Live updates: Federal government to scale back testing support even as hospitalizations reach new highs

Megan Rapinoe and U.S. World Cup teammates Tobin Heath and Christen Press have opted out of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Challenge Cup tournament, which starts this weekend and will be the first U.S. team sport to resume since the novel coronavirus pandemic forced leagues to shut down in mid-March.

Rapinoe, the star of the national team’s championship last summer in France, did not immediately offer a reason Tuesday as her club, OL Reign of Tacoma, Wash., announced its roster for the event. She has not practiced with the team since the league’s training moratorium was lifted this month.

“Megan let us know that she has decided not [to] play in the tournament,” Reign chief executive Bill Predmore said in a statement. “Like all NWSL players, she was given the option to participate. … We understand and respect her decision.”

School districts have been planning for the upcoming school year with a growing consensus that the most likely scenario would be a mix of in-school and virtual learning. But now, with novel coronavirus infection rates rising, South Carolina’s top education official says reopening school buildings would be “extremely difficult” if a rise in covid-19 cases is not stemmed — and other states are likely to be in the same position.

South Carolina State Superintendent Molly Spearman just released final recommendations for districts to consider as they plan for the new school year even as the state is experiencing a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. More than 1,000 were reported on Monday, adding to a sharp spike in June.

MOSCOW — Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov, who traveled to Moscow for Wednesday’s Victory Day parade, has returned to Bishkek to go into self-isolation after two members of his delegation tested positive for the coronavirus, his press service said.

Jeenbekov did not attend the parade, which commemorates the Soviet victory over the Nazis, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders of other nations, including several former Soviet states.

Two members of the Kyrgyz delegation tested positive for the coronavirus, the Kyrgyz presidential press service said, adding that the president would self-isolate for three days.

The president and his delegation were tested for the coronavirus on arrival in Moscow, according to the press service. A foreign policy official and a security official tested positive.

Kyrgyzstan’s confirmed cases rose by a record 207 on Wednesday, reaching 3,726, according to health official Madamin Karatayev. The country’s official death toll from the coronavirus is 42.

The state of Virginia has proposed its own set of coronavirus-era safety rules that companies must implement to protect workers from infection — a first in the country and a potential way forward for other states in the face of federal inaction.

The temporary emergency safety rules were drafted by the state’s Department of Labor and Industry under direction from Gov. Ralph Northam (D) in late May and will be voted on by the state’s 14-member health and safety board on Wednesday.

The governor’s office said the rules were prompted in large part by the lack of enforcement from the federal agency tasked with upholding workplace safety, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

OSHA has issued only one citation in response to more than 4,000 coronavirus-related complaints, a jarring record that workplace advocates and former OSHA officials have criticized in recent weeks as a neglect of the agency’s duties.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was hospitalized last week with the novel coronavirus, remains in a “delicate” condition and had to be treated with oxygen, a military doctor said Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Juan Diaz, who works at Tegucigalpa’s military hospital, said the head of state would needs to stay in the hospital as he battles the disease and a related bout of pneumonia.

Offering the first public comments on Hernández’s condition, Diaz said the president has oscillated “between a good state and feverish with trouble breathing,” Reuters reported.

Although a number of world leaders or their close family members have contracted the virus, Hernández is one of a very few who have been hospitalized for treatment.

The coronavirus marks the latest challenge for Hernández, 51, who has faced increasing criticism after a sweeping U.S. drug trafficking investigation implicated him and his brother.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, Hernández’s political opponents and ordinary Hondurans alike have questioned whether the president was sick at all, accusing him of lying to divert attention from the investigation.

Hernández first announced that he and his wife had tested positive for the coronavirus a week ago, saying he would be shifting to work from home. Just a day later, he was taken to the hospital, where he has remained since.

Hernández, who contracted the virus just over two years into his second term as president, claimed a week ago to be suffering only mild symptoms, The Washington Post’s Claudia Mendoza and Mary Beth Sheridan reported. After imposing a strict nationwide curfew in mid-March to limit the spread of the virus, his government took steps to begin reopening the battered economy a week ago.

China has conducted more than 90 million nucleic acid coronavirus tests since the pandemic began, a senior Chinese official said Wednesday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The total is more than three times the number of tests that President Trump says have been carried out in the United States.

In total, 90.41 million nucleic acid tests have been completed, said Guo Yanhong with China’s National Health Commission.

China claims to have rapidly expanded its theoretical testing capacity, from around 1.26 million in March to now 3.78 million nucleic acid tests per day. The country’s ramped-up testing capacity was on display after a renewed outbreak in the city of Wuhan in May. Two weeks into a campaign to mass-test the city’s residents, 6.5 million had already been tested in late May.

Chinese officials have also pledged to more selectively test all restaurant or supermarket employees and food-delivery workers in Beijing, as they are considered individuals at a higher risk of being infected.

After an outbreak scare the past two weeks, Beijing had tested 2.3 million people as of Monday and taken some 3 million swabs in total from June 12 to June 22.

According to China’s National Health Commission, the number of nucleic acid testing centers has more than doubled since early March, to now around 4,800. Almost 30,000 Chinese technicians are involved in the testing effort, Chinese officials said.

The Chinese government’s push to increase testing stands in contrast to the United States, where more than 28 million test results have been recorded so far, according to a data tracker by the Atlantic, and where President Trump said Saturday that he had asked officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down.” Congressional Democrats and public health officials responded with outrage.

Researchers in Thailand are collecting and examining bats in hopes of figuring out more about the origins of the novel coronavirus that has sparked a global health crisis and infected more than 9 million people around the world.

“We, as researchers, must keep finding new viruses all the time to prevent diseases that could infect humans,” virus expert Supaporn Wacharapluesadee told the BBC as the animals were inspected at the Khao Ang Rue Nai wildlife sanctuary in Chachoengsao, Thailand.

Supaporn has more than a decade’s experience in identifying viruses and first alerted Thai officials on Jan. 9 that a new coronavirus had emerged after detecting it while analyzing saliva samples from five people who had landed in Thailand from Wuhan, China, the original epicenter of the outbreak.

Two days later, China reported to the World Health Organization that a new virus had sickened at least 41 people and claimed one life in Wuhan.

The virus found in the sample provided by passenger No. 5 had strong similarities to a SARS virus found in the Chinese rufous horseshoe bat, but the genome was “unlike anything previously detected in humans,” she said.

Bats have the ability to carry viruses without contracting the diseases themselves. This, researchers say, makes them the host to strains of coronaviruses that can be passed onto humans.

Each study at the center requires 100 bats that yield four types of samples — including saliva and urine. The animals are later released back into the wild.

National Geographic estimates that 6 out of 10 infectious diseases that strike humans come from animals — including Ebola and SARS.

It’s possible that the novel coronavirus came from animals, and it has been linked to a wet market in China — but scientists around the world remain divided over its precise origins.

The United States is still struggling with the coronavirus in a way that the vast majority of other countries — particularly in Europe — simply are not. President Trump has responded not by doubling down on the fight or addressing the danger, but by downplaying the threat. His favored argument in recent days is that the uptick in cases is due to increased testing.

But the data doesn’t back up that claim. Tellingly, Trump’s commentary is increasingly at odds with GOP allies in the hardest-hit states — the ones most familiar with and accountable for the problem.

Massive nationwide protests of racial injustice and police brutality this spring did not lead to a significant increase in new coronavirus infections, according to a working paper published Monday by an economic think tank.

The report from the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research, which used anonymous cellphone data from more than 300 U.S. cities, found that net growth in coronavirus cases did not rise differentially after the demonstrations.

Many public health officials had warned that these large protests could spur fresh outbreaks by bringing thousands of people close together on city streets. Others still argued that the racial justice cause trumped the risk of infection, noting that the prevalence of face masks as well as the outdoor nature of the protests served to lower demonstrators’ likelihood of contracting the virus.

According to the report, which has not been peer-reviewed, cities with protests in fact experienced an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population.

Researchers suggested that residents who did not want to participate in the demonstrations — for fear of clashing with police or contracting the virus or because streets and businesses were closed — may have avoided public spaces more than usual, possibly offsetting the risk at the demonstrations.

The report does not rule out the possibility of protest-related flare-ups. Racial justice activists in Columbia, S.C., said earlier this week that they would be postponing future protests or moving them online after more than a dozen people who had participated in previous demonstrations tested positive for the coronavirus.

But the National Bureau of Economic Research paper concludes that warnings about the potential consequences of demonstrations, largely sparked by the death of George Floyd, were “far too narrowly conceived.”

“Public speech and public health did not trade off against each other in this case,” the report said.

In the still-early days of the pandemic, Mississippi briefly ordered residents to stay home to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus, between April 3 and the phased-in reopening three weeks later, on April 27. Nearly two months after that, the state is in the grips of a rapidly growing outbreak that officials fear could soon overwhelm hospitals.

Since then, officials have recommended masks and social distancing, but little has been done to enforce those guidelines, and they have been frequently ignored by residents. The formal limits on mass gatherings are lax: without social distancing, businesses can host 20 people inside and 50 outside; with social distancing, the permissible numbers double.

Mississippi leaders had hoped summer would provide a reprieve from outbreaks in the state, but the virus has continued to spread. On Tuesday, the state reported its highest number of new cases in a single day, with 611 people testing positive for the virus.

Now, the state’s top health official says the state is facing a dire scenario in the coming months.

“Understand that people across the nation are tired of coronavirus, but just because you’re tired of something doesn’t mean it’s gone. And we are going to pay for it,” State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs told the Jackson Free Press on Tuesday. “We’re paying for it now. And it’s just going to continue to get worse.”

Dobbs predicted the outbreak would grow to be “really bad,” leading to overwhelmed hospitals, packed emergency rooms and ventilator shortages.

“Prepare for not being able to get into the hospital if you have a car wreck, [to] have a heart attack and there not be a ventilator to put you on,” Dobbs told the Free Press.

LONDON — Top British medical experts have penned a letter warning British lawmakers that a second wave of the novel coronavirus is a “real risk” and asking for an immediate review to determine whether the country is prepared for a new surge of virus infections.

The letter was written by 16 health leaders, including the presidents of the royal colleges of surgeons and nursing, and was published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday. It comes as the country continues to roll back the stringent lockdown measures that have been in place since March 23.

“We think there’s a strong case for an immediate assessment of national preparedness,” authors of the document wrote, adding that localized flare-ups across the country are “increasingly likely” and that measures must be implemented to prevent more deaths.

While the authors noted that steps to contain the coronavirus were being implemented, they communicated concern that “substantial challenges remain.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced broad changes to social distancing rules, reducing a stay-apart instruction from two meters to one meter and giving the green light for pubs, hairdressers, restaurants and hotels to reopen July 4.

Two households will now be able to meet indoors or outside, and groups of up to six people from different households will be allowed to socialize in outdoor spaces.

While many Britons across the country have celebrated the promise of a return to normality, others have expressed concern that the government is moving too quickly and that the threat is far from over.

On Tuesday, the prime minister said he did not believe there was “a risk of a second peak of infections that might overwhelm” Britain’s health-care system.

In a normal year, Macy’s famous Fourth of July fireworks draw packed crowds of New Yorkers to parks and rooftops and bridges to watch the display above the water.

But with such mass gatherings dangerous and illegal during the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s pyrotechnic show will adapt to the era of social distancing.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said Tuesday that a series of surprise, five-minute displays around the city next week will lead up to the Fourth, culminating in a TV broadcast featuring a final show from the top of the Empire State Building.

“With heights reaching up to 1,000 feet from some firing locations, staying close to home and following social distancing guidelines is the best way to enjoy the show,” de Blasio said at a news conference.

Starting Monday, the pyrotechnic shows will be scattered throughout the week, launched from one or two on-land or water locations at night, the Associated Press reported. Macy’s said the fireworks will include more than two dozen colors and a wide array of special effects, as well as a tribute to front-line health-care workers.

For the first time in a month, Australia reported a coronavirus death, after a man in his 80s died from complications caused by the virus.

A resurgence in cases in the nation’s previous virus hot spot and second-most-populous state, Victoria, has prompted fears of a possible second wave.

Victoria Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said 20 new cases were confirmed overnight, bringing the total to nearly 1,900, Reuters reported. Australia has reported more than 7,500 cases nationwide and 103 deaths.

Although far below the ballooning coronavirus numbers seen in some other countries, including the United States, the new cases raised concerns in Australia, which managed to “flatten the curve” early in the pandemic. Officials had hoped the containment efforts would continue to keep new infections at bay. The new spate of coronavirus cases inspired a rush to buy essential supplies at grocery stores and sent thousands of people to testing centers.

“When we get additional cases, there will be a risk of people dying” or of more people “being hospitalized and going to intensive care,” Sutton told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday. “That’s why we need to get on top of [the] numbers.”

Officials said they believe the new cases stem from family parties where guests showed mild symptoms.

After coronavirus fears stripped Kentucky’s supply of volunteer election workers, the number of polling places contracted from 3,700 to just 170 for Tuesday’s primary. Louisville, the state’s largest city, was left with just one polling location.

As poll workers prepared to lock the doors in Louisville’s voting center just after 6 p.m., would-be voters began running from the parking lot to make it inside in time to cast a ballot.

After-work traffic and a late rush to vote caused delays in the parking lot, and many people arrived just after polls were set to close. One man told the Louisville Courier Journal that he had waited in traffic for 45 minutes before he could park and approached the exposition center just minutes after poll workers locked it down. Dozens of other people were left outside the glass doors when the last entryway was locked.

When the doors locked, people stuck outside began banging on the glass and demanding a chance to vote. Some shouted through the glass, arguing with poll workers and pleading with officials to reopen the doors.

The tense standoff lasted a few minutes before a judge’s last-minute injunction reopened the polls until 6:30 p.m. When workers unlocked the doors, people cheered as they lined up to cast their ballots inside.

U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker (D), who hopes to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in November, filed an appeal to have the voting deadline extended to 9 p.m., but a judge rejected the request.

Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Kentucky expects to see record voter turnout, after many residents requested mail-in ballots to avoid exposure to the coronavirus at an in-person voting booth.

As Florida hospitals rapidly fill up with new coronavirus patients, authorities have changed how they measure the number of full beds in intensive care units. The move, which will probably lower that figure, comes as the state eyes the next phase of reopening in July.

Until recently, Florida officials required hospitals to report the number of covid-19 patients occupying ICU beds, regardless of whether those individuals in fact needed the most intensive level of care.

But under the new data-tracking guidelines, hospitals would be asked to post only the number of patients who are receiving ICU-level care. In smaller hospitals, which tend to use the units to isolate slightly less sick patients, this change could make the ICUs seem emptier on paper.

At a news conference Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said he wanted to verify reports that newer patients are not getting as sick as those who contracted the illness in the spring.

But some critics have questioned the timing of changing the guidelines.

“Why in the middle of a global pandemic are those guidelines being modified the week when cases are skyrocketing?” Daniel W. Uhlfelder, a lawyer who has appeared as the Grim Reaper to warn against reopening, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Rebekah Jones, who was fired as the state’s coronavirus data scientist, charged that health authorities had deleted 1,200 virus cases. That alters data and makes it look “like Florida is improving next week in the lead-up to July 4, like they’ve ‘made it over the hump,’ ” she wrote on Twitter.

For more than 10 days in a row, Florida has posted a new high for the rolling average of new infections, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

Even as it drilled in some of the nation’s richest oil and gas basins, Oasis Petroleum came up dry on the bottom line, failing for five straight years to make enough money to cover its annual borrowing costs.

In 2019, a dozen years after it began exploring shale formations in Montana, North Dakota and West Texas, Oasis reported $154 million in operating income — well short of the $176 million it owed in interest on its debt. On Wall Street, the Houston-based company’s shares, which traded above $56 in 2014, have spent most of this year hovering around $1.

Oasis is what economists call a “zombie company” — largely abandoned by investors and able to stay in business only by tapping banks or bond investors for more credit. The Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight the impact of the coronavirus upon the economy may be inadvertently making it possible for a growing number of companies to remain in this twilight state.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has canceled most previously announced performances for the rest of 2020, including its signature Kennedy Center Honors and Mark Twain Prize, which have been rescheduled for next spring. The cancellations and postponements will cost the arts center $45.7 million in tickets and other revenue, increasing its coronavirus-related losses to more than $90 million.

The national arts center closed March 12 as large gatherings were banned to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. It extended the closure through Aug. 8, canceling or postponing more than 1,000 events.

Next month, officials plan to announce new programs to be held in socially distanced fashion either outside or in reconfigured indoor spaces. In the meantime, it will not present any large-scale events — including National Symphony Orchestra concerts and Washington National Opera performances — until next year.

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, two people with knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Washington Post.

The NBA entered Phase 2 of its comprehensive reopening plan Tuesday, with players reporting to teams in their respective home markets to undergo mandatory coronavirus testing. The Arizona Republic reported Tuesday that two unidentified members of the Phoenix Suns also tested positive, while other teams don’t expect to have test results until Wednesday.

In the weeks after the NBA’s shutdown on March 11, the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Detroit Pistons and Utah Jazz announced that members of their teams had tested positive. The Nuggets and Suns would not confirm the positive test results, citing “medical privacy,” and it remains unclear whether the NBA or its teams will formally announce future positive tests.

Top federal health officials warned Tuesday that surges in coronavirus infections in more than a dozen states could worsen without new restrictions, and contradicted President Trump’s recent claims that he told officials to slow testing so the country would record fewer cases.

Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the country is still in the grip of the pandemic’s first wave, including a “disturbing surge” of new cases in Southern and Western states, including Florida, Texas and Arizona.

The hearing came on the same day that Arizona reported record-high new coronavirus cases, and both Texas and Arizona reported record hospitalizations. Trump held a campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, days after his trip to Tulsa, another site of surging infections. Last week, Texas, Florida, Arizona and at least seven other states reported their highest weekly infection-rate averages.

A doctor who says face masks should be a nationwide requirement to combat the spread of the coronavirus compared flouting mask recommendations to smoking cigarettes in public spaces.

“The bottom line is that we know that masks reduce infections and they save lives,” Jha said. “Just as I can’t walk into a retail store and light up a cigarette, I shouldn’t be able to walk into a retail store without wearing a mask. These are basic public health measures that I think should be implemented across the country. It’s not that inconvenient and if it helps us stay open and avoid our hospitals getting overwhelmed, it feels to me like it’s well worth the cost.”

There is no national mandate regarding face coverings, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended the use of face coverings to help fight the virus’s spread.

As the debate over face masks has raged across the country, some states have made them mandatory and others have left the decision up to local officials. President Trump has repeatedly opposed wearing face masks in public.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced Tuesday that the state would make face masks in public a requirement as new cases continue to spike.

President Trump in an interview with Scripps on Tuesday suggested that increased testing was picking up many less-serious and perhaps negligible coronavirus cases among young people. “You’re showing people that are asymptomatic,” Trump said. “You’re showing people that have very little problem. You’re showing young people that don’t have a problem.”

In an interesting exchange Monday with GOP Rep. Pete Olson (Tex.), Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, roundly but indirectly rebutted Trump’s comments.

Olson then asked Fauci how, if he were “king for a day,” he would change that Bad Attitude Curve “and make these people address this issue for the threat it truly is.”

Fauci’s response bore almost no resemblance to what Trump had said.