list of his statements was laid out in the style of a campaign’s opposition research document.
A poll conducted for The New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67 percent of Americans trusted Dr. Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26 percent trusted the president.
In an interview with FiveThirtyEight.com last week, Dr. Fauci said that a few states had the virus under control but that “as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.”
Last week, Mr. Trump told Fox News that Dr. Fauci had been wrong about many aspects of the pandemic. Dr. Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” the president said.
Hong Kong closes gyms, cinemas and bans gatherings of more than four people to stem outbreak.
Hong Kong, a city that weeks ago seemed like one of the most successful places in controlling the virus, announced Monday evening that it would close gyms and cinemas and ban public gatherings of more than four people in response to a new wave of locally transmitted infections.
Carrie Lam, the territory’s chief executive, announced a series of measures to take effect on Wednesday. Also included were a prohibition on all dining inside restaurants every evening from 6 p.m., and a requirement that everyone taking public transport wear a mask.
Health officials said that the territory’s new spate of cases, including another 52 announced on Monday, was mainly connected to taxi drivers, restaurants and nursing homes.
The prohibition on public gatherings of four or more people could make it even harder for the pro-democracy opposition to organize any protests against a stringent national security law imposed on June 30 by Beijing. The ban could also interfere with an election campaign now underway to choose a new legislature on Sept. 6.
Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory, has a robust contact-tracing system that helped the authorities contain an initial outbreak last winter. The city won praise from international health experts in the pandemic’s early days. In response to a second wave of infections imported in March from Europe and the United States, Hong Kong closed its borders to non-residents and mandated quarantine for returning residents.
Under the new regulations issued on Monday, travelers to Hong Kong will be required to provide proof that they tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding flights to the city.
The 52 new cases on Monday continued a week-long spike, labeled a third wave by health officials, after months in which few or no new daily infections were detected. The authorities said they were unable to trace the infection pattern in 20 of the new cases disclosed on Monday. That raises the prospect that the virus is circulating silently in the community, after months in which local transmission appeared to have been at a standstill.
Gabriel Leung, the dean of Hong Kong University’s faculty of medicine, said in a radio program on Sunday that the virus was now spreading at a faster pace within the region because of a mutation in its DNA. The reproductive number of the virus is currently close to four, he said, suggesting that each person who is infected on average passes the virus on to four others.
Here’s how some are reducing health risks by shifting life outdoors.
In Monday’s edition of The Morning newsletter, David Leonhardt discussed some of the creative ideas that companies, government agencies and other organizations have had to move activities outside, where the coronavirus spreads less easily:
Rice University, in Houston, is building nine big new classrooms this summer, all of them outdoors.
Five are open-sided circus tents that the university is buying, and another four are semi-permanent structures that workers are building in an open field near dorms, Kevin Kirby, Rice’s vice president for administration, told me. Students and professors will decorate the spaces with murals and video projections.
In the fall, the structures will host classes and student activities, while reducing health risks — since the coronavirus spreads less easily outdoors. Kirby describes the construction project as “a statement to the community.” The statement: “We’re creative. We’re resilient. And what we do matters.”
Across the country, many indoor activities are going to be problematic for the foreseeable future: school, religious services, work meetings, cultural events, restaurant meals, haircuts and more. Mask-wearing reduces the risks, but being outdoors can reduce it even more.
Do you know of other companies or communities taking smart steps to move activities outdoors? Tell us about it.
After Trump first wore a mask in public, administration officials urge the public to do so, too.
Facing questions about the gravity of the nation’s coronavirus crisis, Trump administration health officials on Sunday took a somber tone and stressed the importance of wearing masks, something their boss did publicly for the first time only the day before.
On ABC’s “This Week,” Adm. Brett Giroir, an official with Health and Human Services, acknowledged that with “more cases, more hospitalizations,” the expectation was for “deaths to go up” over the next several weeks. “It’s really essential to wear masks,” he said, adding: “We have to have like 90 percent of people wearing the masks in public in the hot spot areas. If we don’t have that we will not get control of the virus.”
The host, George Stephanopoulos, asked about suggestions by Mr. Trump — who after months of refusing, donned a mask on Saturday during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — that there could be some harm in wearing face coverings.
“There’s no downside to wearing a mask,” Admiral Giroir said. “I’m a pediatric I.C.U. physician. I wore a mask 10 hours a day for many, many years.”
Asked if states with stark increases in cases, like Florida, South Carolina, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, should consider more stringent measures, Admiral Giroir said that closing bars and limiting the number of patrons allowed in restaurants are “two measures that really do need to be done.”
The admiral, who has been in charge of testing, also told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that rates of people testing positive were “leveling off.” However, the Covid Tracking Project at The Atlantic shows positivity rates leveling only in the Northeast, with rates rising in the South, West and Midwest.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams said people needed to “understand the importance of wearing face coverings and good hand hygiene and staying home when they can.”
Dr. Adams wore a mask during his entire interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation” even though he was being interviewed remotely from Indiana. He said measures like wearing face coverings were “critically important.”
With the virus surging in many parts of the country, a number of governors, mayors and county officials who had been hesitant about requiring face coverings have now issued mandates.
In all, 25 states and the District of Columbia now have face-covering orders in effect, and two more will join them on Monday, according to a tally by The New York Times. Twelve of the orders have come into force in July.
In general, the orders require most people to cover their faces when in public places and unable to maintain social distance. But the scope of the mandate varies from state to state.
GLOBAL ROUNDUP
A health worker in Italy raised concerns about the virus. Then he lost his job.
In February, Hamala Diop, a 25-year-old medical assistant, said the directors of the nursing home where he worked in Milan kept him from wearing a mask, fearing it would scare patients and their families. In March, he became infected with the virus and spoke out about the virus spreading through the home. In May, he was fired amid claims that he had “damaged the company’s image.”
Mr. Diop challenged the decision in a lawsuit that will be heard in court on Monday. The proceedings raise the issue of whether whistle-blowers have paid a price in voicing concerns about dangerous conditions at medical facilities.
After successfully lowering the curve of new cases after a devastating initial outbreak, Italy is now bracing for a potential second wave.
The country, with the oldest population in Europe, was affected especially deeply by the virus, and nearly half the infections reported in April happened in nursing homes, according to the Italian National Institute of Health. The breadth of the outbreak put the management of nursing homes under judicial and media scrutiny.
In a statement, the lawyers for the nursing home, the Palazzolo Institute of the Don Gnocchi Foundation, said the home had followed the instructions of the Italian National Institute of Health on the use of masks, and that communications about the infections among workers took place according to privacy laws.
“Nobody protected us from catching the virus,” Mr. Diop said, “and nobody protected us from getting fired.”
In other developments around the world:
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Australian citizens and residents returning from overseas to New South Wales, which includes the city of Sydney, will be charged for their mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine starting Saturday, the state premier said. Mandatory hotel quarantines at a similar cost are already in effect in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and other parts of the country are likely to begin charging travelers as well amid a new outbreak in Melbourne, Australia’s second-biggest city. The border has been closed to nonresidents since March.
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The leader of Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia, Quim Torra, said on Monday that his government would proceed with a regional lockdown, a day after a judge ruled that such a measure was only valid if approved by the country’s central government.
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President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa reinstated a ban on the sale and distribution of alcohol in an effort to alleviate pressure on the health care system. The government also reintroduced an overnight curfew. South Africa has seen a surge in cases as the country enters its coldest month, with more than 264,000 known cases, and nearly 4,000 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
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Xu Zhangrun, a law professor in Beijing who had criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, was released from detention on Sunday, a week after the police took him away.
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On Monday, an organization in France comprising doctors and virus victims has appealed to the country’s highest administrative court to impose the wearing of masks, adding that it was “urgent to take all possible measures to prevent the second wave” of infections. Prime Minister Jean Castex said that he was considering the compulsory wearing of masks to prevent a resurgence of the epidemic and called on people to stay vigilant.
U.S. Roundup
Disney World reopened, with virus numbers rising.
As Florida set new records for virus cases, two of Walt Disney World’s major parks that had closed in March, the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, welcomed back a limited number of temperature-checked visitors over the weekend, with some attractions and character interactions unavailable as safety precautions.
Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios were set to reopen on Wednesday.
“I’m so overwhelmed with emotion,” said a weeping Sonya Little, who flew to Orlando, Fla., from Birmingham, Ala., with two friends. “The last few months have been so hard. We have just felt so defeated. Being here gives me the strength to go on.”
The reopening comes as the virus continued its rampage through Florida, with officials reporting more than 15,000 new infections on Sunday, a daily record for any state.
To ward off germs, Disney now leaves rows of seats empty on rides, which employees constantly disinfect. Face masks are mandatory, and, for some visitors, the coverings quickly grew wet with sweat.
“It would be a lot more fun without having to wear one,” Ivan Chanchavac, 14, said as he hopped off the Jungle Cruise. Here’s what else was happening around the country:
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Stocks in the United States followed global markets higher on Monday, as companies begin to report their results for the second quarter, a chance for investors to hear how businesses are coping with the pandemic. Lifting sentiment was news from Pfizer that its candidates for a potential vaccine, being developed with BioNTech, have received “Fast Track” designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that could enable it to be developed more quickly.
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Since many New Yorkers in wealthy neighborhoods fled the city amid the pandemic, city officials fear that their populations will be severely undercounted in the current census — potentially costing the city federal aid and political clout. Officials hope that the virus evacuees will return by the end of October, the new extended deadline for final responses to the census.
Fax machines are a choke point for the U.S. virus response.
Sometimes, they arrive instantly in a doctor’s email inbox. Other times, they are delivered physically, in envelopes. And still, a number of them are spit out by fax machines.
Across the United States, public health officials and private laboratories have dramatically expanded the number of coronavirus tests performed daily. But the system for recording those results, officials say, has remained fractured and disjointed.
The machine at the Harris County Public Health department recently became overwhelmed when one laboratory sent a large batch of test results, spraying hundreds of pages all over the floor.
“Picture the image of hundreds of faxes coming through, and the machine just shooting out paper,” said Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of the department. The county has so far recorded more than 40,000 cases.
Some doctors fax coronavirus tests to Dr. Shah’s personal number, too. Those papers are put in an envelope marked “confidential” and walked to the epidemiology department.
“From an operational standpoint, it makes things incredibly difficult,” Dr. Shah said. “The data is moving slower than the disease.”
The torrent of paper data led at least one health department to request additional forces. Washington State recently brought in 25 members of the National Guard to assist with manual data entry for results not reported electronically.
Reporting was contributed by Brooks Barnes, Pam Belluck, Emma Bubola, Keith Bradsher, Chris Buckley, Troy Closson, Michael Cooper, Sheri Fink, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, Hailey Fuchs, Maggie Haberman, Anemona Hartocollis, Hikari Hida, Makiko Inoue, Sarah Kliff, Tiffany May, Patricia Mazzei, Raphael Minder, Zach Montague, Kate Phillips, Motoko Rich, Rick Rojas, Dana Rubinstein, Margot Sanger-Katz, Mitch Smith, Eileen Sullivan, Mariel Wamsley and Mihir Zaveri.
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